Author: visculturecaffe

Broken Spoke documentary – 2 more days on Kickstarter!

The Broken Spoke is one of the few places left where you can sit and enjoy a country fried steak, beer or whiskey, hear live country music and dance the two-step.  Last year they celebrated their 50th anniversary.  Back then they were surrounded by countryside, there are tales of neighbors riding horses down Lamar.   Nowadays they are flanked by towering condos.  Help Blue Yonder Films complete their documentary so that the world can learn the rich history of the Broken Spoke.

When you enter the Broken Spoke it’s like walking into a time-capsule from Texas in the early 60’s.   In one of the rooms they have their own museum of Austin Country music history with photos and artifacts but the entire restaurant itself has changed very little in that long time.  Owners James and Annetta White are still a staple in this legendary place where Willie Nelson, Dale Watson, Ray Benson and Billy Willis all played.

Follow their progress on:

Other media attention on the Broken Spoke:

 

 

Mexican Early Music from Colonial Archives

Discovered in the archives of Latin America was a treasure trove of Colonial works of art, sacred music for the feasts and holidays of the Catholic Church.  After Mexico defeated Spain these Colonial masterpieces from the 17th and 18th century were neglected for over a century but were rediscovered in the 1940’s.

The Austin Baroque Orchestra is holding their forth annual celebration of these musical archives, presenting works from three cathedrals from different regions, Oaxaca, the Hill Country of Northwestern Mexico and Mexico city.  From Oaxaca cathedral you’ll hear the works of Manuel de Sumaya, known as the “Mexican Handel.”  From Durango Cathedral in Mexico’s hill country you’ll enjoy Santiago Billoni, New Spain’s Italian-born maestro. From Mexico City’s Metropolitan Cathedral you’ll encounter the pieces by Ignacio Jerúsalem, Mateo Tollis de la Rocca, and Antonio Juanas.

A sample from last year’s selection of the works of Juan de Araujo can be listened to here. 

Find out more about these concerts here and here.

Saturday, November 14, 2015 – 8:00PM
First Presbyterian Church of Austin
8001 Mesa Drive · Austin, TX 78731

Sunday, November 15, 2015 – 4:00PM
Mission Concepción
807 Mission Road · San Antonio, TX 78210

Gabriel Garcia Marquez archive at the Harry Ransom Center

Please take the time to enjoy one of the Harry Ransom Centers most recent acquisitions, the Archive of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

The HRC has issued a wonderful video giving an overview of this famous writer and his cultural contribution.

The director helps to explain the value of the Harry Ransom Center to our community, the university and the humanities field at large.  The Latin American studies director gives context to the weight of this collection.  One of its professors explains how the archive will be used by those in academia. The archivist discusses the collection and how the materials are being conserved and made available.

What’s in Dave Gahan, New Order & Gary Numan’s bag?

One of the things I miss most about living in Berkeley is going to record stores with my dad…going to Amoeba Music, or Tower Classics back in the day.  Having him teach me about Haydn
or Moondog, telling me his stories of having met Sonny Rollins or Miles Davis decades ago.

These stories and introductions to music helped to shape my tastes, which is why I am delighted with Amoeba Music’s video series ‘What’s in my bag?’ In the absence of programs like old MTV (120 minutes more appropriately), people turn to blogs like Pitchfork…but Amoeba is doing something rare and sorely needed by giving these artists video air-time to share the seminal albums that shaped them as well as the newer works they are impressed by.

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It’s Halloween and the Indonesia Rain Forest is on fire – what can I do?

George Monbiot alerts us that: “Indonesia is burning. So why is the world looking away?”

To give perspective on the devastation of this fire:

“it is currently producing more carbon dioxide than the US economy. And in three weeks the fires have released more CO2 than the annual emissions of Germany.”

For those of you who would like to have a Palm Oil-free Halloween, please refer to this list:

 

Laurie Anderson, Slavoj Zizek, Guillermo del Toro, Wim Wenders pick film faves from Criterion

One of the things I miss the most from my jobs in the 90’s – working in cafes next door to bookstores, working at the UC and Elmwood Theatres in Berkeley, working at Tower Records and Virgin stores in multiple cities – was how close I was to books, music, films.  Daily I would receive recommendations from co-workers and customers. I had a finger on a cultural pulse and it was three-dimensional and organic. This was an experience that Amazon and Netflix’s algorithms have not been able to replicate.

Something that Criterion Collection has started comes close and I really hope they continue. They’ve brought in famous film directors (Wim Wenders, Guillermo del Toro), artists (Laurie Anderson) and popular philosophers (Slavoj Zizek) to go through their vaults (Laurie Anderson is absolutely delightful, she’s like a kid in a candy store), select and describe their favorite films.

Their enthusiasm is contagious – I’ve done my best to compile a list of their recommendations under the clips. Enjoy!

 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez archives now in Austin

One cannot mention the title source of the Strange Pilgrims exhibit without  reminding one’s readers that the Harry Ransom Center recently acquired the archives of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

“More than 75 boxes of documents constitute the archive of the Colombian-born author, journalist, screenwriter and key figure in Latin American history and politics. Researchers will have access to manuscript drafts of published and unpublished works, correspondence, 43 photograph albums, 22 scrapbooks, research material, notebooks, newspaper clippings, screenplays and ephemera.”

Wed. Oct. 27 there will be a webcast of acclaimed author Salmon Rushdie’s keynote speech for the symposium Gabriel García Márquez: His Life and Legacy.

Strange Pilgrims – Environment & Place

The Contemporary Austin is offering til January 24th of next year,  a surreal, experimental journey hosted in three parts, at the Jones Center, Laguna Gloria and the Visual Arts Center at UT.  Inspired in part by the title of the collection of short stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, these three showings feature “vignettes offering dark and surreal meditations on memory, mortality and the passage of time.” The following artists’ work is present in the exhibition:  Charles Atlas, Trisha Baga, Millie Chen, Phil Collins, Andy Coolquitt, Ayse Erkmen, Roger Hiorns, Nancy Holt, collective Lakes Were Rivers, Angelbert Metayer, Bruce Newman, Yoko Ono, Paul Sharits, and Sofia Taboas.  UT Press has published a 250 page catalogue of the exhibit.

The Jones Center is offering the first installment of the three-part exhibition, Environment and Place showcasing installation, video, architectural and landscape oriented works. 1960s-1970s conceptual and minimalist art by Bruce Nauman and Nancy Holt share space with contemporary artists Millie Chen, Andy Coolquitt, Roger Hiorns and Angelbert Metayer.

Bruce Nauman’s Green Light Corridor (1970) is about changing perspectives by inviting the viewing to walk through a narrow corridor lit by green neon lights. It’s presented within the large upper space of the downtown Jones Center, with its historical stone, wood and industrial walls. The juxtaposition of this piece with its neon to the cool, calm of the natural elements in the building is jarring.  I did not see many viewers volunteer to walk inside the corridor, perhaps because we are so often surrounded by neon and artificial light.  It would be interesting to compare audience perceptions from its original debut and environment 45 years ago.

Millie Chen’s Tour (2014) invites us to return to a different kind of temporal site.  In hers she presents four historical killing fields viewed while walking through tall grasses or meadows that have reclaimed the land. As we walk away from and through these sites of trauma we hear lullabies and gentle folk music from the Lakota, Khmer, from Rwanda and from Yiddish artists. Each site blends meditatively into the next allowing us to take this tour and reflect.