North Korean Posters: The David Heather Collection

PROPAGANDA is one of the only forms of artistic expression in which representation equals endorsement. Fraught with exclamation points and the color red, this stunning volume of art collector David Heather's collection of North Korean propaganda posters, edited by Koen de Ceuster, portrays an even rarer form of artistic expression: a representation of representation that equals endorsement. Of course, any review is a representation of a representation of a representation, but that does not necessarily equal endorsement -- triple removes and the
Droste effect notwithstanding.

A socialist realism of clarity, compactness and delicacy -- tenets crystallized by North Korean ruler Kim Jong Il -- informs these pictures. The exhortations accompanying the images are equally concise: "More milk and meat, by positively expanding grassland!" "Here and there in the country, let's build more small-scale power plants!" "Bombing suicide squad, forward!", "Socialism is invincible!", even, "Let's popularize basketball!"

"North Korean Posters" is a book that comes at a deeply auspicious time. With the easing of U.S. sanctions and the discreet charm of the Internet, it won't be long before images of gleaming patriots are tested by the perception of freedoms in the world outside and the withering onslaught of capitalism -- and all the fast food and graffiti that that implies. North Korea is the last country of its kind in terms of fervent isolation and nationalism; these priceless examples of agitprop exist simultaneously as history lessons and time capsules. Ironically, as curiosity and avarice congeal into the wax of capitalism, posters like these become coveted collector's items -- trading for sizable sums that to the propagandists who created these fierce and stoic artifacts would represent a psychological disembowelment -- and be vastly more effective than any four-color, four-story call to arms.

Article courtsey of Latimes 3 August 2008 by David Cotner

Enzo Mari's Autoprogettazione

We knew Enzo Mari from his simple fruit prints and interlocking wooden Animali puzzle, but didn't know about his furniture until recently. In 1974, he came out with 19 designs for wooden furniture entitled Autoprogettazione. Autoprogettazione (or "self design") was Mari's collection of designs for furniture you could make yourself with just a hammer using inexpensive, off-the-shelf lumber.

We've always loved Enzo Mari's low-key, sincere approach to design-- recently he has been designing chairs for Muji, who shares a similar aesthetic. We read that in the 1950's Mari was noticing that mass-produced furniture was starting to change people's tastes away from quality and craftsmanship, so he created simple designs to help reconnect people with how things were made. During his 1974 exhibition he gave out a free catalogue with detailed instructions for making these basic, easy-to-assemble furniture pieces using standardized wooden planks and nails. Anyone (except for factories and dealers) was encouraged to make the furniture, or to make varations on them, and send him a picture.

Mari's Autoprogettazione made plans for nine tables, three chairs, a bench, a bookshelf, a wardrobe, and four beds. We especially like the long dining room table (top), the "F". With current design focusing on locally-made, handmade furniture, DIY, simplicity and collaboration, we think his Autoprogettazione and the thought behind the collection fits in just as well today as over 30 years ago when he designed them.

Mari's Autoprogettazione made plans for nine tables, three chairs, a bench, a bookshelf, a wardrobe, and four beds. We especially like the long dining room table (top), the "F". With current design focusing on locally-made, handmade furniture, DIY, simplicity and collaboration, we think his Autoprogettazione and the thought behind the collection fits in just as well today as over 30 years ago when he designed them.You can buy a reprint of Enzo Mari's Autoprogettazione catalog at Unicahome for $27

Posting and pictures courtsey of http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/

Top 15 Modernist Gas Stations

Some of America’s best Mid Century Modern architecture is in the form of gas stations, with their simple space requirements and focus on innovative roofs.

Several of the best known names in architecture have created gas stations, around the world, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies Van der Rohe, Willem Dudok, Jean Prouve, Arne Jacobsen and Norman Foster, but nobody created a design package that was as enduring and comprehensive as Elliot Noyes for Mobil.

To vote on your favourite modernist gas station visit:
http://oobject.com/category/Top-15-modernist-gas-stations

Isaac Hayes, Deep-Voiced Soul Icon, Is Dead at 65

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) -- Isaac Hayes, the baldheaded, baritone-voiced soul crooner who laid the groundwork for disco and whose ''Theme From Shaft'' won both Academy and Grammy awards, died Sunday afternoon after he collapsed near a treadmill, authorities said. He was 65.

Hayes was pronounced dead at Baptist East Hospital in Memphis an hour after he was found by a family member, the Shelby County Sheriff's Office said. The cause of death was not immediately known.

With his muscular build, shiny head and sunglasses, Hayes cut a striking figure at a time when most of his contemporaries were sporting Afros. His music, which came to be known as urban-contemporary, paved the way for disco as well as romantic crooners like Barry White.

And in his spoken-word introductions and interludes, Hayes was essentially rapping before there was rap. His career hit another high in 1997 when he became the voice of Chef, the sensible school cook and devoted ladies man on the animated TV show ''South Park.''

''Isaac Hayes embodies everything that's soul music,'' Collin Stanback, an A&R executive at Stax, told The Associated Press on Sunday. ''When you think of soul music you think of Isaac Hayes -- the expression ... the sound and the creativity that goes along with it.''

Hayes was about to begin work on a new album for Stax, the soul record label he helped build to legendary status. And he had recently finished work on a movie called ''Soul Men'' in which he played himself, starring Samuel Jackson and Bernie Mac, who died on Saturday.

Steve Shular, a spokesman for the sheriff's office, said authorities received a 911 call after Hayes' wife and young son and his wife's cousin returned home from the grocery store and found him collapsed in a downstairs bedroom. A sheriff's deputy administered CPR until paramedics arrived.''The treadmill was running but he was unresponsive lying on the floor,'' Shular said.

The album ''Hot Buttered Soul'' made Hayes a star in 1969. His shaven head, gold chains and sunglasses gave him a compelling visual image.''Hot Buttered Soul'' was groundbreaking in several ways: He sang in a ''cool'' style unlike the usual histrionics of big-time soul singers. He prefaced the song with ''raps,'' and the numbers ran longer than three minutes with lush arrangements.

''Jocks would play it at night,'' Hayes recalled in a 1999 Associated Press interview. ''They could go to the bathroom, they could get a sandwich, or whatever.''

Next came ''Theme From Shaft,'' a No. 1 hit in 1971 from the film ''Shaft'' starring Richard Roundtree.

''That was like the shot heard round the world,'' Hayes said in the 1999 interview.
At the Oscar ceremony in 1972, Hayes performed the song wearing an eye-popping amount of gold and received a standing ovation. TV Guide later chose it as No. 18 in its list of television's 25 most memorable moments. He won an Academy Award for the song and was nominated for another one for the score. The song and score also won him two Grammys.

''The rappers have gone in and created a lot of hit music based upon my influence,'' he said. ''And they'll tell you if you ask.''

Hayes was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.''I knew nothing about the business, or trends and things like that,'' he said. ''I think it was a matter of timing. I didn't know what was unfolding.''A self-taught musician, he was hired in 1964 by Stax Records of Memphis as a backup pianist, working as a session musician for Otis Redding and others. He also played saxophone.

He began writing songs, establishing a songwriting partnership with David Porter, and in the 1960s they wrote such hits for Sam and Dave as ''Hold On, I'm Coming'' and ''Soul Man.''

All this led to his recording contract.

In 1972, he won another Grammy for his album ''Black Moses'' and earned a nickname he reluctantly embraced. Hayes composed film scores for ''Tough Guys'' and ''Truck Turner'' besides ''Shaft.'' He also did the song ''Two Cool Guys'' on the ''Beavis and Butt-Head Do America'' movie soundtrack in 1996. Additionally, he was the voice of Nickelodeon's ''Nick at Nite'' and had radio shows in New York City (1996 to 2002) and then in Memphis.

He was in several movies, including ''It Could Happen to You'' with Nicolas Cage, ''Ninth Street'' with Martin Sheen, ''Reindeer Games'' starring Ben Affleck and the blaxploitation parody ''I'm Gonna Git You, Sucka.''

In the 1999 interview, Hayes described the South Park cook as ''a person that speaks his mind; he's sensitive enough to care for children; he's wise enough to not be put into the 'wack' category like everybody else in town -- and he l-o-o-o-o-ves the ladies.''

But Hayes angrily quit the show in 2006 after an episode mocked his Scientology religion

''There is a place in this world for satire,'' he said. ''but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry toward religious beliefs of others begins.''

Co-creator creators Matt Stone responded that Hayes ''has no problem -- and he's cashed plenty of checks -- with our show making fun of Christians.'' A subsequent episode of the show seemingly killed off the Chef character.Hayes was born in 1942 in a tin shack in Covington, Tenn., about 40 miles north of Memphis. He was raised by his maternal grandparents after his mother died and his father took off when he was 1 1/2. The family moved to Memphis when he was 6.

Hayes wanted to be a doctor, but got redirected when he won a talent contest in ninth grade by singing Nat King Cole's ''Looking Back.''

He held down various low-paying jobs, including shining shoes on the legendary Beale Street in Memphis. He also played gigs in rural Southern juke joints where at times he had to hit the floor because someone began shooting.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

AP writers Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Ky., and Nekesa Moody in New York contributed to this story.

In Changing Harlem, Soul Food Struggles

The white Formica counter at Louise’s Family Restaurant in Harlem is the original, and is more than 40 years old. Southern dishes like pig’s feet with black-eyed peas and candied yams cost $8. Sweet lemonade is still served in a plastic foam cup.

The restaurant seats 18, about the same number it always has, but it is rarely full. The menu makes few concessions to modern eating habits. The food is unapologetically heavy, fried, salty and fattening, with nary a fresh fruit or vegetable. Many dishes are considered incomplete without a dollop of brown gravy, a big clump of butter, or both.

Louise’s is among a handful of culinary survivors of an older Harlem, when inexpensive, family-run restaurants operated by black Southern transplants dominated the streetscape. “People are used to eating soul food the way we make it,” Julia Wilson, 63, Louise’s owner and the daughter of the restaurant’s founder, said on a recent afternoon. “A lot of people like it how I keep it, old-fashioned.”

But Louise’s is on the wrong side of several trends. Soul food is dying in Harlem and elsewhere in the city, and not being able to fill 18 seats is as good an indication as any. The reasons can be chalked up to the vagaries of contemporary city life: Changing tastes; health consciousness; the fast-food culture; and an influx of wealthier young adults — including African-Americans, long a customer base for soul food restaurants — who are more comfortable eating Indian or Thai dishes.

A recitation of the names of the vanished Harlem soul food restaurants — where the waitress/owner called everyone “Baby,” and the temperature in the room was determined by the amount of lard in the skillet — would be longer than the menu at most of the places.

Among those now out of business are: 22 West, where Malcolm X used the pay phone in back to do radio broadcasts; Adel’s, popular for its fried chicken; Pan Pan, which burned down in 2004; Wilson’s, known for its breakfasts; Wimps, revered for its smothered chicken and red velvet cake; Singleton’s, which was among the last restaurants to regularly serve pig tail stew, hog maws, and pig ears; and Wells Supper Club, best known as the restaurant credited with putting chicken and waffles on the same plate.

Onetime staples like butter beans, country fried steak, hog maws, oxtails, chicken livers, ham hocks, neck bones, and chitterlings have become uncommon, and in some cases, unavailable, in this former soul food capital.

“There used to be two or three soul food places on a block,” said Johnny Manning, 67, who has lived in Harlem since 1966 and for the past eight years has operated a Web site, eatinharlem.com, focused on the neighborhood’s culinary options. “Now you’ve got to look for them. When I came here, Harlem was predominantly black, so you had a predominantly black cuisine in restaurants.”

Each month seems to bring a new casualty: Charles’s Southern Style Kitchen closed its 125th Street location this summer after the rent doubled; and House of Seafood and an outlet of Manna’s Soul Food Restaurant will most likely be shuttered by the end of summer, the casualties of a planned shopping mall, also on 125th Street.

Charles Copeland, 83, who closed his landmark soul food restaurant Copeland’s last summer after 50 years because of declining business, said gentrification and accelerating prices for basics like cooking oil and collard greens may doom many of the rest.

“The transformation of Harlem snuck up on me like a tornado,” Mr. Copeland said. “I don’t expect many of those places to last. Soul food was supposed to be a cheap type of food that black people made at home. What we used to call cheap isn’t cheap anymore.

Louise’s, on Lenox Avenue, was opened in 1964 by the sister of Sylvia Woods, who started Sylvia’s two years earlier. But while Louise’s has resisted change, Sylvia’s has bucked the trend and become a soul food temple, expanding into grocery stores nationwide and onto the Internet with items as varied as canned turnip greens and shampoo.

In addition to Louise’s, Sylvia’s, and the original Charles’s Southern Style Kitchen location on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, holdouts include M & G Diner and several newer soul food places, including Amy Ruth’s, Margie’s Red Rose Diner, a Taste of Seafood, Miss Maude’s Spoonbread Too, and Londel’s.More recently, restaurants serving dishes inspired by soul food have also arrived in Harlem. Their food is lighter and tends to be more healthful. They include Mobay, Cafe Veg, Native, Revival, Melba’s, and Raw Soul, a raw food restaurant.

Mobay, on 125th Street, for instance, serves collard greens with a vegetarian flavoring, instead of pork or turkey.

Though some of the newer restaurants charge as much as $15 for an entree, Charles Gabriel, 60, owner of Charles’s Southern Style Kitchen, said he could not afford to raise prices.

“Uptown, people don’t have so much money, so when the prices go up, they’ll go to a Chinese place,” which have sold items such as fried chicken wings for years, he said.

Restaurants, including soul food places, are also operating under increased pressure from the city to offer more nutritious meals. This summer, the city banned restaurants from using artificial trans fat to prepare foods, and also required chain restaurants to post calorie counts of their menu items.Even before the new laws took effect, some traditional soul food restaurants began to offer more healthful choices, including sometimes using skim milk in macaroni and cheese, and offering the option of oven fried, instead of deep fried, chicken.

The calorie count for a traditionally prepared dish of macaroni and cheese, for instance, is about 650 calories, and a single piece of deep fried chicken can have more than 400 calories, said Lindsey Williams, author of Neo Soul cookbook.

Those numbers are in line with a typical fast food meal: At McDonald’s, a Big Mac has about 540 calories, while a McDonald’s premium crispy chicken club sandwich contains 630 calories, according to the restaurant.At Louise’s, Ms. Wilson, a tall, quiet woman who was a factory worker before she took over the restaurant, has changed little about the place since her mother, Louise Thompson, died in 1977.

The handwritten menu above the grill includes breakfasts of fried bologna, corned beef hash and a sardine sandwich. There are more choices now, but the sign remains. Three stools at the old lunch counter are missing their seats. The juke box, featuring songs by Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, has not worked for at least 10 years.

“The guys from the phone company used to come and play it,” Ms. Wilson said, smiling at the memory. “It used to be fun. We used to play it as much as the customers did.”

During a recent afternoon, the restaurant had four customers during the lunch hour. Three other people looked at the menu, but left.

As they waited, Ms. Wilson, her husband, Issac, 67, who does the cooking, and her daughter, Cassandra, 43, who is the waitress, watched the “Young and the Restless” on a portable television set.

Mornings are busier, and Louise’s does a brisk business in dishes like fish and grits.

“A lot of people look forward to breakfast: grits and home fries and biscuits,” she said. “They wait on that.”

Maurice Robinson, 48, who was eating breakfast at the counter recently, has been coming to Louise’s for more than 20 years.

“I can get grits here,” he said, between bites. “And it’s not easy getting grits.”

Ms. Wilson said she might like to update the restaurant’s menu with salads and baked goods, and perhaps give the place a makeover. She is reluctant to make too many changes though, she said.

Then she turned to the coffee machine, a 1950s-era stainless steel gas-powered model that dispenses coffee through a spigot. “Maybe get a new coffeemaker — with a coffee pot,” she said.

After a few moments, she changed her mind. “I don’t know,” she said. “Everybody loves my coffee.”

Ms. Wilson, who has been on her feet at the restaurant from 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. six days a week for decades now, said she wanted to keep Louise’s open to pass it on to her children, as it had been passed to her.

In the meantime, health issues have led to a ticklish situation that she has kept to herself for years.“The doctor said I’m not supposed to eat fried food anymore,” she said, chuckling, as fish and bacon sizzled in oil on the grill. “How am I supposed to give up fried food?”

New York Times 5 August 2008 by Timothy Williams

Syrian General Who Oversaw Arms Shipments Assassinated

CAIRO, Aug. 4 -- A Syrian general shot to death at a beach resort over the weekend was a top overseer of his country's weapons shipments to Hezbollah, according to opposition Web sites and Arab and Israeli news media.

Syria by late Monday had issued no reaction to widespread reports of the assassination of Brig. Gen. Mohammed Suleiman near the Syrian port city of Tartous on Friday night.

Maher al-Assad, head of Syria's Republican Guards and a brother of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, attended Suleiman's funeral Sunday, the Reuters news agency said, citing unidentified sources.

The Syrian president is on a state visit to Iran. His government enforces rigid secrecy about security matters.

The Free Syria Web site of Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian vice president now living in exile, said a sniper on a yacht shot Suleiman. The Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper said he was struck by four bullets fired from the direction of the sea.

Suleiman, 49, was known to have been a top security official, a friend to Syria's president and his brothers since their youth, and a former schoolmate of at least one of the brothers.

Israel's Haaretz newspaper said Israeli officials believed Suleiman had been in charge of shipping Iranian and Syrian weapons to the armed Lebanese movement Hezbollah, including long-range rockets used in attacks on Israel.

Haaretz did not identify its sources. Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth daily said the slain man also had been in charge of Syria's alleged nuclear program. In September, Israeli warplanes destroyed what U.S. officials described as a clandestine nuclear site in Syria's eastern desert.

Asked whether Israel was responsible for the reported assassination, Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said, "The Israeli government has neither any direct knowledge nor any comment on this incident."

A February bombing in Damascus killed Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyah. Israel denied Hezbollah accusations of responsibility for the assassination.

Despite their enmity, Israel and Syria this year confirmed they were conducting indirect talks through Turkey on a possible peace deal, based on the return of the Golan Heights to Syria.

Olmert and other Israeli officials in recent weeks have stressed weapons smuggling by Syria to Hezbollah as a major Israeli concern.

Washington Post 5 August 2008

By Ellen Knickmeyer and Samuel Sockol

Blogs, bribes, booms and post punk Beijing (with distant peasant protests and executions). Reading the News from China

Once closed to the world, China is now in the middle of a media feeding frenzy. From state controlled radio and TV to the western media and Youtube, not forgetting 16 million bloggers (and rising), there's an unprecedented flow of stories pumped out daily. But sometimes it seems that the more we're told, the less we know.

As the world braces itself for the Beijing Games, Radio Eye has assembled its own Olympic team for this week's feature, Reading The News From China. James West is a journalist with Triple J's Hack program. His book Beijing Blur (Penguin Australia) is based on his experiences working for China's state run radio; Stephanie Hemelryk Donald is professor of Chinese media studies at Sydney University and Nicholas Jose is the author of Avenue of Eternal Peace (Wakefield Press with a new Postscript Beijing 2008).

Punctuated with the sounds of China online and the music of punk and post-punk Beijing, Reading the News from China was produced by Steven Tilley and Nick Franklin.

To download audio visit:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/radioeye/stories/2008/2313040.htm

Beijing Blur

'I was in China and I wanted something more Chinese than Chinese: bigger, better, badder, redder. China held the promise of dragons' heads, acrobatics, mahjong and brothels. I was also expecting a display of kitsch, old-school communism: messages daubed on walls, Mao sculptures propped up against cash registers, crumbling socialist monoliths... But when my eyes hit Beijing for the first time, all this fell away.'

When Sydney journalist James West lands a job at a state-run radio station in Beijing, he imagines he knows a lot about China.

Then he arrives, and finds himself at a rave, dancing on the Great Wall. But is one night of hedonism on China's most well-known landmark an accurate reflection of the 'real Beijing'? Or an anomaly in an otherwise tightly controlled culture, still dealing with the aftershocks of the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square?

To find answers, he talks to the next generation about their experiences and frustrations, about politics and about the China they will create for themselves. Against a backdrop of the changing seasons in Beijing, a city he grows to love, he enters a brave new world of bloggers, punk-rock dens and underground queer culture.

An intimate account of one young Australian's year abroad, Beijing Blur is also the story of modern China - a nation poised at one of the great turns of the global historical tide.

Published by Penguin Group and available at good bookstores.