Indian Country Today Is Back!

Who Will Be Our First Founding Member? The new Indian Country Today is launching a membership drive and an auction. Top bid will be forever known as Indian Country Today’s: “First Founding Member.”

Who Will Be Our First Founding Member? The new Indian Country Today is launching a membership drive and an auction. Top bid will be forever known as Indian Country Today’s: “First Founding Member.”

Indian Country Today is back! The NCAI has taken over, and this is grand news.

From September through February I have heard about the importance of saving Indian Country Today. So many people across Indian Country had the same idea:

What if … What if we all contribute?

What if I step up to make certain Indian Country has solid, accurate, fair reporting?

Is it worth it to save this voice? A national media platform for Indian concerns?  And how much will it take?

Yes. Yes. And the answer is a lot  — or perhaps a few tax-deductible dollars if we all contribute together.

We are building a new Indian Country Today on a public media model. We will have some advertising, but most of our resources will come from members, tribes, enterprises, and non-profits.

We need you.

We are launching a membership drive and an auction.

The membership drive will solicit help from our “members” as $100 Founding Members, $500 Sustaining Members, and $1,000 for Premier Members.

Unlike public media we don’t have nifty gifts as a thank you. No t-shirts. No coffee mugs. Just a better news report. We want to use the money to build our news operation, a multimedia reporting platform about what’s going on across Indian Country. We’ll stretch your dollars by partnering with other organizations, and amplify our reporting by letting others repurpose our editorial content.

We will serve.

This is great news, but to work, ICT needs help from people. If you can drop a few dollars into the fund, please do, and if you can’t do that, please, please, spread the word, get it out everywhere! You can read more by Mark Trahant at Indian Country today, or go straight to the membership drive. This is so very important, it’s vital for Indigenous peoples to have a voice.  Also, be sure to check out the new edition, there’s all manner of interesting reading!

ETA: I should point out that it’s possible to donate $5.00 to the membership drive, which is all I can manage right now, but I’ll be dropping more fives each week.

Daniel Pešta.

Daniel Pešta, “Scream III” (2015-2016), acrylic on canvas, (all images courtesy of DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague).

Daniel Pešta, “Scream III” (2015-2016), acrylic on canvas, (all images courtesy of DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague).

Daniel Pešta is an artist with a lot to say, and he’s well worth getting acquainted with, to say the least. His work is deeply expressive, profound, and stirring. Many times it’s frightening, because people can be quite frightening, and Daniel Pešta has a good deal of insight when it comes to human nature.

Daniel Pešta’s largest exhibition to date, drawn from his high-flying decade starting in 2007 , which has included three Venice appearances and Second Prize in Painting at 2017’s London Art Biennale, dominates Prague’s DOX Centre for Contemporary Art. Pešta’s work is timely, disturbing and profound. His extraordinary artistic range encompasses photography, video, assemblage, installation, sculpture, drawing and painting; his materials include wax, leather, resin, textiles, paper, plaster, wood, acrylic, latex, gum, paint, neon lighting, and stone. Two generative objects pull this exhibition together. One is red string, signifying blood, genetic coding, fatalism, or humanity’s endlessness, variously. The other is the mask. A central motif in Pešta’s practice, it is meant to evoke disguise, dissemblance, and anonymity.

Born in 1959, Pešta lived according to the larger Czech struggle for self-determination. He was painting as the Czechs stumbled out of the darkness of Communist rule in 1989. In the mid-1980s he entered into the underground music scene, anticipating what has been dubbed the “Velvet Revolution” — the demise of what former Czech President Vaclav Havel had called “post-totalitarianism” (in his 1978 samizdat essay “The Power of the Powerless”). After a trip to New York, in 1998, Pešta saw the possibilities of multimedia art.

You can read and see more at Hyperallergic.

Angry White Men.

LOS ANGELES — Judging from the paintings and drawings on view at Susan Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Nicole Eisenman has been thinking a lot about angry white men. They are almost the exclusive population throughout the expansive gallery. There is a large contingent of shooters, each confronting us from behind a firearm aimed directly outward, so that to look at the drawings is to stare down a gun-barrel. These shooter drawings are almost all from 2016, with a few from 2017 and one from 2018, elaborated in ink, charcoal, oil, acrylic, and pencil. This last is the largest, and the only one bearing a title, “The Shooter.” One of the untitled drawings, in pencil and blue ballpoint pen, shows a man pointing his gun at us with one hand while the other grasps his penis. Along the bottom margin Eisenman has written “BAMSPLOOSH.”

Nicole Eisenman, “The Tea Party” (2012–2017), ink on gessoed paper, 40” x 35″ paper size, 52” x 45.50” x 2″ framed (photo by Robert Wedemeyer).

Nicole Eisenman, “The Tea Party” (2012–2017), ink on gessoed paper, 40” x 35″ paper size, 52” x 45.50” x 2″ framed (photo by Robert Wedemeyer).

While there is nothing original about equating guns with penises, the full array of drawings in Dark Light reveals Eisenman’s mind ping-ponging through a number of visual rhymes, adding up to many of the show’s most compelling moments. The circle of the gun barrel becomes the end of a cigarette smoked by impassive men. In one case, smoke billows from a man’s right nostril; in another, a sooty cloud issues from a cigarette belonging to an African American in a drawing titled “A Moment of General Anesthesia” (2018), suggesting this man’s need for relief from pain of America’s continuous police shootings of black men. Further iterations of the black circle appear: in a small 2016 sketch it is a bullet hole in the middle of someone’s face, in others it is a darkened sun. A 2015 ink drawing titled “Black Sun” has the cheerless orb spewing fecal liquid that piles like a mound of pudding below, resembling a pipe depositing sewage in our waterways. Finally and inescapably, the circle is an anus.

Nicole Eisenman, “Heading Down River on the USS J-Bone of an Ass” (2017), oil on canvas, 127.25” x 105” x 1.75″(all images courtesy the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; photo by Robert Wedemeyer).

Nicole Eisenman, “Heading Down River on the USS J-Bone of an Ass” (2017), oil on canvas, 127.25” x 105” x 1.75″(all images courtesy the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; photo by Robert Wedemeyer).

Nicole Eisenman: Dark Light continues at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects (6006 Washington Blvd, Culver City, Los Angeles) through April 21.

Fascinating viewing and reading, you can do more of both at Hyperallergic.

The Amazing Egg Dance: Peasants to Politics.

Contrast between Carnival and Fasting (ca. 1550–99), artist unknown — Source.

Contrast between Carnival and Fasting (ca. 1550–99), artist unknown — Source. Click for full size.

Whoever the artist of the above piece was, I’d say they had been most impressed with Hieronymus Bosch. The Egg Dance, from village revelry to romance to politics. This is a wonderful piece of history, which demonstrates several cultural shifts throughout the centuries.

The egg dance was a traditional Easter game involving the laying down of eggs on the ground and dancing among them whilst trying to break as few as possible. Another variation (depicted in many of the images featured here) involved tipping an egg from a bowl, and then trying to flip the bowl over on top of it, all with only using one’s feet and staying within a chalk circle drawn on the ground. Although, as shown in many of its depictions in art, the pastime is associated with peasant villages of the 16th and 17th century, one of the earliest references to egg-dancing relates to the marriage of Margaret of Austria and Philibert of Savoy on Easter Monday in 1498.

[…]

This blindfolded version of the egg dance features in Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795). … According to some scholars Goethe’s mention gave birth to the phrase “einen wahren Eiertanz aufführen” (to perform a true egg dance) which refers to moving carefully in a difficult situation. This particularly association of the egg dance with navigating danger was expressed time and time again in political cartoons of the 19th-century: various political figures, from Bismarck to Disraeli, precariously trying to make there way about a floor strewn with potential upsets.

Democracy’s Disastrous Egg-dance, (1884), Joseph Keppler. A woman labeled “Democracy” wearing a blindfold labeled “Stupidity” is pushed by Samuel J. Randall toward a chair labeled “Presidenti[al] Chair”, with several eggs in the way on the ground, they are labeled “Honest Naval Appropriation, Civil Service Reform, Honest River – Harbor Appropriation, Economy, Anti-Silver Coinage, National Banking System, Tariff Reform, [and] Prompt Legislation”, two of the eggs are broken; among a group of men laughing, in the background on the right, are John Logan, John Sherman, and William D. Kelley. — Source.

Democracy’s Disastrous Egg-dance, (1884), Joseph Keppler. A woman labeled “Democracy” wearing a blindfold labeled “Stupidity” is pushed by Samuel J. Randall toward a chair labeled “Presidenti[al] Chair”, with several eggs in the way on the ground, they are labeled “Honest Naval Appropriation, Civil Service Reform, Honest River – Harbor Appropriation, Economy, Anti-Silver Coinage, National Banking System, Tariff Reform, [and] Prompt Legislation”, two of the eggs are broken; among a group of men laughing, in the background on the right, are John Logan, John Sherman, and William D. Kelley. — Source.

The Journalistic Egg Dance (ca. 1840), Andreas Geiger. A caricature of press censorship before the 1848 revolution in Austria. During the Restoration after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the European powers, led by Austrian Chancellor Clemens von Metternich (1773-1859), restricted the freedom of speech and expression to contain any kind of critical, nationalist or anti-authoritarian movement — Source.

The Journalistic Egg Dance (ca. 1840), Andreas Geiger. A caricature of press censorship before the 1848 revolution in Austria. During the Restoration after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the European powers, led by Austrian Chancellor Clemens von Metternich (1773-1859), restricted the freedom of speech and expression to contain any kind of critical, nationalist or anti-authoritarian movement — Source.

You read and see much more at The Public Domain Review.

Swedish House-Gymnastics (1913).

These exercises and the photographic illustrations are splendid! Exercises anyone can do, without taking up much time, and can be done conveniently at home.

These wonderful photographs, which make such innovative use of multiple exposure, are from a 1913 German book titled Schwedische Haus-Gymnastik nach dem System P.H. Ling’s by Theodor Bergquist, Director of the Swedish Gymnastic Institute in the Bavarian spa town of Bad Wörishofen. As the title tells us, this style of “Swedish house-gymnastics” demonstrated by Bergquist (and his mysterious female colleague) is based on a system developed by Pehr Henrik Ling (1776–1839), a pioneer in the teaching of physical education in Sweden. Inventor of various physical education apparatus including the box horse, wall bars, and beams, Ling is also credited with establishing calisthenics as a distinct discipline and is considered by some as the father of Swedish massage.

I think I could choose a series to do each day from these, without over exertion, and it might really help to be a bit more flexible these days. You can see much more at The Public Domain Review.

The Last Fiction.

This looks to be fascinating, and it’s a great way to learn too. The Last Fiction is a feature-length animation based on a Persian legend told in the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi. I will be looking for it, and looking forward to seeing it. The best bit might be that it’s out of an Iranian studio, so it will not end up being a stupid, offensive, Disnified version. If you could use a bit more information: Shahnameh (The Book of Kings), and Abu ʾl-Qasim Ferdowsi Tusi.

The Last Fiction.

YouTube video “People who like martial arts and weapons are normal”

Well, some of them are. Some are assholes and some are downright dangerous. And some are capable of formulating comprehensive (though not perfect) argument for their point of view. I must say that I too don’t find watching people kicking spherical object around the field for 90 minutes even remotely entertaining.

However if we take “normal” in this context to mean “not different from any other group of people” then I would say the title is completely correct. Assholes and dangerous people are in any and all human congregations. The compounding problem here is that while a dangerous footballer will at the worst hurt one o their fellows on the playing field, a dangerous person with a gun can do much more damage.

I think I could have a reasonable discussion with Matt Easton, author of this video and I think he missed slightly a good opportunity to enhance his point by not wearing his “Fighters Against Racism” T-shirt in this one.

To me this is another issue that is not clear-cut black&white. We have a saying in Czech “Když dva dělají totéž, není to vždy totéž.” – When two (persons) do the same thing, it is not always the same thing.  It applies here.

The key difference is the attitude and intent. Weapon collectors will grumble about laws that restrict their hobby, but most of them will respect the law and for example limit their collecting to weapons of the type that is legal in their country and they will buy ammo and shoot only a the shooting range for example. They will not found and congregate in corporation-like organizations lobbying for complete abandonment of said laws . They will not amas  a load of super-modern weaponry and pallets of ammo to go with it. They will hunt the rare, the peculiar, the unique pieces.

It is possible to appreciate weapons for their aesthetics and technical intricacy and enjoy learning the skills to use them without ever hurting anyone, or ever wanting to hurt anyone. And it is possible to pursue such hobby even in a country with strict gun laws – only, like in any other hobbies, other people’s needs have to be taken into account and respected.

Banksy Blitz NYC.

One of the new Banksy murals in Midwood, Brooklyn. Benjamin Sutton.

One of the new Banksy murals in Midwood, Brooklyn. Benjamin Sutton.

Banksy’slatest series of interventions in the New York City streetscape continued apace today. This afternoon the artist revealed on Instagram that a mural in the Midwood section of Brooklyn that had come to widespread attention last week is in fact his doing.

The mural is a characteristically coy commentary on capitalism, although it is accompanied by a smaller piece that depicts a seal. The pair is located in Midwood, at Coney Island Avenue and Avenue I. The larger one features what looks like a real estate developer (equipped with both a briefcase and a hardhat) brandishing a whip in the shape a rising red line graph, while a procession of children, a woman, an elderly person, and a dog flee. Nearby, a smaller mural whose connection to the theme of gentrification is indecipherable, features a seal balancing a ball — formed by the unpainted circle where a sign used to hang — on its nose.

It’s always interesting, tracking Banksy, and this is no exception. Benjamin Sutton at Hyperallergic has the story.

Does 18 Make For A Shithole?

Esplanade Park in Helsinki. Finland, is the happiest country in the world, according to the newest World Happiness Report. Credit Martti Kainulainen/Lehtikuva, via Associated Press

Esplanade Park in Helsinki. Finland, is the happiest country in the world, according to the newest World Happiness Report. Credit Martti Kainulainen/Lehtikuva, via Associated Press.

According to The World Happiness Report, Ustates has plummeted to 18th on the list. If you really want to be happy and feel secure, you need to go Nordic. Finland made the top of the list.

Finland was ranked number one on the World Happiness Report, compiled by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. The country was joined by other Scandinavian nations—Norway, Denmark, and Iceland—in the top four, followed by Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, and Australia.

All these nations are based on strong social welfare structures, and look, people are happy! Looks like that evil socialism has a lot going for it. Turns out that when people feel secure, they tend to be happier and much more laidback.

“I think there really is a deep and very unsettling signal coming through that U.S. society is in many ways under profound stress, even though the economy by traditional measures is doing fine,” Jeffrey D. Sachs, an editor of the report, told the New York Times. “The trends are not good, and the comparative position of the U.S. relative to other high-income countries is nothing short of alarming.”

The drop followed President Donald Trump’s first year in office, during which the majority of Americans reported disapproval of the country’s top elected official, and hundreds of thousands protested his regressive policies on immigration, women’s reproductive rights, and gun control—as well as widespread concerns that the president is blatantly profiting off his position in public office.

The past year also saw reports of America’s widening wealth gap, with the average upper middle-class household holding 75 times more wealth than low-income families.

While other countries have focused on social welfare of all their citizens, Ustates has been in the process of removing rights and the very last shreds of social programs. We’re in the middle of dismantling education, nazis are running rampant all over the place, and you never know when you might be walking into a nightmare massacre. Sounds like a shithole to me.

The World Happiness Report ranks countries according to per capita GDP, social support, life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and corruption levels.

Going by that alone, seems Ustates should be at the bottom of the list.

Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped for the second year in a row in 2017, with researchers suggesting that the opioid addiction epidemic and inequality are related to the decline.

I expect no health care has a lot to do with that one, along with a hefty percentage of the population living in food deserts and being unable to eat well.

Reigning political ideologies in the highest-ranking nations contrast sharply with that of the U.S., noted the researchers.

The countries in the top 10 tend to “believe that what makes people happy is solid social support systems, good public services, and even paying a significant amount in taxes for that,” said Sachs.

Yep. I’m more than happy to pay taxes, when they are used for the common good. That’s supposed to be the bloody point of taxes.

Every top-ranking country also ensures that every citizen has access to free or affordable healthcare, while millions of Americans remain uninsured despite the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Oh, there it is. Yep, other countries seem to have all figured out that having healthy citizens is to their benefit. That strikes me as simple common sense, but not here in Amerikka, no. I’m quite surprised we ended up as high as 18. Now I can’t get this song outta my head:

Via RawStory.

Katastwóf Karavan.

Kara Walker with her “Katastwóf Karavan” at the Mississippi River Trail on February 23, 2018, in New Orleans. Josh Brasted/Getty Images.

Kara Walker with her “Katastwóf Karavan” at the Mississippi River Trail on February 23, 2018, in New Orleans. Josh Brasted/Getty Images.

[…] Walker titled the whole montage the Katastwóf Karavan, or Caravan of Catastrophe, the use of Haitian Creole signaling the mix of Caribbean and Southern histories that shaped New Orleans. Walker’s first public installation since the 2014 Marvelous Sugar Baby — the enormous Sphinx-like mammy figure that she built out of sugar in the now-demolished Domino factory in Williamsburg — the Karavan went up for the closing weekend of the Prospect.4 triennial, which ran for three months at multiple sites around New Orleans. The installation was freighted with layers of site-specific symbolism — none of it subtle if you knew a bit about local history, yet all of it obscured by years of avoidance or, at best, awkward notes in the narratives delivered by school curricula or tourist brochures.

Thus Algiers Point: Here, in the eighteenth century, traders warehoused disembarked captives — those who survived the Middle Passage — before selling them on the opposite bank in the markets that dotted the French Quarter and surroundings. This is where families were rent apart, humans assessed and packaged as commodities. Thus, too, Walker’s tableaux, relevant across the landscape of chattel slavery but especially here.

And thus the calliope, a direct retort to the one on the Natchez — “the OTHER calliope,” Walker called it on her handout for the event — and its sonic broadcast of a whitewashed history. Several times a day, the vessel’s instrument blares out to the city (there is no such thing as a quiet calliope) items from a hoary playlist such as “Old Man River,” “When the Saints Go Marching In,” “God Bless America,” and, yes, “Dixie’s Land.” […]

You can read and see much more about Kara Walker’s latest piece here.

Pantherpedia: An Essay Guide.

Members of the Dora Milaje in "Black Panther." From left: Okoye (Danai Gurira), Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o) and Ayo (Florence Kasumba). Matt Kennedy / Marvel Studios

Members of the Dora Milaje in “Black Panther.” From left: Okoye (Danai Gurira), Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) and Ayo (Florence Kasumba). Matt Kennedy / Marvel Studios.

Carolina Miranda has the compleat rundown on Pantherian analysis:

Have you heard about the little movie that tells the story of a royal man-feline named T’Challa who is powered by vibranium and defends a secret African paradise named Wakanda?

Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther” is not just an epic comic-book action flick — it could approach the $1-billion mark globally after its opening in China this weekend — the movie is a full-blown cultural phenomenon, generating a cottage industry of cultural criticism that touches on a spectacular array of topics, including racial politics, geopolitics, gender issues, beauty standards, design and urbanism. (Hello, Wakandan municipal transit system!)

In fact, there are so many takes on “Black Panther” that New York-based educator Roberto Soto-Carrion has helpfully compiled dozens of analytical stories related to the film and the “Black Panther” comics in general into a 14-page Google Doc called “The Black Panther Reader.”

Ms. Miranda’s summary is excellent, and provides a great overview, with many links for those who wish to delve deeper. You can read it here.

Roentgenizdat: Bone Music.

Example of an x-ray record (all photos courtesy X-Ray Audio Project/Paul Heartfield).

Example of an x-ray record (all photos courtesy X-Ray Audio Project/Paul Heartfield).

Several years ago, while poking around a flea market in St. Petersburg, musician Stephen Coates came across a record unlike any other he had ever seen. Rather than etched on vinyl, its tiny grooves were cut onto a medical X-ray, tracing shallow circles over the ghostly shapes of bones.

“I immediately knew I had to find out who made it, why they made it, and how they made it,” Coates told Hyperallergic in a recent phone interview. He soon realized that the 78 RPM he had purchased — a single of “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets — was just one of many strange, makeshift records created in the Cold War years of the Soviet Union. Produced and disseminated on an underground market to circumvent government control of culture, these flimsy sheets were known as roentgenizdat, or “bone music.”

Installation view of ‘Forbidden Music: X-Ray Audio in the USSR, 1946 – 1964’ at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Installation view of ‘Forbidden Music: X-Ray Audio in the USSR, 1946 – 1964’ at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Working with photographer Paul Heartfield, Coates has since established the X-Ray Audio Project, a multi-faceted endeavor to chronicle and share the history of roentgenizdat. The pair has released a book and documentary on their extensive research and have also organized a traveling exhibition. It is currently at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, where examples of the decades-old transparencies are on view along with documents and other ephemera that together tell the technical, cultural, and human stories of this particular form of audio. Visitors can also listen to digitized recordings of the bone music, which, like homemade mixtapes, are far from crystal clear.

An absolutely fascinating subject! Humans are utterly amazing in their ability to circumvent control, and there’s nothing like declaring something forbidden to bring out the creative rebellion in people. You can read and see much more at Hyperallergic. I would love to be able to see this show, if you have the chance, don’t miss it!