Wunderkammer (2011) by Emma Leonard.
As someone who was eight years old at the time of the Apollo moon landing, I remember calculating that I would be thirty-nine in the magic year 2000 and wondering what the world would be like. Did I expect I would be living in such a world of wonders? Of course. Everyone did. Do I feel cheated now? It seemed unlikely that I’d live to see all the things I was reading about in science fiction, but it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t see any of them.
A quote from Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit, an essay by David Graeber. Related: Another World: David Graeber interviewed by Michelle Kuo at Artforum.
• Constellation, a series of portraits by Kumi Yamashita: “This body of work consists of three simple materials that, when combined, produce the portraits: a wooden panel painted a solid white, thousands of small galvanized nails, and a single, unbroken, common sewing thread.”
• Nicole Rudick at The Paris Review on the history of psychedelic art. Related: The psychedelic art and design of Keiichi Tanaami. Also Manifesting the Mind: Footprints of the Shaman, a two-hour documentary about psychedelic drugs.
• Already mentioned here, The Lost Tapes, a 3-CD collection of previously unreleased recording by the mighty Can, is out on Monday. There’s a preview of ten of the tracks here.
• “I can’t think of anybody who would have a good word to say for centipedes…” Duncan Fallowell (a Can associate for many years) interviewed William Burroughs in 1982.
• Herb Lubalin: American Graphic Designer and the Herb Lubalin Study Center’s Flickr sets.
• Strange Flowers goes to the movies with everyone’s favourite Bavarian king, Ludwig II.
• The Sphinx’s Riddle: The Art of Leonor Fini at the Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco.
• More Teutonica: A Spacemusic Primer by Dave Maier.
• Van Dyke Parks: return of a musical maverick.
• Forty Posters for Forty Years at Pentagram.
• Donovan’s Colours (1968) by Van Dyke Parks | Sailin’ Shoes (1972) by Van Dyke Parks | Clang Of The Yankee Reaper (1975) by Van Dyke Parks.
That David Graeber essay was great stuff – thanks for posting!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8DoEzTNYf4
“And then someday. Someday he’ll play as good as Van Dyke Parks.” – Harry Nilsson
That’s a line I didn’t know but then I’ve only heard a couple of his albums.
I am a fountain of completely useless musical trivia knowledge :-)
Guys – human history is full of the ‘completely useless’ and apparently trivial triggering new tracks of creativity, enabling new ways of being human, and even, but by no means most importantly, facilitating new ways of being productive!