Chinese Artist Ai Weiwei Releases a “Heavy Metal” Song & Video Recalling His Harsh Imprisonment

in Art, Music, Politics | June 18th, 2013

Burly Chi­nese artist and dis­si­dent Ai Wei­wei has nev­er lost his sense of humor, even when fac­ing harsh repres­sion from his gov­ern­ment. But while the idea of 55-year old Ai record­ing a heavy met­al record might seem like a stunt, the source mate­r­i­al for his first sin­gle, “Dum­b­ass” (above), is any­thing but fun­ny. The furi­ous­ly angry, exple­tive-filled song is inspired by Ai’s harsh treat­ment dur­ing his 81-day impris­on­ment in 2011. He’s call­ing the musi­cal project “a kind of self-ther­a­py” and will release six tracks on June 22—the sec­ond anniver­sary of his release—as an album called The Divine Com­e­dy.

Ai sings (or howls, growls, and bel­lows) in Chi­nese. As you can see from the grim images in the video above—with the artist re-enact­ing and re-imag­in­ing his expe­ri­ences in detention—the mem­o­ries of his incar­cer­a­tion are still raw and painful. While he’s called his music “heavy met­al,” The Guardian points out that “it’s not exact­ly Metal­li­ca” (unless you count that Lou Reed col­lab­o­ra­tion). Ai him­self says of his sound:

After I said it would be heavy met­al I ran back to check what heavy met­al would be like. Then I thought, oh my god, it’s quite dif­fer­ent…. So it’s Chi­nese heavy met­al, or maybe Caochang­di [where his stu­dio is based] heavy met­al.

Call it what you want: Chi­nese heavy met­al, prac­ti­cal joke, avant garde per­for­mance piece… it’s still like­ly to get Ai in even fur­ther trou­ble with Chi­nese author­i­ties. As he explained to the New York Times, how­ev­er, he “want­ed to do some­thing impos­si­ble…. I want­ed to show young peo­ple here we can all sing…. It’s our voice.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei­wei: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Ai Weiwei’s Par­o­dy of ‘Gang­nam Style’

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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23 Cartoonists Unite to Demand Action to Reduce Gun Violence: Watch the Result

in Animation, Current Affairs, Politics | May 1st, 2013

The Unit­ed States has only five per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion, but some­where between 35 and 50 per­cent of the world’s pri­vate­ly owned guns. Is it a sur­prise, then, that we have sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er rates of gun vio­lence?

Accord­ing to research pub­lished by the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health, homi­cide rates in the U.S. are 6.9 times high­er than they are in oth­er high-income nations. For 15- to 24-year-olds, the homi­cide rate is 42.7 times high­er. Firearm sui­cide rates are 5.8 times high­er in Amer­i­ca than in oth­er coun­tries, even though the over­all sui­cide rates are 30 per­cent low­er.

A suc­ces­sion of high-pro­file massacres–Columbine, Vir­ginia Tech, Sandy Hook–has tak­en place against a base­line of dai­ly gun deaths that rarely make the nation­al head­lines: mur­ders, sui­cides, acci­den­tal killings. Since the Decem­ber 14 mass mur­der at Sandy Hook Ele­men­tary School in New­town, Con­necti­cut, in which 20 chil­dren and six adults were gunned down by a heav­i­ly armed man, there have been well over 3,300 gun-relat­ed deaths in Amer­i­ca. If cur­rent trends con­tin­ue, gun deaths are pro­ject­ed to exceed traf­fic deaths for the first time by the year 2015.

So what is being done? At the fed­er­al lev­el, noth­ing.

Ear­li­er this month the Sen­ate not only struck down leg­is­la­tion to ban assault weapons and high-capac­i­ty gun mag­a­zines, it also struck down–at the will of a 45-mem­ber minority–a bipar­ti­son com­pro­mise to expand back­ground checks for gun buy­ers, a mea­sure sup­port­ed by 90 per­cent of the Amer­i­can peo­ple.

In response to the paral­y­sis (some would say cow­ardice) on Capi­tol Hill, a group of 23 promi­nent car­toon­ists, includ­ing Gar­ry Trudeau, Ruben Bolling, Art Spiegel­man and Tom Tomor­row, have joined forces to fight back against the gun lob­by. The car­toon (above) was orga­nized by May­ors Against Ille­gal Guns, and is nar­rat­ed by actors Julianne Moore and Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man.

“Enough. Demand action,” say Moore and Hoff­man. “As a dad, as a mom, as a hus­band, as a wife, as a fam­i­ly, as a friend. As an Amer­i­can. It’s time. We can’t back down. It’s time for our lead­ers to act right now. Demand action”

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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History Declassified: New Archive Reveals Once-Secret Documents from World Governments

in Archives, Current Affairs, History, Politics | April 26th, 2013

che and Zhou Enlai

In the ear­ly ’90s, the so-called “Iron Archives” of Russ­ian polit­i­cal doc­u­ments from the Cold War era opened up to his­to­ri­ans, shed­ding light on the ear­li­est days of Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin’s diplo­mat­ic alliance.

But not all of the Russ­ian doc­u­ments were declas­si­fied at that time. The Woodrow Wil­son Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter for Schol­ars has launched a new dig­i­tal archive con­tain­ing recent­ly declas­si­fied mate­ri­als from some 100 dif­fer­ent inter­na­tion­al col­lec­tions, includ­ing a cable Mao sent to Com­man­der Fil­ip­pov (Stalin’s alias) eager­ly detail­ing his plans to study Rus­sia and com­plain­ing about his poor health.

The sub­se­quent exchange between the two world lead­ers is as banal as their lat­er cor­re­spon­dence would be ide­o­log­i­cal. Mao sug­gests, once his health improves, that they use the aero­drome in Weix­i­an for his depar­ture and he includes the exact dimen­sions of the land­ing strip. One won­ders whether Oba­ma and Israeli Pres­i­dent Shi­mon Peres worked so close­ly togeth­er on trav­el details for their meet­ings in March.

The details con­tained in the thou­sands of cables, telegrams and mem­os are part of the fun. Oth­er doc­u­ments exchanged between the KGB chair­man and East Ger­man Min­is­ter in July, 1981 include blunt lan­guage about the dif­fi­cul­ties of read­ing the Rea­gan Administration’s inten­tions and the impor­tance of quash­ing the Pol­ish Sol­i­dar­i­ty Move­ment.

Because the world’s biggest issues tend to have long roots, there is a lot of mate­r­i­al here that echoes today’s head­lines. Here, the Sovi­et Min­is­ter of For­eign Affairs records a 1958 memo about his assess­ment of North Korea’s plans for a nuclear pro­gram.

Dur­ing a 1960 glob­al com­mu­nist del­e­ga­tion meet­ing, Mao Zedong spoke at length with Che Gue­vara about sug­ar sales, Amer­i­can influ­ence and counter-rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies.

As a side note, the Wil­son Cen­ter is a one of the more intel­lec­tu­al memo­ri­als to an Amer­i­can pres­i­dent. Woodrow Wil­son was, after all, the only Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States to hold a Ph.D. The Cen­ter is one of the world’s top think tanks, with research and projects focused on U.S.-Russia rela­tions, the Mid­dle East, North Korea and, odd­ly, emerg­ing nan­otech­nolo­gies. But, of course, the Wil­son Cen­ter is more known for its cen­trist analy­sis of inter­na­tion­al diplo­ma­cy issues.

The new dig­i­tal archive (whose tagline is “Inter­na­tion­al His­to­ry Declas­si­fied”) offers sev­er­al ways to search: by place, year (begin­ning with1938) or sub­ject. For schol­ars or his­to­ry buffs, this is a trove worth brows­ing.

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Vis­it her web­site: .

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Hunter S. Thompson Runs for Aspen, Colorado Sheriff on the “Freak Power” Platform (1970)

in History, Literature, Politics | February 27th, 2013

In 1970, Hunter S. Thomp­son was look­ing to become the new sher­iff in town — the town being Aspen, Col­orado. In a heat­ed elec­tion, Thomp­son ran against a tra­di­tion­al, con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­ate, Car­rol Whit­mire, on what he called the “freak pow­er” plat­form, which most­ly called for the legal­iza­tion of mar­i­jua­na and uncon­ven­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tions.

As Thomp­son lat­er explained in his essay “Freak Pow­er in The Rock­ies,” hun­dreds of Haight-Ash­bury refugees moved to Aspen after the ill-fat­ed “Sum­mer of Love” in 1967, and they became part of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. In the town, reg­is­tered Repub­li­cans his­tor­i­cal­ly out­weighed reg­is­tered Democ­rats by a two-to-one mar­gin.

But both camps were out­weighed by inde­pen­dents, which includ­ed “a jan­gled mix of Left/Crazies and Birchers; cheap big­ots, dope deal­ers, nazi ski instruc­tors and spaced off ‘psy­che­del­ic farm­ers’ with no pol­i­tics at all beyond self-preser­va­tion,” remem­bers Thomp­son. So, win­ning an elec­tion came down to reg­is­ter­ing indie vot­ers and get­ting them to the polls — some­thing that was eas­i­er said than done, it turns out.

In the short term, Hunter S. Thomp­son lost the “Bat­tle of Aspen” by 300–500 votes, depend­ing on whose accounts you read. In the long-term, he arguably won. 42 years after Thomp­son made the legal­iza­tion of mar­i­jua­na his cen­tral cam­paign promise, Col­orado vot­ers passed Amend­ment 64, legal­iz­ing mar­i­jua­na for recre­ation­al use. Some­where, the would-be gonzo politi­cian is smil­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards, and Very Lit­tle Makes Sense

Hunter S. Thomp­son Calls Tech Sup­port, Unleash­es a Tirade Full of Fear and Loathing (NSFW)

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son (NSFW)

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The BBC Presents a New Dramatization of Orwell’s 1984, with Christopher Eccleston as Winston Smith

in Literature, Politics, Radio | February 15th, 2013


Like the idea of total­i­tar­i­an­ism, per­haps best artic­u­lat­ed by Han­nah Arendt in her post-war Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism, George Orwell’s post-war scruti­ny of repres­sive gov­ern­ments has become a sta­ple, catch-all ref­er­ence for pun­dits on either side of the polit­i­cal spec­trum, par­tic­u­lar­ly the con­cepts of dou­ble­s­peak, dou­ble­think, his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism, and the hyper-intru­sive Big Broth­er, all from the 1949 nov­el 1984. In fact, few adjec­tives seem to get deployed with more fre­quen­cy in urgent polit­i­cal dis­course of all kinds than “Orwellian.” But the name George Orwell, pen name of jour­nal­ist Eric Blair, hides an enig­ma: Orwell iden­ti­fied him­self explic­it­ly as a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ist of a par­tic­u­lar­ly Eng­lish bent (most notably in his essay “The Lion and the Uni­corn”), but his scathing cri­tiques of near­ly every exist­ing insti­tu­tion some­times make it hard to pin him down as a par­ti­san of any­thing but the kind of free­dom and open­ness that every­one vague­ly wants to advo­cate. That ambi­gu­i­ty is a strength; despite his stead­fast left­ist roots, Orwell would not be a par­ti­san hack—where he saw stu­pid­i­ty, avarice, and bru­tal inhu­man­i­ty, he called it out, no mat­ter the source.

The seem­ing con­tra­dic­tions and ironies that per­me­ate Orwell’s thought and fic­tion are also what keep his work peren­ni­al­ly inter­est­ing and worth reread­ing and revis­it­ing. He was a prob­ing and unsen­ti­men­tal crit­ic of the motives of pro­pa­gan­dists of all stripes, both left and right. Begin­ning in late Jan­u­ary, BBC Radio 4 launched a month-long series on Orwell, with the avowed­ly iron­ic name, “The Real George Orwell.” Part of the irony comes from the fact that Orwell (or Blair) once worked as a pro­pa­gan­dist for the BBC dur­ing WWII, and lat­er based the tor­ture area in 1984, Room 101, on a meet­ing room he recalled from his time there. His expe­ri­ences with the state broad­cast­ing net­work were not pleas­ant in his mem­o­ry. Nonethe­less, his for­mer employ­er hon­ors him this month with an exten­sive ret­ro­spec­tive, includ­ing read­ings and drama­ti­za­tions of his essays and jour­nal­ism, his semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal accounts Down and Out in Paris and Lon­don and Homage to Cat­alo­nia, and his nov­els Ani­mal Farm and 1984.

In this lat­est drama­ti­za­tion of Orwell’s most famous nov­el, pro­tag­o­nist Win­ston Smith is voiced by actor Christo­pher Eccle­ston, who has inhab­it­ed anoth­er key post-war char­ac­ter in Eng­lish fic­tion, Dr. Who (Pip­pa Nixon voic­es Julia). In a brief dis­cus­sion of what he takes away from the nov­el, Eccle­ston (above) draws out some of the rea­sons that 1984 appeals to so many peo­ple who might agree on almost noth­ing else. At the heart of the nov­el is the kind of human­ist indi­vid­u­al­ism that Orwell nev­er aban­doned and that he cham­pi­oned against Sovi­et-style state com­mu­nism and hard-right impe­ri­al­ist author­i­tar­i­an­ism both. Win­ston Smith is an embod­i­ment of human dig­ni­ty, cel­e­brat­ed for his strug­gle to “love, remem­ber, and enjoy life,” as Eccle­ston says. “It’s the human sto­ry that means that we keep com­ing back to it and that keeps it rel­e­vant.” Lis­ten to a brief clip of the 1984 drama­ti­za­tion at the top of this post, and vis­it BBC Radio 4’s site to hear parts one and two of the full broad­cast, which is avail­able online for the next year. When Europe and Amer­i­ca both seem rent in two by com­pet­ing and incom­pat­i­ble social and polit­i­cal visions, it’s at least some com­fort to know that no one wants to live in the world Orwell fore­saw. Despite his novel’s deeply pes­simistic end­ing, Orwell’s own career of fierce resis­tance to oppres­sive regimes offers a mod­el for action against the dystopi­an future he imag­ined.

For oth­er free, online read­ings of Orwell’s work, you can vis­it our archives of Free Audio Books, where you’ll find

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aldous Hux­ley Reads Dra­ma­tized Ver­sion of Brave New World

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

Also find major works by Orwell in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Watch Lambeth Walk—Nazi Style: The Early Propaganda Mash Up That Enraged Joseph Goebbels

in Comedy, Film, History, Politics, Video - Arts & Culture | February 14th, 2013

In a ter­rif­ic his­tor­i­cal prank that sent Nazi Pro­pa­gan­da Min­is­ter Joseph Goebbels storm­ing out of the screen­ing room, British min­is­ter Charles A. Rid­ley edit­ed togeth­er scenes from the film Tri­umph of the Will with the music from the musi­cal Me and My Girl to cre­ate a spoof that infu­ri­at­ed lead­ers of the Third Reich.

Lam­beth Walk—Nazi Style was released in 1941 to news­reel com­pa­nies. It was billed as “Schich­le­gru­ber Doing the Lam­beth Walk, Assist­ed by the Gestapo Hep Cats,” and lays the catchy tune against images of Hitler and Nazi sol­diers from Leni Riefenstahl’s sem­i­nal pro­pa­gan­da film.

The sto­ry goes that the par­o­dy enraged Goebbels to such an extent that he ran out of the screen­ing room, kick­ing at chairs and scream­ing obscen­i­ties.

“The Lam­beth Walk” tune was writ­ten for the 1937 musi­cal, about a Cock­ney boy who inher­its a for­tune and must leave behind his work­ing-class ways to become a gen­tle­man. Nazi par­ty offi­cials called the tune “Jew­ish mis­chief and ani­mal­is­tic hop­ping,” mak­ing it even fun­nier as the back­ground music for Nazi sol­diers parad­ing.

The name “Schich­le­gru­ber,” by the way, was also a dig at Hitler. It was the name of his mater­nal grand­moth­er, whose son Alois (Hitler’s father) was an ille­git­i­mate child. Oops!

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

Hitler Reacts to Take­down of Hitler Par­o­dies

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

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Nate Silver (Sporting a Cookie Monster T‑Shirt) Talks Serious Stats with Conan O’Brien

in Media, Politics | December 10th, 2012

Even if you hate or fear sta­tis­tics, you’ve sure­ly become more than aware in recent months of one par­tic­u­lar sta­tis­ti­cian: Nate Sil­ver. The young pro­fes­sion­al num­ber-crunch­er has made the news in a big way for a legit­i­mate­ly impres­sive sta­tis­ti­cal feat: pre­dict­ing the win­ner of all fifty states and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia in this year’s Unit­ed States pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. He came near­ly as close back in 2008’s elec­tion, pre­dict­ing the win­ner in 49 states. In between those coups, Time named Sil­ver one of the world’s hun­dred most influ­en­tial peo­ple, and the New York Times has giv­en their offi­cial impri­matur by host­ing his blog FiveThir­tyEight. Now he’s received what some would con­sid­er an even high­er hon­or: an invi­ta­tion to sit down with Conan O’Brien for the bet­ter part of an hour on Seri­ous Jib­ber-Jab­ber.

“Elec­tions are prob­a­bly the most dra­mat­ic moments in the his­to­ry of our coun­try,” O’Brien says to Sil­ver. “The­se’s a dan­ger,” he then dead­pans, “that you’re tak­ing the fun out of it.” We jumped on O’Brien’s new long-form inter­view web series last month, fea­tur­ing his con­ver­sa­tions with pres­i­den­tial his­to­ri­an Edmund Mor­ris and “com­e­dy mas­ter­mind” Judd Apa­tow. Sil­ver, the pro­gram’s third guest, per­fect­ly con­tin­ues its short but strong tra­di­tion of per­son­al­i­ties who bring both zeit­geist rel­e­vance and intel­lec­tu­al sub­stance. The choice also taps into a well of pub­lic curios­i­ty — a great many of us know of Nate Sil­ver with­out quite under­stand­ing why we do — and finds a reserve of goofi­ness to match O’Brien’s own. (If you doubt this, behold Sil­ver’s Cook­ie Mon­ster t‑shirt.) So think hard when you watch this con­ver­sa­tion about polit­i­cal echo cham­bers, media frag­men­ta­tion, data’s rela­tion­ship to instinct, and math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el­ing. But do feel free to laugh at the jokes.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Conan O’Brien Plays Char­lie Rose, Talks Pres­i­den­tial His­to­ry with Edmund Mor­ris

Celebri­ty Sta­tis­ti­cian Nate Sil­ver Fields Ques­tions from Data Wiz­ards at Google

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Ai Weiwei’s Parody of ‘Gangnam Style’

in Current Affairs, Music, Politics | November 23rd, 2012

Some­how this one slipped by me, and per­haps by you too. In recent weeks, Chi­nese dis­si­dent artist Ai Wei­wei post­ed a video par­o­dy­ing Gang­nam Style, the unex­pect­ed­ly mas­sive hit record­ed by the South Kore­an rap­per Psy. To date, the music video for Gang­nam Style has been viewed 792 mil­lion times on YouTube. That has to be some kind of record. And every­one has had fun riff­ing on it. The North Kore­ans have used it to mock rival South Kore­an politi­cians. And Ai Wei­wei seems to be tak­ing a shot at Chi­na’s rul­ing par­ty (you see the hand­cuffs, no?). Or maybe he’s just blow­ing off some steam.

Ear­li­er this month, the artist also pro­duced a new video titled “How to Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Remove a Shiny Screw with Chi­nese Char­ac­ter­is­tics From a Mov­ing Vehi­cle in Eigh­teen Turns.” The video, writes Hint­mag, fol­lows Ai Wei­wei “on a bus mak­ing its way through Beijing—notably pass­ing by Tianan­men Square—while lit­er­al­ly unscrew­ing a screw. It’s thought to be a state­ment on the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Chi­na and the new 18th Nation­al Con­gress, which took office two weeks ago.” You can watch it right below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei­wei: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Ai Wei­wei and the Seeds of Free­dom

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