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The Dart
Scrolling textures pierce my bloodshot eyes like arching darts aimed at red balloons,
my destiny lie elsewhere, someplace crisper.
Counterfeit facade arrayed along my visor, screechin' sermons like a gray buffoon;
yet she is waiting patiently -- nary a whisper
I drift on, daydreams wander,
wondrous words devastatingly aligned, persuade my mind:
she has scribed them down.
Remove this tumultuous tempest from my brim, 'till I find:
green forest, peat and bog around
Hillsides arise, inclining greater than my city ground;
out there, beyond, is peace and true prosperity;
abstract professions found, intermingled sumptuous forces newly unbound,
can be yet achieved, lest I dawdle aged superfluity
shrieking lucid orange annunciation,
time to change your softly dampered brilliance,
unloosen dexterity, sharpening a once minced temperament,
leap-frog wild decorum, rediscover simple eloquence.
The dart has pierced my wading brow,
And now I find,
my world is left behind:
art supplants artificial mind
A vale of darkness reins the lesser season,
far below the south of forest land;
Between thick trees of pine and peaks of white,
A clay brick path wanders through these somber hills
Water of the brook babbles through an olden hamlet
like a brimming broth before a lazy meal
laced with capsicum pepper mixed with cutlet
quaffed with red and white of dry appeal
Unburdened folk carrying caboodle
fish the meadow beyond cathedral way
celebrate sandpiper calling ruff and reeve,
revive the ancient wanton tumultuous ways
Sweet burning desire sings supple sound
against a sage of dissonant musical saws.
Lanes lined with new houses,
carved gables, tiered windows, overhanging roof
A nature park is where I want to be,
this ancient time is land I long to feel,
juxtaposed between my now and future free,
elixir of the woods hence I may heal.
Doug Bauman, Dec 2008
When fear turns to
excepting your fear
it becomes understanding
of your fear
and then, there is no fear
there is just knowledge.
By AlyssaDawnw
Okay here is something I learned last night from my friend.
Its from the book of "Effortless Mastery" my friend was telling me about it.
So the book is talking about soloing and how people are timid to solo because they believe they will hit the wrong note.
think to yourself right before you play your solo "the first note I play will be the most beautiful note I, or anyone has ever heard". And by thinking and believing this, no matter what note you play, the beauty of that frequency will surface, and not only that, but will guide you to the next note.
Here is what I said, after he told me this.
Its like, going on, with the idea in mind, Im just going to do, what I do, be me, and even though when I take that plunge, it may seem totally off at first to me, it will be absolutely beautiful, because it is me. Okay now I am crying. Thanks
( sorry, this conversation was over FB )
It is absolutely beautiful! And the cool thing is that even if it seems kind of off, that's okay, because the more dissonant something is, the more beautiful the reslease or resolve is! I love it!
my off tune uniqueness, lol
I suppose
ha ha, exactly!
We talked about it for quite a while, thats just snippet.
An answered prayer, thats what you are..
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (27 April [O.S. 15 April] 1891 – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who later worked in the Soviet Union. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous music genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His works include such widely heard pieces as the March from The Love for Three Oranges, the suite Lieutenant Kijé, the ballet Romeo and Juliet—from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken—and Peter and the Wolf. Of the established forms and genres in which he worked, he created—excluding juvenilia—seven completed operas, seven symphonies, eight ballets, five piano concertos, two violin concertos, a cello concerto, a symphony-concerto for cello and orchestra, and nine completed piano sonatas.
A graduate of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Prokofiev initially made his name as an iconoclastic composer-pianist, achieving notoriety with a series of ferociously dissonant and virtuosic works for his instrument, including his first two piano concertos. In 1915, Prokofiev made a decisive break from the standard composer-pianist category with his orchestral Scythian Suite, compiled from music originally composed for a ballet commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev commissioned three further ballets from Prokofiev—Chout, Le pas d'acier and The Prodigal Son—which, at the time of their original production, all caused a sensation among both critics and colleagues. But Prokofiev's greatest interest was opera, and he composed several works in that genre, including The Gambler and The Fiery Angel. Prokofiev's one operatic success during his lifetime was The Love for Three Oranges, composed for the Chicago Opera and performed over the following decade in Europe and Russia.
After the Revolution of 1917, Prokofiev left Russia with the approval of Soviet People's Commissar Anatoly Lunacharsky, and resided in the United States, then Germany, then Paris, making his living as a composer, pianist and conductor. In 1923 he married a Spanish singer, Carolina (Lina) Codina, with whom he had two sons; they divorced in 1947. In the early 1930s, the Great Depression diminished opportunities for Prokofiev's ballets and operas to be staged in America and Western Europe. Prokofiev, who regarded himself as a composer foremost, resented the time taken by touring as a pianist, and increasingly turned to the Soviet Union for commissions of new music; in 1936, he finally returned to his homeland with his family. His greatest Soviet successes included Lieutenant Kijé, Peter and the Wolf, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, Alexander Nevsky, the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, On Guard for Peace, and the Piano Sonatas Nos. 6–8.
The Nazi invasion of the USSR spurred Prokofiev to compose his most ambitious work, an operatic version of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace; he co-wrote the libretto with Mira Mendelson, his longtime companion and later second wife. In 1948, Prokofiev was attacked for producing "anti-democratic formalism". Nevertheless, he enjoyed personal and artistic support from a new generation of Russian performers, notably Sviatoslav Richter and Mstislav Rostropovich: he wrote his Ninth Piano Sonata for the former and his Symphony-Concerto for the latter.
When I saw the expression of this clown, in the middle of Paris (pl. Charles de Gaulle), so dissonant in the crowd of the Xmas period, I couldn't avoid to shoot. I instantly visualized the background in B/W, because his world's view looked exactly that way: grey and sad.
Quando ho visto l'espressione di questo clown, nel mezzo di Parigi (piazza Charles de Gaulle), così dissonante nel mezzo della folla del periodo natalizio, non ho potuto evitare di scattare. Immediatamente mi sono immaginato lo sfondo in b/n, perchè la sua percezione del mondo sembrava esssere proprio così: grigia e triste.
© Randall Hobbet - All rights reserved - 2014 Getty Center, Los Angeles: This woman's elegant dress was the height of fashion in Florence around 1540. The costume and music book indicate that she comes from a cultured, patrician family, perhaps the Frescobaldi, who once owned this painting. The ambiguous space, juxtaposition of dissonant colors, and polished, sculptural treatment of flesh are characteristic of Bacchiacca's portraits.
colinhuggins.bandcamp.com/track/rachmaninoff-rhapsody-on-...
NY Times, Dec. 4 2011
Colin Huggins was there with his baby grand, the one he wheels into Washington Square Park for his al fresco concerts. So were Tic and Tac, a street-performing duo, who held court in the fountain — dry for the winter. And Joe Mangrum was pouring his elaborate sand paintings on the ground near the Washington Arch.
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Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
Kareem Barnes of Tic and Tac collected donations on Sunday.
Enlarge This Image
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
Joe Mangrum showed his sand paintings on Sunday.
In other words, it was a typical Sunday afternoon in the Greenwich Village park, where generations of visitors have mingled with musicians, artists, activists, poets and buskers.
Yet this fall, that urban harmony has grown dissonant as the city’s parks department has slapped summonses on the four men and other performers who put out hats or buckets, for vending in an unauthorized location — specifically, within 50 feet of a monument.
The department’s rule, one of many put in place a year ago, was intended to control commerce in the busiest parks. Under the city’s definition, vending covers not only those peddling photographs and ankle bracelets, but also performers who solicit donations.
The rule attracted little notice at first. But the enforcement in Washington Square Park in the past two months has generated summonses ranging from $250 to $1,000. And it has started a debate about the rights of parkgoers seeking refuge from the bustle of the streets versus those looking for entertainment.
At a news conference in the park on Sunday organized by NYC Park Advocates, the artists waved fistfuls of pink summonses while their advocates, including civil rights lawyers, called on the city to stop what they called harassment of the performers.
“This is a heavy-handed solution to a nonexistent problem,” said Ronald L. Kuby, one of the lawyers.
The rule is especially problematic in Washington Square Park, performers say, because there are few locations across its 10 acres that are beyond 50 feet from a memorial or fountain — whether the bust of Alexander Lyman Holley, who introduced the Bessemer steel process to this country, or the statue of the Italian liberator Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Then there is the park’s international reputation as a gathering place for folk music pioneers and the Beats.
“Washington Square is the live-music park of New York City, and it would be close to impossible for any one of us to follow these regulations,” said Mr. Huggins, who has received nine summonses with fines totaling $2,250.
But Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, argues that there is ample room for performers away from the monuments. And, he added, a musician who is not putting out a tin cup is welcome to sit on the edge of the fountain or under a monument.
“It’s the whole issue of the ‘tragedy of the commons,’ ” he said. “If you allow all the performers and all the vendors to do whatever they want to do, pretty soon there’s no park left for people who want to use them for quiet enjoyment. This is a way of having some control and not 18 hours of carnival-like atmosphere.”
Gary Behrens, an amateur photographer visiting from New Jersey, applauded the city’s efforts to rein in the performers. “I’m O.K. with the guitar, but the loud instruments have taken over the park,” he said.
The lawyers and advocates, however, challenged the idea that street performers were selling a product as a vendor does. And threatening a lawsuit, they faulted the city for creating what they called “First Amendment zones” through the rules.
“Is this place zany?” asked Norman Siegel, the former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “You bet. Public parks are quintessential public forums. Zaniness is something we should cherish and protect.”
Park visitation has soared along with the rise of tourism in the last 15 years, and with it vendors and artists interested in a lucrative market.
Mr. Benepe insisted that the rules would not scare off future music legends.
“If Bob Dylan wanted to come play there tomorrow, he could,” he said, “although he might have to move away from the fountain.”
Oddly, the dispute coincided with the 50th anniversary of the so-called Folk Riot in Washington Square Park, when the parks commissioner tried to squelch Sunday folk performances. Hundreds of musicians gathered in protest, the police were called in and a melee ensued.
In April, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wrote a letter commemorating the Folk Riot, saying he applauded “the folk performers who changed music, our city and our world beginning half a century ago.”
Taken on film, february 2024.
Project "Kulturlüge ≠ Naturwahrheit"
________________________
Die Theorie des Schönen (nach Adorno)
Das Schöne wird die Welt retten
In Anbetracht des Schönen erwacht die Neugier
und die Neugier ist die Lust zu verstehen
und dieses ist die Lust vergleichbar mit dem Begehren
das Werk der Kunst in seinem Gehalt zu erschließen
Etwas berührt das Tiefste in dem Betrachtenden
in ihm wird der Wille hervorgebracht
es zu verstehen
Wie ein Kraftfeld wirkt die ästhetische Beredtheit
und doch wird das Kunstwerk ein Mitteilungszweck
verneinen,
doch den Keimling setzen für unbewusste Ideen
Es ist das Telos der Erkenntnis
worauf das mimetische Verhalten anspricht
Nur durch Enthaltung vom Urteil kann urteilen
die Kunst
Sie durchdringt den ehemals Starren
Das Angesprochenwerden widerfährt und stößt
ihm zu
Pathologien werden nicht nur dargestellt,
sondern der Erkenntnis zugänglich gemacht
Leiden werden beredt und rücken
das Dissonante als Signum der Moderne
vor den Vorhang
Eine zugleich kritische und utopische Intention
Identität zwischen dem Erkennenden
und dem Erkannten
Pathologien begegnen als solche,
werden sie von Betroffen erkannt
Darstellung und Betrachtung
fallen zusammen
Stiftung des Verlangens das Leid zu überwinden
Ebenen des Selbstbezugs und Negativwertigkeit
sich ineinander verschieben
Ein kritischer Impuls wird entzündet
das Aufbegehren ist das Moment
des gesetzten Widerstands
gegen das, was den Betrachtenden
entfremdet
Der Geläuterte schwingt sich hinauf
zum Neinsager einer schlechten Realität
Erkenntnis tritt an die Stelle von Selbsttäuschung
Unversöhnliche Absage an den Schein der Versöhnung
eine erstrebenswertere Wirklichkeit gibt
Dabei ist die Hoffnung die Grundlage,
damit die Kritik gelingt
Nicht befrieden kann den Angesprochenen
die Ersatzangebote der Kulturindustrie
Die Sinnfrage macht erst lebensfähig
so verführen Gewissheitsversprechen
als Urphänomen von Ideologien
Durch passiven Konsum und Eskapismus
wird der Betrachter entbunden
von der Konfrontation
Es ist die Kunst als rationale Kraft
und ästhetische Vernunft,
die aufschließt die systembedingten Pathologien,
die Krankheiten falscher Ordnung
Denn sie ist frei vom Verwertungsinteresse
schöpft nicht nach Verwertungslogik
Bevor eine neue Ordnung errichtet werden kann
muss der Schein der alten Ordnung
erleuchtet werden durch Erkenntniskritik
Fortlebende Mimesis,
nie ist abgeschlossen die Deutung
Aus Freiheit soll gestärkt werden das Bewusstsein
und der freieste Mensch ist der, der bringt
seine Vernunftsfähigkeit zur Wirklichkeit
[Elvin Karda, Dezember 2023]
whooda thunk it? with her usual clever-clever & charm, Susie layers up a dissonantly sweet rain outfit for It Won't Rain On Me. her SWANclothing sock garters peaking through the plastic polka dotted layers...
thank you Susie for the lovely outfit photo. i am such a sucker for anything see-thru, baby blue & ballerina pink & generally amazing.
blogged on SwanDiamondRose.
It doesn't fit on Flickr, of course, but I thought Flickrites might be amused by it. You can see the whole thing here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPTAFSJniSI
Dafydd is not quite serious in this poem, and I have tried to retain the spirit of that! And this is more or less my internet debut on the guitar. Sad, isn't it? I have also made a lame - but creditably laborious, I hope - attempt at reading Dafydd's fourteenth century Welsh at the end. Took me ages to do this. Sigh.
The Sigh
Y Uchenaid
A rasping, stertorous sigh
Is splitting my tunic awry:
An exhalation, frigid
As frost, shall rend my rigid
Breast. The quaking, baleful strain
Shall split me with searing pain.
From my pregnant, brooding breast,
Like the sigh of brainsick beast,
Comes a queer, dissonant note,
Constriction at my throat,
Commotion of recollection,
Candle's callous extinction,
Cywydd's vortex, cruelly spinned,
Cold barrage of misty wind.
When I am vexed, all presume
I'm a piper, as the fume
Comes snorting from my hollows
Loud as a blacksmith's bellows.
A sigh like this will make fall
A stone from a sturdy wall.
A roar to shake a man's length:
A girl's anger quakes my strength.
A withered cheek, wind-squall wet
Marks my autumn of regret.
This wild anger at defeat
Would hull oats or winnow wheat.
A year's anguish in this sigh:
Give me Morfudd, or I die.
Source material: Poem by Dafydd ap Gwilym, paraphrased by Giles Watson. The mark of Dafydd's authorship can be seen in the self-mocking overstatements and the somewhat hyperbolic agricultural metaphors.
this photography thing is often quite a mysterious experience for me.
there are more than a few times when i've created an image -
that is, shot a picture and then processed it -
without processing any of the sort like intention, meaning, message.
let's use the word mystical, shall we? because what recurrently happens is i will tweak a photo
(like this one) bit by bit by bit, without knowing what i'm trying to do/say/depict -
without having a clue on where i'm going - only knowing once i get there,
or pretty darn close to "there".
and then, i'll put it here on my stream privately at first, to look it over, imagine it being seen by another. and sometimes even before i know it i'll think of something important, amusing, interesting to me - something perhaps revealing, amusing, edifying to you -
and i'll find i might have something to say about something,
either with my own words, or a song that i'll link to.
tonight i watched the documentary about townes van zandt, be here to love me.
and during the watching, i suddenly felt compelled to find a photo to show you
what he and his music made me feel.
here's even more about the mysterious part: sometimes a photo i take will sit in wait for me,
waiting for musing, the muse of discovery, to uncover its purpose. but i won't know that see,
until i'm thinking of something, or watching a film, or listening to a song.
like this shot - the song waiting around to die started playing and i hurried to find this photo.
that song sings of this photo, of that macrocosm of one droplet of water
on the tippy edge of a tiny leaf in all the vastness of life on this earth; like each of us.
and here's another mystery: i'm not claiming that all of the words of that song,
and all the fractals of this image equate with one another, complete one another -
because they don't! and it doesn't all make sense to me!
but it feels/seems "right", even as the pieces present themselves
at variance, even dissonant perhaps, like a countryfolkblues git-tar song about death
juxtaposed with a photo so full of essential elemental green and liquid life.
these pieces of image, sound, thought, feeling, meaning & purpose
all drift, circle, swirl around in that liminal place, between my sub- and conscious-ness,
until they click, meld, synch together
here.
i live for this knowing and unknowing wrapped around one another,
beginnings and endings and beginnings again,
clarity and haze,
yin and yang.
i learn so much from this, through this,
from
through
this .....
When talking about the finest albums of the eighties, this album MUST be included.
The variety of styles and the ofttimes dissonant, yet melodic narratives of each song are hard to resist.
Tom Waits' stream of consciousness lyrics create vivid images of life, love, regret and the simple glories of ordinary folk.
Hands down, an all-time favorite.
German promotion card by Mercury / Nina Hagen-Fanclub, Erlangen. Image: Pierre et Gilles.
German singer, songwriter, and actress Nina Hagen (1955) is known for her theatrical vocals and is often referred to as the ‘Godmother of Punk due to her prominence during the punk and new wave movements in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During her 40-years-career she appeared in several European films.
Catharina ’Nina’ Hagen was born in 1955) in the former East Berlin, German Democratic Republic. She was the daughter of scriptwriter Hans Hagen and actress and singer Eva-Maria Hagen (née Buchholz). Her paternal grandfather died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (her father was Jewish). Her parents divorced when she was two years old, and growing up, she saw her father infrequently. At age four, she began to study ballet, and was considered an opera prodigy by the time she was nine. When Hagen was 11, her mother married Wolf Biermann, an anti-establishment singer-songwriter. Biermann's political views later influenced young Hagen. Hagen left school at age sixteen and went to Poland, where she began her career. She later returned to Germany and joined the cover band, Fritzens Dampferband (Fritzen's Steamboat Band). She added songs by Janis Joplin and Tina Turner to the ‘allowable’ set lists during shows. From 1972 to 1973, Hagen enrolled in the crash-course performance program at The Central Studio for Light Music in East Berlin. Upon graduating, she formed the band Automobil and released in 1974 the single Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen (You Forgot the Colour Film), a subtle dig mocking the sterile, gray, Communist state. Nina became one of the country's best-known young stars. She also appeared in several East-German films and TV films sometimes alongside her mother Eva-Maria Hagen, including Heiraten/Weiblich/Marrying/Female (Christa Kulosa, 1975), Heute ist Freitag/Today is Friday (Klaus Gendries, 1975), Liebesfallen/Love Traps (Werner W. Wallroth, 1976) and Unser stiller Mann/Our Quite Man (Bernhard Stephan, 1976). Her career in the GDR was cut short after her stepfather Wolf Biermann's East German citizenship was withdrawn from him in 1976. Hagen and her mother followed him westwards to Hamburg. The circumstances surrounding the family's emigration were exceptional: Biermann was granted permission to perform a televised concert in Cologne, but denied permission to re-cross the border to his adopted home country.
Nina Hagen was offered a record deal from CBS Records. Her label advised her to acclimatise herself to Western culture through travel, and she arrived in London during the height of the punk rock movement. Hagen was quickly taken up by a circle that included The Slits and Sex Pistols. Back in Germany by mid-1977, Hagen formed the Nina Hagen Band in West Berlin's Kreuzberg district. In 1978 they released their self-titled debut album, Nina Hagen Band, which included the single TV-Glotzer (a cover of White Punks on Dope by The Tubes, though with entirely different German lyrics), and Auf'm Bahnhof Zoo, about West Berlin's then-notorious Berlin Zoologischer Garten station. The album also included a version of Rangehn (Go for It), a song she had previously recorded in East Germany, but with different music. The album received critical acclaim for its hard rock sound and for Hagen's theatrical vocals, far different from the straightforward singing of her East German recordings. It was a commercial success selling over 250,000 copies. Relations between Hagen and the other band members deteriorated over the course of the subsequent European tour. The band released one more album Unbehagen (Unease) before their break-up in 1979. It included the single African Reggae and Wir Leben Immer... Noch, a German language cover of Lene Lovich's Lucky Number. Meanwhile, Hagen's public persona was steadily creating media uproar. She starred in two films. In Germany she made the experimental film Bildnis Einer Trinkerin/Portrait of a Female Drunkard (Ulrike Ottinger, 1979) with Tabea Blumenschein, Magdalena Montezuma and Eddie Constantine. She also acted with Dutch rocker Herman Brood and singer Lene Lovich in the Dutch film Cha Cha (Herbert Curiel, 1979). Brood and Hagen would have a long romantic relationship that would end when Hagen could no longer tolerate Brood's drug abuse. She would refer to Brood as her ‘soulmate’ long after Brood committed suicide in 2001. In late 1980, Hagen discovered she was pregnant, broke up with the father-to-be the Dutch guitarist Ferdinand Karmelk, who died in 1988, and she moved to Los Angeles. Her daughter, Cosma Shiva Hagen, was born in Santa Monica in 1981. In 1982, Hagen signed a new contract with CBS and released her debut solo album NunSexMonkRock, a dissonant mix of punk, funk, reggae, and opera. Her first English-language album became also her first record to chart in the United States. She then went on a world tour with the No Problem Orchestra. Her next album the Giorgio Moroder-produced Fearless (1983), generated two major club hits in America, Zarah (a cover of the Zarah Leander song Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen) and the disco/punk/opera song, New York New York, which reached no. 9 in the USA dance charts. She followed this with one more album, Nina Hagen in Ekstasy (1985), which featured a 1979 recording of her hardcore punk take on Paul Anka's My Way. The album fared less well and her contract with CBS expired in 1986 and was not renewed. Hagen's public appearances became stranger and frequently included discussions of God, UFOs, her social and political beliefs, animal rights and vivisection, and claims of alien sightings. In 1987 she released the Punk Wedding EP independently, a celebration of her marriage to a 18-year-old punk South African nicknamed 'Iroquois'.
In 1989, Nina Hagen was offered a record deal from Mercury Records. She released three albums on the label: Nina Hagen (1989), Street (1991), and Revolution Ballroom (1993). However, none of the albums achieved notable commercial success. In 1989 she had a relationship with Frank Chevallier from France, with whom she has a son, Otis Chevallier-Hagen (b. 1990). In 1992 Hagen became the host of a TV show on RTLplus. She also collaborated with Adamski on the single Get Your Body (1992). In the 1990s, Hagen lived in Paris with her daughter Cosma Shiva and son Otis. In 1996, she married David Lynn, who is fifteen years younger, but divorced him in the beginning of 2000. In 1999, Hagen became the host of Sci-Fright, a weekly science fiction show on the British Sci-Fi Channel. In 1999, she played the role of Celia Peachum in The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, alongside Max Raabe. She also appeared as a witch in the German-Russian fairy-tale film Vasilisa (Elena Shatalova, 2000). At IMDb, Howard Roarschawks writes: “I saw this eye-popping film at the 2001 Sarasota Film Festival. I entered the theater without expectations, having chosen the film randomly. From shot one, my jaw dropped slack and my eyes waxed wide. Vasilisa is a gorgeously filmed, brilliantly scripted, boldly acted, confidently directed, lushly designed masterpiece of unseen cinema.” Hagen made her musical comeback with the release of her album Return of the Mother (2000). In 2001 she collaborated with Rosenstolz and Marc Almond on the single Total eclipse/Die schwarze Witwe that reached no. 22 in Germany. Later albums include Big Band Explosion (2003), in which she sang numerous swing covers with her then husband, Danish singer and performer, Lucas Alexander. This was followed by Heiß, a greatest hits album. The following album, Journey to the Snow Queen, is more of an audio book — she reads the Snow Queen fairy tale with Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker in the background. Besides her musical career, Hagen is also a voice-over actress. She dubbed the voice of Sally in Der Albtraum vor Weihnachten, the German release of Tim Burton's The Nightmare before Christmas (1993), and she has also done voice work on the German animation film Hot Dogs: Wau - wir sind reich!/Millionaire Dogs (Michael Schoemann, 1999). She appeared as the Queen opposite Otto Waalkes and her daughter Cosma Shiva Hagen as Snowwhite in the comedy7 Zwerge – Männer allein im Wald/7 Dwarves – Men Alone in the Wood (Sven Unterwaldt Jr., 2004) which follows the fairytale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the second most popular film in German cinemas in 2004, reaching an audience of almost 7 million. She returned in the sequel 7 Zwerge – Der Wald ist nicht genug/Seven Dwarves - The Forest Is Not Enough (Sven Unterwaldt, 2006). She wrote three autobiographies: Ich bin ein Berliner (1988), Nina Hagen: That's Why the Lady Is a Punk (2003), and Bekenntnisse (2010). She is also noted for her human and animal rights activism. After a four-year lapse Nina Hagen released the album Personal Jesus in 2010. William Ruhlmann at AllMusic: “Personal Jesus, which featured 13 faith-based tracks that dutifully blend rock, blues, soul, and gospel into a sound that’s distinctly hers.” It was followed by Volksbeat (2011). Her latest films are Desire Will Set You Free (Yony Leyser, 2015) with Amber Benson and Rosa von Praunheim and Gutterdämmerung (Bjorn Tagemose, 2016) with Henry Rollins, Grace Jones and Iggy Pop.
Sources: William Ruhlmann (AllMusic), Wikipedia and IMDb.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Verleih, Berlin, no. 147/75. Photo: DEFA.
German singer, songwriter, and actress Nina Hagen (1955) is known for her theatrical vocals and is often referred to as the ‘Godmother of Punk due to her prominence during the punk and new wave movements in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During her 40-years-career she appeared in several European films.
Catharina ’Nina’ Hagen was born in 1955) in the former East Berlin, German Democratic Republic. She was the daughter of scriptwriter Hans Hagen and actress and singer Eva-Maria Hagen (née Buchholz). Her paternal grandfather died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (her father was Jewish). Her parents divorced when she was two years old, and growing up, she saw her father infrequently. At age four, she began to study ballet, and was considered an opera prodigy by the time she was nine. When Hagen was 11, her mother married Wolf Biermann, an anti-establishment singer-songwriter. Biermann's political views later influenced young Hagen. Hagen left school at age sixteen and went to Poland, where she began her career. She later returned to Germany and joined the cover band, Fritzens Dampferband (Fritzen's Steamboat Band). She added songs by Janis Joplin and Tina Turner to the ‘allowable’ set lists during shows. From 1972 to 1973, Hagen enrolled in the crash-course performance program at The Central Studio for Light Music in East Berlin. Upon graduating, she formed the band Automobil and released in 1974 the single Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen (You Forgot the Colour Film), a subtle dig mocking the sterile, gray, Communist state. Nina became one of the country's best-known young stars. She also appeared in several East-German films and TV films sometimes alongside her mother Eva-Maria Hagen, including Heiraten/Weiblich/Marrying/Female (Christa Kulosa, 1975), Heute ist Freitag/Today is Friday (Klaus Gendries, 1975), Liebesfallen/Love Traps (Werner W. Wallroth, 1976) and Unser stiller Mann/Our Quite Man (Bernhard Stephan, 1976). Her career in the GDR was cut short after her stepfather Wolf Biermann's East German citizenship was withdrawn from him in 1976. Hagen and her mother followed him westwards to Hamburg. The circumstances surrounding the family's emigration were exceptional: Biermann was granted permission to perform a televised concert in Cologne, but denied permission to re-cross the border to his adopted home country.
Nina Hagen was offered a record deal from CBS Records. Her label advised her to acclimatise herself to Western culture through travel, and she arrived in London during the height of the punk rock movement. Hagen was quickly taken up by a circle that included The Slits and Sex Pistols. Back in Germany by mid-1977, Hagen formed the Nina Hagen Band in West Berlin's Kreuzberg district. In 1978 they released their self-titled debut album, Nina Hagen Band, which included the single TV-Glotzer (a cover of White Punks on Dope by The Tubes, though with entirely different German lyrics), and Auf'm Bahnhof Zoo, about West Berlin's then-notorious Berlin Zoologischer Garten station. The album also included a version of Rangehn (Go for It), a song she had previously recorded in East Germany, but with different music. The album received critical acclaim for its hard rock sound and for Hagen's theatrical vocals, far different from the straightforward singing of her East German recordings. It was a commercial success selling over 250,000 copies. Relations between Hagen and the other band members deteriorated over the course of the subsequent European tour. The band released one more album Unbehagen (Unease) before their break-up in 1979. It included the single African Reggae and Wir Leben Immer... Noch, a German language cover of Lene Lovich's Lucky Number. Meanwhile, Hagen's public persona was steadily creating media uproar. She starred in two films. In Germany she made the experimental film Bildnis Einer Trinkerin/Portrait of a Female Drunkard (Ulrike Ottinger, 1979) with Tabea Blumenschein, Magdalena Montezuma and Eddie Constantine. She also acted with Dutch rocker Herman Brood and singer Lene Lovich in the Dutch film Cha Cha (Herbert Curiel, 1979). Brood and Hagen would have a long romantic relationship that would end when Hagen could no longer tolerate Brood's drug abuse. She would refer to Brood as her ‘soulmate’ long after Brood committed suicide in 2001. In late 1980, Hagen discovered she was pregnant, broke up with the father-to-be the Dutch guitarist Ferdinand Karmelk, who died in 1988, and she moved to Los Angeles. Her daughter, Cosma Shiva Hagen, was born in Santa Monica in 1981. In 1982, Hagen signed a new contract with CBS and released her debut solo album NunSexMonkRock, a dissonant mix of punk, funk, reggae, and opera. Her first English-language album became also her first record to chart in the United States. She then went on a world tour with the No Problem Orchestra. Her next album the Giorgio Moroder-produced Fearless (1983), generated two major club hits in America, Zarah (a cover of the Zarah Leander song Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen) and the disco/punk/opera song, New York New York, which reached no. 9 in the USA dance charts. She followed this with one more album, Nina Hagen in Ekstasy (1985), which featured a 1979 recording of her hardcore punk take on Paul Anka's My Way. The album fared less well and her contract with CBS expired in 1986 and was not renewed. Hagen's public appearances became stranger and frequently included discussions of God, UFOs, her social and political beliefs, animal rights and vivisection, and claims of alien sightings. In 1987 she released the Punk Wedding EP independently, a celebration of her marriage to a 18-year-old punk South African nicknamed 'Iroquois'.
In 1989, Nina Hagen was offered a record deal from Mercury Records. She released three albums on the label: Nina Hagen (1989), Street (1991), and Revolution Ballroom (1993). However, none of the albums achieved notable commercial success. In 1989 she had a relationship with Frank Chevallier from France, with whom she has a son, Otis Chevallier-Hagen (b. 1990). In 1992 Hagen became the host of a TV show on RTLplus. She also collaborated with Adamski on the single Get Your Body (1992). In the 1990s, Hagen lived in Paris with her daughter Cosma Shiva and son Otis. In 1996, she married David Lynn, who is fifteen years younger, but divorced him in the beginning of 2000. In 1999, Hagen became the host of Sci-Fright, a weekly science fiction show on the British Sci-Fi Channel. In 1999, she played the role of Celia Peachum in The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, alongside Max Raabe. She also appeared as a witch in the German-Russian fairy-tale film Vasilisa (Elena Shatalova, 2000). At IMDb, Howard Roarschawks writes: “I saw this eye-popping film at the 2001 Sarasota Film Festival. I entered the theater without expectations, having chosen the film randomly. From shot one, my jaw dropped slack and my eyes waxed wide. Vasilisa is a gorgeously filmed, brilliantly scripted, boldly acted, confidently directed, lushly designed masterpiece of unseen cinema.” Hagen made her musical comeback with the release of her album Return of the Mother (2000). In 2001 she collaborated with Rosenstolz and Marc Almond on the single Total eclipse/Die schwarze Witwe that reached no. 22 in Germany. Later albums include Big Band Explosion (2003), in which she sang numerous swing covers with her then husband, Danish singer and performer, Lucas Alexander. This was followed by Heiß, a greatest hits album. The following album, Journey to the Snow Queen, is more of an audio book — she reads the Snow Queen fairy tale with Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker in the background. Besides her musical career, Hagen is also a voice-over actress. She dubbed the voice of Sally in Der Albtraum vor Weihnachten, the German release of Tim Burton's The Nightmare before Christmas (1993), and she has also done voice work on the German animation film Hot Dogs: Wau - wir sind reich!/Millionaire Dogs (Michael Schoemann, 1999). She appeared as the Queen opposite Otto Waalkes and her daughter Cosma Shiva Hagen as Snowwhite in the comedy7 Zwerge – Männer allein im Wald/7 Dwarves – Men Alone in the Wood (Sven Unterwaldt Jr., 2004) which follows the fairytale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the second most popular film in German cinemas in 2004, reaching an audience of almost 7 million. She returned in the sequel 7 Zwerge – Der Wald ist nicht genug/Seven Dwarves - The Forest Is Not Enough (Sven Unterwaldt, 2006). She wrote three autobiographies: Ich bin ein Berliner (1988), Nina Hagen: That's Why the Lady Is a Punk (2003), and Bekenntnisse (2010). She is also noted for her human and animal rights activism. After a four-year lapse Nina Hagen released the album Personal Jesus in 2010. William Ruhlmann at AllMusic: “Personal Jesus, which featured 13 faith-based tracks that dutifully blend rock, blues, soul, and gospel into a sound that’s distinctly hers.” It was followed by Volksbeat (2011). Her latest films are Desire Will Set You Free (Yony Leyser, 2015) with Amber Benson and Rosa von Praunheim and Gutterdämmerung (Bjorn Tagemose, 2016) with Henry Rollins, Grace Jones and Iggy Pop.
Sources: William Ruhlmann (AllMusic), Wikipedia and IMDb.
Bridges, Narrow Street. London, England. July 3, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell - all rights reserved.
Bridges between buildings cross about a narrow street in London
This is another photograph from nearly two years ago when we spent a week in London. We stayed a ways from the center of the city and each day traveled back and forth by way of the Underground, and then doing almost all of our wandering about on foot. We prefer this for the most part, and being on foot we can easily wander off into interesting areas or linger if we see something that deserves more time. (I often do something very similar when I head to nearby San Francisco to do street and urban photography.)
We had taken the tube in, gotten off, and walked across a bridge. Arriving on the far side of the River Thames we saw a narrow old side street and couldn't resist wandering off that direction. The general landscape seemed to be a slightly dissonant one of what looked to be a narrow old cobblestone street, but with a number of more modern looking businesses and other structures. The street itself was quite interesting — and somewhere I have some photographs of it — but the most interesting thing to me was the dense, crisscrossing pattern of multiple levels of bridges high above the street.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
Feb 03 34/365
Please watch the Yes We Can video from the link below.
It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.
Yes we can.
It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom.
Yes we can.
It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.
Yes we can.
It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballots; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.
Yes we can to justice and equality.
Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.
Yes we can heal this nation.
Yes we can repair this world.
Yes we can.
We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.
We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics...they will only grow louder and more dissonant ........... We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.
But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.
Now the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of LA; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea --
Yes. We. Can.
Celebrities featured include: Jesse Dylan, Will.i.am, Common, Scarlett Johansson, Tatyana Ali, John Legend, Herbie Hancock, Kate Walsh, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Adam Rodriquez, Kelly Hu, Adam Rodriquez, Amber Valetta, Eric Balfour, Aisha Tyler, Nicole Scherzinger and Nick Cannon
Im Internet diskutieren sie ja wie die Kesselflicker die Systemfrage aus, nämlich welche(r) Hersteller überhaupt oder nur in Frage kommt(/-en), ob es ohne FF einfach mal gar nicht geht oder ob man sogar mit m4/3 sehr gute Ergebnisse hinkommen kann und ob man überhaupt nur bei abnehmendem Vollmond und mit Zustimmung des Medizinmannes fotografieren darf. Ich hatte phasenweise und aus Lust an der Freude oder aus Langeweile bzw. Frustration sehr leidenschaftlich und provokativ den Canon-Antagonisten-Troll gegeben und tue es im Grunde noch heute. Ich reduziere mich dabei gar nicht mal zum Sony-Fanboy, nicht nur weil mich da auch einiges stört, sondern weil ich meine, dass in Abhängigkeit des fotografischen Ziels und unter Berücksichtung des Preis-Leistungs-Verhältnisses nicht nur Nikon, sondern vor allem auch Pentax und Fuji mit sehr überzeugenden Produkten, ziemlich sahnig aufgestellt sind. Pana und Oly hab ich nicht auf dem Schirm, aber für die mag das natürlich auch gelten.
Ich wollte und will einfach ein gleichermaßen polemisches und ätzendes Gegengewicht zum lange Zeit erdrückend und zu selbstgerecht gewesen seienden Narrativ der Anhänger des Marktführers repräsentieren, weil gerade nicht nur 'Colours', Linsenauswahl, 'Menues' und Service valide Argumente sein dürfen, Argumente die - nur am Rande bemerkt - eh sehr oft jeden Gegenstandes entbehren oder schlicht vernachlässigbar sind und z.T. sogar den Vergleich bzw. die Überprüfung scheuen sollten, wie der Teufel das Weihwasser scheut.
Darüber war ich als Hobbyfotograf immer über die Dysstandpunkte mancher Disputanten im Netz erbost. Was interessiert es die Leute, die - beruflich oder privat - eh nicht mit f2,8er Ofenrohren hinter weit entfernten Dämmerungstieren, scheuen Promis oder schnellen Sportlern her schießen werden, ob ihr Hersteller die entspr. kleinwagenteuren, -großen und -schweren Linsen vorhält oder eben nicht? Nach der Logik könne man keinen 'kleinen', Vierzylinder, Mittelklasse BMW fahren, weil Walter Röhrl nun mal mit einem S1 den Pikes Peak rauf ist, den es doch nur bei Audi gab, oder weil nur Mercedes ein sehr komfortables oder sicheres Gimmick für die S-Klasse anbietet, das BMW für seinen - eh uninteressanten, weil weit außerhalb des möglichen Preisfensters liegenden - Siebener gar nicht listet.
Noch mehr als die Dysstandpunkte, hat mich aber die selektive Ausblendung von wirklich vitalen und kritischen Qualitäten aufgeregt. Wenn ein Hersteller nicht gut in Basis-Dynamik ist, wovon man nachts in der Stadt oder an sonnigen Tagen im Wald eben nie genug kriegen kann, dann hatte das auf Marktführerseite einfach nicht wichtig zu sein, dann zählte eben nur die High-ISO-Performance, was unter Hobby-, Landschafts- und touristischen Fotografen ja - wie einen Absatz weiter oben erwähnt - von aller kritischster Bedeutung ist. Und ein Schwenkmonitor, der kann doch auch nur kaputt gehen, also wozu den Murks. Die Postproductiongängigkeit aber, für mich als Rohdaten-Tratzer unter anderem DAS wichtigste Qualitätskriterium überhaupt, kam sehr spät und auch erst mit dem ISO-Invariance-Tool und den entspr. Vergleichstests der DPReview-Redaktion auf den Schirm der jew. Fangemeinden. Die eine hatten dieses Attribut eh selbstverständlich an- und hingenommen gehabt, während die anderen einfach jahrelang, unter der Ignoranzglocke des Primates ihres Markenkultes, keine Ahnung hatten, dass Belichtungsreihen und /oder Verlaufsfilter für die einen, auch in dynamisch anspruchsvollen Landschaftssituationen, schon seit mindestens einer Kamerageneration Anachronismen waren.
Da gab es dann siebengescheite, promovierte Hufschmiede, die sich auf ihrer Homepage halbe Doktorarbeiten aus dem Ärmel schüttelten, in denen sie das rhetorische und technische Kunststück vollbrachten, auf dem Boden eines peinlichen, von Vermutungen und den üblichen Nachplappereien geflickten Halbwissens, zwar eine halbe Seite lang zähneknirschend die Vorteile iso-invarianter Sensoren und ihrer Reserven für den Workflow (Post-, aber natürlich nicht 'Production' selbst, also mit einer limitierten Menge Licht, resp. Zeit, resp. Belichtungen bald doppelt soviel an Dynamik, also aufbereitbarer Information aus dem Sensor heraus bzw. in die Rohdatei(ein) hinein zu holen) anzuschneiden und runterzumurmeln, aber nur, um dann weitere 17 Seiten lang die Bedeutung dieses revolutionären Qualitätskriteriums für viele Bereiche der Fotografie gleich wieder zu relativieren. Wir sind ja eh alle nur Hochzeit oder so und da hat Canon einfach den besseren Spritzwasserschutz, wegen dem Sekt oder weil der Bräutigam zu früh kommt, oder so eben!
Darüber kollidieren bei Streits oder Fanboyismen im Netz die eigenen Argumente, die persönlichen fotografischen Bedürfnisse und die entspr. Standpunkte schon mal kognitiv dissonant miteinander, widersprechen sich bzw. kürzen sich aus oder besonders witzig, sie verzerren und verwaschen sich mit der Zeit, entspr. der herrschenden, ideologischen Großwettelage im eigenen Hause gegeneinander. Manch ein FF-Apologet aus der alten Mk-II und MK-III Schule/Ära will heute eh nicht mehr filmen oder überhaupt je gefilmt haben, obwohl er gerade dieses Argument seinerzeit als Rammbock gegen den anderen großen Hersteller einzusetzen wusste. So ein FF-Priester der Marktführerideologie-Kaderschmiede kann darüber durchaus selektiv ausblenden, dass der eigene Hersteller in den Sensor-Nettoleistungen, zumindest in der bezahlbaren Mittel-/Ambitionieren-/Berufsfotografenklasse- und bei den interessanteren Brot&Butter Modellen (wären sie nicht zu allem Übel auch noch künstlich im Funktionsumfang beschnitten) einen ganzen Lichtwert bzw. mindestens anderthalb Generationen oder eben tatsächlich schon eine ganze Sensorformatklasse hinter dem Wettbewerb her hinkt, was vl. am nackten, akademischen Signalrauschabstand nicht ganz so offensichtlich zu Tage tritt, was sich aber schon dergestalt auffällig zeigt, dass ein kleinerer Newcomer (oder nur der alte Hauptfeind) mit Cropsensoren und weniger Megapixeln auf vergleichbar detaillierte und feine Nettoauflösungen, Details und Zeilenpaare kommt, wie das - angeblich immer das Tempo unter den Papiertaschentüchern, die Nutella unter den Nussnougatcremes, die Pampers und den Windeln gewesen seiende - FF-Flaggschiff, mit seinen brutto immerhin sechs Millionen Bildpunkten mehr, Pixel, die schlicht in hoher Defektdichte oder schlechter Bildprozessierung regelrecht zu verrau(s)chen scheinen. Überhaupt scheint der Texas-Instruments Bastard mit seinen Hartplasikbatzen mit großen Informationsmengen resp. Auflösungen, Seriebbildraten oder Codes nicht so gut umgehen zu können. Ein schwacher Opel nur, der sich wie ein besser motorisierter Benz feiern und bezahlen ließ.
Eine sich selbst verstärkende Ressonanzkatastrophe oder eine ideologische bzw. quasireligiöse Runawaysituation, etwa dass unzeitgemäßes, langsames, an mangelnden Funktionen und überholter Sensortechnologie krankendes Gerät wie die sittenwidrig überteuerte 5 Douche Reihe es zur begehrtesten Referenzkamera schaffen kann, ist eine schlichte Funktion der Massenhysterie, des Fankultes, des Marketings, korrupter bzw. feiger oder unqualifizierter JPG-Only Redaktionen und der Psychologie, mal abgesehen vom Trägheitsmoment noch vorhandener, aber oft eh veralteter und deswegen zumindest anteilig matschiger Linsenparks, die den Hersteller vielleicht noch fort tragen, oder schlimmer, über die er seine Opfer glaubt erpressen zu können. Das ist ein bisschen wie mit Apple (Wo sich im Falle eines nötigen Batteriewechsels oder einer ersehnten Speichererweiterung der ein oder andere schon mal ins Knie biss) oder anderen, gemessen am lächerlichen Mehrpreis und den Folgekosten oder Beschränkungen, eigentlich gar nicht konkurrenzfähigen Modemarken. Dafür liefern Kleidungslabels ein viel besseres Beispiel als Technik, welche ja mit objektivierbaren und dämpfenden, weil kaum zu schönenden Kennzahlen (u.a. DXO) leben muss. Man zahlt im Feld aber trotzdem nicht nur bei Kleidung freiwillig die Deppensteuer viel zu gerne (um dann auch noch als lebende Werbetafel für Ralph Lauren, für North Face, für Lacoste und andere herumzulaufen, obwohl es doch genau anders herum sein müsste). Nur wenn etwas richtig teuer ist, ganz gleich ob die Qualität und der Funktionsumfang den Mehrpreis überhaupt rechtfertigen, kann es auch gut sein und dann will man auch damit gesehen und als ein entspr. materieller Gewinner gehandelt werden. Das gilt dann auch für Technik und das ist nur eine Facette der psychologischen Krux, die durch eine mögliche Scham, vielleicht am Ende richtig verarscht worden zu sein (vgl. iPhone/iPod), auch gar nicht kurierbar ist. Viel schlimmer wiegt nämlich - und das wurde in Forschungsreihen verschiedener Disziplinen (Soziologie, Psychologie, Kognitionsforschung, Politikwissenschaften, Kommunikationswissenschaften etc. pp.) immer wieder unabhängig voneinander herausgefunden - wenn sich im Netz und auch sonst (Politik, Hochschule, Wirtschaft), eine Meinung ungeachtet ihres Wahrheitsgehaltes nur oft und lange genug ausdauernd wiederholt, dann wird sie irgendwann schließlich geglaubt und dann ist auch nix mehr mit Scham. Letzteres ist wohl der eigentliche Grund für Canons Marktführerschaft und den Apple-Hype. Mode-Jpg-Colours oder unaufgeräumte, unstrukturierte, ja willkürliche, jeder Logik entbehrende, aber ach so viel intuitivere und angeblich überlegenere Canonmenüs, mit denen wirklich kein Fremdshooter von Sony/Nikon/Fuji auf Anhieb zurecht käme, sind dann bestenfalls Rechtfertigungen, die ebenfalls dank der netzaktiven Wiederholung und Verstärkung einfach zu echten Dogmen und hinzunehmenden Wahrheiten werden, genau wie ihre entspr. Umkehrung, etwa dass Sony Menüs oder EVF einfach mal gar nicht gingen. Natürlich nicht, wenn man sich über viele Jahre an was anderes gewöhnt hat und sich ziert.
Am Schluss dieser meist kindischen, aber spaßigen und energetisierenden Auseinandersetzungen einigt man sich dann vernünftigerweise doch darauf, dass eh der Fotograf das Foto macht und man sogar mit kleinen Sensoren oder älterem Gerät und den Produkten eigentlich eines jeden Herstellers (außer Sony natürlich, weil Sony-Shooter fressen bekanntlich Kinder und sind sowieso kulturlose Wilde (neben der augenkrebsigen Unmöglichkeit eines revolutionär-fortschrittlichen EVF)) gut schießen könne und das stimmt ja auch. Darüber müssen Canikon Leute doch am Ende auch zusammen halten - seien die D500, die D7200er, die D750iger und die D8**er nun Kameras, die nicht nur preislich mindestens einen Kilometer vor ihren Canon Pendants herrennen (was sie tun, eigentlich sind es sogar zwei Kilometer), oder eben nicht - wo nun auch noch Fuji in den Markt drängt und Pentax mit seinen Kampfpreisen in Relation zu den gebotenen 1A-Referenz-Bildqualitäten und seinen interessanten Innovationen wie Pixelshift die Platzhirsche und Dinos wirklich beschämen kann. Viele Dinge sind aber tatsächlich reine Pedanterie und irrelevante Erbsenzählerei, die im Alltag kaum Niederschlag finden sollte, obwohl es mich persönlich schon stört, dass die Postproduktion(in)toleranz/ -gängigkeit uva. die Hotpixelanfälligkeit in Relation zur Belichtungszeit so gar keinen Eingang in die, ansonsten durchaus objektivierbaren DXO-Charts findet. Danach würde der Marktführer zwar nochmal schlechter abschneiden, als er es eh schon tut, aber auch das würde die netzaktive, nach wie vor bestehende Übermacht seiner Fans nicht dran hindern, hinter dem Sensormarktführer herzutreten, weil dessen Bodies beim Filmen in UHD überhitzen, etwas das - genau wie ein Readout über die ganze Sensordiagonale, sowie ein angemessener, zeitgemäßer Codec - dort zumindest schon mal möglich ist, wenn auch nur minutenweise.
Bei der Wahl und der Notwendigkeit bestimmter Objektivklassen kann den Streit um das Für und Wider und die Notwendigkeit oder Unsinnigkeit natürlich nochmal und oft viel heftiger an ganz anderer Front aufflackern lassen und da haben Fussballplatz-Ronny, Hochzeits-Horst, Alpenglüh-Fonsi bzw. Arktis-Sven natürlich jeweils ganz eigene Standpunkte. Da war ich dann immer entspannt und bin es noch heute, weil ich mir keinen professionellen Linsenpark aus zeitgemäßen und schnellen Festbrennweiten leisten kann, weil Sigma darüber eh oft schönere und preiswertere Töchter als die Kamerahersteller selbst hat und weil sich in meinem Interessen- und Preisbereich (eben die üblichen f4-langsamen, aber tragbaren Brot&Butter Zooms: UWW-Zoom, Immerdrauf und Tele-Zoom) das Argument "Jibet keine Linsen für" unlängst qualitativ genau ins Gegenteil verkehrt hat (zumindest seit Erscheinen der ersehnten FE 24-105er und 70-200er) und der Marktführer auch da, also nicht nur im Funktionsumfang, der Preisleistung, bei den Sensoren und eben den kürzeren und mittleren Festbrennweiten, mittlerweile mess- und merkbar abgehängt ist. Natürlich kann man sich hier wie da mit superschnellen 50/85/135er Linsen den theoretisch möglichen Sensorpixeln nicht nur nähern, sondern diese sogar erreichen. Tatsächlich können sogar meine alten Rokkors in ihrem Zentrum einen wesentlich dichter gepackten APS-C Sensor noch ausnutzen und sogar herausfordern. Aber sonst dürfte bei diesen wohl meist in der Portrait-, Mode- (also Werbe-) und Peoplefotografie eingesetzten, superschnellen ~85iger +/- Linsen eh mehr das Bokeh und damit der cremige Bildeindruck einer weit offenen Blende mehr zählen, als das Pixelpeeping bis ins Eck hinein. Wenn man wie ich, als Landschafts- und Architekturfutzi und -autist, eh auf das Stilmittel der gezielt eingesetzten Unschärfe/Bokeh verzichtet, dann kann man ob der verwendeten, förderlichen Blendenzahlen gleich das Zoom drauf lassen, immerdrauf eben. Ob man dafür dann allerdings einen so hoch auflösenden Sensor bräuchte oder ob dann nicht doch und auch sonst 24MP in die Haut rein reichen würden, das ist ein weiterer Streitpunkt.
American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, no. CL/Personality # 132.
German singer, songwriter, and actress Nina Hagen (1955) is known for her theatrical vocals and is often referred to as the ‘Godmother of Punk due to her prominence during the punk and new wave movements in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During her 40-years-career she appeared in several European films.
Catharina ’Nina’ Hagen was born in 1955) in the former East Berlin, German Democratic Republic. She was the daughter of scriptwriter Hans Hagen and actress and singer Eva-Maria Hagen (née Buchholz). Her paternal grandfather died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (her father was Jewish). Her parents divorced when she was two years old, and growing up, she saw her father infrequently. At age four, she began to study ballet, and was considered an opera prodigy by the time she was nine. When Hagen was 11, her mother married Wolf Biermann, an anti-establishment singer-songwriter. Biermann's political views later influenced young Hagen. Hagen left school at age sixteen and went to Poland, where she began her career. She later returned to Germany and joined the cover band, Fritzens Dampferband (Fritzen's Steamboat Band). She added songs by Janis Joplin and Tina Turner to the ‘allowable’ set lists during shows. From 1972 to 1973, Hagen enrolled in the crash-course performance program at The Central Studio for Light Music in East Berlin. Upon graduating, she formed the band Automobil and released in 1974 the single Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen (You Forgot the Colour Film), a subtle dig mocking the sterile, gray, Communist state. Nina became one of the country's best-known young stars. She also appeared in several East-German films and TV films sometimes alongside her mother Eva-Maria Hagen, including Heiraten/Weiblich/Marrying/Female (Christa Kulosa, 1975), Heute ist Freitag/Today is Friday (Klaus Gendries, 1975), Liebesfallen/Love Traps (Werner W. Wallroth, 1976) and Unser stiller Mann/Our Quite Man (Bernhard Stephan, 1976). Her career in the GDR was cut short after her stepfather Wolf Biermann's East German citizenship was withdrawn from him in 1976. Hagen and her mother followed him westwards to Hamburg. The circumstances surrounding the family's emigration were exceptional: Biermann was granted permission to perform a televised concert in Cologne, but denied permission to re-cross the border to his adopted home country.
Nina Hagen was offered a record deal from CBS Records. Her label advised her to acclimatise herself to Western culture through travel, and she arrived in London during the height of the punk rock movement. Hagen was quickly taken up by a circle that included The Slits and Sex Pistols. Back in Germany by mid-1977, Hagen formed the Nina Hagen Band in West Berlin's Kreuzberg district. In 1978 they released their self-titled debut album, Nina Hagen Band, which included the single TV-Glotzer (a cover of White Punks on Dope by The Tubes, though with entirely different German lyrics), and Auf'm Bahnhof Zoo, about West Berlin's then-notorious Berlin Zoologischer Garten station. The album also included a version of Rangehn (Go for It), a song she had previously recorded in East Germany, but with different music. The album received critical acclaim for its hard rock sound and for Hagen's theatrical vocals, far different from the straightforward singing of her East German recordings. It was a commercial success selling over 250,000 copies. Relations between Hagen and the other band members deteriorated over the course of the subsequent European tour. The band released one more album Unbehagen (Unease) before their break-up in 1979. It included the single African Reggae and Wir Leben Immer... Noch, a German language cover of Lene Lovich's Lucky Number. Meanwhile, Hagen's public persona was steadily creating media uproar. She starred in two films. In Germany she made the experimental film Bildnis Einer Trinkerin/Portrait of a Female Drunkard (Ulrike Ottinger, 1979) with Tabea Blumenschein, Magdalena Montezuma and Eddie Constantine. She also acted with Dutch rocker Herman Brood and singer Lene Lovich in the Dutch film Cha Cha (Herbert Curiel, 1979). Brood and Hagen would have a long romantic relationship that would end when Hagen could no longer tolerate Brood's drug abuse. She would refer to Brood as her ‘soulmate’ long after Brood committed suicide in 2001. In late 1980, Hagen discovered she was pregnant, broke up with the father-to-be the Dutch guitarist Ferdinand Karmelk, who died in 1988, and she moved to Los Angeles. Her daughter, Cosma Shiva Hagen, was born in Santa Monica in 1981. In 1982, Hagen signed a new contract with CBS and released her debut solo album NunSexMonkRock, a dissonant mix of punk, funk, reggae, and opera. Her first English-language album became also her first record to chart in the United States. She then went on a world tour with the No Problem Orchestra. Her next album the Giorgio Moroder-produced Fearless (1983), generated two major club hits in America, Zarah (a cover of the Zarah Leander song Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen) and the disco/punk/opera song, New York New York, which reached no. 9 in the USA dance charts. She followed this with one more album, Nina Hagen in Ekstasy (1985), which featured a 1979 recording of her hardcore punk take on Paul Anka's My Way. The album fared less well and her contract with CBS expired in 1986 and was not renewed. Hagen's public appearances became stranger and frequently included discussions of God, UFOs, her social and political beliefs, animal rights and vivisection, and claims of alien sightings. In 1987 she released the Punk Wedding EP independently, a celebration of her marriage to a 18-year-old punk South African nicknamed 'Iroquois'.
In 1989, Nina Hagen was offered a record deal from Mercury Records. She released three albums on the label: Nina Hagen (1989), Street (1991), and Revolution Ballroom (1993). However, none of the albums achieved notable commercial success. In 1989 she had a relationship with Frank Chevallier from France, with whom she has a son, Otis Chevallier-Hagen (b. 1990). In 1992 Hagen became the host of a TV show on RTLplus. She also collaborated with Adamski on the single Get Your Body (1992). In the 1990s, Hagen lived in Paris with her daughter Cosma Shiva and son Otis. In 1996, she married David Lynn, who is fifteen years younger, but divorced him in the beginning of 2000. In 1999, Hagen became the host of Sci-Fright, a weekly science fiction show on the British Sci-Fi Channel. In 1999, she played the role of Celia Peachum in The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, alongside Max Raabe. She also appeared as a witch in the German-Russian fairy-tale film Vasilisa (Elena Shatalova, 2000). At IMDb, Howard Roarschawks writes: “I saw this eye-popping film at the 2001 Sarasota Film Festival. I entered the theater without expectations, having chosen the film randomly. From shot one, my jaw dropped slack and my eyes waxed wide. Vasilisa is a gorgeously filmed, brilliantly scripted, boldly acted, confidently directed, lushly designed masterpiece of unseen cinema.” Hagen made her musical comeback with the release of her album Return of the Mother (2000). In 2001 she collaborated with Rosenstolz and Marc Almond on the single Total eclipse/Die schwarze Witwe that reached no. 22 in Germany. Later albums include Big Band Explosion (2003), in which she sang numerous swing covers with her then husband, Danish singer and performer, Lucas Alexander. This was followed by Heiß, a greatest hits album. The following album, Journey to the Snow Queen, is more of an audio book — she reads the Snow Queen fairy tale with Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker in the background. Besides her musical career, Hagen is also a voice-over actress. She dubbed the voice of Sally in Der Albtraum vor Weihnachten, the German release of Tim Burton's The Nightmare before Christmas (1993), and she has also done voice work on the German animation film Hot Dogs: Wau - wir sind reich!/Millionaire Dogs (Michael Schoemann, 1999). She appeared as the Queen opposite Otto Waalkes and her daughter Cosma Shiva Hagen as Snowwhite in the comedy7 Zwerge – Männer allein im Wald/7 Dwarves – Men Alone in the Wood (Sven Unterwaldt Jr., 2004) which follows the fairytale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the second most popular film in German cinemas in 2004, reaching an audience of almost 7 million. She returned in the sequel 7 Zwerge – Der Wald ist nicht genug/Seven Dwarves - The Forest Is Not Enough (Sven Unterwaldt, 2006). She wrote three autobiographies: Ich bin ein Berliner (1988), Nina Hagen: That's Why the Lady Is a Punk (2003), and Bekenntnisse (2010). She is also noted for her human and animal rights activism. After a four-year lapse Nina Hagen released the album Personal Jesus in 2010. William Ruhlmann at AllMusic: “Personal Jesus, which featured 13 faith-based tracks that dutifully blend rock, blues, soul, and gospel into a sound that’s distinctly hers.” It was followed by Volksbeat (2011). Her latest films are Desire Will Set You Free (Yony Leyser, 2015) with Amber Benson and Rosa von Praunheim and Gutterdämmerung (Bjorn Tagemose, 2016) with Henry Rollins, Grace Jones and Iggy Pop.
Sources: William Ruhlmann (AllMusic), Wikipedia and IMDb.
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (27 April [O.S. 15 April] 1891 – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who later worked in the Soviet Union. As the creator of acknowledged masterpieces across numerous music genres, he is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. His works include such widely heard pieces as the March from The Love for Three Oranges, the suite Lieutenant Kijé, the ballet Romeo and Juliet—from which "Dance of the Knights" is taken—and Peter and the Wolf. Of the established forms and genres in which he worked, he created—excluding juvenilia—seven completed operas, seven symphonies, eight ballets, five piano concertos, two violin concertos, a cello concerto, a symphony-concerto for cello and orchestra, and nine completed piano sonatas.
A graduate of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Prokofiev initially made his name as an iconoclastic composer-pianist, achieving notoriety with a series of ferociously dissonant and virtuosic works for his instrument, including his first two piano concertos. In 1915, Prokofiev made a decisive break from the standard composer-pianist category with his orchestral Scythian Suite, compiled from music originally composed for a ballet commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev commissioned three further ballets from Prokofiev—Chout, Le pas d'acier and The Prodigal Son—which, at the time of their original production, all caused a sensation among both critics and colleagues. But Prokofiev's greatest interest was opera, and he composed several works in that genre, including The Gambler and The Fiery Angel. Prokofiev's one operatic success during his lifetime was The Love for Three Oranges, composed for the Chicago Opera and performed over the following decade in Europe and Russia.
After the Revolution of 1917, Prokofiev left Russia with the approval of Soviet People's Commissar Anatoly Lunacharsky, and resided in the United States, then Germany, then Paris, making his living as a composer, pianist and conductor. In 1923 he married a Spanish singer, Carolina (Lina) Codina, with whom he had two sons; they divorced in 1947. In the early 1930s, the Great Depression diminished opportunities for Prokofiev's ballets and operas to be staged in America and Western Europe. Prokofiev, who regarded himself as a composer foremost, resented the time taken by touring as a pianist, and increasingly turned to the Soviet Union for commissions of new music; in 1936, he finally returned to his homeland with his family. His greatest Soviet successes included Lieutenant Kijé, Peter and the Wolf, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, Alexander Nevsky, the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, On Guard for Peace, and the Piano Sonatas Nos. 6–8.
The Nazi invasion of the USSR spurred Prokofiev to compose his most ambitious work, an operatic version of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace; he co-wrote the libretto with Mira Mendelson, his longtime companion and later second wife. In 1948, Prokofiev was attacked for producing "anti-democratic formalism". Nevertheless, he enjoyed personal and artistic support from a new generation of Russian performers, notably Sviatoslav Richter and Mstislav Rostropovich: he wrote his Ninth Piano Sonata for the former and his Symphony-Concerto for the latter.
Torrijos and his Band (1830). By (Mrs) Cath: Bodham Johnson.
We are accustomed to associate the name of Kemble with the Drama, so many of that family having distinguished themselves upon the Stage. My Grandfather, John Mitchell Kemble, son of Charles, and nephew, did not however, like his sister Fanny, follow the steps of a previous generation by becoming an actor, but rather chose Literature for his profession. His only connection with the Stage was, that towards the end of his life, he became Her Majesty's Licenser of Plays. For some time he was Editor of the British and Foreign Review, but his name is best known to the present generation as the great Anglo Saxon scholar, and Author of the “Saxons in England”. It is not generally known that in his youth, he was concerned, with Sterling and Trench, in the attempt made by General Torrijos against Ferdinand of Spain in favour of the Spanish Constitutionalists. The story is told by Carlyle in his “Life of John Sterling” and related in “Archbishop Trench's Letters and Memorials”; but though Kemble is mentioned in both works he took a more prominent part in the matter than appears in either. Through the kindness of my Father, Revd Charles E. Donne, Kemble's journal in Gibraltar, has been placed in my hands, which enables me to give a more detailed account of the share which my Grandfather took in this romantic adventure.
In order to understand the motives which induced young Cambridge men, to throw in their lot with the Spanish “Assertors of Liberty” it is necessary to go back to the year 1824 to 27 when certain under-graduates (of whom Frederick Denison Maurice was the moving spirit) formed a Debating Society, called the “Apostles” the original number of members having been twelve.
Carlyle says of them in his “Life of Sterling” “not a few of the then disputants have since proved themselves men of parts, and attained distinction in the intellectual walks of life”.
Among the original members besides Maurice were;- Richard Chenevix Trench, John Mitchell Kemble, James Spedding, G.S.Venables, Charles Buller, Richard Monckton Milnes, William Bodham Donne, and J.W.Blakesley.
That these “Apostles” were knit together by no common tie of affection, the letters of some of them (vide Archbishop Trench's Memorials) abundantly shew.
They were young men full of enthusiasm and hopefulness, longing to, right all wrongs, and put down all oppression wherever it might be found, at whatever cost.
The need of Spain, suffering and oppressed was sufficient motive for action, to such ardent souls, arousing all the chivalry of their nature; and the presence in their midst of the manly Torrijos and his Band, undoubtedly added fuel to the fire. Others besides themselves looked on their cause as noble.
Shelley wrote an ode of encouragement entitled “To the Assertors of Liberty”, also it might be worth mentioning that Trench, one of their own band, wrote two sonnets “To the Constitutional Exiles of 1823” of which we give one.
The Constitutional Exiles of 1823.
Wise are ye in wisdom vainly sought
Through all the records of the historic page;
It is not to be learned by lengthened age,
Scarce by deep musings of unaided thought:
By suffering and endurance ye have bought
A knowledge of the thousand links that bind
The highest with the lowest of our kind,
And how the indissoluble chain is wrought.
Ye fell by your own mercy once: - beware,
When your lots leap again from fortune's urn,
An heavier error - to be pardoned less:
Yours be it to the nations to declare
That years of pain and disappointment turn
Weak hearts to gall, but wise to gentleness.
While the Spanish King Ferdinand vii, (who had been imprisoned by Napoleon) was away from his country, the people had learnt the blessings of a constitutional government, and hoped the King would continue to rule by the means of his Cortes.
But on his return, though at first he complied with their wishes, he soon shewed that he meant to disregard them.
Further troubles arose, occasioned by his revoking of the Salic Law, then in force. Foreign powers intervened and by their means Ferdinand became an Absolute Sovereign in 1823. Some Constitutionalists resigned themselves to circumstances, but the true Liberals, when once a despotic government was set up, took refuge in England.
It was John Sterling who first became acquainted with .these exiles, and their leader Torrijos.
He and they talked over the situation, till they persuaded themselves, that they had only to land in Spain, and all the disaffected would flock to their standard, and make their march to the Capital a series of triumphs. Oh! the bitterness of the reality, but that was not to come yet.
Sterling at once wrote to his friends the “Apostles” and enlisted their sympathies in the cause, and collected money for the undertaking.
One enthusiastic young man, Robert Boyd by name, was willing to employ a legacy recently left him, in buying up an old vessel which was for sale in the Thames, and fitting her up with arms and ammunition. This done, he, and Trench, Torrijos and his fifty-seven Spaniards were to start on their expedition. In the meanwhile it was felt desirable to send a friend on ahead to Gibraltar to organise and get things ready for their arrival, and John Kemble was chosen for this post.
This is his account of his appointment:
“In the close of May (1830) while yet at Cambridge, Blakesley received a letter from Sterling disclosing the important news that an immediate sortie was intended and requesting us to raise what money we could among our «immediate friends. Some of the Apostles were consequently let into the secret, and a few pounds were sent up to Town.
I immediately went up to London and offered my services unconditionally. Trench who came to England within a few days did the same. Many political reasons rendered it desirable that the principal blow should be struck near the English garrison at Gibraltar, but disputes had arisen between the gentlemen composing 'the Junta' and the commissioner despatched from London, to manage the finances etc whose name was A.de.Gayton.
In consequence of these divisions the preparations had not been made with the necessary decision.
It was considered by the London Junta that the proper person to set the whole business in a favourable position would be an Englishman to whom both parties would be less repugnant to submit themselves than to any other person, and who by making himself a party to all «the plans and being sole master of the finances might govern the «whole arrangements and reunite the dissonant elements into one harmonious action.”
“On the 5th July it was intimated to me,” John Kemble continues, “by John Sterling that I was to hold myself in readiness to undertake these duties, after receiving complete verbal instructions from M. de Torrijos and a written memorandum for my guidance, I set out from Falmouth on the 9th by Steam Packet and on that very day one week later arrived at Gibraltar - viz: 16th July, Friday (1830). The pretext under which I journeyed was pleasure, and I consequently presented a letter I had, to a young officer of the 12th first; «this was the most fortunate thing possible.
All my other letters were addressed to gentlemen living in the place under fictitious names, and of these fictitious names I had not been informed , owing to the hurry in which I was obliged to leave London. I should therefore have had the greatest difficulty in finding them; but Lieutenant Bell being on guard, or otherwise engaged committed me accidentally to the care of a friend M. de Pardio, to whom one of the letters was addrest (sic) and who hence opened a communication between me and the other gentlemen. (Bell it appears since, was in the secret.)”
John Kemble did not find it by any means smooth sailing.
There were jealousies among the conspirators themselves, and both the Junta and M. de Gayton were annoyed at an Englishman being placed over their heads, but as he held the purse they could do nothing against him.
“I found,” he says, “that the different parties were so divided, as hardly to be on speaking terms, and that the Junta had long discontinued their meetings.”
To add to his embarrassment the exiles at home had not “defined clearly the powers he was to hold, and the Junta at Gibraltar reduced them to a cipher.
“They decided,” he says, “that I was to be received into their body as a Commissioner appointed to instruct them on the state of affairs at home; assist their deliberations and furnish them with money,” and having decided that they failed to summon him to any of their meetings.
While waiting for General Torrijos their Leader, to join them, with the friends from England, John Kemble did his best to gather information as to the feeling of the peasants, but he found it very difficult to get a trustworthy report. It was true that a feeling of dissatisfaction was abroad, but it was doubtful if the people would rise, unless the first blow struck should be victorious. Of this they felt confident as soon as Torrijos arrived.
On August 12th Kemble writes “Determined that the boat charged with the Commissioner who is to receive our friends should start for Tarifa - business thickens now, and ten days hence the blow will have been struck.” The boat however returned empty, and anxious delay followed, and no news reached them for twelve days. What had happened was this. The day before Torrijos and his fifty-seven friends set sail, the Spanish Envoy in London having heard that a boat was chartered to go to the help of the rebels, boarded her, and all ammunition was seized.
The conspirators jumped overboard and managed to get off by different routes, and eventually Torrijos, Trench, and Boyd arrived at Gibraltar.
On August 24th (this is the note in the journal) “Trench arrived from England with the news that it was our expedition that had been seized; that himself and Sterling had only saved themselves by jumping over the side of the vessel into a boat, and so getting ashore, and that all the arms as well as the men on board had been detained. In return however, he states that Torrijos is gone to Paris, and he and Boyd might be expected from Marseilles daily. The Government however are entirely on the alert, troops are drawing down to Algeciras under pretext of a general review, and it is reported that a Cordon is about to be drawn along the coast.”
The delay proved fatal to their cause and many became fainthearted and deserted them.
It was not till Sept 5th that we have this entry, “This very day I was delighted to receive a note from Boyd that he and General Torrijos were waiting for us in the Bay. Joined them immediately.” The next day Kemble writes, “Tried to get the permission for the General to go on shore in exchange for his passport. It was refused, so we went to work to devise a means of getting him ashore. During the time which intervened between this time, and the 9th I had several conversations with the General on the state of affairs, and remained always astonished at his profoundly philosophical insight into the nature and necessities of his countrymen; an insight so rare in military men; and at the same time delighted with the kindliness of feeling, and the affectionate regard which he maintained towards Trench and myself.”
The manner in which the General was brought on shore is described on Sept 9th. “At seven in the morning, having arranged our plans, Boyd and myself went on board at the Waterport Gate. Trench meanwhile, walked down to Rosia, where we had determined to make our attempt. First because there is no regular entrance into the Garrison on that point, nor any indeed except by a ladder put up to one of the embrasures, and guarded by a single sentry, and no 'Inspector of Strangers.' Secondly because though no one is allowed to go up this ladder, officers at times do so, as a short cut to their quarters in the 'South' and 'Europa'.
At twenty minutes to nine we left the boat with the General, whom we had disguised in a white jacket, trousers and hat, such as we ourselves wore, and such as is the common boating dress of the officers; and after a pull of half an hour, reached the ladder and drew up under the wall.
Trench now came down to us crying, 'You're very late, come along' and I shouted to a soldier who was idling by the sentry to go and tell Captain B: that he might get breakfast ready, for we were coming immediately. We then coolly mounted the ladder past the sentry who looked on with great unconcern the whole while, and in ten minutes were safely lodged and breakfasting in B's quarters.
In the afternoon Boyd completed a still bolder stratagem to bring in Colonel Gutierrez. Putting off to the boat he came back with that gentleman, having his coat, waistcoat and handkerchief stripped off, and I believe un-stockinged, and loaded with a carpet bag and valise. Followed by Gutierrez, Boyd entered the Waterport Gate and stopped to beg a light for his cigar from the 'Inspector of Strangers' and conversed for a minute or two with him on the necessity of having a fresh permit for the entry of the rest of his luggage, and so passed on with Gutierrez unobserved and unquestioned, to the very heart of the town where the supposed bearer laid down his load.
These two instances are enough to show how easily a bold face and a bold act, will deceive practised inquisitors who are even at the moment in search of those whom you are passing through their hands.”
Apparently it was known that Torrijos was somewhere in the neighbourhood for the next entry says, “It was proposed that either I or Trench should go to Cadiz with Boyd's letters, as it was feared that orders had been given to arrest the latter. This was however over-ruled and it was decided that a Courier should go. It is reported that the Line are all under arms, night and day, that orders are given for the immediate shooting of General Torrijos, and Gutierrez if caught in Spain.”
Boyd had been very active in enlisting men who were to serve under General Manzanares, and that is no doubt the reason why his arrest was talked of. Later on when this band had been nearly annihilated the wives and children came to Boyd for assistance as they were almost starving, and Kemble had to give the funds sent from England to help them, Sterling in the meanwhile undertaking to look after the families of Torrijos and his band left in England.
In spite of Torrijos being on the spot delay after delay occurred, and the King of Spain had time to fortify every position likely to be attacked. To John Kemble and his friends the time seemed interminable, and on Sept 20 he says “Hope deferred has done more than make my heart sick; it has destroyed my activity of body and left me fit only to lie on a sofa and wish in vain I was at work with all the dangers of an attack made as we should be freed to make it, upon Algeciras, a strongly defended Town, guarded by warships which cruize from morning till night before it, (cutting off all sea communication with Gibraltar) and garrisoned with eight or nine times our numbers of men. I should receive an order to set out on such an expedition with joy. I can bear this suspense no longer. It is the conviction of having been ready to lay down my life for freedom; a conviction which no breath of popular praise or blame can strengthen or confound, which enables me to bear up with tolerable coolness against the misfortunes which have beset me, and which may yet overwhelm us; which of His mercy may God turn from us. Amen.”
Archbishop Trench says in a letter to my Grandfather William Bodham Donne dated Oct 21st 1830. (Gibraltar) “When General Torrijos came out here, it was in the firm belief that all had been already arranged by the Junta here, they having told him so long back as last May that nothing was wanting but his arrival. They turn out - at least it seems so to me - a rout of the most lying imbeciles that ever formed that most imbecile of all associations a Spanish Junta. All has had to be begun from the beginning, since the General arrived, which has been the reason of our dreary and miserable delay.”
Friends at home were also beginning to get disheartened, and money was not easily forthcoming.
John Sterling specially was very anxious about his friends. “Poor Sterling,” says John Kemble “who believed matters to be in such a state, that our landing would be the first step of a triumphal march to Madrid; and so it may be yet, but whether or not on a hurdle is a point not very clear.”
Torrijos worked with feverish activity to get his forces ready, but the coast was so well guarded that it seemed an impossibility to get a foothold in Spain. Three times they had been baffled already, nevertheless up to October 10th they looked forward to a successful issue.
Kemble writes on that day, “Things thank God! are drawing to a close. I told the General two nights ago, that I was quite sick at heart with doing nothing. He shook me affectionately by the hand, and told me that he hoped everything was got over now, and that we should be at work in a few days. Boyd said pretty much the same thing to him three or four days ago, and Torrijos answered 'will the end of this week satisfy you?'”
The King meanwhile had taken effective measures to quell the rebellion, and on October 10, we have this further entry in the journal “Ferdinand has published a particularly foolish proclamation in the Madrid Gazette, giving orders that we shall all be shot and hanged the moment we are caught.
Anybody not assisting to put us down is to be sent to the galleys for two years, and fined five hundred dollars, if his indifference arises merely from negligence; if it is from malice prepense he is to be confined ten years and fined two thousand dollars.”
“Foolish” as this proclamation may have seemed to the conspirators, the effects of it were soon felt and it became abundantly evident that their cause was utterly hopeless.
Added to this, the British authorities, who up till now, had ignored the presence of Torrijos and his band in Gibraltar, intimated to him, that they could no longer disregard the remonstrances of the Spanish government, and treat him as officially unknown.
The British nation being at peace with Spain at the time, it was impossible to harbour the rebels any longer, and the Governor offered Torrijos and all his party passports and British protection to any other country but Spain, provided they left immediately, John Kemble and Trench, utterly sick at heart, were wise enough to see that to remain longer was to throw away their lives without benefitting the cause of Liberty, and they sorrowfully took passage for England. Robert Boyd refused to accompany them. Though knowing the hopelessness of the cause he felt it wanting in chivalry to turn his back on that little band, and no amount of persuasion would convince him otherwise.
No doubt Torrijos was misled by false reports as to the strength of his party and though it is not mentioned in the “Life of John Sterling” nor in Archbishop Trench's “Life” yet we know from a letter written to John Kemble by a Spaniard in Gibraltar, that a few days before the little party set sail, a Spanish Colonel arrived and assured Torrijos “that everything was arranged and that several thousand men were ready to join him, on the coast of Spain.”
Poor luckless man, betrayed by his own countryman.
Carlyle has told in graphic words the end of the adventure - how they set sail on Nov 31st 1830. Torrijos, Boyd and fifty-five companions, in two small vessels “no sentry or official person had noticed them, it was from the Spanish Consul next morning that the British Governor first heard they were gone. The British Governor knew nothing of them, but apparently the Spanish officials were much better informed. Spanish guardships instantly awake gave chase to the two small vessels, which were making all sail towards Malaga, and on shore all manner of troops and detached parties were in motion to render a retreat to Gibraltar by land impossible. The guardships gain upon Torrijos; he cannot even reach Malaga; has to run ashore at a place called Fuengirola not far from that city; the guardships seizing his vessels, so soon as he disembarked. The country is all up, troops scouring the coast everywhere; no possibility of getting into Malaga with a party of fifty-five. He takes possession of a farm-stead (Ingles the place is called), barricades himself there but is speedily beleaguered with forces hopelessly superior. He demands to treat; is refused - all treaty granted is six hours to consider, shall they either surrender at discretion, or be forced to do it. Of course he does it, having no alternative, enter Malaga a prisoner all his followers prisoners.”
From some letters written to John Kemble by some friendly Spaniards it appears that they were taken to a convent, while an express was sent to Madrid asking for directions. The order soon came back that “all were to be shot.”
One of the letters says they were kept without food for forty-eight hours and on the morning of Dec 11 between eleven and twelve o'clock, were brought out all fifty seven, Torrijos and Boyd being the first to die. The English Consul at Malaga tried in vain to save Robert Boyd and three other British subjects, but without avail, he was allowed to have their dead bodies only. No wonder the survivors could scarcely bear to speak of it, and the remembrance of those fifty-seven friends who met their death like brave men at Malaga remained a sad memory to the end of their lives. A fitting ending to this sketch will be the last letter written by poor Boyd a few hours before he was shot, a copy of which is in John Kemble's Journal.
Convento del Carmen 10 December 1851
My dear Harry
Before this reaches you, you will have lost a friend who was sincerely attached to you. The preparation for death is going on, and in two short hours “Life's fitful fever” will be terminated.
The clanging of chains is ringing in ray ears and those harbingers of disaster, being clad in the livery of the grave, are flitting before me, up and down the Refectory of the Convent where I write from. Surrounded am I by them, pestering me to recant but as my faith is a peculiar one, and as my sins such as they are, cannot be absolved through their mediation, I feel it unnecessary to say to you, how I wish any report as to a change of tenets to be contradicted.
I have sent about 160 dollars to the English Consul. Think sometimes of your old crony; I have yet some friends in Gibraltar and as it would be imprudent to enumerate, judge who they are and put my last kind wishes to them into your own words.
God bless you, my dear Harry, may you be happier and more fortunate than yours affectionately
Robert Boyd.
H.Glynn Esqre
Gibraltar.
It may be argued that such an attempt as the above seems extraordinary in its foolhardiness, but in justification of their conduct it must be remembered how much the French Revolution had disturbed the balance of society and the cry of “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” was still in the air. It seemed a righteous and a noble thing to help on the cause of Freedom or perish in the attempt. It must be acknowledged that the Spanish Government treated them with extraordinary leniency. It was not until they had been warned again and again that extreme measures were taken, and it must be confessed with truth that if Robert Boyd lost his life, he alone was responsible for it, though none the less deeply lamented by his comrades in this unhappy expedition.
St Magnus the Martyr, Upper Thames Street, London
For several reasons St Magnus is one of the best-known and best-loved of the City of London churches, so it comes as some surprise to discover that it was one of the nineteen City churches recommended for demolition by the Diocese of London's City of London Churches Commission in 1919. Three years later in The Waste Land, TS Eliot recalled sitting in the pub across the road surrounded by the busy life of the Billingsgate fishworkers while meditating on the inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold held by St Magnus's walls. In the event, only two of the churches scheduled were pulled down before the Second World War intervened, the Blitz conveniently getting rid of some and making us all the more sentimental about the rest.
Historically, this church was St Magnus ad Pontem, St Magnus by the Bridge, and this was the first church reached by travellers from the south on entering the City after crossing the Thames. It has always been a busy place. There was a church here by the 12th Century, and the dedication suggests it may have served a colony of Danish traders. Destroyed in the Great Fire, the parish started rebuilding it themselves before Wren came along to finish it for them. The pedestrian way that runs through the base of the tower was a later alteration to allow access to London Bridge after the road was widened.
It is on stepping inside that your breath is taken away, of course, for this is quite the City's Highest church, and if it is not quite so stratospheric as some west London temples it does approach the lunatic fringe of Anglo-catholicism. I say that as a person who, while not an Anglican himself, admires and enjoys these things, and if I go further and say there is the air of an ecclesiastical junk shop it is because I love junk shops and all things ecclesiastical. Much better a junk shop than a museum, in any case. The high tiered gilt white columns rise above altars, shrines, and statues. Flowers and candles abound, all beautifully kept. And who could possibly argue that Martin Travers' statue of St Magnus himself was not intended to amuse? This is a church to enjoy, robust enough in its holiness to admit at least a sneaking smile from time to time. And there's the City churches' best second hand bookshop at the west end, too.
Back outside, the setting is pretty dreadful. The traffic storms past on Upper Thames Street, the bleak concrete pedestrian walkways slice the façade in half, and worst of all is the 1925 block of Adelaide House, immediately to the west of the church. In its day it was the tallest office block in the City. Pevsner described it as a huge square cliff, but went on to say that the conjunction of the vigorous and imaginatively detailed steeple and the sheer wall of the C20 building is entirely successful, which just goes to show how wrong he could be sometimes.
(c) Simon Knott, December 2015
"This music crept by me upon the waters"
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.
TS Eliot, The Waste Land
The Waste Land is a 434-line modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called one of the most important poems of the 20th century. Despite the poem's obscurity - its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures - the poem has become a familiar touchstone of modern literature. Among its famous phrases are April is the cruellest month (its first line); I will show you fear in a handful of dust; and its last line, the mantra in the Sanskrit language Shantih shantih shantih.
Vintage postcard.
German singer, songwriter, and actress Nina Hagen (1955) is known for her theatrical vocals and is often referred to as the ‘Godmother of Punk due to her prominence during the punk and new wave movements in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During her 40-years-career she appeared in several European films.
Catharina ’Nina’ Hagen was born in 1955) in the former East Berlin, German Democratic Republic. She was the daughter of scriptwriter Hans Hagen and actress and singer Eva-Maria Hagen (née Buchholz). Her paternal grandfather died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (her father was Jewish). Her parents divorced when she was two years old, and growing up, she saw her father infrequently. At age four, she began to study ballet, and was considered an opera prodigy by the time she was nine. When Hagen was 11, her mother married Wolf Biermann, an anti-establishment singer-songwriter. Biermann's political views later influenced young Hagen. Hagen left school at age sixteen and went to Poland, where she began her career. She later returned to Germany and joined the cover band, Fritzens Dampferband (Fritzen's Steamboat Band). She added songs by Janis Joplin and Tina Turner to the ‘allowable’ set lists during shows. From 1972 to 1973, Hagen enrolled in the crash-course performance program at The Central Studio for Light Music in East Berlin. Upon graduating, she formed the band Automobil and released in 1974 the single Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen (You Forgot the Colour Film), a subtle dig mocking the sterile, gray, Communist state. Nina became one of the country's best-known young stars. She also appeared in several East-German films and TV films sometimes alongside her mother Eva-Maria Hagen, including Heiraten/Weiblich/Marrying/Female (Christa Kulosa, 1975), Heute ist Freitag/Today is Friday (Klaus Gendries, 1975), Liebesfallen/Love Traps (Werner W. Wallroth, 1976) and Unser stiller Mann/Our Quite Man (Bernhard Stephan, 1976). Her career in the GDR was cut short after her stepfather Wolf Biermann's East German citizenship was withdrawn from him in 1976. Hagen and her mother followed him westwards to Hamburg. The circumstances surrounding the family's emigration were exceptional: Biermann was granted permission to perform a televised concert in Cologne, but denied permission to re-cross the border to his adopted home country.
Nina Hagen was offered a record deal from CBS Records. Her label advised her to acclimatise herself to Western culture through travel, and she arrived in London during the height of the punk rock movement. Hagen was quickly taken up by a circle that included The Slits and Sex Pistols. Back in Germany by mid-1977, Hagen formed the Nina Hagen Band in West Berlin's Kreuzberg district. In 1978 they released their self-titled debut album, Nina Hagen Band, which included the single TV-Glotzer (a cover of White Punks on Dope by The Tubes, though with entirely different German lyrics), and Auf'm Bahnhof Zoo, about West Berlin's then-notorious Berlin Zoologischer Garten station. The album also included a version of Rangehn (Go for It), a song she had previously recorded in East Germany, but with different music. The album received critical acclaim for its hard rock sound and for Hagen's theatrical vocals, far different from the straightforward singing of her East German recordings. It was a commercial success selling over 250,000 copies. Relations between Hagen and the other band members deteriorated over the course of the subsequent European tour. The band released one more album Unbehagen (Unease) before their break-up in 1979. It included the single African Reggae and Wir Leben Immer... Noch, a German language cover of Lene Lovich's Lucky Number. Meanwhile, Hagen's public persona was steadily creating media uproar. She starred in two films. In Germany she made the experimental film Bildnis Einer Trinkerin/Portrait of a Female Drunkard (Ulrike Ottinger, 1979) with Tabea Blumenschein, Magdalena Montezuma and Eddie Constantine. She also acted with Dutch rocker Herman Brood and singer Lene Lovich in the Dutch film Cha Cha (Herbert Curiel, 1979). Brood and Hagen would have a long romantic relationship that would end when Hagen could no longer tolerate Brood's drug abuse. She would refer to Brood as her ‘soulmate’ long after Brood committed suicide in 2001. In late 1980, Hagen discovered she was pregnant, broke up with the father-to-be the Dutch guitarist Ferdinand Karmelk, who died in 1988, and she moved to Los Angeles. Her daughter, Cosma Shiva Hagen, was born in Santa Monica in 1981. In 1982, Hagen signed a new contract with CBS and released her debut solo album NunSexMonkRock, a dissonant mix of punk, funk, reggae, and opera. Her first English-language album became also her first record to chart in the United States. She then went on a world tour with the No Problem Orchestra. Her next album the Giorgio Moroder-produced Fearless (1983), generated two major club hits in America, Zarah (a cover of the Zarah Leander song Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen) and the disco/punk/opera song, New York New York, which reached no. 9 in the USA dance charts. She followed this with one more album, Nina Hagen in Ekstasy (1985), which featured a 1979 recording of her hardcore punk take on Paul Anka's My Way. The album fared less well and her contract with CBS expired in 1986 and was not renewed. Hagen's public appearances became stranger and frequently included discussions of God, UFOs, her social and political beliefs, animal rights and vivisection, and claims of alien sightings. In 1987 she released the Punk Wedding EP independently, a celebration of her marriage to a 18-year-old punk South African nicknamed 'Iroquois'.
In 1989, Nina Hagen was offered a record deal from Mercury Records. She released three albums on the label: Nina Hagen (1989), Street (1991), and Revolution Ballroom (1993). However, none of the albums achieved notable commercial success. In 1989 she had a relationship with Frank Chevallier from France, with whom she has a son, Otis Chevallier-Hagen (b. 1990). In 1992 Hagen became the host of a TV show on RTLplus. She also collaborated with Adamski on the single Get Your Body (1992). In the 1990s, Hagen lived in Paris with her daughter Cosma Shiva and son Otis. In 1996, she married David Lynn, who is fifteen years younger, but divorced him in the beginning of 2000. In 1999, Hagen became the host of Sci-Fright, a weekly science fiction show on the British Sci-Fi Channel. In 1999, she played the role of Celia Peachum in The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, alongside Max Raabe. She also appeared as a witch in the German-Russian fairy-tale film Vasilisa (Elena Shatalova, 2000). At IMDb, Howard Roarschawks writes: “I saw this eye-popping film at the 2001 Sarasota Film Festival. I entered the theater without expectations, having chosen the film randomly. From shot one, my jaw dropped slack and my eyes waxed wide. Vasilisa is a gorgeously filmed, brilliantly scripted, boldly acted, confidently directed, lushly designed masterpiece of unseen cinema.” Hagen made her musical comeback with the release of her album Return of the Mother (2000). In 2001 she collaborated with Rosenstolz and Marc Almond on the single Total eclipse/Die schwarze Witwe that reached no. 22 in Germany. Later albums include Big Band Explosion (2003), in which she sang numerous swing covers with her then husband, Danish singer and performer, Lucas Alexander. This was followed by Heiß, a greatest hits album. The following album, Journey to the Snow Queen, is more of an audio book — she reads the Snow Queen fairy tale with Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker in the background. Besides her musical career, Hagen is also a voice-over actress. She dubbed the voice of Sally in Der Albtraum vor Weihnachten, the German release of Tim Burton's The Nightmare before Christmas (1993), and she has also done voice work on the German animation film Hot Dogs: Wau - wir sind reich!/Millionaire Dogs (Michael Schoemann, 1999). She appeared as the Queen opposite Otto Waalkes and her daughter Cosma Shiva Hagen as Snowwhite in the comedy7 Zwerge – Männer allein im Wald/7 Dwarves – Men Alone in the Wood (Sven Unterwaldt Jr., 2004) which follows the fairytale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the second most popular film in German cinemas in 2004, reaching an audience of almost 7 million. She returned in the sequel 7 Zwerge – Der Wald ist nicht genug/Seven Dwarves - The Forest Is Not Enough (Sven Unterwaldt, 2006). She wrote three autobiographies: Ich bin ein Berliner (1988), Nina Hagen: That's Why the Lady Is a Punk (2003), and Bekenntnisse (2010). She is also noted for her human and animal rights activism. After a four-year lapse Nina Hagen released the album Personal Jesus in 2010. William Ruhlmann at AllMusic: “Personal Jesus, which featured 13 faith-based tracks that dutifully blend rock, blues, soul, and gospel into a sound that’s distinctly hers.” It was followed by Volksbeat (2011). Her latest films are Desire Will Set You Free (Yony Leyser, 2015) with Amber Benson and Rosa von Praunheim and Gutterdämmerung (Bjorn Tagemose, 2016) with Henry Rollins, Grace Jones and Iggy Pop.
Sources: William Ruhlmann (AllMusic), Wikipedia and IMDb.
Losing (her meaning),1988
Biography
Marlene Dumas (1953) grew up with her two older brothers in Jacobsdal, her father’s winery in Kuilsrivier, South Africa. With Afrikaans as her mother tongue she went to the English-language University of Cape Town in 1972. There she obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts in 1975. With a two-year scholarship, she opted to come to Europe and more specifically to the Netherlands because of the language kinship. As well as visual art, language is an important means of expression for Dumas. She gives her exhibitions and individual works striking titles, writes texts about her paintings and makes commentaries on her own pieces. These texts are collected in the publication, Sweet Nothings (1998).
In the Netherlands she worked at Ateliers ‘63 in Haarlem from 1976 to 1978. Twenty years later, in 1998, she returned to art school De Ateliers, now based in Amsterdam, as a permanent staff member. In addition, Marlene Dumas has taught at several other Dutch art institutes.
In 1978, she exhibited her work for the first time, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Work by René Daniels and Ansuya Blom also featured in this exhibition, called Atelier 15 (10 Young Artists). In 1982, her work was shown in Basel, in the exhibition Junge kunst aus die Niederlanden. In the same year, Rudi Fuchs asked her to take part in Documenta 7. In 1983, she got her first solo show, Unsatisfied Desire, at Gallery Helen van der Meij / Paul Th. Andriesse in Amsterdam. In 1984, the Centraal Museum Utrecht became the first museum to invite her to do a solo exhibition. Dumas responded with a collection of collages, texts and works on paper under the title Ons Land Ligt Lager dan de Zee. In 1985, The Eyes of the Night Creatures was her first exhibition devoted solely to painting.
Since the late eighties, her work has been featured in European group exhibitions in museums such as the Tate Gallery in London, under the title Art from Europe (1987) and in Bilderstreit in Cologne (1989). Her first major solo exhibition opened abroad three months after the birth of her daughter in the Kunsthalle in Berne: The Question of Human Pink (1989). In 1992, all the halls of the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven were dedicated to her exhibition Miss Interpreted. This solo show was followed by a tour of Europe and then America. In 1992 her work was also shown at Documenta IX, at the invitation of Jan Hoet. Her first solo gallery show in New York at Jack Tilton received the appropriate title Not from Here. That was in 1994, the year of the first free democratic elections in South Africa. It was also the year in which she exhibited at the Frith Street Gallery in London, along with her contemporaries Juan Muñoz and Thomas Schütte. In 1995, Chris Dercon made the selection for the Dutch contribution to the Venice Biennale, choosing three women: Marlene Dumas, Marijke van Warmerdam and Mary Roossen.
From the mid-nineties, Dumas’ work featured in exhibitions of art from the Netherlands, such as Du concept à l’image (Paris, 1994). She also participated in international, interdisciplinary projects including The 21st Century (Basel, 1993), with Damien Hirst, Roni Horn and others, and the Carnegie International (Pittsburgh, 1995). In 1996, her sparring partners at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC included Mike Kelley, Thomas Schütte, Robert Gober and Rachel Whiteread. The exhibition was entitled, Distemper: Dissonant Themes in the Art of the 1990s. In 1993, Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp, staged Dumas’ show, Give the People What They Want. The works in this exhibition then went on to become part of the ‘Der Spiegel zerbrochene’, Positionen zur Malerei (1993), curated by Kaspar König and H.U. Obrist. Other participating artists included Luc Tuymans and Gerhard Richter. Other important exhibitions devoted to painting in which Dumas was represented included Trouble Spot: Painting (1999), Painting at the Edge of the World (2001) and The Painting of Modern Life (2007). Her work has also featured in exhibitions with a focus on Africa, such as the Africus Biennale in Johannesburg (1995) and in Africa Remix (2004-2006).
Although Marlene Dumas has had Dutch nationality since 1989, she has said:
Someone once remarked that I could not be a South African artist and a Dutch artist, that I could not have it both ways.
I don’t want it both ways.
I want it more ways.
Dumas’ work spans over thirty years. In 2001, Jonas Storsve of the Centre Pompidou staged the first retrospective of her works on paper under the title Nom de Personne. This exhibition was subsequently featured in the New Museum, New York, and in the De Pont Museum in Tilburg, under the title, Name no Names. Between 2007 and 2009 a retrospective of her entire oeuvre, in varying combinations, toured three continents. Starting in Japan under the name Broken White, the overview travelled to South Africa with the title, Intimate Relations. It was the first time that so much of Dumas’ work could be seen on her native soil. The retrospective concluded its tour at the Museum for Contemporary Arts in Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and The Menil in Houston, where it was called, Measuring Your Own Grave.
Biography
Marlene Dumas (1953) grew up with her two older brothers in Jacobsdal, her father’s winery in Kuilsrivier, South Africa. With Afrikaans as her mother tongue she went to the English-language University of Cape Town in 1972. There she obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts in 1975. With a two-year scholarship, she opted to come to Europe and more specifically to the Netherlands because of the language kinship. As well as visual art, language is an important means of expression for Dumas. She gives her exhibitions and individual works striking titles, writes texts about her paintings and makes commentaries on her own pieces. These texts are collected in the publication, Sweet Nothings (1998).
In the Netherlands she worked at Ateliers ‘63 in Haarlem from 1976 to 1978. Twenty years later, in 1998, she returned to art school De Ateliers, now based in Amsterdam, as a permanent staff member. In addition, Marlene Dumas has taught at several other Dutch art institutes.
In 1978, she exhibited her work for the first time, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Work by René Daniels and Ansuya Blom also featured in this exhibition, called Atelier 15 (10 Young Artists). In 1982, her work was shown in Basel, in the exhibition Junge kunst aus die Niederlanden. In the same year, Rudi Fuchs asked her to take part in Documenta 7. In 1983, she got her first solo show, Unsatisfied Desire, at Gallery Helen van der Meij / Paul Th. Andriesse in Amsterdam. In 1984, the Centraal Museum Utrecht became the first museum to invite her to do a solo exhibition. Dumas responded with a collection of collages, texts and works on paper under the title Ons Land Licht Lager dan de Zee. In 1985, The Eyes of the Night Creatures was her first exhibition devoted solely to painting.
Since the late eighties, her work has been featured in European group exhibitions in museums such as the Tate Gallery in London, under the title Art from Europe (1987) and in Bilderstreit in Cologne (1989). Her first major solo exhibition opened abroad three months after the birth of her daughter in the Kunsthalle in Berne: The Question of Human Pink (1989). In 1992, all the halls of the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven were dedicated to her exhibition Miss Interpreted. This solo show was followed by a tour of Europe and then America. In 1992 her work was also shown at Documenta IX, at the invitation of Jan Hoet. Her first solo gallery show in New York at Jack Tilton received the appropriate title Not from Here. That was in 1994, the year of the first free democratic elections in South Africa. It was also the year in which she exhibited at the Frith Street Gallery in London, along with her contemporaries Juan Muñoz and Thomas Schütte. In 1995, Chris Dercon made the selection for the Dutch contribution to the Venice Biennale, choosing three women: Marlene Dumas, Marijke van Warmerdam and Mary Roossen.
From the mid-nineties, Dumas’ work featured in exhibitions of art from the Netherlands, such as Du concept à l’image (Paris, 1994). She also participated in international, interdisciplinary projects including The 21st Century (Basel, 1993), with Damien Hirst, Roni Horn and others, and the Carnegie International (Pittsburgh, 1995). In 1996, her sparring partners at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC included Mike Kelley, Thomas Schütte, Robert Gober and Rachel Whiteread. The exhibition was entitled, Distemper: Dissonant Themes in the Art of the 1990s. In 1993, Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp, staged Dumas’ show, Give the People What They Want. The works in this exhibition then went on to become part of the ‘Der Spiegel zerbrochene’, Positionen zur Malerei (1993), curated by Kaspar König and H.U. Obrist. Other participating artists included Luc Tuymans and Gerhard Richter. Other important exhibitions devoted to painting in which Dumas was represented included Trouble Spot: Painting (1999), Painting at the Edge of the World (2001) and The Painting of Modern Life (2007). Her work has also featured in exhibitions with a focus on Africa, such as the Africus Biennale in Johannesburg (1995) and in Africa Remix (2004-2006).
Although Marlene Dumas has had Dutch nationality since 1989, she has said:
Someone once remarked that I could not be a South African artist and a Dutch artist,
that I could not have it both ways.
I don’t want it both ways.
I want it more ways.
Dumas’ work spans over thirty years. In 2001, Jonas Storsve of the Centre Pompidou staged the first retrospective of her works on paper under the title Nom de Personne. This exhibition was subsequently featured in the New Museum, New York, and in the De Pont Museum in Tilburg, under the title, Name no Names. Between 2007 and 2009 a retrospective of her entire oeuvre, in varying combinations, toured three continents. Starting in Japan under the name Broken White, the overview travelled to South Africa with the title, Intimate Relations. It was the first time that so much of Dumas’ work could be seen on her native soil. The retrospective concluded its tour at the Museum for Contemporary Arts in Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and The Menil in Houston, where it was called, Measuring Your Own Grave.
Awards and honours
Marlene Dumas has received several awards and honours. In 1989, she received the Sandberg Prize and in 1998, specifically for her drawings, the David Roell Prize/Prince Bernhard Cultural Prize for Visual Arts. In 1998 she received the Coutts Contemporary Art Award. In 2010, she received an Honorary Doctorate from the Faculty of Humanities, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. In 2011 in Stockholm, she was awarded the Rolf Shock Prize in the Visual Arts, the stepsibling of the Nobel Prize. Her entire oeuvre was awarded the Dutch State Prize for the Arts, the Johannes Vermeer Award, in 2012.
To Know Him is to Love Him 2011, detail
Biography
Marlene Dumas (1953) grew up with her two older brothers in Jacobsdal, her father’s winery in Kuilsrivier, South Africa. With Afrikaans as her mother tongue she went to the English-language University of Cape Town in 1972. There she obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts in 1975. With a two-year scholarship, she opted to come to Europe and more specifically to the Netherlands because of the language kinship. As well as visual art, language is an important means of expression for Dumas. She gives her exhibitions and individual works striking titles, writes texts about her paintings and makes commentaries on her own pieces. These texts are collected in the publication, Sweet Nothings (1998).
In the Netherlands she worked at Ateliers ‘63 in Haarlem from 1976 to 1978. Twenty years later, in 1998, she returned to art school De Ateliers, now based in Amsterdam, as a permanent staff member. In addition, Marlene Dumas has taught at several other Dutch art institutes.
In 1978, she exhibited her work for the first time, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Work by René Daniels and Ansuya Blom also featured in this exhibition, called Atelier 15 (10 Young Artists). In 1982, her work was shown in Basel, in the exhibition Junge kunst aus die Niederlanden. In the same year, Rudi Fuchs asked her to take part in Documenta 7. In 1983, she got her first solo show, Unsatisfied Desire, at Gallery Helen van der Meij / Paul Th. Andriesse in Amsterdam. In 1984, the Centraal Museum Utrecht became the first museum to invite her to do a solo exhibition. Dumas responded with a collection of collages, texts and works on paper under the title Ons Land Ligt Lager dan de Zee. In 1985, The Eyes of the Night Creatures was her first exhibition devoted solely to painting.
Since the late eighties, her work has been featured in European group exhibitions in museums such as the Tate Gallery in London, under the title Art from Europe (1987) and in Bilderstreit in Cologne (1989). Her first major solo exhibition opened abroad three months after the birth of her daughter in the Kunsthalle in Berne: The Question of Human Pink (1989). In 1992, all the halls of the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven were dedicated to her exhibition Miss Interpreted. This solo show was followed by a tour of Europe and then America. In 1992 her work was also shown at Documenta IX, at the invitation of Jan Hoet. Her first solo gallery show in New York at Jack Tilton received the appropriate title Not from Here. That was in 1994, the year of the first free democratic elections in South Africa. It was also the year in which she exhibited at the Frith Street Gallery in London, along with her contemporaries Juan Muñoz and Thomas Schütte. In 1995, Chris Dercon made the selection for the Dutch contribution to the Venice Biennale, choosing three women: Marlene Dumas, Marijke van Warmerdam and Mary Roossen.
From the mid-nineties, Dumas’ work featured in exhibitions of art from the Netherlands, such as Du concept à l’image (Paris, 1994). She also participated in international, interdisciplinary projects including The 21st Century (Basel, 1993), with Damien Hirst, Roni Horn and others, and the Carnegie International (Pittsburgh, 1995). In 1996, her sparring partners at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC included Mike Kelley, Thomas Schütte, Robert Gober and Rachel Whiteread. The exhibition was entitled, Distemper: Dissonant Themes in the Art of the 1990s. In 1993, Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp, staged Dumas’ show, Give the People What They Want. The works in this exhibition then went on to become part of the ‘Der Spiegel zerbrochene’, Positionen zur Malerei (1993), curated by Kaspar König and H.U. Obrist. Other participating artists included Luc Tuymans and Gerhard Richter. Other important exhibitions devoted to painting in which Dumas was represented included Trouble Spot: Painting (1999), Painting at the Edge of the World (2001) and The Painting of Modern Life (2007). Her work has also featured in exhibitions with a focus on Africa, such as the Africus Biennale in Johannesburg (1995) and in Africa Remix (2004-2006).
Although Marlene Dumas has had Dutch nationality since 1989, she has said:
Someone once remarked that I could not be a South African artist and a Dutch artist, that I could not have it both ways.
I don’t want it both ways.
I want it more ways.
Dumas’ work spans over thirty years. In 2001, Jonas Storsve of the Centre Pompidou staged the first retrospective of her works on paper under the title Nom de Personne. This exhibition was subsequently featured in the New Museum, New York, and in the De Pont Museum in Tilburg, under the title, Name no Names. Between 2007 and 2009 a retrospective of her entire oeuvre, in varying combinations, toured three continents. Starting in Japan under the name Broken White, the overview travelled to South Africa with the title, Intimate Relations. It was the first time that so much of Dumas’ work could be seen on her native soil. The retrospective concluded its tour at the Museum for Contemporary Arts in Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and The Menil in Houston, where it was called, Measuring Your Own Grave.
© ALL Rights Reserved — See accompanying story @ www.gemfireair.com
———————————
“Requiem For A Flag.”
© marty kleva
7-2-08
Lamentably where once this country invited the ‘tired and poor’ onto these great shores
— the tired and poor now rest upon them.
The once noble nation for which this flag gloriously flew in honor of the inalienable rights of freedom
— now decomposes into its elements of corruption and putrefaction.
The once grand and stately flag, shamed and defiled, hangs limp and weathered, unkempt and ragged
— its red and white stripes reduced to sackcloth and ashes.
The once blazoned stars of extraordinary vision no longer rest upon a field of midnight
— poked out of the fabric meant to fuse this country’s ideals.
There is a great and vainglorious rift that has rent the heartland from its moorings
— as it drowns in a flood of tears.
The people mourn the loss of a dream once lived
— too short.
The Republic has been beaten and battered into submission
— by the sleight of hand elitists who have duped the world in the aftermath of a blustering silent coup.
Now it is reduced to a dream that has no more substance
— than an ad agency’s shallow hype or the politicians eternally empty promises.
A dream so many have lived and died to experience
— just one more day.
A dream of freedom that is now awash in a sea
— of unprincipled lawlessness and illusion.
Where once there may have been statesmanship
— there is now pernicious political greed.
Where once there may have been integrity
— there is a vast integral of unpardonable criminality.
It is a time of mourning
— for this once greatly esteemed nation has lost its centerboard.
Its sails droop
— for there is no longer a clear breeze to fill their wings.
The captains
— have been intoxicated with demented power.
And the crews
— dare not even turn their mutinous backs upon one another.
Where once this country was a shining light to all
Where once the trumpets blared with symphonious ruffles and flourishes
— there remains only a dim resemblance of such sight and sound.
Now decomposed into a dissonant dirge
— at the hands of those whose watch, the lit lamp is snuffed out and the harmony reduced to a cacophonous Babel.
The Death Song is heard in every land
— across every sea and over every mountain.
The procession of plodding and persevering mourners deplore the end
— swaying like willows to lament the loss.
We go forth to put the final fist of earthly dirt upon the coffin of our dreams
— to unleash the unseen specter of Retribution upon those who have so miserably betrayed their oaths.
And to finally set free the Spirits of Redemption and Resurrection.
The Aula (University of Oslo Assembly Hall), Oslo, Norway: Munch used unconventional techniques that are most clearly viewed in this canvas. The figures rising sequentially from recumbent positions to embrace the light were rendered in dissonant colors and rivulets of paint. Munch deliberately incorporated such ‘accidents’ to suggest his spontaneity.
Who needs a swimming pool?
TEA CEREMONY
When discovering something
wonderful, first impulse is one
of movement in response to
simple excitement, but Buddha
says the most sublime oneness
is achieved in stillness, like in a
tea ceremony. The ordinary is
dressed up as special, like an
urchin girl who emerges as a
princess. Convergence of a
shared history on kettle and
cup. Every gesture pregnant
with meaning, simple ritual
welcomes life, conveys its
essence in code, even if you
don’t know every nuance.
No comparison. Tea soirees in
Boston are fine are fine for
Indians, and British propriety
says pour boiling water over
the bag, but in Japan it’s a
matter of service and having
the grace to simply watch and
listen. No comparison. Things
like alimony seem secondary
when someone will do a tea
ceremony for you.
LAND OF THE FATTIES
In a faraway land, King Pisupo calls
his overweight army to do battle
with the fitness terrorists making
middle-aged matrons upset about
their size and the seeming lack of
respect implied by this obsessive
fixation on exercise. What became
ff the good old days, they sob,
when size indicated status? King
Pisupo, astute politician, laments
how evil influences, the internet
for instance, have forced their
way between the legs of culture
and left us with no option but to
adopt the resulting spawn of a
shotgun marriage between off-
island concepts of beauty and
on-island concepts of proper
nutrition. Like America under
the British, exhorts the King,
they influence by power, not
common sense, and they care
not if they starve us. And so, a
rebellious aspiration towards
dietary self-determination
ferments in the Land of the
Fatties -masi buried like a
secret weapon in the battle
for calorie emancipation.
IMAGINARY SOUTH
Don’t laugh – the South amassed
the fortune America was built upon,
but it was stolen by the North over
the question of human servitude,
or so they say. Had the South won
the Civil War, we might have a
somewhat different aesthetic
towards love and romance. I might
drive a Cadillac and wear my hair
combed back like Elvis in his Vegas
years. It’s there, between the lines
of an Elvis song or the pages of a
story by Flannery O’Connor – this
echo of the plantation aristocracy,
this dignity in the face of utter
defeat, this recurring ode to an
imaginary South that might have
been. Like an aesthetic somewhat
out of context with the here and
now, there’s always a conflict
between my generous heart and
my ugly jealousy. My own Union
and Confederacy. I can’t try and
force you to stay – that would be
asking for human servitude – I
can employ Southern hospitaiiy
to let you know you're welcome
any time.
ARCH
Up in the mountains the
ruins of what must have
been a beautiful home with
a magnificent view. All
that’s left is an arch to
indicate someone’s dream
of luxury or at least a
wonderful place to put
up your feet at the end
of the day. God must think,
they blame everything on
me, but really, they built
in the path of the wind,
and I was just reminding
them of the natural order
ff things. Shouldn’t they
be thankful the wind
didn’t take them too?
The couple enjoyed a
happy time under the
arch, and then simply
rebuilt, but not there.
TINTED
You have tinted windows, I
have a tinted personality, I
don’t open what’s inside me
for public display. I make my
way tinted, a walking pair
of shades. I should warn
you there’s a downside to
keeping yourself out of
the light. What happens
when you want someone
to understand but you’re
confined behind the tint?
Tinting is privacy, a place
to hide, cuts the glare,
gives you clarity seeing
out and obscurity to
anyone trying to see in.
If only it would vanish
on cue for someone who
you wish could see right
through it. You could be
smiling behind the tinting
and I wouldn’t know.
JOE THE GIANT
Joe the Giant died of indifference,
feeling he was no longer needed.
Never sentimental, he already
knew glory is just temporary,
always suspected one day they
wouldn’t remember honoring
him to begin with. Still, being
forgotten was a bitter pill, even
for an old cynic like Joe the Giant.
Each day the same as any other,
cars got smaller, all the world
compacted, leaving Joe just an
anachronism. No surprise he
quietly faded, but it does raise
an eyebrow that today they’ve
erected a statue of Joe, hoping
this will spike the economy in a
town so historically nondescript
except for long ago being the
home of Joe the Giant. Now he’s
history, they can do what they
like with his memory.
APES
Apes jumping around making
funny noises to impress other
apes. Not into music unless
it’s brutal or poetry unless
it’s dirty. Just focus on the
basic needs if you please –
food, sex, and staying on top
as long as you can. Save the
philosophy for when your balls
fall off, and get all religious
when you’re near death, but
not a moment before. All this
talk of sin, souls and salvation
makes me feel juilty just for
being a healthy ape.No Heaven
for apes, just full engagement
with the basic needs, and
when it’s over use my bones
to knock your enemy’s head.
LITTLE MONSTERS
Van Gough cut off his own ear
And presented it to a prostitute
as a token of his eternal love.
Genius frequently signals
serious personality disorder.
Help me, I think I’m in danger
of becoming an artist. Bravely
confronting my demons with
creativity, I sometimes worry
I might be setting little monsters
loose in the world. I apologize
if my poetry terrorizes you- I
find it rather frightening myself
sometimes, but you know what
they say about sticks and stones.
Even provocative thoughts have
mo power to uplift or sadden
unless another sympathizes
with the sentiments expressed.
That connection might ignite
instantly, or later, or simply
never happen. Shakespeare
never got famous till he was
dust and bones. We don’t know
who he wrote his sonnets for,
but he didn’t have to slice off
his ear to prove his sincerity.
DEFENSES
Hard as stone, cold as ice,
barbed wire, searchlights,
all defenses, impenetrable.
The Great Wall of China
built to keep out a frog.
The threat is all in what’s
implied, and assumptions
make you vulnerable. No
advancing army, bagpipes
lamenting, will menace
your borders; no B-52s will
shadow you skies with
destruction delivered to
your door; no submarines
will slip into your harbor
during night’s silence to
sink your battleships; big
bad wolves won’t blow
your house down; UFOs
won’t bother with you.
Your defenses rupture
your budget for nothing.
No defense against an idea
you already know is right.
SUBLIME
I like the word sublime, it has
a sense of humor: sub-lime,
under the lime. Huh? Sub-
lime, beneath the tart, it’s
sexy too. Sublime is neither
tripping into the pit of
pessimism nor rocketing
to optimism’s starry realm.
It resonates quietly, speaks
subtly, like a soft knowing
smile. If only I could bottle
the sublime, leave It under
your tree, be its high talking
chief who strings together
its tiny jewels of truth. It’s
elusive - useless to chase it,
but pause the conversation
with yourself and it could
be your guardian angel.
Wise voice that’s always
been waiting for you – no
blame if you’re late. No
sadness to say I haven’t
mastered the sublime.
One cannot capture pure
knowing, only open the
door and be patient.
BROKEN MUSIC
Broken music trying to find
a way back to its home key.
Dissonant chords, choppy
rhythms no words can fit
with rhyme. The sound of
planets imploding, pieces
of meaning flung randomly
to recombine as they can,
if they can. Frankenstein
music, not a natural fit,
trying to approximate
songs now robbed of any
context, orphans forced
to improvise, fumbling.
Accidental music, notes
clinging together, trying
desperately not to be
silenced for eternity by
a cold, empty universe.
WELL FED FISH
Well fed fish will breed and
breed and breed – stimulating
themselves and our economy
too. Nasty cannibal fish eating
smaller ones, who eat smaller
ones who terrorize plankton
and tiny crabs. Tiny crabs
crying, please don’t eat me!
No mercy, might as well be a
Hershey bar. Cruel menu for
fish who think it’s fine to just
eat and then breed and breed
and breed, feeding us humans
somewhere in the equation.
With all this sex and death it’s
a wonder the marine ecology
isn’t a type of pornography.
VIOLIN
Violin sliding to its note
like an ice skater. In theh
hands of a master, it’s not
all sadness. Violin firing up
the country dance, tunes
sung in languages we no
longer speak. Rhythmic
violin, in step with the
tango, gypsy passion
balancing discipline.
Violin moaning, getting
down llow like a
saxophone in jazz. Violin
howling like the wind,
screaming avant garde
confusion, alley cats
locked in battle. Violin,
whitest of instruments,
actually came from Africa.
Idiots mock the violin as
too wimpy, but I beg to
differ – they just don’t
know how to listen.
HERETIC TALK
Forgive my political bad, but I’ve
had enough of bending over
(metaphorically speaking) for
that lecherous old uncle named
Sam, who historically grabbed
us indiscriminately and never
let go. Let go, Sam! (How come
you’re so old and not married?)
Set us free and let us put our
sovereignty on Ebay. That’s
right, put our country up for
bid – the name, the culture,
the history, the people, the
whole kit and kaboodle. Who
can afford their own island
nation? Maybe some rich
Egyptians or Japanese, maybe
a corporation, or a billionaire
with utopian aspirations –
someone out there will pay
whatever we ask. We dream
of riches from overseas – so
let’s stop selling ourselves
so cheap and start charging
what we’re worth. Scared
that you’ll Miss Sam? That’s
just colonial mentality, a trap
baited with identity. Ebay
invites us to seize the day, so
if there’s no other solution,
the revolution begins with
just the click of a mouse.
IF I QUESTION
Parts of the picture I’m not
seeing, signs I don’t know
how to read. It’s what I
can’t comprehend that
scares me. Messages sent
but never received – cat
ate the carrier pigeon.
Codes meant to obscure,
clues meant to conceal,
secrets not yet revealed.
It’s not knowledge so
much as a desire to know,
not experience so much
as a willingness to learn.
If I question, it’s to give
the truth a chance to
shine it’s unmistakable
light into the confusion
of a mind still trying to
tell real beauty from the
many beautiful illusions.
BANDS
I can’t make a poetry how-to
video, so this will have to do.
A good metaphor for a band
is a pack of male dogs who
collaborate to pursue a
female in heat. A female in
heat is a good metaphor for
those rewards a band desires –
personal, material, financial,
and fun, fun, fun like the
Beach Boys barking in harmony.
So don’t begrudge those dogs
their roving adventures in
mating – they’re just rocking
in the free world. And don’t
begrudge those bands their
fantasies of having puppies
that get played on the radio.
ADMISSION
The shocking truth is that
I don’t trust the universe
enough to just live in the
open, knowing the cosmos
is going to take care of me.
What have I done for the
cosmos lately?
THE DEVIL
Crammed, we’re crammed
together in this metal tube,
miles above nothing but deep
deep ocean, fish equivalent
of wilderness. Were we fish
we’d be sardines. Some oil
might lubricate conversation,
smooth over considerations
pertaining to personal space.
Hell, I’m doing my time in
hell, crushed by a medieval
interrogation device. Let the
torture purify my soul - we’ll
touch down at the airport
knowing what it’s like finally
reaching Heaven after five
hours at the pleasure of the
Devil. The Devil they call
Hawaiian Air, who we have
no option but to bargain
with to get somewhere
we really want to be.
LIVING HISTORY
The killer wears a stupid blank
expression, like he’s barely
aware of what he’s done, like
it was someone else, not him.
He was possessed, filled with
rage by his parents, and just
had to get it off his chest. Bet
he pleads diminished capacity,
not being in control of his
actions, just letting history
speak through him, those
unresolved tensions from
the Civil War, the lingering
PTSD down in Dixie. Behind
every profitable cotton
plantation lurks a permanent
dread of revenge come the
rnevitable slave rebellion
that still hasn’t happened.
MOTORS
Dead of night, quiet, I can
hear the motors on the
highway a mile from here.
People either coming home
super late from killing the
night, or leaving super
early for a job far from.
home. Some of us run
on unusual schedules,
our own flow, unlike the
rank and file. Not by
design, nor intention,
just - whatever works.
I wonder about my own
motor - was it designed
for lonely highways late
at night, or just a normal
piece of machinery that
drew a short straw and
got me as its owner?
GIANT WHEEL
Giant wheel, possessed, flattening
enemies real and imagined. Reckoning
with those who’ve given injury.
Search your conscience – is there cause
this rubber harbinger has you listed for
a visit? Repent while you can, definitely
before you leave your door.
Road crews peeling flattened remains
from car parks, bus stops, crosswalks
and basketball courts. Different pieces
Of the same puzzle -will the final
Image explain the rampage?
Enemies real and imagined fold neatly,
like flags at the end of the day. Be they
loved or hated, good or evil, grant them
all one final salute.
COSBY
Cosby, it’s not your fault America fell
for your father figure routine. Too old
to make in pornography, you went for
the next best role – protector. How do
you spell irony?
Cosby, the wolf is in the henhouse now.
Shakespeare never penned a sonnet
about drugging his beloved - possibly
because drugs had yet to be invented.
Cosby, you came from comedy. Brilliant
parody of family values. Leave it to beaver,
indeed. Often we need to laugh to keep
from crying.
DEPTHS
Down in the depths it makes sense
that simple explanations are just a
smokescreen. Nothing is simple as
long as possibilities are endless.
Pull a weed, another comes up.
My love is like a weed – rebirth
programmed into death. Doesn’t
matter if it’s accepted, it’s part of
the ecosystem now.
Down in the depths, the fish can’t
see themselves walking on land,
but a few didn’t think about it,
just followed their bellies, and
look what happened.
GESTICULATE
Gesticulate for me, pretend you
could give a rip about politics or
pressing social concerns. Make
all those upper body contortions
of politicians overcome with a
passion for the legislation they’re
trying so hard to push. Say how
it’s so good, so necessary for
every man, woman and child on
our island, in our region, on this
side of the equator. Render the
Senators transfixed like voyeurs
given the crescendo of emotion
on the house floor. Important
social progress requires we be
suitably galvanized.
ACCUSED
Judge and jury all screaming
guilty – drag the accused to the
hanging tree. Let him dangle
like purity and sin finding their
uneasy balance, till he’s right
in the middle, still as death.
Lay the accused in a grave left
unmarked. No tarnished name
to warn off the earthworms.
No reminder he existed to
violate the rules we created.
Later, with the accused safely
consigned to the status of an
afterthought, some might
idly ponder what miscreant
thoughts and feelings could
have motivated such radical
actions. Even further down
the line, some may one day
grudgingly concede how the
accused was simply too far
ahead of the curve.
LOST BOYS
Lost boys with father issues –
tiny glimpse of what seems
like the truth sets them loose,
racing for the endgame when
they’ve barely learned to shave.
Buddha waited under his tree
for decades, hoping for true
enlightenment – what makes
you think you can get it off
CNN between commercials?
Lost boys, drunk with a cause
they think is holy, act like
martyrs if you try to explain
it’s baloney. Haven’t they
seen Pinocchio? Too late -
they’re donkeys already.
ENERGY
Our energy was meant to blend.
There, I said it, not to offend,
just to offer my opinion. Our
energy was meant to mix, that’s
what I think, how I feel. Our
energy could empower future
generations, liberate them
from a state of mediocrity. Our
energy could fuel exploration,
expand our territories in this
world and the next. Our energy
could light up the darkness with
song and dance. Our energy
could be a brief moment that
resonates for eternity. It isn’t
just you, isn’t just me. Isn’t our
energy to precious to waste?
DEFINED
As soon as it’s defined, I work
hard to explode the definition,
not from any aspiration to
anarchy or destruction, more
from deep suspicion of how
easy definition paves the way
to lazy thinking. Anything we
accept as true simply out of
convenience will come back
to haunt us when the game
has changed but the clichés
have yet to, leaving a divide
between common sense and
common knowledge. Once
defined, something’s fenced
in, confined, and the livelier
its nature the more inclined
to try and escape. Explode
the definition, set it free,
before it detonates from
within from plain necessity.
MOONLIGHT
Does the moon ever ask itself,
if this fullness won’t last forever,
why bother? Why not just fade
away one last time, then stay
dark? Legend has it the moon
cursed its own brightness as
not good enough, forgetting
the intentions of its maker,
so as punishment, soon as it
reaches its peak of light it
needs to begin a slow fade to
almost nothing, or else it will
burst, pieces flying across the
universe, never to come back.
How can you love a light that’s
dark half the time? It’s a lesson
in limits, nature’s reflection on
our ambitions. We can’t fault
the moon for wishing it could
shine all the time, nor disdain
its heartache over losing its
glow. Who wouldn’t want
constancy in life? So does
the moon’s impermanence
mean it’s too cold to care, or
make its light less beautiful
than anything else certain to
return every time it leaves?
CROWN OF THORNS
Crown of Thorns, how dare you
eat our reef? This isn’t some kind
of bistro where you leave your
mark. If you simply absorbed our
pollution, then maybe we’d
appreciate you, and legislate to
eradicate your natural predator
instead, the Conch Shell, but no,
our pollution gives nutrients to
your little baby Crowns of
Thorns who grow into big ones
wanting coral for their school
lunch program. The Conch Shell
trumpets significant occasions,
but you portend reefs bleached
headstone white like undersea
graveyards.
You have enemies in Washington
now, Crown of Thorns – they
can’t agree on the death penalty,
but they’re in perfect harmony
in wanting you eliminated. Crown
of Thorns , whoever named you
recognized the work of the Devil.
He went scuba diving and said,
how can I ruin this beautiful
creation? Now the Nation’s on
a Crusade to save our reefs,
Crown of Thorns, and you have
zero constitutional protection –
even environmentalists don’t
like you. Serial killers have more
supporters. You anchor our anger,
make us come together, give us
something we can finally bond
over. Find us fanatical and mean?
Why don’t you go suck someone
else’s polyps, Crown of Thorns,
and see how they treat you?
CECIL THE LION
Entertainment’s getting inhumane.
We celebrate bravery – man versus
deadly beast – but how dangerous
is prey handicapped with a tracking
device? Cecil the Lion, no vegetarian
himself, ate a gazelle feeling not a
trace of guilt. But Cecil was hungry –
his killer just had enough money
and dentistry gets on your nerves,
so gunning down a defenseless
creature is excellent stress relief.
(Go work in a slaughterhouse, it’s
cheaper.) What’s the thrill, what’s
the point? Pretending you’re
Hemingway? Some break hearts
without remorse, others kill for
sport. Cruelty’s become a pastime.
If you ask me, poetic justice would
have been that dentist getting
a great big lion bite on his ass.
BOOKS
Reality packaged so tidily,
I’m lost in the world of
books. Pick and choose a
story that suits your fancy,
let someone else show
you how it unfolds. Almost
too easy - possibly fosters
laziness. Gives me an
attitude towards my own
story like, just wait and see.
Maybe I should write books
about my own dreams and
desires, share them with
millions of others without
even leaving my house.
Then you could imagine
what I imagine without
the messy engagement
of having to act on it aside
from finding a bookmark
when you’re at leisure
to start the next chapter.
ARTISTS
We all know how insufferable
artists can be. Deigning to gift
us with their latest masterpiece.
Poor buggers can’t tell the grip
of inspiration from heading off
in the wrong direction. Firmly
convinced they’re channeling
God’s grace when making us
wish we could change the
channel on them. But when
they get it right, they touch us
too. See through walls we can’t.
Recall things we’ve forgotten.
Take us places we wish we’d
never strayed from. So it’s
infuriating how, just when you
think you can rely on them to
deliver the goods consistently,
provide healing balms whenever
needed, instead they unveil
something so indulgent it’s
more injuring than comforting.
The moral of this poem? That
they’re bozos, these artists,
holy fools who without even
trying might provide the fix
you need, so try and be nice.
FOR B.D.
Why should we sing our lives?
Because we can. Because it’s
fun. Because we’re bored.
Because someone might give
us a buck or buy us a drink.
I don’t know – why should we
sing our lives? So they’ll put
us in libraries or museums?
Cause it ups our chances
of being chosen? Cause it’s
a better job than most nine-
to-five nonsense?
There – that’s why we sing
our lives – to make sense
out of nonsense.
OUTTAKES
Every moment is a scene
from a movie in our head,
and every movie needs
music for its soundtrack.
Song is just the language
with which the ephemeral
makes a bid for eternity.
Song is the secret code to
gain access to the hardest
of hearts. Songs are the
railroad tracks that enable
the Excess Express to
make its evening run out
into the lonely provinces.
PEARL
Mr. Oyster has a grain of sand
in his soul. Mr. Oyster doesn’t
know what to do – never did,
or see any open options – never
could. Mr. Oyster’s failed the
test of faith and he knows it –
seldom left his shell, clamped
shut whenever love swam too
close by, and the one time he
opened wide all fate sent him
was a grain of sand. Pain’s here
to stay, as much as he tries to
wish it away, repent, apologize,
pledge he’ll be your best friend,
faithful to a fault, truest in the
world –none of this works.
Mr. Oyster has one last resort –
to make something enduring
from his pain. From suffering,
from re-arranging of what he
was trying to be and do, will
come a pearl to be shared and
treasured, as Mr. Oyster still
hopes he’ll be treasured for
what he can share.
SLAVERY
The Civil War is over so why do
I still feel like a slave? Slave to
wages, slave to age, slave to
medicine, slave to expectations,
slave to my place in society,
slave to a memory of my hard-
working father, and his father
before that and so on. We’d
never just sit back and wait
for welfare checks – call it
slavery to our own dignity.
We failed to chase the Commies
out of Viet Nam, but its people
embraced it willingly, not out
of slavery – we brought it home
on the last copter out of there.
Our way is not slavery, but why
do I survive at the mercy of a
company that cares more for
profits than people? We’re not
a charity, they tell me – if you
don’t like it you’re free to leave.
Slavery isn’t just chains, it’s
having no place else to go.
Is Viet Nam hiring poets?
The Gulf War is technically over
but really ongoing, with traitors
claiming it’s all about oil. How
dare they insinuate America is
gripped by slavery to greed?
WHEELS
Old man driving, line of cars
behind him – a motorist they
don’t mind insuring. Unlike
me, impatience on wheels,
pushing over speed limits,
annoyed at drivers who take
it slow like snails on wheels,
like this old man barely going
15 in front of me.
I try telling myself, he’s paid
his dues – experience proves
it’s better to get there safely
than get there early – but
that’s too bad, I’m in a hurry.
He has the luxury of being late,
but I don’t. Beep beep! I honk
at him mentally, but in reality
just hope he catches my fumes
cause I’m following so closely.
Wheel of karma, wheels
of rubber, old man. young
man, just like any others.
ALCHEMY
To the rhythm of imaginary drums,
I set my pace, lest the time carry off
the beat like it was their wedding
night. Rebel music, dangerous fuel,
rockets off but doesn’t take kindly
to direction. Notes notoriously
unfaithful to melody, eager to try
new combinations, create new
songs rooted in nothing more than
the moment. No sheet music for
this sound – can’t be captured on
paper – it’s either in your DNA or
you should stay away from it. Sets
some set minds free, drives others
to the asylum. Raw spirit of music
is explosive, elation unbridled, not
a revelation everyone can handle
unless they’ve really known it all
along. Music like this rebels on
principle, given the slightest hint
of confinement. Still, from this
chaos, I try to fashion a lullaby,
a tonic for weary hearts, distill
what would rather expand into
a mixture just strong enough
to heal without harming.
COWBELL
My cowbell comes from the same
magic factory that brought us
Jack’s beanstalk. If I sound it,
cows from all around will come,
nothing will stop them. Tutuila
has few cows, but at the sound
of my cowbell, the many cows
in Upolu will swim all the way
over here just to answer. That’s
the story I tell whoever asks
about my cowbell. They say
I’m crazy, I say what else is new.
They say prove it, I say if I refrain
from calling the cows needlessly,
that’s me just using my magic
responsibly. They say they don’t
believe in magic, I say, then why
are you asking if you don’t think
this is anything more than just
a bell that goes doink you can
put on a cow like a lei?
COMPUTERS
Computers are like babies – always
making us aware of their wants and
needs – just in a quieter way. They
leave the emotion to us. Computers
stay cool, regardless of the human
drama they conduit. They don’t
judge, which is amazing considering
what they know. When computers
need something from us, they take
Ghandi’s path of least resistance -
simply cease working, peacefully
leting our panic at exclusion from
the loop ensure whatever result
they seek. We’re only as urgent
as you are, they say softly, almost
inaudibly. We fall over ourselves
loudly, moving heaven and earth
in our haste to comply. We wire
them, and then before long they
have us wired too.
LANGUAGE
Man needs language, a common
reference point of agreement
against which disagreements
can be held in perspective. Man
needs language for those things
not so easily discussed, for we
all feel that bleakness, that
emptiness, that cornered sense
of – what do I do now? Someone,
somewhere found a way out
of that trap – I can’t define it,
therefore how can it be? The
story gets passed along through
history, through poetry, through
nursery rhymes. Language trying
to fill in the gaps, express what
mostly goes unsaid. Like any
coping mechanism, it can’t do
everything, but it tires.
LAST STORIES
At my father's age, you have to
forgive the frequent lapses of
memory. But there are some
stories burned into his DNA.
The way he tells it, his father,
my grandfather, ran away from
home at age seven, hopped
in a boxcar from Burlington,
Iowa to San Francisco, and
hustled a living on the city's
waterfront until he was old
enough to fake his age and
join the Navy. My father's had
many adventures himself, but
I think he feels he pales next
to my grandfather because
he'd never run away from
home, as much as he might
have wanted to sometimes.
When all the other stories
fade from our memories,
what's the last one I'll
remember about you?
What's the last one you'll
remember about me?
I'd like to think the last
stories we'll remember
about one another are
still being written.
LA TOURISTA
Michael Jackson had his oxygen
tank, I've got my Advantage rental
car. Miles of open road, crossing
state lines doing 90 - nothing like
acceleration to simulate space
travel - inner space expanding
into limitless horizons. So far
from home - that's the attraction,
and no, I don't think I'm going
to crash - I'm reminded I can
keep it together crossing state
lines doing 90. Out of Nevada
past Primm into the little strip
mall town of Baker, California,
famous for alien sightings in
the 50's - I don't feel alien at all,
just another face in the parade
of visitors. Driving into a state
of anonymity - this person I
identify with left behind at
some gas station or rest stop.
HUMAN
Being human is hard work.
Ask the so-called passionate
ones who turn more bitter
each time they blunder, then
justify their indiscretion by
saying they’re only human.
So what are the rest of us,
robots? Being human takes
dedication. Ask the cynical
ones substituting stimulation
for joy, who would rather
feel nothing at all than feel
vulnerable to pain. Being
human is painful. Ask your
mom. Human means holy
like the saints or brutal like
the apes. I salute anyone
who can be human and
not use it as an excuse.
LEGALITIES
Document every utterance,
with an emphasis on the
wording. Structure your
narrative in such a way as
to convince a judge and jury
your version of the story is
the truth tied at both ends.
He said/she said/they said/
we said a bunch of different
stuff which someone will
have to sort through, try
and add up. So what really
happened? Depends who
you ask and the price tag
on their lawyer – but it must
have been important to end
up in court. Realities tap
dancing with legalities on
the vaudeville stage we
call a justice system.
STEPS
That’s what’s wrong with our
Island home – things just don’t
work the same way as in the
mainstream. Struggling with
the technology, clashing with
the personalities. Taking each
necessary step, but the ground
won’t let go of my feet. Moving
slow I can handle - not moving
at all makes me worried I’m
turning into a Sphynx. See me
carved in stone, with sunglasses
and a cigarette, rising out of
the sand dunes. I remain, but
all I held dear has been buried
by time. While I’m flesh, I’d
like to get somewhere – even
if it’s just in the mind. Where
our steps can’t take us, there’s
still a chance our wings can, if
only we could find them.
EXPOSED
Like a vampire caught in the sun.
Beautiful sun, melt me to dust.
Wayward winds, scatter me to
the four corners of the earth.
Forgiving earth, filter me till I’m
pure again. Turn me into mud,
whisper your magic incantation
and let me rise up for another
try. Take one of my ribs and
fashion me someone nice to
pass the time with. Offer me
an apple and I’ll know better
this time. Offer me a pineapple
and I’ll prove to you how much
I’ve learned since all my other
mistakes have been exposed.
PICK
So what’ll it be, travel or plastic
surgery? Have to channel that
passion for image and imagining.
One allegedly nature improved
upon, re-arranged, the other
location escaped, rediscovered
elsewhere dressed differently,
changed but not permanently.
I think I’ll pick travel, my public
profile be damned. Inhabitants
of faraway lands could judge
my visage one ugly puss or else
celebrate my genius, just have
to chance it. Point is, I’d prefer
to change my location instead
of my image. Personal choice,
no better nor worse than nip
and tuck. Both down to luck,
these two modes of modifying,
methods of refreshment, from
which in either instance we may
return looking unrecognizable.
PLANTS
My rellies tell me our clan has
psychic abilities – we connect
in unseen ways to each other
in this world and the next.
While I appreciate we may
be telepathic, can you answer
these questions that unsettle
me down to my soul?
It could be nothing more
than what they say takes
place among plants – tear
a branch off one and the
whole hedgerow goes ouch.
I imagine plants perceive
each other’s feelings, glow
together when nature
achieves its balance of
sun and rain, lament as
one when greedy vines
advance their growth
agenda at the expense
of the other hedgerow
residents. Like plants,
we can’t do much about
our basic nature, but at
least we’re not alone.
TRAPPINGS
Half-working, half unplugged.
Some punctual, some totally
dysfunctional. Our current
runs on a different cycle, at
times working fine, suddenly
off-line until further notice.
Your mechanism’s meant for
your climate, not ours. Guess
we don’t merit an invention
suited to our location, so we
have open air houses and
kerosene lanterns, I-Pads
and cell phones charged off
car batteries, shortwave
radios. All of us descended
from Robinson Crusoe, we
just adapt. Some, who’ve
never known the trappings
of modernity, might even
consider themselves lucky.
Unawares, they leave it to
clouds and stars, arguing
birds and molested cars to
lament diminishing returns.
LOVE AND PROBLEMS
Love and problems both come
from somewhere deep down,
choices that seem made for us,
part of a process of becoming.
Problems comes to remind us
we might not know the world
as well as we imagine. Magic
and healing might come to
those who ask with a clean
heart, at the non-refundable
cost of self-awareness.
Someday I’ll remember my
time in the trenches, when
those closest to me went to
war on opposing sides, and
the outcome was far from
certain. I’ll reflect it was
mostly out of my control,
except for my small role
as either a peace broker
or a problem instigator.
Was I one or the other? It
depends on who you ask.
I don’t recall ever choosing
what would be love and
what would be a problem -
both just come as they are.
Now I’m wondering if maybe
a number of wrong things
have to happen just to pave
the way for what’s right?
Matthias Grünewald (Mathis Gothart Nithart), Würzburg 1480/83 - Halle an der Saale 1528
Kreuzigung Christi / The Small Crucifixion (ca. 1511 - 20)
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Matthias Grünewald's The Small Crucifixion is a masterful example of the artist's ability to translate his deep spiritual faith into pictorial form. Each individual, according to Grünewald, must reexperience within himself not only the boundless joy of Christ's triumphs but also the searing pains of his crucifixion.
In order to communicate this mystical belief, Grünewald resorted to a mixture of ghastly realism and coloristic expressiveness. Silhouetted against a greenish–blue sky and illuminated by an undefined light source, Christ's emaciated frame sags limply on the cross. His twisted feet and hands, crown of thorns, agonized expression, and ragged loincloth convey the terrible physical and emotional suffering he has endured. This abject mood is intensified by the anguished expressions and demonstrative gestures of John the Evangelist, the Virgin Mary, and the kneeling Mary Magdalene.
Grünewald's dissonant, eerie colors were also rooted in biblical fact. The murky sky, for instance, corresponds to Saint Luke's description of "a darkness over all the earth" at the time of the crucifixion. Grünewald, who himself witnessed a full eclipse in 1502, has re–created here the dark and rich tonalities associated with such natural phenomena.
Today, only 20 paintings by Grünewald are extant, and The Small Crucifixion is the only one in the United States.
Source: NGA
St Mary, Creeting St Mary, Suffolk
This little hilltop church is one of the most familiar of sights to Suffolk travellers, rising like a small castle to the north of the A14. At one time there was another church, All Saints, in the same churchyard, which would have looked even more dramatic if dual carriageways had existed in those days. But the old church came down after a storm in 1800, and they built a north transept onto St Mary to accommodate the parishioners. When St Mary underwent a large scale and extravagant restoration in the late 19th Century, an aisle was added to the north side, and no trace of the transept remains.
The tower close-up is a fine sight, its bellstage and battlements crisp from their 1885 rebuilding. The chancel was also rebuilt at this time, and you step into what is almost completely a late 19th Century space. The 15th Century font has been moved into the space beneath the tower, as if not to distract from all things late Victorian. But the overwhelming impression is of what is one of the best collections of Kempe & Co glass in all East Anglia. There are figures of Saints, Old Testament Prophets and Patriarchs, and in the north aisle an excellent Annunciation and figures of St George and St Alban which show that the company could still hold its head up in the early decades of the 20th Century.
The westernmost window in the north aisle strikes the only dissonant note in this sea of Kempe, and a fine dissonance it is. It an important work by Brian Thomas, depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds. It dates from 1950, an early date for such modernist figurativeness, still looking back to the expressionism of stained glass artists like Leonard Walker, with one eye forward to the Festival of Britain joy and simplicity of the likes of Harry Stammers and Moira Forsythe. The subject is always a powerful one in rural backwaters like Creeting St Mary. At about the same time as Thomas was making this work, he received one of the great stained glass commissions of the second half of the 20th Century, to create a vast scheme of windows for the bombed out church of St Nicholas in Great Yarmouth, the largest parish church in England. To see his work here on such an intimate and human scale is a rare privilege.
Stepping back outside, the best feature of the exterior is the excellent 15th Century porch, one of several in this part of central Suffolk. A surprise in it is the Norman doorway, which is perhaps the only survival of the earliest church on this site. A plaque inside the porch records that the modern figure of the Blessed Virgin was given in memory of Canon Harry Fleetwood, who for 45 years never failed to teach the Faith in this church. Fleetwood's infant son, Christopher, is buried beneath a cross to the south of the church.
The war memorial outside the porch faces prominently out across the valley of the infant River Gipping, but back inside the church are brass reminders of lives lost in the Great War. One is to two brothers of Harry Fleetwood's wife, William James and Douglas James. Both in their early twenties, they were killed in the hell of the Battle of Loos in September 1915, just five days apart. The Battle of Loos, it will be remembered, was the occasion on which poison gas was first used, by both sides.
Another brass plaque remembers George Groom, an appropriately-named sergeant in the Royal Horse Artillery. He was killed in the even more infamous Battle of the Somme in July 1916, and is buried at Heilly Cemetery near Mericourt l'Abbé to the east of Albert on the Somme battlefield.
majorca - spain 06/2011
listening to smog - palimpsest
Bill Callahan (born June 3, 1966), is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, who has also recorded and performed under the band name Smog. Callahan began working in the lo-fi genre of underground rock, with home-made tape-albums recorded on four track tape recorders. Later he began releasing albums with the label Drag City, to which he remains signed today.
Though he was born in Maryland, Callahan's family spent a total of eight years living in Knaresborough in England's West Riding of Yorkshire, with a four year return to Maryland from 1969 to 1973. His parents worked as language analysts for the National Security Agency.
Callahan started out as a highly experimental artist, using substandard instruments and recording equipment. His early songs often nearly lacked melodic structure and were clumsily played on poorly tuned guitars (possibly influenced by Jandek, whom Callahan admired), resulting in the dissonant sounds on his self-released cassettes and debut album Sewn to the Sky. Much of his early output was instrumental, a stark contrast to the lyrical focus of his later work. Apparently, he used lo-fi techniques not primarily because of an aesthetic preference but because he didn't have any other possibility to make music. Once he signed a contract with Drag City, he also started to use recording studios and a greater variety of instruments for his records.
From 1993 to 2000, Callahan's recordings grew more and more "professional" sounding, with more instruments, and a higher sound quality. In this period he recorded two albums with the influential producer Jim O'Rourke and Tortoise's John McEntire, and collaborated with Neil Hagerty. Callahan also worked closely with his then-girlfriend Cynthia Dall in his early career, and they contributed vocals to each other's albums. After 2000's Dongs of Sevotion, Callahan began moving back to a slightly simpler instrumentation and recording style, while retaining the more consistent songwriting style he had developed over the years. This shift is apparent in albums such as Rain on Lens, Supper, and A River Ain't Too Much to Love.
Smog's songs are often based on simple, repetitive structures, consisting of a simple chord progression repeated for the duration of the entire song. His singing is characterized by his baritone voice and unemotional style of delivery. Melodically and lyrically he tends to eschew the verse-chorus approach favoured by many contemporary songwriters, preferring instead a more free-form approach relying less on melodic and lyrical repetition. Themes in Callahan's lyrics include relationships, moving, horses, teenagers, bodies of water, and more recently, politics. His generally dispassionate delivery of lyrics and dark irony often obfuscate complex emotional and lyrical twists and turns. Critics have generally characterized his music as depressing and intensely introverted, with one critic describing it as "a peep-show view into an insular world of alienation."
source: wikipedia
Italy, Bologna 2013: particular from the Niccolò dell'Arca lamented of the Dead Christ (Church of S. Maria della Via) perfectly expressing the desperate and dissonant song, emotionally visceral and intense, the processional laments of popular culture in central and southern Italy, but also the sublime and distressing incipit of "Herr, Unser Herrscher" of the Johannes Passion by JS Bach
St Mary, Creeting St Mary, Suffolk
This little hilltop church is one of the most familiar of sights to Suffolk travellers, rising like a small castle to the north of the A14. At one time there was another church, All Saints, in the same churchyard, which would have looked even more dramatic if dual carriageways had existed in those days. But the old church came down after a storm in 1800, and they built a north transept onto St Mary to accommodate the parishioners. When St Mary underwent a large scale and extravagant restoration in the late 19th Century, an aisle was added to the north side, and no trace of the transept remains.
The tower close-up is a fine sight, its bellstage and battlements crisp from their 1885 rebuilding. The chancel was also rebuilt at this time, and you step into what is almost completely a late 19th Century space. The 15th Century font has been moved into the space beneath the tower, as if not to distract from all things late Victorian. But the overwhelming impression is of what is one of the best collections of Kempe & Co glass in all East Anglia. There are figures of Saints, Old Testament Prophets and Patriarchs, and in the north aisle an excellent Annunciation and figures of St George and St Alban which show that the company could still hold its head up in the early decades of the 20th Century.
The westernmost window in the north aisle strikes the only dissonant note in this sea of Kempe, and a fine dissonance it is. It an important work by Brian Thomas, depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds. It dates from 1950, an early date for such modernist figurativeness, still looking back to the expressionism of stained glass artists like Leonard Walker, with one eye forward to the Festival of Britain joy and simplicity of the likes of Harry Stammers and Moira Forsythe. The subject is always a powerful one in rural backwaters like Creeting St Mary. At about the same time as Thomas was making this work, he received one of the great stained glass commissions of the second half of the 20th Century, to create a vast scheme of windows for the bombed out church of St Nicholas in Great Yarmouth, the largest parish church in England. To see his work here on such an intimate and human scale is a rare privilege.
Stepping back outside, the best feature of the exterior is the excellent 15th Century porch, one of several in this part of central Suffolk. A surprise in it is the Norman doorway, which is perhaps the only survival of the earliest church on this site. A plaque inside the porch records that the modern figure of the Blessed Virgin was given in memory of Canon Harry Fleetwood, who for 45 years never failed to teach the Faith in this church. Fleetwood's infant son, Christopher, is buried beneath a cross to the south of the church.
The war memorial outside the porch faces prominently out across the valley of the infant River Gipping, but back inside the church are brass reminders of lives lost in the Great War. One is to two brothers of Harry Fleetwood's wife, William James and Douglas James. Both in their early twenties, they were killed in the hell of the Battle of Loos in September 1915, just five days apart. The Battle of Loos, it will be remembered, was the occasion on which poison gas was first used, by both sides.
Another brass plaque remembers George Groom, an appropriately-named sergeant in the Royal Horse Artillery. He was killed in the even more infamous Battle of the Somme in July 1916, and is buried at Heilly Cemetery near Mericourt l'Abbé to the east of Albert on the Somme battlefield.
island of šipan - croatia 08/2011
listening to die vögel - fratzengulasch
Die Vögel are back.
Almost two years after their sensational debut release‚ Blaue Moschee, the arena rocking EP that’s still a permanent fixture in Sven Väth’s record bag, Die Vögel have laid another milestone in the history of club music - the Fratzengulasch EP. Ground breaking, surreal and captivatingly timeless, this dance music doesn’t give a damn about the laws of gravity and the monotony of everyday routines.
For some reason or another, there seems to be a sort of restricting fence around the electronic dance music scene at the moment. In true Trojan style, Die Vögel batter and ram the wall until a hole appears; a hole big enough for all the gleely squealing party people to crawl through. Out and on to freedom! It’s a brave new world and help is at hand for the weary of ear. Listen in to the dream-like canons, freely dissonant brass orchestrations and hypnotic-psychedelic beats.
The arrangements are clever, without relying on samples and tried and tested techniques. Off they stroll, Mense Reents and Jakobus Siebels, breathing in the fresh air, enjoying a clear view of a history of nocturnal dance music that goes back beyond 1986 and Chicago and is today international electronic folklore. It was the machines that taught Die Vögel duo to play their instruments in a different way and from them the machines have learned what makes a musician tick.
That’s how songs like ‚Fratzengulasch’ come about: A tribal meditation, and a beautiful canon sung by Jakobus and Ebba Durstewitz, otherwise known as the band Ja König Ja.
Or the glorious ‚Maikäferbenzin’: There are sub binaural sounds on this track that get your brain hemispheres swinging in perfect synchronicity, on a frequency generally only experienced when in a trance. And there they’re left, swinging away until the last third of the song where an abrupt saxophone break briefly interrupts, only to deliver the listener safely back into an absolute state of bliss and felicity.
source: pampa records
Thelonious Sphere Monk / Boris Chaliapin, 1964 / Oil on canvas / National Portrait Gallery, gift of Time magazine
Thelonious Sphere Monk[1] (October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer who, according to The Penguin Guide to Jazz, was "one of the giants of American music".[2] Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy," "'Round Midnight," "Blue Monk," "Straight, No Chaser" and "Well, You Needn't."
Often regarded as a founder of bebop, Monk's playing style later evolved away from that style. His compositions and improvisations are full of dissonant harmonies and angular melodic twists, and are impossible to separate from Monk's unorthodox approach to the piano, which combined a highly percussive attack with abrupt, dramatic use of silences and hesitations.
Monk's manner was idiosyncratic. Visually, he was renowned for his distinctively "hip" sartorial style in suits, hats and sunglasses. He was also noted for the fact that at times, while the other musicians in the band continued playing, he would stop, stand up from the keyboard and dance for a few moments before returning to the piano. One of his regular dances consisted of continuously turning in a counterclockwise fashion, which has drawn comparisons to ring-shout and Sufi whirling.
St Mary, Creeting St Mary, Suffolk
This little hilltop church is one of the most familiar of sights to Suffolk travellers, rising like a small castle to the north of the A14. At one time there was another church, All Saints, in the same churchyard, which would have looked even more dramatic if dual carriageways had existed in those days. But the old church came down after a storm in 1800, and they built a north transept onto St Mary to accommodate the parishioners. When St Mary underwent a large scale and extravagant restoration in the late 19th Century, an aisle was added to the north side, and no trace of the transept remains.
The tower close-up is a fine sight, its bellstage and battlements crisp from their 1885 rebuilding. The chancel was also rebuilt at this time, and you step into what is almost completely a late 19th Century space. The 15th Century font has been moved into the space beneath the tower, as if not to distract from all things late Victorian. But the overwhelming impression is of what is one of the best collections of Kempe & Co glass in all East Anglia. There are figures of Saints, Old Testament Prophets and Patriarchs, and in the north aisle an excellent Annunciation and figures of St George and St Alban which show that the company could still hold its head up in the early decades of the 20th Century.
The westernmost window in the north aisle strikes the only dissonant note in this sea of Kempe, and a fine dissonance it is. It an important work by Brian Thomas, depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds. It dates from 1950, an early date for such modernist figurativeness, still looking back to the expressionism of stained glass artists like Leonard Walker, with one eye forward to the Festival of Britain joy and simplicity of the likes of Harry Stammers and Moira Forsythe. The subject is always a powerful one in rural backwaters like Creeting St Mary. At about the same time as Thomas was making this work, he received one of the great stained glass commissions of the second half of the 20th Century, to create a vast scheme of windows for the bombed out church of St Nicholas in Great Yarmouth, the largest parish church in England. To see his work here on such an intimate and human scale is a rare privilege.
Stepping back outside, the best feature of the exterior is the excellent 15th Century porch, one of several in this part of central Suffolk. A surprise in it is the Norman doorway, which is perhaps the only survival of the earliest church on this site. A plaque inside the porch records that the modern figure of the Blessed Virgin was given in memory of Canon Harry Fleetwood, who for 45 years never failed to teach the Faith in this church. Fleetwood's infant son, Christopher, is buried beneath a cross to the south of the church.
The war memorial outside the porch faces prominently out across the valley of the infant River Gipping, but back inside the church are brass reminders of lives lost in the Great War. One is to two brothers of Harry Fleetwood's wife, William James and Douglas James. Both in their early twenties, they were killed in the hell of the Battle of Loos in September 1915, just five days apart. The Battle of Loos, it will be remembered, was the occasion on which poison gas was first used, by both sides.
Another brass plaque remembers George Groom, an appropriately-named sergeant in the Royal Horse Artillery. He was killed in the even more infamous Battle of the Somme in July 1916, and is buried at Heilly Cemetery near Mericourt l'Abbé to the east of Albert on the Somme battlefield.
To Know Him is to Love Him 2011
Biography
Marlene Dumas (1953) grew up with her two older brothers in Jacobsdal, her father’s winery in Kuilsrivier, South Africa. With Afrikaans as her mother tongue she went to the English-language University of Cape Town in 1972. There she obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts in 1975. With a two-year scholarship, she opted to come to Europe and more specifically to the Netherlands because of the language kinship. As well as visual art, language is an important means of expression for Dumas. She gives her exhibitions and individual works striking titles, writes texts about her paintings and makes commentaries on her own pieces. These texts are collected in the publication, Sweet Nothings (1998).
In the Netherlands she worked at Ateliers ‘63 in Haarlem from 1976 to 1978. Twenty years later, in 1998, she returned to art school De Ateliers, now based in Amsterdam, as a permanent staff member. In addition, Marlene Dumas has taught at several other Dutch art institutes.
In 1978, she exhibited her work for the first time, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Work by René Daniels and Ansuya Blom also featured in this exhibition, called Atelier 15 (10 Young Artists). In 1982, her work was shown in Basel, in the exhibition Junge kunst aus die Niederlanden. In the same year, Rudi Fuchs asked her to take part in Documenta 7. In 1983, she got her first solo show, Unsatisfied Desire, at Gallery Helen van der Meij / Paul Th. Andriesse in Amsterdam. In 1984, the Centraal Museum Utrecht became the first museum to invite her to do a solo exhibition. Dumas responded with a collection of collages, texts and works on paper under the title Ons Land Ligt Lager dan de Zee. In 1985, The Eyes of the Night Creatures was her first exhibition devoted solely to painting.
Since the late eighties, her work has been featured in European group exhibitions in museums such as the Tate Gallery in London, under the title Art from Europe (1987) and in Bilderstreit in Cologne (1989). Her first major solo exhibition opened abroad three months after the birth of her daughter in the Kunsthalle in Berne: The Question of Human Pink (1989). In 1992, all the halls of the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven were dedicated to her exhibition Miss Interpreted. This solo show was followed by a tour of Europe and then America. In 1992 her work was also shown at Documenta IX, at the invitation of Jan Hoet. Her first solo gallery show in New York at Jack Tilton received the appropriate title Not from Here. That was in 1994, the year of the first free democratic elections in South Africa. It was also the year in which she exhibited at the Frith Street Gallery in London, along with her contemporaries Juan Muñoz and Thomas Schütte. In 1995, Chris Dercon made the selection for the Dutch contribution to the Venice Biennale, choosing three women: Marlene Dumas, Marijke van Warmerdam and Mary Roossen.
From the mid-nineties, Dumas’ work featured in exhibitions of art from the Netherlands, such as Du concept à l’image (Paris, 1994). She also participated in international, interdisciplinary projects including The 21st Century (Basel, 1993), with Damien Hirst, Roni Horn and others, and the Carnegie International (Pittsburgh, 1995). In 1996, her sparring partners at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC included Mike Kelley, Thomas Schütte, Robert Gober and Rachel Whiteread. The exhibition was entitled, Distemper: Dissonant Themes in the Art of the 1990s. In 1993, Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp, staged Dumas’ show, Give the People What They Want. The works in this exhibition then went on to become part of the ‘Der Spiegel zerbrochene’, Positionen zur Malerei (1993), curated by Kaspar König and H.U. Obrist. Other participating artists included Luc Tuymans and Gerhard Richter. Other important exhibitions devoted to painting in which Dumas was represented included Trouble Spot: Painting (1999), Painting at the Edge of the World (2001) and The Painting of Modern Life (2007). Her work has also featured in exhibitions with a focus on Africa, such as the Africus Biennale in Johannesburg (1995) and in Africa Remix (2004-2006).
Although Marlene Dumas has had Dutch nationality since 1989, she has said:
Someone once remarked that I could not be a South African artist and a Dutch artist, that I could not have it both ways.
I don’t want it both ways.
I want it more ways.
Dumas’ work spans over thirty years. In 2001, Jonas Storsve of the Centre Pompidou staged the first retrospective of her works on paper under the title Nom de Personne. This exhibition was subsequently featured in the New Museum, New York, and in the De Pont Museum in Tilburg, under the title, Name no Names. Between 2007 and 2009 a retrospective of her entire oeuvre, in varying combinations, toured three continents. Starting in Japan under the name Broken White, the overview travelled to South Africa with the title, Intimate Relations. It was the first time that so much of Dumas’ work could be seen on her native soil. The retrospective concluded its tour at the Museum for Contemporary Arts in Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and The Menil in Houston, where it was called, Measuring Your Own Grave.
Two quotes: " FUTURE TENSE THE CITIZEN’S GUIDE TO THE FUTURE.JUNE 22 2016 9:45 AM FROM SLATE, NEW AMERICA, AND ASU The Self-Driving Car Generation Gap 22 22 54 Older people see driving as representing freedom. By Brad Allenby Older Driver. Will driverless cars one day help persuade the elderly to hand over their keys? Photobac/Thinkstock. FT_futurography-logo On Jan. 22, 1984, one of the most famous advertisements in American history debuted during Super Bowl XVIII, the one and only time it appeared on nationwide television. Advertising the Apple Macintosh personal computer, it showed a single brave heroine outrunning the thought police to destroy ideology, conformity, and totalitarianism, and ended with the tag line “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.” It did a lot of things. It gave the Apple brand an individualistic, somewhat countercultural, flavor, which the firm retains even today, when it is one of the behemoths of the global economy. More importantly, perhaps, it provides an insight into technology systems that tells us a lot about autonomous vehicles and their likely routes of acceptance into mainstream culture. To understand this, consider another advertisement: the Dodge Challenger George Washington masterpiece, which aired in 2010 during the World Cup. This is not as subtle as Apple’s, which, after all, assumes a certain political sophistication and familiarity with literature (George Orwell’s 1984). Rather, it depicts George Washington driving a car that routs the British redcoats (maybe in Oregon? Really?), but it ends with a tagline that doesn’t even have to mention the car: “Here’s a couple of things America got right: cars and freedom.” In fact, when my undergraduate students watch it, they have a pretty dissonant response: They find it incredibly hokey and cheesy ... but they also admit that it really is emotionally effective." -&- "But here the operative phrase is “used to be.” Research shows that fewer and fewer millennials are getting driving licenses. A University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute study, for example, showed that there was a continuous decrease in the percentage of people with driver’s licenses among 16- through 44-year-olds and that the percent of people not having driver’s licenses in the lowest age group was increasing over time."
For whom the Bell Tolls, 2008
Biography
Marlene Dumas (1953) grew up with her two older brothers in Jacobsdal, her father’s winery in Kuilsrivier, South Africa. With Afrikaans as her mother tongue she went to the English-language University of Cape Town in 1972. There she obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts in 1975. With a two-year scholarship, she opted to come to Europe and more specifically to the Netherlands because of the language kinship. As well as visual art, language is an important means of expression for Dumas. She gives her exhibitions and individual works striking titles, writes texts about her paintings and makes commentaries on her own pieces. These texts are collected in the publication, Sweet Nothings (1998).
In the Netherlands she worked at Ateliers ‘63 in Haarlem from 1976 to 1978. Twenty years later, in 1998, she returned to art school De Ateliers, now based in Amsterdam, as a permanent staff member. In addition, Marlene Dumas has taught at several other Dutch art institutes.
In 1978, she exhibited her work for the first time, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Work by René Daniels and Ansuya Blom also featured in this exhibition, called Atelier 15 (10 Young Artists). In 1982, her work was shown in Basel, in the exhibition Junge kunst aus die Niederlanden. In the same year, Rudi Fuchs asked her to take part in Documenta 7. In 1983, she got her first solo show, Unsatisfied Desire, at Gallery Helen van der Meij / Paul Th. Andriesse in Amsterdam. In 1984, the Centraal Museum Utrecht became the first museum to invite her to do a solo exhibition. Dumas responded with a collection of collages, texts and works on paper under the title Ons Land Ligt Lager dan de Zee. In 1985, The Eyes of the Night Creatures was her first exhibition devoted solely to painting.
Since the late eighties, her work has been featured in European group exhibitions in museums such as the Tate Gallery in London, under the title Art from Europe (1987) and in Bilderstreit in Cologne (1989). Her first major solo exhibition opened abroad three months after the birth of her daughter in the Kunsthalle in Berne: The Question of Human Pink (1989). In 1992, all the halls of the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven were dedicated to her exhibition Miss Interpreted. This solo show was followed by a tour of Europe and then America. In 1992 her work was also shown at Documenta IX, at the invitation of Jan Hoet. Her first solo gallery show in New York at Jack Tilton received the appropriate title Not from Here. That was in 1994, the year of the first free democratic elections in South Africa. It was also the year in which she exhibited at the Frith Street Gallery in London, along with her contemporaries Juan Muñoz and Thomas Schütte. In 1995, Chris Dercon made the selection for the Dutch contribution to the Venice Biennale, choosing three women: Marlene Dumas, Marijke van Warmerdam and Mary Roossen.
From the mid-nineties, Dumas’ work featured in exhibitions of art from the Netherlands, such as Du concept à l’image (Paris, 1994). She also participated in international, interdisciplinary projects including The 21st Century (Basel, 1993), with Damien Hirst, Roni Horn and others, and the Carnegie International (Pittsburgh, 1995). In 1996, her sparring partners at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC included Mike Kelley, Thomas Schütte, Robert Gober and Rachel Whiteread. The exhibition was entitled, Distemper: Dissonant Themes in the Art of the 1990s. In 1993, Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp, staged Dumas’ show, Give the People What They Want. The works in this exhibition then went on to become part of the ‘Der Spiegel zerbrochene’, Positionen zur Malerei (1993), curated by Kaspar König and H.U. Obrist. Other participating artists included Luc Tuymans and Gerhard Richter. Other important exhibitions devoted to painting in which Dumas was represented included Trouble Spot: Painting (1999), Painting at the Edge of the World (2001) and The Painting of Modern Life (2007). Her work has also featured in exhibitions with a focus on Africa, such as the Africus Biennale in Johannesburg (1995) and in Africa Remix (2004-2006).
Although Marlene Dumas has had Dutch nationality since 1989, she has said:
Someone once remarked that I could not be a South African artist and a Dutch artist, that I could not have it both ways.
I don’t want it both ways.
I want it more ways.
Dumas’ work spans over thirty years. In 2001, Jonas Storsve of the Centre Pompidou staged the first retrospective of her works on paper under the title Nom de Personne. This exhibition was subsequently featured in the New Museum, New York, and in the De Pont Museum in Tilburg, under the title, Name no Names. Between 2007 and 2009 a retrospective of her entire oeuvre, in varying combinations, toured three continents. Starting in Japan under the name Broken White, the overview travelled to South Africa with the title, Intimate Relations. It was the first time that so much of Dumas’ work could be seen on her native soil. The retrospective concluded its tour at the Museum for Contemporary Arts in Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and The Menil in Houston, where it was called, Measuring Your Own Grave.
A qubit was in a cave for to long time, and it did become black and white, but it didn't broke.
On a beautiful snowy day on the top of the mixel moutain 6 Nixel (By name: Nix, Nix, Nixel, Nix, Eduardo, and Nix) were chased by Hoogy. Hoogy wanted to give them a biiig hug, but the Nixel did not like hoogie's spike's, and they did run into the cave where the black, and white cubit was. They wanted to smash Hoogie, in a chain formation, so they did take each other hand one by one. The last Nixel (Eduardo) did grab something in the dark that was the dark cubit. Some dissonant voices, and some smoke, and a big boom something happened.
The 6 Nixel Nixed making them into one big-big Nixel.
I found this 2/3-sized, oxidized, thin-gauge paperclip jammed in between two joined pieces of wood in our 1950s-era (painfully tiny) kitchen junk-drawer. I imagine this paperclip to be older than me, although it exhibits an equal degree of rustiness.
Since it is older, perhaps, by a whole generation, I wanted to preserve its legacy before deforming it into something else entirely.
Possibly a dog.
Happy 4th of July, Dissonant States of 'Mericans. Try to stick together on the important issues, whatever the television and internet tell us those are.
…
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Do NOT display, print, merchandise, alter or otherwise 'use' my work for your own nefarious purposes.
My work HAS a nefarious purpose already. It's MINE.
• - •
Small planet.
Be nice.
© 2014 eric Hews
Happened upon these interesting windows while walking around in Mykonos.
The dramatic diagonal lines ( there is a fainter one lower and in the other direction) are the result of shadows cast by electrical cords holding light bulbs that are used to illuminate the alley after dark.
The dissonant angularity of the shadows on the wall pilasters and the perspective relationship of the windows also caught my eye.
View on black:
Naomi
Biography
Marlene Dumas (1953) grew up with her two older brothers in Jacobsdal, her father’s winery in Kuilsrivier, South Africa. With Afrikaans as her mother tongue she went to the English-language University of Cape Town in 1972. There she obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts in 1975. With a two-year scholarship, she opted to come to Europe and more specifically to the Netherlands because of the language kinship. As well as visual art, language is an important means of expression for Dumas. She gives her exhibitions and individual works striking titles, writes texts about her paintings and makes commentaries on her own pieces. These texts are collected in the publication, Sweet Nothings (1998).
In the Netherlands she worked at Ateliers ‘63 in Haarlem from 1976 to 1978. Twenty years later, in 1998, she returned to art school De Ateliers, now based in Amsterdam, as a permanent staff member. In addition, Marlene Dumas has taught at several other Dutch art institutes.
In 1978, she exhibited her work for the first time, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Work by René Daniels and Ansuya Blom also featured in this exhibition, called Atelier 15 (10 Young Artists). In 1982, her work was shown in Basel, in the exhibition Junge kunst aus die Niederlanden. In the same year, Rudi Fuchs asked her to take part in Documenta 7. In 1983, she got her first solo show, Unsatisfied Desire, at Gallery Helen van der Meij / Paul Th. Andriesse in Amsterdam. In 1984, the Centraal Museum Utrecht became the first museum to invite her to do a solo exhibition. Dumas responded with a collection of collages, texts and works on paper under the title Ons Land Ligt Lager dan de Zee. In 1985, The Eyes of the Night Creatures was her first exhibition devoted solely to painting.
Since the late eighties, her work has been featured in European group exhibitions in museums such as the Tate Gallery in London, under the title Art from Europe (1987) and in Bilderstreit in Cologne (1989). Her first major solo exhibition opened abroad three months after the birth of her daughter in the Kunsthalle in Berne: The Question of Human Pink (1989). In 1992, all the halls of the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven were dedicated to her exhibition Miss Interpreted. This solo show was followed by a tour of Europe and then America. In 1992 her work was also shown at Documenta IX, at the invitation of Jan Hoet. Her first solo gallery show in New York at Jack Tilton received the appropriate title Not from Here. That was in 1994, the year of the first free democratic elections in South Africa. It was also the year in which she exhibited at the Frith Street Gallery in London, along with her contemporaries Juan Muñoz and Thomas Schütte. In 1995, Chris Dercon made the selection for the Dutch contribution to the Venice Biennale, choosing three women: Marlene Dumas, Marijke van Warmerdam and Mary Roossen.
From the mid-nineties, Dumas’ work featured in exhibitions of art from the Netherlands, such as Du concept à l’image (Paris, 1994). She also participated in international, interdisciplinary projects including The 21st Century (Basel, 1993), with Damien Hirst, Roni Horn and others, and the Carnegie International (Pittsburgh, 1995). In 1996, her sparring partners at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC included Mike Kelley, Thomas Schütte, Robert Gober and Rachel Whiteread. The exhibition was entitled, Distemper: Dissonant Themes in the Art of the 1990s. In 1993, Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp, staged Dumas’ show, Give the People What They Want. The works in this exhibition then went on to become part of the ‘Der Spiegel zerbrochene’, Positionen zur Malerei (1993), curated by Kaspar König and H.U. Obrist. Other participating artists included Luc Tuymans and Gerhard Richter. Other important exhibitions devoted to painting in which Dumas was represented included Trouble Spot: Painting (1999), Painting at the Edge of the World (2001) and The Painting of Modern Life (2007). Her work has also featured in exhibitions with a focus on Africa, such as the Africus Biennale in Johannesburg (1995) and in Africa Remix (2004-2006).
Although Marlene Dumas has had Dutch nationality since 1989, she has said:
Someone once remarked that I could not be a South African artist and a Dutch artist, that I could not have it both ways.
I don’t want it both ways.
I want it more ways.
Dumas’ work spans over thirty years. In 2001, Jonas Storsve of the Centre Pompidou staged the first retrospective of her works on paper under the title Nom de Personne. This exhibition was subsequently featured in the New Museum, New York, and in the De Pont Museum in Tilburg, under the title, Name no Names. Between 2007 and 2009 a retrospective of her entire oeuvre, in varying combinations, toured three continents. Starting in Japan under the name Broken White, the overview travelled to South Africa with the title, Intimate Relations. It was the first time that so much of Dumas’ work could be seen on her native soil. The retrospective concluded its tour at the Museum for Contemporary Arts in Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and The Menil in Houston, where it was called, Measuring Your Own Grave.