Dive into the archives.
- AI WEIWEI Freedom Mix
Last week on Facebook I asked my friends to dedicate songs to the jailed artist/activist Ai Weiwei. Many responded and the songs they posted expressed a mix of outrage, reassurance, appreciation, anger, and empathy. I promised I’d make a mix out them to keep the word alive. Here it is…
Expensive Jewelry - FREE AI WEIWEI
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right-click + ’save link as’ (mac) / ’save target as’ (windows)*If you have any trouble downloading from the link about try THIS LINK.
Compiled by:
Ralph Fortune, Lok Jansen, Marieke Rietbergen, Mietze Beej, Jochem Ruijgrok, Jeroen Koolhaas, Afaina de Jong, Damon Johnson, Bea Galilee, Reineke Otten, An Xiao Mina, Adrian Jevicki, Allister Slingenberg, Joshua Ellison, Farida Sedoc, Samir Bantal, Daniel Perlin, Uniek Mager, Nancy Krahe, James McGetrick, Mavis McGetrick…Tracklist
Friends and enemies intro - Malcolm X
Truth and rights - Johnny Osbourne
Liberation - Outkast, Ceelo, Erykah Badu, Big Rube
Get up stand up - Bob Marley and the Wailers
54-46 was my number - Toots and the Maytals
San Quentin - Johnny Cash
Freedom - Richie Havens
The revolution will not be televised - Gill Scott Heron
Unknown soldier 1&2 - Fela Kuti
Sonny’s lettah - Linton Kwesi Johnson
None of us are free - Solomon Burke
Doctor’s darling version - Seeed
Korruption - Junior Kelly
Blood money - Pablo Moses
Time has come today - The Chambers BrothersAi Weiwei vocals sampled from his TED Talk and PBS feature.
For the history and latest developments, check freeaiweiwei.org
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- FREE AI WEIWEI
On Sunday April 3 my friend and collaborator Ai Weiwei was seized by Beijing police. He has not been seen or heard from since. Weiwei is a brilliant artist, curious thinker, adventurous eater, and courageous defender of freedom of expression. His arrest, which has not been explained or even acknowledgedby the authorities, violates the basic human rights promised him by The Constitutionof the People’s Republic of China. Due to the restricted nature of Chinese media, it is unlikely that many of Weiwei’s fellow citizens will ever hear of his mistreatment. Since his arrest, his name has been stricken from domestic search engines and blogging platforms.
Weiwei is just the most recent and most prominent subject of a Jasmine-infused crackdown on free expression in the which the government has “criminally detained 26 [now 27] individuals, disappeared more than 30, and put more than 200 under soft detention,” according to a report by Chinese Human Rights Defenders.
External pressure is now being applied by foreign ministries and supporters in the cultural world. If your government hasn’t yet spoken up, please contact your local politicians and media and alert them. And please sign the petition currently active on Twitter, a platform near and dear to Weiwei’s heart.
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- Black Tuesday Mix: Half Love
Songs of reluctance and regret by Bettye LaVette, Etta James, Sam Cooke, Ben E King, Deer Tick, Ann Peebles, Frankie Beverly, Arcade Fire, Arthur Lee & Love, Bonnie Prince Billie, Chocolate Genius, Larry Banks, Bilal, D’Angelo, Broken Social Scene, and so on and so forth.
This was originally supposed to be a kind of anti-Valentine’s Day mix about love lost, but I lost the plot half way through putting it together and decided to scrap it. My friend Jeroen just put out a superior Valentine’s Day mix called ‘Rappers need love too’. I’ve had that on repeat for the past couple of days and the pressure from it made me give this a second shot. Here it is. Hope you like.
Expensive Jewelry - Half Love
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right-click + ’save link as’ [mac] / ’save target as’ [windows]Tracklist
Deer Tick - Art isn’t real
Timmy Thomas - Why can’t we live together
Frankie Beverly & Maze - Joy and pain
Arcade Fire - Ocean of noise
Bettye LaVette - Let me down easy
Etta James - Almost persuaded
Sam Cooke - Lost and lookin’
Ben E King - It’s all over
Arthur Lee & Love - Signed DC
Bonnie Prince Billie - I see a darkness
Chocolate Genius - My mom
Larry Banks - I’m not the one
Bilal - How come you don’t call me anymore?
D’Angelo - Shit, damn, motherfucker
Broken Social Scene - Pitter patter goes my heart
Ann Peebles - I can’t stand the rain
OV Wright - Let’s straighten it out
Little Boy Blues - Seed of lovePopularity: 6% [?]
- Skateistan
This is a pretty cool feature on some very cool kids in a very difficult situation.
For more info check this New York Times story.
Visit the Skateistan site and find out how to support the cause.Popularity: 5% [?]
- Pic of the day
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- New Mix: Capricorn Sound
A tribute mix to the hardest working sign in the zodiac. Nineteen ambitious, hard headed tracks by Capricorn champions past and present, mixed by birthday me.
Tracklist
The sweetest taboo - Sade [January 16]
Slow dance - John Legend [December 28]
No one else - Mary J Blige [January 11]
Let’s get drunk and screw - Jimmy Buffet [December 25]
Bad girls - Donna Summer [December 31]
Ashes to ashes - David Bowie [January 8]
Love is a battlefield - Pat Benetar [January 10]
Rapture - Blondie [Chris Stein, January 5]
I miss you - Aaliyah [January 16]
A woman’s threat - R Kelly [January 8]
Shine eye gal - Shabba Ranks [January 17]
Going back to Cali - LL Cool J [January 14]
Funkmaster Flex freestyle - Xzibit [January 18]
I’m a man - Bo Diddley [December 30]
Go back home - Allen Toussaint [January 14]
Suspicious minds - Elvis Presley [January 8]
I will always love you - Dolly Parton [January 19]
Maybe - Janis Joplin [January 19]
Free Money - Patti Smith [December 30]
When the levee breaks - Led Zeppelin [Jimmy Page, January 9]The Capricorn Sound - Expensive Jewelry [January 7]
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right-click + ’save link as’ (mac) / ’save target as’ (windows)Popularity: 5% [?]
- Guangzhou WanderCam
I was in Guangzhou yesterday checking out its new Opera House for Icon magazine. Here are some photos of my long, rambling walk from the House to my hotel.
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- My TEDx talk: Me-We
Here’s a presentation I gave a couple months ago as part of an event called TEDxFactory798 in Beijing. It covers a few projects that I’ve done in China and some of the aspirations behind them.
You can see the other presentations from that day here:
Neville Mars - Taming the Beast that is Beijing
Megan & KC Connolly - Bringing Together Art & PeopleOr, if you’re trapped behind the Great Firewall, watch em on Tudou here.
Popularity: 5% [?]
- Beautiful Dark Twisted Houston Fantasy
Man alive. I’ve been holding off on getting the new Kanye album (despite the many rave reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) because I’ve got a bunch of work to do and don’t want to get too distracted. But a couple of days ago, on recommendation of my friend Robin, I downloaded a chopped and screwed version called ‘MY BEAUTIFUL TWISTED DARK HOUSTON FANTASY’ and, man, it is Goddamn amazing and now I don’t know if I can even listen to the original version.
It’s the full album maestroed by DJ Candlestick and hosted by future mayor of Houston OG Ron C. You can get the whole glorious thing free HERE, but here’s a sample:
Kanye West w/ Pusha T - Runaway (Chopped & Screwed)
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right-click + ’save link as’ [mac] / ’save target as’ [windows]I posted the original a little while ago. Here is it again for comparison:
Kanye West w/ Pusha T - Runaway
Besides the obvious chopping and screwing a couple other great songs are mixed into the Candlestick version. Here they are too…
Outkast - Elevators
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(Love to Rotterdam where I rinsed the hell out of this song…)Music.
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- Chart: The Causes of Mortality
Today, while looking around for a graphic to explain how the StuxNet virus works, I stumbled into an interesting article on the communicative power of charts. It features three beautiful and hugely influential historical infographics, including the one above. “Diagram of the Causes of Mortality in the Army in the East” was created by none other than Florence Nightingale and its existence is probably common knowledge to all students of 1. statistics 2. diagramming 3. nursing 4. the Crimean war. Being none of those things, my mind was kind of blown. Anyway, here is the back story:
Although remembered as the mother of modern nursing, Nightingale was an accomplished statistician too. She was particularly innovative in presenting data visually. The example above, of a type now known as “Nightingale’s Rose” or “Nightingale’s Coxcomb”, comes from her monograph, “Notes on matters affecting the health, efficiency and hospital administration of the British army” published in 1858. In the same year she became the first female fellow of the Statistical Society of London (now Royal Statistical Society).
The chart displays the causes of the deaths of soldiers during the Crimean war, divided into three categories: “Preventible or Mitigable Zymotic Diseases” (infectious diseases, including cholera and dysentery, coloured in blue), “wounds” (red) and “all other causes” (black). As with today’s pie charts, the area of each wedge is proportional to the figure it stands for, but it is the radius of each slice (the distance from the common centre to the outer edge) rather than the angle that is altered to achieve this. Her principal message—that even during periods of heavy fighting, such as November 1854, far more soldiers died from infection than from wounds—can be seen at a glance. She sent the chart to the War Office; and it is a fair assumption that it contributed to the improvements in military hospitals that she brought about.
Nightingale’s chart is a beautiful and persuasive call to action, but it is not perfect. The red, black and blue wedges are all measured from the centre, so some areas mask parts of others. The numbers of deaths from the various causes are not stated—although, to be fair, it was their relative size that Nightingale wished to show.
Read the rest here: The Economist - “Worth a thousand words”
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- The Boss w/ The Roots
“RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAH!!” - Melle Mel
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- Hug the Police
Coming from America, I have always associated the police with a kind of bullying menace. Although I have seen many old films and TV shows featuring pudgy, gregarious, community policemen, I came of age in 80s & 90s, which was an era of aggro, steroid-fueled pigs of the Dirty Harry, Death Wish variety. So upon moving to Japan after college I found it kind of shocking that the police there seem to go out their way to promote a friendly, non-threatening image to their citizens. I was reminded of this today when I stumbled onto this fantastic collection of Japanese police mascots collected by Edward Harrison.
As a kind of disclaimer I should probably say that once you’ve broken Japanese law (or scared a Japanese person) and the police have you at the station, I think things change pretty drastically. And there is of course an Orwellian aspect to the kawaiification of authority, but still my impression and experience of Japanese police is that their default setting is friendly.
Anyway, here are some of my favorites (Text ©IdleIdol):
Konohakeibu (コノハけいぶ)
The bird symbol of Aichi is of course an owl, a Eurasian scops-owl to be precise which is called ‘konohazuku’ in Japanese. The migratory bird is found throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Shinshiro in Aichi is a famous spot where the calls of the owls can be heard. So the first part of the name comes from the type of owl while the later, ‘keibu’ means police inspector.Yoichi-kun (よいち君)
Kagawa’s capital city, Takamatsu, was the location for an historic battle between the Heike and Genji clans. Nasu no Yoichi was a famed samurai who fought in the Genpei War and known for his skilled archery. An enemy of his side is known to have placed a fan at the top of a mast on one of his ships, and challenged the opposing side to shoot it off. Despite the fierce waves and the rocking of the ship, Yoichi hit the fan with just one shot. The bright and colourful mascot takes inspiration from this historical figure.Gorou-kun (ごろうくん)
On the 11th of November 1999 Gorou-kun was born and started working in public relation campaigns and traffic safety classes for the police. ‘Mutsugorou’ is the Japanese word for mudskipper and where Gorou-kun takes his name. The wide eyed mudskipper a creature common on the coast line of saga represents the police forces friendliness, their sense of justice and cheerfulness.Catch-kun (キャッチ君)
Catch-kun symbolizes the age of information and technology. He’s a robot who can quickly catch the voice of citizens and solve their problems.
(VERY FEEL: Awesome)Tateyama-kun (立山くん)
Tateyama was designed by Fujiko Fujio the penname for two manga artists called Hiroshi Fujimoto and Moto Abiko. They are most famous for creating Doraemon and Obake no Q-taro. Both artists came from Toyama but moved to Tokyo for work. The design and name of the character comes from Mount Tate (Tateyama) one of the tallest peaks in the Hida Mountains.Popularity: 5% [?]
- AInterview
Here’s a little interview I did with Ai Weiwei for the November/December issue of Flash Art magazine. In stores now, pick it up.
Your installation for the Unilever Commission recently opened at the Tate Turbine Hall in London. That seems to me a very difficult commission, not just because of the prominence of the institution and quality of past recipients, but due to the character of the Turbine Hall itself. How did these aspects affect you?
As you say, the Unilever Commission is a program that’s been running. I’m already the eleventh person invited by the Tate to do this. Of course, you see that those artists go in very different directions in terms of their personal histories, their artistic statements, and their public performance. This is important, because the Unilever Commission really is a public performance, since it’s in a public space that attracts a few million visitors and a lot of media attention. I felt that the work had to have some kind of relation to that condition. It could be a very minimal relation, but still you need to decide what kind of position you want to take. You’re not really trying to prove something to yourself or to challenge, but rather to speak very quietly but certainly about certain elements of life.
It’s really a metaphysical thing, because you present one work to the public, as a statement. It’s very difficult: it’s as if someone asked you to say one word about your life or your ideology. I think most people would say God, but my type of work is mostly about uncertainty. (more…)
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- Pic of the Day
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- Pic of the day
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