How to Argue With Kindness and Care: 4 Rules from Philosopher Daniel Dennett

in Philosophy | June 19th, 2019

Pho­to by Math­ias Schindler, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Drawn from Aris­to­tle and his Roman and Medieval inter­preters, the “clas­si­cal trivium”—a divi­sion of thought and writ­ing into Log­ic, Gram­mar, and Rhetoric—assumes at least three things: that it mat­ters how we arrive at our ideas, it mat­ters how we express them, and it mat­ters how we treat the peo­ple with whom we inter­act, even, and espe­cial­ly, those with whom we dis­agree. The word rhetoric has tak­en on the con­no­ta­tion of emp­ty, false, or flat­ter­ing speech. But it orig­i­nal­ly meant some­thing clos­er to kind­ness.

We might note that this ped­a­gogy comes from a logo­cen­tric tra­di­tion, one that priv­i­leges writ­ing over oral com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But while it ignores phys­i­cal niceties like ges­ture, pos­ture, and per­son­al space, we can still incor­po­rate its lessons into spo­ken conversation—that is, if we’re inter­est­ed in hav­ing con­struc­tive dia­logue, in being heard, find­ing agree­ment, and learn­ing some­thing new. If we want to lob shots into the abyss and hear hun­dreds of voic­es echo back, well… this requires no spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion.

The sub­ject of sound rhetoric—with its sub­sets of eth­i­cal and emo­tion­al sensitivity—has been tak­en up by philoso­phers over hun­dreds of years, from medieval the­olo­gians to the staunch­ly athe­ist philoso­pher of con­scious­ness Daniel Den­nett. In his book Intu­ition Pumps and Oth­er Tools for Think­ing, Den­nett sum­ma­rizes the cen­tral rhetor­i­cal prin­ci­ple of char­i­ty, call­ing it “Rapoport’s Rules” after an elab­o­ra­tion by social psy­chol­o­gist and game the­o­rist Ana­tol Rapoport.

Like their clas­si­cal pre­de­ces­sors, these rules direct­ly tie care­ful, gen­er­ous lis­ten­ing to sound argu­men­ta­tion. We can­not say we have under­stood an argu­ment unless we’ve actu­al­ly heard its nuances, can sum­ma­rize it for oth­ers, and can grant its mer­its and con­cede it strengths. Only then, writes Den­nett, are we equipped to com­pose a “suc­cess­ful crit­i­cal com­men­tary” of another’s posi­tion. Den­nett out­lines the process in four steps:

  1. Attempt to re-express your tar­get’s posi­tion so clear­ly, vivid­ly and fair­ly that your tar­get says: “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
  2. List any points of agree­ment (espe­cial­ly if they are not mat­ters of gen­er­al or wide­spread agree­ment).
  3. Men­tion any­thing you have learned from your tar­get.
  4. Only then are you per­mit­ted to say so much as a word of rebut­tal or crit­i­cism.

Here we have a strat­e­gy that pays div­i­dends, if under­tak­en in the right spir­it. By show­ing that we under­stand an opponent’s posi­tions “as well as they do,” writes Den­nett, and that we can par­tic­i­pate in a shared ethos by find­ing points of agree­ment, we have earned the respect of a “recep­tive audi­ence.” Alien­at­ing peo­ple will end an argu­ment before it even begins, when they turn their backs and walk away rather than sub­ject them­selves to obtuse­ness and abuse.

Addi­tion­al­ly, mak­ing every effort to under­stand an oppos­ing posi­tion will only help us bet­ter con­sid­er and present our own case, if it doesn’t suc­ceed in chang­ing our minds (though that dan­ger is always there). These are reme­dies for bet­ter social cohe­sion and less shouty polar­iza­tion, for deploy­ing “the artillery of our right­eous­ness from behind the com­fort­able shield of the key­board,” as Maria Popo­va writes at Brain Pick­ings, “which is real­ly a men­ace of react­ing rather than respond­ing.”

Yelling, or typ­ing, into the void, rather than engag­ing in sub­stan­tive, respect­ful dis­cus­sion is also a ter­ri­ble waste of our time—a dis­trac­tion from much wor­thi­er pur­suits. We can and should, argues Den­nett, Rapoport, and philoso­phers over the cen­turies, seek out posi­tions we dis­agree with. In seek­ing out and try­ing to under­stand their best pos­si­ble ver­sions, we stand to gain new knowl­edge and widen our appre­ci­a­tion.

As Den­nett puts it, “when you want to crit­i­cize a field, a genre, a dis­ci­pline, an art form… don’t waste your time and ours hoot­ing at the crap! Go after the good stuff or leave it alone.” In “going after the good stuff,” we might find that it’s bet­ter, or at least dif­fer­ent, than we thought, and that we’re wis­er for hav­ing tak­en the time to learn it, even if only to point out why we think it most­ly wrong.

via Brain Pick­ings/Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Daniel Den­nett Presents Sev­en Tools For Crit­i­cal Think­ing

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Will Teach You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

Mon­ty Python’s “Argu­ment Clin­ic” Sketch Reen­act­ed by Two Vin­tage Voice Syn­the­siz­ers (One Is Stephen Hawking’s Voice)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How Blondie’s Debbie Harry Learned to Deal With Superficial, Demeaning Interviewers

in Music | June 19th, 2019

Unpro­fes­sion­al, obnox­ious, rude, bor­ing, bullying—all adjec­tives that can apply when mid­dle-aged men com­ment inces­sant­ly on a woman’s looks, when that woman has met with them to talk about her career. The cringe-fac­tor is mag­ni­fied a thou­sand­fold when it’s broad­cast over air­waves, or fiber and 4G. The actress­es and singers who have endured such abuse in front of audi­ences spans the his­to­ry of radio and TV.

Blondie’s Deb­o­rah Har­ry got the treat­ment. Sub­ject­ed to “years of super­fi­cial, tedious, and demean­ing ques­tions from jour­nal­ists,” notes doc­u­men­tary pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Pub­lic Inter­est, she final­ly “devis­es a bril­liant way to turn inter­views on their head.” The video above pulls togeth­er a mon­tage of inter­view clips in which both male and female talk­ing heads start near­ly every con­ver­sa­tion with Har­ry by refer­ring to her as “a rein­car­na­tion of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe” or some­thing to that effect. She is vis­i­bly annoyed but keeps her cool, which a cou­ple inter­view­ers take as an invi­ta­tion for near-harass­ment.

Some might claim the crude inter­est in Harry’s looks was jus­ti­fied, giv­en her ear­ly per­sona as a punk-rock pin­up, but note that most of the inter­view­ers nev­er get around to talk­ing about the music—the rea­son we know and admire her in the first place. Instead, one British TV pre­sen­ter fol­lows up the Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe ques­tion (if it can be so called) by ask­ing if Har­ry is “think­ing about going into mar­riage.”

The ques­tions aren’t always lech­er­ous but they are always inane. Har­ry is clear about one thing. It’s an oblig­a­tion; she’s there to sell a prod­uct. How does she turn the tables? A stuffed ani­mal mas­cot, a few well-placed “can you believe this shit?” looks at the cam­era, and a flat-out refusal to answer any ques­tions about Madon­na, for a start. Lou Reed and Bob Dylan get cred­it for being some of the cranki­est inter­view sub­jects in rock and roll, but Har­ry had more rea­son than either of them to hate this part of the job.

See how she han­dles it, and for con­trast, read an inter­view she did with Bill Brew­ster in 2014, when Blondie released the reunion album Ghosts of Down­load. Brew­ster keeps the focus on the music, and she seems total­ly thrilled to get the chance to talk about it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Deb­bie Harry’s Stun­ning Ethe­re­al Vocal Tracks from “Heart of Glass,” “Call Me,” “Rap­ture,” and “One Way or Anoth­er”

Watch Iggy Pop & Deb­bie Har­ry Sing a Swelli­gant Ver­sion of Cole Porter’s “Did You Evah,” All to Raise Mon­ey for AIDS Research (1990)

Blondie Plays CBGB in the Mid-70s in Two Vin­tage Clips

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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When Stanley Kubrick Banned His Own Film, A Clockwork Orange: It Was the “Most Effective Censorship of a Film in British History”

in Film | June 19th, 2019

“What in hell is Kubrick up to here?” asked Roger Ebert in his orig­i­nal 1972 review of A Clock­work Orange, whose mar­ket­ing announced it as a film about “the adven­tures of a young man whose prin­ci­pal inter­ests are rape, ultra-vio­lence, and Beethoven.” How could this acclaimed direc­tor real­ly want to involve us in the “psy­cho­path­ic lit­tle life” of this dubi­ous pro­tag­o­nist? “In a world where soci­ety is crim­i­nal, of course, a good man must live out­side the law. But that isn’t what Kubrick is say­ing. He actu­al­ly seems to be imply­ing some­thing sim­pler and more fright­en­ing: that in a world where soci­ety is crim­i­nal, the cit­i­zen might as well be a crim­i­nal, too.”

Oth­ers in the press lev­eled sim­i­lar crit­i­cisms at A Clock­work Orange, most of them much sim­pler and more accusato­ry. They had more seri­ous con­se­quences for the pic­ture in Kubrick­’s adopt­ed home­land of Eng­land. With­in two weeks of its release there, writes David Hugh­es in The Com­plete Kubrick, “right-wingers and tub-thump­ing MPs were bay­ing for the film to be banned there before copy­cat vio­lence could spread among the nation’s impres­sion­able youth. Under a head­line that read ‘CLOCKWORK ORANGES ARE TICKING BOMBS,’ the Evening News pre­dict­ed that the film would ‘lead to a clock­work cult which will mag­ni­fy teen vio­lence.’ ”

The direct attri­bu­tions of vio­lent inci­dents involv­ing young peo­ple to A Clock­work Orange con­tin­ued until the film was final­ly pulled from British the­aters — by the film­mak­er him­self. “In ear­ly 1974, Kubrick and Warn­er Bros qui­et­ly with­drew it from cir­cu­la­tion,” Hugh­es writes, “refus­ing to allow it to be shown under any cir­cum­stances.” Attempt­ed breach­es of this “most effec­tive cen­sor­ship of a film in British his­to­ry” were dealt with harsh­ly: Lon­don’s Scala Cin­e­ma, for exam­ple, was forced to shut its doors for­ev­er after show­ing the film in 1992. A Clock­work Orange final­ly received a British re-release in 2000, the year after Kubrick­’s death.

That same year the doc­u­men­tary Still Tickin’: The Return of A Clock­work Orange, which you can watch on YouTube, told the sto­ry of the film’s sup­pres­sion and re-emer­gence. But why would such a force­ful­ly indi­vid­u­al­is­tic film­mak­er as Stan­ley Kubrick pull his own film from cir­cu­la­tion in the first place? “Stan­ley was very insult­ed by the reac­tion, and hurt,” Hugh­es quotes his wid­ow Chris­tiane as say­ing. Kubrick “did­n’t want to be mis­un­der­stood and mis­in­ter­pret­ed,” nor did he want to keep receiv­ing the “death threats” that the bad press had been draw­ing.

Kubrick “nev­er spoke about the deci­sion” to ban his own movie, writes Devin Faraci at Birth.Movies.Death., and sure­ly did­n’t see it as to blame for youth vio­lence in Britain, but “he was still sick­ened to see the clothes of his char­ac­ters hung on these per­pe­tra­tors. The mes­sage of his film was being missed, and he refused to let the movie take on a life of its own.” Kubrick had dis­cussed his own oppo­si­tion to the idea that art pro­motes vio­lent behav­ior dur­ing the ini­tial pro­mo­tion of A Clock­work Orange: “There has always been vio­lence in art,” he said to jour­nal­ist Michel Ciment. “There is vio­lence in the Bible, vio­lence in Homer, vio­lence in Shake­speare, and many psy­chi­a­trists believe that it serves as a cathar­sis rather than a mod­el.”

In Kubrick­’s view, “the peo­ple who com­mit vio­lent crime are not ordi­nary peo­ple who are trans­formed into vicious thugs by the wrong diet of films or TV. Rather, it is a fact that vio­lent crime is invari­ably com­mit­ted by peo­ple with a long record of anti-social behav­ior, or by the unex­pect­ed blos­som­ing of a psy­chopath who is described after­ward as hav­ing been ‘…such a nice, qui­et boy.’ ” Either way, “immense­ly com­pli­cat­ed social, eco­nom­ic and psy­cho­log­i­cal forces are involved,” and “the sim­plis­tic notion that films and TV can trans­form an oth­er­wise inno­cent and good per­son into a crim­i­nal has strong over­tones of the Salem witch tri­als.” Whether or not Kubrick went too far in with­draw­ing A Clock­work Orange, he cer­tain­ly had a clear­er sense of what cre­ates the kind of malev­o­lent char­ac­ters it depicts than many of its ear­ly view­ers did.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange

The Scores That Elec­tron­ic Music Pio­neer Wendy Car­los Com­posed for Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing

Peter Sell­ers Calls Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange “Vio­lent,” “The Biggest Load of Crap I’ve Seen” (1972)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Rare 1965 Inter­view with The New York­er

A Clock­work Orange Author Antho­ny Burgess Lists His Five Favorite Dystopi­an Nov­els: Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Island & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky Debate Human Nature & Power on Dutch TV (1971)

in Philosophy | June 18th, 2019

Two aca­d­e­m­ic stars and heroes of anti-author­i­tar­i­an left­ist polit­i­cal thought sit down to debate human nature—nowadays such events occur more rarely than they did in the 60s and 70s, when the coun­ter­cul­ture and anti-war move­ments made both Michel Fou­cault and Noam Chom­sky famous. Now, when two thinkers of such cal­iber sit down togeth­er, their con­ver­sa­tion is imme­di­ate­ly dis­tilled into tweet­ed com­men­tary, some­times illus­trat­ed with gifs and video clips. We get the gist and move on to the next link.

In 1971, when Fou­cault and Chom­sky joined host Fons Elders on Dutch TV, those view­ers who tuned in would have to fol­low the con­ver­sa­tion for themselves—for the most part—though it aired in a part­ly abridged ver­sion with com­men­tary from a Pro­fes­sor L.W. Nau­ta. “Chom­sky is at the height of his lin­guis­tic-sci­en­tif­ic mode,” notes New Inquiry, where “Fou­cault per­forms a geneal­o­gy of sci­en­tif­ic truth itself.”

After an intro­duc­tion in Dutch by Dr. Nau­ta, Elders wel­comes his guests onstage in Eng­lish as “tonight’s debaters,” two “moun­tain dig­gers, work­ing at the oppo­site sides of the same moun­tains, with dif­fer­ent tools, with­out know­ing even if they are work­ing in each other’s direc­tion.” It’s a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion that amus­es both Chom­sky and Fou­cault, who aren’t dis­cov­er­ing each other’s dif­fer­ences so much as enact­ing them for the stu­dio audi­ence of “ear­ly-70s Dutch intel­li­gentsia.”

The two do find some com­mon ground, in Foucault’s cri­tique of the dom­i­nant his­to­ry of sci­ence, for exam­ple. Where they dif­fer, they seem to be speak­ing dif­fer­ent lan­guages, and they are also lit­er­al­ly speak­ing dif­fer­ent lan­guages. Chom­sky begins in Eng­lish, Fou­cault responds in Eng­lish with apolo­gies for his lack of flu­en­cy, then switch­es to French. Those of us who aren’t flu­ent in both lan­guages will have to rely on the trans­la­tion, as many of us do when read­ing Fou­cault as well, a sit­u­a­tion that should give us pause before we draw con­clu­sions about what we think he’s say­ing.

Still, those inclined to reject Fou­cault as a rejec­tor of sci­ence should pay clos­er atten­tion to him, even in trans­la­tion (into Eng­lish, Por­tuguese, and Japan­ese sub­ti­tles in the video above). He does not reject the notion of sci­en­tif­ic fact, but rather, as Wittgen­stein had decades ear­li­er, points out that much of what we take as con­cep­tu­al real­i­ty is no more than vague, mean­ing­less abstrac­tion, “periph­er­al” words and phras­es that do “not all have the same degree of elab­o­ra­tion” as more pre­cise sci­en­tif­ic terms.

Fuzzy ideas, for exam­ple, like “human nature… do not play an ‘orga­niz­ing’ role with­in sci­ence.” Nei­ther “instru­ments of analy­sis” nor “descrip­tive either,” they “sim­ply serve to point out some prob­lems, or rather to point out cer­tain fields in need of study.” They are sign­posts for the unknown, a “sci­en­tif­ic shop­ping list,” as Pro­fes­sor Nau­ta puts it when he breaks in to help­ful­ly explain to view­ers at home what he thinks Fou­cault means. Nauta’s inter­ven­tions are dri­er than the main action—apparently no one thought in 1971 to sen­sa­tion­al­ize the event.

Well, almost no one thought to sen­sa­tion­al­ize the event. Anar­chist host Elders “want­ed to jazz things up a bit,” writes Eugene Wolters at Crit­i­cal The­o­ry. “Aside from offer­ing Fou­cault hashish for part of his pay­ment, Elder tried repeat­ed­ly to get Fou­cault to wear a bright red wig.” Accord­ing to the James Miller in The Pas­sion of Michel Fou­cault, Elders “kept pok­ing Fou­cault under the table, point­ing to the red wig on his lap, and whis­per­ing, ‘put it on, put it on.”

Chom­sky found the exchange less than amus­ing, lat­er call­ing Fou­cault “total­ly amoral” and say­ing that he “wild­ly exag­ger­ates.” These minor spec­ta­cles aside, the Chom­sky-Fou­cault debate is less epic show­down and more two most­ly par­al­lel, only occa­sion­al­ly inter­sect­ing, dis­cours­es on “a wide range of top­ics, from sci­ence, his­to­ry, and behav­ior­ism to cre­ativ­i­ty, free­dom, and the strug­gle for jus­tice in the realm of pol­i­tics.” If some of that dis­cus­sion seems over­ly obscure at times, just imag­ine Fou­cault in a bright red wig, and lat­er enjoy­ing what he and his friends called “Chom­sky hash.”

The text of their debate has been pub­lished. Read The Chom­sky-Fou­cault Debate: On Human Nature.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Michel Foucault’s Lec­ture “The Cul­ture of the Self,” Pre­sent­ed in Eng­lish at UC Berke­ley (1983)

Michel Fou­cault Offers a Clear, Com­pelling Intro­duc­tion to His Philo­soph­i­cal Project (1966)

A Brief Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Noam Chomsky’s Lin­guis­tic The­o­ry, Nar­rat­ed by The X‑Files‘ Gillian Ander­son

Noam Chom­sky Makes His First Pow­er Point Pre­sen­ta­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How the Universe Will Come to Its Explosive End: Trillions of Years Covered in 29 Timelapse Minutes

in Astronomy | June 18th, 2019

We all know that Earth won’t last for­ev­er. But noth­ing else in the uni­verse will either, and you can wit­ness the series of explo­sions, evap­o­ra­tions, expi­ra­tions, and oth­er kinds of cos­mic deaths that will con­sti­tute the next one tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion tril­lion years in the video above. Con­ve­nient­ly, it does­n’t take quite that long to watch: the time-lapse gets from just a few years into the future to the time at which the last black hole van­ish­es in under half an hour, dou­bling its own speed every five sec­onds. Not only does Earth go first, destroyed by the dying sun, but it hap­pens at the 3:20 mark.

Most of us have no idea what might pos­si­bly play out in the uni­verse over the next 26 or so time-lapsed min­utes. But more astro­physics-inclined minds like Bri­an Cox, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sean Car­roll, Jan­na Levin, and Michio Kaku have put a great deal of thought into just that, and it is from their words that this video’s cre­ator John D. Boswell, known on Youtube as melodysheep, crafts its nar­ra­tion.

And what this for­mi­da­ble cast of sci­en­tists nar­rates resem­bles sequences from the biggest-bud­get sci­ence-fic­tion movies, which shows how far visu­al effects have come since A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ the­mat­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar 1991 doc­u­men­tary on the late Stephen Hawk­ing — a fig­ure who has also appeared in Boswell’s pre­vi­ous work.

How­ev­er it’s told, the nar­ra­tive remains the same: “the death of the sun, the end of all stars, pro­ton decay, zom­bie galax­ies, pos­si­ble future civ­i­liza­tions, explod­ing black holes, the effects of dark ener­gy, alter­nate uni­vers­es, the final fate of the cos­mos,” as Boswell puts it. “This is a pic­ture of the future as paint­ed by mod­ern sci­ence,” and one that “gives a pro­found per­spec­tive — that we are liv­ing inside the hot flash of the Big Bang, the per­fect moment to soak in the sights and sounds of a uni­verse in its glo­ry days, before it all fades away.” Thanks to the work of gen­er­a­tion upon gen­er­a­tion of sci­en­tists, as well as the work of cre­ators like Boswell who inter­pret their find­ings in far-reach­ing ways (this time-lapse of the future has already racked up near­ly 12.5 mil­lion views), we know how the sto­ry of the uni­verse ends. Now what will we do with the chap­ters grant­ed to us?

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

Super­mas­sive Black Hole Shreds a Star, and You Get to Watch

Watch A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ Film About the Life & Work of Stephen Hawk­ing

The Very End of Time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Ruins of Chernobyl Captured in Three Haunting, Drone-Shot Videos

in History, Television | June 18th, 2019

Voic­es of Cher­nobyl—Svet­lana Alexievich’s oral his­to­ry of the 1986 nuclear explo­sion in Ukraine—brings togeth­er the har­row­ing tes­ti­monies of over 500 eye­wit­ness­es to the acci­dent: Fire­fight­ers, nurs­es, sol­diers, for­mer Sovi­et offi­cials, engi­neers, nuclear sci­en­tists, and ordi­nary Sovi­et cit­i­zens (at the time), who saw, but could not under­stand, events that would cost tens, per­haps hun­dreds, of thou­sands of lives.

We will nev­er know the exact toll, due to both inter­nal cov­er-ups and the immea­sur­able long-term effect of over 50 mil­lion curies of radionu­clides spread out over the Sovi­et Union, Europe, and the globe for over three decades. But Alexievich’s book eschews “the usu­al approach of try­ing to quan­ti­fy a dis­as­ter in terms of loss­es and dis­place­ment,” notes Robert Matthews at the Jour­nal of Nuclear Med­i­cine. She opt­ed instead to tell the sto­ries “of indi­vid­u­als and how the dis­as­ter affect­ed their lives.”

The inher­ent­ly mov­ing, dra­mat­ic sto­ries of peo­ple like Lyud­mil­la Ignatenko—the wife of a doomed fire­fight­er whose unfor­get­table jour­ney opens the book—immediately draw us into the “psy­cho­log­ic and per­son­al tragedy” of the dis­as­ter. For their vivid­ness and sheer emo­tion­al impact, these sto­ries have a cin­e­mat­ic effect, fill­ing our imag­i­na­tion with images of gris­ly tragedy and a grim per­sis­tence we might not exact­ly call hero­ism but which cer­tain­ly counts as a close cousin.

It’s no won­der, then, that parts of Alexievich’s deserved­ly-Nobel-win­ning his­to­ry made such a bril­liant tran­si­tion to the screen in Craig Mazin’s HBO minis­eries, which draws from sto­ries like Lyudmilla’s in its por­trait of the explo­sion and its con­tain­ment. The series’ psy­cho­log­i­cal focus, and the need to cre­ate indi­vid­ual heroes and vil­lains, cre­ates “con­fronta­tion where con­fronta­tion was unthink­able” in real­i­ty, as Masha Gessen writes in her cri­tique at The New York­er. We can­not trust Cher­nobyl as his­to­ry, though it is incred­i­bly com­pelling as his­tor­i­cal fic­tion.

Rather what the show gives view­ers, writes Gessen, is a stun­ning­ly accu­rate visu­al por­tray­al of the time peri­od, one that seems at times to have recre­at­ed his­tor­i­cal footage shot-for-shot. The show’s total immer­sion in the bleak, bureau­crat­ic world of mid-eight­ies Sovi­et Rus­sia has so enthralled view­ers that peo­ple have tak­en to post­ing Insta­gram pho­tos of them­selves inside the Cher­nobyl exclu­sion zone. Though it may seem like a fool­ish thing to do giv­en the lev­els of radi­a­tion still present in much of the area, Cher­nobyl has in fact been slat­ed for rede­vel­op­ment since 2007. Tourists began vis­it­ing the area not long after­wards.

Since the zone became acces­si­ble, hours of footage from Cher­nobyl and near­by city of Pripy­at, for­mer home of Lyud­mil­la Ignatenko, have appeared in ama­teur video and and more pro­fes­sion­al pro­duc­tions like “Post­cards from Pripy­at” (top), shot by Dan­ny Cooke for CBS, “The Fall­out,” a demo reel shot by Aer­obo Designs, and the drone footage in the Wall Street Jour­nal video just above. These are stun­ning mon­tages of decay­ing Sovi­et cities left behind in time. Even emp­tied of the indi­vid­u­als whose sto­ries keep us com­pul­sive­ly read­ing eye­wit­ness accounts like Alexievich’s and watch­ing fic­tion­al­ized dra­mas like Mazin’s, the videos still have a sto­ry to tell, a visu­al account of the remains of an empire brought low by cor­rup­tion, fear, and lies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Scenes from HBO’s Cher­nobyl v. Real Footage Shot in 1986: A Side-By-Side Com­par­i­son

A Haunt­ing Drone’s‑Eye View of Cher­nobyl

The Ani­mals of Cher­nobyl

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Lost Miles Davis Album, Rubberband, Will Finally Be Released This Fall: Hear the Title Track, “Rubberband,” in Five Different Versions

in Music | June 17th, 2019

Jazz is a col­lab­o­ra­tive art, no mat­ter how big the egos and out­sized the per­son­al­i­ties involved. Even band­lead­ers as auto­crat­ic as Miles Davis are referred to in the con­text of their ensem­bles and in the com­pa­ny of their finest play­ers. Davis knew how good his col­lab­o­ra­tors were. He gave them ample space to prove it and pushed them to improve. Usu­al­ly pushed them out the door, to leg­endary solo careers and new musi­cal dynas­ties: John Coltrane and Her­bie Han­cock come to mind imme­di­ate­ly.

As the 80s dawned, pop­u­lar music on the whole became increas­ing­ly pro­duc­er-dri­ven. Dig­i­tal syn­the­siz­ers and sam­plers took promi­nence, and jazz greats like Davis and Han­cock fol­lowed suit. (Would Coltrane have made com­put­er music in the 80s had he lived to see them?) In 1986, Davis’s album Tutu fierce­ly “divid­ed fans and crit­ics,” notes Jazz­wise mag­a­zine. “Miles record­ed his trum­pet parts over a lush elec­tric sound­scape, pro­duced from a bat­tery of sam­plers, syn­the­siz­ers, sequencers and drum machines.”

Most­ly “pro­duced, arranged, played, and com­posed,” by bassist Mar­cus Miller—anticipating the cur­rent phe­nom­e­non of pro­duc­er-cre­at­ed albums—Tutu “was a prod­uct of the 80s, a decade where music was often in dan­ger of becom­ing sub­servient to tech­nol­o­gy.” In Davis’ hands, the tech­no­log­i­cal approach to jazz pro­duced a clas­sic that “con­tin­ues to thrive” in the jazz world, cov­ered by sev­er­al major artists. Anoth­er album Davis record­ed around the same time, Rub­ber­band, nev­er got the chance to have this kind of impact—but we will soon get to imag­ine what might have hap­pened had he released the 1986 funk, soul, dance album at the time.

In its fin­ished form—finished, that is, by orig­i­nal pro­duc­ers Randy Hall and Zane Giles, and Davis’ nephew Vince Wilburn, Jr., who played drums on the album—Rub­ber­band sounds ahead of its time, seem­ing to fore­cast the smooth neo-soul sound of a decade lat­er. But who knows how much this is an arti­fact of recent stu­dio deci­sions. The impres­sion, in any case, comes only from the title track, released last year in five dif­fer­ent ver­sions on the Rub­ber­band EP. Fea­tur­ing singer Ledisi, the song presages the hip-hop-adja­cent, horn-and-female-vocal-dri­ven funk of the Brand New Heav­ies, Erykah Badu, and Meshell Nde­geo­cel­lo.

At the same time, “Rub­ber­band” incor­po­rates some of the more banal ele­ments of the genre, such as an upbeat, some­what insipid cho­rus about mak­ing a bet­ter life. The track cross­es ful­ly over into con­tem­po­rary dance music—it is no longer jazz at all, real­ly. Whether or not we can say that about the entire album remains to be seen. The full, com­plet­ed, album will be released on Sep­tem­ber 6th (pre-order here), with a cov­er paint­ing by Davis him­self. “Set to be his first album for Warn­er Bros. Records fol­low­ing his depar­ture from long­time label Colum­bia,” reports Pitch­fork, “that record was ulti­mate­ly shelved” in favor of Tutu.

The record fea­tures oth­er guest singers, so we might expect more jams like “Rub­ber­band,” but one nev­er real­ly knows with Davis, who arguably invented—or at least perfected—producer-driven, stu­dio-made jazz records many years ear­li­er, first on the ground­break­ing In a Silent Way in 1969, then on the even more ground­break­ing Bitch­es Brew in 1970. Even as his music began to sound more com­mer­cial, its roots in four decades of rad­i­cal­ly chang­ing jazz every few years made it whol­ly orig­i­nal to the minds of Miles Davis and his col­lab­o­ra­tors.

via Pitch­fork

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kind of Blue: How Miles Davis Changed Jazz

Hear a 65-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Miles Davis’ Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Jazz Albums

Lis­ten to The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead in 1970

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Women Who Draw: Explore an Open Directory That Showcases the Work of 5,000+ Female Illustrators

in Art, Gender | June 17th, 2019

The seem­ing­ly nev­er-end­ing era of female artists labor­ing in the shad­ows cast by their male col­leagues is com­ing to a close.

Dit­to the tyran­ny of the male gaze.

Women Who Draw, a data­base of over 5,000 pro­fes­sion­al artists, offers a thrilling­ly diverse panoply of female imagery, all cre­at­ed, as the site’s name sug­gests, by artists who iden­ti­fy as women.

Launched by illus­tra­tors Julia Roth­man and Wendy Mac­Naughton in response to a dis­may­ing lack of gen­der par­i­ty among cov­er artists of a promi­nent magazine—in 2015, men were respon­si­ble for 92%—the site aims to chan­nel work to female artists by boost­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty.

To that end, each illus­tra­tor toss­ing her hat in the ring is required to upload an illus­tra­tion of a woman, ide­al­ly a full body view, on a white back­ground.

The result is an aston­ish­ing range of styles, from an inter­na­tion­al cast of cre­ators.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the major­i­ty of con­trib­u­tors are based on the East Coast of the Unit­ed States, but giv­en the site’s mis­sion to pro­mote female illus­tra­tors of col­or, as well as LBTQ+ and oth­er less vis­i­ble groups, expect to see grow­ing num­bers from Africa, the Caribbean, the Mid­dle East, and Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca.

In addi­tion to indi­cat­ing their loca­tion, artists can check­list their reli­gion, ori­en­ta­tion, and ethnicity/race. (Those who would check“white” or “straight” should be pre­pared to accept that those cat­e­gories are tabled as “WWD encour­ages peo­ple to seek out under­rep­re­sent­ed groups of women.”)

Bean count­ing aside, the per­son­al­i­ties of indi­vid­ual con­trib­u­tors shine through.

Some, like Paris-based Amer­i­can Lau­ra Park, choose explic­it self-por­trai­ture.

Vanes­sa Davis gives the lie to biki­ni sea­son

SouthAsian illus­tra­tor Baani makes an impres­sion, doc­u­ment­ing women of her com­mu­ni­ty even as she rein­ter­prets tropes of West­ern art.

Pé-de-Ovo Stu­dio cor­ners the mar­ket on plushies.

Women Who Draw’s lat­est crowd-sourced project is con­cerned with per­son­al sto­ries of immi­gra­tion.

Final words of encour­age­ment from Lind­sey Andrews, Assis­tant Art Direc­tor for the Pen­guin Young Read­ers Design Group:

Just keep putting your work out there in any form you can think of. Update your var­i­ous social plat­forms reg­u­lar­ly. Mail post­cards of your work. Send emails. Net­work when you can. But, main­ly, do what you love. Even if you have a port­fo­lio full of com­mis­sioned pieces, I still like to see what you cre­ate when you get to cre­ate what­ev­er you want. Also, let me know your process!

Sub­mit your work here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Space of Their Own, a New Online Data­base, Will Fea­ture Works by 600+ Over­looked Female Artists from the 15th-19th Cen­turies

A New Archive Tran­scribes and Puts Online the Diaries & Note­books of Women Artists, Art His­to­ri­ans, Crit­ics and Deal­ers

The Dai­ly Rit­u­als of 143 Famous Female Cre­ators: Octavia But­ler, Edith Whar­ton, Coco Chanel & More

Ven­er­a­ble Female Artists, Musi­cians & Authors Give Advice to the Young: Pat­ti Smith, Lau­rie Ander­son & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC tonight, Mon­day, June 17 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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