LATEST UPDATE: Sept. 1 — “Killing Kit” is to be staged in a London try out. The production opens at The Cockpit on Sept. 21. FURTHER UPDATE: Feb. 15 — The reading came off well, I’m told. Somebody in The Cockpit audience tweeted: “Beautiful, meaty, dangerous Elizabethan play for today’s Elizabethans. Real writing. Great night.” […]
Two Poe Shows — One at the Morgan, One on Paper
Not being a Poe man myself, I asked a friend who happens to be an avid Poe man, how he would describe him. His reply — “The best writer, the best bad writer, America ever produced” — was pretty much a capsule preview of Charles McGrath’s excellent feature in this morning’s NY Times about the […]
Heathcote Williams: ‘My Dad and My Uncle’
![Royal Artillery gun crews and Howitzers WWI at Lydd [Bill Hyde collection].](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/My-Dad-and-My-Uncle-howitzer-1-.jpg)
Words by Heathcote Williams. Narration and montage by Alan Cox. Written upon learning that WWI centenary Remembrance plans are to be given £50 million by the UK government.— BBC News, 11 October 2012 My Dad and my Uncle were in World War One. At least they were in it, but not in it: Conscripted but […]
Sight Unseen, a Plug for Godfrey Reggio’s ‘Visitors’
2002: “Naqoyqatsi,” meaning “life as war,” was the third in Reggio’s qatsi trilogy. 1988: “Powaqqatsi,” meaning “life in transformation,” was the second. 1982: “Koyaanisqatsi,” meaning “life out of balance,” was the first. Reggio’s latest, “Visitors,” with another score by Philip Glass, will be released in 2014. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
He Had a Dream, But His Speech Was Hardly Noticed
![From the Wall Street Journal [Aug. 27, 1963]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/wsj-little-encouragement-e1377779460236.png)
Given all the self-congratulation of the 50th anniversary celebration marking the historic significance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, you’d think its importance had been noted at the time, especially by the news media. Well, Jess Bravin has news for you. The day before King gave the speech on the steps […]
Everybody’s Celebrating the ‘Dream’ Speech
So here’s A Reminder to Our Pipsqueak Leaders. Martin Luther King Jr. was bold and beautiful for a reason. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
‘No Borders’
‘The grass is greener when there are no sides.’ — Heathcote Williams Click for video. Narration and montage by Alan Cox. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
Why Some of the Best Journalists Jam the Media
This comment from William Osborne, in response to Surveillance Without Just Cause, deserves its own post: Most Americans no longer care if they are being spied on by their government. We live in a society so transparent they already feel they have no meaningful secrets left. Through social conditioning, government becomes an almost aestheticized ideal […]
On ‘Planetary-wide Surveillance Without Just Cause’
Why is it that dissident journalists are articulate and eloquent in their arguments? One good reason is that the truth is on their side. Another is that they’re dedicated to human rights. Watch Jacob Appelbaum, a dissident security researcher and Wikileaks associate, speaking today in an interview on “Democracy Now!” It’s a stunner, and not […]
Archival Evidence from the 20th Century
![Cutup Fragment in the 'Grand' Style [Jan Herman, 1970]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/CUT-UP-FRAGMENT-IN-THE-GRAND-STYLE.png)
The more books we read the sooner we perceive the plague that sweeps us … EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
Free Lynne Stewart: Save Her Life
UPDATES BELOW … Back in 2005, when Lynne Stewart was prosecuted for aiding terrorists in her role as a civil rights defense attorney representing Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted in 1995 of plotting to blow up the United Nations building in New York, it was clear the feds were aiming to fry her. […]
From a Townhouse to the Vasty Deep
Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? Glendower: Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command the Devil Hotspur: And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the Devil By telling the truth. […]
Queen of the Arms Trade
“Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II is one of the world’s richest women, worth £17 billion. Her investments in the arms trade include firms that produce the uranium used in depleted uranium (DU) shells. The deployment of these shells by the US military in its attack on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004 is believed to […]
An Amazing Act of Filming
I’m late on this, but I can now say that the widespread praise for this revelatory documentary is deserved. It is not — yes, NOT — an exploitation flick, but if you’re innarested in kinky you MUST see it. “The Act of Killing” is kinky to the 10th power. Not sex kinky but life-and-death kinky […]
Back-to-Back Writings From Underground Dos-à-Dos
+++ Incidental Intelligence: Anyone who cherishes raw truth, and especially those of us who were warmed by Carl Weissner’s friendship, will appreciate EINE ANDERE LIGA as a mammoth achievement. But Milena Verlag ought to correct two claims on its Web site: 1) that this posthumous collection of his underground writings has a foreword written by […]
‘It’s a Boy!’
![Inheritance [Click for video]](https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/QUEEN.jpg)
Someone asked what I thought about the royal birth in Britain. Nima Shirazi said it for me. And let’s not forget this: +++ Or the latest addition to the Royal Babylon video archive on YouTube: Inheritance. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
Connecting Kim Dotcom and Edward Snowden
To have a staff of thousands that keeps me informed is one of the privileges of this blog. Had I not been tipped about the projection of Kim Dotcom’s face with the words “United Stasi of America” on a wall of the U.S. embassy in Berlin, I would not have made a connection between N.S.A. […]