Discover The Key of Hell, an Illustrated 18th-Century Guide to Black Magic (1775)

in Books, Religion | August 11th, 2022

Accord­ing to the Book of Rev­e­la­tion, the return­ing Christ arrives sur­round­ed by sev­en can­dle­sticks. In its author’s prophet­ic dream, “his head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire.” From his mouth issues “a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations.” It’s a star­tling image, cre­at­ed for sym­bol­ic pur­pos­es. With­out a key to what those sym­bols mean, the text remains obscure. It is, after all, a vision giv­en to a mys­tic her­mit exiled on an island.

Many a Rev­e­la­tion-inspired mag­i­cal gri­moire from suc­ceed­ing cen­turies also remains near­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble to non-adepts. Such is the case with the “strange 18th-cen­tu­ry man­u­script called Clavis Infer­ni (key of hell),” as Ben­jamin Breen writes at Slate. “Filled with invo­ca­tions, cryp­tic sig­ils, and paint­ings of super­nat­ur­al beings” — such as the illus­tra­tion from Rev­e­la­tion above — “the book defies inter­pre­ta­tion — as it was meant to do.” Also, like Rev­e­la­tion, the tex­t’s author­ship is mys­te­ri­ous, and yet sig­nif­i­cant to our under­stand­ing of its intent.

The Key of Hell is attrib­uted to a Cypri­anus, a name that “prob­a­bly refers to St. Cypri­an of Anti­och (d. 304 CE),” Breen writes in a post at Atlas Obscu­ra, “a very com­mon apoc­ryphal attri­bu­tion for medieval mag­i­cal texts, since Cypri­an was reput­ed to have been a pow­er­ful magi­cian and demon-sum­mon­er before con­vert­ing to Chris­tian­i­ty.” The use of pseu­doepig­ra­phy — an author assum­ing the name of a long-dead fig­ure — was com­mon prac­tice through­out the his­to­ry of both the­o­log­i­cal and alchem­i­cal writ­ing. Rather than an attempt at decep­tion, it could sig­nal the con­tin­u­a­tion of a tra­di­tion of occult knowl­edge.

The title page of the Key of Hell “seems to date it to 1717,” writes Breen, but a Sothe­by’s cat­a­logue entry claims, “the script seems to be of the late 18th cen­tu­ry” and dates it to 1775. At the Well­come Library — who host the text online in its entire­ty — we find this “Har­ry Pot­ter-esque” ori­gin sto­ry:

Also known as the Black Book, [the Key of Hell] is the text­book of the Black School at Wit­ten­berg, the book from which a witch or sor­cer­er gets his spells. The Black School at Wit­ten­berg was pur­port­ed­ly a place in Ger­many where one went to learn the black arts.

Writ­ten in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and “the Mag­i­cal Alpha­bet devised by occultist Cor­nelius Agrip­pa in his Third Book of Occult Phi­los­o­phy from 1510,” notes Flash­bak, the man­u­script is “filled with invo­ca­tions to spir­its and demons — includ­ing a Hebrew invo­ca­tion for sum­mon­ing God.” (It also includes help­ful instruc­tions for ban­ish­ing sum­moned spir­its.) The man­u­scrip­t’s full Latin title — Clavis Infer­ni sive mag­ic alba et nigra appro­ba­ta Meta­trona — trans­lates to “The Key of Hell with white and black mag­ic approved by Meta­tron,” an archangel in the Tal­mu­dic and Kab­bal­ist tra­di­tions. The use of this name sug­gests the spells with­in come from a high­er author­i­ty.

Breen, how­ev­er, found some unusu­al com­men­tary on the book’s pos­si­ble author, includ­ing the idea in Den­mark that Cypri­anus was “a fel­low Dane so evil dur­ing his life­time that when he died the dev­il threw him out of Hell,” writes pro­fes­sor of Nor­we­gian lit­er­a­ture Kath­leen Stokker. Cypri­anus was so enraged by this treat­ment that “he ded­i­cat­ed him­self to writ­ing the nine Books of Black Arts that under­lie all sub­se­quent Scan­di­na­vian black books.” Anoth­er apoc­ryphal sto­ry iden­ti­fies Cypri­anus as a “rav­ish­ing­ly beau­ti­ful” Mex­i­can nun from 1351 (?!) who met a “gory” end.

Who­ev­er wrote the Key of Hell, and for what­ev­er rea­son, they left behind a fas­ci­nat­ing book of sor­cery full of curi­ous illus­tra­tions and a cryp­tic cos­mol­o­gy. See Breen’s attempts to deci­pher some of its key sym­bols here and make your own with the full text at the Well­come Library.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Exquis­ite Water­col­ors of Demons, Mag­ic & Signs: Behold the Com­pendi­um Of Demonolo­gy and Mag­ic from 1775

1,600 Occult Books Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Thanks to the Rit­man Library and Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

A Big Archive of Occult Record­ings: His­toric Audio Lets You Hear Trances, Para­nor­mal Music, Glos­so­lalia & Oth­er Strange Sounds (1905–2007)

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

How German Artist John Heartfield Pioneered the Use of Art as a Political Weapon, and Took on Hitler

in Art | August 10th, 2022

The sto­ry of artist John Heart­field — born Hel­mut Franz Josef Herzfeld in Berlin in 1891 — begins like a Ger­man fairy tale. In 1899, his par­ents, ill and pover­ty-strick­en, aban­doned Hel­mut and his three sib­lings in a moun­tain cab­in at Aigen, near Salzburg. The hun­gry chil­dren were dis­cov­ered four days lat­er by the may­or of the town and his wife, who took them in and fos­tered them. Mean­while, their uncle, a lawyer, appeared with a trust from their wealthy grand­fa­ther’s estate to fund their edu­ca­tions.

Hel­mut trained at sev­er­al art schools in Ger­many, even­tu­al­ly arriv­ing at the School of Arts and Crafts in the bohemi­an Berlin of the 1910s, where he aban­doned his dream of becom­ing a painter and instead invent­ed huge­ly effec­tive anti-war pro­pa­gan­da art dur­ing World War I and the rise of the Nazis. As The Can­vas video above explains, Heart­field­’s work point­ed­ly encap­su­lates the “anti-bour­geois, anti-cap­i­tal­ist, anti-fas­cist” atti­tudes of rad­i­cal Berlin Dadaists. He was “one of Hitler’s most cre­ative crit­ics.”

Herzfeld began his anti-war art cam­paign by angli­ciz­ing his name to counter ris­ing anti-British sen­ti­ment at the start of World War I. As John Heart­field, he col­lab­o­rat­ed with his broth­er, Wei­land, and satir­i­cal artist George Grosz on the left­ist jour­nal New Youth and the rev­o­lu­tion­ary pub­lish­ing house, Malik Ver­lag. After the war, they joined the Ger­man Com­mu­nist par­ty. (Heart­field “received his par­ty book,” writes Sybille Fuchs, “from KPD leader Rosa Lux­em­burg her­self.”); they also became “found­ing mem­bers of the Berlin Dadaists,” devel­op­ing the pho­tomon­tage style Heart­field used through­out his graph­ic design career.

John Heart­field, War and Corpses, the Last Hope of the Rich

“Pho­tomon­tage allowed Heart­field to cre­ate loaded and polit­i­cal­ly con­tentious images,” the Get­ty writes. “To com­pose his works, he chose rec­og­niz­able press pho­tographs of politi­cians or events from the main­stream illus­trat­ed press.… Heart­field­’s strongest work used vari­a­tions of scale and stark jux­ta­po­si­tions to acti­vate his already grue­some pho­to-frag­ments. The result could have a fright­en­ing visu­al impact.” They also had wide­spread influ­ence, becom­ing an almost stan­dard style of rad­i­cal protest art through­out Europe in the ear­ly part of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

On rare occa­sions, Heart­field includ­ed pho­tographs of him­self, as in the self-por­trait below with scis­sors clip­ping the head of the Berlin police com­mis­sion­er; or he used his own pho­tog­ra­phy, as in an unglam­orous shot a young preg­nant woman behind whose head Heart­field places what appears to be the body of a dead young man. The 1930 work protest­ed Weimar’s anti-abor­tion laws with the title “Forced Sup­pli­er of Human Mate­r­i­al Take Courage! The State Needs Unem­ployed Peo­ple and Sol­diers!”

John Heart­field, Self-Por­trait with the Police Com­mis­sion­er Zörgiebel

Heart­field­’s direct attacks on state pow­er were allied with his sup­port for work­er move­ments. “In 1929, fol­low­ing ten years of activ­i­ty in pho­tomon­tage and pub­lish­ing,” The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go writes, “John Heart­field began work­ing for the left-wing peri­od­i­cal Work­er’s Illus­trat­ed Mag­a­zine (Arbeit­er-Illus­tri­erte-Zeitung [AIZ]).” This week­ly pub­li­ca­tion “served from the first as a major organ of oppo­si­tion to the ris­ing Nation­al Social­ist Par­ty.” Heart­field­’s provoca­tive cov­ers mocked Hitler and por­trayed the pow­er of orga­nized labor against the fas­cist threat. He trav­eled to the Sovi­et Union in 1931 under the mag­a­zine’s aus­pices and gave pho­tomon­tage cours­es to the Red Army. His style spread inter­na­tion­al­ly until the life­less pro­pa­gan­da paint­ing of Social­ist Real­ism purged mod­ernist art from the par­ty style.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Heart­field, and for Europe, the Ger­man left failed to present a uni­fied front against Nazism as the KPD also became increas­ing­ly dog­mat­ic and Stal­in­ist. The artist and the edi­tors of the AIZ were forced to flee to Prague when Hitler took pow­er in 1933. (Heart­field report­ed­ly escaped a “gang of Nazi thugs,” writes Fuchs, by leap­ing from his bal­cony in Berlin). In Czecho­slo­va­kia, he con­tin­ued his counter-pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign against Hitler through the cov­ers of the AIZ. When the Nazis occu­pied Prague in 1938, he fled again, to Lon­don but nev­er stopped work­ing through the war. He would even­tu­al­ly return to Berlin in the ear­ly 1950s and take up a career as a pro­fes­sor of lit­er­a­ture.

Heart­field is a com­pli­cat­ed fig­ure — an over­looked yet key mem­ber of the Ger­man avant garde who, with his broth­er Wei­land and artists like George Grosz rev­o­lu­tion­ized the media of pho­tog­ra­phy, typog­ra­phy, and print­ing in order to vir­u­lent­ly oppose war, oppres­sion, and Nazism, despite the dan­gers to their liveli­hoods and lives. You can learn more about the artist’s life and work at the Offi­cial John Heart­field Exhi­bi­tion site, which fea­tures many of the col­lages shown in the Can­vas video at the top. (See espe­cial­ly the fea­ture on Heart­field­’s rel­e­vance to our cur­rent moment.) Also, don’t miss this inter­ac­tive online exhi­bi­tion from the Akademie Der Kün­ste in Berlin, which con­trols the artist’s estate and has put a num­ber of rare pho­tos and doc­u­ments online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edu­ca­tion for Death: The Mak­ing of the Nazi–Walt Disney’s 1943 Film Shows How Fas­cists Are Made

Stephen Fry on the Pow­er of Words in Nazi Ger­many: How Dehu­man­iz­ing Lan­guage Laid the Foun­da­tion for Geno­cide

Watch a Grip­ping 10-Minute Ani­ma­tion About the Hunt for Nazi War Crim­i­nal Adolf Eich­mann

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

The Photo That Triggered China’s Disastrous Cultural Revolution (1966)

in History, Photography | August 10th, 2022

In 1958, Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap For­ward. Eight years lat­er, he announced the begin­ning of the Great Pro­le­tar­i­an Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion. Between those two events, of course, came the Great Chi­nese Famine, and his­to­ri­ans now view all three as being “great” in the same pejo­ra­tive sense. Though Chair­man Mao may not have under­stood the prob­a­ble con­se­quences of poli­cies like agri­cul­tur­al col­lec­tiviza­tion and ide­o­log­i­cal purifi­ca­tion, he did under­stand the impor­tance of his own image in sell­ing those poli­cies to the Chi­nese peo­ple: hence the famous 1966 pho­to of him swim­ming across the Yangtze Riv­er.

By that point, “the Chi­nese leader who had led a peas­ant army to vic­to­ry in the Chi­nese Civ­il War and estab­lished the com­mu­nist Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na in 1949 was get­ting old.” So says Cole­man Lown­des in the Vox Dark­room video above. Worse, Mao’s Great Leap For­ward had clear­ly proven calami­tous. The Chair­man “need­ed to find a way to seal his lega­cy as the face of Chi­nese com­mu­nism and a new rev­o­lu­tion to lead.” And so he repeat­ed one of his ear­li­er feats, the swim across the Yangtze he’d tak­en in 1956. Spread far and wide by state media, the shot of Mao in the riv­er tak­en by his per­son­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er illus­trat­ed reports that he’d swum fif­teen kilo­me­ters in a bit over an hour.

This meant “the 72-year-old would have shat­tered world speed records,” a claim all in a day’s work for pro­pa­gan­dists in a dic­ta­tor­ship. But those who saw pho­to­graph would­n’t have for­got­ten what hap­pened the last time he took such a well-pub­li­cized dip in the Yangtze. “Experts feared that Mao was on the verge of kick­ing off anoth­er dis­as­trous peri­od of tur­moil in Chi­na. They were right.” The already-declared Great Pro­le­tar­i­an Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, now wide­ly known as the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, saw mil­lions of Chi­nese youth — osten­si­bly rad­i­cal­ized by the image of their beloved leader in the flesh — orga­nize into “the fanat­i­cal Red Guards,” a para­mil­i­tary force bent on extir­pat­ing, by any means nec­es­sary, the “four olds”: old cul­ture, old ide­ol­o­gy, old cus­toms, and old tra­di­tions.

As with most attempts to ush­er in a Year Zero, Mao’s final rev­o­lu­tion wast­ed lit­tle time becom­ing an engine of chaos. Only his death end­ed “a decade of destruc­tion that had ele­vat­ed the leader to god-like lev­els and result­ed in over one mil­lion peo­ple dead.” The Chi­nese Com­mu­nist’s Par­ty has sub­se­quent­ly con­demned the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion but not the Chair­man him­self, and indeed his swim remains an object of year­ly com­mem­o­ra­tion. “Had Mao died in 1956, his achieve­ments would have been immor­tal,” once said CCP offi­cial Chen Yun. “Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say?” Per­haps that, had the aging Mao drowned in the Yangtze, Chi­nese his­to­ry might have tak­en a hap­pi­er turn.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Col­or­ful Wood Block Prints from the Chi­nese Rev­o­lu­tion of 1911: A Gallery of Artis­tic Pro­pa­gan­da Posters

Won­der­ful­ly Kitschy Pro­pa­gan­da Posters Cham­pi­on the Chi­nese Space Pro­gram (1962–2003)

Long Before Pho­to­shop, the Sovi­ets Mas­tered the Art of Eras­ing Peo­ple from Pho­tographs — and His­to­ry Too

Why the Sovi­ets Doc­tored Their Most Icon­ic World War II Vic­to­ry Pho­to, “Rais­ing a Flag Over the Reich­stag”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Oscar-Winner CODA and Deaf Representation in Film — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #130

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | August 10th, 2022

The 2022 Oscar win­ner for Best Pic­ture was CODA, a sto­ry about a musi­cal­ly inclined girl with a deaf fam­i­ly. Kam­bri Crews, her­self a CODA and author of a much dark­er sto­ry about this called Burn Down the Ground, joins your Pret­ty Much Pop host Mark Lin­sen­may­er, writer Sarahlyn Bruck, and jack-of-many-intel­lec­tu­al-trades Al Bak­er to talk about how deaf cul­ture inter­acts with film.

Films tend to show deaf­ness as trag­ic, which is not nec­es­sar­i­ly how the deaf com­mu­ni­ty views them­selves. We talk about bal­anc­ing the demands of a sto­ry, how real life works, and the need for pos­i­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Also, deaf bowl­ing!

In addi­tion to CODA, we talk about The Sound of Met­al, A Qui­et Place, Chil­dren of a Less­er God, Mr. Hol­land’s Opus, See No Evil Hear No Evil, Eter­nals, Dri­ve My Car, and more.

Note that this dis­cus­sion was record­ed in May but got bumped with all the shows wrap­ping up at that time and sum­mer movies launch­ing.

If you liked this, see our pre­vi­ous episode on dis­abil­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Hear more Pret­ty Much Pop. Sup­port the show at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

When Helen Keller Met Charlie Chaplin and Taught Him Sign Language (1919)

in Film, History | August 9th, 2022

Char­lie Chap­lin had many high-pro­file fans in his day, includ­ing some of the lumi­nar­ies of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. We could per­haps be for­giv­en for assum­ing that the writer and activist Hellen Keller was not among them, giv­en the lim­i­ta­tions her con­di­tion of deaf­ness and blind­ness — or “deaf­blind­ness” — would nat­u­ral­ly place on the enjoy­ment of film, even the silent films in which Chap­lin made his name. But mak­ing that assump­tion would be to mis­un­der­stand the dri­ving force of Keller’s life and career. If the movies were sup­pos­ed­ly unavail­able to her, then she’d make a point of not just watch­ing them, but befriend­ing their biggest star.

Keller met Chap­lin in 1919 at his Hol­ly­wood stu­dio, dur­ing the film­ing of Sun­ny­side. This, as biog­ra­phers have revealed, was not one of the smoothest-going peri­ods in the come­di­an-auteur’s life, but that did­n’t stop him from enjoy­ing his time with Keller, and even learn­ing from her.

In her 1928 auto­bi­og­ra­phy Mid­stream, she would remem­ber that he’d been “shy, almost timid,” and that “his love­ly mod­esty lent a touch of romance to the occa­sion that might oth­er­wise have seemed quite ordi­nary.” The pic­tures that have cir­cu­lat­ed of the meet­ing, seen here, include one of Keller teach­ing Chap­lin the tac­tile sign-lan­guage alpha­bet she used to com­mu­ni­cate.

It was also the means by which, with the assis­tance of com­pan­ion Anne Sul­li­van, she fol­lowed the action of Chap­lin’s films A Dog’s Life and Shoul­der Arms when they were screened for her that evening. When Keller and Chap­lin met again near­ly thir­ty years lat­er, he sought her feed­back on the script for his lat­est pic­ture, Mon­sieur Ver­doux. “There is no lan­guage for the ter­ri­fy­ing pow­er of your mes­sage that sears with sar­casm or rends apart coverts of social hypocrisy,” Keller lat­er wrote to Chap­lin. A polit­i­cal­ly charged black com­e­dy about a bigamist ser­i­al killer bear­ing lit­tle resem­blance indeed to the beloved Lit­tle Tramp, Mon­sieur Ver­doux met with crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial fail­ure upon its release. The film has since been re-eval­u­at­ed as a sub­ver­sive mas­ter­work, but it was per­haps Keller who first tru­ly saw it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Helen Keller Writes a Let­ter to Nazi Stu­dents Before They Burn Her Book: “His­to­ry Has Taught You Noth­ing If You Think You Can Kill Ideas” (1933)

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

When Albert Ein­stein & Char­lie Chap­lin Met and Became Fast Famous Friends (1930)

When Mahat­ma Gand­hi Met Char­lie Chap­lin (1931)

The Char­lie Chap­lin Archive Opens, Putting Online 30,000 Pho­tos & Doc­u­ments from the Life of the Icon­ic Film Star

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Damien Hirst’s NFT Experiment Comes to an End: How Many Buyers Chose Digital Tokens Over Physical Artworks?

in Art, Technology | August 9th, 2022

Damien Hirst is into NFTs. Some will regard this as a reflec­tion on the artist, and oth­ers a reflec­tion on the tech­nol­o­gy. Whether you take those reflec­tions to be pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive reveals some­thing about your own con­cept of how the art world, the busi­ness world, and the dig­i­tal world inter­sect. So will your reac­tion to The Cur­ren­cy, Hirst’s just-com­plet­ed art project and tech­no­log­i­cal exper­i­ment. Launched in July of last year, it pro­duced 10,000 unique non-fun­gi­ble tokens “that were each asso­ci­at­ed with cor­re­spond­ing art­works the British artist made in 2016,” as Art­net’s Car­o­line Gold­stein writes. “The dig­i­tal tokens were sold via a lot­tery sys­tem for $2,000.”

Hirst also laid down an unprece­dent­ed con­di­tion: he announced “that his col­lec­tors would have to make a choice between the phys­i­cal art­work and its dig­i­tal ver­sion, and set a one-year dead­line — ask­ing them, in effect, to vote for which had more last­ing val­ue.” For each buy­er who choos­es the orig­i­nal work, Hirst would assign its NFT to an inac­ces­si­ble address, the clos­est thing to destroy­ing it. And for each buy­er who choos­es the NFT, Hirst would throw the paper ver­sion onto a bon­fire. The final num­bers, as Hirst tweet­ed out at the end of last month, came to “5,149 phys­i­cals and 4,851 NFTs (mean­ing I will have to burn 4,851 cor­re­spond­ing phys­i­cal Ten­ders).” Hirst also retained 1,000 copies for him­self.

“In the begin­ning I had thought I would def­i­nite­ly choose all phys­i­cal,” Hirst explains. “Then I thought half-half and then I felt I had to keep all my 1,000 as NFTs and then all paper again and round and round I’ve gone, head in a spin.” In the end he went whol­ly dig­i­tal, hav­ing decid­ed that “I need to show my 100 per­cent sup­port and con­fi­dence in the NFT world (even though it means I will have to destroy the cor­re­spond­ing 1000 phys­i­cal art­works).” Per­haps this was a vic­to­ry of Hirst’s neophil­ia, but then, those instincts have served him well before: few liv­ing artists have man­aged to draw such pub­lic fas­ci­na­tion, enam­ored or hos­tile, for so many years straight — let alone such for­mi­da­ble sale prices, and not just for his stuffed shark.

“I’ve nev­er real­ly under­stood mon­ey,” Hirst says to Stephen Fry in the video above. (You can watch an extend­ed ver­sion of their con­ver­sa­tion here.) “All these things — art, mon­ey, com­merce — they’re all ethe­re­al,” ulti­mate­ly based on noth­ing more than “belief and trust.” Return­ing to the tech­niques of his ear­ly “spot paint­ings” — those he made him­self before farm­ing the task out to stead­ier-hand­ed assis­tants — and mint­ing the results into unique dig­i­tal objects for sale was per­haps an attempt to get his head around the even less intu­itive con­cept of the NFT. All told, The Cur­ren­cy brought in about $89 mil­lion in rev­enue. More telling will be the price of its tokens on the sec­ondary mar­ket, where they’re chang­ing hands at the moment for around $7,000: a price impos­si­ble prop­er­ly to eval­u­ate for now, and thus not with­out the thrilling ambi­gu­i­ty of cer­tain mod­ern art­works.

via Art­net

Relat­ed con­tent:

What are Non-Fun­gi­ble Tokens (NFTs)? And How Can a Work of Dig­i­tal Art Sell for $69 Mil­lion

Bri­an Eno Shares His Crit­i­cal Take on Art & NFTs: “I Main­ly See Hus­tlers Look­ing for Suck­ers”

The Art Mar­ket Demys­ti­fied in Four Short Doc­u­men­taries

Mark Rothko Is Toast… and More Edi­ble Art from SFMOMA

Damien Hirst Takes Us Through His New Exhi­bi­tion at Tate Mod­ern

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

13 Glorious Minutes of The Ramones in Kansas City, Captured on a Super‑8 Camera (1978)

in Music | August 8th, 2022

Thir­teen min­utes was an awful long time for The Ramones, since they could play an entire album of songs in a quar­ter of an hour. Thus, when Ramones fan Mark Gilman snuck a Super‑8 sound cam­era into the Grena­da The­ater in Kansas City in July of 1978 to secret­ly film the band, he man­aged to cap­ture an awful lot of The Ramones on film before he was forced to shut it down. The band, as you can see above, was in top form.

I exag­ger­ate a lit­tle.… Ramones albums are longer than this film clip. Their self-titled 1976 debut is over twice the length at 29 min­utes, which is still three or four min­utes shy of the short­est LPs of the time (back when albums only meant vinyl). Into that almost-half-hour, the ulti­mate 70s New York punk band crammed 14 songs, at an aver­age of two min­utes each: no solos, no filler, no extend­ed intros, out­ros, or remix­es.…

That’s exact­ly what we see above: mops of hair and a sweaty, leather-and-den­im-clad wall of pure, dumb rock ’n’ roll, played blis­ter­ing­ly fast with max­i­mum atti­tude. It’s qual­i­ty, audi­ence-lev­el footage of about half a clas­sic Ramones show, which usu­al­ly spanned around 30 min­utes: no ban­ter, chat­ter, tun­ing up, requests, or encores. This is what you came for, and this — full-on assault of bub­blegum melodies, thud­ding chants of “I wan­na” and “I don’t wan­na” played with chain­saw pre­ci­sion — is what you get.

They seemed ful­ly-formed, walk­ing and talk­ing right of the womb when they hit stages out­side the New York clubs that nur­tured them. But four years ear­li­er, their first audi­ences did­n’t see a dis­ci­plined rock ’n’ roll machine; they saw a sham­bling mess. Ryan Bray describes the impres­sions of long­time tour man­ag­er Monte Mel­nick on first see­ing them in 1974:

Musi­cal­ly, songs like “Now I Wan­na Sniff Some Glue” were already in the band’s reper­toire, but the songs were plagued by errat­ic tem­pos, blown notes, and oth­er sort­ed son­ic mis­cues. Between-song bick­er­ing also marred the band’s ear­li­est shows. For a sec­ond, Dee Dee and Tom­my seem like they’re almost ready to come to blows when they can’t agree on what song to play next.

“I did­n’t like them at all,” Mel­nick remem­bers. “It was pret­ty raw. They were stop­ping and start­ing and fight­ing. They could bare­ly play.” They did­n’t meet a dev­il at a cross­roads in the years between these ear­ly gigs and their 1978 live album It’s Alive (record­ed at Lon­don’s Rain­bow The­atre on the last day of the year as the band fin­ished a 1977 UK tour). They played a hell of a lot of gigs, and pushed them­selves hard for a rock star­dom they’d nev­er real­ly achieve until their found­ing mem­bers died.

All­mu­sic’s Mark Dem­ing describes the band in 1978 as “relent­less.… a big-block hot rod thrown in to fifth gear” and calls their live album of the time “one of the best and most effec­tive live albums in the rock canon.” Watch them play “I Wan­na Be Well” at the Rain­bow The­atre, just above, and catch a rare bit of stage ban­ter from Joey regard­ing the pre­vi­ous night’s chick­en vin­daloo.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Dave Grohl & Greg Kurstin Cov­er The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop” to Cel­e­brate Han­nukah: Hey! Oy! Let’s Goy!

Talk­ing Heads Per­form The Ramones’ “I Wan­na Be Your Boyfriend” Live in 1977 (and How the Bands Got Their Start Togeth­er)

CBGB’s Hey­day: Watch The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Bad Brains, Talk­ing Heads & Blondie Per­form Live (1974–1982)

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

A Brief History of Dumplings: An Animated Introduction

in Animation, Food & Drink, History, K-12 | August 8th, 2022

Dumplings are so deli­cious and so ven­er­a­ble, it’s under­stand­able why more than one coun­try would want to claim author­ship.

As cul­tur­al food his­to­ri­an Miran­da Brown dis­cov­ers in her TED-Ed ani­ma­tion, dumplings are among the arti­facts found in ancient tombs in west­ern Chi­na, rock hard, but still rec­og­niz­able.

Schol­ar Shu Xi sang their prais­es over 1,700 years ago in a poem detail­ing their ingre­di­ents and prepa­ra­tion. He also indi­cat­ed that the dish was not native to Chi­na.

Lamb stuffed dumplings fla­vored with gar­lic, yogurt, and herbs were an Ottoman Empire treat, cir­ca 1300 CE.

The 13th-cen­tu­ry Mon­gol inva­sions of Korea result­ed in mass casu­al­ties , but the sil­ver lin­ing is, they gave the world man­doo.

The Japan­ese Army’s bru­tal occu­pa­tion of Chi­na dur­ing World War II gave them a taste for dumplings that led to the cre­ation of gyoza.

East­ern Euro­pean pel­meni, piero­gi and vareni­ki may seem like vari­a­tions on a theme to the unini­ti­at­ed, but don’t expect a Ukrain­ian or Russ­ian to view it that way.

Is the his­to­ry of dumplings real­ly just a series of bloody con­flicts, punc­tu­at­ed by peri­ods of rel­a­tive har­mo­ny where­in every­one argues over the best dumplings in NYC?

Brown takes some mild pot­shots at cuisines whose dumplings are clos­er to dough balls than “plump pock­ets of per­fec­tion”, but she also knows her audi­ence and wise­ly steers clear of any posi­tions that might lead to play­ground fights.

Relax, kids, how­ev­er your grand­ma makes dumplings, she’s doing it right.

It’s hard to imag­ine sushi mas­ter Naomichi Yasu­da dial­ing his opin­ions down to pre­serve the sta­tus quo.

A purist — and favorite of Antho­ny Bour­dain — Chef Yasu­da is unwa­ver­ing in his con­vic­tions that there is one right way, and many wrong ways to eat and pre­pare sushi.

He’s far from prig­gish, instruct­ing cus­tomer Joseph George, for VICE Asia MUNCHIES in the prop­er han­dling of a sim­ple piece of sushi after it’s been light­ly dipped, fish side down, in soy sauce:

Don’t shake it. Don’t shake it! Shak­ing is just to be fin­ished at the men’s room.

Oth­er take­aways for sushi bar din­ers:

• Use fin­gers rather than chop­sticks when eat­ing maki rolls.
• Eat­ing pick­led gin­ger with sushi is “very much bad man­ners”
• Roll sushi on its side before pick­ing it up with chop­sticks to facil­i­tate dip­ping
• The tem­per­a­ture inter­play between rice and fish is so del­i­cate that your expe­ri­ence of it will dif­fer depend­ing on whether a wait­er brings it to you at a table or the chef hands it to you across the counter as soon as it’s assem­bled.

Explore TED-Ed’s Brief His­to­ry of Dumplings les­son here.

For a deep­er dumpling dive, read the Oxford Symposium’s Wrapped and Stuffed Foods: Pro­ceed­ings on the Sym­po­sium: Foods and Cook­ery, 2012, avail­able as a free Google Book.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Japan­ese Restau­rants Show You How to Make Tra­di­tion­al Dish­es in Med­i­ta­tive Videos: Soba, Tem­pu­ra, Udon & More

How to Make Sushi: Free Video Lessons from a Mas­ter Sushi Chef

How the Aston­ish­ing Sushi Scene in Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs Was Ani­mat­ed: A Time-Lapse of the Month-Long Shoot

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Watch the Sinking of the Lusitania Animated in Real Time (1915)

in History | August 5th, 2022

If you are a grad­u­ate of a U.S. school sys­tem, the words “Remem­ber the Lusi­ta­nia” may be as vague­ly famil­iar to you as “Remem­ber the Alamo.” And you may be just as fuzzy about the details. We learn rough­ly that the sink­ing of the British lux­u­ry lin­er was an act of Ger­man aggres­sion that moved the U.S. to enter World War I. That les­son is large­ly the result of a pro­pa­gan­da effort launched at the time to inflame anti-Ger­man sen­ti­ments and push the U.S. out of iso­la­tion­ism. But it would take almost two years after the attack before the coun­try entered the war. The Lusi­ta­nia did not change Pres­i­dent Woodrow Wilson’s posi­tion. While the “sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia was a cru­cial moment in help­ing to sway the Amer­i­can pub­lic in sup­port of the Allied cause,” it was only kept in the pub­lic eye by those who want­ed the U.S. in the war.

Main­stream U.S. cov­er­age imme­di­ate­ly after­ward was not over­ly bel­liger­ent. A week after the dis­as­ter, in a May 16th, 1915 issue, the Sun­day New York Times ran a two-page spread enti­tled “Promi­nent Amer­i­cans Who Lost Their Lives on the S.S. Lusi­ta­nia.” Two weeks lat­er, anoth­er pho­to spread hon­ored the ship’s dead, reflect­ing a “panora­ma of respons­es to the dis­as­ter,” the Library of Con­gress writes, includ­ing “sor­row, hero­ism, ambiva­lence, con­so­la­tion, and anger.”

These were emo­tion­al sur­veys of a tragedy, not inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism of an act of war. “Remark­ably,” the attack had “dom­i­nat­ed the head­lines for only about a week before being over­tak­en by a new­er sto­ry.” We might com­pare this to news of the Titan­ic dis­as­ter three years ear­li­er, cred­it­ed as “one of the first and most sig­nif­i­cant inter­na­tion­al news sto­ries of the 20th cen­tu­ry.” There is much about the Lusi­ta­nia the pub­lic did not learn, lead­ing to lat­er accu­sa­tions of a British Naval Intel­li­gence cov­er-up.

For one thing, sto­ries report­ed that the ship had been hit by two tor­pe­does when there was only one. Imme­di­ate­ly after its impact, how­ev­er, a sec­ondary explo­sion from inside the ship caused the Lusi­ta­nia to list per­ilous­ly to one side (ren­der­ing most lifeboats use­less) and take on water. Where the Titan­ic had tak­en 2 hours and 40 min­utes to go down, the Lusi­ta­nia sank in 18 min­utes — as you can see in the real-time ani­ma­tion above — killing approx­i­mate­ly 1,200 pas­sen­gers includ­ing around 120 Amer­i­cans. The sec­ond explo­sion lent cred­i­bil­i­ty to Ger­man accu­sa­tions that the pas­sen­ger ship was car­ry­ing muni­tions from New York to Britain. (Divers in a 1993 Nation­al Geo­graph­ic expe­di­tion found four mil­lion U.S.-made Rem­ing­ton bul­lets on board.) While this could not be proven at the time, the British had tak­en to hid­ing arms on pas­sen­ger ships, and the Lusi­ta­nia was out­fit­ted to be com­man­deered for war.

Not only did British author­i­ties put the Lusi­ta­nia in har­m’s way by allow­ing civil­ian pas­sen­gers to sail through block­ad­ed waters in which Ger­man sub­marines had been sink­ing mer­chant ships, but pas­sen­gers know­ing­ly put them­selves in dan­ger. The Ger­man High Com­mand had warned of attacks in Amer­i­can news­pa­pers in days before the ship set sail. Yet “only a cou­ple of peo­ple actu­al­ly can­celed,” says Erik Lar­son, author of the book Dead Wake: The Last Cross­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia. No war at sea or recent mem­o­ry of the Titan­ic could dis­suade them.

They saw this ship as so fast it could out­run any sub­ma­rine. They saw it as being so immense, so well built, so safe, and so well equipped with lifeboats in the wake of the Titan­ic dis­as­ter that even if it were hit by a tor­pe­do, no one imag­ined this thing actu­al­ly sink­ing. But no one could imag­ine a sub­ma­rine going after the Lusi­ta­nia in the first place.

Lar­son­’s last point sig­nals the crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence between this attack and all of those pre­vi­ous: the sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia was a shock­ing turn­ing point in the war, even if it did­n’t force Wilson’s hand as Churchill hoped. No one had expect­ed it. “In the his­to­ry of mod­ern war­fare,” the Library of Con­gress notes, the Lusi­ta­nia sig­naled “the end of the ‘gen­tle­man­ly’ war prac­tice of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry and the begin­ning of a more omi­nous and vicious era of total war­fare.” While the Ger­mans ceased the prac­tice after British out­cry, they resumed the tar­get­ing of pas­sen­ger and mer­chant ships in 1917, final­ly prompt­ing U.S. involve­ment. The era that began with the Lusi­ta­nia con­tin­ues over a cen­tu­ry lat­er. Indeed, the wan­ton destruc­tion of civil­ian life no longer seems like trag­ic col­lat­er­al dam­age in cur­rent war zones, but the very point of wag­ing mod­ern war.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Titan­ic Sink in Real Time in a New 2‑Hour, 40 Minute Ani­ma­tion

Titan­ic Sur­vivor Inter­views: What It Was Like to Flee the Sink­ing Lux­u­ry Lin­er

The First Col­or Pho­tos From World War I: The Ger­man Front

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

What a Disney Version of A Clockwork Orange Would Look Like

in Animation, Film | August 4th, 2022

“Fam­i­ly-friend­ly enter­tain­ment” means dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple, despite near­ly a cen­tu­ry of the Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny attempt­ing to asso­ciate the con­cept exclu­sive­ly with its own brand. And on the busi­ness lev­el, Dis­ney has become increas­ing­ly iden­ti­fied with enter­tain­ment itself. “With Mar­vel, Star Wars, Pixar, and their princess con­tent tucked safe­ly in their port­fo­lio,” writes Boing Boing’s Devin Nealy, “Dis­ney is only a few stu­dios away from hav­ing a monop­oly on nos­tal­gia. At this point, it’d be eas­i­er to count the IPs that Dis­ney does­n’t own.”

When it comes to extract­ing all pos­si­ble val­ue from IP — that is, intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty — no com­pa­ny shows quite as much deter­mi­na­tion as Dis­ney. This goes for the cre­ations it has late­ly acquired as well as those it already owned.

Wit­ness, for instance, its recent spate of live-action remakes: The Jun­gle Book direct­ed by Jon Favreau, Aladdin by Guy Ritchie, Dum­bo by Tim Bur­ton. That these are hard­ly the least plau­si­ble prod­ucts to be put out by Dis­ney Stu­dios in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry sends the imag­i­na­tion toward ever more incon­gru­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties for IP-reusage. What if Dis­ney remade, say, Stan­ley Kubrick­’s A Clock­work Orange?

Such is the premise of the uncan­ny trail­er above, cre­at­ed by Youtu­ber Jaba­Toons. Using audio tak­en straight from Kubrick­’s eclec­ti­cal­ly night­mar­ish vision of Antho­ny Burgess’ dystopi­an nov­el, it also ren­ders a host of its scenes not in the style of the CGI extrav­a­gan­zas Dis­ney puts out today, but the more tra­di­tion­al, two-dimen­sion­al ani­mat­ed pic­tures it still did in the nine­teen-nineties. The trail­er announces the film as “Dis­ney’s 35th ani­mat­ed clas­sic,” a posi­tion occu­pied in real­i­ty by Her­cules: also a hero’s jour­ney, albeit with a much dif­fer­ent tone, to say noth­ing of out­come, than A Clock­work Orange. Alex Delarge may look strange­ly plau­si­ble as a Dis­ney char­ac­ter, but a pro­tag­o­nist with a less fam­i­ly-friend­ly set of inter­ests would be hard to imag­ine.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Lccokrkow Gar­neo: All 245,000 Frames of Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange Ran­dom­ized

Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Re-Imag­ined as an Epic, Main­stream Hol­ly­wood Film

The Shin­ing and Oth­er Com­plex Stan­ley Kubrick Films Recut as Sim­ple Hol­ly­wood Movies

Don­ald Duck Dis­cov­ers Glenn Beck: A Remix

Mick­ey Mouse In Viet­nam: The Under­ground Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968, Co-Cre­at­ed by Mil­ton Glaser

When Stan­ley Kubrick Banned His Own Film, A Clock­work Orange: It Was the “Most Effec­tive Cen­sor­ship of a Film in British His­to­ry”

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.