#guernica daily

[dyingroses]

Woke up at 5:45 this morning from a nightmare and I will not be going back to sleep after that terrifying crossover of Children of the Corn and Guernica!

[fiercynn]

palestinian poets: george abraham

george abraham (they/he/هو) is a palestinian american poet, performance arist, and writer who was born and raised on unceded timucuan lands (jacksonville, FL). their debut poetry collection birthright (button poetry) won the arab american book award and the big other book award, and was a lambda literary award finalist. he is also the author of the chapbooks al youm and the specimen's apology. their collaborations include co-editing a palestinian poetry anthology with noor hindi (haymarket books, 2025), and a performance art project titled EVE with fargo nissim tbakhi. 

they are a recipient of fellowships from kundiman, the arab american national museum, the boston foundation, the national performance network, and the MAP fund, and more. their writing has appeared in poetry magazine, the nation, the american poetry review, guernica, the baffler, the paris review, mizna, and many other journals and anthologies. a graduate of swarthmore college and harvard university, they have taught at emerson college, and are currently a litowitz MFA+MA candidate in poetry at northwestern university. he is also currently executive editor of the whiting award-winning journal mizna.

you can follow them on twitter @IntifadaBatata.

IF YOU READ JUST ONE POEM BY GEORGE ABRAHAM, MAKE IT THIS ONE

OTHER POEMS ONLINE THAT I LOVE BY GEORGE ABRAHAM

Field Notes on Terror & Beginnings at poetry daily

Love Letter to the Eve of the End of the World at the margins

Of Nation, at rusted radishes: beirut literary and art journal

Searching for a Palestinian After at the nation

Stage Directions for a Representation in which Eve and Adam travel through their first checkpoint at mosaic theatre company

the ghosts of the dead sea are rising at the drift

ars poetica in which every pronoun is FREE PALESTINE at the margins

“from UNIVERSAL THEORY IN WHICH EVERY FAILED ATTEMPT AT LOVE IS A SOULMATE FROM AN ALTERNATE TIMELINE” at fiyah literary magazine

Ode to My Swollen, Mono-Infected Spleen at brooklyn poets

The Olive Tree Speaks of Deforestation to my body at crabfat magazine

arab/queer vs. Imaginary at shade literary arts

self-portrait with second-degree sunburn at

[ summer / winter ] is the worst time to lose a [ country / lover ] at wildness

maqam of moonlight, for the wandering at the rumpus

against perturbation at the scores

apology, at cordite poetry review

i also adore this 2021 essay of abraham's at guernica magazine called teaching poetry in the palestinian apocalypse: towards a collective, lyric "i".

[picassopeacescarf]

Pierre Daix (1922 -2014)

The above photo of Pierre Daix with Picasso and Helen Parmelin (French novelist, journalist, and art critic) in 1954 is posted in the Paris Picassso Museum just outside the conference room that bears his name.

Pierre Daix wrote the following eloquent description of the Picasso's Peace Scarf when he was the Editor of Lettres Francaises:

"The Dove of Peace, a symbol whose origins are shrouded in the mists of ancient iconography, is giving new life and meaning in this design by Pablo Picasso.  A dove, reduced to its essential form, carries the olive branch upward with powerful thrusts of its wings.  The bird does not sit or float lazily on the updrafts of a warm and friendly world, but actively works to carry its message to an inimicable one.

The races of Man are painted in large, simple forms with a minimum of border distinction.  In this way Picasso graphically illustrates his realization that human beings share a heritage and that it is the artificial definitions which have prevented the development of a truly universal brotherhood.  The faces of Man, stylized representations of the Negro, Indian, Asian and Caucasian, form a square which embraces the brilliant blue shield upon which the dove flies. The forehead of one face becomes the chin of another at each corner, unifying the composition and the concept. Each profile is set against a color of another race, thus strengthening the composition and subtly unifying it.  Free spots of color, picked up from the central square, are repeated in the border. 

This is a joyful, hopeful picture which contrasts dramatically with the apocalyptic vision of war which Picasso thrust upon a shocked world in Guernica which is on loan from the artist to the Museum of Modem Art in New York City. "

Writer and Editor in Chief  LETTRES FRANCAISES

Pierre Daix was born in Ivry-sur-Seine on May 24, 1922, and died in Paris on November 2, 2014. He studied at the Lycée Henri IV in Paris before his preparatory class was transferred to Rennes at the beginning of the Second World War. In 1939, he joined the French Communist Party (P.C.F.) and entered the Resistance from the Occupation. Arrested after the demonstration on November 11, 1940 on Place de l'Étoile, he was incarcerated in nine French prisons before being deported to Mauthausen in Austria. At the Liberation, he became head of the private secretariat of Charles Tillon, Minister of Air, Armaments and Reconstruction. From 1947, he worked at Éditions sociales and the communist daily Ce soir, of which he became editorial director. He was mainly, for nearly twenty years, from 1953 to 1972, editor-in-chief of French Letters to Louis Aragon.

[spookyabuki]

In this tradition of political funerals, grief refuses confinement to the cemetery, to “friendly bosoms” or “secret sighs.” Its breaking out into the open activates geographies where public and private, collective and personal, already converge. Word of the garment workers’ funeral strike was spread via hand-distributed flyers and neighborhood socialist newspapers like the Call and the Jewish Daily Forward, and strong local unions helped the cheek-by-jowl neighbor-laborers see that they both rose and fell as a collective. The event released immigrant workers’ fellow-feeling, filling Lower Manhattan with a politically potent, intimate charge that the powers-that-be sought to circumscribe, sequester, and suppress. ACT UP members were often friends, lovers, and neighbors before they were comrades-in-arms. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the streets of Greenwich Village, perhaps the world’s most famous venue for vibrant queer life, were transformed by furious queer grief.

—Olivia Schwob, from "Mourn and Organize," in Guernica

[warningsine]

https://www.ottawareviewofbooks.com/single-post/2015/10/31/palestine-by-hubert-haddad

Reviewed by Timothy Niedermann

Any author writing fiction about Palestine for a Western audience has two problems. The first is Westerners’ overall unfamiliarity with the Middle East, its long, varied history, and its very diverse cultures, and our attendant assumption of the superiority of Western institutions and practices. The second problem is the polarized, propagandistic nature of the current information that Westerners receive from both sides with regard to Palestine and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Recently released in English by Guernica Editions, French author Hubert Haddad’s prize-winning 2007 novel Palestine is a brave attempt to get past the political noise and cultural baggage to tell a story of human beings caught in the remorseless conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.

In the southern West Bank, an Israeli soldier, Cham, is wounded in an ambush. Briefly captured by a small group of terrorists, he is soon abandoned by his captors near Hebron. Dressed in Arab clothing, with no memory of who he is, Cham wanders until an Arab scrap dealer finds him and delivers him to the home of Asmahane, a blind woman, and her anorexic daughter, Falastin. As they nurse Cham back to health, they notice his resemblance to Falastin’s brother, Nessim, a university student who is missing and presumed dead. Years before, Falastin’s father was killed by the Israelis. Falastin, then eleven, was with him at the time and is still haunted by memories of that day. She is now part of an underground resistance movement.

After he has recovered, Cham moves through the checkpoints and back alleys of Hebron, learning the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship, as he is beaten and nearly imprisoned, witnessing harassment, raids by the Israeli army, and the razing of Asmahane’s house with her inside. Cham and Falastin fall in love, but her course is set, and she disappears on an undisclosed mission of her own choosing. Alone, Cham joins a terrorist group and infiltrates back into Israel wearing a vest laden with explosives.

Haddad’s main point seems fairly clear: take an Israeli, subject him to the same treatment that Israel metes out to Palestinians and that Israeli will likely become a terrorist, too.

He inserts a good deal of factual information into the text, mostly through dialogue, which is clearly meant to give the reader some background into the history and events that shape the daily lives of Palestinians. The descriptions of the relentless cycle of violence in both its deliberate and capricious forms are viscerally disturbing.

But Haddad also adds literary touches. “Falastin” is Arabic for “Palestine,” and, indeed, the beautiful, thin girl represents the land of Palestine, a place of marvels starved by circumstance. The language is often poetic, giving resonance to the unique and delicate beauty of the West Bank as well as the profound suffering of its people.

But some of this works, and some of it doesn’t. The translation seems true to the French, but Haddad’s poetic images often contain odd or incomplete references. And he seems to prefer using pithy adjectives and adverbs instead of fuller elaboration. An Israeli soldier is described as an “abusive occupier, trapped in resentment”—whose resentment it is, and of what is not clear. Falastin “took in the landscape like a bird with jealous wings.” A breath is “fatal.” Phrases like these are evocative, but at the same time a bit vague.

The plot is thin and moves rather fast. The main purpose of Falastin and Cham’s moving in and around Hebron seems to be to allow the author to describe the checkpoints and abuses by Israeli authorities, but there is little else to create drama or suspense to give credence to the radicalization of Cham.

The characters present another problem. The few Israeli characters mostly are caricatures, either bigoted or lustful. Several minor characters are used as polemical vehicles, and thus come off as overly preachy. This gets tiring. And unfortunately, with the exception of Asmahane, who comes across vividly, the main characters seem distant. We get almost nothing of what is going on in Cham’s head as he fills the blank spaces of his memory with images and emotions from life in his new identity. As an amnesiac, he must be in a constant state of bombardment with what he is experiencing, trying desperately to establish reference points to help him understand what is going on around him. His state of mind is declared, but not developed or illustrated.

It’s similar with Falastin. The haunting memories of her father’s death come across in all their horror, but her current state of mind is presented to us as a given. We never get an intimate sense of her inner person—her doubts, her worries, her conflicts. Her falling in love with Cham comes out of the blue and seems inconsistent with her otherwise detached, driven personality.

Here and there, this is a powerful book, but its defects accumulate to leave the reader unsatisfied and unconvinced.

[elhnrt]

u know i was thinking about this a little more and i wanted to add a little bit more on my approach to this all, wherein ultimately i do think generative works are a trend like crypto and ultimately will die out thru these means and fingers crossed environmental regulations slapped on them, but i approach it the same way i do with all other art, specifically movies and visual art itself

who is this for

what is its intended message

what is the purpose of its existence

schmucks like to go shit on artists like klee or picasso or basquiat or rothko like, oh i could do that, AI can do that, the former of which haha yeah you didn't though you asshole, and the latter yeah AI can do that, while sucking up our remaining vestiges of water and non-renewable resources, but ultimately as a medium it winds up being just totally worthless.

guernica 1937 answers all three:

1. globally disseminated the events of one of the most horrific events that occurred during the spanish civil war, which is in and of itself an under-discussed yet catastrophic event in the interwar period in early 20th century europe, all under the shadow of an encroaching fascist umbrella that described modern art - in this case, surrealism - as 'degenerate' art (sidenote, so think about how you sound the next time you decide to scoff at surrealism/cubism/minimalism/experimental etc art on principle, if you're that type)

2. to showcase the horrors of indiscriminate bombing on a civilian population, mostly of women and children and their goods considering it took place during a day where everyone would be in the town, not to mention how fascistic alignment winds up being deadly to even the far reaching vestiges of society

3. the size of the canvas takes up the length and height of an entire museum exhibit's wall at 349.3 cm × 776.5 cm (137.4 in × 305.5 in) and is thus not something to be ignored, and being that picasso was originally from spain and antifascist as well, the piece is both a humanitarian, historical documentation and an espousal of antifascist belief

but of course to compare fanworks of an anime series to a tragedy like guernica is disrespectful, but i wanted to give a more solid answer as something to reflect upon in any future debate. swinging back around to the original point: fanfic authors who use AI to generate covers for their work

who is the work for? - primarily the creator themselves. the audience, as i find, could not give less of a shit about the cover work unless it's on a shelf, and even then...

what is its intended message? - 'to entice' is the obvious answer, but shouldn't the merit of the work be the main enticement?

for example, this is the cover of my very beat up and overly worn copy of 1984 that i've had since third grade. it is a majority white cover. there is nothing else to say about it, but still satisfies my three requirements in its own way. and not only that, the merit of the work on its own carries itself: "big brother is watching you". there's even memes about it with quotes from the work itself.

3. what is the purpose of its existence? - supposedly to entice, but let's be real: generative work winds up being a monolith of the same stylistic rendering because, as i mentioned before, artificially generated work scrapes together the most common denominator to try and imitate mass appeal without understand what that appeal is. and, sorry to say, mass appeal is usually a. bought b. nostalgia-based and/or c. mass marketed in that it's pummeled into your eyes and ears and brain on the daily so you can't escape it and therefore completely saturates the scraping grounds.

a big gotcha i see toward artist wariness over generative works is like, haha ohhh yeah i'm just gonna commission someone to draw pregnant seinfeld giving birth to a gray alien yeah sure, which is like, not even close to what i'm talking about, generating meme phrases visually is just pure ridiculousness, and i don't even mean that as an insult, like memes are ridiculous and redundant on their own. i'm obviously talking about people who are supposedly taking their craft seriously but can't even be assed to put in the effort to show the supposed love they have for the story they want to tell and instead just go computer! show me this concept of this thing i want to make but i don't give enough of a shit about to sink the time into perfecting it! well i don't give enough of a shit to sink my time into reading/looking at it. i will scroll faster every time because it looks like everything else i'm forced to look at every day and hate already so i'm not even going to bother lol. i don't entertain artistic laziness

Hey! I'm writing again, and I even feel embarrassed about it, but I'm really interested in your opinion.

How do you feel about the fact that some have started using artificial intelligence capable of drawing, not only for fun, but also in all seriousness? I quite often see authors on various sites whose fanfiction covers are generated by AI. As far as I know, some artists find this offensive — the fact that people prefer neural networks to them. What do you think about this? As a person who sincerely admires your work, I really want to hear the answer.

'grats on picking up the pen again! no need to feel embarrassed, i'm just flattered you'd come to me for my take on the situation. which is simple: aside from the horrendous environmental impact of generated dog shit, which it is, why should i even give the time of day to something someone couldn't even give a shit enough about to make themselves in the first place? like why would i spend my recreational time on something so effortless. let's be real here: it's just barrel scraping for the common denominator. and i have standards.

[ryan-n83313]

Virtual Sketchbook #2

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Journaling (6 Of the Following Examples below):

Unity and Variety: An assembly of assembling all individual parts to unite to work together as one structure.

Balance: Maintaining the use of fine arts such as color wise, outline, and shape of invention of the piece of the works that display optical steadiness.

Emphasis and Subordination: Form an establishment of underline ideas that focus on the subject matter or plan designs that artists desire to showcase in an artwork.

Directional Forces: A guided pathways that indicated within the artwork that catch the eyes of the readers through the configuration.

Repetition and Rhythm: Having more than one identical drawn articles or items which repetitively happen in the setting of the main plot for the tale.

Scale and Proportion: Narrates the connection between the dimensions of dissimilar sections and an all-inclusive structure, including mention the artwork's canvas size.

(Examples of pictures for each and all of the Principles of Design):

a.) (Unity and Variety)

b.) (Balance)

c.) (Emphasis and Subordination)

d.) (Directional Forces)

e.) (Repetition and Rhythm)

f.) (Scale and Proportion)

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Writing and Looking

(Fig. 6. 13)

Title of the Artwork: Guernica (By Pablo Picasso)

Figure and Page #: 6.2; Purposes of Drawing

The medium of the artwork, Guernica, by Picasso, was made of oil in canvas and was originated in the year of 1937. The composition structure of Guernica contains a style of mural and painting. The skill technique mostly be conditional on the merge of Cubist shapes with a monochrome paint board which provide the shading of the decoration to be more practical than before. Not only that, the work itself also include as a expressionistic message which invents such dreadful depiction of conflict and chaos that occur in our main history from time to time before.

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Connecting Art to the World

Color are mainly a crucial key in accordance to what people act and acknowledge to anything at their surroundings within our range. It may even affected the course of action of how others perceive and how they make contact with each other. The color also bring influence upon me since it create a value of worth that depend on its usefulness. Take the traffic lights for example, almost everyone around the world in real life, including me, have seen traffic lights at the intersection street either if it more than once, twice, or more times before. These traffic lights contain 3 color block panels that signify the restriction of the drivers' movement. If the traffic lights shows green light, it means to go ahead but move behind carefully if there are drivers present in the roadway ahead. If it yellow light, it means to proceed with caution while take a quick glance at other drivers from different road paths in intersection. And if it red light, it means to stop completely. Overall, the color lights of the traffic lights are informative since it a simple yet effective presenting implement, which clearly directs and notifies drivers, including bicyclists and walkers on the sidewalk what to do next before proceed carelessly to minimize further accidents on the road. My "color scheme" for my life is dark blue since it represents a sense of responsibility and potential. It also shows a kind of mood I'm having which I am fine and comfortable with having to take a walk in a dark outside during the nighttime or sleep and work alone in my own bedroom without any disturbance from anyone or anything except my family members.

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Art Project (3 Comic Panels Below):

These art panels that I created describes the kind of everyday life I have been dealing with daily. My daily activities are consists of eating, sleeping, working, playing, and more. Very often, I would prefer working alone at my own pace and avoid going to public almost all of the time, since as an introvert person myself, I'm still not comfortable enough to go outside for a fresh change in public yet. Until I build enough confident to stand tall and self-assured with everyone around me, I'll give it a try eventually.

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Photo/Design (5/31)

(Black and White vs. Color Photography)

Black and White Photography by Aaron Reed

Color Photograph

(Group 6 - Photography)

     The idea behind the grayscale of black and white photographs helps support in separates disturbance of coloring shade which allows eyewitnesses drawn in attention on more features and dynamics of the center of the frame. Above, the black and white photo displays the pathway guiding along with the fences, including in between the trees, depicting a prolonged adventure that is still waiting for you to follow. Judging by the grayscale picture, it brings me back some memories from the history of the past that are still written in our modern research that there was time like the picture shown above existed before. The inspiration of color photographs intends to carry on the content of the news to us readers and followers. The shining glow of the sun gives off such a wonderful view in essence to the natural world as if it were sent back to our good side. So long as the light of the color photograph shows up, it brings positive effects for me to smile once more with how our future still has endless possibilities to do much more greater implements. 

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[digitalsketchbook1]

Writing and Research:

Pablo Picasso 1937 Guernica. Oil on canvas; 11’ 5 ½” x 25” 5 ¼

Pablo Picasso felt inspired by the Spanish Civil War. The painting is representing the "town of Guernica in Basque County in northern Spain". This town was getting bombed by the Italians and Germans. 

This painting was recognized and brought awareness, it conveyed a powerful message to the world and became an anti-war support for peace. 

 This became one of Picasso's most famous pieces of work but he originally did not have a political message in mind he wanted to do the opposite. 

Picasso used a grey, black, and white color palette and used these colors to portray and foreshadow what was coming in the second world war. 

There are hidden messages in the painting such as the skull which was laid over the horse's body, the bull formed by the horse's legs, and the screaming women and dismembered soldiers representing the town of Guernica. 

3. When I took my first look at this piece of artwork, I felt that there was violence surrounding this painting, the first thing that caught my eye was the bull on the left side. After researching and looking more into the artwork it told me the story of why there is so much going on and why it takes a violent approach. When looking at the art now I see the hidden messages that Picasso left in his work. I mentioned a few hidden messages above but the one that caught my eye the most was the sun at the top of the painting with the light bulb symbol in the middle. 

Art and Writing:

Every day I see this piece of art in my hallway right outside of my room as part of our house decor. My family and I went to Guatemala one summer and went to La Azotea Genuine Estate Antigua. This is a coffee estate where they grow their own coffee. This work is done out of one of the coffee sacs in which they package the coffee. I think this piece is beautiful because it is unique and represents a beautiful memory of visiting a beautiful country. 

Writing a Self-Portrait:

I am 20 years old and I am a female. I was born in New Jersey but raised in Florida my whole life. My parents are from Cuba and came from Cuba in the 80s. When I am not doing any school work I like to hang out with my dog and friends. I am not a member of organized groups but work at a restaurant on Longboat Key. What makes me uniquely me I would say is b able to read people.

Self Portrait:

I think what fascinates me about my daily life is life. I feel like I am always taking pictures and videos of myself, my friends, my family, my dog, the ocean, sunsets, and everything. I think we take life for granted more times than we think and I think we need to appreciate the world around us and as it says in the picture, “enjoy the little things”. 

[burlveneer-music]

Stephen Mallinder - tick tick tick

Cabaret Voltaire co-founder Stephen Mallinder’s second solo outing for Dais further distills his signature fusion of minimal synth, oblique wordplay, and “wonky disco” into a riveting rhythm suite ripe for our age of escalation: tick tick tick. Channeling the temporal malaise of lockdown through a lusher palette of modular electronics and stereo strings, the songs embrace ambiguity and plasticity, loose systems of percolating circuitry and airless funk. Recorded across a handful of sessions at MemeTune Studios in Cornwall with frequent collaborator Benge (aka Ben Edwards), Mallinder cites no guiding aesthetic premise for the collection beyond “cowbell on every track, and entirely no reverb.” From the first coiled cybernetic groove of opener “Contact,” the album’s spatial dynamics are disorienting and asymmetrical, alternately cold and sensual, opiated and claustrophobic. But, throughout, “rhythm is the default, the bedrock, the building block – even the melodies are rhythmic.” Across 40-plus years of electronic musicianship, Mallinder’s sense of timing and tempo has honed into a rare tier of mastery, limber and fluid but knotted with strange frictions. Shades of Detroit technoid industrial (“ringdropp,” “Shock to the Body”) crossfade into no wavy punk-funk (“Guernica Gallery,” “Galaxy,” “The Trial”), bad trip IDM (“Wasteland”), and jittery vapor house (“Hush”), at the threshold of modes both familiar and foreign. Lyrically the record is equally evasive, rich with allusions and associative linguistics, surveying liquid notions of societal noise, ecological ruin, art world pretension, and the trials of daily life. But the lack of fixed meaning remains Mallinder’s main muse: “Music should draw you in; lyrics should make you think. Most interpretation is misinterpretation.” This is music of countdowns and comedowns, fleeting pleasures and opaque futures, observing the great decline while dancing on its ashes. Flux is deathless and forever; the rest, illusion: “I will be a constant figure / Flickering a moving picture / Turning in your head forever / Split apart but held together.”

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 4.26

1348 - Czech king Karel IV founds the Charles University in Prague, which was later named after him and was the first university in Central Europe. 1336 – Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ascends Mont Ventoux. 1478 – The Pazzi family attack Lorenzo de' Medici kills his brother Giuliano during High Mass in Florence Cathedral. 1564 – Playwright William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England (date of actual birth is unknown). 1607 – The Virginia Company colonists make landfall at Cape Henry. 1721 – A massive earthquake devastates the Iranian city of Tabriz. 1777 – Sybil Ludington, aged 16, rode 40 miles (64 km) to alert American colonial forces to the approach of the British regular forces 1794 – Battle of Beaumont during the Flanders Campaign of the War of the First Coalition. 1802 – Napoleon Bonaparte signs a general amnesty to allow all but about one thousand of the most notorious émigrés of the French Revolution to return to France. 1803 – Thousands of meteor fragments fall from the skies of L'Aigle, France; the event convinces European scientists that meteors exist. 1805 – First Barbary War: United States Marines captured Derne under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon. 1865 – Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, in Virginia. 1903 – Atlético Madrid Association football club is founded 1920 - Ice hockey makes its Olympic debut at the Antwerp Games with center Frank Fredrickson scoring 7 goals in Canada's 12-1 drubbing of Sweden in the gold medal match. 1923 – The Duke of York weds Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at Westminster Abbey. 1925 – Paul von Hindenburg defeats Wilhelm Marx in the second round of the German presidential election to become the first directly elected head of state of the Weimar Republic. 1933 – The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established. 1937 – Spanish Civil War: Guernica, Spain, is bombed by German Luftwaffe. 1942 – Benxihu Colliery accident in Manchukuo leaves 1549 Chinese miners dead. 1943 – The Easter Riots break out in Uppsala, Sweden. 1944 – Georgios Papandreou becomes head of the Greek government-in-exile based in Egypt. 1944 – Heinrich Kreipe is captured by Allied commandos in occupied Crete. 1945 – World War II: Battle of Bautzen: Last successful German tank-offensive of the war and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht. 1945 – World War II: Filipino troops of the 66th Infantry Regiment, Philippine Commonwealth Army, USAFIP-NL and the American troops of the 33rd and 37th Infantry Division, United States Army are liberated in Baguio and they fight against the Japanese forces under General Tomoyuki Yamashita. 1954 – The Geneva Conference, an effort to restore peace in Indochina and Korea, begins. 1956 – SS Ideal X, the world's first successful container ship, leaves Port Newark, New Jersey, for Houston, Texas. 1958 – Final run of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue from Washington, D.C., to New York City after 68 years, the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives. 1960 – Forced out by the April Revolution, President of South Korea Syngman Rhee resigns after 12 years of dictatorial rule. 1962 – NASA's Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon. 1963 – In Libya, amendments to the constitution transform Libya (United Kingdom of Libya) into one national unity (Kingdom of Libya) and allows for female participation in elections. 1964 – Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania. 1966 – The magnitude 5.1 Tashkent earthquake affects the largest city in Soviet Central Asia with a maximum MSK intensity of VII (Very strong). Tashkent is mostly destroyed and 15–200 are killed. 1966 – A new government is formed in the Republic of the Congo, led by Ambroise Noumazalaye. 1970 – The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization enters into force. 1981 – Dr. Michael R. Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center performs the world's first human open fetal surgery. 1982 – Fifty-seven people are killed by former police officer Woo Bum-kon in a shooting spree in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea. 1986 – The Chernobyl disaster occurs in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. 1989 – The deadliest known tornado strikes Central Bangladesh, killing upwards of 1,300, injuring 12,000, and leaving as many as 80,000 homeless. 1989 – People's Daily publishes the April 26 Editorial which inflames the nascent Tiananmen Square protests. 1991 – Fifty-five tornadoes break out in the central United States. Before the outbreak's end, Andover, Kansas, would record the year's only F5 tornado. 1994 – China Airlines Flight 140 crashes at Nagoya Airport in Japan, killing 264 of the 271 people on board. 2002 – Robert Steinhäuser kills 16 at Gutenberg-Gymnasium in Erfurt, Germany before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot. 2005 – Under international pressure, Syria withdraws the last of its 14,000 troop military garrison in Lebanon, ending its 29-year military domination of that country (Syrian occupation of Lebanon). 2015 – Nursultan Nazarbayev is re-elected President of Kazakhstan with 97.7% of the vote. 2018 – American comedian Bill Cosby is found guilty of sexual assault. 2019 – Marvel Studios' blockbuster film, Avengers: Endgame, is released, becoming the highest-grossing film of all time, surpassing the previous box office record of Avatar.

[art-now-italy]

In the Name of the Father, Chiara Criniti

This illustration tells both the daily tragedy of refugees landing on European shores in search of peace and, at the same time, it depicts the drama and the effort of all those who volunteer to provide assistance, often in vain. Therefore, not only violence is perpetrated In the Name of the Father but also, fortunately, people are rescued In the Name of the Father. The illustration is heavily inspired by Picasso's Guernica, an extraordinary symbol of protest against war and all forms of violence.

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Drawing-In-the-Name-of-the-Father/851350/3432498/view

[lifeinpoetry]

Are there any options for me if I wanted good quality poems but I don't have the money to subscribe to lit mags?

I’m not sure what you mean by good quality since that is subjective but here’s a list of online lit mags and some pay lit mags with free online content. Also, some poem of the day/week sites & some big sites that post work from the books of contemporary poets and poetry from lit mags.

Lit Magazines/Journals

The Felt

The Offing

Winter Tangerine

The Adroit Journal

BOAAT

Black Warrior Review

DIAGRAM

ANMLY

Tinderbox

Auburn Avenue

Asian American Writers’ Workshop

The Rumpus

Cosmonauts Avenue

wildness

Triangle House

Poetry Northwest

SWWIM

The American Poetry Review

The Baffler

AMP

Blood Orange Review

Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Figure 1

The Puritan

Guernica

Nat. Brut

Big Other

Blackbird

The Pinch Journal

Four Way Review

Scoundrel Time

Lunch Ticket

Thrush

Sixth Finch

Inverted Syntax

Bennington Review

Small Orange

Tupelo Quarterly

Quarterly West

New Delta Review

Literary Hub

AGNI

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Love’s Executive Order

[all-or-nothing-baby]

Suptober |2019|

Oct 17th: LIMBO

[ so, today's offering is a collaboration between myself and the lovely @reallyelegantsharkfish. i spent a lot of the day making a piece of art that I ended up HATING. then my good friend sharkfish swam in, coming to my rescue and offering this work of hers for me to post. so i wrote some #destielcrack based on literally everything we just chatted about in DMs. you're welcome? ps it's also today's offering as it mentions food xD ]

_____________________________

Castiel (obviously) doing the limbo, drawn in red ink on lined paper.

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Picasso's Blue-Eyed

Nightmare

Sam, Dean and Cas took an afternoon off from The Daily Grind at a pop-up icerink in Austin, Texas, near a dangerous looking wall covered in really cool graffiti (including one freakishly real-looking Orangutan) that Dean had heard had somehow traveled in time.

When they got inside, weirdly—as well as a fifty-foot mega-screen TV playing reruns of Grey's Anatomy, which was a close second to Dr Sexy, in Dean's opinion—there was a Limbo dance bar set up right there on the ice.

Cas made a beeline for it. Obviously.

Dean watched, bemused, as Sam circled back round to where he stood.

"Woah, Cas is actually pretty good at that!" Sam said, obviously impressed.

"Yeah, wow. Yeah. Dude is bendy. Wow. Who knew, huh...?" Dean said, obviously turned on.

Sam screwed up his face. "OMC. Are you done?"

"Did Picasso build Guernica in a day?"

"Dean, no, that's not—you know what, nevermind. Go chat him up, man! You have got to finally tell him how you feel. Start a conversation about... about that Shark tracker website you were looking at the other day! Then go from there. Cas'll be putty in your hands."

"But I'm... I'm scared, Sammy." Dean admitted.

"Eleven. Frickin. Years! It's time, Dean. Go tell him you love him RIGHT NOW or I swear, I'll tie you down and make you watch Planet of The Apes again; the originals with Heston that freak you the hell out."

Dean skated over to Cas so fast he nearly fell on his ass, thrice. He reached him just as Cas completed another dip.

"Hello, Dean. This is so much fun."

"Dude, you gotta kiss me. Like, right now." Dean blurted. "If you don't, I'm gonna have performance anxiety on hunts about talking apes wearing suede vests, and Charlton Heston's dick swinging 'round like a broken clock arm all over the damn shop!"

Cas looked (quite fairly) very confused. But then resolute as he seemed to make up his mind...

He grabbed Dean's warm face in cold hands and kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, until all Dean's thoughts of time travel, Grey's Anatomy, scary movies, an old actors wang—and even how crazy-bendy Cas was—melted away with the ice they stood on, seeing as they were in Austin and it was 100 fucking degrees.

Now, there was only Cas.

Sam wolf whistled from across the rink with immense joy and a huge, thank-fuck amount of relief.

Dean lifted his lids to Cas' smiling eyes. Cas then looked a little sheepish (but that was better than Orangutan-ish, in Dean's opinion).

"So... I guess we're not in limbo anymore," Cas deadpanned.

Dean laughed harder than when he'd tried to draw a picture of his phone earlier that day, but it had turned out looking more like corned beef.

"I guess not, man. Wanna do that some more?"

"The kissing? Or the native Trinidadian dance?" Cas asked, hopeful for either.

"Oh, definitely the kissing. As long as you don't make an Orangutan face, I'm all over you..." and with that strange remark, Dean movie-star kissed Cas, lowering him down right under the limbo bar.

Sam shouted, "OMC. Are you done?!" purposely repeating himself, not just because the author couldn't be bothered finding a different way to say the same thing.

But Dean and Cas weren't done—not then nor ever.

Epilogue:

Sam promised to destroy his VHS copies of the original Planet of The Apes movies (but absolutely didn't); Cas' now has Dean's "Suptober" drawing of corned beef (that really is not supposed to be corned beef) up on their bedroom wall; and Dean is still freaked out by Orangutan's and other primates. But mostly Orangutans.

The End

[imkeepinit]

Guernica (1937) by Pablo Picasso

On April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the town of Guernica was bombed in a collaborative airstrike by the Condor Legion of the German Luftwaffe and the Aviazione Legionaria of Fascist Italy. Code named ‘Operation Rügen', the bombing was carried out at the request of Francisco Franco, head of the Nationalists faction with whom Germany and Italy were aligned. This was one of the first aerial bombings to gain notoriety, particularly because of the military force used against a civilian population. Being market day, most of the people of Guernica were gathered in the market place in the center of town. When the bombing started, they were unable to escape. Meanwhile, the war products factory at the outskirts of town went unscathed, leading to charges that this was a terror bombing.

Picasso had been asked by the Spanish Republican government to provide a large canvas for the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. Picasso began some unenthusiastic sketches on the theme of the artist in his studio. After the attack, poet Juan Larrea urged Picasso to make the bombing his subject. George Steer, a reporter for the British daily newspaper The Times, was an eyewitness to the attack, and his reporting provided the inspiration that Picasso needed. He completed the painting in just 35 days.

[hinxlinx]

Daily #Art - Day 10-08-19 (2019) Tears of Chaos Here's an abstract tribute to Batman and Joker, with an art inspired by Picasso's Guernica (1937). "Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair." - Anonymous I think the same sentiment applies to almost everything, like we can replace “trust” with a “society” or a “city”. Granted nothing escapes entropy, but we shall not despair and should never give in to destruction. . 每日藝�� - 2019年10月08日 （2019）失序之淚 這是一幅對蝙蝠俠及小丑致敬的抽象畫，其藝術靈感來自畢加索的《格爾尼卡》（1937）。 “多年建設起來的信任，瞬間便可破滅，耗無盡來修補。” -匿名 我認為此句適用於所有事物，例如我們可以用一個「社會」或一座「城市」取代此句的「信任」。 沒有任何東西可以逃避熵/失序現象，但是我們絕不能絕望，也絕不能屈服於破壞。 (#15,748 / #338) . . . #dailyart #illustration #pendrawing #abstractart #characterart #joker #clown #chaos #order #fire #batman #小丑 #混亂 #火 #蝙蝠俠 #hinxlinx #ericlynxlin #elynx #軒 #instaart #artofinstagram

[lookthroughyourlashes]

DO THE READING #3

FEATURED TEXTS: “The Far North Experience” by Rebecca Solnit, “On Reckoning with a Mother’s Relentless Need to Save Everything” by Donna Masini, and “A Burning is Not A Letting Go” by Suzanne Levine and Kristin Prevallet

There is a direct link between excessive accumulation and the human desire to identify with those closest to them. each article named above clearly outlines specific emotional impulses: the desire to accumulate possessions, the desire to dispose of/alter accumulated possessions, and the drive to empathetically connect with absent loved ones.

until the 20th century, most humans were plagued by scarcity. Everything from food to clothing to household goods were difficult to create, and relatively expensive to obtain. But the industrial revolution dramatically increased the average americans’ access to (and appetite for) cheap goods, crowding homes and creating a problem that would have been foreign to our ancestors: hoarding. Donna masini’s article paints a vivid picture of collection of outdated clothing, unused office supplies, and endless household gadgets that confronted her and her father after her mother’s death. Charged with the daunting task of de-cluttering her parents home, she was forced to grapple with her own emotional attachments to the objects that her mother had saved. Masini found that she was reluctant to dispose of things because they seemed to be the safeguards of her memories (she relates them to Tupperware), capable of holding onto the happy moments and keeping them safe. But as she sifted through her parents’ home, she came to the realization that no stockpile of keepsakes had the power to preserve memories. The past, she explains, only exists within her for as long as she is alive to remember it. The objects made her feel as though her loved ones were with her, but her memories were not tethered to them. Without which, they became “just junk (masini, 8).”

She closes the article with the realization that everything that she was holding onto could outlive her only if she wrote it down. Writing allowed donna masini to free herself from the anxiety of impending loss while curating and organizing the past. artist Suzanne Levine found that her own written records, meticulously preserved and archived, were the source of her “dread”. Like masini, Levine explains that memories “are not contained in anything (Levine, 2)”, rather they survive as fragments in the mind, occasionally re-connected by some external inspiration. the urge to hold onto keepsakes is driven by people who mistake documents and artifacts from the past for the past itself. Unlike more tangible aritfacts, levine’s decades-worth of diaries were different, because their words were capable of reviving memories that were better forgotten. The power that donna masini found so invigorating sparked anxiety for Levine. she was torn between a desire to preserve the diaries for posterity, and the conflicting notion that nobody else would care about the trials of her teenage years, and that they were not worth preserving.

Levine chose to confront the opposing urges by taking a radical artistic action. she chose to burn the diaries, taking photographs of the paper as it curls in and eventually fades into ash. the words that survived the flames became erasure poems, fragmented and fragile just like her memories of the years that they chronicled. The transformation freed her from the painful years of her childhood, allowing her to become the sole keeper of her memories.

Both of the above essays speak to the ways that we grapple with the objects that remain from our pasts, and the memories that are associated with them. rebecca solnit’s eloquent definition of empathy speaks to both artists’ need to dispose of the physical remnants. She relates the pursuit of empathetic interaction as navigating a labyrinth in the dark. lacking the ability to see, one must proceed into the unknown darkness with their hands outstretched, using their sense of touch to search for the way forward. This mindset is ripe for creativity because it forces one to act without planning ahead or fully comprehending their actions. Here, ideas can emerge unencumbered by the harshness or rationality. This “slow journey into the unknown and the unknowable (solnit, 4)” forces to embrace an all-encompassing state of confusion. This allows the wanderer to truly hear what surrounds them, to immerse themselves in it. This is the approach neccessary to learn empathy, because to empathize is to identify with a person by imagining their reality as if it were one’s own, by immersing oneself in it.

simply immersing, and hearing is insufficient. “To hear,” solnit explains “is to let the sound wander all the way through the labyrinth go your ear; to listen is to travel the other way to meet it (solnit, 5).” One must actively. engage with the information, reaching out for it, translating it into one’s own inner language so as to truly understand the others the way they understand themselves: through their senses. if we accept solnit’s definition of empathy, this active emotional connection and curiosity, then I wonder how it would feel to search through that metaphorical labyrinth only to find oneself alone. When we personify our heirlooms and keepsakes, we are acting out of desperation to achieve a sense of empathetic intimacy with an absent person. by picking up the things that they interacted with everyday, one can envelop themselves in the ruins left by their absent loved-one. they can smell the soap as they wash the kitchen sink, can wrap themselves in their coats, and go for walks on the same sidewalks. after all of that is gone, they are left to scour the snapshots and the outdated documents for any traces of that unknowable life.

EMPATHY CAN STILL BE FOUND FOR THOSE WHO ARE ABSENT IF ONE DIRECTS THOSE SAME EFFORTS TOWARDS ARTWORKS, LITERATURE, AND FILM. ALL SPEAK TO THE MINUTIAE OF DAILY LIFE, TO THOSE ASPECTS OF INDIVIDUAL EXISTENCE THAT WOULD OTHERWISE BE LOST.

CITATION:

Solnit, Rebecca. “The Far North Experience: In Praise of Darkness (and Light).” Guernica Magazine, June 17, 2013. https://www.guernicamag.com/rebecca-solnit-the-far-north-of-experience.

Masini, Donna. “On Reckoning with a Mother's Relentless Need to Save Everything.” Literary Hub, September 4, 2019. https://lithub.com/on-reckoning-with-a-mothers-relentless-need-to-save-everything/.

Levine, Suzanne, and Kristin Prevallet. “A Burning Is Not Letting Go.” Guernica Magazine, May 9, 2017. https://www.guernicamag.com/kristin-prevallet-a-burning-is-not-a-letting-go/.

MANY THANKS to Literary Hub and Guernica Magazine, for not hiding your deep wells of collective artistic effort behind paywalls.

FEATURED RESOURCE: SPOTIFY

NO REALLY, THIS IS AN ART RESOURCE:

As a painter, my hands and my eyes are constantly occupied while in my studio. This means that I have less time to catch up on media that I would normally read. In the studio, I use Spotify not just to listen to music, but to stay up to date on the news, to learn about intriguing makers and thinkers in the art world, and to become a a more culturally literate human being. I cite this as an art resource specifically because it features a number of really stellar art podcasts that not only inspire me in the studio, but that introduce important ideas that can advance one’s work in significant ways: many introduce listeners to up an coming artists that they might not otherwise have heard of, others give established artists air time to share useful technical knowledge, still more keep listeners up to date on the complex machinations of the art world, allowing listeners to maintain their awareness of our shared professional community.

DON’T BELIEVE ME?

Bad at Sports: Presents more than 700 interviews with the most influential artists, art historians, curators, critics, and teachers. The episodes are often more than an hour long, and are full of smart ideas that can come in handy when writing an artist statement or advancing a studio practice. They are based in Chicago, which means that they spend a lot of time on local happenings.

Check out episode 360 (where the crew interviews the radiant Lucy Lippard).

Savvy Painter Podcast with Antrese Wood: Host Antrese Wood interviews expert painters about every facet of their studio practices. Episodes are released every other Thursday, and explore a range of subjects such as trends in art sales, the future of painting in the digital age, and parenting as an artist. Other artists focus more on the evolving content of their work, or the technical advances in their studios. In addition, listeners can suggest artists, attend workshops, and learn more about painters who rarely catch the attention of larger publications.

My favorite episode: The love of literature & telling stories through art with Susan Lichtman

The Lonely Palette: Tamar Avishai spends each episode with a specific influential artwork. She starts by interviewing museum-visitors as they stand in front of the piece, exposing listeners to fresh ways of understanding their old favorites. Often, she speaks to people with no artistic background. Then, dives into the more academic portion of the show, breaking down the historical, social, and conceptual contexts that make each piece important. This podcast is useful for those artists who wish they had more time to settle down with a thick book, and want to keep their art history muscles flexed.

Start with episode 0: Art! What is it good for?

SOME OTHER ART PODCASTS WORTH EXPLORING:

I Like Your Work

Eyesore

Art Movements (by Hyperallergic)

Deep Color

WORKS IN PROGRESS: