Hear Patti Smith’s New Work With The Soundwalk Collective, a Tribute to the Avant-Garde Poet Antonin Artaud

in Music | March 7th, 2019

The Sound­walk Col­lec­tive has made music art out of found sounds since 2004. They record­ed 2012’s Medea while tra­vers­ing the Black Sea and fish­ing for sounds using a scan­ner and high pow­ered aer­i­al anten­nas; 2014’s Last Beat used con­tact micro­phones on the archi­tec­ture of a music club to col­lect vibra­tions instead of music; 2017’s Before Music There Is Blood col­laged deep echo­ing record­ings of clas­si­cal music played in var­i­ous halls. This time, in their upcom­ing The Pey­ote Dance, they have brought in poet and rock god­dess Pat­ti Smith for a trip into Mex­i­co.

The above track “The New Rev­e­la­tions of Being” is a pre­view of what’s to come. The album title comes from a book by Antonin Artaud, the avant-garde the­ater direc­tor and author, who trav­eled to Mex­i­co to explore rev­e­la­to­ry visions with the Rará­muri peo­ple in 1936. Artaud was hop­ing that pey­ote would shake his opi­oid addic­tion. When he lat­er returned to France, Artaud stayed and remained in an insane asy­lum, receiv­ing elec­tric shock ther­a­py. His time with the Rará­muri stayed a touch­stone of hap­pi­ness dur­ing his dark­est days.

With a shared belief that trav­el expands the mind, the Sound­walk Col­lec­tive trav­eled to the same Sier­ra Tarahu­marar region of Mex­i­co as Artaud, vis­it­ed the same places he stayed, and indeed also took pey­ote. They record­ed instru­ments and sound­scapes, and then back in the States, Pat­ti Smith wrote and record­ed poems based on Artaud’s book, his oth­er works, and her own respons­es to the sound fields.

“The poets enter the blood­stream, they enter the cells. For a moment, one is Artaud,” Smith said about the record­ing. “You can’t ask for it, you can’t buy it, you can’t take drugs for it to be authen­tic. It just has to hap­pen, you have to be cho­sen as well as choose.”

The album is the first in a tril­o­gy with Smith about poets and trav­el. The oth­er two albums will be based on works and jour­neys by Arthur Rim­baud and René Dau­mal, and fea­ture sounds record­ed at the Abyssin­ian val­ley of Ethiopia and the Himalayan Sum­mit of India respec­tive­ly.

This not the first time the group has col­lab­o­rat­ed with Pat­ti Smith. In 2016, they released Killer Road a trib­ute to Nico and her final days on the island of Ibiza, where the singer plunged to her death on a bicy­cle ride. The album also fea­tured vocals by Smith’s daugh­ter Jessie Paris Smith.

Sound­walk Col­lec­tive mem­ber Stephan Cras­nean­sc­ki first met Pat­ti Smith, fit­ting­ly, at an air­port in Paris, as the two were return­ing from sep­a­rate artis­tic trav­els: Cras­nean­sc­ki from East­ern Europe and Rus­sia, Smith from French Guiana and Tang­iers.

The Pey­ote Dance will be released May 31 on Bel­la Union.

via Lithub

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s List of Favorite Books: From Rim­baud to Susan Son­tag

Pat­ti Smith’s Award-Win­ning Mem­oir, Just Kids, Now Avail­able in a New Illus­trat­ed Edi­tion
Hear Antonin Artaud’s Cen­sored, Nev­er-Aired Radio Play: To Have Done With The Judg­ment of God (1947)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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“Stay Free: The Story of the Clash” Narrated by Public Enemy’s Chuck D: A New 8‑Episode Podcast

in Music, Podcasts | March 7th, 2019

Spo­ti­fy, in part­ner­ship with the BBC, has launched “Stay Free: The Sto­ry of the Clash,” an eight-part pod­cast on the icon­ic punk band, nar­rat­ed by Pub­lic Ene­my front man, Chuck D. It might seem like an unex­pect­ed pair­ing. And yet Spo­ti­fy explains: “Like The Clash, Pub­lic Ene­my open­ly chal­lenged the sta­tus quo in a com­plete­ly orig­i­nal way—this par­al­lel and Chuck D’s per­son­al expe­ri­ences bring a sur­pris­ing new dimen­sion to the sto­ry of The Clash.” Review­ing the pro­duc­tion in The New York­er, Sarah Lar­son adds:

In [“Stay Free: The Sto­ry of the Clash”], we learn that Chuck D, a radio d.j. at the time, co-found­ed Pub­lic Ene­my after a con­ver­sa­tion, in 1986, with a friend at Def Jam, who want­ed him to become “the hip-hop ver­sion of Joe Strum­mer,” of the Clash—to make music with “intel­lec­tu­al heft” that could also “rock the par­ty.” And read­er, he did. His pres­ence as nar­ra­tor adds appeal­ing per­spec­tive and grav­i­tas to the pod­cast, which begins with the sto­ry of the Clash’s ori­gins, in a West Lon­don riot in 1976. With a skill­ful­ly lay­ered pre­sen­ta­tion of punk music, sev­en­ties-Lon­don audio, and inter­view clips, the pod­cast so far thrills me the way that “Mogul,” the Spo­ti­fy-Gim­let pod­cast about the late hip-hop mogul Chris Lighty, did; I’m eager to hear the rest.

Watch the pod­cast trail­er above. Stream the pod­cast episodes–all eight–on Spo­ti­fy here. Also the relat­ed playlist of music. And remem­ber folks, The Clash, they’re still the only band that mat­ters…

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:

The Beast­ie Boys Release a New Free­wheel­ing Mem­oir, and a Star-Stud­ded 13-Hour Audio­book Fea­tur­ing Snoop Dogg, Elvis Costel­lo, Bette Midler, John Stew­art & Dozens More

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

Mick Jones Plays Three Favorite Clash Songs at the Library

Doc­u­men­tary Viva Joe Strum­mer: The Sto­ry of the Clash Sur­veys the Career of Rock’s Beloved Front­man

The Clash Star in 1980’s Gang­ster Par­o­dy Hell W10, a Film Direct­ed by Joe Strum­mer

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Sleep or Die: Neuroscientist Matthew Walker Explains How Sleep Can Restore or Imperil Our Health

in Health, Neuroscience | March 7th, 2019

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could fix the work/life thing by chuck­ing out the dif­fer­ence? At home, you’re in the office, at the office, you’re at home, always on and nev­er off—sleep, option­al. Two-four hours per 24-hour cycle should be enough, right? Wrong. We need prop­er sleep like we need good food, low stress, engag­ing pur­suits, etc.—to thrive and live a long and hap­py life. If you wait until you’re dead to sleep, you’ll be dead soon­er than you think. “Short sleep pre­dicts a short­er life,” explains sleep researcher Matthew Walk­er in the RSA ani­ma­tion Sleep or Die, above. “Sleep,” he says, “is a non-nego­tiable bio­log­i­cal neces­si­ty.“

The Nation­al Sleep Foun­da­tion rec­om­mends that adults sleep an aver­age of eight hours a night. That num­ber may vary from per­son to per­son, but few­er than six can be high­ly detri­men­tal. Walk­er is some­thing of a “sleep evan­ge­list,” notes Berke­ley News. Ask him about “the down­side of pulling an all-nighter, and he’ll rat­tle off a list of ill effects that range from mem­o­ry loss and a com­pro­mised immune sys­tem to junk food crav­ings and wild mood swings.” The neu­ro­sci­en­tist tells Ter­ry Gross on Fresh Air, “Every dis­ease that is killing us in devel­oped nations has causal and sig­nif­i­cant links to a lack of sleep.”

Walk­er has a lot more to say about sleep in the inter­view below, includ­ing tips for get­ting there, whether you can make up for lost sleep (you can’t), and why you shouldn’t yank teenagers out of bed on the week­ends. Why should we lis­ten to him? Well, he isn’t just any sleep sci­en­tist. “To be spe­cif­ic,” writes Rachel Cooke at The Guardian, “he is the direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Human Sleep Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, a research insti­tute whose goal—possibly unachievable—is to under­stand every­thing about sleep’s impact on us, from birth to death, in sick­ness and health.”

 

The ben­e­fits of sound sleep include enhanced cre­ativ­i­ty and con­cen­tra­tion, low­er blood pres­sure, bet­ter mood reg­u­la­tion, and high­er immu­ni­ty and fer­til­i­ty. Lack of sleep, how­ev­er, is “increas­ing our risk of can­cer, heart attack and Alzheimer’s,” notes Cooke. Indeed, “after just one night of only four or five hours’ sleep,” Walk­er tells The Guardian, “your nat­ur­al killer cells—the ones that attack the can­cer cells that appear in your body every day—drop by 70%.” Sleep depri­va­tion has such seri­ous out­comes that “the World Health Organ­i­sa­tion has classed any form of night-time shift work as a prob­a­ble car­cino­gen.”

Sleep holds many mys­ter­ies, but one thing sci­en­tists like Walk­er seem to know: poor sleep leaves us more in sick­ness than in health. And we are in the midst of a “cat­a­stroph­ic sleep-loss epi­dem­ic.” “No one would look at an infant baby asleep, and say ‘What a lazy baby!” Walk­er observes. Yet adults have “stig­ma­tized sleep with the label of lazi­ness. We want to seem busy, and one way we express that is by pro­claim­ing how lit­tle sleep we’re get­ting.” It’s a way to broad­cast that we aren’t falling behind or miss­ing out. But our bod­ies’ nat­ur­al cycles and rhythms don’t speed up along with tech­nol­o­gy and glob­al mar­kets.

“As bed­rooms every­where glow from the screens of round-the-clock tech­nol­o­gy con­sump­tion,” Berke­ley News writes, mil­lions of peo­ple suf­fer phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, cog­ni­tive, and psy­cho­log­i­cal stress­es. Or, put more pos­i­tive­ly, “a grow­ing body of sci­en­tif­ic work” shows that “a sol­id sev­en to nine hours of sleep a night serves func­tions beyond our wildest imag­i­na­tions.” Learn more about not only what’s gone wrong with sleep, but how to start address­ing the prob­lem in Walker’s book Why We Sleep: Unlock­ing the Pow­er of Sleep and Dreams.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Russell’s Advice For How (Not) to Grow Old: “Make Your Inter­ests Grad­u­al­ly Wider and More Imper­son­al”

Bri­an Eno Lists the Ben­e­fits of Singing: A Long Life, Increased Intel­li­gence, and a Sound Civ­i­liza­tion

10 Longevi­ty Tips from Dr. Shigea­ki Hino­hara, Japan’s 105-Year-Old Longevi­ty Expert

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

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Van Gogh’s Ugliest Masterpiece: A Break Down of His Late, Great Painting, The Night Café (1888)

in Art | March 7th, 2019

Ask passers­by to name a Vin­cent van Gogh paint­ing off the top of their heads, and most will come up with works like The Star­ry Night, The Pota­to Eaters, one of his self-por­traits (prob­a­bly with his ear ban­daged), or maybe the one with the smok­ing skele­ton David Sedaris used for a book cov­er. How many will men­tion 1888’s The Night Café, an inte­ri­or, van Gogh wrote to his broth­er Theo from Arles (the town in the south of France where he had come in search of Japan-like sur­round­ings), “of the café where I have a room, by gas light, in the evening,” the kind of place that nev­er clos­es, accom­mo­dat­ing the kind of “night prowlers” who “have no mon­ey to pay for a lodg­ing, or are too drunk to be tak­en in”?

Promis­ing sub­ject mat­ter for a painter, one might think. When Vin­cent wrote back to Theo after com­plet­ing The Night Café, he described the paint­ing “one of the ugli­est I’ve done,” but that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean he saw it as a fail­ure, or indeed that we should­n’t see it as a mas­ter­piece. “At first glance, you can see what he meant,” says Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, in the explain­er above. “This is a jar­ring image, even for van Gogh, espe­cial­ly when you com­pare it to his oth­er famous scene of a café in Arles, Café Ter­race at Night,” which “cap­tures that roman­tic sense of Euro­pean cafés on sum­mer evenings where friends gath­er to talk and laugh.” And yet The Night Café is “a paint­ing of anx­i­ety,” offer­ing the night­mare to Café Ter­race at Night’s “dream of French night life.”

Just as van Gogh used col­or “to cap­ture his emo­tion­al response to nat­ur­al beau­ty” in oth­er paint­ings, here he used col­or “to con­vey the uneasi­ness of a low-class bar­room after mid­night.” Puschak digs into the artist’s let­ters and finds clear­ly stat­ed intent behind all this: “I’ve tried to express the ter­ri­ble human pas­sions with the red and the green,” wrote van Gogh. “Every­where it’s a bat­tle and an antithe­sis of the most dif­fer­ent greens and reds.” Puschak goes on to break down all the ele­ments van Gogh used to delib­er­ate­ly make The Night Café unset­tling: mak­ing the wall of the space “a thick, oppres­sive rib­bon the col­or of blood,” a col­or that clash­es with the green of the ceil­ing and cre­ates “a ten­sion that trem­bles in the eye,” and using on the rest of the inte­ri­or “a sul­fur yel­low that gets into every­thing.”

The mood is set by much more than col­or: the lack of shad­ows apart from that cast by the pool table, the hunched pos­ture of the patrons and the scat­tered posi­tions of the chairs and glass­es, the “warped qual­i­ty” of the per­spec­tive itself. “There’s no escape,” Puschak says, “not for the peo­ple inside the paint­ing, not for the peo­ple out­side it” — and not for van Gogh him­self, who com­mit­ted his famous act of ear-slic­ing mere months after fin­ish­ing The Night Café. But through this inescapable paint­ing we can see as well as or bet­ter than in any oth­er how van Gogh’s artis­tic mas­tery real­ly worked, and how mas­tery in ser­vice of some­thing oth­er than beau­ty remains mas­tery all the same.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Van Gogh’s 1888 Paint­ing, “The Night Cafe,” Ani­mat­ed with Ocu­lus Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Soft­ware

13 Van Gogh’s Paint­ings Painstak­ing­ly Brought to Life with 3D Ani­ma­tion & Visu­al Map­ping

Near­ly 1,000 Paint­ings & Draw­ings by Vin­cent van Gogh Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online: View/Download the Col­lec­tion

A Com­plete Archive of Vin­cent van Gogh’s Let­ters: Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed and Ful­ly Anno­tat­ed

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

Edward Hopper’s Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks Explained in a 7‑Minute Video Intro­duc­tion

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 or on Face­book.

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The Medieval Masterpiece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Digitized & Put Online

in Art, Books, History | March 6th, 2019

If you know noth­ing else about medieval Euro­pean illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts, you sure­ly know the Book of Kells. “One of Ireland’s great­est cul­tur­al trea­sures” com­ments Medievalists.net, “it is set apart from oth­er man­u­scripts of the same peri­od by the qual­i­ty of its art­work and the sheer num­ber of illus­tra­tions that run through­out the 680 pages of the book.” The work not only attracts schol­ars, but almost a mil­lion vis­i­tors to Dublin every year. “You sim­ply can’t trav­el to the cap­i­tal of Ire­land,” writes Book Riot’s Eri­ka Har­litz-Kern, “with­out the Book of Kells being men­tioned. And right­ful­ly so.”

The ancient mas­ter­piece is a stun­ning exam­ple of Hiber­no-Sax­on style, thought to have been com­posed on the Scot­tish island of Iona in 806, then trans­ferred to the monastery of Kells in Coun­ty Meath after a Viking raid (a sto­ry told in the mar­velous ani­mat­ed film The Secret of Kells). Con­sist­ing main­ly of copies of the four gospels, as well as index­es called “canon tables,” the man­u­script is believed to have been made pri­mar­i­ly for dis­play, not read­ing aloud, which is why “the images are elab­o­rate and detailed while the text is care­less­ly copied with entire words miss­ing or long pas­sages being repeat­ed.”

Its exquis­ite illu­mi­na­tions mark it as a cer­e­mo­ni­al object, and its “intri­ca­cies,” argue Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin pro­fes­sors Rachel Moss and Fáinche Ryan, “lead the mind along path­ways of the imag­i­na­tion…. You haven’t been to Ire­land unless you’ve seen the Book of Kells.” This may be so, but thank­ful­ly, in our dig­i­tal age, you need not go to Dublin to see this fab­u­lous his­tor­i­cal arti­fact, or a dig­i­ti­za­tion of it at least, entire­ly view­able at the online col­lec­tions of the Trin­i­ty Col­lege Library. (When you click on the pre­vi­ous link, make sure you scroll down the page.) The pages, orig­i­nal­ly cap­tured in 1990, “have recent­ly been res­canned,” Trin­i­ty Col­lege Library writes, using state of the art imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy. These new dig­i­tal images offer the most accu­rate high res­o­lu­tion images to date, pro­vid­ing an expe­ri­ence sec­ond only to view­ing the book in per­son.”

What makes the Book of Kells so spe­cial, repro­duced “in such var­ied places as Irish nation­al coinage and tat­toos?” ask Pro­fes­sors Moss and Ryan. “There is no one answer to these ques­tions.” In their free online course on the man­u­script, these two schol­ars of art his­to­ry and the­ol­o­gy, respec­tive­ly, do not attempt to “pro­vide defin­i­tive answers to the many ques­tions that sur­round it.” Instead, they illu­mi­nate its his­to­ry and many mean­ings to dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties of peo­ple, includ­ing, of course, the peo­ple of Ire­land. “For Irish peo­ple,” they explain in the course trail­er above, “it rep­re­sents a sense of pride, a tan­gi­ble link to a pos­i­tive time in Ireland’s past, reflect­ed through its unique art.”

But while the Book of Kells is still a mod­ern “sym­bol of Irish­ness,” it was made with mate­ri­als and tech­niques that fell out of use sev­er­al hun­dred years ago, and that were once spread far and wide across Europe, the Mid­dle East, and North Africa. In the video above, Trin­i­ty Col­lege Library con­ser­va­tor John Gillis shows us how the man­u­script was made using meth­ods that date back to the “devel­op­ment of the codex, or the book form.” This includes the use of parch­ment, in this case calf skin, a mate­r­i­al that remem­bers the anatom­i­cal fea­tures of the ani­mals from which it came, with mark­ings where tails, spines, and legs used to be.

The Book of Kells has weath­ered the cen­turies fair­ly well, thanks to care­ful preser­va­tion, but it’s also had per­haps five rebind­ings in its life­time. “In its orig­i­nal form,” notes Har­litz-Kern, the man­u­script “was both thick­er and larg­er. Thir­ty folios of the orig­i­nal man­u­script have been lost through the cen­turies and the edges of the exist­ing man­u­script were severe­ly trimmed dur­ing a rebind­ing in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry.” It remains, nonethe­less, one of the most impres­sive arti­facts to come from the age of the illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script, “described by some,” says Moss and Ryan, “as the most famous man­u­script in the world.” Find out why by see­ing it (vir­tu­al­ly) for your­self and learn­ing about it from the experts above.

For any­one inter­est­ed in get­ting a copy of The Book of Kells in a nice print for­mat, see The Book of Kells: Repro­duc­tions from the man­u­script in Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Dublin.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold the Beau­ti­ful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketch­book: A Win­dow Into How Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made (1494)

800 Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Are Now Online: Browse & Down­load Them Cour­tesy of the British Library and Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

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

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Download the ModulAir, a Free Polyphonic Synthesizer, and Make Your Own Electronic Sounds

in Uncategorized | March 6th, 2019

Over the years, we’ve talked a fair share about elec­tron­ic music–from the ear­li­est days of the genre, through con­tem­po­rary times. Now, we give you a chance to make your own elec­tron­ic sounds.

Accord­ing to Syn­thopia, a por­tal devot­ed to elec­tron­ic music, “Full Buck­et Music has released Mod­u­lAir 1.0 – a free poly­phon­ic mod­u­lar syn­the­siz­er for Mac & Win­dows.” (For the unini­ti­at­ed, a poly­phon­ic synthesizer–versus a mono­phon­ic one–can play mul­ti­ple notes at once.) The Mod­u­lAir “is a mod­u­lar poly­phon­ic soft­ware syn­the­siz­er for Microsoft Win­dows (VST) and Apple macOS (VST/AU), writ­ten in native C++ code for high per­for­mance and low CPU con­sump­tion.” Watch a demo above, and down­load it here.

via Syn­thopia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing Thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Syn­the­siz­er: A Vin­tage Three-Hour Crash Course

Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces the Moog Syn­the­siz­er to the World in 1969, Play­ing an Elec­tri­fied Ver­sion of Bach’s “Lit­tle Fugue in G”

The Mas­ter­mind of Devo, Mark Moth­ers­baugh, Presents His Per­son­al Syn­the­siz­er Col­lec­tion

Free, Open Source Mod­u­lar Synth Soft­ware Lets You Cre­ate 70s & 80s Elec­tron­ic Music—Without Hav­ing to Pay Thou­sands for a Real-World Syn­the­siz­er

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100-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Helen Fagin Reads Her Letter About How Books Save Lives

in Books, History | March 6th, 2019

“Could you imag­ine a world with­out access to read­ing, to learn­ing, to books?” Helen Fagin, who pos­es that ques­tion, does­n’t have to imag­ine it: she expe­ri­enced that grim real­i­ty, and worse besides. “At twen­ty-one,” she con­tin­ues, “I was forced into Poland’s World War II ghet­to, where being caught read­ing any­thing for­bid­den by the Nazis meant, at best, hard labor; at worst, death.” There she oper­at­ed a school in secret where she taught Jew­ish chil­dren Latin and math­e­mat­ics, soon real­iz­ing that “what they need­ed wasn’t dry infor­ma­tion but hope, the kind that comes from being trans­port­ed into a dream-world of pos­si­bil­i­ty.”

That hope, in Fag­in’s wartime expe­ri­ence, came from books. “I had spent the pre­vi­ous night read­ing Gone with the Wind — one of a few smug­gled books cir­cu­lat­ed among trust­wor­thy peo­ple via an under­ground chan­nel, on their word of hon­or to read only at night, in secret.”

The next day she retold the sto­ry of Mar­garet Mitchel­l’s nov­el in her clan­des­tine class­room, where the stu­dents had expressed their desire for her to “tell us a book,” and one young girl expressed a spe­cial grat­i­tude, thank­ing Fagin “for this jour­ney into anoth­er world.” To hear how her sto­ry, and Fag­in’s, turned out, you can lis­ten to the 100-year-old Fagin her­self read the let­ter that tells the tale in the video above, and you can fol­low along with the text at Brain Pick­ings.

Brain Pick­ings founder Maria Popo­va has includ­ed Fag­in’s let­ter in the new col­lec­tion A Veloc­i­ty of Being: Illus­trat­ed Let­ters to Chil­dren about Why We Read by 121 of the Most Inspir­ing Humans in Our World. The book con­tains “orig­i­nal illus­trat­ed let­ters about the trans­for­ma­tive and tran­scen­dent pow­er of read­ing from some immense­ly inspir­ing humans,” Popo­va writes, from Jane Goodall and Mari­na Abramović to Yo-Yo Ma and David Byrne to Judy Blume and Neil Gaiman — the last of whom, as Fag­in’s cousin, offered Popo­va the con­nec­tion to this cen­te­nar­i­an liv­ing tes­ta­ment to the pow­er of read­ing. There are times when dreams sus­tain us more than facts,” writes Fagin, one sus­pects as much to the adult read­ers of the world as to the chil­dren. “To read a book and sur­ren­der to a sto­ry is to keep our very human­i­ty alive.”

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Holo­caust Sur­vivor Vik­tor Fran­kl Explains Why If We Have True Mean­ing in Our Lives, We Can Make It Through the Dark­est of Times

96-Year-Old Holo­caust Sur­vivor Fronts a Death Met­al Band

Helen Keller Writes a Let­ter to Nazi Stu­dents Before They Burn Her Book: “His­to­ry Has Taught You Noth­ing If You Think You Can Kill Ideas” (1933)

Bri­an Eno Lists 20 Books for Rebuild­ing Civ­i­liza­tion & 59 Books For Build­ing Your Intel­lec­tu­al World

Stew­art Brand’s List of 76 Books for Rebuild­ing Civ­i­liza­tion

Ray Brad­bury Explains Why Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion (in Which Case We Need More Lit­er­a­ture!)

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 or on Face­book.

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John Cleese Revisits His 20 Years as an Ivy League Professor in His New Book, Professor at Large: The Cornell Years

in Books, Comedy | March 6th, 2019

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Paul Box­ley

It takes real intel­li­gence to suc­cess­ful­ly make dumb com­e­dy. John Cleese and his Mon­ty Python col­leagues are a pre­mi­um exam­ple. You can call sketch­es like the “Min­istry of Sil­ly Walks” and “Dead Par­rot” sur­re­al­ist, and they are com­pa­ra­ble to the absur­dist stunts favored by cer­tain ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry mod­ern artists. But you can also call them very smart kinds of stu­pid, a descrip­tion of some of the high­est forms of com­e­dy, I’d say, and one that applies to so much of Cleese’s best work, from the Pythons, to Fawl­ty Tow­ers, to A Fish Called Wan­da. We are moved by stu­pid­i­ty, Cleese believes, and silli­ness is the engine of good com­e­dy. “Some­times very, very sil­ly things,” he says in the inter­view with Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Press direc­tor Dean Smith below, “have the pow­er to touch us deeply.” Then he tells the old joke about a grasshop­per named Nor­man.

Is Cleese still fun­ny? Depends. Many lis­ten­ers of a recent BBC Radio 4 show found his act a lit­tle stale. He has also come off late­ly as a “clas­sic old man yelling at a cloud,” writes Fiona Sturges at The Guardian. (He called, sure­ly in jest, for the hang­ing of EU pres­i­dent Jean Claude Junck­er, for exam­ple, dur­ing the Brex­it cam­paign).

In cur­mud­geon­ly inter­views, he com­plains about hyper­sen­si­tiv­i­ty with exam­ples of jokes con­tem­po­rary audi­ences sim­ply don’t find amus­ing, or at least not com­ing from him. Cleese has railed about the evils of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, espe­cial­ly on col­lege cam­pus­es, while spend­ing the past 20 years as a “pro­fes­sor-at-large” on the pres­ti­gious cam­pus of Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty, where he has deliv­ered “incred­i­bly pop­u­lar events and classes—including talks, work­shops, and an analy­sis of A Fish Called Wan­da and The Life of Bri­an.”

These appear­ances draw hun­dreds of peo­ple, and their enor­mous pop­u­lar­i­ty should offer Cleese some reas­sur­ance that he may not need to fear cen­sor­ship, and that his wit—while it might not be as well appre­ci­at­ed in today’s mass entertainment—still has plen­ty of cur­ren­cy in places where smart peo­ple gath­er. From sem­i­nars on script writ­ing to lec­tures on psy­chol­o­gy and human devel­op­ment, Cleese’s appear­ances at Cor­nell lead to riv­et­ing, some­times hilar­i­ous, and often con­tro­ver­sial con­ver­sa­tions.

In the episodes here from the Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Press pod­cast, you can hear Cleese’s full con­ver­sa­tion with Smith, part of the pro­mo­tion of his 2018 book Pro­fes­sor at Large: The Cor­nell Years, in which he includes an inter­view with Princess Bride screen­writer William Gold­man, a lec­ture about cre­ativ­i­ty called “Hare Brain, Tor­toise Mind,” a dis­cus­sion of facial recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy, and a talk on group dynam­ics with busi­ness stu­dents and fac­ul­ty. Like Cleese’s mind, these lec­tures and dis­cus­sions range far and wide, demon­strat­ing, once again in his long career, that it takes real smarts to not only speak with ease on sev­er­al aca­d­e­m­ic sub­jects, but to under­stand the mechan­ics of stu­pid­i­ty. You can pick up a copy of Pro­fes­sor at Large: The Cor­nell Years here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

John Cleese Explains the Brain — and the Plea­sures of DirecTV

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

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

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97-Year-Old Philosopher Ponders the Meaning of Life: “What Is the Point of It All?”

in Film, Life, Philosophy | March 5th, 2019

If you’ve sat by the bed­side of a dying friend or rel­a­tive, or recov­ered from a ter­mi­nal ill­ness your­self, you may know too well: the con­cerns of yesterday—career anx­i­eties, polit­i­cal high stakes, per­son­al grudges—can slip away into the rear view, becom­ing small­er and more mean­ing­less as hours pass into final days. What takes their place? Maybe a savor­ing of the moment, maybe regrets over moments not savored, maybe a grow­ing acknowl­edg­ment that grat­i­tude mat­ters more than being right. Maybe a will­ing­ness to let go of pri­or ideas—not to adopt new ones, but to open to the ques­tions again.

Some­times, this expe­ri­ence is bewil­der­ing and fright­en­ing, espe­cial­ly when cou­pled with the pains of ill­ness and old age. What­ev­er insights one might have at the thresh­old of death, they can­not eas­i­ly over­come “life­long habits,” says Her­bert Fin­garette in the can­did short film Being 97, a doc­u­men­tary made in the last months of the con­trar­i­an Amer­i­can philosopher’s life. By the time of his death,” notes Aeon, “Fin­garette (1921–2018) had lived what most would con­sid­er a full and mean­ing­ful life. His mar­riage to his wife, Leslie, was long and hap­py. His career as a pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia was both accom­plished and con­tro­ver­sial.”

By this time, his wife of sev­en­ty years had been gone for sev­en. And at 97, phys­i­cal­ly frail and his career long over, Fin­garette was com­ing to terms with “lone­li­ness and absence” as well as with his need for help from oth­er peo­ple to do sim­ple tasks. After 42 years of teaching—and writ­ing on sub­jects like self-decep­tion, Con­fu­cian­ism, eth­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty, and addiction—he was also grap­pling with the fact he had been wrong about one par­tic­u­lar­ly press­ing mat­ter, at least.

Fin­garette became infa­mous when, with­out under­tak­ing any sci­en­tif­ic research him­self, he claimed in the 1988 book Heavy Drink­ing that alco­holism was a prob­lem of self con­trol, not a dis­ease. But he does not speak of the polit­i­cal furor in this minor con­tro­ver­sy. Eleven years lat­er, he took on an even heav­ier sub­ject in Death: Philo­soph­i­cal Sound­ings. “What I said was in a nut­shell,” he recalls, “is there’s no rea­son to be afraid or con­cerned or any­thing about death because when you die, there’s noth­ing. You’re not going to suf­fer, you’re not going to be unhap­py… you’re not going to be…. It’s not ratio­nal to be afraid of death.”

He admits, “I now think that is not a good state­ment, because I think it’s impor­tant to fig­ure out why it is then that peo­ple are afraid of death. Why am I con­cerned about it?” His best think­ing aside, “my sense of real­ism tells me, well, no good rea­son or not, it is some­thing that haunts me. I walk around the house and I ask myself, ‘What is the point of it all? There must be some­thing I’m miss­ing in this argu­ment.’” He asks, he says, know­ing “that there isn’t any good answer.” But that doesn’t stop him from look­ing for one. We see Fingarette’s life­long habits as a thinker push him for­ward in pur­suit of what he calls a “fool­ish ques­tion,” although he intu­its that “the answer might be… the silent answer.”

It’s a painful exis­ten­tial real­iza­tion for a man so devot­ed to log­i­cal argu­ment and pro­nounce­ments of cer­tain­ty. This film of Fin­garette in his last months is both a per­son­al­ly mov­ing por­trait and a dra­ma in minia­ture of a uni­ver­sal human dilem­ma: why is it so hard to accept the inevitable? Why do we have minds that strug­gle against it? The mul­ti­tude of pos­si­ble answers may be far less mean­ing­ful than the expe­ri­ence of the ques­tion itself, painful and tran­scen­dent as it is, whether we are griev­ing the loss of oth­ers, fac­ing our own mor­tal­i­ty, or, as in Fin­garet­te’s case, both at once.

Being 97 will be added to our list of Free Online Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Death: A Free Phi­los­o­phy Course from Yale Helps You Grap­ple with the Inescapable

Alan Watts Explains Why Death is an Art, Adven­ture and Cre­ative Act

When Aldous Hux­ley, Dying of Can­cer, Left This World Trip­ping on LSD, Expe­ri­enc­ing “the Most Serene, the Most Beau­ti­ful Death” (1963)

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

 

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A Visualization of the United States’ Exploding Population Growth Over 200 Years (1790 – 2010)

in Data, History, Maps | March 5th, 2019

The U.S. is bare­ly even an ado­les­cent com­pared to many oth­er coun­tries around the world. Yet it ranks third, behind Chi­na and India, in pop­u­la­tion. How did the coun­try go, in a lit­tle over 200 years, from 6.1 peo­ple per square mile in 1800 to 93 per square mile today? We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured maps of how the real estate came on the mar­ket. And we’ve brought you a map that tells the loca­tions and sto­ries of the peo­ples who used to live there. The map above takes a dif­fer­ent approach, show­ing pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty growth from 1790 to 2010, in num­bers based on Cen­sus records.

Orig­i­nal­ly appear­ing on Vivid Maps, the ani­mat­ed time­line con­tains no infor­ma­tion about the how, who, or why of things. But we know that since it only accounts for those who were count­ed, the num­bers of peo­ple actu­al­ly liv­ing with­in the bor­ders is often much high­er. “Not only did the pop­u­la­tion boom as a result of births and immi­grants,” writes Jeff Des­jardins at the site Visu­al Cap­i­tal­ist, “but the bor­ders of the coun­try kept chang­ing as well.” This change, and the fact that indige­nous peo­ple were not record­ed, leads to an inter­est­ing visu­al­iza­tion of west­ward expan­sion from the point of view of the set­tlers.

As Des­jardins notes, the state of Okla­homa appears as an “emp­ty gap” on the map in the late-1800s, light­ly shad­ed while its bor­ders are sur­round­ed by dark brown. This is because “the area was orig­i­nal­ly des­ig­nat­ed as Indi­an Ter­ri­to­ry…. How­ev­er, in 1889, the land was opened up to a mas­sive land rush, and approx­i­mate­ly 50,000 pio­neers lined up to grab a piece of the two mil­lion acres opened for set­tle­ment.” Thou­sands of the peo­ple liv­ing there had already, of course, been pushed off their land dur­ing the decades-long “Trail of Tears.” The ques­tion of who “exact­ly is count­ed as a whole per­son?” comes up in the com­ments on Visu­al Cap­i­tal­ist post, anoth­er key con­sid­er­a­tion for under­stand­ing this data in its prop­er con­text.

The ways peo­ple have been cat­e­go­rized are prod­ucts of con­tem­po­rary bias­es, polit­i­cal atti­tudes, and legal and social dis­crim­i­na­tions. These atti­tudes are not inci­den­tal to the pop­u­lat­ing of the coun­try, but mate­ri­al­ly inte­gral. As we see the mas­sive, yet huge­ly uneven, spread of peo­ple across the expand­ing coun­try, we might be giv­en the impres­sion that it con­sti­tutes a uni­fied surge of expan­sion and devel­op­ment, when the his­tor­i­cal real­i­ty, of course, is any­thing but. Of the many ques­tions we can ask of this data, “who ful­ly count­ed as an Amer­i­can dur­ing each of these peri­ods and why or why not?” might be one of the most rel­e­vant, in 1790 and today. Or, if you’d rather just watch the map fill up with sepia and burnt umber pix­els, to the tune of some mar­tial-sound­ing drum & bass, watch the video above.

via Visu­al Cap­i­tal­ist

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Native Lands: An Inter­ac­tive Map Reveals the Indige­nous Lands on Which Mod­ern Nations Were Built

Inter­ac­tive Map Shows the Seizure of Over 1.5 Bil­lion Acres of Native Amer­i­can Land Between 1776 and 1887

A Rad­i­cal Map Puts the Oceans–Not Land–at the Cen­ter of Plan­et Earth (1942)

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

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60 Free-to-Stream Movies for Women’s History Month: Classic Agnès Varda, a Portrait of Susan Sontag, Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, and More

in Film | March 5th, 2019

March is Wom­en’s His­to­ry Month, and every month is a good one for watch­ing movies. Well aware of both those facts, the peo­ple behind free-to-user online stream­ing ser­vice Kanopy have made a range of 60 woman-cen­tric and most­ly woman-made films avail­able this month. Some of the women involved include Nou­velle Vague auteur Agnès Var­da, direc­tor of Cléo from 5 to 7 and The Beach­es of Agnès; Susan Son­tag, the pro­lif­ic writer and sub­ject of Regard­ing Susan Son­tag; and Gre­ta Ger­wig, who went from respect­ed indie-cin­e­ma actress to even more respect­ed indie-cin­e­ma direc­tor with 2017’s Lady Bird.

If the trail­ers for these films in this post intrigue you, you can, of course, go right to Kanopy to watch them in full. First, though, you’ll want to pull out your local library card. “We stream thought­ful enter­tain­ment to your pre­ferred device with no fees and no com­mer­cials by part­ner­ing with pub­lic libraries and uni­ver­si­ties,” says Kanopy­’s about page, explain­ing that you need only “log in with your library mem­ber­ship and enjoy our diverse cat­a­log with new titles added every month.”

To check and see whether your library (or uni­ver­si­ty) is among Kanopy­’s part­ners, just type it into the search win­dow on this page.

After log­ging in you can explore the full breadth of Kanopy­’s list of Wom­en’s His­to­ry Month selec­tions, which also includes doc­u­men­taries like Won­der Women: The Untold Sto­ry of Amer­i­can Super­heroines, The Girls in the Band: Female Jazz Musi­cians, Who Does She Think She Is?: A Por­trait of Female Artists, and Women of ’69: Unboxed: Women from the Six­ties Share their Sto­ries, as well as oth­er exam­i­na­tions of women in pol­i­tics, women in gam­ing, women in STEM, and women in prison. Once you’ve seen them all, you might con­sid­er explor­ing Kanopy­’s oth­er cin­e­mat­ic offer­ings, from a vari­ety of oth­er doc­u­men­taries to dra­ma, com­e­dy, and even hor­ror and thriller as well as sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy.

That last sec­tion, one can’t help but notice, comes head­ed by Mark Saw­ers’ No Men Beyond This Point, which takes as its set­ting a world that has­n’t been able to pro­duce male babies for the past 60 years. Its main char­ac­ter is the last man alive. Kanopy describes it as “a wry mock­u­men­tary that asks the ques­tion, what would the world be like if women were in charge?” How­ev­er pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive an answer to that ques­tion just popped into your head, all these films will sure­ly give it a bit more nuance, and at no charge at that.

Kanopy­’s own list of five Wom­en’s His­to­ry Month films rec­om­mend­ed from each of their major col­lec­tion runs as fol­lows:

Films Direct­ed by Women
  1. Lady Bird — Direct­ed by Gre­ta Ger­wig and nom­i­nat­ed for five Oscars, this warm, affect­ing com­e­dy fol­lows a high school­er who must nav­i­gate a lov­ing, but tur­bu­lent rela­tion­ship with her strong-willed moth­er over the course of her event­ful and poignant senior year of high school.
  2. Cleo from 5 to 7 — Direc­tor Agnes Var­da elo­quent­ly cap­tures Paris in the ‘60s with this real-time por­trait of a singer (Corinne Marc­hand) set adrift as she awaits test results fol­low­ing a biop­sy.
  3. The Mise­d­u­ca­tion of Cameron Post — Direct­ed by Desiree Akha­van and Grand Jury Prize win­ner at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val, the film fol­lows Cameron when she’s sent to a gay con­ver­sion ther­a­py cen­ter after get­ting caught with anoth­er girl in the back­seat of a car.
  4. Amer­i­can Hon­ey — Nom­i­nat­ed for six Film Inde­pen­dent Spir­it Awards and win­ner of two Spe­cial Jury Prizes at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, the film fol­lows an ado­les­cent girl from a trou­bled home who runs away with a trav­el­ing sales crew across the Amer­i­can Mid­west to sell sub­scrip­tions door-to-door.
  5. Made­line’s Made­line — From direc­tor Josephine Deck­er, the lines between per­for­mance and real­i­ty begin to blur when a young actress is pushed too far. An Offi­cial Selec­tion at the Berlin Inter­na­tion­al Fes­ti­val, Madeline’s Made­line stars Mol­ly Park­er (“Lost in Space”).
His­to­ry
  1. Ani­ta — Against a back­drop of sex, pol­i­tics, and race, Ani­ta reveals the inti­mate sto­ry of a woman who spoke truth to pow­er.
  2. Killing Us Soft­ly (Four-Part Series) — Jean Kil­bourne takes a fresh look at how print and tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments bare a stun­ning pat­tern of dam­ag­ing gen­der stereo­types, dis­tort­ing the ideals of fem­i­nin­i­ty over the decades.
  3. Women of ’69: Unboxed — An inti­mate, per­son­al­ized por­trait of women of the 1960s through the eyes of one col­or­ful class that grad­u­at­ed in 1969 and start­ed to explore the New Old Age.
  4. Polit­i­cal Ani­mals — This mul­ti-award win­ning film tells the sto­ry of the civ­il rights strug­gle of this cen­tu­ry — the gay rights move­ment — through the eyes of the first four mem­bers of the LGBT Leg­isla­tive Cau­cus.
  5. The Girls in the Band — An award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary film that tells the poignant, untold sto­ries of female jazz and big band instru­men­tal­ists and their fas­ci­nat­ing, his­to­ry-mak­ing jour­neys from the late ‘30s to present day.
Major Fig­ures
  1. Regard­ing Susan Son­tag — An inti­mate and nuanced inves­ti­ga­tion into the life of one of the most impor­tant lit­er­ary, polit­i­cal and fem­i­nist icons of the 20th cen­tu­ry, Susan Son­tag.
  2. Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise — The film traces Dr. Angelou’s incred­i­ble jour­ney, shed­ding light on the untold aspects of her life through nev­er-before-seen footage, rare archival pho­tographs and videos in her own words.
  3. Jane’s Jour­ney — A 2010 film that fol­lows Jane Goodall across sev­er­al con­ti­nents, from her child­hood home in Eng­land to the Gombe Nation­al Park in Tan­za­nia, where she began her ground­break­ing research and where she still returns every year to enjoy the com­pa­ny of chim­panzees.
  4. The Beach­es of Agnes — From direc­tor Agnes Var­da, this cin­e­mat­ic self-por­trait touch­es on every­thing from the fem­i­nist move­ment and the Black Pan­thers to the filmmaker’s hus­band Jacques Demy and the birth of the French New Wave.
  5. Mavis! — An award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary on gospel/soul music leg­end and civ­il rights icon, Mavis Sta­ples and her fam­i­ly group, The Sta­ple Singers.
Cur­rent Events
  1. Wom­en’s March — Shot on loca­tion in five U.S. cities in 2017, this is a sto­ry about democ­ra­cy, human rights and what it means to stand up for val­ues in today’s Amer­i­ca.
  2. I am a Girl — Nom­i­nat­ed for four Aus­tralian Acad­e­my Awards includ­ing Best Doc­u­men­tary and Best Direc­tor, this inspi­ra­tional fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary fol­lows six girls from around the world, paint­ing a clear pic­ture of the real­i­ty of what it means to be a female in the 21st cen­tu­ry.
  3. Miss Rep­re­sen­ta­tion — Writ­ten and direct­ed by Jen­nifer Siebel New­som, this film expos­es how main­stream media con­tributes to the under-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women in posi­tions of pow­er and influ­ence in Amer­i­ca.
  4. Star­less Dreams — A stark tes­ti­mo­ni­al of the pre­vi­ous­ly unseen and unheard, this award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary plunges into the lives of young teenage girls shar­ing tem­po­rary quar­ters at a reha­bil­i­ta­tion and cor­rec­tion cen­ter on the out­skirts of Tehran.
  5. Hooli­gan Spar­row — Mav­er­ick activist Ye Haiyan (a.k.a Hooli­gan Spar­row) and her band of col­leagues trav­el to Hainan Province in south­ern Chi­na to protest the case of six ele­men­tary school girls who were sex­u­al­ly abused by their prin­ci­pal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream 48 Clas­sic & Con­tem­po­rary Ger­man Films Free Online: From Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis to Mar­garethe von Trotta’s Han­nah Arendt

1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

An Ambi­tious List of 1400 Films Made by Female Film­mak­ers

Watch Four Dar­ing Films by Lois Weber, “the Most Impor­tant Female Direc­tor the Amer­i­can Film Indus­try Has Known” (1913–1921)

The First Fem­i­nist Film, Ger­maine Dulac’s The Smil­ing Madame Beudet (1922)

11 Essen­tial Fem­i­nist Books: A New Read­ing List by The New York Pub­lic Library

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 or on Face­book.

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