Méconnaissance

Photographers Anne Marie Hubert-Brierre, Xavier Hubert-Brierre and Michel Guiss Djomo set up a mirror and cameras in the jungles near Nyonié in Gabon to record how the area’s leopards reacted.  More videos are on their youtube channel.

The hummingbird people

Regard Eloigne

"To the Yanomami, each person has an ‘image-essence’, a double called a utupë, to which they are joined until death.  A utupë can present itself in the image of many different living creatures, including a bird, mammal or insect. There are also spirits of trees, waterfalls and wild honey." (Survival International)

One by one the spirits arrived. The toucan spirits arrived with their big ear sticks and bright red loin cloths, describes Davi. The hummingbird people arrived and flew around. The moka frog spirits were there with quivers of arrows on their backs. Then came the peccary spirits, the bat people and the spirits of the waterfall.

My soul began to shine.

All came and slung their hammocks in my chest.

OSPAAL Poster Art

The Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (Organización de Solidaridad con los Pueblos de Asia, África y América Latina), abbreviated as OSPAAAL, is a Cuban political movement with the stated purpose of fighting globalisation, imperialism, neoliberalism and defending human rights. It publishes the magazine Tricontinental. The OSPAAAL was founded in Havana in January 1966, after the Tricontinental Conference, a meeting of leftist delegates fromGuinea, the Congo, South Africa, Angola, Vietnam, Syria, North Korea, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Chile and the Dominican Republic. Mehdi Ben Barka, the Moroccan leader of the Tricontinental Conference, was murdered the year before, allegedly with complicity of the CIA.

One of the main purposes of the organisation is to promote the causes of socialism and communism in the Third World; for example, OSPAAAL strongly supported Hugo Chávez and demands that the Cuban Five be released. Social development, which the organization says is a human right, is a recurring theme in OSPAAAL publications.

From its foundation until the mid 1980s, OSPAAAL produced brightly coloured propaganda posters promoting their cause, however, financial difficulty and ink shortages forced the organization to stop producing these posters. However, in 2000, these posters began to be printed again.  These posters, as they intended to be internationalist, usually had their message written in Spanish, English, French, and Arabic. As opposed to being put up on walls around Cuba, these posters were instead folded up and stapled into copies ofTricontinental, so that they could be distributed internationally. This allowed OSPAAAL to send its message to its subscribers around the world.

All OSPAAAL-Posters from the beginning until 2003 are documented and indexed in the book The Tricontinental Solidarity Poster.

Comprehensive archive of OSPAAAL posters created by librarian/archivist Lincoln Cushing

These are some of my favorites:

Biologically Inspired Network Design

1. Tokyo rail network designed by Physarum plasmodium

2. Slime Mold Physarum polycephalum networking on a map of the United States

3. Physarum Polycephalum solves Traveling Salesman Problem

New editing project — Witness: South Sudan

The episode of the docu-series Witness that I edited will premiere on HBO on Nov. 19th. It profiles the photographer Veronique de Viguerie.  It was directed and produced by David Frankham, and produced by Michael Mann.

The four-part series premiers on Monday, November 5th. For more information on HBO Documentary Films, visit http://itsh.bo/I83ODm.

The embodied voice: Thea Musgrave and Kui Dong

Below are two very different yet fantastic examples of perfomative choral music, and each brings entirely different musical and cultural influences to their work.  Thea Musgrave and Kui Dong are two of my favorite coposers who work in the avant-garde and yet ancient tradition of giving their musical performers performative cues as part of their musical score.  In works such as those below, these composers treat the physical presentation of the music as inseperable from the score itself, yet they present their works in a composed music setting as opposed to a theatrical or otherwise traditionally performative setting — to great effect.

Kui Dong (董葵, born 1966, Beijing, China) is a Chinese-American composer, musician, and teacher. She is known for her music which has often incorporated traditional Chinese music into contemporary contexts, and is currently Professor of Music at Dartmouth College.

Thea Musgrave (b. 27 May 1928) is a Scottish composer of opera and classical music.  In 1970 she became Guest Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, a position which confirmed her increasing involvement with the musical life of the United States, where she has lived since 1972. She has received the Koussevitsky Award (1974) as well as two Guggenheim Fellowships (1974/5 and 1982/3). From 1987 to 2002 she was Distinguished Professor at Queen’s College, City University of New York. She holds honorary degrees from Old Dominion University (Virginia), Glasgow University, Smith College and the New England Conservatoire in Boston. In 2002 she was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours List.

Transpersonal Psychology

A lecture given by R.D. Laing (1927-1989) and Leo Matos February 10 1982 as a St Görans Lecture in Stockholm. Introduction by Prof Lennart Wetterberg. Note that this is not a Stockholm Psychiatry Lecture, these can be found at http://www.youtube.com/psychiatrylectures

If the pain of love were not so pleasant

Adam de la Halle:

Se li maus c'amours envoie

This is the most beautiful song I've ever heard.  It was recorded by the group Sequentia — Barbara Thornton (voice), Benjamin Bagby (harp) — in 1984. The composer, Adam de la Halle, or Adam le Bossu (Adam "the hunchback") lived from 1285 and 1288.  Much of the notation of his music is lost or unclear, and requires active (re)interpretation.

If the pain of love
Were not so pleasant,
One could never suffer through it
For very long without taking the road
To despair, or worse.
But it is such pleasing pain, 
And Love is so gentle,
And is the source of such noble thoughts,
That, in truth, it can be Paradise
For those who love truly. 

The hope of the joy
Of seeing her,
And Love's amaible manners
Encourage every suitor to hope
That he will gain favor,
Provided he will be happy
And eager to serve,
Only hoping for the best,
For no one is suitably enamoured
Who has not this resolve.

I would not for anything in the world
Want to believe that a true lover
Could ever be inconsistent,
Or that he could shrink from sufferings;
Provided his heart and desires
Are ever inclined towards that smiling face,
Those sweet, loving eyes,
And the noble bearing,
And all the goodness, honor and worthiness
Which have made him a prisoner.

For this is what soothes and restores
Those who are most patient in love;
And this is what compels them to sing,
In the hopes that Humility will intercede in their favor.

No advantage is accorded to the bold
Who love only as they see fit,
But steadfast lovers always prosper,
Heedful of their tasks:
Mercy favors them.

My lady, if I thought that I would live
For one hundred thousand years.
And even if you were no longer living,
I could never think of another;
You have so utterly enchanted me
That there will never arise in me anything but joy
At that place where my pure and devothed thoughts
Are fixed. This is my suffering,
And I shall die possessed by it,
I am certain.

O sweet month of May or April,
I am barred from entering that sweet place.
See that my song gets sung
There, and is attended. 

NEW GHOST TRADE POSTER

Kestrel's Eye

This intrepid documentary by Swedish filmmaker Mikael Kristersson follows two European falcons as they go about their daily activities. Two years in the making, the film is shot without any supplemental audio, allowing the two birds to be the sole focal point. As the birds hunt for food and care for their offspring, viewers are treated to a literal bird's-eye view from their nest at the top of an old church steeple. (Netflix)