On 27 March, there was music and poetry in the theater.
Alex Franken, also a poet, sang songs.
Brit sang songs in English, sowehat reminiscent of Suzanna Vega and Tracy Chapman; and a song in Dutch, about her recently deceased grandfather.
Ernst Kamphuis told a story.
So did Gerdie van der Poel, about a pub in the 1930s.
Kees Godefrooij read his poems.
There was a column by yours truly, on subjects like witch trials and French racist Le Pen.
By Owen Hatherley in Britain:
Socialists have often felt rather uncomfortable with Futurism.
This Italian art movement, founded in 1909, sang the praises of new technology, aeroplanes and the mass media – but it also exalted war and colonialism.
Many of its leaders, such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, later became outspoken supporters of fascism.
The Marxist critic Walter Benjamin attacked Futurism in the 1930s, contrasting it to the Russian Constructivist art movement that allied itself with the October 1917 revolution.
The paradox, however, is that Russian Constructivism grew out of Italian Futurism – as this timely exhibition at the Estorick Collection gallery in north London demonstrates.
A Russian group of Futurist artists was formed around 1910.
Their first manifesto, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, appeared in 1912 and was composed by the poet and painter Vladimir Mayakovsky, among others.
The Russian Futurists had much in common with the Italians – they too romanticised technology.
But there were differences from the start.
Paintings and book illustrations by Kasimir Malevich and Natalia Goncharova show the influence of Russian folk art, particularly the “lubok”, or woodcut.
Against the realist pretensions of bourgeois art, the Russians saw the future in schematic, distorted figures drawn by anonymous peasant artists.
It’s also notable, considering Marinetti’s inclusion of “scorn for woman” in his Futurist Manifesto, that nearly half the Russian Futurists were female – Varvara Stepanova, Olga Rozanova, Lyubov Popova and Natalia Goncharova being the most prominent.
Promise
Another difference is the harsh, clear lines that creep into the Russian images from around 1913 onwards.
The “metallisation of the human body” promised by the Italian Futurists saw its fulfilment more in Malevich’s robotic figures than in the soft pastel blur of Italian painters such as Gino Severini.
Popova’s painting Portrait (1915), with the word “futurismo” emblazoned across it, shows the mid-point between the two styles.
The Futurist theme of a collision between man and machine took on a very different significance after 1914.
Marinetti’s Futurist group volunteered for the First World War.
Despite the death of their great sculptor Umberto Boccioni, they remained militaristic even after the war had ended.
The Russian response to the war was more ambiguous.
Initially Malevich and Mayakovsky (who had joined the Bolsheviks in 1908, but then drifted away from politics) designed propaganda posters with folksy representations of bayoneted Germans.
Their enthusiasm for war didn’t last long.
By 1915 Mayakovsky was roaring out anti-war poems like “You!”.
The war’s presence in Russian Futurist art also changed dramatically. Rozanova’s Universal War series used abstract shapes to create dehumanised depictions of the slaughter.
By 1915, Malevich had effaced human figures altogether and embraced abstraction. Meanwhile Vladimir Tatlin started using actual industrial materials in his exhibits.
Then came the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Mayakovsky wrote at the time, “October. To accept or not to accept?
For me, as for the other Moscow Futurists, this question never arose. It is my revolution.”
See also here.
Jewish artists and the Russian revolution: here.
Radical Russia: Art, Culture and Revolution. How the Bolshevik Revolution saved avant-garde art: here.
From the BBC:
Llama dung mites track Inca fall
By Christine McGourty
BBC science correspondentScientists believe they have found a new way to track the rise and fall of some ancient civilisations – by studying fossilised mites that thrive in the dung of their livestock.
A team from America, France and Britain have been studying mites from the soil in the Andes in Peru and say the tiny creatures can provide clues to changing patterns of trade and of disease epidemics through history.
The researchers made the discovery, announced in the Journal of Archaeological Science, while studying mud cores from a lake near the town of Cuzco, the heart of the former Inca Empire.
Dr Mick Frogley, of Sussex University, UK, said: “We were looking at the lake sediments for evidence of climate change, but we found so many of these mites it piqued our interest.”
The tiny bugs – not much more than a millimetre across – are related to domestic dust mites often found in carpets or mattresses.
Some species live exclusively in moist grassland and pastures where they break down vegetable matter, including the droppings of grazing animals.
When the scientists started to record the numbers of mites, they obtained a plot with a very distinctive pattern.
Spanish signature
“It couldn’t have been better if we’d made it up,” Dr Frogley told BBC News. “It was that good.”
They found a huge increase in the number of fossil mites as the empire expanded from the Cuzco area in the early 1400s. A sudden drop in numbers corresponded with the collapse of the native population after the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors.
Historical accounts from the time also document that two-thirds of the llamas in the Cuzco area died of skin diseases.
Studying ancient civilisations can be difficult when they have left no detailed written records behind. But the researchers say they now have a new tool for examining the fortunes of native populations in the Andes.
The mite methodology could have more wide-ranging applications in the study of economic and social changes in other cultures through history.
“The Inca were a test-bed,” said Dr Frogley. “Now, the findings have given us confidence to look further back into the past at civilisations that pre-date the Inca.
“A lot less is known about their economic and social structures and why these other cultures disappeared from the archaeological record. The technique could help find some answers.”
He said it could also be used to study the Viking occupation of Greenland, which was also an animal-based economy.
See also here.
Spanish colonialism under Philip II: here.
First Known Gunshot Victim Of New World Found In Peruvian Inca Cemetery: here.
Peruvian Nazca culture: here.
Chibcha culture in Colombia: here.
Guanacos in Tierra del Fuego: here.
Alpaca surf video: here.
This video from England is called George Bush Iraq War Demo, London 2003.
By Vicky Short:
Spanish Judge calls for architects of Iraq invasion to be tried for war crimes
27 March 2007
Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge who sought to prosecute Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet, has called for US President George W. Bush and his allies to be tried for war crimes over Iraq.
Writing in El Pais on the fourth anniversary of the invasion, Garzón stated, “Today, March 20, marks four years since the formal start of the war on Iraq.
Instigated by the United States and Great Britain, and supported by Spain among other countries, one of the most sordid and unjustifiable episodes in recent human history began.
“Breaking every international law, and under the pretext of the war against terror, there has taken place since 2003 a devastating attack on the rule of law and against the very essence of the international community. In its path, institutions such as the United Nations were left in tatters, from which it has not yet recovered.”
“Instead of commemorating the war,” Garzón continues, “we should be horrified, screaming and demonstrating against the present massacre created as a consequence of that war.”
He then writes that George W. Bush and his allies should eventually face war crimes charges for their actions in Iraq:
Dear Kitty. Some blog 