Neil deGrasse Tyson Talks Asteroid Physics & “Non Newtonian Solids” with Inspiring 9‑Year-Old Student

in K-12, Physics | December 4th, 2013

Just this week, some new test results showed that Amer­i­can teens, com­pared to oth­er stu­dents world­wide, “failed to reach the top 20 in math, sci­ence or read­ing,” accord­ing to The Guardian. After­wards, Arne Dun­can, the U.S. Sec­re­tary of Edu­ca­tion, called the results a “pic­ture of edu­ca­tion­al stag­na­tion.”

The results are deflat­ing. But maybe we should­n’t lose hope, not when we have kids like Jacob com­ing of age, and teach­ers like Neil deGrasse Tyson men­tor­ing him along. Speak­ing last month at Grand Val­ley State Uni­ver­si­ty in Michi­gan, Tyson field­ed a ques­tion — the last ques­tion of the night —  from a nine-year-old ele­men­tary school stu­dent named Jacob. To para­phrase, Jake want­ed to know why we could­n’t shoot a “chunk of ran­dom mate­r­i­al” at a hypo­thet­i­cal aster­oid and stop it from hit­ting earth. This ends up being the first of a two-part ques­tion, which leads Jacob to demon­strate physics con­cepts with his clip­board and debate whether these fly­ing objects share prop­er­ties with “non-New­ton­ian solids.” Yes, I’m feel­ing a lit­tle bet­ter about the Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem, espe­cial­ly since Jake’s dad con­firms on YouTube that his son attends “great pub­lic schools.”

You can find Neil’s com­plete GVSU talk here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Physics: Free Online Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Read­ing List for Eight-Year-Old Girl

Free Com­ic Books Turns Kids Onto Physics: Start With the Adven­tures of Niko­la Tes­la

200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

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The History of Economics & Economic Theory Explained with Comics, Starting with Adam Smith

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, Economics | December 3rd, 2013

economix adam smith

“Every­one has ques­tions about the econ­o­my. I start­ed look­ing for the answers in eco­nom­ics. I found enough insights to get me inter­est­ed, but I could­n’t seem to make the insights add up. I went back to the orig­i­nal sources, the great econ­o­mists, and start­ed to see a big pic­ture. And while the whole pic­ture was com­pli­cat­ed, no one part of it was all that hard to under­stand. I could see that all this infor­ma­tion made a sto­ry. But I could­n’t find a book that told the sto­ry in an acces­si­ble way. So I decid­ed to write one, in the most acces­si­ble form I knew: comics.”

Thus begins Michael Good­win’s new book Economix: How Our Econ­o­my Works (and Does­n’t Work) in Words and Pic­tures.

The book cov­ers two (plus) cen­turies of eco­nom­ic his­to­ry. It starts with the Phys­iocrats, Adam Smith and the­o­ret­i­cal devel­op­ment of cap­i­tal­ism, and then steams ahead into the 19th cen­tu­ry, cov­er­ing the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion, the rise of big busi­ness and big finance. Next comes the action packed 20th cen­tu­ry: the Great Depres­sion, the New Deal, the threat from Com­mu­nism dur­ing the Cold War, the tax reforms of the Rea­gan era, and even­tu­al­ly the crash of 2008 and Occu­py Wall Street. Along the way, Good­win and the illus­tra­tor Dan E. Burr demys­ti­fy the eco­nom­ic the­o­ries of fig­ures like Ricar­do, Marx, Malthus, Keynes, Fried­man and Hayek — all in a sub­stan­tive but approach­able way.

As with most treat­ments of mod­ern eco­nom­ics, the book starts with Adam Smith. To get a feel for Good­win’s approach, you can dive into the first chap­ter of Economix, which grap­ples with Smith’s the­o­ries about the free mar­ket, divi­sion of labor and the Invis­i­ble Hand. Economix can be pur­chased online here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

An Intro­duc­tion to Great Econ­o­mists — Adam Smith, the Phys­iocrats & More — Pre­sent­ed in a Free Online Course

60-Sec­ond Adven­tures in Eco­nom­ics: An Ani­mat­ed Intro to The Invis­i­ble Hand and Oth­er Eco­nom­ic Ideas

Read­ing Marx’s Cap­i­tal with David Har­vey (Free Course)

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The Library: A World History Presents a Stunning Visual Survey of The World’s Great Libraries

in Architecture, Art, Books, History | December 3rd, 2013

strahov-abbey-library-horizontal-large-gallery1

Volu­mi­nous­ly well-read author and ama­teur librar­i­an Alber­to Manguel opens The Library at Night, a com­pen­dious trea­tise on the role of the library in human cul­ture, with a star­tling­ly bleak ques­tion. “Why then do we do it?” He asks, why do we “con­tin­ue to assem­ble what­ev­er scraps of infor­ma­tion we can gath­er in scrolls and books and com­put­er chips, on shelf after library shelf” when “out­side the­ol­o­gy and fan­tas­tic lit­er­a­ture, few can doubt that the main fea­tures of our uni­verse are its dearth of mean­ing and lack of dis­cernible pur­pose.” Manguel goes on—in beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed chap­ter after themed chapter—to list in fine detail the host of virtues each of his favorite libraries pos­sess­es, answer­ing his own ques­tion by ref­er­ence to the beau­ti­ful micro­cos­mic orders great libraries man­i­fest.

tripitaka-koreana-library-horizontal-large-gallery1

A new book, The Library: A World His­to­ry by author James Camp­bell and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Will Pryce, takes a more work­man­like approach to the sub­ject, steer­ing clear of Manguel’s meta­physics. Even so, the book will deeply move lovers of libraries and his­to­ri­ans alike, per­haps even to ecsta­sy. One Ama­zon review­er put it sim­ply: “Book Porn at its best.”

Boing Boing calls Pryce’s pho­tographs “the cen­ter­piece of the book,” and you can see why in a cou­ple of selec­tions here. Even with­out his eye­sight, this is a project that would have delight­ed that rhap­sodist of the library, Jorge Luis Borges. At the top, see the Stra­hov Abbey library in Prague. Halfway across the world, we have the Trip­i­ta­ka Kore­ana library in South Korea (above). CNN has a gallery of Pryce’s pho­to­graph­ic trib­utes to the world’s great­est libraries, and find here a crit­i­cal review of the book by The Guardian’s Tom Lam­ont, who laments that the book sole­ly “focus­es on insti­tu­tions cre­at­ed for the priv­i­leged.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Look Inside Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Per­son­al Library

The Odd Col­lec­tion of Books in the Guan­tanamo Prison Library

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Love of Lan­guage Revealed by the Books in His Per­son­al Library

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

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Watch Jean Genet’s Only Film, the Censored A Song of Love (1950)

in Film, Literature | December 3rd, 2013

Pet­ty crim­i­nal, out­law writer, polit­i­cal rad­i­cal, gay icon—the name Jean Genet means many things to many peo­ple, but film­mak­er isn’t usu­al­ly one of them. Yet Genet did direct a short film, A Song of Love (Un chant d’amour), in 1950. Silent and shot in grainy black and white, the film presents a pas­sion­ate rela­tion­ship between inmates, sep­a­rat­ed from each oth­er by the prison walls. The pris­on­ers express their estranged desire for each oth­er in increas­ing­ly sen­su­al ways until the frame is filled with writhing bod­ies. All the while, a lone guard watch­es, men­ac­ing and jeal­ous.

Despite the fact that the film was banned for many years, and that Genet him­self dis­owned it, it’s a foun­da­tion­al work for lat­er gay film­mak­ers, from Andy Warhol to the ear­ly Derek Jar­man, whose first fea­ture Sebas­tiane (1976) sure­ly owes a debt to A Song of Love. Genet’s choice of set­ting is no mere auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal detail; the pre­vi­ous year he faced a life sen­tence after his tenth con­vic­tion, and was only saved by the inter­ven­tion of his respect­ed sup­port­ers Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picas­so, and Jean Cocteau, who peti­tioned the pres­i­dent on his behalf. It’s pos­si­ble to read A Song of Love in many ways, but it’s hard not to see it at least as Genet’s pro­jec­tion of the frus­trat­ed (yet hot­house) sex­u­al ten­sion he would know if incar­cer­at­ed for the rest of his days.

Of course Genet began his writ­ing career in prison, draft­ing his first nov­el, the pulpy yet pro­found­ly lyri­cal Our Lady of the Flow­ers, while serv­ing out a sen­tence in the ear­ly for­ties. Genet’s erot­i­cal­ly charged, some might say deca­dent, fic­tion worked to reclaim and reval­ue his iden­ti­ty as a homo­sex­u­al, social out­cast, and crim­i­nal. In his auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el, The Thief’s Jour­nal, writ­ten in 1949 while his fate was being decid­ed, Genet defined him­self thus:

Lim­it­ed by the world, which I oppose, jagged by it, I shall be all the more hand­some and sparkling as the angles which wound me and give me shape are more acute and the jag­ging more cru­el.

The quote could almost serve as an epi­graph for Genet’s only film, which, writes Fer­nan­do Croce, draws its “pre­sid­ing image… of flesh against stone” from The Thief’s Jour­nal. It’s an image Croce inter­prets as “metaphor for soci­ety-enforced divi­sion imposed on gay men, and also of the need for con­nec­tion which encom­pass­es all human exis­tence.” Like all Genet’s work, A Song of Love takes plea­sure from pain and finds arrest­ing inti­ma­cy and unabashed­ly lib­er­at­ing sex­u­al ful­fill­ment in the Parisian sew­ers, gar­rets, and jails.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jean Genet, France’s Out­law Poet, Revealed in a Rare 1981 Inter­view

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

Wittgen­stein: Watch Derek Jarman’s Trib­ute to the Philoso­pher, Fea­tur­ing Til­da Swin­ton (1993)

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

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How Ray Bradbury Wrote the Script for John Huston’s Moby Dick (1956)

in Film, Literature | December 3rd, 2013

BradburyMobyDick

Ray Brad­bury, unlike many nov­el­ists who choose to reside in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, did­n’t sup­port his fic­tion-writ­ing career by tak­ing screen­play work. With the likes of The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles and Fahren­heit 451 to his name, he did­n’t need to, not that it stopped him from adapt­ing cer­tain sto­ries of his own for tele­vi­sion and the movies. Only once did the pro­lif­ic Brad­bury under­take to write a screen­play based upon a book he did­n’t write. But oh, what a book: Her­man Melville’s Moby-Dick, turned into the John Hus­ton-direct­ed 1956 film of almost the same name. Though ulti­mate­ly stormy — work­ing with Hus­ton, even in the best of times and for the bright­est of writ­ers, tend­ed to become an ordeal — the col­lab­o­ra­tion began aus­pi­cious­ly, with the writer an avowed fan of the film­mak­er, and the film­mak­er an avowed fan of the writer. Yet nei­ther, iron­i­cal­ly, had much time for the Melville nov­el to which they had ded­i­cat­ed their efforts.

“Have you tried to read that nov­el?” Brad­bury asks his audi­ence in the clip just above. “Oh my god! John Hus­ton did­n’t know any more about it than I did. He want­ed to play Ahab. Give him a har­poon, and he would’ve done it.” Work­ing on the script in Ire­land, Brad­bury spent “eight long months of ago­niz­ing work, sub­con­scious work,” all of which pre­pared him for the next deci­sive moment in this par­tic­u­lar writ­ing process: “I got out of bed one morn­ing in Lon­don, looked in the mir­ror, and said, ‘I am Her­man Melville!’ I sat down at the type­writer, and in eight hours of pas­sion­ate, red-hot writ­ing, I fin­ished the screen­play of Moby Dick, and I ran across Lon­don, I threw the script in John Hus­ton’s lap, and said, ‘There! It’s done!’ He read it and said, ‘My god, what hap­pened?’ I said, ‘Behold: Her­man Melville.’ ”

bradbury huston

You can now read the fruits of this act of artis­tic chan­nel­ing in a new edi­tion from Sub­ter­ranean Press fea­tur­ing an essay by William Touponce, direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Ray Brad­bury Stud­ies at Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty-Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty Indi­anapo­lis. Cinephil­ia and Beyond has more, includ­ing a link to a PDF of Brad­bury’s orig­i­nal final script.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Moby Dick Big Read: Celebri­ties and Every­day Folk Read a Chap­ter a Day from the Great Amer­i­can Nov­el

Jean-Paul Sartre Writes a Script for John Huston’s Film on Freud (1958)

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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Learn to Draw Butts with Just Five Simple Lines

in Art, Comedy, K-12 | December 3rd, 2013

You know what I say when some­one tells me they “can’t” draw?

Pshaw.

Even those who’ve yet to dis­cov­er the trans­for­ma­tive effects of Lyn­da Bar­ry’s won­der­ful­ly cor­rec­tive Pic­ture This know how to draw some­thing. Very few chil­dren make it to adult­hood with­out pick­ing up some sim­ple geo­met­ric for­mu­la by which a series of ovals, rec­tan­gles and lines can be con­fig­ured to resem­ble a dog­gie head or a brave astride his can­ter­ing pony.

A cou­ple thou­sand ren­der­ings lat­er, such mag­ic still sat­is­fies, but you might want to con­sid­er branch­ing out. May I rec­om­mend the teach­ings of artist and visu­al sto­ry­teller, Karl Gude? This laid-back for­mer Direc­tor of Infor­ma­tion Graph­ics at Newsweek can — and will! — teach you how to draw “great butts” with just five lines.

Gude’s com­mand of pos­te­ri­or essen­tials is down­right heady. (I say this as a for­mer artist’s mod­el whose rear end has been mis­rep­re­sent­ed on paper more times than I’d care to men­tion.) Who knew that cap­tur­ing this part of human anato­my could prove so sim­ple? Gude’s easy­go­ing online instruc­tion style may be trace­able to some sort of adult bev­er­age (I’m not cast­ing stones…), but his meth­ods are easy enough for a child to mas­ter.

Speak­ing of which, if you want to make a friend for life, share the above video with an actu­al child, prefer­ably one who claims he or she “can’t” draw. Put a Sharpie in his or her paw, and with­in five min­utes, Gude will have the lit­tle twerp crank­ing out butts of all shapes and sizes. After which, pride of accom­plish­ment may well lead to some of Gude’s more advanced tuto­ri­als, like the detailed human eye seen below.

If that proves too chal­leng­ing, there’s no shame in stick­ing with the glutes. To my way of think­ing, the mind­set that allows the artist to keep going when his pen­cil snaps mid-demon­stra­tion is les­son enough.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Join Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry for a Uni­ver­si­ty-Lev­el Course on Doo­dling and Neu­ro­science

Saul Bass’ Advice for Design­ers: Learn to Draw, and Cre­ate Beau­ty Even If Nobody Else Cares

The Anatom­i­cal Draw­ings of Renais­sance Man, Leonar­do da Vin­ci

Clever Ani­ma­tion Brings Fig­ure Draw­ings to Life

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s per­son­al mot­to is Dare to Be Heinie. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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MIT Teaches You How to Speak Italian & Cook Italian Food All at Once (Free Online Course)

in How to Learn for Free, Language Lessons, MIT | December 2nd, 2013

At MIT, Dr. Pao­la Rebus­co usu­al­ly teach­es physics to fresh­men. But, on behalf of the MIT Exper­i­men­tal Study Group, Rebus­co has devised an appeal­ing course — Speak Ital­ian with Your Mouth Full — where she com­bines teach­ing two things many peo­ple love: learn­ing to speak Ital­ian and cook­ing Ital­ian food. The course sum­ma­ry reads:

The par­tic­i­pants in this sem­i­nar will dive into learn­ing basic con­ver­sa­tion­al Ital­ian, Ital­ian cul­ture, and the Mediter­ranean diet. Each class is based on the prepa­ra­tion of a deli­cious dish and on the bite-sized acqui­si­tion of parts of the Ital­ian lan­guage and cul­ture. A good diet is not based on recipes only, it is also root­ed in healthy habits and in cul­ture. At the end of the sem­i­nar the par­tic­i­pants will be able to cook some healthy and tasty recipes and to under­stand and speak basic Ital­ian.

As Rebus­co explains in a short video, this course has the advan­tage of mak­ing the lan­guage lessons a lit­tle less abstract. It gives stu­dents a chance to apply what they’ve learned (new vocab­u­lary words, pro­nun­ci­a­tions, etc.) in a fun, prac­ti­cal con­text.

Above, we start you off with the first lan­guage les­son in the sem­i­nar. It begins where all basic cours­es start — with how to say your name. Below, you can watch the class learn to cook fresh pas­ta. Along the way, the course also teach­es stu­dents how to make espres­so, risot­to, home­made piz­za, bruschet­ta, and bis­cot­ti. Lec­tures for the course can be found on the MIT web site, YouTube and iTunes. Speak Ital­ian with Your Mouth Full also appears in our col­lec­tion of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons and 1200 Free Cours­es Online. Buon Appeti­to!

Ingre­di­ents & Cook­ing Instruc­tion:

Food Prepa­ra­tion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mas­ter List of 700 Free Online Cours­es From Great Uni­ver­si­ties

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Har­vard Profs Meet World-Class Chefs in Unique Online Course

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

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Maria Callas Performs at Covent Garden in 1962, Toward the End of Her Brief But Spectacular Career

in Music | December 2nd, 2013

Maria Callas’s short and sto­ried opera career first took off in Italy in the late 1940s and ear­ly 1950s. From there, her dis­tinc­tive voice — some would call it “ugly,” oth­ers, mag­i­cal — car­ried the sopra­no to Lon­don, Paris and New York. She’s remem­bered for her per­for­mances in La travi­a­ta, Nor­ma and Tosca as much as for her rapid per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al decline. By the mid 1950s, her voice began to lose its warmth “becom­ing thin and acidu­lous,” some would say. At 40, her singing career was basi­cal­ly over. Then, at 53, she died of a heart attack in Paris, alone and unhap­py. Above, we have Callas per­form­ing at the Roy­al Opera House, Covent Gar­den, on Novem­ber 4, 1962, basi­cal­ly toward the end of her brief but spec­tac­u­lar career. She was a sur­prise par­tic­i­pant in a gala con­cert broad­cast on British tele­vi­sion. Callas would have turned 90 today, an occa­sion marked by this Google doo­dle.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry Hosts “The Sci­ence of Opera,” a Dis­cus­sion of How Music Moves Us Phys­i­cal­ly to Tears

Expe­ri­ence Invis­i­ble Cities, an Inno­v­a­tive, Ita­lo Calvi­no-Inspired Opera Staged in LA’s Union Sta­tion

Steve Jobs Nar­rates the First “Think Dif­fer­ent” Ad (Where Callas Makes a Cameo Appear­ance)

 

 

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A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 Best American Films Ever Made (1963)

in Film | December 2nd, 2013

Jean-Luc_Godard_at_Berkeley,_1968_(1)

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Gary Stevens

Like most of the Nou­velle Vague direc­tors who remain inter­est­ing today, Jean-Luc Godard has played the role of film crit­ic as often as he has the role of film direc­tor. While his cin­e­mat­ic com­pa­tri­ot François Truf­faut got his start review­ing movies before he decid­ed to make them, Godard nev­er quite under­went the full con­ver­sion; his non­fic­tion works for the screen include the four-and-a-half-hour Histoire(s) du ciné­ma, a thor­ough­ly idio­syn­crat­ic take on exact­ly the sub­ject you would think it cov­ers, and even most of his fea­ture films turn back on their medi­um and “inter­ro­gate” it — to use, I sup­pose, an aca­d­e­m­ic term fall­en slight­ly out of fash­ion. Then agan, Godard him­self has also gone some­what out of style, not that it drains any of the fas­ci­na­tion out of his fil­mog­ra­phy, and cer­tain­ly not that it makes his opinons less rel­e­vant to fel­low cinephiles.

You’ll find a col­lec­tion of these Godar­d­ian judg­ments in the back pages of Cahiers du cin­e­ma, the jour­nal that bred the lion’s share of these French New-Wave crit­ics-turned-film­mak­ers. On a page of crit­ics’ favorites lists main­tained by a cer­tain Eric C. Jon­sh­son, you’ll find Godard­’s top-ten rank­ings, as pub­lished by Cahiers du cin­e­ma for the years 1956 through 1965.

While he does use these lists to give the occa­sion­al (and well-deserved) prop to a col­league — Jean-Pierre Melville’s Deux Hommes dans Man­hat­tan, Alain Resnais’ Hiroshi­ma, mon amour, Truf­faut’s Les Qua­tres cent coups, Claude Chabrol’s Les Cousins, and Agnes Var­da’s Du cote de la Cote come in for hon­ors in 1959 alone — he also pays his respects to the stol­id virtues of Amer­i­can film­mak­ing, espe­cial­ly of the sen­sa­tion­al vari­ety: Orson Welles’ Mr. Arkadin (#1, 1956), Alfred Hitch­cock­’s Psy­cho (#8, 1960), Samuel Fuller’s Schock Cor­ri­dor (#5, 1965.) He even put togeth­er a list of the Ten Best Amer­i­can Sound Films, which runs as fol­lows:

  1. Scar­face (Howard Hawks)
  2. The Great Dic­ta­tor (Charles Chap­lin)
  3. Ver­ti­go (Alfred Hitch­cock)
  4. The Searchers (John Ford)
  5. Sin­gin’ in the Rain (Kel­ly-Donen)
  6. The Lady from Shang­hai (Orson Welles)
  7. Big­ger Than Life (Nicholas Ray)
  8. Angel Face (Otto Pre­minger)
  9. To Be or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch)
  10. Dis­hon­ored (Josef von Stern­berg)

I’ve often thought that it takes some­one for­eign to most clear­ly view Amer­i­ca, and by the same token, it prob­a­bly takes an out­sider to most clear­ly view main­stream cin­e­ma. In this list, Godard char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly pro­vides both angles at once.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Ing­mar Bergman Eval­u­ates His Fel­low Film­mak­ers — The “Affect­ed” Godard, “Infan­tile” Hitch­cock & Sub­lime Tarkovsky

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

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In Touching Video, Artist Marina Abramović & Former Lover Ulay Reunite After 22 Years Apart

in Art, Life | December 2nd, 2013

In 2010, Ser­bian artist Mari­na Abramović had the hon­or of being the sub­ject of a pop­u­lar ret­ro­spec­tive at New York’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. Through­out the show, Abramović per­formed a gru­el­ing piece enti­tled “The Artist Is Present,” sit­ting in the museum’s atri­um and invit­ing the swelling crowds of view­ers to sit direct­ly oppo­site her, in silent dia­logue. Abramović was no stranger to chal­leng­ing per­for­mances. By the time that MoMA staged the ret­ro­spec­tive, the then 63-year-old artist had engaged in count­less tax­ing exhi­bi­tions, earn­ing her self-giv­en title, “the grand­moth­er of per­for­mance art.”

In her first per­for­mance at 27, Abramović explored the idea of rit­u­al by play­ing a knife game on cam­era, stab­bing the sur­face between her splayed fin­gers with a knife and occa­sion­al­ly hurt­ing her­self; she would then watch a video record­ing of the vio­lence, and attempt to repli­cate it. Sub­se­quent per­for­mances includ­ed her explo­rations of con­scious­ness through the inges­tion of pills for cata­to­nia and depres­sion; anoth­er com­prised a 1974 incar­na­tion of her MoMA per­for­mance, where Abramović  sat pas­sive­ly before a table lit­tered with objects for six hours, invit­ing the audi­ence to put them to use on her per­son (of this piece, Abramović says, “What I learned was that… if you leave it up to the audi­ence, they can kill you… I felt real­ly vio­lat­ed: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stom­ach…”)

In 1976, Abramović  met Ulay, a West Ger­man artist who would become her lover and col­lab­o­ra­tor for the next twelve years. The duo fell into an imper­son­al abyss, los­ing their self­hoods and attempt­ing to become a sin­gle enti­ty through arrest­ing per­for­mances such as Breath­ing In/Breathing Out, where they locked mouths and breathed each other’s exhaled breath, even­tu­al­ly fill­ing their lungs with car­bon monox­ide and falling uncon­scious. By 1988, their romance had run its course; in typ­i­cal­ly atyp­i­cal fash­ion, the pair decid­ed to part by walk­ing from oppos­ing ends of the Great Wall of Chi­na until they met in the mid­dle, and then said good­bye.

On the open­ing night of Abramović’s ret­ro­spec­tive in 2010, the erst­while lovers were reunit­ed. The video above shows Abramović, sit­ting and steel­ing her­self for her next silent inter­locu­tor. Ulay approach­es, and Abramović, a vet­er­an of such dif­fi­cult per­for­mances, looks up to what may have been the sin­gle most unex­pect­ed sight of the night, jolt­ing her dig­ni­fied com­po­sure. Their reunion is a deeply ten­der scene.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Waters: The Point of Con­tem­po­rary Art

Jack­son Pol­lock 51: Short Film Cap­tures the Painter Cre­at­ing Abstract Expres­sion­ist Art

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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Slavoj Žižek on the Feel-Good Ideology of Starbucks

in Business, Economics | December 1st, 2013

Back in 2010, we pre­sent­ed an ani­mat­ed video where Slavoj Žižek, our favorite Sloven­ian the­o­rist, iden­ti­fied a new trend in mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism. Nowa­days, mar­keters have found a crafty way to rework Max Weber’s Protes­tant Eth­ic. They tell us we can achieve per­son­al redemp­tion not through hard work and amass­ing sav­ings, but by con­sum­ing the right prod­ucts. When you buy eco-friend­ly prod­ucts, fair trade goods, or prod­ucts that yield some kind of char­i­ta­ble div­i­dend, you don’t have to think twice about the cost of your con­sumerism. Not when you’ve done some good and earned your­self some good cap­i­tal­ist kar­ma.

This line of think­ing returns in Žižek’s new film The Per­vert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy, where, once again, he focus­es on one of the world’s most effec­tive mar­ket­ing oper­a­tions, Star­bucks. This, after hav­ing seem­ing­ly imbibed a “Ven­ti” or “Trenta” por­tion of the prod­uct.

To drill deep­er into Zizek’s thoughts on this sub­ject, see his 30-minute lec­ture “First as Tragedy, Then as Farce.” For more clips from his new film, see our recent posts:

Slavoj Žižek Exam­ines the Per­verse Ide­ol­o­gy of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy

Slavoj Žižek’s Pervert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy Decodes The Dark Knight and They Live

via Bib­liok­lept

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