In 2004, photographer Michael Wolf traveled to Southern China to document the lives of the toy factory workers that live there: their days consisted of sewing, painting, and other repetitive tasks. He documented how they slept, ate, and live under the often brutal conditions and demands of global consumerism and capitalism. (h/t gessato.com)
I’m a big Oneohtrix Point Never fan. Those who know me well, know that. Now, you dear reader, know this about me as well. Welcome to the inner circle.
I was listening to Age Of the other day, and it stuck me that cover art is really something else. It really drew me in to inspect it a bit closer. At first glance, kinda witch-y, kinda cult-y, cool! I dug in further. A quick Google revealed the painting featured on the cover of Age Of is by an artist who’s name is Jim Shaw.
Age Of Cover Art, Oneohtrix Point Never / Warp Records. 2018
I kept digging and found some details of the original painting at artresearchmap.com. Check it out:
Jim Shaw, The Great Whatsit, 2017 acrylic on muslin, 53 x 48 inches, 134.6 x 121.9 cm.Jim Shaw. Installation view, 2017. Metro Pictures, New York.
Some of Jim’s other work is pretty spectacular too. Check out the rest of Jim Shaw’s 2017 exhibition. This fleshy acrylic Head is just a marvel to look at. It’s haunting, disturbing and just glistens. Can’t look away.
Jim Shaw, Head, 2017 Foam, aqua resin, acrylic paint, and synthetic hair with metal base 34 1/2 x 12 x 12 inches, 87.6 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm
Shaw’s ongoing project Oism contains a narrative core and ironically challenges the norms of an artwork. Marking Shaw’s attempt to create a functioning religion, complete with its own history, totems and traditions, Oism is drawn from profound and far-reaching research initiated in the early 1990s into the history of American religious practice and finds inspiration in the messianic cults active in America’s Bible belt. The creation and study of Oism has fuelled a wide range of artworks-cum-artefacts, and includes, amongst others, paintings, photographs, sculptures, collages, posters, films and musical instruments.
Whoo. I’ll say! The Great Whatsit, is certainly effective pursuit of his Oism narrative. The Sunday school hymnal-esque illustration of singing women, bathed in MacBook sunbeams perfectly evokes the Warner Sallman white Jesus brand, with a hint of psychedelic vibes. If you ask me, Shaw hit the nail on the head. American culture on a spectrum. Both searching for a messiah, burning the candle at both ends.
If we want to go deeper, Daniel Lopatin’s string choice for the title track, is a Hapsichord. Apart from snapping so fucking hard as an intro (it’s so good), it really sets the tone as a meditative album from the get-go. I just love the marriage between Oism and 0PN. It’s almost like they’re teasing a sort of recommended set-and-setting for this album. Such a strong connection that can’t be ignored, between these two artists. It’s perfect.
Joywave, a rad indie band that hails from Rochester, New York is known for their penchant for the meta and the weird. Just watch their 2015 music video for Somebody New and you’ll see what I mean. In 2019, Joywave released the single Obsession, in preparation for the full-length Possession slated for March 2020. The single came with goodies, a delicious music video that is oozing with nostalgia and American culture.
Here’s a few of my favorites stills from the music video:
The music video is well produced. It’s also very visibly Los Angeles. THat’s not a slight either. It’s really beautiful. It has the weight of a hundred films, and shows just how flexible the Los Angeles landscapes can be for filmmakers. Check it out:
“Always restless, even daring when he had to be, Shaughnessy worked hard to get in and around the railroad, in all conditions, in all settings,” writes Kevin P. Keefe, former editor-in-chief of Trains magazine, in a book essay. “If the life of a crossing watchman was important, then Shaughnessy shuddered through a subzero night until the perfect moment when his subject dashed back into the warmth of a shanty. If the guts of a steam locomotive were interesting, then he’d insert himself into the depths of roundhouses and sidle up next to the hostlers in order to record the oily intricacies of valve gear and side rods.”
Born in Troy, New York, in 1933, Shaughnessy published his first photograph in Trains in 1952. While the detailed captions in Essential Witness are those of a true rail enthusiast (the “Pennsylvania Railroad 11-class 2-10-0” is identified as chugging over an elevated bridge), his images have a broader appreciation for how people exist with the railroads in North America, and how these systems altered the landscape. The silhouette of a tunnel in Canaan, New York, in 1989 reveals its jagged edges, framing the train with this rock that was blasted through for progress. Sometimes the trains are tiny against the mountains or waterfalls, sometimes the focus is elsewhere, like a 1953 photograph that concentrates on the cows in a Vermont pasture, unperturbed by the freight train zooming behind.
Jim Shaughnessy, “Pennsylvania Railroad operator hoops up train orders to crew of a northbound coal train, Trout Run, Pennsylvania” (1956) (source: the artist and Thames & Hudson)
I love this photo. Train orders, are largely obsolete here in North America. But sometimes, it still happens. Traditionally orders get hooped to the conductor at the front, and the operator(s) at the caboose. Nowadays, operations are radioed or even downloaded.
There’s nothing more enchanting than the perfect slice of toast, says Kaori Kajita, founder of the Japan Butter Toast Association, which sounds half-baked but actually exists. “You can’t help but be elated.”
It helps that bread in Japan is tailored for toast. Called shoku pan, Japanese-style square bread has been around for years (think of a high-quality version of Wonder Bread). The toaster boom has its origins in the desire to have soft, chewy bread that tastes and feels like it came out of a baker’s oven, Kajita says.
I can relate. Nothing is better than fresh bread from the baker (well okay, Mr.s Baird’s Bread beats em all but I digress).
Japan is full of specialties, traditions, and politeness the rest of the world often doesn’t understand. This toaster slots into that cultural framework easily. Let’s face it, toasters (and now, more than even smart ovens) are temperamental and frequently too complicated. I’m not in love with the price tag, but personally, I find the TO-ST1 a refreshingly simple device I can get behind.
The year is currently 2019. This marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved peoples to American soil. The virginal wharfs America’s first slaves arrived on were likely shallow and crude. The ships were packed, grueling and nightmarish. America’s fledgling colony began here, in Virginia on the backs of slave-trading and cotton. The ironic state motto, entombed 150 years later in 1776 by George Mason at the Virginia Convention became (and still unchanged), Sic Semper Tyrannis, roughly meaning, death to tyrants or down to tyrants.
400 years later, and Black Americans are still battling for the equality they deserve. The phenomenon of equality and protected freedoms may have been only ink on paper in 1776. But, Black Americans have fought to make it a reality. We owe Black America gratitude and thanks, and instead they are met with slavery, brutality, whitewashed history and often, violence.
This ideology — that black people belonged to an inferior, subhuman race — did not simply disappear once slavery ended. If the formerly enslaved and their descendants became educated, if we thrived in the jobs white people did, if we excelled in the sciences and arts, then the entire justification for how this nation allowed slavery would collapse. Free black people posed a danger to the country’s idea of itself as exceptional; we held up the mirror in which the nation preferred not to peer. And so the inhumanity visited on black people by every generation of white America justified the inhumanity of the past.
The 1619 Project has a single focus. A mission to arm all Americans with the truth. Reframe America’s textbook-whitewashed history with the truth and honesty they deserve. Add context and proper attribution to the Black Americans who have previously been left out of America’s founding narrative.
The #1619Project published online today and it is my profound hope that we will reframe for our readers the way we understand our nation, the legacy of slavery, and most importantly, the unparalleled role black people have played in this democracy.
The conceit of the magazine is that nothing about modern American life has been left untouched by the colonists’ decision to purchase that first group of enslaved Africans, that the year 1619 is as important to the American story as the year 1776.
The #1619Project is at one one of the most profoundly beautiful things I have ever seen, & also one of the most devastating. The arguments, meticulously researched, powerfully argued, make what to me is an irrefutable case that it’s time to rewrite our narrative & tell the truth.
The contributors page tells a powerful story. Black writers, black poets, black photographers, original works from black artists. We are the descendants who are here to set the record straight.
The 1619 Project is led by Nikole Hannah-Jones, a seasoned reporter at The New York Times. Over the coming weeks and months, The Times will be adding more stories, essays, poems and works to continue the discourse.
But these days, clotheslines lovers are fighting back, Mr. Lake said. At least 19 states (including California, where I live) protect a “right to dry” with laws that prevent municipalities and homeowners’ associations from outlawing laundry lines.
It’s sad that clotheslines have become a cause of community disputes, because laundry used to connect neighbors, said museum curator Lissa Rivera. Digging through the archives of the Museum of the City of New York, Ms. Rivera recently discovered a trove of early 20th-century photos of clotheslines crisscrossed above courtyards. “Those clotheslines were a way of knowing your neighbors, because you would have to make arrangements to share a line,” she said.
Wow. Unbelievable. People in California are having to fight for a right to dry. That makes me so sad.
My grandmother continues to air-dry laundry on her clothesline. To this day. She rarely uses her actual machine dryer. I never really thought much about the clothesline culture until after reading this story. I figured many still do it, but I suppose it’s dwindling. I mean, hanging clothes up to dry outside is a seriously zen exercise. It’s good for the planet. But, the best part about it? Your clothes will last longer. They won’t fall apart as fast.
But, what a tragedy to see homeowners associations are wasting breadth, fighting over this. Of all the things they should be debating amongst themselves — HOA’s are getting upset over clotheslines? What the fuck. Let people air-dry their clothes.
The firm ran the experiment — which reduced the workweek to 32 hours from 40 — in March and April this year, and asked two researchers to study the effects on staff. Jarrod Haar, a human resources professor at Auckland University of Technology, said employees reported a 24 percent improvement in work-life balance, and came back to work energized after their days off.
“Supervisors said staff were more creative, their attendance was better, they were on time, and they didn’t leave early or take long breaks,” Mr. Haar said. “Their actual job performance didn’t change when doing it over four days instead of five.”
Not surprised by the results of this interesting study. Not completely unrelated, but taking an afternoon nap can lower your risk of heart-related death! If you take a step back from the results of either study, it’s apparent that reducing the hours of working (wether that is physically or mentally exhaustive) contributes to a better life.
Noting that the company had seen lower electricity bills with 20 percent less staff in the office each day, Mr. Barnes said the change in work hours could have wider implications if more companies adopted such a strategy.
“You’ve got 20 percent of cars off the road in rush hour; there are implications for urban design, such as smaller offices,” he said.
But reducing the workweek can be expensive for other cities, as a similar study in Sweden shows. But it does corroborate public health results:
The study showed that employees felt healthier, which reduced sick-leave absence, and that patient care improved, but the city won’t push ahead to make the plan permanent.
Fascinating results. I would love to see a 4-day workweek become the norm. If you ask me, the trade-off is worth the coin spent.
The Center for American Politics and Design (CAPD) is a research group investigating the graphic vernacular of American politics.
The first of its kind, this collection consists of every campaign logo† from the 2018 election for United States Congress. The archive is a tool to explore trends and typologies that reveal themselves only when viewed in aggregate.
Founded in 2018, CAPD aims to increase political literacy among designers and to foster a dialogue about the role of design in the American democratic process.
Our complete dataset is available upon request; we welcome anyone to use this collection to conduct their own analyses.
This is a cool project. The topography of the political design landscape is so vitally important, and (in my opinion) has not been investigated thoroughly enough. It’s a monstrously large undertaking no doubt. It makes me uncomfortable to think about what horrors we may unearth about ourselves from this project. Personally, when I begin to think about dissecting our collective American graphical political heritage, I begin to think about Paula Scher’s Maps.
Play around with the filter function on the homepage and compare/contrast regions of the US. For example, compare Rhode Island to Texas. Now look at Nebraska. You can go even further by filtering by Office, or Incumbency.
Fascinating stuff. I’m going to love revisiting this in a few years.
