In conjunction with our residency at the Serpentine Gallery’s Centre for Possible Studies, the Bidoun Library is presenting a program of two films drawn from our collaboration with the online archive UbuWeb this Wednesday, June 8.

The program will be introduced by Masoud Golsorkhi, editor of Tank magazine.

Wednesday June 8, 2011
7-9pm
Free!

Centre for Possible Studies
64 Seymour Street
London W1H 5BW

Bahman Maghsoudlou
Ardeshir Mohasses & His Caricatures
1972
20 min

A short documentary about Ardeshir Mohasses (1938-2008) featuring rare footage of the Iranian artist in his studio in Iran before his self-imposed exile to New York, which was to last over thirty years. Mohasses’ anti-Shah and anti-Islamic Republic cartoons used settings and costumes of the Qajar dynasty (1794 to 1925) — a misdirection that fooled no one. The film features commentary from Iranian intellectuals of the time, including Houshang Taheri, Javad Mojabi, and Fereidoun Gilani. Mohasses, a man of few words, is noticeably mute throughout.

Kamran Shirdel
The Night It Rained
1967
35min

In northern Iran, a schoolboy from a village near Gorgan is said to have discovered that the railway had been washed away by a flood. When he saw the approaching train — so the story goes — he set fire to his jacket, ran toward the train, and averted a serious and fatal accident. Kamran Shirdel’s film The Night it Rained does not concentrate on the heroic deed promulgated in the newspapers, but on a caricature of social and subtle political behavior — the way in which witnesses and officials manage to insert themselves into the events. Shirdel uses newspaper articles and interviews with railway employees, the governor, the chief of police, the village teacher and pupils — each of whom tell a different version of the event. In the end, they all contradict one another, while the group of possible or self-appointed heroes constantly grows. With his cinematic sleights of hand, Shirdel paints a bittersweet picture of an Iranian society in which truth, rumor, and lie can no longer be distinguished.

Randy Miller, President of Original New York Seltzer and sponsor of Alphy’s Soda Pop Club.

Bookshop now open — email your order (or order online) and receive 15% off all books, catalogs, editions, magazines, monographs, multiples, and videos, between November 24, 2009 and January 1, 2010. All orders placed by December 11th, will be delivered by December 24th. Orders placed online will receive a 15% refund. Happy Holidays!

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Trevor Jackson is the man.

Momus video interview.

“Every city has its own gang history, part of Chicago’s are Gang cards, most prominent in the 70’s and early 80’s”

Klansmen dingbats!

Thanks Ray for the link.

by Julie Bosman

The scruffy players in brick-red jerseys and secondhand shoes hailed from Haiti, Togo, Mexico, Honduras and Harlem. The fresh-faced team in black had neatly trimmed hair, new gear and degrees from Carnegie Mellon, Syracuse, Pace and universities in China and Australia.

Most of the players in black work together at the Royal Bank of Canada, bonded by the financial cloud hanging over their industry. The reds, too, are united by financial circumstance, sharing a temporary address, 1 Wards Island: a homeless shelter.

They faced off the other night at Chelsea Piers, perhaps Manhattan’s premier soccer spot for young professionals, and this spring also the base for the newest team in Street Soccer USA, a 16-city network of homeless players that started in 2005 in Charlotte, N.C., and is under the umbrella of Help USA, a national homeless services provider.

The idea behind homeless soccer is something like this: Take a group of poor people, disconnected from the regular rhythms of life, lacking both physical exercise and much to look forward to. Add soccer.

In Ann Arbor, Mich., and Austin, Tex., Minneapolis, St. Louis and Washington, the program has been credited with helping players pull themselves out of homelessness. There is even a Homeless World Cup. This year’s, the seventh, is scheduled for September in Milan.

“When I’m out there, I feel like I can’t do any wrong,” said Dexter Burnett, 47, who played soccer in his native Jamaica, where his speed earned him the nickname Pepper. He was laid off last fall from a job as a medical assistant. “It allows me not to think about my situation so much and just relax and enjoy the moment.”

The league is the brainchild of Lawrence Cann, 31, once a nationally ranked soccer player at Davidson College, who moved in the fall from Charlotte to New York, with one of the nation’s largest homeless populations, estimated at 35,000, but no established homeless soccer team.

With the help of a few volunteers, Mr. Cann cleared out a dusty gymnasium that had previously been used for storage at the shelter on Wards Island, a patch of land in the East River. He recruited a few reluctant players, promising they would not be punished for missing the standard 10 p.m. shelter curfew.

At an early practice on a rainy night in March, a couple of the 15 people standing expectantly in a circle had evidently been drinking. Most spoke little English. And they did not even know one another’s names.

“Hey, you,” one player called out before kicking a clumsy pass that landed far from its target.

Taking note, Mr. Cann imported a drill familiar to early practices of soccer teams everywhere: Before making a pass, the kicker had to call out the name of the receiver. He gave instructions in English and Spanish. He declared that anybody who showed up drunk or high would not participate that night (but could return the next week). And between running, passing and shooting, players are expected to talk to the coach about their goals outside soccer, their job searches and their state of mind.

Of the 30 people who have turned out for a practice, only six have not returned a second time.

“You need something to occupy your time around here,” said Woods Matthews, 45, a regular whose long braid swings when he plays. “That’s why people get so mad around the shelter. We don’t get any exercise, we’re all cooped up, and then people get in fights.”

As the players smoothed their ragged edges, Mr. Cann began to look for opponents.

Chelsea Piers, with its state-of-the-art facilities, is among the city’s most expensive places to play — $2,450 per team for 10 games — and normally has a waiting list of more than 25 teams. But the bad economy led a lot of corporate-sponsored teams to drop out. Mr. Cann raised the entry fee, Nike donated equipment, and Chelsea Piers provided matching jerseys, as it does for all the teams that play there.

Just getting to the field is a 70-minute trek: the M35 bus to Harlem, a downtown train, then a half-mile walk to the West Side Highway.

The homeless players lost their debut game, 14-4, playing without a single substitute. The next week, they faced a team from Bloomberg, the financial information company, whose players were politely intrigued.

“I guess I figure being homeless, they’ll play pretty aggressively,” predicted Louis Brun, 22.

Street Soccer NY lost again, 11-5. As the teams headed to the locker room, Mr. Burnett chatted up an opponent, asking if Bloomberg was hiring.

“If these guys can get out there, feel comfortable talking to new people, and not get frustrated, then it’s really going to help them integrate,” Mr. Cann said. “Then eventually they’ll keep jobs and not get kicked out of their apartments.”

He is already seeing progress: One player left the shelter and returned to his family. Another, Jarvis Strose, who had refused to meet with caseworkers and regularly missed curfew over two years of homelessness, arrived promptly at practice every week. A caseworker told Mr. Cann that a third man, who had developed a nervous disorder after being beaten in prison, was beginning to recover from his trauma because of the exercise.

On Tuesday, Street Soccer NY met the team made up mostly of Royal Bank of Canada workers, called the Gunners.

Chris Lodgson, 25, who plays center back on the homeless team, came straight from his new job at the cafe at Bloomingdale’s; he was planning to move from the shelter to an apartment in Washington Heights. He will continue to play with Street Soccer, which he said has been instrumental in his getting back on his feet.

“I don’t want to say it’s a return to being normal, but it makes me feel like myself again,” he said. “Two weeks ago, that was, like, the first time in a while that I forgot. I forgot where I was and what was going on.”

The red team took an early lead, passing fluidly, players calling one another by name. Players from the adjacent field wandered over to watch.

“Is that the homeless team?” asked one. “Wow,” he said, cocking an eyebrow. “They’re good.”

Mr. Strose scored his fourth goal of the game, panting with exhaustion as he ran off the field. When Mr. Matthews, sent in to substitute, kicked for a goal but missed the ball entirely, his teammates shouted encouragement.

“When we started, they didn’t know how to play,” Mr. Cann said. “They didn’t know how to pass. They didn’t trust each other.”

Final score: Homeless 10, Bankers 4.

Mr. Cann, surrounded by celebrating players, looked relieved. “We really needed a win,” he said.

Still clapping, he called out to his team, “Shake hands!”

Thanks Ryan

Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and social critic, talks about society, materialism, relationships, government, religion, and happiness. Interviewed by Mike Wallace. 3 part video.

Found from the blog my friend Shane Lester keeps. (Happy Birthday!)

Photograph by Michael Wells

Municipal de Fútbol is distributed by D.A.P.

93 year old cook and great grandmother, Clara, recounts her childhood during the Great Depression as she prepares meals from the era. In this episode she will be making a “Poorman’s Feast”.

Other episodes can be found here.

Classic footage of Cypress Hill production hero DJ Muggs hard at work on the SP1200 inside his home studio back in 1993. Notice the beautiful piles of scattered vinyl and racks of cassette tapes on the back wall.
Via CrateKings

George Best Interview, Part 1 of 4.

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Andrew Rogers, Untitled, 2006

The group exhibition Sack of Bones comes from a viewing of Paul Rachman’s 2006 film, American Hardcore, in which Mark Flood appears as an interviewee on the topic of 1980s punk rock. The tone of the film is reverent, to be sure, but more than an ode, the voices in the film present conflicting parts pride, humor, fraternity, anger, bitterness, nostalgia, and what are often doleful mechanisms for dealing with the here-and-now. That Flood was both part of Hardcore as it existed musically (in 1980 his band, Culturcide, put out their first 7-inch: Another Miracle/Consider Museums as Concentration Camps) and has been practicing visual art for over 30 years poses an interesting question: how, if at all, can art be hardcore? By embodying adolescent punk obsession? By miraculous use of irony? By a simple withdrawal from popular territory?

All time favorite movie Hoop Dreams is available to watch free here.

The Universal Mind of Bill Evans. The creative process and self-teaching.
(Extract)

Watch the full 5-part series.