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thekillerssluts · 4 years

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DIY Magazine, October 2020.

Interview TALKING ‘BOUT MY GENERATION: WILL BUTLER

Talking to Will Butler is a bit like trying to have a conversation with a human magpie. Hugely enthusiastic and with a constant giggle on the go (“I have a nervous laugh, so I laugh at more things than I should…”), the 37-year-old has a tendency to veer off down strange tangents, taking your original point but then getting distracted or excited by some other new, shiny train of thought in a different direction.

You can tell he’s smart - not just booksmart, but the kind of smart where you can practically see the cogs turning at 100mph. “I love knowledge for its own sake,” he professes at one point. “I believe in it to a fault. I think it’s worth knowing all this shit, for no other reason than just knowing that it’s true.” And it’s this attitude that’s filled the three years since ‘Everything Now’ - he and his Arcade Fire bandmates’ society-skewering fifth LP.

In that time, amid world tours and festival headlines, Will has had two more children - twins - and went to Harvard to study a masters in public policy. He also found time to record ‘Generations’ - a second solo effort that takes the brilliantly all-over-the-place nature of 2015’s ‘Policy’ and hones it into something that’s more pointed, though still clearly fuelled by the same curious mind. Or as he puts it: “The first [album] it’s like, ‘I’m at the market! There’s some eggplants! Oh there’s a nice sausage guy! And OK cool I’ll get some of those and these!’ But then ‘Generations’ was much more like, ‘I’ve been storing these bones in my freezer for two years and now we’re gonna boil this down to make the pure essence of the beast’.”

Like most debuts from artists splintering off from their main projects, ‘Policy’ had been born from accumulating a collection of material that didn’t fit with his band. Unlike most, Will had just been nominated for an Oscar (for his soundtrack to Joaquin Phoenix film Her) before its release, “so that was a confidence boost,” he notes amiably. Conversely, the essence of ‘Generations’’ particular beast seems a far more targeted one - one intrinsically linked with the intense political conversations the musician had found himself wrangling with during his recent studies.

“I always want whatever I’m making to emerge out of what I’m living and for it to help me understand how I’m living better, so going to policy school was certainly part of that artistic project as well as the ‘what do we fucking do?’ project,” he explains. “I jokingly say that I was radicalised at Harvard, which is basically true. I was in a mid-career programme, so there were 25-year-old geniuses but also people in their middle age who’d worked in the UN in Pakistan or the government in Mexico. They had this whole perspective of how fucked everything is across the whole globe so it was… educational.

As such, his second brims with a sense of palpable unease for a society that’s not only crumbling before our eyes right now, but has been doing so intermittently for decades and centuries. The twinkling, finger-clicking patter of ‘Close My Eyes’ belies the all-too-timely despair beneath it (“The photograph is new / But I seen that same headline, and I got to dance to keep from crying”), Randy Newman-esque closer ‘Fine’ digs right back to “George Washington and all his slaves,” while ‘Not Gonna Die’, he explains, was written in direct response to the November 2015 Bataclan shootings.“All these things hit different people in different ways, but that was so close to home,” he says. “It was Christmas after that and I was shopping in Manhattan; I walked into Sephora and it was super crowded and I thought, there’s a lot of people in here, where would I go [if something like that happened]? And I got so mad. It fucking worked. You made me scared. I’m not gonna die in Sephora on 5th Avenue but you made me think about it, you fucking pieces of shit.“Mike Pence was writing about it before he was running for Vice President, like, ‘We need to make sure we don’t have any immigrants come in because the immigrants can do this to us here’. And it’s like, I’m not gonna be killed by a woman fleeing violence in Guatemala!! The terrorists and the people saying ‘Be afraid!’: what you’re doing is working, and I AM afraid, and fuck you.”

Perhaps most interestingly, however, ‘Generations’ doesn’t just point the finger outwards, it also poses questions of the singer’s own inherent part in it all. “A big chunk of this record is asking: What’s my place in American history? What’s my place in America’s present?” he explained in a previous statement about the album. “Both in general, but also extremely particularly: me as Will Butler, rich person, white person, Mormon, Yankee, parent, musician. What do I do? What can I do?”

“It’s basically like, ‘My God, how did we get here?’ - that Talking Heads line,” he continues now. “The record is at times literally a conversation with people arguing back and forth, and there’s a lot of questions raised and the answers aren’t answers - you just end the conversation in a different spot. There’s something to that process of discussing and coming to some sort of revelation only to find out what’s lacking there, and then you move onto the next conversation and find out what’s lacking there. I was pleased that the material felt cyclical and of a piece, and you feel like you’re in a different spot than you were at the beginning.”

Because yes, his latest might not provide all the answers - “This is a musical work and I don’t know what the end notes are,” he admits - but ‘Generations’ does emphasise the importance of asking the questions and having the conversations, both with the world and with yourself. And if you can have them over an album of musically explorative, rich and often perversely funny new offerings? All the better.

Next, he’ll return to the fold to begin work on Arcade Fire’s sixth opus. Writing for that had originally started in New Orleans before the pandemic hit, but the band “don’t have the file management down to really do it at a distance,” he chuckles. “Win and Régine are always demoing and working, and I’ve done a little. We always work on a record for about a year and a half and we’re not off that pace yet, we’re still weirdly on track…”

You can bet by the time that record lands, he’ll have chalked up a handful of other accomplishments to his name, too; lord only knows the political battleground of the coming weeks will give him enough food for thought. And in the inquisitive mind of Will Butler, thought and curiosity are clearly the most nourishing tools of all. “You can write a love song that’s super true, but can you write a history song that also is? And if it comes out right and there’s some value in it, then what does that mean?” he muses. “It’s about just trying different angles to express something true.”

‘Generations’ is out now via Merge.

Butler’s Bits

‘Generations’ is undoubtedly an album rooted in politics and society - this much we know. But it’s also a record that digs into the musician’s relationship with other parts of the human experience…

HUMOUR “It’s a coping mechanism and it’s also a worldview. There’s not exactly a cabaret scene in New York but the comedy here is quite musical and there’s a lot of comedians that interact with people in interesting ways. They’re a bit younger than me - I’m the oldest millennial - but there’s something in that spirit that feels relevant.”

RELIGION “I grew up Mormon and I’m still ethnically Mormon. It’s like The Smiths song, ‘Meet Me At The Cemetery Gates’ - ‘Keats and Yeats are on your side, and Wilde is on mine’, you lose, haha. I’m sure Yeats is such a fucking asshole but that’s my heritage. The classic lineage of the Western canon is how I grew up.”

ADULTHOOD “I have three kids now, and it doesn’t make me worry about the future so much as it’s made me learn so much about humanity watching them - watching how it all goes into the ‘this is what humans are’ mill. On ‘Policy’, the protagonists are a motley crew of rag-tag whatevers, whereas this is much more a coming of age novel - not like a teenager becoming an adult, but an adult becoming a worse adult…”

As featured in the October 2020 issue of DIY, out now.

#Arcade Fire #will butler #generations #interview #the HOT Butler

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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How TCM Resurrects Plan 9 from Outer Space for Ghoulish Table Read

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UFOs are often visible, but not always. Sometimes they make noise, sometimes they are silent. If you’ve never seen a flying saucer, that is proof they are everywhere. This is one of the many amazing things we learn in TCM’s upcoming table read of Ed Wood’s masterwork, Plan 9 from Outer Space.

We once laughed at the horseless carriage, the aero-plane, the telephone, the electric light, vitamins, radio, and even television. But it took a while to get the joke about Plan 9 from Outer Space. Written and directed by Edward D. Wood Jr. in 1959, it was a little-known independent film with a direct line through directors who carried on the DIY-filmmaking spirit like John Cassavetes, Melvin Van Peebles and John Waters. The Cult of Plan 9 began when Ed Wood was posthumously awarded a Golden Turkey Award for Worst Director of All Time in 1980. Though this has been disputed.

Turner Classic Movies is the go-to channel for prestigious films. You can always count on a showing of The Treasure of Sierra Madre or The Public Enemy, or Citizen Kane. But top prize in the Golden Turkey awards carries its own prestige.

“This isn’t ‘Plans One Through Eight from Outer Space,’” Jerry Seinfeld proclaimed at the Chinese restaurant in a 1991 episode of Seinfeld. “This is Plan 9. The one that worked. The worst movie ever made.”

The SF Sketchfest presentation was adapted for the stage and virtual stage by former The Simpsons writer, and self-proclaimed Ed Wood superfan, Dana Gould. He and his Stan Against Evil co-star Janet Varney have been acting in live staged reads with a revolving cast of eager comic actors for over three years. The Zoom production also features Kat Aagesen, Bob Odenkirk, Bobcat Goldthwait, Oscar Nuñez, Deborah Baker Jr., Maria Bamford, David Koechner, Jonah Ray, Paul F. Tompkins, Baron Vaughn, and Gary Anthony Williams. The miniature visual effects, which are by no means just cardboard cutouts, were done by Mike Carano, and the sounds of musical accompaniment came out of Eban Schletter.

Laraine Newman is the narrator. She brings Gould’s adapted stage directions to such vivid life they can reanimate the dead, which is a key element of the actual plan at the center of the cult movie. Originally titled “Grave Robbers from Outer Space,” the film marked the last appearance of Bela Lugosi, who had also acted in Wood’s 1953 feature Glen or Glenda.

Lugosi’s footage for Wood’s unmade film “The Vampire’s Tomb,” was repurposed for Plan 9. Lugosi died of a heart attack on Aug. 16, 1956. To complete the film, Wood cast his chiropractor, Tom Mason, who in spite of his professional familiarity with the human skeletal structure, somehow believed he could mask the fact that he was much taller than the horror icon by pulling his cape over his face.

The table read of Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space is part of TCM’s Classic Film Festival weekend, which runs through May 9. For easy comparisons, the original film will air directly after the event. Dana Gold and Janet Varney spoke with Den of Geek about refurbishing the low-budget cult classic, and how, like their predecessor, they proudly spared every expense on its new décor.

Den of Geek: I watched the table read a second time while playing Plan 9 in another window, and I just have to say, recreating those sets must’ve cost a fortune.

Janet Varney: Yeah, just like it cost Ed Wood a fortune.

Dana Gould: That’s the genius of, of Mike Carano. All those things were this big. You can see, I have the Bela Lugosi statue and the saucer. What he did was so amazing, and it really brought [the production] up to be better than it had a right to be. When Janet and I discussed doing this on Zoom, we were like, “Well, how do we take the limits of Zoom and turn them to our advantage? Why is it on Zoom?” By doing it, one, it allowed us to get a cast that we might not be able to get. Got people in different places. Maria Bamford was in Minnesota. Bob Odenkirk was in Vancouver. So, we could get people that normally we couldn’t get. Doing it in black and white helped. And then what Mike Marano did, it made it something unique.

Janet Varney: I would just also add, as a tribute to Ed Wood, we’ve never had anyone that we’ve asked to do the show who hasn’t wanted to do the show. Whether or not they’ve been in town for the live version, every person that we love that we’ve asked to be a part of the cast at one time or another is like, “Oh, my God, I need to do that. I want to do it. When is it? Please say it’s not a date I’m out of town. Please say it’s not. Will you ask me on the next one?”

Everyone knows this movie. And the idea of getting to step into its shoes in any kind of iteration is really exciting for every single person that we’ve ever asked.

Dana Gould: And it’s great to see how different people play different parts. Joel Murray plays the General different than David Koechner plays the General. Bob Odenkirk plays Eros differently than Patton Oswalt plays Eros. It’s always great. And Janet and I, we don’t want to know what you’re going to do. Just do it.

For this production, you assembled the all-star team. But were you ever tempted to use the same kind of players Wood used: wrestlers, tap dancing accordion players, chiropractors, and radio psychics?

Janet Varney: That’s a great question. I feel like we also have pretty good access to all those folks. So maybe that will get the next variety version. Because our friend, Jim Turner, is just about to do a fundraiser for the kind of variety acts who have been struggling in this last year, because of the many myriad things that they do.

So, I actually love that idea, Tony. And you’re right, it would be a totally different experience. That’s an interesting idea too, because we do come at it with a bunch of people who love the movie, but there’s also some major winking going on, as all the comedians and actors try to lean into being: “It’s my first time on stage, maybe my first time saying words,” really playing that up.

In the future, do you hope to see this performance eviscerated on Mystery Science Fiction Theater 3000?

Dana Gould: That would be great. If they did this.

Janet Varney: Especially because Bill and Kevin have done it. They have been in our production of Plan 9. Bill had been what Laraine [Newman] did. Bill did the narration at a show, at SketchFest, and it was great.

Dana Gould: I would like to see Jonah making fun of himself.

Janet Varney: Yeah. Let’s get meta. Our fans can handle it. Fans of MST3K can handle it. Plant 9 fans can handle it. Everybody could handle it.

I know I’m paraphrasing Seinfeld, but as the person who’s trusted with Plan 9 and all that comes with that, did you get to see the first eight plans from outer space?

Janet Varney: And are you allowed to talk about it if you did?

Dana Gould: Exactly. What were they?

Janet Varney: So many questions.

Dana Gould: So many questions.

Were the first eight plans rejected?

Janet Varney: Or were they all executed? And I use that word purposefully. Were all of those plans executed and they didn’t have great results?

Dana Gould: That’s a drunk man at a typewriter, “Plan 9 sounds good.” I remember showing Plan 9 to somebody who’d never seen it before. And they turned to me afterwards and said, “Did he not have any friends he could have shown this to and gotten notes?” He didn’t have those kinds of friends.

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What are some of your favorite mistakes from the movie?

Janet Varney: Oh, God. I was going to say Dana had mentioned that the first time he saw the movie was on a video cassette that Tom Kenny and Dan Spencer, and Bobcat Goldthwait showed him. And I was actually going to ask, did you think it was the tape glitching at the end when the monologue goes from, blip to [makes a noise]? And you’re like, “Wait a minute. Back that up, hold on. Is somebody going to fix this?”

That’s definitely one. That’s a spectacularly new, weird problem in a movie that was not a consistent problem. So, you’re like, “Wait, how did that happen one time, in this very, very overt way?” So good.

Dana Gould: From the very beginning, it’s like the first time you saw William Shatner do “Rocket Man.” I remember, I had a party at my house, and I was working on The Ben Stiller Show, and everybody was there. And back then, there was no YouTube. You would just have these cassette tapes with all of the weird stuff that you had collected on it, like the farting priest and all these weird things that you had, and “Rocket Man.” And I remember showing “Rocket Man” at this thing and Bob Odenkirk just shouting at my television, “You’re a grown man. You’re a grown man.”

I always thought Shatner gave the same line reading for “Mr. Tambourine Man” as he did for “Kahn.”

Dana Gould: Yes, he did. He did. He had a couple of tricks, and he used them. Yeah. There’s one direction he doesn’t get a lot, “You want to just try one big? You want to just see how it goes?” “Take the chains off and let it rip?”

Was some of the background music in this reading, especially the oxidation bit, inspired by The Simpsons?

Dana Gould: That’s all Eban [Schletter, the musical accompanist], you have to ask Eban. But again, that’s great, especially the Solaronite song. Necessity being the mother of invention, that is a brutal chunk of dialogue for anybody, a thankless, brutal chunk. And every time I give it to Paul, I say, “I’m apologizing ahead of time. I give it to you because I don’t want anybody else to do it. Because if it was anybody else, it would be death.”

Eban came up with that. And we were just like, “Maybe we can break this up. Maybe there’s a way to break this up.” And then Eban came up with that kind of thing. And it is one of those things that I love, that it’s like a mutant. It’s grown into its own weird thing to solve its inherent problems. You can’t describe it to anybody. It’s just like, you have to see it.

I used to remember describing Kevin Meaney, the comedian. I used to just tell people, “I can’t describe what he does. You just have to see him, but then you’ll know. You only need a minute, and you’ll get it. But I can’t describe it to you.” That’s really a good analogy.

Laraine Newman, I believe, steals this as the narrator. How much of that is improvised and how much of that is written by you? Because I know that you wrote the stage directions.

Dana Gould: It’s written, but Laraine, I call it “newscaster flat.” Laraine knows how the notes need to be played. It’s like the Wrecking Crew, you have a guitar behind you. I don’t know what Tommy Tedesco is going to play, but I know it’s going to be good. I don’t know what Carol Kaye is going to play, but I trust it. It’s the same thing. It’s a murderers’ row, and I wouldn’t have the gall to tell them what to do.

Janet Varney: It takes a very specific kind of confidence as a performer to be that deadpan. It’s such a specific skill. And it’s a skill, I think, born out of a type of bravado and expertise that’s all just tightly contained in this tiny space, where she’s not trying to sell any of it. And that is the genius behind what she does is just letting it lay out there like that. I mean, it’s hard.

When you have something that you know is funny and you would be laughing yourself, if you were listening to someone else read it, it’s so hard not to want to sell it. Like, can I make this even funnier? And she’s like, “No, I need to take it all the way back, to the back of the house just like, who me, who me? I’m just reading these things.” And it’s just so brilliant.

Dana Gould: This is a person that did sketches on live television with John Belushi and Bill Murray. So she definitely knows where her center of gravity is.

Janet Varney: That’s right. Well said.

Dana Gould: And yeah, again, unflinching. And that takes, as a performer, just like a little inside baseball, a lot of control and to really, to have control of your own ego, to know that I’m going to get what I want by stepping way back. I mean, Sterling Hayden is the only person I’ve ever seen blow Peter Sellers off the screen. And he does it just by, he’s like a statue, but there’s so much weight to it.

In the original movie, I love the “Criswell Predicts.” So I wanted to ask, Janet, do you get asked to do bathroom readings?

Janet Varney: I would if asked, I would love to. That’s one of the things that’s great about Ed Wood in general too, is just having this a sort of fascination with the occult and that kind of thing. And the way that it fits into camp is so appealing. And so, yeah, I would very happily jump back into some bad psychic practices if I could. Hopefully, I will someday.

Dana Gould: And an unerring dedication to Wicker furnishings.

Janet Varney: That’s right. Always that. Paula and her wicker.

Because the table read is done during COVID and everyone feels an immediacy to Zoom calls, were you ever at all concerned about an Orson Welles’ scenario, where the residents of San Fernando Valley will believe they’re under attack by flying saucers from outer space?

Janet Varney: If only.

Dana Gould: Yeah. That’s the least of our problems out here. I don’t know when you visited last time, but the walking dead, they’re around.

The table read of Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space airs on Friday, May 7 at 8pm on TCM. Plan 9 from Outer Space airs at 9:30pm.

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The post How TCM Resurrects Plan 9 from Outer Space for Ghoulish Table Read appeared first on Den of Geek.

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cremegrungepoetry · 3 years

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Watch "Summer Newman - Bridges - DIY Sessions" on YouTube

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a---z · 4 years

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TRANSMISSIONS

www.transmissions.tv

TRANSMISSIONS returns for Season 2 comprising eight episodes with contributions from BBZ TV, Juliet Jacques, Ignota Books, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Kat Anderson, Plastique Fantastique, and many others!

All forms of community are now more important than ever, and it is vital that we find mechanisms to support each other through this precarious time. In the landscape that we have found ourselves in, many artists, writers and thinkers have had exhibitions, opportunities and subsequent fees postponed or cancelled. In response to this, we have established TRANSMISSIONS an online platform that commissions artists to share their work within a classic DIY TV show format. Episode 1 | 9 September | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 11 September | 9AM GMT Kat Anderson: Bad Man Nuh Flee Episode 2 | 16 September | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 18 September | 9AM GMT Plastique Fantastique Communiqué: Beware Mars with Earth in Ascendance W/ Plastique Fantastique / Arianne Churchman & Benedict Drew / Christopher Kirubi / Gentle Stranger Episode 3 | 23 September | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 25 September | 9AM GMT Juliet Jacques: Spectres of Socialism W/ Bill Morrison / Colin Newman / Deimantas Narkevičius / The Duvet Brothers / Erica Scourti / Igor & Gleb Aleinikov / Jasmina Cibic / John Smith / Kerry Tribe / Octavio Cortázar / Oleksiy Radynski / R W Paul / Santiago Álvarez Episode 4 | 30 September | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 2 October May | 9AM GMT Lawrence Abu Hamdan W/ Maryam Jafri / Maan Abu Taleb & Others Episode 5 | 7 October | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 9 October | 9AM GMT BBZ TV: Past, Present and Future Episode 6 | 14 October | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 16 October | 9AM GMT Ignota Books: Deep Deep Dream Episode 7 | 21 October | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 23 October | 9AM GMT Curated by Anne Duffau, Hana Noorali and Tai Shani W/ Adam Christensen / Carolyn Lazard / Hardeep Pandhal / Imran Perretta / Jordan Lord / Sung Tieu / Tabita Rezaire / Lloyd Corporation / Rehana Zaman & Others Episode 8 | 28 October | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 30 October | 9AM GMT w/ TBC

Season 2 of TRANSMISSIONS will run as eight weekly episodes screening every Wednesday at 9 pm BST and repeated on Friday at 9 am BST on Twitch. The 1st episode will air on 9th of September 2020. Each artist included in TRANSMISSIONS is paid a fee in return for their contribution. In some instances, artists have waived their fees in order to donate the money to a charity of their choice. With a sense of community, all the money used to pay artists in season 2 has been kindly donated by established art institutions and commercially stable artists.

Season 2 is funded and supported by BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Chisenhale Gallery, DACS, Grazer Kunstverein, Matt's Gallery, Studio Oscar Murillo, Netwerk Aalst, Somerset House Studios and Wysing Arts Centre.

Episode 1 | 9 September | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 11 September | 9AM GMT Kat Anderson: Bad Man Nuh Flee

Kat Anderson will show a collection of audio/visual notes on oppression, Black liberation and the white imagination.

Kat Anderson is a visual artist and filmmaker, working under an artistic and research framework called ‘Episodes of Horror’, which uses the genre of horror to discuss representations of mental illness and trauma as experienced by or projected upon Black bodies in media.

Episode 2 | 16 September | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 18 September | 9AM GMT Plastique Fantastique Communiqué: Beware Mars with Earth in Ascendance W/ Plastique Fantastique / Arianne Churchman & Benedict Drew / Christopher Kirubi / Gentle Stranger

On 30 May 2020, at 3:52 pm EDT, Plastique Fantastique watched the Spacex Falcon 9 rocket carry NASA personal (for a fee) to the International Space Station and thought, as below, so above (next stop the moon, then Mars)… there is much today, down here, that needs our urgent attention… and there is much in the future, up there, to worry about too (including one million people living on Mars by 2050 as the first stage of planetary colonisation)… Earth views Mars as a planetary symbol for the cocksure warrior, and for violence, passion, assertion, and the weaponization of skill and sex… above all, Mars is the sign of competition (and Mars is a goal for commerce)… Mars is not this Mars though... That land is not that land… We know a different Mars (we have been there)… It is the hominids of Earth that have projected this image (of themselves) onto Mars… all other animals know this… Mars as ruling planet is not to be feared… it is Earth as ruling planet (Earth in Mars and the Mars in Earth) that we need to worry about… For episode two of the second series of Transmission2020, Plastique Fantastique offer moving images, stories and songs about planetary problems, below and above, with help from our friends Gentle Stranger, Christopher Kirubi and the collaboration of Arianne Churchman & Benedict Drew. The broadcast will feature clips from a film by Plastique Fantastique commissioned by Southwark Park Galleries. Plastique Fantastique is a collaboration between David Burrows, Simon O’Sullivan, Alex Marzeta and Vanessa Page and others, including Mark Jackson, Motsonian, Benedict Drew, Frankie Roberts, Harriet Skully, Ana Benlloch, Stuart Tait, Tom Clark, Simon Davenport, Joe Murray, Lawrence Leaman, Samudradaka and Aryapala. The collaboration is a performance fiction produced through comics, performances, text, music, film and assemblages, and investigates the relation of aesthetics and politics and sacred, popular and mass cultures. Recent exhibitions include Shonky: Aesthetics of Awkwardness, Hayward Touring Show 2017-18, and Mars Year Zero at Southwark Park Galleries 2019.

Episode 3 | 23 September | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 25 September | 9AM GMT Juliet Jacques: Spectres of Socialism W/ Bill Morrison / Colin Newman / Deimantas Narkevičius / The Duvet Brothers / Erica Scourti / Igor & Gleb Aleinikov / Jasmina Cibic / John Smith / Kerry Tribe / Octavio Cortázar / Oleksiy Radynski / R W Paul / Santiago Álvarez

Less than a year after the UK's traumatic General Election, after a pandemic that would surely have been far better handled if the principles of communality and solidarity had been at the heart of government, Juliet Jacques presents a selection of films that mostly look back at socialist politics and culture. Starting with comrade John Smith's film made in response to the Covid-19 crisis, and the government's chaotic communications, these films - by Jasmina Cibic, Octavia Cortázar, the Duvet Brothers, Deimantas Narkevičius, Oleksiy Radynski, Kerry Tribe and others - engage creatively with ideology and art in Yugoslavia, the USSR, Cuba, the UK and beyond.

Juliet Jacques (b. 1981) is a writer and filmmaker, based in London. She has published two books, most recently Trans: A Memoir (Verso, 2015). Her short fiction, journalism and essays have appeared in numerous publications including The Guardian, Granta, Frieze, Sight & Sound, Wire, New York Times, 3:AM, The New Inquiry, Arts of the Working Class, London Review of Books and elsewhere. Her short films have screened in galleries and festivals worldwide. She has taught art and creative writing at the Royal College of Art and other institutions, and hosts the political arts podcast Suite (212).

Episode 4 | 30 September | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 2 October May | 9AM GMT Lawrence Abu Hamdan W/ Maryam Jafri / Maan Abu Taleb & Others

Lawrence Abu Hamdan is a “Private Ear”. His interest with sound and its intersection with politics originate from his background as a touring musician and facilitator of DIY music. The artists audio investigations has been used as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and as advocacy for organisations such as Amnesty International and Defence for Children International together with fellow researchers from Forensic Architecture.

Abu Hamdan completed his PhD in 2017 from Goldmsiths College University of London and is currently a fellow at the Gray Centre for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago

Abu Hamdan has exhibited his work at the 58th Venice Biennale, the 11th Gwanju Biennale, the 22nd Sydney Biennial and the 13th and 14th Sharjah Biennial, Witte De With, Rotterdam, Tate Modern Tanks, Chisenhale Gallery, Hammer Museum L.A, Portikus Frankfurt, The Showroom, London and Casco, Utrecht. His works are part of collections at MoMA, Guggenheim, Van AbbeMuseum, Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern. Abu Hamdan’s work has been awarded the 2019 Edvard Munch Art Award, the 2016 Nam June Paik Award for new media and in 2017 his film Rubber Coated Steel won the Tiger short film award at the Rotterdam International Film festival. For the 2019 Turner Prize Abu Hamdan, together with nominated artists Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani, formed a temporary collective in order to be jointly granted the award.

Episode 5 | 7 October | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 9 October | 9AM GMT BBZ TV: Past, Present and Future

BBZ present a snapshot into queer Black British archives, memes that shaped us and a re- imagined queertopia. BBZ is a Black Queer Art & DJ collective raised in London with roots in nightlife and clubbing culture, working to challenge institutionalised and post colonial behaviours. We prioritise the experiences of Black queer womxn, femmes, trans folk and non binary people in all aspects of our work, providing physical and online spaces for this specific community.

Episode 6 | 14 October | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 16 October | 9AM GMT Ignota Books: Deep Deep Dream

Deep Deep Dream is a journey through the techniques of awakening taking the hallucinogenic form of a palindrome. Unfolding through a series of experimental rituals, this encounter is an invitation to touch the dreamworld — a place where no matter how far you walk, you arrive back at your point of departure — and a meditation on these questions: What kind of world do you want to live in? What is a world?

Ignota Books is an invitation to awaken, and at the same time, dream. Founded in the last days of 2017 in the Peruvian mountains by Sarah Shin and Ben Vickers, Ignota publishes at the intersection of technology, myth-making and magic. Deriving our name from Hildegard of Bingen’s mystical Lingua Ignota, we seek to develop a language that makes possible the reimagining and reenchantment of the world around us.

Episode 7 | 21 October | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 23 October | 9AM GMT Curated by Anne Duffau, Hana Noorali and Tai Shani W/ Adam Christensen / Carolyn Lazard / Hardeep Pandhal / Imran Perretta / Jordan Lord / Sung Tieu / Tabita Rezaire / Lloyd Corporation / Rehana Zaman & Others

Episode 8

| 28 October | 9PM GMTREPLAY | 30 October | 9AM GMT

w/ TBC

Thank you to:

All contributing artists, writers, composers and thinkers; Adam Sinclair; Donald Smith; Hen Page; Lori E. Allen; Maxwell Sterling; Mika Lapid;

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art

Chisenhale Gallery

DACS

Grazer Kunstverein

Matt's Gallery

Studio Oscar Murillo

Netwerk Aalst

Somerset House Studios

Wysing Arts Centre

www.transmissions.tv

@transmissions2020

TRANSMISSIONS collective is composed of:

Anne Duffau

is a cultural producer, researcher, and founder of A---Z, an exploratory/nomadic curatorial platform exploring artistic practices and knowledge exchange through collaborations, presentations, soundscapes, screenings and discussions. She has collaborated with a range of projects and organisations including ArtLicks, Southwark Park Galleries, Mimosa House and Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London Please Stand By, or-bits .com, PAF Olomouc Czech Republic & Tenderflix. Anne has previously run the StudioRCA Riverlight, London programme (2016-2018) and is currently the interim curator at Wysing Arts Center, a Tutor at the School of Arts and Humanities, and is the acting Lead in Critical Practice, within the Royal College of Art’s Contemporary Art Practice Programme. She has performed live music under Alpha through a number of projects and collaborations.

Hana Noorali

is an independent curator and writer based in London. In 2019 she was selected (together with Lynton Talbot) to realise an exhibition at The David Roberts Foundation as part of their annual curator’s series. She curated Lisson Presents at Lisson Gallery, London from 2017-2018 and from 2017 -2019, produced and presented the podcast series Lisson ON AIR. In 2018 Hana edited a monograph on the work of artist and Benedictine Monk, Dom Sylvester Houédard. Its release coincided with an exhibition of his work at Lisson Gallery, New York that she co-curated with Matt O’Dell. In 2007, she co-founded a non-profit project space and curatorial collective called RUN active until 2011. In 2020 Hana and her curatorial partner Lynton Talbot will be publishing an anthology that examines the intersection of poetry and film with (p) (prototype).

Tai Shani

is an artist living and working in London. She is the joint 2019 Turner Prize winner together with Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock and Oscar Murillo. In 2019 Tai was a Max Mara prize nominee. Her work has been shown at Turner Contemporary, UK (2019); Grazer Kunst Verein, Austria (2019); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy (2019); Glasgow International, UK (2018); Wysing Arts Centre, UK (2017); Serpentine Galleries, London (2016); Tate, London (2016); Yvonne Lambert Gallery, Berlin (2016) and Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2016).

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indochina17 · 7 years

Photo

DIY, April 2017

#Alt-J #Joe Newman #Thom Green #Gus Unger-Hamilton #DIY #april #2017

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newmandiy · 4 years

Video

youtube

DIY Face Mask - 3D Print on Cloth Challenge

#diy #face mask #3d #3d print #3d printer #3d printed #homemade face mask #diy face mask #print on cloth #NewMan DIY #newmandiy

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years

Text

Pluralistic: 19 Mar 2020 (Marie Newman ousts Dan Lipinski, Radicalized radio documentary, African Whatsapp modders, Imagineering in a Box, Data is the New Toxic Waste, a fair covid bailout, Fox News is a death cult, food supply chains are healthy, magic for coronavirus)

Today's links

The worst Democrat in Congress just lost his job: Dan Lipinski primaried by the amazing Marie Newman.

Canada Reads documentary on Radicalized: The Great Canadian Book debate is indefinitely postponed, but here's an hour on my book!

Africa's Facebook modders are world leaders: Technological self-determination through adversarial interoperability.

Imagineering in a Box: Interdisciplinary theme park design lessons from Khan Academy and Disney.

Data is the New Toxic Waste: It was never "the new oil."

How to structure a fair covid bailout: Stimulus, not private jets.

Fox News is a suicide cult: Telling your elderly viewers to perform tribal loyalty by engaging in high-risk behaviors is a career-limiting move.

Grocery supply chains are resilient: One less thing to worry about.

Magic in the time of coronavirus: Never let a good crisis go to waste, card-trick edition.

This day in history: 2010, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

The worst Democrat in Congress just lost his job (permalink)

Congress's worst Democrat is Dan Lipinski, a corrupt, anti-abortion, corporatist, gunhumping asshole in a safe seat that he inherited from his father in 2004, who handed it to him after nominations had closed, bypassing the semblance of democracy.

https://theintercept.com/2018/01/29/dan-lipinski-illinois-3rd-district-marie-newman/

He's a homophobic bigot who opposed the $15 minimum wage and allowed the rail-barons who fund his campaign to dismantle safety regulations.

He was primaried by Marie Newman (I'm a donor!) whose campaign was vicious sabotaged by the DNC.

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/26/dccc-blacklist-marie-newman-dan-lipinski/

Despite this, Marie Newman successfully primaried this piece of shit.

Like AOC's seat, Newman's is a very safe one, meaning she's all but guaranteed to go to Congress in November.

Canada Reads documentary on Radicalized (permalink)

The Canada Reads national book prize is indefinitely postponed, thanks to covid. In lieu of the televised debates originally scheduled for this week, the CBC is airing one-hour specials on each book, including mine, Radicalized.

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-6-canada-reads/clip/15766247-canada-reads-2020-special-episode-radicalized-by-cory-doctorow

If you're jonesing for The Great Canadian Book Debate, you can fill the gap with the whole series:

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-6-canada-reads

Africa's Facebook modders are world leaders (permalink)

In most of Africa, the most popular app by far is WhatsApp, and unofficial WhatsApp mods – including one that started life as a Syrian alternative at the height of its civil war – are offering local tools for local contexts.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/african-whatsapp-modders-are-masters-worldwide-adversarial-interoperability

"Nothing about us without us" has been a rallying cry for many movements, most recently the disability rights movement. Coders working for a Silicon Valley Big Tech firm shouldn't have the last work on how apps work for people half a world away.

The big WhatsApp mods accommodate lots of local needs: larger groups and filesizes, better privacy protection, multiple accounts on a single device.

But it's also hard to find reliable mods, because FB used legal threats to shut down the largest, most popular one.

Ironically, this has driven peer-to-peer app sharing, where people you trust will directly send the app from their phone to yours, assuring you that they haven't detected any spyware. That's just great.

What would be even better is if local coders could dismantle FB's digital colonialism and market their improved apps directly, come out of the shadows without fear of retaliation by distant juggernauts who want to capture "the next billion users" and own their digital lives.

The history of Adversarial Interoperability is full of users modifying their tools to improve them. Before John Deere was a monopolistic copyright troll, it used to send engineers out to farms to collect and integrate farmers' mods into its products.

https://securityledger.com/2019/03/opinion-my-grandfathers-john-deere-would-support-our-right-to-repair/

Every human being should have the right of technological self-determination: the right to decide which tools they use, and to change how those tools work to suit their own needs.

Imagineering in a Box (permalink)

Imagineering in a Box is a joint project from Khan Academy, Pixar and Disney Imagineering. It's a series of interactive lessons and lectures on designing themed spaces, rides to go in those spaces, and animatronics to go in those rides.

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/hass-storytelling/imagineering-in-a-box

It's interdisciplinary: land design is meant to be undertaken with physical materials, ride design uses art and math, and animatronic design is robotics – mechanical engineering and software development.

Data is the New Toxic Waste (permalink)

In a new article for Kaspersky, I argue that data was never "the new oil" – instead, it was always the new toxic waste: "pluripotent, immortal – and impossible to contain."

https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/secure-futures-magazine/data-new-toxic-waste/34184/

Data breaches are inevitable (any data you collect will probably leak; any data you retain will definitely leak) and cumulative (your company's data breach can be combined with each subsequent attack to revictimize your customers). Identity thieves benefit enormously from cheap storage, and they collect, store and recombine every scrap of leaked data. Merging multiple data sets allows for reidentification of "anonymized" data, and it's impossible to predict which sets will leak in the future.

These nondeterministic harms have so far protected data-collectors from liability, but that can't last. Toxic waste also has nondeterministic harms (we never know which bit of effluent will kill which person), but we still punish firms that leak it.

Waiting until the laws change to purge your data is a bad bet – by then, it may be too late. All the data your company collects and retains represents an unquantifiable, potentially unlimited source of downstream liability.

What's more, you probably aren't doing anything useful with it. The companies that make the most grandiose claims about data analytics are either selling analytics or data (or both). These claims are sales literature, not peer-reviewed citations to empirical research.

Data is cheap to collect and store – if you don't have to pay for the chaos it sows when it leaks. And some day, we will make data-hoarders pay.

How to structure a fair covid bailout (permalink)

It's a foregone conclusions that there will be a bailout. My first worry is that it will be inflationary, because production has ground to a halt. More dollars chasing fewer goods — not good.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/18/diy-tp/#covid-stimulus

But there's another risk, which is that it will just go to the finance sector, who will use it to buy private jets and political influence, repeating the 2008 pattern.

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-to-structure-the-coronavirus

Financialization is how the economy got so fragile in the first place. Leveraged buyouts, debt-loading, payoffs for layoffs, looting corporate cash reserves, selling assets and spiking executive competition made companies brittle. As Matt Stoller writes, financialization's goal "is to eliminate production in favor of scalable profitable things like brands, patents, and tax loopholes, because producers – engineers, artists, workers – are cost centers."

Bush/Obama had huge leverage over corporations during their bailout, but they squandered it by making companies subservient to finance, instead of public priorities, workers' rights, or a fair deal for customers.

We must not repeat that blunder. Any company that gets a covid bailout should:

be permanently banned from buybacks, and banned from dividends for 5 years. Companies need to restore their financial cushions.

have their share price zeroed. Shareholders aren't getting a bailout. They "took the risk and upside, they should get the downside too."

have limits on executive comp. Tax dollars shouldn't make execs who presided over failure into millionaires.

a ban on lobbying, limits on PR – you can't spend public handouts to lobby for more public handouts

no M&A activity for 5 years. We're bailing you out so you can run a productive business, not become an acquisition target.

This crisis is different than 2008. It's worse. Let's not make the response worse, as well.

(Image: Bernie Durfee, CC BY-SA)

Fox News is a suicide cult (permalink)

Throughout the crisis, Fox News has been dutifully fulfilling its role as a state new organ for the Trump admin. When Trump's narrative was "no big deal," the network engaged in denial and urged its viewers to engage in high-risk conduct to perform their tribal loyalty.

TV news viewers are much older than the median American. Fox viewers are much older than the median TV new viewer. Old people are at the highest risk of covid complications. Linear increases in patient age yield exponential increases in mortality.

Fox has since changed its orthodoxy to match the president's new narrative. But it's too late. Many viewers will cling to their original denial in order to protect themselves from feeling like dupes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/on-fox-news-suddenly-a-very-different-tune-about-the-coronavirus/2020/03/16/7a7637cc-678f-11ea-9923-57073adce27c_story.html

Others are already incubating – and passing on the virus.

Fox News just murdered a substantial portion of its viewership.

https://ritholtz.com/2020/03/foxnews-clearpresentdanger/

But don't get smug. The Fox viewers' risky conduct will have spread the virus further, infecting people far beyond the circle of denialists.

And their cases and the cases of those they infected will contribute to the overwhelming of the health-care system.

People who have car-wrecks or burst appendices or complex births or other emergency hospitalizations will die as a result.

Fox didn't cause the pandemic, and its viewers aren't solely responsible for its spread. But their ideology and conduct made it much, much worse.

Grocery supply chains are resilient (permalink)

If you – like me – have been worried about empty US grocery shelves, it appears that you can rest easy (or easier).

US food distributors' warehouses are at 200-500% nominal, comparable to pre-Thanksgiving.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/18/817920400/empty-grocery-shelves-are-alarming-but-theyre-not-permanent

They saw this coming and stocked up.

Food production is also still very healthy.

The shortages appear temporary, driven by logistics bottlenecks that will ease with time, assuming the labor force for grocers/warehousers/shippers remains healthy and available.

(Image: Lyza, CC BY-SA)

Magic in the time of coronavirus (permalink)

I really dote on the "social magic" of Andy at The Jerx, a one-on-one style of conjuring and mentalism that often plays out over weeks and months. He's been doing a series of performing tricks during coronavirus, and the latest instalment is great.

http://www.thejerx.com/blog/2020/3/19/magic-in-the-time-of-coronavirus-part-3

"I have this trick I'm working on but I've run out of people to perform it on in person. Can you hop on Skype for a few minutes?"

This implies that you could do the trick in person, and you can use it to do something you couldn't do in person.

"The window of the Skype frame makes switching and ditching and that sort of thing incredibly easy. You don't need a pocket index, you can have stuff just sitting on your computer desk off frame."

This day in history (permalink)

#10yrsago Peter Watts found guilty www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1186

#10yrsago Icelandic Pirates soar: citizenship for Snowden? https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/icelandic-pirate-partys-rapid-rise-may-result-in-citizenship-for-snowden/

#1yrago Uber used spyware to surveil and poach drivers from Australian rival service Gocatch https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-18/uber-used-secret-spyware-to-try-and-crush-australian-start-up/10901120

#1yrago Kickstarter employees want to unionize under OPEIU and have formed Kickstarter United to make that happen https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/19/18254995/kickstarter-unionizing-union-representation-inclusivity-transparency-tech-us-crowdfunding

#1yrago The European Copyright Directive: What Is It, and Why Has It Drawn More Controversy Than Any Other Directive In EU History? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/03/european-copyright-directive-what-it-and-why-has-it-drawn-more-controversy-any

#1yrago Matt Taibbi finally makes sense of the Pentagon's trillions in off-books "budgetary irregularities" https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/pentagon-budget-mystery-807276/

#1yrago New Zealand's domestic spies, obsessed with illegally surveilling environmental activists, missed a heavily armed right-wing terrorist https://consortiumnews.com/2019/03/15/misguided-spying-and-the-new-zealand-massacre/

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Disney Parks Blog (https://disneyparks.disney.go.com), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/).

Currently writing: I've just finished rewrites on a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I've also just completed "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel next.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: The Masque of the Red Death and Punch Brothers Punch https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/16/the-masque-of-the-red-death-and-punch-brothers-punch/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

#pluralistic

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