Drive-In Concerts and Even Raves Are Becoming the Rage in Europe

in Current Affairs | May 6th, 2020

If we are to remain social­ly dis­tant in the com­ing months of the pandemic—and near­ly every rep­utable health expert says we should—at least 21st cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy has pre­pared us for life lived in iso­la­tion. If we insist on going out, we may see a 20th cen­tu­ry inno­va­tion become even more pop­u­lar. The dri­ve-in the­ater has returned as a safe venue for movies, con­certs, and even raves, at least in Den­mark, where the city of Aarhus recent­ly staged a dri­ve-in con­cert by singer-song­writer Mads Langer. “500 tick­ets sold out in min­utes,” reports Forbes. “The fol­low­ing day, the stage became a dri­ve-in cin­e­ma” show­ing Star Wars Episode IX. 

The first in a series, the dri­ve-in shows are part of a larg­er trend in Europe. Pro­mot­ers in Lithua­nia have launched sim­i­lar events out­side Vil­nius. And if you’re won­der­ing what a dri­ve-in rave looks like, won­der no more—Germany held the first of many a few days back.

Does it look like a pre­cur­sor to the world of Mad Max: Fury Road? As some com­menters have sug­gest­ed, enough events like these around the world might be just what we need to accel­er­ate deser­ti­fi­ca­tion. But it’s a fun idea, with unde­ni­ably nos­tal­gic built-in brand­ing.

Dri­ve-in the­aters are dis­tinct­ly tied to teenage romances of the 1950s and envi­ron­men­tal­ly mon­strous vehi­cles large enough for very com­fort­able dou­ble dates. Their ori­gins are less roman­tic than the stereo­type. “The first patent­ed dri­ve-in was opened on June 6, 1933 by Richard Holling­shead in New Jer­sey,” notes the New York Film Acad­e­my. “He cre­at­ed it as a solu­tion for peo­ple unable to com­fort­ably fit into small­er movie the­ater seats after cre­at­ing a mini dri­ve-in for his moth­er. Appeal­ing to fam­i­lies, Holling­shead adver­tised his dri­ve-in as a place where ‘The whole fam­i­ly is wel­come, regard­less of how noisy the chil­dren are.’”

 

It is unlike­ly many par­ents today would sit through a dri­ve-in show with noisy chil­dren, when every­one can stay home with their own pri­vate screen. But for Matt Langer fan Signe Nygaard, a par­ent and for­mer gym­nast, the dri­ve-in made a dream come true. The singer invit­ed her onstage. “A few years ago,” she says, “I was sup­posed to dance at a con­ven­tion where Mads Langer sang live, but I couldn’t because I was preg­nant. Now I final­ly got the chance.” There will be feel­go­od sto­ries in the pan­dem­ic, but I do hope they stayed six feet apart.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Live Per­form­ers Now Stream­ing Shows, from their Homes to Yours: Neil Young, Cold­play, Broad­way Stars, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Operas & More

Free: Austin City Lim­its Opens Up Video Archives Dur­ing COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic

Sooth­ing, Uplift­ing Resources for Par­ents & Care­givers Stressed by the COVID-19 Cri­sis

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

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‘Never Be Afraid’: William Faulkner’s Speech to His Daughter’s Graduating Class in 1951

in Graduation Speech, Literature | May 5th, 2020

By the start of the 1950s, the eupho­ria felt by Amer­i­cans after win­ning World War II had giv­en way to a per­va­sive atmos­phere of dread.

The Sovi­ets had explod­ed their first atom­ic bomb, McCarthy­ism had reared its head, and Amer­i­ca’s school­child­ren would soon be told to “Duck and Cov­er” at the first sound of a civ­il defense siren.

It was in this cli­mate of pal­pa­ble fear that William Faulkn­er was asked by his daugh­ter, Jill, to speak to her grad­u­at­ing class of 1951 at Uni­ver­si­ty High School in Oxford, Mis­sis­sip­pi. Faulkn­er was at the height of his fame.

Only a few months ear­li­er, in Novem­ber of 1950, he had trav­eled to Swe­den to accept the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture. In his speech at Stock­holm, Faulkn­er said that “the basest of all things is to be afraid”:

“Our tragedy today is a gen­er­al and uni­ver­sal phys­i­cal fear so long sus­tained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer prob­lems of the spir­it. There is only the ques­tion: When will I be blown up?”

Faulkn­er expand­ed on the theme dur­ing the speech to his daugh­ter’s high school class, deliv­ered May 28, 1951 at Ful­ton Chapel on the cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­sis­sip­pi, or “Ole Miss.”

The occa­sion was some­thing of a home-town tri­umph for Faulkn­er, who had dropped out of high school with­out a diplo­ma. The excerpt above is from a short doc­u­men­tary released in 1952 called, sim­ply, William Faulkn­er. Two pas­sages from the speech are omit­ted in the film. You can read the com­plete text below. Faulkn­er begins with a pas­sage from Hen­ri Esti­enne’s 1594 book Les Prémices: “If youth only knew; if age only could.”

“Years ago, before any of you were born, a wise French­man said, ‘If youth knew; if age could.’ We all know what he meant: that when you are young, you have the pow­er to do any­thing, but you don’t know what to do. Then, when you have got old and expe­ri­ence and obser­va­tion have taught you answers, you are tired, fright­ened; you don’t care, you want to be left alone as long as you your­self are safe; you no longer have the capac­i­ty or the will to grieve over any wrongs but your own.

“So you young men and women in this room tonight, and in thou­sands of oth­er rooms like this one about the earth today, have the pow­er to change the world, rid it for­ev­er of war and injus­tice and suf­fer­ing, pro­vid­ed you know how, know what to do. And so accord­ing to the old French­man, since you can’t know what to do because you are young, then any­one stand­ing here with a head full white hair should be able to tell you.

“But maybe this one is not as old and wise as his white hairs pre­tend to claim. Because he can’t give you a glib answer or pat­tern either. But he can tell you this, because he believes this. What threat­ens us today is fear. Not the atom bomb, nor even fear of it, because if the bomb fell on Oxford tonight, all it could do would be to kill us, which is noth­ing, since in doing that, it will have robbed itself of its only pow­er over us: which is fear of it, the being afraid of it. Our dan­ger is not that. Our dan­ger is the forces in the world today which are try­ing to use man’s fear to rob him of his indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, his soul, try­ing to reduce him to an unthink­ing mass by fear and bribery — giv­ing him free food which he has not earned, easy and val­ue­less mon­ey which he has not worked for; the economies and ide­olo­gies or polit­i­cal sys­tems, com­mu­nist or social­is­tic or demo­c­ra­t­ic, what­ev­er they wish to call them­selves, the tyrants and the politi­cians, Amer­i­can or Euro­pean or Asi­at­ic, what­ev­er they call them­selves, who would reduce man to one obe­di­ent mass for their own aggran­dize­ment and pow­er, or because they them­selves are baf­fled and afraid, afraid of, or inca­pable of, believ­ing in man’s capac­i­ty for courage and endurance and sac­ri­fice.

“That is what we must resist, if we are to change the world for man’s peace and secu­ri­ty. It is not men in the mass who can and will save man. It is man him­self, cre­at­ed in the image of God so that he shall have the pow­er to choose right from wrong, and so be able to save him­self because he is worth sav­ing — man, the indi­vid­ual, men and women, who will refuse always to be tricked or fright­ened or bribed into sur­ren­der­ing, not just the right but the duty too, to choose between jus­tice and injus­tice, courage and cow­ardice, sac­ri­fice and greed, pity and self — who will believe always not only in the right of man to be free of injus­tice and rapac­i­ty and decep­tion, but the duty and respon­si­bil­i­ty of man to see that jus­tice and truth and pity and com­pas­sion are done.

“So, nev­er be afraid. Nev­er be afraid to raise your voice for hon­esty and truth and com­pas­sion, against injus­tice and lying and greed. If you, not just you in this room tonight, but in all the thou­sands of oth­er rooms like this one about the world today and tomor­row and next week, will do this, not as a class or class­es, but as indi­vid­u­als, men and women, you will change the earth; in one gen­er­a­tion all the Napoleons and Hitlers and Cae­sars and Mus­soli­n­is and Stal­ins and all the oth­er tyrants who want pow­er and aggran­dize­ment, and the sim­ple politi­cians and time-servers who them­selves are mere­ly baf­fled or igno­rant of afraid, who have used, or are using, or hope to use, man’s fear and greed for man’s enslave­ment, will have van­ished from the face of it.”

When he was fin­ished, Faulkn­er gave his copy of the speech to the edi­tor of the local news­pa­per. At a par­ty after­ward he reportedly said, “You know, I nev­er knew how nice a grad­u­a­tion could be. This is the first one I’ve ever been to.”

To watch the full film from which the speech is tak­en, see our ear­li­er post: “Rare 1952 Film: William Faulkn­er on His Native Soil in Oxford, Mis­sis­sip­pi.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Faulkn­er Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

Sev­en Tips From William Faulkn­er on How to Write Fic­tion

7 Nobel Speech­es by 7 Great Writ­ers: Hem­ing­way, Faulkn­er and More

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Quarantined Family Re-Creates Journey’s “Separate Ways” Video Shot-by-Shot

in Music, Random | May 5th, 2020

The Heller fam­i­ly writes: “Soli­tary con­fine­ment does strange things to the best of us and this quar­an­tine was real­ly hav­ing an effect. My wife texted me and said, ‘we need to remake a music video.’ I thought that sound­ed like a lot of work, but her per­sis­tence paid off and here we are. Enjoy!”

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Take Hannah Arendt’s Final Exam for Her 1961 Course “On Revolution”

in Philosophy, Politics | May 5th, 2020

After her analy­sis of total­i­tar­i­an­ism in Nazi Ger­many and Stalin’s Sovi­et Union, Han­nah Arendt turned her schol­ar­ly atten­tion to the sub­ject of revolution—namely, to the French and Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tions. How­ev­er, the first chap­ter of her 1963 book On Rev­o­lu­tion opens with a para­phrase of Lenin about her own time: “Wars and rev­o­lu­tions… have thus far deter­mined the phys­iog­no­my of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.”

Arendt wrote the book on the thresh­old of many wars and rev­o­lu­tions yet to come, but she was not par­tic­u­lar­ly sym­pa­thet­ic to the left­ist turn of the 1960s. On Rev­o­lu­tion favors the Amer­i­can Colonists over the French Sans Culottes and Jacobins. The book is in part an intel­lec­tu­al con­tri­bu­tion to anti-Com­mu­nism, one of many ide­olo­gies, Arendt writes, that “have lost con­tact with the major real­i­ties of our world”?

What are those real­i­ties? “War and rev­o­lu­tion,” she argues, “have out­lived all their ide­o­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tions… no cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the begin­ning of our his­to­ry has deter­mined the very exis­tence of pol­i­tics, the cause of free­dom ver­sus tyran­ny.” This sounds like pam­phle­teer­ing, but Arendt did not use such abstrac­tions light­ly. As one of the fore­most schol­ars of ancient Greek and mod­ern Euro­pean phi­los­o­phy, she was emi­nent­ly qual­i­fied to define her terms.

Her stu­dents, on the oth­er hand, might have strug­gled with such weighty con­cepts as “rev­o­lu­tion,” “rights, “free­dom,” etc. which can so eas­i­ly become mean­ing­less slo­gans with­out sub­stan­tive elab­o­ra­tion and “con­tact with real­i­ty.” Arendt was a thor­ough teacher. Once her stu­dents left her class, they sure­ly had a bet­ter grasp on the intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy. Such under­stand­ing con­sti­tut­ed Arendt’s life’s work, and it was through teach­ing that she devel­oped and refined the ideas that became On Rev­o­lu­tion.

Arendt began research for the book at Prince­ton, where she was appoint­ed the first woman to serve as a full pro­fes­sor in 1953. Through­out the 50s and ear­ly 60s, she taught at Berke­ley, Colum­bia, Cor­nell, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, and North­west­ern before join­ing the fac­ul­ty of the New School. In 1961, she taught a North­west­ern sem­i­nar called “On Rev­o­lu­tion.” Just above, you can see the course’s final exam. (View it in a larg­er for­mat here.) If you’re won­der­ing why she gave the test in March, per­haps it’s because the fol­low­ing month, she board­ed a plane to cov­er the Adolf Eich­mann tri­al for The New York­er.

What did Arendt want to make sure that her stu­dents under­stood before she left? See a tran­scrip­tion of the exam ques­tions below. We see the two poles of her lat­er argu­ment com­ing into focus, the French and the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion­ary ideas. The lat­ter exam­ple has been seen by many crit­i­cal philoso­phers as hard­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary at all, giv­en that it was pri­mar­i­ly waged in the inter­ests of mer­chants and slave-own­ing plan­ta­tion own­ers. It was, as one his­to­ri­an puts it, “a rev­o­lu­tion in favor of gov­ern­ment.”

This crit­i­cism is like­ly the basis of Arendt’s final ques­tion on the test. But in her eru­dite argu­ment, the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion is foun­da­tion­al to use of “rev­o­lu­tion” as a polit­i­cal term of art. As Arendt writes in a late 60s lec­ture, re-dis­cov­ered in 2017, “pri­or to the two great rev­o­lu­tions at the end of the 18th cen­tu­ry and the spe­cif­ic sense it then acquired, the word ‘rev­o­lu­tion’ was hard­ly promi­nent in the vocab­u­lary of polit­i­cal thought or prac­tice.” Rather, it main­ly had astro­log­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance.

Arendt saw all sub­se­quent world rev­o­lu­tions as par­tak­ing of the twinned log­ics of the 18th cen­tu­ry. “Its polit­i­cal usage was metaphor­i­cal,” she says, “describ­ing a move­ment back into some pre-estab­lished point, and hence a motion, a swing­ing back to a pre-ordained order.” Gen­er­al­ly, that order has been pre-ordained by the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies them­selves. See if your under­stand­ing of rev­o­lu­tion­ary his­to­ry is up to Arendt’s ped­a­gog­i­cal stan­dards, below, and get a more com­pre­hen­sive his­to­ry of rev­o­lu­tion from the read­ings on recent course syl­labus­es here, here, and here.

 

Answer at least five of the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

  1. What is the ori­gin of the word “rev­o­lu­tion”?

How was the word orig­i­nal­ly used in polit­i­cal lan­guage?

  1. Iden­ti­fy the fol­low­ing dates:

The 14th of July

The 9th of Ther­mi­dore

The 18th of Bru­maire

  1. Who wrote The Rights of Man?

Who wrote Reflec­tions on the French Rev­o­lu­tion?

What was the con­nec­tion between the two books?

  1. Who was Creve­coeur? Give title of his book.
  2. Enu­mer­ate some authors and books that played a role in the rev­o­lu­tions?
  3. What is the dif­fer­ence between abso­lutism and a “lim­it­ed monar­chy”?
  4. Who is the author of The Spir­it of the Laws?
  5. Which author had the great­est influ­ence on the men of the French Rev­o­lu­tion?
  6. What is meant by the phrase “state of nature”?
  7. The fol­low­ing words are of Greek ori­gin; give their Eng­lish equiv­a­lent: monarchy—oligarchy—aristocracy—democracy.

Write a short essay of no more than four pages on one of the fol­low­ing top­ics:

  1. It is a main the­sis of R.R. Palmer’s The Age of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rev­o­lu­tion that “the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion was an event with­in an Atlantic civ­i­liza­tion as a whole.” Explain and dis­cuss.

  2. Clin­ton Rossiter asserts that “America’s debt to the idea of social con­tract is so huge as to defy mea­sure­ment.” Explain and dis­cuss.

  3. Dif­fer­ences and sim­i­lar­i­ties between the Amer­i­can and the French Rev­o­lu­tion.

  4. Con­nect on pos­si­ble mean­ings of the phrase: Pur­suit of hap­pi­ness.

  5. Describe Melville’s atti­tude to the French Rev­o­lu­tion in Bil­ly Budd.

  6. The Amer­i­can Revolution—was there any?

via Saman­tha Hill

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Pro­pa­gan­da Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Moral­i­ty: Insights from The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism

Han­nah Arendt Explains Why Democ­ra­cies Need to Safe­guard the Free Press & Truth … to Defend Them­selves Against Dic­ta­tors and Their Lies

Large Archive of Han­nah Arendt’s Papers Dig­i­tized by the Library of Con­gress: Read Her Lec­tures, Drafts of Arti­cles, Notes & Cor­re­spon­dence

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

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Watch a Screen Test of 21-Year-Old Orson Welles (1937)

in Film, History | May 5th, 2020

We remem­ber Orson Welles as a film direc­tor, and giv­en the influ­ence of Cit­i­zen Kane, we do it with good rea­son. It cer­tain­ly does­n’t hurt the image of Welles-as-auteur that he was only 25 years old when he made that movie, now con­sid­ered one of the great­est of all time. Not only did he direct, he co-wrote, pro­duced, and starred, show­cas­ing a set of act­ing skills he’d been hon­ing on radio and the stage since child­hood. If any man was ever born to give com­mand­ing per­for­mances, it was Welles; when silent film gave way to “talkies,” which favored actors with strong pres­ences and strong voic­es both, Hol­ly­wood stu­dios should have beat­en a path to his door. And yet, when he came to Hol­ly­wood, one of its biggest stu­dios turned him down.

These clips show a 21-year-old Welles doing a screen test for Warn­er Broth­ers in ear­ly 1937, by which time he had already estab­lished him­self as a radio and the­atre per­former. What­ev­er spark of genius we feel we can rec­og­nize in Welles’ line-read­ings today, the peo­ple at Warn­ers’ evi­dent­ly could­n’t see it then — or more char­i­ta­bly, they did­n’t know how to sell his preter­nat­ur­al grav­i­tas.

As his­to­ry shows, Welles could in any case make more of a mark with projects under his own con­trol. Lat­er that same year he would co-found the Mer­cury The­atre, the reper­to­ry com­pa­ny now best remem­bered for its radio broad­casts, specif­i­cal­ly the 1938 adap­ta­tion of H.G. Wells’ alien-inva­sion nov­el War of the Worlds that, so the leg­end goes, proved a lit­tle too real for many lis­ten­ers across Amer­i­ca.

Mas­ter­ing the dra­mat­ic arts is one thing, but set­ting off nation­wide con­tro­ver­sy — now that’s the way to get the enter­tain­ment indus­try’s atten­tion. Welles found him­self able to par­lay the inter­est gen­er­at­ed by War of the Worlds into a his­tor­i­cal­ly gen­er­ous three-pic­ture deal with RKO Pic­tures, one that allowed him total cre­ative con­trol as well as the use of his actors from the Mer­cury The­atre. After com­ing to grips with the art of film­mak­ing as well as the art of putting togeth­er projects, Welles came up with the sto­ry of the rise and fall of char­ac­ter mod­eled on William Ran­dolph Hearst, Howard Hugh­es, and oth­er Amer­i­can tycoons. Released in 1941, Cit­i­zen Kane would mark the zenith of Welles’ fame, though over the next 44 years he would labor over many oth­er cin­e­mat­ic visions — efforts more acclaimed now than they were in his life­time, and all finan­cial­ly sup­port­ed by the act­ing skills that nev­er desert­ed him.

via Eyes on Cin­e­ma

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Orson Welles’ First Ever Film, Direct­ed at Age 19

Stream 61 Hours of Orson Welles’ Clas­sic 1930s Radio Plays: War of the Worlds, Heart of Dark­ness & More

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Orson Welles’ Last Inter­view and Final Moments Cap­tured on Film

Warhol’s Screen Tests of Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico & More

Mar­lon Bran­do Screen Tests for Rebel With­out A Cause (1947)

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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Peruvian Singer & Rapper, Renata Flores, Helps Preserve Quechua with Viral Hits on YouTube

in Language, Music | May 4th, 2020

Ten years ago, a study by David Har­mon and Jonathan Loh showed that in 30 years’ time, the world had seen a twen­ty per­cent decline in lin­guis­tic diver­si­ty. Indige­nous lan­guages and local dialects have con­tin­ued to dwin­dle, in the U.S. and around the globe. “There are a lot of pres­sures in the world that are entic­ing or even forc­ing peo­ple to switch from gen­er­al­ly small­er, more geo­graph­i­cal­ly restrict­ed lan­guages, to larg­er lan­guages,” Har­mon told Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, “espe­cial­ly glob­al lan­guages like Man­darin Chi­nese, Eng­lish, or Span­ish.”

This pres­sure has been exert­ed on indige­nous lan­guages for cen­turies. Yet hun­dreds have sur­vived, includ­ing Quechua, a fam­i­ly of lan­guages descend­ed from the Inca, and spo­ken by almost 4 mil­lion peo­ple in Peru alone. With many more speak­ers in Bolivia, Argenti­na, and else­where, it is Latin America’s most wide­ly spo­ken Indige­nous lan­guage.

It may seem to be thriv­ing, but Quechua speak­ers are wide­ly treat­ed with con­tempt in Peru, though they make up rough­ly 13% of the pop­u­la­tion. They are the country’s poor and ignored. Quechua has been gross­ly under­stud­ied in acad­e­mia and until recent­ly has had almost no major media pres­ence.

The language’s absence from cen­ters of pow­er has made it less acces­si­ble to new­er generations—whose par­ents would not teach them Quechua for fear of stig­ma­tiz­ing them—and more like­ly to die out with­out inter­ven­tion. It became “syn­ony­mous with dis­crim­i­na­tion” and “social rejec­tion,” says Hugo Coya, direc­tor of a recent Peru­vian news pro­gram entire­ly in Quechua. Coya aims to change that, as does Peru­vian schol­ar Rox­ana Quispe Col­lantes, who defend­ed the first Quechua doc­tor­al the­sis last year. Their work will sure­ly have sig­nif­i­cant impact, but per­haps not near­ly as much as the debut of a 14-year-old Peru­vian singer and rap­per, Rena­ta Flo­res, who had a viral hit five years ago with her Quechua cov­er of Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel” (top).

Flo­res, now 19, has fol­lowed up with a string of songs in Quechua that have “brought huge suc­cess,” writes Vice, “mil­lions of views on YouTube; fea­tures and inter­views in Peru­vian media and for­eign press like The Clin­ic, Tele­mu­n­do, El Paid, AJ+ Español, CNN, and BBC; fans in Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Argenti­na, Guatemala, Domini­can Repub­lic, Cos­ta Rica, Puer­to Rico, Mex­i­co, the Unit­ed States, Spain, Italy, Chi­na, Alge­ria, and count­ing. And with it, Flo­res is chal­leng­ing the very way peo­ple val­ue lan­guages, espe­cial­ly indige­nous ones.” Her music may speak the lan­guage of a spe­cif­ic region, but does so in a glob­al idiom, com­bin­ing “trap, hip-hop, and elec­tron­ic influ­ences with Andean instru­ments.”

Flo­res’ suc­cess in bring­ing such wide­spread atten­tion to Quechua shows anoth­er major cul­tur­al shift of the past few years. Inter­net cul­ture, once assumed to be ephemer­al and of lit­tle last­ing val­ue, has become the coin of the realm, as aca­d­e­m­ic human­i­ties strug­gle, polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions implode, and jour­nal­ism fails. The joke so often goes that his­to­ri­ans of the future will have to fill text­books (or inter­ac­tive vir­tu­al real­i­ty lessons) with tweets, posts, and memes. Viral YouTube stars like Flo­res are also mak­ing his­to­ry, their videos pri­ma­ry doc­u­ments of how a lan­guage that is mar­gin­al­ized in its home coun­try reached out and found mil­lions of fans around the world.

“The mes­sage con­veyed to Quechua speak­ers” by most treat­ments of their cul­ture in Peru, “is that their iden­ti­ties are part of the region’s past,” writes Julie Turke­witz in a New York Times pro­file of Flo­res. Har­mon makes a sim­i­lar con­nec­tion: “there is a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that we’ll lose lan­guages that peo­ple are using as their main vehi­cle of expres­sion, which they may regard as one of the linch­pins of their self-iden­ti­ty.” When nation­al nar­ra­tives, media, and edu­ca­tion rel­e­gate a con­tem­po­rary lan­guage to a pre-colo­nial past, it tells mil­lions of peo­ple they essen­tial­ly don’t exist in the mod­ern world. Flo­res, who grew up with Quechua, coun­ters that mes­sage with style.

Flo­res and oth­er Quechua singers not only reaf­firm their cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, but they put their lan­guage in con­ver­sa­tion with con­tem­po­rary pop music and polit­i­cal con­cerns. Tak­ing on “female pow­er, gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion, war and inter­na­tion­al pop cul­ture polemics,” writes Turke­witz, Flo­res con­tin­ues a lega­cy her one-time musi­cian par­ents helped launch decades ear­li­er, a Quechua-lan­guage blue-rock move­ment called Uch­pa. Now her fam­i­ly helps her record her own songs in their music school. But like most young artists she began with cov­ers. See her play a Quechua ver­sion of “House of the Ris­ing Sun” as a 14-year-old con­test win­ner, fur­ther up; see her very first con­cert, at the same age, in her home­town of Ayacu­cho, below. And see what she’s been up to since then in the videos above and on her YouTube chan­nel.

via NYTimes

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peru­vian Schol­ar Writes & Defends the First The­sis Writ­ten in Quechua, the Main Lan­guage of the Incan Empire

Opti­cal Scan­ning Tech­nol­o­gy Lets Researchers Recov­er Lost Indige­nous Lan­guages from Old Wax Cylin­der Record­ings

200+ Films by Indige­nous Direc­tors Now Free to View Online: A New Archive Launched by the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

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

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Watch Jean-Luc Godard’s Filmmaking Masterclass on Instagram

in Current Affairs, Film | May 4th, 2020

As the last liv­ing major French New Wave direc­tor, Jean-Luc Godard has become a kind of ora­cle for younger film­mak­ers and cinéastes. Despite hav­ing turned 89 last Decem­ber, he remains in a sense what film schol­ar David Bor­d­well not long ago called “the youngest film­mak­er at work today.” When Godard start­ed work­ing in cin­e­ma just about 65 years ago, it did­n’t take him long to make his name by break­ing its rules. Ever since, he’s ward­ed off com­pla­cen­cy by con­tin­u­ing to rethink, at the most fun­da­men­tal lev­el, not just film but the nature of images, sounds and words them­selves. And he pur­sues this line of think­ing in any avail­able medi­um, includ­ing, as demon­strat­ed in the con­ver­sa­tion above on “images in the time of the coro­n­avirus,” Insta­gram Live.

This form, as a film­mak­er like Godard would sure­ly appre­ci­ate, suits the sub­stance. No venue could be more of the moment than Insta­gram Live, as per­form­ers of all kinds have tak­en to stream­ing them­selves from home in the midst of the glob­al pan­dem­ic. But where many such fig­ures use the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take view­ers’ minds off the coro­n­avirus, Godard and his inter­view­er Lionel Baier, head of the cin­e­ma depart­ment at Lau­san­ne’s ECAL Uni­ver­si­ty of Art and Design, use it as a start­ing point. What begins as a dis­cus­sion of Godard­’s news-watch­ing habits turns into a con­ver­sa­tion­al jour­ney across such sub­jects as film­mak­ing, writ­ing, paint­ing, phi­los­o­phy, sci­ence, med­i­cine, law, and lan­guage. “I don’t believe in lan­guage,” goes one of Godard­’s char­ac­ter­is­tic pro­nounce­ments. “What needs to be changed is the alpha­bet. There are too many let­ters and we should delete lots of them.”

Per­haps that does­n’t come as a sur­prise from a direc­tor whose recent pic­tures include one called Good­bye to Lan­guage. But spo­ken or filmed, Godard­’s ideas on the mat­ter also reflect his per­son­al expe­ri­ence: he tells of hav­ing for a time lost the mem­o­ry of names of cer­tain fruits and veg­eta­bles, and con­se­quent­ly devel­op­ing a visu­al method of remem­ber­ing his gro­cery lists. Such every­day sto­ries come along with ref­er­ences to a wide range of artists, sci­en­tists, philoso­phers, and “adven­tur­ers” in his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly from the his­to­ry of the Fran­coph­o­ne world. More than once aris­es the name of Nicéphore Niépce, the 19th-cen­tu­ry French inven­tor respon­si­ble for the first known pho­to­graph ever tak­en (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) and a sub­ject of one of Godard­’s cur­rent works-in-progress.

“In the film I’m going to make,” Godard explains, “I ask what Niépce believed he was doing or what his inten­tions were when he sim­ply want­ed to copy real­i­ty.” All through­out his decades as a film­mak­er, Godard has clear­ly kept ask­ing the same ques­tion about him­self: in mak­ing films, does he want to “copy real­i­ty” or do some­thing more inter­est­ing? For­tu­nate­ly for cin­e­ma, he always seems to have opt­ed for the lat­ter, back to his days with his Nou­velle Vague com­pa­tri­ots François Truf­faut, Jacques Riv­ette, Claude Chabrol, and Éric Rohmer, all of whom fig­ure into his rem­i­nis­cences here. And will COVID-19 fig­ure in a future Godard film? “It’ll have an influ­ence but not direct­ly,” he says. “The virus should def­i­nite­ly be talked about once or twice. With every­thing that comes with it, the virus is a form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It does­n’t mean we’re going to die from it, but we might not live very well with it either.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Luc Godard’s Inno­v­a­tive Film­mak­ing Through Five Video Essays

How the French New Wave Changed Cin­e­ma: A Video Intro­duc­tion to the Films of Godard, Truf­faut & Their Fel­low Rule-Break­ers

Jean-Luc Godard Takes Cannes’ Rejec­tion of Breath­less in Stride in 1960 Inter­view

How Jean-Luc Godard Lib­er­at­ed Cin­e­ma: A Video Essay on How the Great­est Rule-Break­er in Film Made His Name

Jean-Luc Godard Gives a Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of Han­nah Arendt’s “On the Nature of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

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 Art of the New Deal: Why the Federal Government Funded the Arts During the Great Depression

in Art, Health, History | May 4th, 2020

It’s odd to think that the gray-faced, gray-suit­ed U.S. Cold War­riors of the 1950s fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism and left-wing lit­er­ary mag­a­zines in a cul­tur­al offen­sive against the Sovi­et Union. And yet they did. This seem­ing his­tor­i­cal irony is com­pound­ed by the fact that so many of the artists enlist­ed (most­ly unwit­ting­ly) in the cul­tur­al Cold War might not have had careers were it not for the New Deal pro­grams of 20 years ear­li­er, denounced by Repub­li­cans at the time as com­mu­nist.

The New Deal faced fierce oppo­si­tion, and its pas­sage involved some very unfor­tu­nate com­pro­mis­es. But for artists, it was a major boon. Pro­grams estab­lished under the Works Progress Admin­is­tra­tion in 1935 helped thou­sands of artists sur­vive until they could get back to ply­ing trades, work­ing as pro­fes­sion­als, or build­ing world-famous careers. Artists and art work­ers once sup­port­ed by the WPA include Dorothea Lange, Langston Hugh­es, Orson Welles, Ralph Elli­son, Zora Neale Hurston, Gor­don Parks, Alan Lomax, Mark Rothko, Jack­son Pol­lock, James Agee, and dozens more famous names.

There were also thou­sands of unknown painters, pho­tog­ra­phers, sculp­tors, poets, dancers, play­wrights, etc. who received fund­ing in their local areas to put their skills to work. “Through the WPA,” the Nation­al Gallery of Art writes, artists “par­tic­i­pat­ed in gov­ern­ment employ­ment pro­grams in every state and coun­ty in the nation.” As to the ques­tion of whether their work deserved to be paid, “Har­ry Hop­kins,” Jer­ry Adler writes at Smith­son­ian, “whom Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt put in charge of work relief, set­tled the mat­ter, say­ing, ‘”Hell, they’ve got to eat just like oth­er peo­ple!”

He turns the ques­tion about who “deserves” relief on its head. Dance may not be nec­es­sary by some people’s lights but eat­ing most cer­tain­ly is. Why shouldn’t artists use their tal­ent to beau­ti­fy the coun­try, col­lect and archive its cul­tur­al his­to­ry, and pro­vide qual­i­ty enter­tain­ment in uncer­tain times? And why should­n’t the coun­try’s artists doc­u­ment the enor­mous build­ing projects under­way, and the major shifts hap­pen­ing in peo­ple’s lives, for pos­ter­i­ty?

Roo­sevelt, tak­ing many of his cues from Eleanor, spoke of fund­ing the arts in much grander terms than the prag­mat­ic Hop­kins. He elab­o­rat­ed on his belief in their “essen­tial” nature in a speech at the ded­i­ca­tion of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s new build­ing in 1939:

Art in Amer­i­ca has always belonged to the peo­ple and has nev­er been the prop­er­ty of an acad­e­my or a class. The great Trea­sury projects, through which our pub­lic build­ings are being dec­o­rat­ed, are an excel­lent exam­ple of the con­ti­nu­ity of this tra­di­tion. The Fed­er­al Art Project of the Works Progress Admin­is­tra­tion is a prac­ti­cal relief project which also empha­sizes the best tra­di­tion of the demo­c­ra­t­ic spir­it. The W.P.A. artist, in ren­der­ing his own impres­sion of things, speaks also for the spir­it of his fel­low coun­try­men every­where. I think the W.P.A. artist exem­pli­fies with great force the essen­tial place which the arts have in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety such as ours.

In the future we must seek more wide­spread pop­u­lar under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of the arts. Many of our great cities pro­vide the facil­i­ties for such appre­ci­a­tion. But we all know that because of their lack of size and rich­es the small­er com­mu­ni­ties are in most cas­es denied this oppor­tu­ni­ty. That is why I give spe­cial empha­sis to the need of giv­ing these small­er com­mu­ni­ties the visu­al chance to get to know mod­ern art.

As in our democ­ra­cy we enjoy the right to believe in dif­fer­ent reli­gious creeds or in none, so can Amer­i­can artists express them­selves with com­plete free­dom from the stric­tures of dead artis­tic tra­di­tion or polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy. While Amer­i­can artists have dis­cov­ered a new oblig­a­tion to the soci­ety in which they live, they have no com­pul­sion to be lim­it­ed in method or man­ner of expres­sion.

He began the address with sev­er­al airy phras­es about free­dom and lib­er­ty; here, he defines what that looks like for the artist—the abil­i­ty to have dig­ni­fied work and liveli­hood, and to oper­ate with full cre­ative free­dom. Of course, artists, espe­cial­ly those employed in dec­o­rat­ing pub­lic build­ings, were con­strained by cer­tain “Amer­i­can” themes. But they could inter­pret those themes broad­ly, and they did, pic­tur­ing scenes of hard­ship and leisure, recov­er­ing the past and imag­in­ing bet­ter futures.

It could­n’t last. “The WPA-era art pro­grams reflect­ed a trend toward the democ­ra­ti­za­tion of the arts in the Unit­ed States and a striv­ing to devel­op a unique­ly Amer­i­can and broad­ly inclu­sive cul­tur­al life,” the Nation­al Gallery explains. Art from this peri­od “offers a win­dow through which to explore the social con­di­tions of the Depres­sion, the main­stream­ing of art and birth of ‘pub­lic art,’ and the open­ing of gov­ern­ment employ­ment to women and African Amer­i­cans.” Oppo­nents of the pro­grams pushed back with red bait­ing. Arts fund­ing under the WPA was end­ed in 1943 by a Con­gress, says schol­ar of the peri­od Fran­cis O’Connor, who could “look at two blades of grass and see a ham­mer and sick­le.”

See much more New Deal art–including plays, pho­tog­ra­phy, art posters and more–at the Nation­al Gallery of Art, the Nation­al Archives, Smith­son­ian, and at the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yale Presents an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

Strik­ing Poster Col­lec­tion from the Great Depres­sion Shows That the US Gov­ern­ment Once Sup­port­ed the Arts in Amer­i­ca

Young Orson Welles Directs “Voodoo Mac­beth,” the First Shake­speare Pro­duc­tion With An All-Black Cast: Footage from 1936

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Take a Virtual Tour of the World’s Only Sourdough Library

in Food & Drink, Libraries, Travel | May 4th, 2020

There’s 15-year-old Pre­cious from the Nether­lands…

And Bub­ble from Aus­tralia, age 4…

Yeasty Beasty Methuse­lah, from Twin Falls, Ida­ho, is esti­mat­ed to be around 50…

Every sour­dough starter is spe­cial to the ones who made or main­tain it, but of the 1000s reg­is­tered online with Quest for Sour­dough, only 125 have earned a per­ma­nent place in the Puratos Sour­dough Library in Saint-Vith, Bel­gium. It’s the world’s only library ded­i­cat­ed to Sour­dough, and you can take a vir­tu­al tour here.

Housed in iden­ti­cal jars in a muse­um-qual­i­ty refrig­er­at­ed cab­i­nets, these her­itage starters have been care­ful­ly select­ed by librar­i­an Karl De Smedt, above, who trav­els the world vis­it­ing bak­eries, tast­ing bread, and learn­ing the sto­ries behind each sam­ple that enters the col­lec­tion.

As De Smedt recalls in an inter­view with the Sour­dough Pod­cast, the idea for the muse­um began tak­ing shape when a Lebanese bak­er reached out to Puratos, a hun­dred-year-old com­pa­ny that sup­plies com­mer­cial bak­ers and pas­try mak­ers with essen­tials of the trade. The man’s sons returned from a bak­ing expo in Paris and informed their dad that when they took over, they planned to retire his time-hon­ored prac­tice of bak­ing with fer­ment­ed chick­peas in favor of instant yeast. Wor­ried that his prized recipe would be lost to his­to­ry, he appealed to Puratos to help pre­serve his pro­to­cols.

While fer­ment­ed chick­peas do not count as sourdough—a com­bi­na­tion of flour, water, and the result­ing microor­gan­isms this mar­riage gives rise to over time—the com­pa­ny had recent­ly col­lect­ed and ana­lyzed 43 ven­er­a­ble starters. The bulk came from Italy, includ­ing one from Alta­mu­ra, the “city of bread, pro­duc­er of what Horace called in 37 B.C. ‘the best bread to be had, so good that the wise trav­el­er takes a sup­ply of it for his onward jour­ney.’”

Thus was a non-cir­cu­lat­ing library born.

Each spec­i­men is ana­lyzed by food micro­bi­ol­o­gist Mar­co Gob­bet­ti from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bolzano and Bari.

A col­lab­o­ra­tion with North Car­oli­na State Uni­ver­si­ty biol­o­gists Rob Dunn and Anne Mad­den revealed that sour­dough bak­ers’ hands share dis­tinct microbes with their starters.

More than 1100 strains of microor­gan­isms have been record­ed so far.

Every two months, the starters are tak­en out of the fridge and fed, i.e. reac­ti­vat­ed, with a com­bi­na­tion of water and some of their flour of ori­gin, year­ly quan­ti­ties of which are con­tributed by their bak­ers. With­out this reg­u­lar care, the starters will die off.

(The pan­dem­ic has De Smedt work­ing from home, but he inti­mat­ed to The New York Times that he intend­ed to make it back to feed his babies, or “moth­ers” as they are known in sour­dough cir­cles.)

#72 from Mex­i­co feeds on eggs, lime and beer

#100 from Japan is made of cooked sake rice.

#106 is a vet­er­an of the Gold Rush.

Their con­sis­ten­cy is doc­u­ment­ed along a line that ranges from hard to flu­id, with Sil­ly Put­ty in the mid­dle.

Each year, De Smedt expands the col­lec­tion with starters from a dif­fer­ent area of the world. The lat­est addi­tions come from Turkey, and are doc­u­ment­ed in the mouth­wa­ter­ing trav­el­ogue above.

For now, of course, he’s ground­ed in Bel­gium, and using his Insta­gram account to pro­vide encour­age­ment to oth­er sour­dough prac­ti­tion­ers, answer­ing rook­ie ques­tions and show­ing off some of the loaves pro­duced by his own per­son­al starters, Bar­bara and Aman­da.

Reg­is­ter your starter on Quest for Sour­dough here.

If you haven’t yet tak­en the sour­dough plunge, you can par­tic­i­pate in North Car­oli­na State University’s Wild Sour­dough Project by fol­low­ing their instruc­tions on mak­ing a starter from scratch and then sub­mit­ting your data here.

And bide your time until you’re cleared to vis­it the Puratos Sour­dough Library in per­son by tak­ing an inter­ac­tive vir­tu­al tour or watch­ing a com­plete playlist of De Smedt’s col­lect­ing trips here.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

An Archive of Hand­writ­ten Tra­di­tion­al Mex­i­can Cook­books Is Now Online

400 Ways to Make a Sand­wich: A 1909 Cook­book Full of Cre­ative Recipes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her cur­rent starter, Miss Sour­dough, was brought to life with an unholy splash of apple cider. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Doobie Brothers Sing Their 1974 Classic, “Black Water,” Live, in Isolation

in Music | May 1st, 2020

The Doo­bie Brothers–they can’t tour this sum­mer and cel­e­brate their 50th anniver­sary. But they can give you this: a per­for­mance of 1974’s “Black Water” per­formed vir­tu­al­ly, live, in iso­la­tion. Make sure you catch the fan con­tri­bu­tions toward the end…

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The Stay At Home Museum: Your Private, Guided Tours of Rubens, Bruegel & Other Flemish Masters

in Art, Museums, Travel | May 1st, 2020

Of the many world class muse­ums treat­ing a stuck-at-home pub­lic to vir­tu­al tours of their col­lec­tions, none inspire the resolve for future trav­el as the Stay At Home Muse­um, an ini­tia­tive of the Flan­ders tourism board.

Before the COVID-19 epi­dem­ic response demand­ed the tem­po­rary shut­ter­ing of all such attrac­tions, the region was enter­ing the final year of a 3‑year fes­ti­val cel­e­brat­ing such Flem­ish mas­ters as Jan Van Eyck, Pieter Bruegel, and Peter Paul Rubens.

Its web­site appeals to young, hip vis­i­tors by match­ing inter­ests with celebri­ty tour guides: Bac­chus (as ren­dered by Rubens) for eat­ing and drink­ing in an arty atmos­phere and Rubens’ Venus for cul­tur­al­ly respon­si­ble shop­ping and dia­mond admir­ing.

Oth­er entic­ing prospects we can’t take advan­tage of at present:

A down­load­able Bruegel walk­ing tour map

Rubens-inspired beer tourism

A Flem­ish Mas­ters itin­er­ary for chil­dren

An open air aug­ment­ed real­i­ty expe­ri­ence based on Bruegel’s The Fight Between Car­ni­val and Lent

Our sad­ness at miss­ing these can­not be chalked up to FOMO. Right now, the whole world is miss­ing out.

So, con­sid­er the Stay At Home Muse­um a pre­view, some­thing to help us enjoy our trips to the region all the more at some point in the future, by edu­cat­ing our­selves on the painters who made Flan­ders famous.

The series is also a treat for the Zoom weary. The expert guides aren’t fac­ing their web­cams at home, but rather using their high lev­el access to lead us through the emp­ty muse­ums in which the exhibits are still installed.

No jostling…

No crowd­ing in front of the most cel­e­brat­ed pieces…

No inane lunch-relat­ed chat­ter from tourists who aren’t into art as deeply as you are…

Above, Van Eyck expert Till-Hol­ger Borchert, Direc­tor of Musea Bruges, ori­ents us to the artist and his work, most notably the Ghent altar­piece, aka Ado­ra­tion of the Mys­tic Lamb, a 12-pan­el polyp­tych that Van Eyck worked on with Hugo, the old­er broth­er who died 6 years before its com­ple­tion.

Pay close atten­tion to Adam and Eve’s body hair. Borchert cer­tain­ly does.

He also sheds a lot of inter­est­ing light on the sig­nif­i­cance of mate­ri­als, fram­ing choic­es, and com­po­si­tion.

The restored altar­piece was slat­ed to be rein­stalled in its orig­i­nal home of Ghent’s Saint Bavo’s Cathe­dral, fol­low­ing the sched­uled clos­ing of Jan van Eyck: An Opti­cal Rev­o­lu­tion—April 30, 2020.

The Roy­al Muse­um of Fine Art’s direc­tor Michel Draguet takes us on a French-speak­ing jour­ney inside Bruegel’s paint­ing, The Fall of the Rebel Angels.

Ben Van Bene­den, the direc­tor of the Rubens House, invites us into Ruben’s “art gallery room”—something no self-respect­ing wealthy poly­glot diplomat/aesthete who’s also a Baroque painter would do with­out, appar­ent­ly.

The peek at Rubens’ gar­den is nice too, espe­cial­ly for those of us with no pri­vate out­door space of our own.

Jump­ing ahead to the Bel­gian avant-garde of the late nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­turies, cura­tor Mieke Mels of Ostennd’s the Mu.ZEE spills the beans on why native son, James Ensor, shield­ed his 1888 mas­ter­piece Christ’s Entry into Brus­sels from the pub­lic view for 3 decades.

This episode has been trans­lat­ed into Inter­na­tion­al Sign Lan­guage for deaf and hear­ing impaired view­ers.

A fifth and alleged­ly final episode is forth­com­ing. View a playlist of all Stay At Home Muse­um episodes here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

14 Paris Muse­ums Put 300,000 Works of Art Online: Down­load Clas­sics by Mon­et, Cézanne & More

The British Muse­um Puts 1.9 Mil­lion Works of Art Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. It’s been so long since she vis­it­ed Bel­gium, she can’t remem­ber if her indis­cre­tion in the Bruges youth hos­tel made it into her trav­el mem­oir, No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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    Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.