January 31st, 2009

Chris Keeley

owsley

The Flying Burrito Brothers

Close Up The Honky Tonks The Flying Burrito Brothers... Close Up The Honky Tonks (.mp3 audio 02:38) and... Long Black Limousine (.mp3 audio 03:25). From the album Gram Parsons Archives Vol. 1: The Flying Burrito Brothers "Live" at the Avalon 1969 (2007, Amoeba Music). The Flying Burrito Brothers opening for the Grateful Dead on April 4, 1969 at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. Recorded by the Grateful Dead's sound engineer and chemist Owsley 'Bear' Stanley.
Chris Keeley

Pieter Hugo

Pieter Hugo: Nollywood

John Dollar Emeka. Enugu, Nigeria 2008 Pieter Hugo... John Dollar Emeka. Enugu, Nigeria 2008 (C-print). From the exhibition Pieter Hugo: Nollywood at Michael Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town, SA. "...In the Nollywood series, Hugo explores the multilayered reality of the Nigerian film industry. Photographs from the series were included on the exhibition Disguise: The art of attracting and deflecting attention at Michael Stevenson in May 2008. Hugo has subsequently returned to Nigeria to extend and deepen this body of work, and the series will be published in book form by Prestel in October 2009.
Nollywood is the third largest film industry in the world, releasing between 500 and 1 000 movies each year. It produces movies on its own terms, telling stories that appeal to and reflect the lives of its public: it is a rare instance of self-representation in Africa. The continent has a rich tradition of story-telling that has been expressed abundantly through oral and written fiction, but has never been conveyed through the mass media before. Stars are local actors; plots confront the public with familiar situations of romance, comedy, witchcraft, bribery, prostitution. The narrative is overdramatic, deprived of happy endings, tragic. The aesthetic is loud, violent, excessive; nothing is said, everything is shouted."
Chris Keeley

Noam

TO: Distinguished Recipients
FM: John Whitbeck
 
Transmitted below is Noam Chomsky's appreciation of Barack Obama's first steps and pronouncements with respect to the fundamental international issue facing America and the world.
 
For those who prefer to retain some sense of optimism and hope (and optimism and hope are essential to sanity), Barack Obama surely does not have the time to personally write all the words he reads. One may hope that Obama's appalling pronouncement on January 22 was written by one of the Clinton-era Israel-Firsters who wrote his AIPAC grovel speech (and who were passed over for the job given to George Mitchell) and does not necessarily reflect a closed mind, a totally intimidated spirit or moral blindness on the part of the new president.
 
Everything that Barack Obama has permitted himself to say so far with respect to Israel/Palestine has been so radically antithetical to everything he appears to be and every value he appears to hold that it is difficult to believe that he will not, at some point, feel compelled to shake off his chains and emancipate himself. Unless he is a complete fraud (which I do not believe), there is reason to hope that, at some point, he will put fundamental moral and human values and the interests of his country ahead of the contervailing pressures that have kept his predecessors on their knees.
 
It would be unreasonable to expect this tranformative, "Free at last!" moment to arrive immediately, but the sooner it arrives the better.
 

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/20364

Obama on Israel-Palestine

January 26, 2009

By Noam Chomsky

 

Barack Obama is recognized to be a person of acute intelligence, a legal scholar, careful with his choice of words. He deserves to be taken seriously - both what he says, and what he omits. Particularly significant is his first substantive statement on foreign affairs, on January 22, at the State Department, when introducing George Mitchell to serve as his special envoy for Middle East peace.

 

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