Tuesday 3 March 2015

Ikue Mori on life after No Wave

The Teardrop Explodes - Tiny Children (parjo01 re-edit)

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Via

Kim Gordon: By the Book

Monday 2 March 2015

Baba Commandant & The Mandingo Band - Juguya

Why racism is not backed by science

Star Wars Desert Rave in Tunisia

The Dunes Electroniques dance festival opens to the mellow beats of one of Tunisia’s biggest up-and-coming DJs on a stage planted in the middle of the Sahara. It is a surreal sight. The festival setting is cocooned by sand dunes, and the backstage area is the film set for the town of Mos Espa on the fictional planet of Tatooine.The “Star Wars” films used southern Tunisia as their dusty backdrop, borrowing heavily from traditional Berber fashion and architecture. Of course, Mos Espa is a made-up name. Tunisians call the place where the festival is being held Ong Jemal (“neck of the camel”), near the villages of Nefta and Tozeur, which lie on the edge of the vast Chott el-Gharsa salt lake.But some in the local crowd embrace the “Star Wars” theme, donning Darth Vader masks or sporting Princess Leia hair. Some dancers opt for selfie sticks to wave in the air; others brandish lightsabers.At first glance, it could be a dance festival anywhere in the world, but it’s distinctively Tunisian. Hipsters from the capital dance alongside locals wearing traditional burnooses, the long brown wool cloaks well known to “Star Wars” fans, over their jeans. The clash of modern with the old at the unusual event strikes a chord with some of the cultural shifts, economic issues and political transitions that Tunisia is facing in tumultuous times...

Heroin has rightly earned a sulphurous reputation for destroying the lives of thousands upon thousands of people, killing many - including scores of important artists, writers and musicians. There is, though, another story to heroin. In this programme, Professor Andrew Hussey sets out to explore the extent to which it's possible to say that the drug has a particular effect on the creative output of those who have been heavily involved in using heroin, and before it, opium. He argues that while heroin won't make somebody creative who wouldn't otherwise have been, its impact on an individual's perception of time and space can be seen to modify the work of addicts and former addicts. He'll talk with, among others, author Will Self and Christiane F., whose book about her own heroin use in Berlin became a cult classic in the 1970s and 1980s, and hear from pianist James Young about the way heroin's influence can be witnessed across the works of such disparate figures as Berlioz, Bill Evans and Nico. The programme in no way seeks to glamorise heroin use, it simply addresses the question of how artists who've used the drug have been influenced as a result
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