The Iconic Design of the Doomsday Clock Was Created 75 Years Ago: It Now Says We’re 100 Seconds to Midnight

in Current Affairs, Design, History | March 15th, 2022

Image via The Bul­letin of the Atom­ic Sci­en­tists

Last year, the fates hand­ed the New York Times’ Maria Cramer an envi­ably strik­ing lede: “Human­i­ty is 100 sec­onds away from total anni­hi­la­tion. Again.” That we all know imme­di­ate­ly what she was writ­ing about speaks to the pow­er of graph­ic design. Specif­i­cal­ly, it speaks to the pow­er of graph­ic design as prac­ticed by Martyl Langs­dorf, who hap­pened to be mar­ried to ex-Man­hat­tan Project physi­cist Alexan­der Langs­dorf. This con­nec­tion got her the gig of cre­at­ing a cov­er for the June 1947 issue of the Bul­letin of the Atom­ic Sci­en­tists. She came up with a sim­ple image: the upper-left cor­ner of a clock, its hands at sev­en min­utes to mid­night.

Asked lat­er why she set the clock to that time in par­tic­u­lar, Langs­dorf explained that “it looked good to my eye.” That quote appears in a post at the Bul­letin address­ing fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions about what’s now known as the Dooms­day Clock, “a design that warns the pub­lic about how close we are to destroy­ing our world with dan­ger­ous tech­nolo­gies of our own mak­ing. It is a metaphor, a reminder of the per­ils we must address if we are to sur­vive on the plan­et.” In the 75 years since its intro­duc­tion, its minute hand has been moved back­ward eight times and for­ward six­teen times; cur­rent­ly it still stands where Cramer report­ed it as hav­ing remained last Jan­u­ary, at 100 sec­onds to mid­night. 

To the pub­lic of 1947, “mid­night” sig­ni­fied above all the prospect of human­i­ty’s self-destruc­tion through the use of nuclear weapons. But as tech­nol­o­gy itself has advanced and pro­lif­er­at­ed, the means of auto-anni­hi­la­tion have grown more diverse. This year’s Dooms­day Clock state­ment cites not just nukes but car­bon emis­sions, infec­tious dis­eases, and “inter­net-enabled mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­in­for­ma­tion.” Ear­li­er this month, the Bul­letin remind­ed us that even as 2022 began, “we called out Ukraine as a poten­tial flash­point in an increas­ing­ly tense inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty land­scape. For many years, we and oth­ers have warned that the most like­ly way nuclear weapons might be used is through an unwant­ed or unin­tend­ed esca­la­tion from a con­ven­tion­al con­flict.”

Now that “Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine has brought this night­mare sce­nario to life,” many have found them­selves glanc­ing ner­vous­ly at the Dooms­day Clock once again. This also hap­pened after the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump, which prompt­ed the Vox video above on the Clock­’s his­to­ry and pur­pose. Its icon­ic sta­tus, as cel­e­brat­ed in the new book The Dooms­day Clock at 75, has long out­last­ed the Cold War, but the device itself isn’t with­out its crit­ics. Bul­letin co-founder Eugene Rabi­now­itch once artic­u­lat­ed the lat­ter as meant “to pre­serve civ­i­liza­tion by scar­ing men into ratio­nal­i­ty,” a some­what con­tro­ver­sial inten­tion. One could also raise objec­tions to using an inher­ent­ly lin­ear and uni­di­rec­tion­al con­cept like time to rep­re­sent a prob­a­bil­i­ty result­ing from human action. Yet some­how more tech­ni­cal­ly suit­able images — “100 cen­time­ters from the edge,” say — don’t have quite the same ring.

Relat­ed con­tent:

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

J. Robert Oppen­heimer Explains How He Recit­ed a Line from Bha­gavad Gita — “Now I Am Become Death, the Destroy­er of Worlds” — Upon Wit­ness­ing the First Nuclear Explo­sion

The Night Ed Sul­li­van Scared a Nation with the Apoc­a­lyp­tic Ani­mat­ed Short, A Short Vision (1956)

53 Years of Nuclear Test­ing in 14 Min­utes: A Time Lapse Film by Japan­ese Artist Isao Hashimo­to

Pro­tect and Sur­vive: 1970s British Instruc­tion­al Films on How to Live Through a Nuclear Attack

How Clocks Changed Human­i­ty For­ev­er, Mak­ing Us Mas­ters and Slaves of Time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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 or on Face­book.

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Fan Faithfully Reconstructs Cream’s Final Concert: Watch a New Version of the Show with the Correct Song Order and Run-Time (1968)

in Music | March 15th, 2022

The orig­i­nal rock super­group, Cream, last­ed two years, changed the course of rock music, bare­ly held togeth­er because of ran­cor between mem­bers and said good­bye in 1968. Their farewell con­cert at the Roy­al Albert Hall in Lon­don was one for the ages. Maybe not their best per­for­mance, but one of their most ener­getic. And inside the cav­ernous Hall, the three men laid down a wall of unde­ni­able sound.

Too bad that it wasn’t prop­er­ly doc­u­ment­ed, despite a series of cam­eras there that evening. A Youtube denizen called Mike Left­on has tried to rec­ti­fy the his­to­ry by assem­bling a cut of the 70-minute con­cert that plays in real time. It’s the kind of fan project for which YouTube is designed—something not pro­fes­sion­al enough for offi­cial release, but vital­ly impor­tant for the fans.

Go on to the Bezos­Borg site (you know, it rhymes with Glama­zon), and you can find a con­cert film offered on Blu-Ray. What’s wrong with that, you might ask? Cream fans will tell you. Instead of let­ting the band play, the offi­cial Farewell Con­cert leaves off sev­er­al songs, and includes a “total­ly square voiceover by Patrick Allen (who refers to the band as “The Cream” through­out),” accord­ing to the moviesteve.com web­site, while anoth­er review­er notes this could be the gen­e­sis of Spinal Tap’s inten­tion­al­ly bad inter­views. (But let’s be fair, the 1960s in gen­er­al were filled with non-rock jour­nal­ists inter­view­ing musi­cians as if they were alien life forms. D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back is a com­pendi­um of such cringey moments.)

On top of that, direc­tor Allen real­ly over­did the zoom lens, which was every­where those days. It’s fun­ny to see how it was used to “spice up” rock band footage, where real­ly you could just hold the cam­era on Gin­ger Bak­er play­ing drums.

This edit cuts Allen’s footage togeth­er with black and white footage from the BBC, and gen­er­al­ly does a fair job fill­ing in the gaps, let­ting the con­cert stand on its own mer­its. It had plenty—the afore­men­tioned Gin­ger Baker’s drum solo on “The Toad.” The rep­e­ti­tion of footage is easy to spot—Jack Bruce tunes his gui­tar quite a lot, Eric Clap­ton looks off­stage, and Bak­er smokes the final half-inch of a rol­lie over the hour—but Mike Left­on made this one for the fans, which is more than you can say for Allen, who made it for fright­ened BBC view­ers still unsure about what all this “rock and roll” music was about. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Afrobeat Leg­end Fela Kuti Col­lab­o­rat­ed with Cream Drum­mer Gin­ger Bak­er

Behold the Blis­ter­ing Bass Solos of Cream Bassist and Singer, Jack Bruce (1943–2014)

Jimi Hen­drix Arrives in Lon­don in 1966, Asks to Get Onstage with Cream, and Blows Eric Clap­ton Away: “You Nev­er Told Me He Was That F‑ing Good”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Real Footage of Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance: Watch Clips from the First Documentary Feature Film Ever Made (1919)

in Film, History | March 14th, 2022

Last week we fea­tured the recent dis­cov­ery of Ernest Shack­le­ton’s ship Endurance, which has spent more than a cen­tu­ry at the bot­tom of the Wed­dell Sea off Antarc­ti­ca. It sank there in 1915, after hav­ing been entrapped and slow­ly crushed by pack ice for the most of a year. That marked the end of what had start­ed as the 1914–1917 Impe­r­i­al Trans-Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion, but it cer­tain­ly was­n’t the end of the sto­ry. When it had become clear that there was no hope for Endurance, writes Rain Noe at Core77, “Shack­le­ton and five of the crew then sailed 800 miles in a lifeboat to Strom­ness, an inhab­it­ed island and whal­ing sta­tion in the South Atlantic, where they were able to orga­nize a res­cue par­ty. Shack­le­ton locat­ed and res­cued his crew four months lat­er.”

Today we can watch the Endurance’s demise on film, as shot by expe­di­tion pho­tog­ra­ph­er Frank Hur­ley. “How is it pos­si­ble that the film footage sur­vived this ordeal?” Noe writes. “After the crew aban­doned ship, food was the main thing to be car­ried away by the men, and Hur­ley had to decide which pho­to neg­a­tives and film reels to sal­vage.” Hur­ley him­self lat­er described this ago­niz­ing process, at the end of which “about 400 plates were jet­ti­soned and 120 retained. Lat­er I had to pre­serve them almost with my life; for a time came when we had to choose between heav­ing them over­board or throw­ing away our sur­plus food — and the food went over!”

Even rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly in the era of cin­e­ma, Hur­ley must have under­stood the pow­er of the image — as, it seems, did his cap­tain. The footage Hur­ley could sal­vage retained a strik­ing clar­i­ty, and it went into 1919’s South, which is now con­sid­ered to be the very first doc­u­men­tary fea­ture. “South was first exhib­it­ed by Ernest Shack­le­ton in 1919 to accom­pa­ny his lec­tures,” writes Ann Ogi­di at the BFI’s Screenon­line, “and it has some of the qual­i­ty of a lec­ture. Excerpts of the jour­ney are inter­spersed with sci­en­tif­ic and bio­log­i­cal obser­va­tions.” And “just when the dra­mat­ic ten­sion reach­es its height, there are almost 20 inex­plic­a­ble min­utes of nature footage, show­ing sea lions gam­bol­ing, pen­guins and oth­er birds.”

Crisply restored in the 1990s, South “is best thought of as that mul­ti-media doc­u­men­tary lec­ture that Shack­le­ton would have pre­sent­ed with stills, paint­ings, film and music woven togeth­er to spin the yarn, and for Hurley’s exquis­ite pho­tog­ra­phy that keeps alive the sto­ry of that group of extra­or­di­nary men.” So writes BFI cura­tor Bry­ony Dixon in a recent piece on the mirac­u­lous sur­vival of not just Shack­le­ton and his men, but of Hur­ley’s hand­i­work. And it was Hur­ley who then went right back out to the island of South Geor­gia to “take wildlife footage that the news­pa­per edi­tor Ernest Per­ris, who spon­sored the film, was con­vinced was need­ed to make the film inter­est­ing to the pub­lic.” Per­ris was dar­ing enough to fund the first doc­u­men­tary fea­ture, but also pre­scient in his con­cep­tion of the form — a con­cep­tion proven defin­i­tive­ly right, more than eighty years lat­er, by the box-office per­for­mance of March of the Pen­guins.

via Core77

Relat­ed con­tent:

See the Well-Pre­served Wreck­age of Ernest Shackleton’s Ship Endurance Found in Antarc­ti­ca

Hear Ernest Shack­le­ton Speak About His Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion in a Rare 1909 Record­ing

Google Street View Opens Up a Look at Shackleton’s Antarc­tic

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage of the Ship Before Dis­as­ter Strikes (1911–1912)

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Ship­wreck Proves Herodotus, the “Father of His­to­ry,” Cor­rect 2500 Years Lat­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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 or on Face­book.

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How to Give Yourself a 3000-Year-Old Hairstyle Using Iron Age Tools

in Fashion, History, Life, Video - Arts & Culture | March 14th, 2022

There was a peri­od in the late 20th-cen­tu­ry when hav­ing hair long enough to sit on was con­sid­ered some­thing of an accom­plish­ment.

Judg­ing by the long hair pins unearthed from Austria’s Hall­statt bur­ial site, extreme length was an ear­ly Iron Age hair goal, too, pos­si­bly because a coro­net of thick braids made it eas­i­er to bal­ance a bas­ket on your head or keep your veil secure­ly fas­tened.

Mor­gan Don­ner, whose YouTube chan­nel doc­u­ments her attempts to recre­ate his­tor­i­cal gar­ments and hair­styles, com­mit­ted to try­ing var­i­ous Hall­statt looks after read­ing arche­ol­o­gogist Kari­na Grömer’s 2005 arti­cle Exper­i­mente zur Haar- und Schleier­tra­cht in der Hall­stattzeit (Exper­i­ments on hair­styles and veils in the Hall­statt peri­od.)

Gromer, the vice-head of the Vien­na Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um’s Depart­ment of Pre­his­to­ry, pub­lished pre­cise dia­grams show­ing the posi­tion of the hair orna­ments in rela­tion to the occu­pants of var­i­ous graves.

For exam­ple, the skele­ton in grave 45, below, was dis­cov­ered with “10 bronze nee­dles to the left of and below the skull, (and) parts of a bronze spi­ral roll in the neck area.”

Although no hair fibers sur­vive, researchers cross-ref­er­enc­ing the pins’ posi­tion against fig­ur­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions from peri­od arti­facts, have made a pret­ty edu­cat­ed guess as to the sort of hair do this indi­vid­ual may have sport­ed in life, or more accu­rate­ly, giv­en the con­text, death.

As to the “bronze spi­ral roll” — which Don­ner per­sists in refer­ring to as a spi­ral “doobly doo” — it func­tioned much like a mod­ern day elas­tic band, pre­vent­ing the braid from unrav­el­ling.

Don­ner twists hers from wire, after arrang­ing to have repli­ca hair­pins cus­tom made to his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate dimen­sions. (The man­u­fac­tur­er, per­haps mis­un­der­stand­ing her inter­est in his­to­ry, coat­ed them with an antiquing agent that had to be removed with “brass clean­er and a bit of rub­bing.”

Most of the styles are vari­ants on a bun. All with­stand the “shake test” and would look right at home in a bridal mag­a­zine.

Star Wars fans will be grat­i­fied to find not one, but two icon­ic Princess Leia looks.

Our favorites were the braid­ed loops and dou­ble buns meant to be sport­ed beneath a veil.

“The braids do kind of act nice­ly as an anchor point for the veil to sit on,” Don­ner reports, “Not a lot of mod­ern appli­ca­tion per se for this par­tic­u­lar style but it’s cute. It’s fun.”

Either would give you some seri­ous Medieval Fes­ti­val street cred, even if you have to resort to exten­sions.

Donner’s video gets a lot of love in the com­ments from a num­ber of archae­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sion­als, includ­ing a funer­ary archae­ol­o­gist who prais­es the way she deals with the “inher­ent issues of preser­va­tion bias.”

The final nine min­utes con­tain a DIY tuto­r­i­al for those who’d like to make their own hair­pins, as well as the spi­ral “doobly doo”.

If you’re of a less crafty bent, a jew­el­ry design­er in Fin­land is sell­ing repli­cas based on the grave finds of Hall­statt cul­ture on Etsy.

Watch a playlist of Donner’s his­tor­i­cal hair exper­i­ments and tuto­ri­als, though a peek at her Insta­gram reveals that she got a buz­z­cut last fall, cur­rent­ly grown out to pix­ie-ish length.

Down­load Grömer’s illus­trat­ed arti­cle on Hall­statt peri­od hair­styles and veils for free (in Ger­man) here.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Ukrainian Violinists Play in Solidarity with 94 Other Violinists from 29 Countries

in Life, Music | March 12th, 2022

Vio­lin­ist Keren­za Pea­cock writes: “I befriend­ed some young vio­lin­ists in Ukraine via Insta­gram and dis­cov­ered some were in base­ment shel­ters but had their vio­lins. So I asked col­leagues across the world to accom­pa­ny them in har­mo­ny. And I got sent videos from 94 vio­lin­ists in 29 coun­tries in 48 hours!! An aston­ish­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion form­ing an inter­na­tion­al vio­lin choir of sup­port for Ukraine. Illia Bon­darenko had to film this between explo­sions, because he could not hear him­self play.

We play an old Ukrain­ian folk song called Ver­bo­vaya Doschech­ka. Nine oth­er young vio­lin­ists shel­ter­ing in Ukraine join in uni­son, and are accom­pa­nied in har­mo­ny by play­ers from Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, Tokyo Sym­pho­ny, Oslo Phil­har­mon­ic, the Hol­ly­wood Stu­dios, and top vio­lin­ists from all over the world includ­ing Ire­land, the Nether­lands, New Zealand, Bel­gium, Geor­gia, Poland, South Korea, South Africa, Moldo­va, Den­mark, India, and the entire vio­lin sec­tion of the Munich Cham­ber Orches­tra!”

Learn more about the col­lab­o­ra­tion here, and donate to sup­port Ukraini­ans in dis­tress here.

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Hear Jack Kerouac Read from On The Road on the 100th Anniversary of His Birth

in Literature | March 12th, 2022

Jack Ker­ouac was born 100 years ago today (March 12, 1922). And to mark the occa­sion, you can hear him read from his 1957 Beat clas­sic, On the Road. This 28-minute recita­tion was appar­ent­ly record­ed on an acetate disc in the 1950s but thought lost for decades. It re-sur­faced dur­ing the late 1990s. Enjoy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Jack Kerouac’s On the Road Turned Into an Illus­trat­ed Scroll: One Draw­ing for Every Page of the Nov­el

Jack Kerouac’s 30 Beliefs and Tech­niques For Writ­ing Mod­ern Prose

Four Inter­ac­tive Maps Immor­tal­ize the Road Trips That Inspired Jack Kerouac’s On the Road

The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945: A Free Yale Course on Nov­els by Nabokov, Ker­ouac, Mor­ri­son, Pyn­chon & More

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Heart’s Nancy Wilson Teaches You How to Play the Notoriously Difficult Opening to “Crazy On You”

in History, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | March 11th, 2022

You can slide up, pull off and ham­mer like a beast, but be fore­warned. It’s unlike­ly you’ll be able to keep pace with Heart’s Nan­cy Wil­son, as she demon­strates how to play the intro­duc­tion to 1975’s “Crazy On You,” one of the great­est — and trick­i­est — open­ing gui­tar solos in rock his­to­ry.

“I real­ly want­ed peo­ple to know right up front what I could do,” Wil­son revealed in a 1999 inter­view with Acoustic Gui­tar:

It was the same thing as sit­ting in the Band­wag­on music store and play­ing (Paul Simon’s) Anji. It was like, “Check me out, I know some stuff.”

As hard rock­ing female musi­cians in the 70s and 80s, Wil­son and her bandmate/sister, lead vocal­ist- and song­writer, Ann found them­selves hav­ing to prove them­selves con­stant­ly.

As Ann recent­ly explained to The Guardian: 

Back then, espe­cial­ly in the 70s, there was no fil­ter on how women were sex­u­al­ized – hyper-sex­u­al­ized – in order to sell their images. Now at least it looks like women have con­trol over their own fil­ters. Back then, they didn’t. It was just like: “Hey, here’s a sexy chick. We know how we can sell her.”

Let’s all observe Wom­en’s His­to­ry Month by insist­ing that every bone­head who ever dis­missed these pio­neer­ing women as a ‘chick band’ pay close atten­tion to Nancy’s intri­cate “hybrid pick­ing”.

“Crazy On You” finds her pick­ing a rhythm on the A‑string while using her bare fin­gers to pull off notes on the B and G strings.

And by her own admis­sion, she tends nev­er to play it the same way twice (“which makes it real easy, right?”)

While we’re at it, how about we cel­e­brate Heart’s 50th anniver­sary by intro­duc­ing the next gen­er­a­tion to “Crazy On You”?

The times have changed in sig­nif­i­cant ways, but the emo­tions that inspired the song will strike close to home for many young peo­ple, as per Ann’s descrip­tion on the Pro­fes­sor of Rock’s YouTube chan­nel:

I wrote the words about the state of the world, and the stress effect it was hav­ing on me. Back then, we thought the world was real­ly messed up, right? Because the Viet­nam War was going on and we were choos­ing to, but stay­ing out of our own country…we were home­sick. Crime was ris­ing, gas was expen­sive, gas short­age, all this hor­ri­ble stuff. We had no idea what was going to hap­pen in lat­er years so it seemed to be, at that time, y’know, this is the end of the world. This close to the apoc­a­lypse. It’s very very stress­ful when you’re in your 20’s and you don’t see a good future.

If you’re com­mit­ted to learn­ing Nan­cy Wilson’s gui­tar intro to “Crazy On You,” we rec­om­mend Shut­up & Play’s video tuto­r­i­al and tabs.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent 

John May­er Teach­es Gui­tarists How to Play the Blues in a 45-Minute Mas­ter­class

James Tay­lor Gives Gui­tar Lessons, Teach­ing You How to Play Clas­sic Songs Like “Fire and Rain,” “Coun­try Road” & “Car­oli­na in My Mind”

The MC5’s Wayne Kramer Demon­strates the Cor­rect & Offi­cial Way to Play “Kick Out the Jams” on the Gui­tar

Pete Seeger Teach­es You How to Play Gui­tar for Free in The Folksinger’s Gui­tar Guide (1955)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online: 1,000+ Librarians Digitally Preserve Artifacts of Ukrainian Civilization Before Russia Can Destroy Them

in Current Affairs, Technology | March 11th, 2022

Before becom­ing a film­mak­er, Jean-Pierre Grum­bach par­tic­i­pat­ed in the French Resis­tance dur­ing World War II. It was then that he took the nom de guerre of Jean-Pierre Melville, under which he would lat­er inspire the French New Wave. Just as he nev­er made a film under anoth­er name, his work nev­er quite aban­doned the themes pro­vid­ed by his wartime expe­ri­ence in Nazi-occu­pied France, which comes through most clear­ly in his fea­ture debut Le Silence de la mer. Released just four years after V‑E Day, it tells the sto­ry of a Ger­man lieu­tenant bil­let­ed in a French house­hold, an admir­er of French cul­ture who holds forth night­ly of his antic­i­pa­tion of the “mar­riage” of the Ger­man and French civ­i­liza­tions.

The day comes for the Ger­man to make a much-antic­i­pat­ed trip to Paris. After wor­ship­ful­ly tak­ing in the sights of the cap­i­tal — the Arc de Tri­om­phe, Notre-Dame de Paris, the Mon­u­ment à Jeanne d’Arc — he meets with his Nazi supe­ri­ors. And so he dis­cov­ers, to his great shock, that what the occu­piers have planned is not a mar­riage but a demo­li­tion. “Do you think we’re so stu­pid as to allow France ever to rise again?” asks one of the oth­er offi­cers. “We have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to destroy France and we will do so,” says anoth­er. “Not only its might, but also its spir­it,” which requires the com­plete extir­pa­tion of all “works of cul­ture” — for “to con­quer, vio­lence is suf­fi­cient, but not to rule.”

81 years lat­er, the events of Le Silence de la mer have returned to mind. “Russia’s war on Ukraine has been an all-round dis­as­ter,” writes the Guardian’s Luke Hard­ing and Har­ri­et Sher­wood. “Its army has shelled dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed cities, killing hun­dreds. More than 2 mil­lion refugees have fled abroad in Europe’s biggest exo­dus since the sec­ond world war.” Ukrain­ian cities have set about hid­ing what pieces they can of their cul­tur­al her­itage: in Lviv, for exam­ple, these includ­ed “a pre­cious wood­en alter-piece show­ing Jesus, Mary and Mary Mag­da­lene. It was removed from Lviv’s 14th cen­tu­ry Armen­ian church and trans­port­ed to a bunker. The sculp­ture was last removed from its court­yard spot short­ly before the Nazis swept into the city in 1941.”

Such efforts are tak­ing place in not just the phys­i­cal realm, but the dig­i­tal one as well. Sav­ing Ukrain­ian Cul­tur­al Her­itage Online (SUCHO) describe them­selves as “a group of cul­tur­al her­itage pro­fes­sion­als – librar­i­ans, archivists, researchers, pro­gram­mers – work­ing togeth­er to iden­ti­fy and archive at-risk sites, dig­i­tal con­tent, and data in Ukrain­ian cul­tur­al her­itage insti­tu­tions while the coun­try is under attack.” This project involves “a com­bi­na­tion of tech­nolo­gies to crawl and archive sites and con­tent, includ­ing the Inter­net Archive’s Way­back Machine, the Browser­trix crawler and the ArchiveWeb.page brows­er exten­sion and app of the Webrecorder project,” and now has the help of more than a thou­sand vol­un­teers.

If you’re read­ing this, you may pos­sess the skill SUCHO needs. Though “we are cur­rent­ly at capac­i­ty for peo­ple to help with Way­back Machine / Inter­net Archive tasks or man­u­al Webrecorder tasks,” says their site, “you can still help by sub­mit­ting URLs” of sites con­tain­ing Ukrain­ian cul­tur­al con­tent. “If you can read Ukrain­ian or Russ­ian, or if you can run the Browser­trix crawler (check out our Browser­trix doc­u­men­ta­tion to see if it’s some­thing you’d be up for try­ing), fill out the vol­un­teer form.” (Even if not, have a look at their doc­u­men­ta­tion of their work­flow and ori­en­ta­tion for new vol­un­teers.) At some point, the vio­lence of the inva­sion of Ukraine will come to an end. When it does, the more of the coun­try’s cul­ture sur­vives, the less its invaders can rule.

Vis­it the Sav­ing Ukrain­ian Cul­tur­al Her­itage Online project here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ukraini­ans Play­ing Vio­lin in Bunkers as Rus­sians Bomb Them from the Sky

Pianist Plays “What a Won­der­ful World” for Ukrain­ian Refugees at Lviv Sta­tion

Russ­ian Inva­sion of Ukraine Teach-Out: A Free Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan

Putin’s War on Ukraine Explained in 8 Min­utes

Why Rus­sia Invad­ed Ukraine: A Use­ful Primer

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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 or on Face­book.

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