It’s one thing to get accepted to Yale but another to have sent your personal essay with an ode to Papa John’s. That’s precisely what Tennessee teen Carolina Williams did and the move prompted the admissions officer to order pizza after reading.
Carolina rejected Yale for Auburn in the end but that story doesn’t end there. Papa John’s caught wind of her pizza prose and sent her a bunch of free stuff!
(via Eater.com)
If you’re foolish enough to succumb to the whims of the media, you’d think Jeremy Corbyn is attempting to paint Downing Street a bright shade of Soviet red. He may want a revolution but not in the way Russia experienced in 1917. In this BBC World Service radio documentary, special guests depict the cultural influences of the Russian Revolution.
From Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago to the politics of Lenin and Trotsky, it all comes as part of the “Hope, Tragedy, Myths” exhibition at the British Library in London. What did it mean to be part of the early days of the Revolution?
And what about the subsequent decades of communism and the hostility that came with it? A range of voices from Uzbekistan, Syria, and Iceland tell their respective stories about the cultural legacy left behind.
You can listen to the documentary on the BBC Sounds website (sign-in required).
The Barcelona Pavilion was originally designed for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona by German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe but was demolished after the exposition ended.
Mies had a series of photographs taken of the building beforehand and thanks to these images, a group of Catalan architects were able to reconstruct it between 1983 and 1986.
This documentary details every innovate aspect of the pavilion, with quotes from Mies himself. Every element of the building had a purpose without the coldness of others of the era.
Innovation was the underlying theme, with opulence from the materials used (red onyx, marble and travertine.) As a lover of both Mies and the construct, I found it fascinating and learnt a lot from it.
Anyone with even a passing interest in architecture, design, or the modernist period will enjoy this documentary.
SeMies related: Another Mies documentary and Paul R. Williams: the Black architect of public buildings and celebrity homes
![[36] German Pavilion | Ludwig Mies van der Rohe](https://cultrface.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/wp-youtube-lyte/lyteCache.php?origThumbUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FdnJLZVQ8K8U%2F0.jpg)
I got into The Minimalists in 2017 after a breakup and while the minimalist movement is heavily whitewashed and misguided, these guys talk sense.
Rather than getting rid of everything and only buy 5 expensive white items in your expensive white apartment, they tell you to keep the things that have value and get rid of the stuff that doesn’t. It seems basic but that’s the trouble with letting go: it can be a fine art.
Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, known to their four million readers as “The Minimalists,” have written four books, including the bestselling memoir, Everything That Remains. They write about living a meaningful life with less stuff at TheMinimalists.com. Their new film, Minimalism, is currently the #1 documentary of 2016.
Stream their TED Talk below.
Head to any half-decent intercity newsagents and you’ll see a wall full of different magazines, glossy and independent, carving out a space to exhibit their culture of interest.
Proper Magazine started out as a fanzine quite some time ago and the indie mag has grown into a website and creative agency. Having worked with the likes of Adidas, Clarks, and Barbour, Proper know their stuff when it comes to clothing brands and related cultures.
The icing on the cake for me, however, is their online store. It contains the usual fare of t-shirts, stickers, and socks but I’m enamoured with the mugs on offer. Yes, I fell in love with some fancy mugs, okay? But they come in all kinds of wonderful colours and my particular favourite is the Proper El Pibe Mug (as I have a soft spot for Colombia after Italia 90 but unfortunately it’s no longer in stock.)
Proper Mag knows their audience well, as to be expected with decades of experience between the editors, Neil Summers and Mark Smith. Having their base in Manchester also helps; a cosmopolitan city with its own rich heritage, away from the clutches of London. Want to know more?
Visit the Proper website and check out the list of stockists so you can grab a copy!
Vic Berger is the master of comedic
will.i.am is a unique guy but this twists and distorts what we already knew into something truly spectacular. It also makes me wish I had a talking toilet. And some ill.i’s (yeah, they actually exist). You just take the wam out.
You’ll see what I mean.
The National Film Archive of Japan (NFAJ) has kindly uploaded 60 films from 1917 to 1941, each one primitive as the other. But when you think these creations were the foundations of masterpieces like Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion, you’ll appreciate them even more.
This shows Japanese animations are more than just anime so I’d highly recommend you watch some of them and get more accustomed to Japanese cinema.
Check the National Film Center’s website for a full list of movies.
Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight was packed full of references.
But the main focal point of his homage was John Carpenter’s The Thing (besides saying the N-word as many times as possible). I usually refrain from watching horror films because they scare me but The Thing is my favourite. I think it’s the cabin fever suspense a la Alien. The special effects are incredible even though they scare the crap out of me but that confirms their quality.
Below is a shot-by-shot comparison of the two films and the resemblance between them is uncanny. As homages/muses go, The Thing is a superb choice.
Apart from the advent of hip hop, not much gets a look in over white counterparts. Barkley L. Hendricks’ portraits were striking in recognising the beauty of post-Civil Rights blackness and every decade after. The contrast of minimalism and abundant strength in his paintings were unfortunately overlooked by those in the museums.
Kriston Capps of The Atlantic wrote a brilliant piece on his work and what it meant to black culture.
He never painted black people in protest or in crisis. Ideas about black nationalisms surfaced in his work as they were reflected in the world of images.
Barkley L. Hendricks died last Tuesday at the age of 72.
For my 10th birthday, I got a Gameboy Color. I cried when I unwrapped it because a few months prior, my original Gameboy DMG was stolen along with 10 games. I also got a gold cover for it but I’ve yet to find another since.
Gold is the colour of extravagance, wealth, riches, and excess. It’s also a colour of prosperity and grandeur and that’s why it’s one of my favourite colours behind red and green.
Here’s a series of images showcasing the gold experience in all its splendour. And if you like all things golden, you should check out how it can make your broken pottery look even better.
Get Out is probably one of the most unique and intriguing horror films I’ve seen since It Follows. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past month or two, Get Out is a huge box-office success and a critically acclaimed horror/thriller/comedy mash-up from the mind of Jordan Peele. A lot has been written about how Get Out derives its horror from racial overtones. This is certainly true and as a young black man myself, what resonated with me most was how Chris attempted to initially combat the awkwardness of the situation – particularly through his language.
In Get Out, Chris Washington, an African-American, accompanies his white girlfriend Rose to meet her parents in a predominately white community but he soon discovers something sinister is afoot. Most black people in predominately white countries are aware of the concept of microaggressions. Get Out successfully highlights how those day-to-day microaggressions contribute to fetishizing an individual by reducing them to stereotypical components. Instead of greeting Chris normally, white characters in the film adopt forced African-American slang and proclaim their love of Obama. To them, Chris isn’t ‘Chris the Individual’, instead, he’s reduced to ‘Chris The Black Guy’ – a thoroughly isolating experience.
Chris’ attempts to remedy this isolation strongly resonated with me. Whilst staying with Rose’s parents, Chris only encounters three other black people. His first solution to avoiding that segregation is to appeal to them for solidarity. But there’s something ‘off’ about the black servants who serve Rose’s family, and similarly something unsettling about the only other black man who Chris meets at the parents’ party. When he tries to engage with them on their assumed level, i.e. through African-American idioms, slang and gestures (the fist bump for example), they don’t reciprocate.
On my initial viewing of Get Out, it got me thinking about the ‘black guy nod’. Personally, I don’t even know when I learned or when I started doing the ‘black guy nod’, otherwise called just ‘the nod’ or the ‘Negro nod’. This refers to a knowing look and small nod of the head shared between black people whenever they see each other in an area without many other black people.
Last year, when walking down the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, I did it when I noticed a black guy walking past me and he kindly returned the gesture. We didn’t even say anything to each other, we just nodded knowingly, kept it moving and I never saw him again. I don’t know his name, where he was from, but it just seemed like something I ought to do.
It’s not the only tool for establishing solidarity; code-switching is an effective tool for connecting with someone from the same culture. Code-switching refers to when a speaker alternates between two or more languages or dialects. It’s often context and audience dependent. For minorities, this can be especially important. Referencing shared cultural experiences can be a form of emotional survival. And considering that survival is at the core of Get Out, it’s probably the best exploration of code-switching I’ve seen on cinema. (Dave Chappelle has a hilarious stand-up routine where he mentions Black people looking out for each other in dangerous situations.)
Some academics propose that this type of intra-communal code-switching can be divided into “we” and “they” codes. “We codes” are geared towards the home, family and immediate community, while “they codes” are associated with wider public discourse. A “we code” might consist of something as overt as a shared language or regional dialect that people of a shared heritage might use versus the standardised language they use when corresponding in formal settings. “We codes” establish solidarity for people who might be marginalised and minorities in a specific context.
A good example of Chris attempting a “we code”, is when he tries to establish a rapport with Walter, a black groundskeeper who serves Rose’s family. It’s a short scene; whilst Walter is outside doing manual labour, Chris says to Walter, “they working you good out here, huh?” in a friendly manner. Potentially, this is Chris’ attempt to highlight a distinction between the wealthy whites who own the property and the African-American outsiders, namely Chris, Georgina and Walter. Walter responds by reaffirming his link with Rose’s family, leaving the audience to feel that Chris is alone and Walter is not an ally.
It’s an awkward moment when Chris tries to segue into a “we code” with fellow African-Americans in the town, only for it not to be reciprocated. For Chris and the audience, this confirms that there’s something ominous brewing in the community with regards to the way it views black people. This shifts the tone of the film from merely being a clumsy navigation of meeting the girlfriend’s parents (a la Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner) to a disturbing and unsafe atmosphere. There’s no one there who can relate to Chris, which poses a threat to him as the true horror of the story unfolds.
There are many things we can take away from Get Out. There are so many thematic points to unpick which makes me look forward to re-watching it. The importance of reciprocating code-switching is demonstrated by the fact that the only person looking out for Chris, is the person who is most relatable to him culturally and linguistically. It’s a film with a lot of substance, but my favourite aspect of the film is its encouragement for ethnic minorities, particularly African-Americans, to look out for each other.
Get Out was released in UK Cinemas on the 17th March 2017.
Yes, you read that headline correctly. Many of the 375,000 images provided by the Met are free for use without any cost or restrictions and come from the late 19th century when photography was in its infancy and back when albumen silver prints were in use. They were the first commercially exploitable method of producing a photographic print on a paper base from a negative and paved the way for photographic materials like celluloid.
Resources like this are really helpful for people without access to places like the Met Museum or the means to reach them in their local areas. Creative Commons was created for purposes like this and it’s great to see the Met taking part.
Free museum image related: ICYMI: The Louvre put its entire collection online
(via DIY Photography)
Hilarious and eye-opening if you hadn’t noticed the significant lack of Black people in Friends. Yep, all your faves are problematic.
The original project was a 12-15 minute short promoting the new Addams Family Values movie but due to Michael’s molestation allegations, the project was shelved. This didn’t stop his motivation towards and the short became “Michael Jackson’s Ghosts” three years later.
Very little changed from the 1993 version compared to the final 1996 version apart from the role of Mayor. Ken Jenkins, better known as Dr Bob Kelso in US comedy Scrubs, played the Mayor in 1993. In Ghosts, Michael played both the Mayor and the Maestro. Yup, that’s Michael dressed as a white male authority figure with a chip on his shoulder.
Read an extract about the making of Ghosts from the book, Making Michael.
Michael Jackson related: MJ vs. MJ and the fall of LA Gear
Based in Sheffield, Jonny Wan’s work covers everything from “advertising to product packaging and beyond”. As you’ll see, he likes bold patterns and shapes with plenty of nods to Art Deco and modernism.
He also graduated from the Manchester School of Art in 2008 and has gone on to work with the likes of Apple, Nike, and The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
Being an illustrator can be a very up and down career, where one month can bring a flurry of jobs in and the next one can be dead. It’s important to remain committed and to not forget why you chose illustration in the first place.
Interview with Jonny Wan on Crazy Animal Face
(all image rights reserved by Jonny Wan)