Kapwani Kiwanga: Flowers for Africa

“I am a Third World artist”

says Doris Salcedo, “from that perspective—from the perspective of the victim, from the perspective of the defeated people—it’s where I’m looking at the world.”

Alondra de la Parra launches The Impossible Orchestra

Keen to play her part in supporting the women and children suffering abuse and hardship in her native Mexico – a situation greatly worsened during the pandemic – the conductor Alondra de la Parra has created The Impossible Orchestra.

Hollow denials exposed by the watchdog

When The Times first claimed in 2011 that a “culture of silence” had for years facilitated “the sexual exploitation of hundreds of young girls by criminal pimping gangs” in towns and cities across northern England and the Midlands, denial followed denial. We reported that most of the identified victims were white and most known offenders were of Pakistani heritage,

Evelyne Axell: Tiger Woman

The Greenland Ice Sheet is losing mass at accelerated rates in the 21st century

making it the largest single contributor to rising sea levels. Faster flow of outlet glaciers has substantially contributed to this loss, with the cause of speedup, and potential for future change,

The Amazon is burning: No to EU-MERCOSUR trade deal

The EU is about to sign a “new TTIP” with Mercosur -- aka Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. It is a deal to import cheap beef, soy, wood and other products grown from the Amazon’s ashes.

Russian opposition leader Navalny poisoned

Navalny, known for his anti-corruption campaigns against top officials and outspoken criticism of President Vladimir Putin, has suffered physical attacks in the past.

Lukashenko Doesn’t Want to Be Putin’s Deputy Tsar

No one anticipated such resounding success for the opposition and such failure for President Aleksandr Lukashenko in the presidential elections. The exact results are not known, but polling places that have reported undistorted results recorded 60 to 90 percent of the vote for the main opposition candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, and no more than 17 percent for Lukashenko—more often around 10 percent.

Huge Garbage Patch Found in Atlantic Too

Akin to the Texas-size garbage patch in the Pacific, a massive trash vortex has formed from billion of bits of plastic congregating off North America's Atlantic coast

Do countries with female leaders truly fare better with Covid-19?

The analysis, which is now out as a working paper and has been submitted for consideration to a journal, found that the infection rate and death rate of Covid-19 were both lower in countries run by women compared to those in male-led countries. In an effort to isolate the specific effect of having a female leader, they compared female-led countries to male-led countries that are similar in population, geography, gender equality, health expenditures, and number of tourists. No matter how they sliced the data, female-led countries fared better.

COVID-19 will accelerate the arts’ ability to connect with audiences through technology

The pandemic strikes at the heart of why orchestras exist: to bring people together and build community through the power and emotion of live music. For many, that loss is an existential experience.

Tschabalala Self: Princess

Speculation on Black Artists Has Gotten So Intense That for Christie’s Latest Sale, Its Curator Is Asking Buyers to Sign a Special Contract

In February, a painting by Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo sold at Phillips in London for $881,432—more than 10 times its estimate and more than 3,000 percent what the seller had paid for it less than a year earlier. As usual, the artist did not see a penny from the transaction

Ex-cop’s video captures crowd’s horror during Floyd arrest

The video made available Thursday comes from fired Officer Tou Thao, one of four former Minneapolis police officers charged in the death of Floyd, a handcuffed Black man. Floyd died after a white officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes on a south Minneapolis street May 25 as Floyd repeatedly said he could not breathe.

Picasso Y-Block Controversy

Viksjø and engineer Sverre Jystad designed the Y-Block using “Naturbetong”, or “natural concrete,” an experimental casting technique based on an aggregate of aluminum and silicon metal, which created a tactile surface receptive to sandblasting. Nesjar’s technique, called “Betograve,” entailed pouring concrete over a form—in this case, Picasso’s designs—tightly packed with gravel. The concrete was then sand-blasted with a high-pressure hose, exposing the gravel beneath. The final product was a singularity for the time and place: Brutalist architecture married with modernist figuration.

Uncovering Indonesia’s Act of Killing

1965-1966 Indonesian massacre, one of the worst, yet least known, mass killings since World War II, in which an estimated half a million Indonesians suspected of being Communists were murdered by soldiers and paramilitary death squads.

How ‘Jakarta’ Became the Codeword for US-Backed Mass Killing

Operação Jacarta. Yakarta Viene. Plan Yakarta. In both Spanish and Portuguese, in all three ways it was used, it’s clear what “Jakarta” meant: anticommunist mass murder and the state-organized extermination of civilians who opposed the construction of capitalist authoritarian regimes loyal to the United States. It meant forced disappearances and unrepentant state terror. And it would be employed far and wide in Latin America over the two decades that followed.

How 5 People Survived Nagasaki’s Nuclear Hell

Truman and the Secretary of War, made a concerted effort to publish articles justifying the use of the bombs, excluding any information about what happened to the people beneath the atomic clouds.

August 9, 1945

At 11:02 A.M., their morning was broken by a blinding white flash in the sky. The plutonium bomb dropped by the United States unleashed more than 21 kilotons of firepower, ripping through Nagasaki and killing as many as 70,000 people almost instantly. Ikeda was only one of 47 survivors from his elementary school; 1,400 students were killed, and 50 others were missing.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

A mushroom cloud is seen over Nagasaki, Japan, after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city on August 9, 1945

Covid-19 lockdown will have 'negligible' impact on climate crisis

putting the huge sums of post-Covid-19 government funding into a green recovery and shunning fossil fuels will give the world a good chance of keeping the rise in global temperatures below 1.5C. The scientists said we are now at a “make or break” moment in keeping under the limit – as compared with pre-industrial levels – agreed by the world’s governments to avoid the worst effects of global heating.

Beirut explosion: death toll rises to 137 as army takes control of site

Lebanese officials have started blaming each other for leaving the highly explosive substance sitting so close to residential neighbourhoods for six years. The ammonium nitrate was taken from a ship that docked in Beirut in 2013 and was apparently abandoned by its Russian owner and mostly Ukrainian crew.

The attack on Hiroshima: Remembering the dead, praying for peace

Bells have tolled in Japan's Hiroshima for the 75th anniversary of the world's first atomic bombing, with ceremonies downsized due to the coronavirus pandemic and the city's mayor urging nations to reject self-centred nationalism and commit to nuclear disarmament more seriously

Is humanity doomed because we can’t plan for the long term?

the bizarre surge in panic buying and stockpiling of everything from food to toilet rolls. A second was the abject failure of most states to be prepared when experts had been warning governments for years that a pandemic would happen sooner or later. The third has been the exposure of the fragility of globalised supply chains. All three of these are underpinned by the same phenomenon: a strong tendency to prioritise the short term at the expense of the future.

What the End of the Universe Will Really Be Like

The explosion of Earth due to shredded spacetime certainly makes for a cinematically exciting scene. But if we are fated for a Big Rip, it is not likely to happen for about 200 billion years. That’s a lot sooner than the standard Heat Death scenario, but it is well beyond the lifespan of our solar system, Earth, and (probably) humanity.

Ur-Fascism

Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old “proletarians” are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority

བདེ་​བར་​གཤེགས་​པའི་​བསྟན་​པ་​ཐམས་​ཅད་​ཀྱི་​སྙིང་​པོ་​རིག་​པ་​འཛིན་​པའི་​སྡེ་​སྣོད་​རྡོ་​རྗེ་​ཐེག་​པ་​སྔ་​འགྱུར་​རྒྱུད་​འབུམ།

The Collected Tantras of the Ancients are organized with varying degrees of precision according to doxographical category. The three major rubrics under which the tantras of this collection are classified are Atiyoga, Anuyoga, and Mahāyoga. Each of these categories can be further divided into sub-categories, though the various editions differ as to whether they follow those sub-categories or not. This edition, the Degé, also contains a volume of supplemental tantric texts and a volume containing the index of titles by volume.

What Was the Most Influential Work of the Decade?

Where Should Art History Go in the Future?

The reorientation means that instead of gaining expertise about a legacy of specific masterworks, we instead have to take on a project that is less comfortable: constantly studying our own ignorance.

Chocolate: Child Labour and Deforestation

In 2001, the lucrative chocolate industry, due to pressure from NGOs, committed itself to putting an end to child labour in cacao plantations before 2006. 18 years later, has that promise been kept? The Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cacao producer, made a real effort to eradicate this scourge on the country. They built schools and trained farmers. Television adverts even reminded populations that child labour is illegal. So why does child exploitation still exist?

In the past half-century, few countries have lost rainforests as fast as the Ivory Coast. More than 80 percent of its forests are gone, most following an illegal invasion by as many as a million landless people into national parks and other supposedly protected forests. The Marahoue National Park alone has 30,000 illegal inhabitants. The invaders are growing cocoa to supply the global chocolate business.

A millennium ago

A millennium ago, Buddhist domination of Tibet spawned a new civilization, one in which the celebrated Lamaist religions of Bön and Buddhism came to hold sway. The inexorable march of time and the ascent of the new religious order slowly but surely clouded the memory of the earlier cultural heritage. As a result, many of the ancient achievements of the Upper Tibetan people were forgotten. All that remains are preserved in the impressive monumental traces of the region. Antiquities of Zhang Zhung attempts to reclaim these past glories by systematically describing the visible physical remains left by the ancient inhabitants of Upper Tibet.

Is our future set in stone?

The laws of physics suggest that our path in life is predetermined

Padre Max & Maria de Lurdes

Murdered for generously teaching the rude and ignorant portuguese people from Cumieira. Day in honor of Father Max and Maria de Lurdes: 3rd of April 

The tradition on the Noite de São João involves locals placing a cat in a clay jar and hanging it on a pole clad in straw which then is set alight

The fun, apparently, is in watching the string holding the jar burn and seeing the cat and container crash to the ground.

Summers could become 'too hot for humans'

when the body is unable to cool down properly so its core temperature keeps rising to dangerous levels and key organs can shut down.

Who owns the Nile?

The universe has an odd sense of humor

While a crown-encrusted virus has run roughshod over the world, another entirely different corona about 100 million light years from Earth has mysteriously disappeared.

Mysterious Thermonuclear Blast Sends Strange Star Hurtling Across The Galaxy

Dox - is whizzing along at 250 kilometres per second (155 miles per second), against the direction of the galaxy's rotation.

Livestock farming and fossil fuels could drive 4C global heat rise

Animal farming and fossil fuels have driven global emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane to the highest level on record, putting the world on track for dangerously increased heat levels of 3C to 4C.

Incorporate remote access from the get-go

During the first few weeks of the COVID-19 lockdowns, many people found themselves scrambling to make the everyday things they do—jobs, classes, family gatherings—accessible from remote locations. Disabled people have been practicing, advocating, and innovating alternative ways of showing up and getting together since long before the pandemic—out of necessity, and to accommodate one another. On May 8, I moderated a Zoom panel on remote access with disabled artists and writers Kevin Gotkin, Johanna Hedva, and Yo-Yo Lin. The video recording is embedded here. Together, we discuss the importance of incorporating the remote access techniques we’re all learning now into future programs, as well as precedents (artworks, exhibitions) that incorporate remote access from the get-go, rather than tacking it on as an afterthought.

Free Tibet and the world’s oldest pro-Tibet group, the Tibet Society have completed a merger

in a move which will see both organisations combine their strengths in support of the Tibetan cause. The merger has been welcomed by the Tibetan community, activists and supporters from across the Tibet movement. Free Tibet is globally known for its public campaigns, advocacy and research, becoming one of the biggest and most influential Tibet organisations in the world. As the secretariat to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Tibet, a group of MPs committed to supporting Tibet, Tibet Society has strong links with decision makers and politicians to keep Tibet on the agenda of the British Government. 

Ennio Morricone Dies at 91

his brilliant body of work includes collaborations with other notable directors like Gillo Pontecorvo (1966’s The Battle of Algiers), Don Siegel (1970’s Two Mules for Sister Sara), Bernardo Bertolucci (1976’s 1900), John Boorman (1977’s Exorcist II: The Heretic), Edouard Molinaro (1978’s La Cage aux Folles), John Carpenter (1982’s The Thing), William Friedkin (1987’s Rampage), Brian De Palma (1987’s The Untouchables), Pedro Almodovar (1989’s Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!), Franco Zeffirelli (1990’s Hamlet), Wolfgang Petersen (1993’s In the Line of Fire), Mike Nichols (1994’s Wolf) and Warren Beatty (1998’s Bulworth). He was asked but never scored a film for Eastwood the director, a decision he said he regretted, and missed out on a chance to do Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) when Leone insisted that the composer was too busy finishing up one of his films (he wasn’t).

‘A Delightful Flurry of Movement’: Dances to Bach

Tanowitz, who works with a range of companies and founded her own in 2000, has developed a style of choreography that is rigorous and structured while often appearing permeable, receptive, and spontaneous. She makes great use of theater wings, upstage recesses, and even audience aisles. One of the joys of watching a Tanowitz performance is catching moments that seem unplanned: a gracious smile between dancers, a performer who stays airborne after her peers have landed, or a group huddle that falls to the left of a spotlight.

Hong Kong: protests erupt as China brings in controversial new security law

Police make first arrest since new law comes into force after man held Hong Kong Independence flag in protest

Elim Chan’s work shines brilliantly across Europe, the United States, as well as her home country of Hong Kong

I look inside the form, the phrase structure, the harmony. I look into returning motives. After this whole preparation I need to internalize it. The body has to feel the music. I try to sing out different parts in order to confirm assumptions or ideas, because that always tells me what is natural. Eventually, I go live my life and let the piece sink in.

Kusama is a phenomenon

She has been an installation artist, dress designer, art dealer, sculptor, pianist, poet and novelist (at least 18 novels

Stop buying "made in China"!

The construction of defensive infrastructure is in direct violation of the bilateral agreement that both nations made to de-escalate the militarisation of the region. The construction of camps, gun emplacements and roads was one of the reasons for the conflict earlier in June that saw the death of tens of Indian and Chinese soldiers. Twenty Indian soldiers were killed in the violence

Observed and predicted effects of climate change on Arctic caribou and reindeer

the decline of many populations concurrent with Arctic warming has precipitated concern for the future status of the species and for the associated socioeconomic consequences. At the same time, a substantial research effort has developed to study the global effects of climate change, with considerable work going into Arctic species and ecosystems. 

As Permafrost Melts It's Unleashing Ancient Viruses, Carbon - And Now Fuel Spills

Melting permafrost, suspected by Russia of being behind an unprecedented fuel spill that has polluted huge stretches of Arctic rivers, is a time bomb threatening health and the environment, and risks speeding up global warming.​

'More masks than jellyfish': coronavirus waste ends up in ocean

Conservationists have warned that the coronavirus pandemic could spark a surge in ocean pollution – adding to a glut of plastic waste that already threatens marine life – after finding disposable masks floating like jellyfish and waterlogged latex gloves scattered across seabeds.

Major fires hit the Amazon and the Arctic for the second year in a row

For the second year running, vital ecosystems are in flames. Several major fires in the Amazon have been spotted ahead of the rainforest’s typical fire season, and it seems likely that 2020 will see worse blazes than the ones which triggered international outcry last year. Fires are also raging across frozen tundra in the Arctic, sending smoke around the world and releasing CO2.

Urging The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, the Sydney Morning Herald and Handelsblatt to #CancelChinaPropaganda

The Chinese government has stifled media freedoms for decades; imprisoning more journalists than anywhere else in the world; banning social media and non-compliant foreign websites, an resorting to extreme measures to prevent all information about its human rights abuses and unrest getting out, including by routinely locking up anyone who speaks out. 

To further efforts to control and censor Chinese Communist Party state media has struck highly lucrative deals with numerous highly regarded news outlets, offering large sums of money for them to carry supplements or 'advertorials'. These outlets include the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and Sydney Morning Herald. 

These supplements or 'advertorials' enable the promotion of the Chinese government’s propaganda, which is far factual reporting and includes articles hailing the celebration by Tibetans of “democratic reforms” in occupied Tibet; reports whitewashing the arbitrary detention of at least 2 million Uyghurs and other Muslims in ‘re-education camps’; and stories claiming that the repressive and internationally condemned National Security legislation in Hong Kong will only “better protect” freedoms on the island.

By accepting money from the Chinese government to hold this propaganda, these media outlets are performing as a mouthpiece for Beijing and are complicity in the crackdown on the freedom of Tibetans, Uyghurs,Chinese and all human rights defenders who risk their lives on the frontlines to expose the realities of life under Chinese rule.

Dos Santos blames asset freeze for Lisbon retreat and failure to pay staff

The Angolan billionaire has closed down her business offices in Portugal and fired dozens of staff after failing to pay wages, rent and bills for months

History will remember Trump as 'an aberration'

"His policymaking is so incoherent, so unfocused, so unstructured, so wrapped around his own personal political fortunes, that mistakes are being made that will have grave consequences for the national security of the United States," Bolton told George Stephanopoulos

Intelligence

Intelligence — the ability to learn, reason and solve problems — is at the forefront of behavioural genetic research. Intelligence is highly heritable and predicts important educational, occupational and health outcomes better than any other trait. Recent genome-wide association studies have successfully identified inherited genome sequence differences that account for 20% of the 50% heritability of intelligence. These findings open new avenues for research into the causes and consequences of intelligence using genome-wide polygenic scores that aggregate the effects of thousands of genetic variants.

Over 1.2 millions Tibetans have died as a direct result of China’s occupation of Tibet

"As a Tibetan refugee born and raised in India, I consider India to be my second home, which has given asylum to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people. For centuries, Tibet and India enjoyed peace and friendship; China did not share a border with India until 1959. Over 1.2 millions Tibetans have died as a direct result of China’s occupation of Tibet. However, Tibetans inside Tibet and in exile have never wavered in our struggle against the colonial occupation of our homeland"

Samar has been jailed for her activities and faces ongoing harassment and threats of punishment from both the government and the religious authorities

Samar Badawi is a Saudi woman human rights defender, who has challenged the conservative authorities by attempting to register to vote and driving her car. Samar has been jailed for her activities and faces ongoing harassment and threats of punishment from both the government and the religious authorities. However, she has also been an inspiration to thousands of Saudi women and along with fellow defenders is challenging gender inequality in Saudi Arabia.

Kara Walker: Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) [first of 15]

Indians, Slaves, and Mass Murder: The Hidden History

The ensuing Age of Discovery, with its expansions of empires and exploitations of New World natural resources, was accompanied by the seizure and forced labor of human beings, starting with Native Americans.

The UN failed to hold the Saudi and Emirati led coalition to account for killing and injuring at least 222 children, and at least 4 incidents of attacks on schools and hospitals verified by the UN in 2019

In a shocking decision, the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has removed Saudi Arabia from his annual ‘list of shame’. This shows powerful parties can kill and maim children or attack schools and hospitals with impunity

Paysage π

Where are going our "advanced" societies?

"When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth."

"situations of male prisoners selfidentifying as females then raping staff in prison".

“Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating"

Olof Palme murder: Sweden believes it knows who killed PM in 1986

A charismatic prime minister who led Sweden's Social Democratic party, Palme was also outspoken on several international issues.

At home he had infuriated business owners with reforms and spoken out against nuclear power.

He was critical of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the US bombing of North Vietnam and had attacked South Africa's "gruesome" regime of apartheid.

Evil brutality and evil monstrosities

• In Buffalo, police said a 75-year-old-man—who was walking alone doing nothing when he was pushed over by a cop, hit his head on cement, started bleeding from his ears, and was ignored by a group of a dozen officers—“tripped and fell.”

Rayshard Brooks was killed following a confrontation with officers outside a fast food restaurant in Atlanta.

• Police Said A Black Man Hanged Himself.

• U.N. Panel Says Russia Bombed Syrian Civilian Targets, a War Crime

Parents fear the city’s (Hong Kong) education system will become a propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party, preventing their children from developing free thinking. They worry about their physical safety too as police crack down hard on young dissenters.

Hannah Gadsby Offers a Hilarious Art History Slide Show in Her New Netflix Special

the High Renaissance, she reminds us, took place between 1500 and 1520 (though some scholars argue that it began in 1490), a time when Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo were at the height of their careers, painting masterpieces left and right. But where is the final member of the quartet, Donatello? Plot twist: he died in 1465.

Berlioz’s Grand Traité d’Instrumentation et d’Orchestration Modernes

was first published in 1843/4 then reissued in 1855 in a revised and enlarged edition. It remains a landmark in the history of the symphony orchestra, and though there have been numerous technical improvements in the manufacture and playing of instruments since the composer’s time, especially concerning wind and brass instruments, the work still retains much of its value. It is a historical document on instrumental practice in the time of Berlioz, and also provides a commentary on Berlioz’s own use of the orchestra

A Massive Oil Spill in the Arctic Has Turned a River Red

Russia declared a state of emergency after a power plant spilled 20,000 metric tons of oil and diesel fuel into a river in the Arctic Circle. The possible cause: melting permafrost due to climate change.

In Taymyr the coastal tundra - marshland with permanently frozen subsoil - is a nesting ground for migratory birds, which fly there for the brief Arctic summer.

Polar bears sometimes come ashore on Taymyr while, inland, vast reindeer herds roam and snowy owls hunt lemmings.

Along with the pollution threat, reindeer are now seriously threatened by poaching, says Alexey Knizhnikov, a conservationist at WWF Russia.

"Developing new projects in such an ecologically sensitive area is madness, in our view," he told the BBC.

Mia Florentine Weiss: don’t provoke to provoke

Nietzsche said: “We have art in order not to die of the truth!” 

མ་གཅིག་ལབ་སྒྲོན

Sagittarius A*

Supermassive black holes lurk at the center of galaxies, with sizes that reach up to 10 billion times the mass of the Sun. For example, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*, is 4 million times the mass of the Sun.

Paysage °

Major U.S. Museums Criticized for Responses to Ongoing George Floyd Protests

As social media flooded with images of civil arrest and police brutality, many museums stayed silent over the weekend, drawing criticism from high-profile activists, curators, and artists

Christo Has Died

Christo, the Bulgarian artist who captivated audiences around the world for more than five decades with massive public art installations, has died. 

Tibetan Chöd practice – cutting through the ego

The tantric practice of Chöd originated in India but was greatly developed in Tibet by the great female practitioner or yogini of the 11th century, Machig Labdrön. She originated a new lineage of the practice that is the only tantric Buddhist practice that was introduced back to India from Tibet.