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Robert Beattie was many things: an architect, a designer of iconic public buildings on Long Island, and a decorated World War II veteran. But most importantly, he was the father of today's guest, Richard Beattie. So we're celebrating Father's Day by celebrating the life and work of Robert Beattie. As an architect, Beattie's specialty was mid-century modern architecture. Working with clean lines, natural light, and an appreciation of the surrounding landscape, he designed many iconic buildings in our area. If you live in the town of Islip, you'll know his MacArthur Airport terminal, the core buildings of Suffolk County Community College's Ammerman Campus, and St. Lawrence Church in Sayville. Richard takes us on a tour of his father's buildings and details his life. Robert was part of the Greatest Generation, earning a Silver Star as an Alamo Scout in the Philippines. He got his start in architecture with the firm Shreve, Lamb & Harmon in New York City. Robert then founded his own firm, Dobecki & Beattie, and embarked on a storied career on Long Island. We discuss the changing architectural landscape of Long Island in the 1960s, the Beattie family's connections to Oakdale, and Robert's devotion to being a father and an architect. Further Research Robert Beattie, Architect (Facebook Memorial page) Church of St. Lawrence the Martyr AIA Long Island “Pockets of Long Island Once Went Crazy for Modernism. Why?” (Metropolis) Audio Footnotes Episode 192 Jones Beach Theater with Richard Beattie Episode 34 Old Mansions (Oakdale) with George Davies Episode 94 Flying on Long Island with Walter Winnicki and Bob Mott Music Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/ Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0
There's a rough stretch of water between Australia and Tasmania called the Bass Strait. Within the strait there's a group of islands called the Furneaux Group. Within the group lies Long Island, a small, mostly-uninhabited stretch of grass and trees that attracted the attention of Madeleine Bessel-Koprek and her colleagues. We're traveling far afield on today's episode, discussing paleoecology with Madeine, a Ph.D. student at Australian National University. Along with Simon Graeme Haberle, Stefania Ondei, Stephen Harris, and David MJS Bowman, she recently published a study unraveling the ecological history of their Long Island. It's a fascinating combination of diligent field work – digging through mud and picking through moss- and meticulous lab work – pouring through microscopic samples and digitally deciphering aerial photographs. Their scientific detective work uncovers a natural world that has in some ways persisted since the last Ice Age and helps inform our understanding of the impact of aboriginal and colonial activities in the area. Further Research Madeleine Bessell‑Koprek at Australian National University at LinkedIn Bessell-Koprek, M., Haberle, S. G., Ondei, S., Harris, S., & Bowman, D. M. (2025). Reconstructing the long-term ecological history of Long Island, Furneaux Group (Bass Strait), Lutruwita/Tasmania. Regional Environmental Change, 25(1), 1-15. The Land Bridge: A World Beneath the Sea (A Wind & Sky Project) Australasian Pollen and Spore Atlas Music Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/ Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0
Courtney Doyle is my first friend to be on God Stories this year and her second time on the show. In this conversation she shares her story in the middle of currently walking through the grief of losing both parents within 67 days. She shares powerful ways God has spoken to them in this midst of great pain and how He has been there all along. This was holy ground sitting with Courtney in her attic as she shared with such vulnerability and love for her parents. I hold her heart and words with such care and gratitude and I'm thankful you get to hear as well. May this bless you as you go through your own challenges knowing just like Courtney said, God is with you and will see you through-keep going!✨Courtney's Website: www.courtneydoyleministries.com ✨Courtney's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/courtneydoyle_8?igsh=bHZzMHZydmoxMDEy✨Courtney's Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mom-show-with-courtney-doyle/id1569103368✨God Stories with Cassie Instagram: @godstorieswithCassie✨Email: godstorieswithCassie@gmail.comMusic provided by FMA: Skyway by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC
Dean chats with Noreen Grice, the founder of You Can Do Astronomy, an accessibility design and consulting company with a focus on making astronomy and space science accessible for everyone! Music from Blue Dot Sessions (CC BY-NC) this episode includes the following titles: Batholith, Spinning Cam, Silent Obelisk and Flame.Send us your thoughts at lookingup@wvxu.org or post them on social media using #lookinguppodcastFind Us Online: Twitter: @lookinguppod @deanregas, Instagram: @917wvxu @deanregas, Tiktok: @cincinnatipublicradio @astronomerdean, Episode transcript: www.wvxu.org/podcast/looking-up, More from Dean: www.astrodean.com
The voices of the past are all around us, if you know how to listen. And sometimes those voices are trapped on small thin strips of tape wrapped in cheap plastic. That's where Robert Anen comes in. As project archivist for the Long Island Library Resources Council, he works with historical collections across Nassau and Suffolk counties. Specializing in audio preservation and digitization, he's rescued a number of collections – copying them to digital media and making them publicly available online. Today we focus on Robert's work with one of the oldest oral history collections on Long Island at the Manhasset Public Library. Library director Maggie Gough introduces us to the scope and depth of their oral history collection while Antonia Mattheou, their consulting archivist, helps us unpack the history contained on the recordings. Special shout out to Manhasset's first librarian Ruth Cowell who conducted most of the oral history interviews. Her foresight, along with a committed group of patrons, means that we get to listen to memories of the Blizzard of 1888 and the Vanderbilt Cup Races from those who experienced them. Recorded in 1953 on a reel to reel recorder, the interviews were converted to cassette tapes sometime in the 1980s before Rob digitized them in the 21st century, On today's episode you'll hear from these Manhasset residents: Ernest Willets Herbert Fish Laura Schneider Ernest Willets George D. Smith Further Research Manhasset Public Library Oral History Collection (1953-1988) Manhasset Public Library History Center Long Island Library Resources Council The Whitney Greentree Estate Spinney Hill, the African American History of Manhasset and Great Neck Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/ Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0
Isle of Ever is Jen Calonita's newest middle grade novel, a story grounded in the history of Long Island's North Fork. On today's episode, Jen discusses growing up on Long Island and spending many summers at her grandparents' house in Mattituck. It was here, in between trips to Greenport, that she first heard tell of Captain Kidd's lost treasure. She tried digging up the local beach, came up empty, but the idea buried itself in Jen's mind. Now she has worked her experiences into the tale of Benny Benedict, a young girl caught up in a race to solve a puzzle and claim an inheritance. The plot and the clues to the mystery are tied up in Greenport's history. Jen walks us through the Greenport locales and local legends that made it into the book in one form or another. We also talk about her love of reading and of middle grade and young adult fiction. Further Resources Jen Calonita Isle of Ever (Sourcebooks) Long Beach Bar ‘Bug' Light Preston's Greenport Carousel (temporarily closed) Sweet Valley High (Good Reads) Steven Kellogg Music: Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/ Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0
Have you ever wanted to take a trip to the Arctic? Every year, tourists from around the world make their way to the region. But the ships carrying these tourists bring an invisible pollutant with them — one that's impossible to see and impossible to ignore: noise. How does this unseen phenomenon affect animals that call the Arctic home? And what role do even the most environmentally conscious travelers play in this story? Researchers and cruise industry officials are working to uncover the answers. Join us as we dive into this noisy crisis and hear from the experts navigating its challenges — and exploring ways to protect the Arctic's pristine, icy wilderness. Check the associated article on Scienceline.org Music: "Cold Summers", "Digital Compass", "Arctic Draba" by Blue Dot Sessions | CC BY-NC 4.0
Memorial Day 1949 was an auspicious day in Riverhead as it saw the inaugural game at the brand new Wivchar Stadium on Harrison Ave. The brainchild of Tony Wivchar, a local entrepreneur and owner of an earth-moving company, the venue soon came to be known as Riverhead Stadium. Although it only existed for a few brief years, the stadium was alive with excitement. To help drum up interest, Wivchar formed the Riverhead Falcons baseball team out of local talent to play in exhibition games. Their opponents ranged from Negro League stalwarts such as the Black Yankees to barnstorming attractions like the House of David. Other events included women's softball, rodeos, and professional wrestling. By the mid-1950s, however, the stadium was gone with little left to mark its passing. Enter Fabio Montella – Suffolk County Community College librarian, history professor, and friend of the podcast. As part of his on-going explorations of baseball in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, Montella became aware of the stadium's short but illustrious existence. He was able to uncover more about Wivchar's past and his pursuits, even finding and interviewing Wivhcar's wife and daughter. The result, as today's episode will attest, is a fascinating glimpse into one man's passion and the field of dreams he built to contain it. Further Research “Riverhead Stadium Opens.” County Review, May 26, 1949 “Giving the House a Home” [House of David baseball] Audio Footnotes: More episodes with Fabio Montella Music Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/ Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0
Edward Lange was a German artist who started his career on Long Island in the late 19th century. He meticulously captured the landscape and built environment across the island from Flushing to Sag Harbor in water color paintings rich in detail and charm. Preservation Long Island has just published Promoting Long Island: The Art of Edward Lange, 1870-1889 by chief curator and director of collections Lauren Brincat and former curatorial fellow Peter Fedoryk. The book features over 100 color reproductions of Lange's work along with essays from Brincat, Fedoryk, and contributors Jennifer L. Anderson, Thomas Busciglio-Ritter, and Joshua M. Ruff. On today's episode, Brincat and Fedoryk discuss their work on the book including the new research that fills in the gaps of Lange's family and education. We also talk about his entrepreneurial drive, his love of photography, and the life of a landscape painter on a Long Island that was rapidly turning from bucolic farmland to a vacation destination. Further Research Order the book Authors Talk and Book Signing 11/16/24 Edward Lange exhibition The Art of Edward Lange “The Tile Club at Play“, Scribner's Monthly, February 1879 (Google Books) William Sidney Mount (National Gallery of Art) Music Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/ Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0
The Association of Public Historians of New York State held their annual conference at Danford's in Port Jefferson this year, gathering public historians from all corners of the state to discuss resources, projects, and to provide a great opportunity for people to talk history. The Long Island History Project was there to hold a workshop, “How to Be a Podcast Guest.” Today's episode features the brave individuals who sat down at the mics and told us a little bit about their work, the challenges they face, and where exactly “upstate” begins. Further Research Association of Public Historians of New York State Ross Lumpkin North Hempstead Town Historian Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society Marilyn Hayden Greenwood Lake Village Historian Amy Folk Southold Town Historian Oyster Pond Historical Society Southold Historical Museum Debra Allen Oswego County Historian Gabrielle Brightwaters Historical Society John Tracy Robert Finnegan Historical Society of Islip Hamlet Regina Feeney Freeport Village Historian Freeport Memorial Library Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/ Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0
Robert Moses had a vision for Jones Beach in the 1920s that included a theater to bring high quality entertainment to the people. That theater on Zachs Bay went through a number of iterations but reached its height from 1954-1977 when it was under the direction of Guy Lombardo. Along with his brothers Carmen and Lebert, the Canadian-born band leader/impresario brought Broadway shows and original productions to the beach. Their stage was an 8,200-seat amphitheater with a host of spectacular additions including icebergs, waterfalls, showboats, and floating mansions. Richard Arnold Beattie got more than a front row seat, performing as a child actor in The Sound of Music and The King and I at Zachs Bay in the early 1970s. Although he went on to a career that included journalism, songwriting, and audio production, he never forgot his time at the Jones Beach Theater. He has captured the experience in a new audio documentary called From Broadway to Jones Beach, streaming now on Spotify and planned to be repackaged as an audiobook. Hear more on today's episode about the development of the Jones Beach Marine Theater and its connections to Broadway history and the Lombardo family who lived in nearby Freeport. You'll also get a preview of Richard's documentary through interviews with actors Connie Towers and June Angela. If you like your Broadway big – including Nazis in speedboats and sharks circling the stage – then you'll love this story. Further Research From Broadway to Jones Beach (Spotify) Louis Armstrong “Mardi Gras” with Guy Lombardo List of Jones Beach Theater productions (OVRTUR) Sound effect Overture and Fanfare.wav by Anapwodicn - License: Creative Commons 0 Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/ Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0
It's no secret that rivers winding through major cities have been reshaped by human hands. Where wildlife and marshes once existed, gray sidewalks and bleak straight-lined tributaries have blossomed. Now, some cities are implementing floating wetlands — native plant life on a body of biodegradable materials that bobs on top of the water — to address a budding desire to see animals and greenery return to their rivers. In this podcast episode, Jenaye Johnson speaks with scientists and community members in Chicago about the Wild Mile — the city's biggest floating wetland to date. Join her as she winds down the Chicago River, explores the wetlands and discusses the future of new animal habitats and clean water in our urban spaces. And check out the associated article on Scienceline: https://scienceline.org/2024/06/wilding-city-rivers/ Music used: "Glue&Glia" by Rah Hite | CC BY 4.0 "Floating Wetlands" by Rah Hite | CC BY 4.0 "Lo Margin" by Blue Dot Sessions | CC BY-NC 4.0 "The Maison" by Blue Dot Sessions | CC BY-NC 4.0
Librarian and baseball historian Fabio Montella returns to the podcast to bring us the story of Ralph “Sammy” Bunn. Bunn was a Setauket native who excelled at baseball all his life. A star athlete in high school in the 1930s, he went on to play for decades on a number of teams and leagues in the makeshift world of community baseball in Suffolk County. His short stint pitching for the Brookhaven Highway Department team (starting in 1939) makes Bunn, by Montella's research, the first documented Black player to break the color barrier on Long Island. (Bunn was soon followed by his Brookhaven teammate Kenneth Sells.) On today's episode Montella describes Bunn's storied career in baseball and his life as a dedicated family man and World War II veteran. Working with Sammy's son, Ralph Jr., and his nephew Carlton Edwards (an accomplished player in his own right) Montella brought to light many details, including Ralph's Shinnecock heritage, a fact not mentioned in contemporary accounts. You'll also hear more about the world of community and semiprofessional baseball on the Island along with other teams like the Suffolk Giants and the Huntington Police Department who make it such an interesting glimpse into local history. Further Research Fabio Montella “The Suffolk Giants of Setauket: From Segregation to Integration.“ Negro Leagues Baseball Museum Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame Intro music: https://homegrownstringband.com/ Outro music: Capering by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY-NC 4.0 Audio footnotes (past episodes with Fabio Montella): The Arthur Murray Girls Baseball Team Satchel Paige in Riverhead The Cuban Giants of Long Island
Meet the newest robotic police officer in town: the Knightscope K5. This “Robocop” completed a two month trial period in New York City's Times Square subway station from September to November of 2023, recording video and monitoring the station. But despite city officials promising its safety, people were understandably nervous about a robotic police officer. The robot's trial period has ended and the K5 will not be re-entering the subway system, but it still serves as an important window to the future of robots integrating into our society. In this podcast Kohava Mendelsohn talks to experts, does some research and even ventures forth to visit the K5 herself in order to answer the important questions: What was this robotic cop? What could it actually do? And how worried should we be about it? And check out the article on Scienceline: https://scienceline.org/2024/03/nyc-robocop/ MUSIC: "Tall Journey" by Blue Dot Sessions | CC BY-NC 4.0 "Turning to You" by Blue Dot Sessions | CC BY-NC 4.0 "The Gran Dias" by Blue Dot Sessions | CC BY-NC 4.0 "Pewter Lamp" by Blue Dot Sessions | CC BY-NC 4.0
Boredom under COVID quarantine led many to pursue some strange side hobby, but for 24 mathematicians and artists, it resulted in Mathemalchemy — a collective of mathematically (aesthetically, too) charming pieces of art — from cryptographic quilts, huge parabolas of embroidered spheres, crochet theta curves caught in fishing nets, and murals of OctoPi, seen generating various wave-related equations per every water ripple. For the “Mathemalchemists,” their project is a lively, whimsical invitation into the world of mathematics, made for an audience of all ages and interests. The goal is to illustrate how math can be fun — not something schools force you to do, but something that leaves you inspired. So, how did this project come to be? What makes Mathemalchemy so special, both for the Mathemalchemists and anyone that comes across the exhibition? In this podcast, Gayoung Lee goes behind the scenes of Mathemalchemy with co-founders Ingrid Daubechies and Dominique Ehrmann, in addition to Mathemalchemists Jessica Sklar, Elizabeth Paley and Carolyn Yackel. MUSIC: “Pglet Into” by Blue Dot Sessions | CC BY-NC 4.0 “The Gran Dias” by Blue Dot Sessions | CC BY-NC 4.0 “Spring Cleaning” by Blue Dot Sessions | CC BY-NC 4.0
When you imagine a dam, what comes to mind? Maybe it's the hulking concrete wall of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River or the Grand Coulee on the Columbia. Large barriers on large rivers, looming large on the horizon. But colossal structures like these make up only a fraction of the dams that chop up waterways across the United States. The nation's rivers, streams and brooks are full of smaller dams — many of which aren't monitored at the state or national level. And even though they're small, these barriers can alter aquatic habitats and cause trouble for the species that live there. In this podcast, Madison Goldberg speaks with scientists about the issue and goes on a dam hunt of her own. Also find the full story on Scienceline's website: TK Music used: “Tower of Mirrors” by Blue Dot Sessions | CC BY-NC 4.0 “Copley Beat” by Blue Dot Sessions | CC BY-NC 4.0
On this Artalaap episode, I, Kamayani speak to Jayant Parashar about his family's legacy -- a pre-Independence film magazine called Film Pictorial, started in Lahore by his grandfather and great-uncle, RK Parashar and ML Parashar. A well-regarded periodical of the 1940s, Film Pictorial shut down once the brothers moved to Delhi after the 1947 Partition. We talk about how Jayant came across the magazine, its role -- similar to other high-profile film publications of that era -- as a snapshot of South Asia's urban cinema culture straddling India and Pakistan's Independence as well as the scattershot, digital preservation of lost archives through which we reconstruct and respond to that era. LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST HERE: Jayant Parashar is a Mumbai-based cinematographer and musician. Film Pictorial (1941-1947) was an English-language magazine on Hindustani cinema co-founded and edited by his grandfather and great-uncle in Lahore. Credits: Producer: Squarewave Studios, New Delhi Executive Producer: Kanishka Sharma Production Associate: Priya Thakur Images courtesy Jayant Parashar via Surjit Singh Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee Marketing: Dipalie Mehta Additional support: Raghav Sagar Patreon support: Shalmoli Halder Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0] CONTENTS 0.00-02.30 – Introduction 02.30- 07.40– Discovering a family legacy. 07.40- 15.00 – Back issues of Film Pictorial on the internet. 15.00 - 18.51 – The Parashar brothers and their engagement with the pre-Independence film industry. 18.51 - 27.34 – The wide range of topics the magazine has explored, both serious and light-hearted versus the present day reporting on the film industry. 27.34- 31.37 – Film Pictorial after the Partition, and the value of vintage film magazines in the present. 31.37- 33.28 – How family legacies impact worldviews.
On this Artalaap episode, I, Kamayani Sharma, speak to artist Pritika Chowdhry, whose solo exhibition 'Unbearable Memories, Unspeakable Histories' featuring her anti-memorials to the Partition is currently on view at the South Asia Institute, Chicago. We talk about the politics of memorialising the 1947 South Asian Partition, the aesthetic challenge of representing collective trauma and the influence of feminist historiography on understanding the Partition. We also touch upon drawing parallels with other colonial divisions of territory as well as ongoing civil conflict in the global south, and the limits of testimony in the contemporary period. You can learn more about the exhibition here: https://www.saichicago.org/exhibition/pritika-chowdhry-unbearable-memories-unspeakable-histories or at the South Asia Institute, Chicago's Instagram page @southasiainstitute. Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-18. For a time-stamped list of Contents, click here: http:/bit.ly/3CeUTWz LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST HERE: Pritika Chowdhry is a feminist and postcolonial artist, curator, and writer whose work is in both public and private collections. Chowdhry has exhibited nationally and internationally in group and solo exhibitions in the Weisman Art Museum, Queens Museum, Hunterdon Museum, Islip Art Museum, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, DoVA Temporary, Brodsky Center, and Cambridge Art Gallery. Her work has been written up in various scholarly publications, including the journals GeoHumanities, Social Transformations Journal of the Global South, and Progress in Human Geography, in addition to news outlets such as CBS, NBC, and Hindustan Times. She is the recipient of Vilas International Travel Fellowship, Edith and Sinaiko Frank Fellowship for a Woman in the Arts, Wisconsin Arts Board grant, and Minnesota State Arts Board grant. She has presented her studio research projects at various national conferences, such as International Arts Symposium at NYU, The Contested Terrains of Globalization at UC-Irvine, and the South Asian Conference at UW-Madison. Chowdhry holds an MFA in Studio Art and an MA in Visual Culture and Gender Studies from UW-Madison and has taught at Macalester College and the College of Visual Arts. Born and raised in India, Chowdhry is currently based in Chicago. Credits: Producer: Squarewave Studios, New Delhi Executive Producer: Kanishka Sharma Intern: Priya Thakur Images courtesy Pritika Chowdhry Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee Marketing: Dipalie Mehta Additional support: Raghav Sagar Patreon support: Shalmoli Halder Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
On this episode, I Kamayani speak to Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai whose solo exhibition 'Naguftaha-e-Havva' ('The Unspoken Words of Havva') is currently on view at Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai as well as online on the In Touch platform. https://www.artintouch.in/exhibitions/13-chatterjee-lal-arshi-irshad-ahmadzai-naguftaha-e-havva-the-unspoken-words-of-havva/ We talk about journeying from a small town to a career in the visual arts, the evolution of a distinct figural language, the possibilities of abstraction as an aesthetic mode during a period of repression and Arshi's engagement with time and space in her process-based practice. We also touch upon the use of text as image, the spiritual aspect of art-making, the gendering of material and the abiding influence of Zarina and Nasreen Mohamedi. Learn about our guest: Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai born in Najibabad, graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts (2011) from Aligarh Muslim University and later pursued a Masters in Fine Arts from Jamia Millia Islamia (2013). She won the Inlaks Fine Art Award in 2019. Working with a range of mediums including painting, printmaking and photography, Ahmadzai's artistic practice is centred around women. Her knowledge of Urdu, Persian and Arabic allows her to understand the nuances of language, which find their way into her work. She lives and works in Weimar, Germany. Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-17 Click here for the time-stamped Contents page: bit.ly/3Ofjmyn Click here for the English-language transcript: bit.ly/37PeIGT Credits: Producer: Varun Kapahi Executive Producer: Kanishka Sharma Intern: Priya Thakur Images: Chatterjee & Lal, Mumbai; Blueprint 12, New Delhi; Shrine Empire, New Delhi. Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee Marketing: Dipalie Mehta Additional support: Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar. Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
In this episode, I, Kamayani Sharma speak to the curators of the 4th Kathmandu Triennale titled "2077" -- Sheelasha Rajbhandari and Hit Man Gurung. They worked alongside Artistic Director Cosmin Costinas to mount the ongoing edition. (originally scheduled for 2020 but deferred due to the COVID-19 pandemic). The Triennale features hundreds of artists from around the world at five venues across Kathmandu. We talk about the Himalayan cultural zone, modern and contemporary Nepali art, decolonial curatorial approaches and the idea of indigenous worlding through aesthetics. We also touch upon the logistics of organising the Triennale in a multilingual & stratified context, the matter of continued economic support from the West, the need for government funding and the place of South Asia as a "region" in a "global" art configuration. You can learn more about the Triennale through their social media – @kathmandu.triennale on Instagram and Facebook. Learn about our guests: Hit Man Gurung's works are concerned with some of the most pressing socio-political issues of Nepal, including internal and international mass migration, the legacy of the decade-long Maoist insurgency in the country, as well as the recent pervasive effects of global capitalism in Nepal. Deeply concerned with the impact of these larger forces on individuals, communities, and society at large, Gurung infuses his paintings, documentary photo collages, performance and installation works with political conviction and personal poetry. Gurung participated in major national and international art exhibitions. He is a co-founder of artist collective ArTree Nepal. Sheelasha Rajbhandari is interested in exploring alternative and plural narratives by learning the value of folktales, folklore, oral histories, mythologies, material culture, performance, and rituals and placing them as evidence, along with references to mainstream history and narratives. Her long term research projects and artistic practice often juxtapose these contradictions and synthesise the knowledge and experiences that result from individual and collective discourses. Through her works, she frequently tries to encounter the simple yet socially forbidden and taboo subject matters, with a focus on women's struggles, celebrating their resilience. Her works have been a part of major international exhibitions. She is a co-founder of artist collective ArTree Nepal. Gurung and Rajbhandari have been working collaboratively on multiple projects, including “12 Bishakh - Camp.Hub'' Post Earthquake Community Art Project, in which they were Co-Artistic Directors. They are also co-contributors to several books including ‘Breaking Views', ‘Absolute Humidity', a.o. Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-16. Click here for the time-stamped contents. Credits: Producer: Varun Kapahi Executive Producer: Kanishka Sharma Intern: Priya Thakur Images courtesy Kathmandu Triennale Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee Marketing: Dipalie Mehta Additional support: Raghav Sagar Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0]
On this episode, it's gonna be just me, ARTalaap creator and your host, Kamayani Sharma. I talk about my work on the cinema of cult Films Division auteur Pramod Pati -- through archival audio footage, clips from Pati's films, original commentary (and joking into the void.) In light of the Indian government's recent widely-criticised move to merge public film units, I dive into an important moment in the history of the Film Division (FD) through the practice of one of its filmmakers. I discuss how the sound design of Pramod Pati's experimental shorts, produced by the Indian government at the end of the 1960s, have a science-fictional quality. This sonic sci-fi is indicative of the futuristic ambitions of the Indian state modernising the mediascape during this era, through the technologies of radio, TV and cinema. This episode is an adaptation of my essay "Archeology of an Experiment: The sci-fi cinema of Pramod Pati" from the Oct. 2015 issue of 'Studies in South Asian Film and Media' (citation below.) Learn about the host: Kamayani Sharma is an independent writer, researcher, podcaster and translator. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Vox, Momus, Aperture, Frieze, The White Review, Art Monthly, ART India and The Caravan. She has contributed to edited volumes including 'South Asian Gothic: Haunted cultures, histories and media' (University of Wales Press, 2021). A Kalpalata Fellow in Visual Culture Writing 2022 for Scroll.in, she was a recipient of the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation: TAKE On Writing Travel Grant 2015, critic-in-residence at Dharti Arts Residency 2018 and a finalist at the International Awards for Art Criticism 2020. Sharma runs South Asia's first independent visual culture podcast ARTalaap. Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-15 Credits: Producer: Varun Kapahi Executive Producer: Kanishka Sharma Intern: Priya Thakur Images: Films Division Special thanks: Amol Ranjan Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee Marketing: Dipalie Mehta Additional support: Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar. Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0] ORIGINAL ESSAY: Sharma, Kamayani, Archeology of an experiment: The science-fiction cinema of Pramod Pati, October 2015, Studies in South Asian Film and Media 6(2):147-164. DOI:10.1386/safm.6.2.147_1f
In this episode I, Kamayani Sharma, speak to artist, researcher & educator Ita Mehrotra, author of the graphic book ‘Shaheen Bagh: A Graphic Recollection' (Yoda Press, 2021). On the second anniversary of the incredible protests led by India's Muslim women against the CAA & NRC, in this episode we discuss the role of language in the public sphere, how illustration captures the contemporary differently from lens-based practices and how the graphic serial form allows movement among different registers & types of material. We also talk about mixed media methods of comics-making and how graphic nonfiction can and does function as a text for children & young adults. Learn about our guest: Ita Mehrotra is a visual artist, researcher and educator. Her work has been published and exhibited by Zubaan Books, Goethe Institute, AdAstra Comix, Yoda press, Fumetto Festival, The Wire and KHOJ, among others. Her recent graphic book ‘Shaheen Bagh, A Graphic Recollection' voices moments and memories from the vast anti CAA uprising that spread across India over the winter of 2019 (Yoda Press, 2021). Ita is currently Director of Artreach India, a not for profit that works at the intersections of art, inclusive education and community development. She has been a recipient of the Arts for Good Fellowship (Singapore Foundation), the Gender Bender Grant (Goethe Institute and Sandbox Collective), Fumetto Festival Apprenticeship Grant (Prohelvetia Swiss Arts Council), Connectors of the Future Fellowship (Swedish Institute) and Negotiating Routes: Art & Ecology Grant (KHOJ Artists Association). Ita was Visiting Faculty, Visual Arts, at Ashoka University in Spring 2021 and has an MPhil from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU. Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-14 Credits: Producer: Abhishek S. Intern: Priya Thakur Images courtesy Yoda Press. Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee Marketing: Dipalie Mehta Additional support: Raghav Sagar, Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar. Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0] Contents: 0.14 - 1.54 – Introduction 1.57 - 6.52 – How Ita's academic engagement influenced her art and the significance of the university campus in political education. 6.53 - 11.43 – The use of various analog and digital media to draw and the process of making the book. 11.43 - 20.31 – Deep listening, responsive drawings, and the play between image and text. 20.32 - 28.28 – Arriving at graphic nonfiction for the documentation of the Shaheen Bagh protests, not as evidence but as an extension of the events. 28.29 - 43.19 – Structuring the book: planning out chapters and storyboarding. Understanding Shaheen Bagh beyond just resistance to CAA-NRC. 43.20 - 52.42 – Space and time on the page vs. screen. 52.43 - 58.45 – The matter of subject-position, collaborative strategies of working and using religious and caste privilege to express solidarity. 58.46 - 1.06.40 – Ita's work as an arts-based educator and how books shape the politics of the children and young adults in the current moment. 1.06.41 - 1.12.03 – Influences and models as an artist and a comment on the future of the form in India and, more broadly, in South Asia.
In this episode I, Kamayani Sharma, am in conversation with art historian Aparna Kumar, recipient of the inaugural UC Berkeley South Asia Art and Architecture Dissertation Prize in 2021 for her dissertation on the Lahore Museum — Partition and the Historiography of Art in South Asia (UCLA, 2018). We discuss the South Asian museum as a locus of studying Partition through art history, how the work of artist Zarina influenced this dissertation and the violent logistics and rhetorics of dividing civilisational heritage. We touch upon the challenges of cross-border scholarship and how the subcontinent's contemporary religious nationalisms continue to be reflected in the visual and material archives of its fissures. Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-13 A full list of textual references is also available in the Image+ Guide. Meet Our Guest Aparna Kumar is a Lecturer in Art and Visual Cultures of the Global South in the Department of History of Art at University College London. She received her Ph.D. in Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2018. Her research and teaching focus on modern and contemporary South Asian art, twentieth-century partition history, museum studies, and postcolonial theory. Before joining UCL in 2020, Aparna was a Lecturer in Art History at UCLA, and a Curatorial Research Assistant at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Kumar's research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Fulbright-Nehru Research Program, the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS), the American Institute of Pakistan Studies (AIPS), the Critical Language Scholarship Program, and the University of California, Los Angeles. Her dissertation project, Partition and the Historiography of Art in South Asia, was awarded the inaugural UC Berkeley South Asia Art and Architecture Dissertation Prize in 2021. Credits: Producer: Abhishek S Intern: Priya Thakur Images: Aparna Kumar Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee Marketing: Dipalie Mehta Additional support: Raghav Sagar, Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar. Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0] Contents: 1.34 - 8.35 – Aparna's academic journey. 8.36 - 15.56 – Writing on South Asian visual culture through the Partition and the Lahore Museum. 15.57 - 17.17 – How Zarina's works inspired by the Partition influenced this dissertation. 17.18 - 22.39 – The museum and material archive as a site of conflict and contestation. 22.40 - 27.08 – The “travel itinerary” of Mohenjo Daro's Priest King and Dancing Girl*. 27.09 - 35.04 – The language used to discuss Partitioned objects. 35.05 - 43.19 – The machinery of the Partition enters the Lahore Museum. 43.20 - 45.32 – The problem of the border and the “regional” as an analytic. 46.34 - 50.02 – The problem of cross-border access for South Asian scholars. 50.03 - 55.07 – Scholars whose work made possible and informed this dissertation (listed in References). 55.08-1.01.18 – Contemporary hypernationalism and its effects on culture: the case of India's National Museum and the Central Vista Project. 1.01.19-1.07.43 – The return of the Priest-King to Pakistan: what does repatriation mean in the subcontinental context?
Albert und Denise finden Marie in Greymouth. Doch sie können noch nicht zurückkehren: Wie können sie Isaac aus der Haft befreien? Und können sie wirklich sicher sein, dass Sophie im Gefängnis ist? Ein Hörspiel von Mirco Neumann. Jan: Fabian Liessmann Marie: Johanna Möller Isaac: Fabian Shahd Denise: Claudia Ott Albert: Holger Wuschke Paul: Mirco Neumann Sophie: Berit Wilschnack In weiteren Rollen: Sprecher: Daniel Wollförster Tristan: Erik Wöller Fahrgast: Wesley Graf Emily: Ann-Christin Blum Polizist: Mike Schlünzen Polizistin: Cilli Goebel Nadja: Lena Schwarz Sicherheitskraft: Stefan Hartlein Frau auf der Straße: Daria Wulle Wachposten: Jan Kristof Schliep Baker: Marco Rheindorf Musik: A Certain Lightness by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY NC: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Blue_Dot_Sessions/Migration/A_Certain_Lightness Thread of Clouds by Blue Dot Sessions CC BY NC: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Blue_Dot_Sessions/Migration/Thread_of_Clouds Dramatic theme by Pk jazz Collective CC BY NC SA: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Pk_jazz_Collective/Pearls_of_our_Life/02_-_Dramatic_theme California '71 by Pk jazz Collective CC BY NC SA: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Pk_jazz_Collective/Pearls_of_our_Life/03_-_California_71 Midnight by Serge Quadrado CC BY NC: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/intelligent-funk/midnight-2 Night Street by Serge Quadrado CC BY NC: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/simple-jazz/night-street March of Hope (TP 064) by Till Paradiso CC BY NC SA: https://www.freemusicarchive.org/music/till-paradiso/funny-around-the-lake/march-of-hope-tp-064 Questions by Mr Smith CC BY: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/mr-smith/studio-city/questions This work uses many sounds from freesound, for the full list see here: https://relativitaetsmagie.de/credits/#folge7 ---------- Ihr wollt mehr erfahren? Folgt uns auch auf: Twitter: https://twitter.com/relativmagie Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/relativitaetsmagie/ Oder besucht uns auf www.relativitaetsmagie.de!
Sophie Herron on their selection: Last July, I read John McPhee's Basin and Range for the first time and was immediately captured by the slim volume—its structure, its fluid sentences, the breadth and depth of its probity and its wry and ever-present humor. The titular basin and range is an area between Utah and California, but the book is as much about geology itself, both the movement of rock and the movement of minds that have studied it. In 1785, a Scottish geologist, James Hutton, presented to the Royal Society a new theory: that landmasses were formed over an indescribable amount of time, and that the evidence of these changes were in the different formations of rocks—where one era of rock met another. I've chosen to read McPhee's accounting of Hutton's search for this geological evidence; a narrative in which McPhee coins the term “deep time,”—a piece of history writing which, it seems to me, enfolds the transcendent experience of humanity's tiny place in time and, concurrently, love for the work of discovery, communication, and of changing minds. It has stayed with me in the moments of excruciating ephemerality and eternity in the past year. Sometimes both at once. I hope, as a final episode for Read By, it serves for you, also, as a microscope that explodes. Basin and Range, by John McPhee Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
Kenzie Allen on her selection: Growing up, I spent precious time each summer on a fire lookout, Sand Mountain, in the Oregon Cascades, and I still return there to volunteer with my father, as happened just last week. Each time I read “deer crowd up to see the lamp,” and “pancakes every morning of the world,” I'm transported back to the mountains, even (and especially) when I'm sitting on the fire lookout itself. For Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, and for me, these places invite philosophy and meditation, and an openness to wonder, which I hope Whalen's “Sourdough Mountain Lookout” can inspire for others. "Sourdough Mountain Lookout," by Philip Whalen Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
Alexandra Zuckerman on her selection: In her book, On Beauty and Being Just, it is as if, in Elaine Scarry's view, the external world has the power to tumultuously expose to us our errors of judgment; wrong beliefs cannot merely be held. Her small anecdote about a palm tree that compels her to experience “being in error” about beauty has stayed with me through the years. She argues that such small experiences guide our instinct to be just. Her palm, its leaves “barely moving, just opening and closing slightly as though breathing,” reveals to her its true beauty. She had denied it even the right to be a tree. On Beauty and Being Just is grounding and gives me hope when it is hard to see where true change comes from. On Beauty and Being Just, by Elaine Scarry Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
In this episode I, Kamayani Sharma, am in conversation with artist Prabhakar Pachpute, among the winners of the Artes Mundi Prize 2020 about his artistry and engagement with coal mining in his native Chandrapur District, Maharashtra. Pachpute "works in an array of mediums and materials including drawing, light, stopmotion animations, sound and sculptural forms. His use of charcoal has a direct connection to his subject matter and familial roots, coal mines and coal miners." We discuss highlights from 10 years of Prabhakar's practice including recent shifts therein, his formative years as a young artist at Mumbai's Clark House Initiative and how the aesthetic mode he adopted captures the political and ecological aspects of mining in the era of extractive capitalism (disguised as "development"). We also talk about frequent comparisons with South African artist William Kentridge, inspiration from contemporary artists grappling with history under antagonistic regimes, and the value of artistic research and practice as a collective, peer-driven process. Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-12. Click here to access the English-language transcript for this episode: https://bit.ly/37HrjIB Credits: Producer: Tunak Teas Intern: Priya Thakur Translation and transcription: Akansha Naredy & Priya Thakur Images: Experimenter & Artes Mundi 9 Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee Marketing: Dipalie Mehta Additional support: Raghav Sagar, Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar. Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0] References: Manik 'Grace' Godghate, 'Ti Geli Tehva Rimjhim', Chandramaadhaviche Pradesh , 1977. Lajja Shah, 'The Wall Street Journal', ART India, pp. 87-89, Vol. 20, Issue 3, 2017. Ana Bilbao, 'Mining Colombian contemporary art: histories, scales and techniques of gold extraction', Burlington Contemporary, May 2019. Kathryn Yusoff, 'Mine as Paradigm', e-flux, June 2021.
It's a rare person indeed who can trick and amaze people on one hand while reassuring them that what they are experiencing is not real. Meet Banacek. He's not only an illusionist, magician, mentalist extraordinaire, he's a skeptic's skeptic who for decades has been instrumental in exposing fraud and deception. In this episode of Point of Inquiry, Jim talks to Banacek about his life as a performer, investigator, and man on a mission. Banchek talks about what led him into magic and mentalism, his relationship with James Randi, his new show at the Stratosphere, and more. For more information about Banacek, or to get tickets to his mentalism show at the Stratosphere in Las Vegas, visit Banacek.com This Week's Music “Bon Journée” by Chad Crouch / CC BY-NC 3.0 “Idle Ways” by Blue Dot Sessions / CC BY-NC 4.0
Mag Gabbert on her selection: I read Kathryn Nuernberger's essay "A Thin Blue Line," which comes from her wonderful collection of essayettes, Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past. I return to these pieces often because they give me new ideas about limits—what can happen to a poem if it's allowed just a little more room to breathe, if those braces or splints that keep it packed into tight lines and stanzas are taken off? And: what happens to prose when it's distilled down to marrow? "A Thin Blue Line" somehow accomplishes both of these, and it does so while weaving Nuernberger's personal narrative together with bits of research material and shreds of fairy tale. To me, this piece strikes the perfect note between genres; it isn't hybrid in the sense that it checks none of the boxes, but because it checks all of them. And this is the kind of work I turn to when I need to reimagine the boundaries of my own relationship with language, to see how I might shape it differently and ask it to function in new ways. Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past, by Kathryn Nuernberger Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
Ina Cariño on her selection: Aracelis Girmay's “You are Who I Love,” first published in 2017, is still so, so needed today. The repetition of the title throughout the poem gives it a musicality that mimics the chants of those who march in the streets. I chose this poem because it calls to and speaks for all of us: those who fight for what is dear to them, those who heal and need healing, and those who give and give even when no one is looking. It's my hope that this poem and poems like this can be not just rallying cries for social justice, but also love songs to ourselves and to each other. the black maria, by Aracelis Girmay: Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
Tracie Morris on her selection: I have the great pleasure of sharing small excerpts from Brent Hayes Edwards' wonderful book, Epistrophies. In it, I repeat a quote from the legendary Mary Lou Williams to introduce Edward's commentary on Sun Ra at the dawn of the Space Age. Epistrophies, by Brent Hayes Edwards Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
In this episode I, Kamayani Sharma, am in conversation with Jyoti Nisha, filmmaker, writer and scholar. She is the director of 'BR Ambedkar: Now And Then', a widely anticipated, partially-crowdfunded documentary that is now readying for release. In her essay, ‘Indian Cinema and the Bahujan Spectatorship' [Economic & Political Weekly, May 2020], she theorised about the politics of the gaze from her perspective as a Dalit woman viewer and media researcher. Jyoti was Director's Assistant on Neeraj Ghaywan's Geeli Pucchi [Dharma Productions, 2021], a short that was part of the Netflix anthology, Ajeeb Dastaans. We discuss growing up as a young woman in UP of the 1990s and 2000s, how Jyoti came to filmmaking via journalism, screenwriting and academia, working on - of all things! - a Dharma movie and her journey, artistic and logistical, towards the completion of her upcoming documentary 'BR Ambedkar: Now and Then'. By way of Jyoti's own essay, African-American film history and the polemical theories of the documentarian Trinh T. Minh-ha, we unpack the idea of the oppositional bahujan gaze unto Indian cinema and the complicated question of how realism in Indian cinema is part of a Brahmanical aesthetic scheme. Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-11. Credits: Producer: Tunak Teas Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee Marketing: Dipalie Mehta Images: Jyoti Nisha Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0] References: Jyoti Nisha, 'Indian Cinema and the Bahujan Spectatorship', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 55, Issue No. 20, 16 May, 2020 bell hooks, 'The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Representation', Black Looks: Race and Representation, Boston: South End Press, 1992. Trinh T. Minh-ha, 'The Totalizing Quest of Meaning', When The Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Politics, Routledge: London, New York, 1991. Yashica Dutt, Coming Out As Dalit, Aleph Book Company, 2019.
Rowan Ricardo Phillips on his selection: The poem "This Lime-tree Bower my Prison'' was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the summer of 1797. He had been set to journey the Quantocks with a group of friends but burned his foot in an accident and thus was left behind, under a lime tree in the garden of a friend's home, while others––including William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Charles Lamb (to whom the poem is addressed)––embarked on the anticipated journey without him. Coleridge's poem nevertheless travels with them ("Beneath the wide wide Heaven") and in doing so makes something from nothing, pleasure from pain, and love from loneliness. I love the poem's own subtle journey from day to night unbowed by the encroaching dark. In light of recent times, Coleridge's dream of social connection from his position of isolation feels fitting and is a beautiful example of poetry's unique imaginative power. “This Lime-tree Bower my Prison,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
Sheila Heti on her selection: I chose a chapter from Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday, which he wrote between 1934 and 1941. It is one of the most fascinating and vivid descriptions I have ever read—not only of what Victorian manners and morals were like, but what it feels like to have lived through history, in particular the great political and social upheavals that occurred between his birth in Vienna in 1881 and his death in 1942. He gave his publisher the typewritten manuscript of this memoir the day before he and his wife died, by suicide. Zwieg grew up in a prosperous Jewish family, and this is the world he is writing about. I found in these pages one of the greatest and most fascinating and sensitive eyewitness accounts of history I have ever read. I love the details. I love the feeling that I am seeing the truth about another world with such intimacy. This chapter has stayed with me since I first encountered it years ago. I am at about the age he was when he wrote it, and though I don't think the changes I have witnessed have been as dramatic, I feel I know what it's like to remember a lost world, and to set now against then and to weigh all of it up. The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
In this episode, I, Kamayani Sharma, am in conversation with Shukla Sawant and Annapurna Garimella, Founder Trustees of the Culture Workers Support Trust, an organisation set up in 2019 to and I'm quoting them directly “spread awareness among culture workers about their rights and responsibilities". We discuss the modes and methods by which labour in India's vast culture sector can start to organise and collectivise, how stakeholders across public and private sectors can come together for worker-oriented solutions to entrenched problems and how forms of workplace violence including gender & caste-based harassment (as that embodied by the #MeToo movement in the art world) cannot be delinked from broader issues of labour rights such as wage security and equitable contracts. We also discuss how in the network capital-dominated industries of the arts, legislative and judicial processes are necessary to enforce fair work conditions. Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-10. Credits: Producer: Tunak Teas Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee Marketing: Dipalie Mehta Images: Culture Workers Support Trust Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0] References: Christine Ithurbide, 'Beyond Bombay art district: Reorganization of art production into a polycentric territory at metropolitan scale', Belgeo [Online], 3 | 2014, 19 Dec. 2014. - and Soraya Hamache, 'Art and Cinema Industries in India: Norms, Workers and Territories', Workshop at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, Centre d'études Inde et de l Asie du Sud, Newsletter No. 13 (Summer 2016), https://sites.google.com/site/ceiasnewsletter/-newsletters-20152016/newsletter-no-13---summer-2016/art-and-cinema-industries-in-india-norms-workers-and-territories. - and Tejshree Savara, 'Legal Handbook for the Artist Community in India', UNESCO in partnership with New Delhi Office, Sept. 2020. Kavita Singh, '2019 Arts & Museum Summit Keynote 3: Museums, New Locations, New Definitions', Asia Society Delhi, 12 Oct. 2019. John Rawls, 'A Theory of Justice', The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, (1971) 1999. 'Google Spreadsheet Reveals How Much the Art World Earns', Frieze, 4 Jun. 2019. 'Journalist Priya Ramani not guilty in MJ Akbar defamation case, rules Delhi court', Scroll.in, 17 Feb 2021. Press Trust of India, 'Delhi Police interrupts India Art Fair after complaint of anti-CAA paintings; artwork was about India's women, clarify participating artists', Firstpost, 3 Feb. 2020. 'Indian Journalists Union defends media's right to report on MeToo allegations', Internet Freedom Foundation, 23 Jan. 2020. Ophelia Lai, Subodh Gupta Settles Defamation Case Over Instagram #MeToo Allegations, ArtAsiaPacific, 3 Mar. 2020. Benita Fernando, 'What is ailing the ‘people's biennale'?', Livemint, 29 Mar. 2020.
As a PhD candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Rakesh Sengupta researched early Indian cinema. His essay 'Writing from the Margins of Media: Screenwriting Practice and Discourse During the First Indian Talkies', published in the Dec 2018 issue of Bioscope [no. 9.2] won the Best Journal Article by Screenwriting Research Network and also received High Commendation for Screen's Annette Kuhn Debut Essay Prize. On today's episode, we talk about the way in which the lack of script archives dictated the methods of research, how the vocation of screenwriting propelled fantasies of self-improvement and socioeconomic ascendancy in the 1930s and 1940s and the way in which the study of early cinema has been revitalised in the contemporary context of OTT and web programming. We also have some lovely anecdotes about serendipitous discoveries of forgotten Indian cinema scripts in other corners of the world. Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-9. Credits: Producer: Tunak Teas Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee Marketing: Dipalie Mehta Musical arrangement: Jayant Parashar Images: Rakesh Sengupta Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0] References: Ashish Rajadhyaksha, 'The Phalke Era: Conflict of Traditional Form and Modern Technology', The Journal of Arts and Ideas, 1987. Kaushik Bhaumik, 'The Emergence of the Bombay Film Industry, 1913-1936', D. Phil Diss., University of Oxford, 2001. Priya Jaikumar, 'Cinema at the End of Empire', Duke University Press, 2006. Debashree Mukherjee, 'Notes on a Scandal: Writing Women's Film History Against an Absent Archive', Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies' [Vol. 4.1], pp. 9-30, Jan. 2013. Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City',Columbia University Press, 2020. 'Somewhere Between Human, Nonhuman and Woman: Shanta Apte's Theory of Exhaustion', Feminist Media Histories [Vol. 6.1], pp. 21- 51, 2020. Tom Gunning, 'The Cinema of Attractions', Amsterdam University Press, 2006. André Gaudreault and Phillipe Marion, 'The Cinema as a Model for the Genealogy of Media', Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Tecnologies [8.4], pp. 12-18, Dec. 2002. Ravi Vasudevan, 'The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema', Palgrave Macmillan US, 2010. Rachel Dwyer, 'Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema', Routledge, 2006. Rosie Thomas, 'Bombay Before Bollywood: Film City Fantasies', SUNY Press, 2015. Sudhir Mahadevan, 'A Very Old Machine: The Many Origins of the Cinema in India', SUNY Press, 2015. André Bazin, 'What Is Cinema?', trans. Hugh Gray, University of California Press, 1967. Stephen Hughes, 'The Production of the Past: Early Tamil Film History as a Living Archive', Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, pp. 71-80, June 2013. Ravikant, 'Words in Motion Pictures: A Social History of the Language of Hindi Cinema (c. 1931 till present)', Unpublished diss., University of Delhi, 2015. Henry Jenkins, 'Converge Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide', NYU Press, 2006. Virchand Dharamsey, 'Light of Asia: Indian Silent Cinema', 1912-1934, eds. Suresh Chabria, Paolo Cherchi Usai, Niyogi Books, 1994.
At the Sundance Film Festival 2021, Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh won the Special Jury Award: Impact for Change and the Audience Award in the World Cinema Documentary category for their debut feature 'Writing With Fire'. On today's episode, we discuss the political economy of documentary filmmaking, its practitioners' love-hate relationship with the state (every government media organisation in India is name-checked in this episode!), the influence and legacy of humanism in nonfiction film and whether its future in South Asia lies in TikTok-type formats. Click here to access the Image+ Guide & view the material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-8. Credits: Producer: Tunak Teas Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee Marketing: Dipalie Mehta Musical arrangement: Jayant Parashar Images: Rintu Thomas & Sushmit Ghosh Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0] References: Kerstin Stutterheim, 'Documentary Film Production Under Neoliberal Circumstances - A Genre in Change', International Science and Humanities Conference 2016, Sharjah. Kamayani Sharma, 'Reason Being', Artforum, 20 Jun 2019. Kartik Nair. "Ramsay Brothers: The Men, The Movies, The Memory”. M.Phil Cinema Studies Diss. SAA, JNU. 2010. Rishi Majumder, 'Ramsay International', Motherland, 2012.
Tobias Wolff on his selection: I read three poems, two by my longtime friend and colleague, Eavan Boland, who died last year, a loss that I feel still. There is a tradition in Irish poetry, inflected by the long Independence movement and a certain kind of heroic poetry, that Boland confronts. The third poem is one by John N. Morris, a poem I have carried in my mind since the mid-70s, that has gathered meaning for me as I had my own children, and now grandchildren: the heroism of learning to let go. New Collected Poems by Eavan Boland The Life Beside This One by John N. Morris Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
Howard Norman on his selection: I read two diary entries by the iconic haiku master, Masaoka Shiki, which I translated with Kazumi Tanaka while in Japan in 2007. Shiki was often confined by his lifelong illness to his bed; a recurring image is a parade of the tops of black umbrellas seen just over the top of a wall. Masaoka Shiki: Selected Poems, trans. Burton Watson Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
18 May marks a watershed event in South Korea's ultimately successful pro-democracy movement - the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. As we come up on its 41st anniversary, I speak to Natasha Ginwala, co-Artistic Director, alongside Defne Ayas, of the 13th Gwangju Biennale (1 April 2021 - 9 May 2021). Against the backdrop of Gwangju's position as a cultural event with a revolutionary ethos, we unpack the philosophy driving this pandemic edition of the Biennale - notably through the work of Catherine Malabou, Yuk Hui, Maya Indira Ganesh, Djamila Ribeiro and others - and how it is incarnated in the works exhibited and practices platformed. We talk about how a biennale is mounted during a global quarantine, what the significance of organic and artificial or machinic intelligence is during an age of unreason as well as how the ghosts of history cause new political ruptures through the phenomenon of recursivity. We also touch upon the role of a biennale as a recorder of change and its paradoxical implication in the very orders it aims to challenge. Click here to access the Image+ Guide and view the images and material being discussed in the podcast: https://sites.google.com/view/artalaap-podcast-resources/episode-7. You can explore and experience the 13th Gwangju Biennale through: - Its official website: https://13thgwangjubiennale.org/ - A downloadable guidebook [https://13thgwangjubiennale.org/pdf/13thGB-Guidebook-ENG-DEF.pdf] - Instagram page [https://www.instagram.com/mindsrisingspiritstuning/] Credits: Producer: Tunak Teas Design & artwork: Mohini Mukherjee Marketing: Dipalie Mehta Intern: Aastha Anupriya Images: The 13th Gwangju Biennale Audio courtesy: Vernouillet by Blue Dot Sessions [CC BY-NC 4.0] Additional support: Kanishka Sharma, Amy Goldstone-Sharma, Raghav Sagar, Shalmoli Halder, Arunima Nair, Jayant Parashar. References: Okwui Enwezor, 'The Politics of Spectacle: The Gwangju Biennale and the Asian Century', Spectacle East Asia (Issue 15), Fall 2010. Gi-Wook Shin, 'Introduction', Contentious Kwangju: The May 18th Uprising in Korea's Past and Present, eds. Gi-Wook Shin and Kyung Moon Hwang, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003. 'Stronger Than Bone', 13th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju Biennale Foundation and Archive Books, Berlin, 2021. Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do With Our Brain?, trans. Sebastian Rand, Fordham University Press, 2008. Yuk Hui, 'Cosmotechnics as Cosmopolitics', e-flux Journal #86, 2017. Vladan Joler & Kate Crawford, 'Anatomy of an AI System: The Amazon Echo as an anatomical map of human labor, data and planetary resources', anatomyof.ai, 2018. Mark Fisher, 'Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?', Zero Books, 2009. Djamila Ribeiro, 'Black Feminism for a New Civilizational Framework', Sur: International Journal on Human Rights, trans. Murphy MacMahon, December 2016. Maya Indira Ganesh, 'Between Flesh: Tech Degrees of Separation', Minds Rising, 13th Gwangju Biennale, August 2020.
Merve Emre on her selection: At the beginning of March, I helped to organize a group reading of Robert Musil's unfinished masterpiece The Man Without Qualities. The excerpt I have chosen to read, from Chapter 32, "The Forgotten, Highly Relevant Story of the Major's Wife," wonderfully compresses much of what I admire about Musil's writing. The story of the major's wife is a story about a man who is in love with the idea of being in love, and as such, is narrated with irony and affectation, but also with pure and gentle beauty. The Man Without Qualities, by Robert Musil, trans. Sophie Wilkins Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
Chris Kraus on her selection: A friend recommended The Executioner’s Song to me when I started researching a book set on the Iron Range of northern Minnesota. Mailer wrote it in 1979 based on events that occurred in Utah between 1976-1977. The culture described in the book feels close to the world I observed on the Range a half century later … different drugs, different guns and vehicle models, but the values and mindset are remarkably similar. Mailer’s book could not be more prescient. The Executioner’s Song, by Norman Mailer Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
Paul Tran on their selection: The handprint is one of the earliest examples of self-representation. I can hardly imagine what it was like, thousands and thousands of years ago, to seek shelter in a cave; to find others had been there; to see the animals they painted; and then to join the animals by leaving their handprint on the wall. Maybe the word for it is hope. Maybe it’s realizing I’m not alone. I’m here, still. “Between Darkness and Light,” Paul Tran, Shantell Martin and Shamel Pitts (TRIBE) “The Cave,” by Paul Tran Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
Valzhyna Mort on her selection: On April 26th, 1986, the worst nuclear reactor accident in history occurred in Chernobyl. I am reading from Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Keith Gessen. Voices from Chernobyl is the first book to present personal accounts of what happened to the people of Belarus, and the fear, anger and uncertainty that they still live with. Voices from Chernobyl, by Svetlana Alexievich, trans. Keith Gessen Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
Paisley Rekdal on her selection: Charming may not be a word commonly associated with Alexander Pope, but for me, “Epistle to Miss Blount, On Her Leaving the Town, After the Coronation” may be one of the most charming poems I know. Pope, famous for “The Rape of the Lock,” and his exhaustingly didactic essay “A Man,” delights with this epistolary poem—brief, by Popian standards—full of wit and life. Like all his poems, it displays a beautiful facility with rhyme and meter, (Pope was a master of the heroic couplet), and a beautiful sense of compassion to the young woman to whom it is addressed. In his poem, Miss Blount is subject to all sorts of whims and institutions—mother, aunt, the church, the squire. There are so many daydreams and visions enclosed inside “Epistle” that by the end of the poem, I’m almost lost inside its spell. Like Pope, I’m regretfully startled awake from this enchanting picture of Miss Blount, and want to return immediately to the poem’s beginning: to relive once more the few, evanescent moments in which Miss Blount is again young, willful, alive—a product both of Pope’s attentive admiration, and mine. Alexander Pope, “Epistle to Miss Blount, On Her Leaving the Town, After the Coronation” Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
Jane Hirshfield on her selection: “The Lives of the Poets” Poems are about our human lives--their knowing by stories, language, feelings, comprehensions, perplexities, musics. Because the lives of poets include the making of poetry, some poems are about that. I've chosen a half-dozen, from a range of persons, places, and directions, from a folder I’ve long been keeping that I think of as “The Lives of the Poets.” Because this selection is for the 92nd St Y, a place where people have long come, and will come again, to hear poems said by their makers, and because we’ve all been through a year now of pandemic uncertainties, I begin with two that show the other side of the fabric of public readings. Anna Swir: “Poetry Reading” (translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan) https://bookshop.org/books/talking-to-my-body/9781556591082 Lucille Clifton: “After the Reading” https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-carry-water-selected-poems-of-lucille-clifton/9781950774142 Han Shan: “Here we languish, a bunch of poor scholars” (translated by Burton Watson) https://bookshop.org/books/cold-mountain-one-hundred-poems-by-the-t-ang-poet-han-shan/9780231034500 Yannis Ritsos: “Necessary Explanation” (translated by Kimon Friar) https://bookshop.org/books/yannis-ritsos-selected-poems-1938-1988/9780918526670 Adrienne Rich: “XIII (Dedication),” final section of “An Atlas of the Difficult World” https://bookshop.org/books/an-atlas-of-the-difficult-world-poems-1988-1991/9780393308310 Frank O'Hara: “Autobiographia Litteraria” https://bookshop.org/books/frank-o-hara-selected-poems/9780375711480 Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
Stacy Schiff on her selection: In a contest between the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard and her third husband, Kingsley Amis, I will opt for Howard every time -- with an exception made for Amis’s 1954 Lucky Jim. As laughter seems in short supply these days, I offer up this favorite Amis set-piece, arguably among the funniest pages of 20th century English literature not written by P.G. Wodehouse. I’m going to do my best to get through them with a straight face, but know that I never have before. Our hero, who is not much of a hero, is Jim Dixon, a lecturer in medieval history at a provincial British university. He is the houseguest of his department chair, who holds Dixon’s fledgling career in his hands. You needn’t worry about the minor characters who flitter by, all of them peripheral to the central drama here, which is Dixon’s climbing into bed and out of it, many hours, several surprises, and one epic hangover later. Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0
Photo: Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation with Pyramid Lake in the back. https://kpfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Burning-Man-Paiute-FINAL_22.14.mp3 jQuery(document).ready(function($) { var media = $('#audio-342776-58'); media.on('canplay', function (ev) { this.currentTime = 0; }); }); ThisIsLucyKang · Burning Man Special: Black Rock City is built on Northern Paiute land ______ Around this time in normal years, Burning Man would be taking place in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. Nearly 80,000 people attended the annual arts event in 2019, which started in the mid-80s and which has gone down in Burning Man lore. However, there's a deeper history that many Burners may not know – one about the original inhabitants, who are still here. Our reporter Lucy Kang went to the Black Rock Desert to learn more. (We wanted to add a quick note that this story was mostly recorded and produced before the COVID-19 pandemic, so a lot of things have changed. We'll hear a quick follow up from our reporter at the end of the story.) ______ Black Rock City is built on the ancestral territory of the Northern Paiute People, the Numu. And their direct descendents are still here, grouped among different bands and tribes, like the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. If you've ever driven to Burning Man from Reno, you've probably passed through their reservation, 50 miles south of here. Burning Man gives several hundred free entry passes for tribe members to attend. Cassandra Davis is from the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone tribe. She is married to Andrew Davis from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, who's also known as Blackowl. Photo: Cassandra Davis at Burning Man 2019. I toss my bicycle into the back of their truck, and hop in. Cassandra is behind the wheel. Blackowl is riding shotgun. “Alright, so we kind of tell people, you know, when we're out here like yeah, we're part of the tribe here, you know,” say Cassandra. “I'll tell people straight up man, I'm from Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, boy,” says Blackowl. “And this actually used to be part of the Pyramid Lake,” continues Cassandra. “This used to be the dry lake bed that was Pyramid Lake,” says Blackowl. “That's why everybody drives through our lake, drive through our reservation. That's why we get wristbands.” Those are the free passes that the Burning Man organization gives to members of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe as a sign of goodwill. “This is all sacred land,” says Blackowl. They drive slowly through the streets of Black Rock City, looking for a place to camp. Blackowl jumps out of the truck. “He's my wildcard,” says Cassandra, laughing. He comes back after a few minutes with someone who's offered them a place to set up their tent. “I said, we're Burners,” he explains. “We came here for the same reason. He asked me if I need a place to camp. Yes, I need a place to camp. And that's how we do it. You don't come in expecting to place somewhere. If you're a real Burner, it always comes through.” “What are you always saying, the playa provides?” asks Cassandra, laughing. “The playa will provide, yup,” answers Blackowl. Cassandra and Blackowl are locals. And when Burning Man comes to town, it's a family affair. Between me and my husband we have eight kids,” says Cassandra. “And our kids love Burning Man. They think it's probably one of the funnest places on Earth.” “They look forward to all the traffic and all the Burners coming through,” she continues. “They get excited seeing all the different art cars, you know. They'll stop and take pictures. And they helped us with our bikes. They'll put the lights on and help decorate our back-bags.” Blackowl and Cassandra have been coming to this event for a long time. Blackowl says it's year 22 for him, though he doesn't consider himself a Burner. Cassandra says, “I'm a Burner five years in.” “I'm a local,” says Blackowl. “And yeah, we're locals,” says Cassandra. “But it's more of a heart thing, you know, like you feel in your heart, you know, when you come out here just you know being home… We're still local. We still have our jobs to go to. We still have to go to work every day and provide for our families, you know… I know a lot of people feel like this is their home.” In fact, “Welcome Home” is how a lot of Burners greet each other. “But you know at the end of the week, they go home,” she continues. “And we're still here.” Underneath Black Rock City is Black Rock Playa, an ancient lakebed that's one of the largest and flattest places on earth. There are some areas here that are still sacred to the Northern Paiute people. Photo: The Black Rock Playa in December 2019. “You can see it on the Playa; you can see the sacred places that we still use,” says Dean Barlese. Dean is a Pyramid Lake Paiute elder with a lot of spiritual and cultural knowledge. In fact, he's on the tribe's Cultural Committee. Right now, he's sitting in a Burning Man camp, answering questions from camp members. “People think we're gone just because we're on the reservation,” he says. “But we still come out here and make offerings in a lot of our sacred places that very few people know about. But we do – I do anyway.” In fact, Dean says that his ancestors are buried in the mountains around Black Rock Playa. Dean's been going to Burning Man since 2001. He says he enjoys it. And he blesses the Burning Man Temple every year, at the request of the Temple volunteers. After the throngs of Burners have left, Dean comes back to bless the playa, to clear it of any negative energy Burners may have left behind. “No matter what anybody says, no matter what the laws say, we're still caretakers,” says Dean. “That has not been taken away from us by Creator.” I wanted to learn more about what Dean means when he talks about the tribe's relationship with the land. So in December, months after Burning Man, I drive to the Pyramid Lake Paiute reservation. I take the route many Burners take, north on highway 447. The landscape here is high desert, with shrubs everywhere – the type of place where tumbleweeds blow in the wind. This is the largest Native American reservation in Nevada. About a quarter of it is taken up by Pyramid Lake's 200 square miles of blue water. Photo: A view of Pyramid Lake with the pyramid-shaped rock in the distance. From the road, there's not much that marks the reservation except the occasional sign on the highway. I drive into Nixon, one of three towns on the reservation. I pass by what look like working ranches and single family homes. Some have rusting cars and trailers parked outside. One of the most distinctive buildings in Nixon has a triangular roof. It's meant to evoke the pyramid rock formation that Pyramid Lake is named for. I'm here to talk to Billie Jean Guerrero. She knows a lot about the history of this place. She is the Museum Director for the Pyramid Lake Museum and Visitor Center, the only tribal museum in the state of Nevada. Photo: The Pyramid Lake Museum and Visitor Center To really understand the tribe's relationship with the Burning Man event, you need to understand a longer span of history. “The Paiute people have been in this area for thousands and thousands of years,” says Billie Jean. “We have petroglyphs in our area that are known as the oldest in North America, and they are dated 14,800 years old.” The original territory of the nomadic Northern Paiute people spanned Nevada, California, Oregon and Idaho. They lived here for generations and lived off the land. They gathered pinyon pine nuts and hunted antelope and deer. The band that would eventually be called the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe was known for eating the cui-ui fish, which was found only in Pyramid Lake. They roamed over the vast territory. Everything changed for them in the mid-1800s. The discovery of gold and silver in California and Nevada sent thousands of white settlers onto Paiute land. The mines built immense wealth for white settlers. But they decimated the traditional ways of life. The settlers took water, grazing land and food sources – all scarce in the desert to begin with. Many Paiutes starved to death. Armed conflict broke out. Wars were fought – and then mostly lost because the settlers were backed by the full force of the United States military. Fighting also took place in the Black Rock Desert. Local historian Sessions Wheeler called these battles a war that “in respect to its ferocity, probably had no equal in Nevada history.” By the end of the century, the Paiute people had been pushed off of 95% of their territory. Most of the land was taken by the federal government or white settlers and homesteaders. Some was carved into reservations, like the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation where I am now. “It basically was a prison camp because people could no longer go off the reservation to hunt and gather as they survived in the past,” says Billie Jean. And then the federal government developed a policy known informally as Kill the Indian, Spare the Man. They forced Native American communities to assimilate into white society. “And one of the ways to assimilate was through boarding schools, which was to beat the Indian out of a person,” says Billie Jean. Stewart Indian School was one such boarding school in Carson City, Nevada that children from nearby tribes were sent to. “And basically children would be kidnapped from the reservations and taken to Stewart Indian school…, sometimes as early as five years old and parents not knowing where they were, says Billie Jean. “It was a very traumatic experience.” Schools like this tried to completely wipe out Native cultures and languages. “They had to forget about the Indian ways and adopt the white man's ways,” she continues. “And if they didn't follow that program, they would be beaten. Sometimes they would be killed.” The US government didn't end the policy of assimilation until 1934. Not long after, the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe gained federal recognition. Tribal elder Dean Barlese sums up this history. “They tried to destroy us, annihilate us, waging wars of genocide against us. We're still here,” he says. Native communities are still dealing with the aftermath of policies enacted by our government. “Those events caused trauma, which is long lasting,” says Billie Jean. “So it carries over from one generation to the next. And if there's no healing that happens, then it just keeps on going.” Photo: Billie Jean Guerrero, Director of the Pyramid Lake Museum and Visitor Center Ultimately, the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe was never completely displaced from its ancestral homelands. But they lost most of the land their ancestors used to roam and forage, including places like the Black Rock Desert. That land is now owned by the US government and overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. It is also home to Burning Man. It's really important to appreciate if you're on Playa and you're at Burning Man… to realize there's a lot of people who have been there before you, says the Burning Man Project's Marnee Benson. “And we're just the most recent visitors.” Marnee works year-round to coordinate with the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. “We recognize that there's a long history that includes… the tribal ancestors and more recently those Western settlers,” says Marnee. “And now our Burning Man community is included in that.” “The Burning Man Project's relationship goes back as far as 1990, when Burning Man first went to the Black Rock Desert,” she continues. Those first Burners — about 90 in total — didn't have a permit from the Bureau of Land Management. Rumors circulated among locals that hippie Satanists had flocked to the desert. From a small group on the playa, Burning Man has grown to a city of tens of thousands. From a gathering on the fringes of society, it became first a corporation and now a non-profit with gross receipts of nearly $48 million in 2019. It's impact on the tribe has grown too. And that's where Marnee comes in. Her official title is Director of Government Affairs for Burning Man. She deals with a whole alphabet soup of federal, state and local agencies, as well as the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. “People need to understand that, that we are a nation within a nation,” says Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal Chairman Anthony Sampson. “A lot of people don't realize that the reservation is a sovereign nation with its own rules and laws,” says Water Quality Manager Kameron Morgan, who is not a tribe member but is employed by them. To be clear, Chairman Sampson and Kameron are the only two people in this story authorized to speak officially on behalf of the Tribe. A former tribal business officer explained in Reno News and Review that “For many years the Tribe worked off a handshake with the festival organizers who paid $10,000 for police, ranger, trash and emergency response services that the Tribe provided during the festival.” By 2011, the former business officer realized that Burning Man only partially repaid the tribe what the extra services cost. Burning Man and the tribe signed an agreement for the first time the following year. These days, the tribe meets with the Burning Man Project every year to discuss the contract. “I think it's 50-50,” says Chairman Sampson. “We throw out what we were looking at and what our needs are, and they'll come back with… what they can… help the tribe with. I think it's somewhat off balance. But I believe that, you know, as this year we sat down with, with Burning Man, they were more open.” “When you say off balance, do you mean in favor of Burning Man, slightly?” I ask. “That would be, yeah, I guess so. Yeah,” he answers. Fifteen hundred people live on the reservation. 80,000 go to Burning Man. And the median household income of Burners was over $100,000 in 2018 — more than two and a half times the median household income on the reservation. So, it's not surprising that Burning Man has a lot of negotiating power, and impact. Locals like Blackowl can have deep ties to Burning Man. But they see what most other Burners don't – the costs that are externalized onto their communities – and onto people who are often just trying to go on with their daily lives. “The festival itself is amazing,” says Andrew Davis Blackowl. “People bring problems.” Cassandra Davis brings up two common concerns. “The impact it has on the environment is number one, you know the trash,” she says. “People are courteous enough to clean up the playa because that's the rules. But on the way out and on the way in, it's more of an issue negatively because of all the trash that, you know, falls off the trailers, people leave behind when they pull over on the sides of the roads.” Burning Man cleanup crews do come after the event to pick up trash on the state roads on the reservation – though trash can sometimes blow away before they get to it. The second problem – is traffic. Like almost every local I talk to, Cassandra has a horror story about reckless drivers. “One year we came out, and there was a lot of people coming, coming back in,” she says. “And they were crossing in front of us trying to pass an RV. There was a semi behind me, and he was hauling a**. I had to slam on my brakes. But I had to do it so much to where the truck behind me wouldn't hit me and almost ran us off the road.” In fact, last year a Nevada man died in a head-on collision with an RV on the highway that brings people to the playa. Burning Man and its community does try to give back in various ways. There are volunteer work days on the reservation, and a donation of solar panels a few years back. And then there's the cash. “We have as an organization, made donations to the tribe for many, many, many years,” says Marnee. “So [the] senior center, the fire rescue, EMS department, and the museum. It's several thousand dollars.” Burners also bump up the local economy while they're here. “You Burners out there, stop by our convenience stores and the vendors out there,” he says. It helps boost the economy for our tribal membership and even our tax revenue on the reservation.” (A quick note here: the reservation and Pyramid Lake are currently closed to the general public due to COVID-19 concerns.) Some families on the reservation rely on roadside vending to make ends meet. Every year at Burning Man, the highway to Black Rock Desert is dotted with food trucks, trash hauling services, and stands hawking blinky lights. Bunny's Tacos was one of the earliest Indian taco stands. If you don't know what an Indian taco is, here's Bunny: “Bunny's taco stand started with a taco bread made from grandma's kitchen, beans, lettuce, tomato, cheese, salsa made, homemade from Bunny's little kitchen,” she says. “All homemade.” Photo: Bunny's Tacos, during the off-season. Bunny's Tacos is run out of a trailer that sits next to Maureen Pancho's house in Nixon. Bunny is Maureen's grandmother, but Maureen calls her Mom. The family has been selling Indian tacos during Burning Man for two decades. Maureen started helping out when she was just a kid. “About 10 years ago Burning Man was just nonstop traffic,” says Maureen. “Everybody wanted a stand. Everybody. It's everybody's extra income during that time. So everybody's popping up stands, whether it's food, crafts, anything… Everyone counts on Burning Man because it's an extra income to help everybody out here because there's barely any jobs for those that don't have one, and that's how they can make their money.” Historically, unemployment here was more than double the state average. And Maureen says the Burning Man business just hasn't been as good for a couple of years. Some think the drop in traffic might be due to the rise in alternative transportation like the Burner Express bus or private flights. Yes – Black Rock City has an airport. Whatever the reason for the slowdown, Maureen is feeling the effects. “Back in the day, I was looking at least five to six grand,” says Maureen. “Now, honestly, I'm at, we'll say, about a minimum wage of a week's work… You're barely making anything now… We count on Burning Man every year.” Photo: Closeup of Bunny's Tacos trailer. Aside from the organization, there's one group of Burners currently addressing the poverty here– the queer camp Comfort & Joy. They run a food drive every year. People leaving Black Rock City can drop off extra food at Bunny's Tacos. Then Maureen helps distribute it to the many, many households that rely on food bank services. “We have gotten over, I want to say roughly eight truckloads of food,” she says. “We fed over 150 families. And it varied from cans to fresh vegetables to eggs… Everything was gone within three days.” Comfort & Joy Camp also holds a separate fundraiser. It raised around $14,000 last year for the tribal food bank. Fabien Gestas, known on the playa as Biscuits, runs both the fundraiser and the food drive. He says he wants to see more awareness from Burners. “You're not just driving through on State Route Nevada 447 heading to Black Rock City,” says Fabien. “You're going through the land that has belonged to somebody for way longer than the United States has ever been here. And that there's a sacredness to it.” Photo: Fabien Gestas, aka Biscuits, at Comfort & Joy, Burning Man 2019. I ask Fabien if he thinks Burners have a moral responsibility to redistribute some of their wealth and resource privilege. “Just as human beings we have a moral responsibility to help one another,” he says. “But obviously that's even compounded when we're coming here to have this crazy celebration on their sacred land… And we do have a moral responsibility. Absolutely.” Many Burners talk about the Black Rock playa as a blank slate. They build their city, like new, every year. But every year, they build it on land taken from the Northern Paiute people, who are still here. This story was recorded primarily in 2019 and produced before the COVID-19 pandemic. A lot has changed since then. Andrew Davis Blackowl, the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe member who let me tag along and jump into the back of his truck, died earlier this year. In April, Burning Man was cancelled. For Paiute vendors like Bunny, the money is gone. And the tribe itself is struggling with COVID-19. Chairman Anthony Sampson had the following to say from a video update on May 5, 2020. COVID-19 cases had just jumped into the double digits. Now the reservation and Pyramid Lake are closed to the general public. “I'm pleading with you people out there, This is not a laughing matter. This is not a drill. This is the reality of what's going on in our communities. This is reality, and it's going to hurt people.” On Paiute land, I'm Lucy Kang, for KPFA. ______ This story is a co-production of KPFA and KALW and is part of the Intersection podcast. It was edited by David Boyer and engineered by Gabe Grabin. Additional reporting from Jonathan Davis. Special thanks to the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Museum and Visitors Center. Comfort & Joy's fundraising campaign for the Tribal Food Bank can be found on Facebook. Thanks also to Anjali L. Nath Upadhyay from Liberation Spring. “Kaiva waito saugaymian” and “Weather Song” from the album Circle Dance Songs of the Paiute and Shoshone (CR-6283) by Judy Trejo. Courtesy Canyon Records, License 2019-092. All rights reserved. “Sweet Betsy From Pike” as performed by Zelmer Ward and Vester Whitworth at Arvin FSA Camp, August 1, 1940. Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Workers Collection, America Folklore Collection. Library of Congress. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/afcts.4099a2. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions (CC BY-NC 4.0 license). The post Burning Man Special: Black Rock City is built on Northern Paiute land appeared first on KPFA.
The hashtag “#LibrariesRespond” was started by the American Library Association's Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services. Its purpose: to create a space for libraries “to help keep current events in conversation with libraries' ongoing work in and commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion.” In solidarity with this ongoing conversation and our communities' stand against racism, this episode of Voices From the Stacks, features conversations with staff about race, injustice, and issues that affect the daily lives of BIPOC. And this is a library podcast; you know we'll talk about our diverse collection and our programs that strive to inspire understanding and community healing too. Visit wpbcitylibrary.org to check out “#LibrariesRespond: A Black Lives Matter Reading List” on our Notes from the Stacks blog A list of all materials recommended on this episode and transcripts are available on the Voices from the Stacks website. This episode is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Music Used in this Episode: "Slow Rollout" by Blue Dot Sessions (CC BY-NC 4.0) "Traction" by Chad Crouch (CC BY-NC 3.0) "Awakenings" by Ketsa (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) "Headway" by Kai Engel (CC BY 4.0) "I Can See" It by DarkSunn (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) "State of the World (Original)" by Makaih Beats (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/voices-from-the-stacks/message
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