Category: news

a few things

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LaborBerlin: State-of-the-Art 16mm Projector

Our idea is to develop a state-of-the-art and modular 16mm film projector using only open-source technologies and non-proprietary/commonly available spare parts. We believe that especially the central mechanical elements of the old projectors – claw mechanism, shutter wheel and film transport – are in most cases so well engineered that a new development here would be a waste of time and energy. Instead, we want to build the projector on the basis of an existing – and easily available – projector mechanism. The same applies to the optics: lenses that are compatible with projectors made by Eiki, Bauer, Bell & Howell and Hokushin are available worldwide in good condition. This projector should cater to the needs of contemporary film artists, archivists and projectionists alike.

TV sets with Automatic Content Recognition. The TV set generates a content fingerprint and sends it to the manufacturer.

1. Don’t connect your TV to the internet.
If you keep the Wi-Fi off, the TV can’t send data to manufacturers or advertisers. Use a laptop or trusted device for streaming instead. If the TV stays offline forever, the data it collects never leaves the device.

2. Turn off ACR settings.
Dig through the menus and disable everything related to viewing info, advertising, and personalization. Look for settings like “Live Plus” or “Viewing Information Services.” Be thorough. These options are often buried.

3. Use dumb displays.
It’s almost impossible to buy a non-smart TV today. The market is flooded with “smart” everything. But a few dumb projectors still exist. And some monitors are safer too, though they don’t go to TV sizes yet.

The merveilleux-scientifique genre (aeon.co)

I protest Mahmoud Khalil’s detainment

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NEW YORK (AP) — Federal immigration authorities arrested a Palestinian activist Saturday who played a prominent role in Columbia University’s protests against Israel, a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s pledge to detain and deport student activists.

Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia until this past December, was inside his university-owned apartment Saturday night when several Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entered and took him into custody, his attorney, Amy Greer, told The Associated Press.

Greer said she spoke by phone with one of the ICE agents during the arrest, who said they were acting on State Department orders to revoke Khalil’s student visa. Informed by the attorney that Khalil was in the United States as a permanent resident with a green card, the agent said they were revoking that instead, according to the lawyer.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed Khalil’s arrest in a statement Sunday, describing it as being “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism.”

[…]

The Department of Homeland Security can initiate deportation proceedings against green card holders for a broad range of alleged criminal activity, including supporting a terror group. But the detention of a legal permanent resident who has not been charged with a crime marked an extraordinary move with an uncertain legal foundation, according to immigration experts.

Jake OffenHartz, Associated Press, 031025

There is no going back from this point: President Donald Trump’s administration is trying to deport a man solely for his First Amendment-protected activity, without due process. By all existing legal standards, this is illegal and unconstitutional: a violation of First Amendment protections, and the Fifth Amendment-protected right to due process. If Khalil’s green card is revoked and he is deported, no one can have any confidence in legal and constitutional protections as a line of defense against arbitrary state violence and punishment. Khalil’s arrest marks an extraordinary fascist escalation.

Natasha Lennard, The Intercept, 031025

Folding Suns or in debt to promises

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Adler Guerrier, Untitled (…whispered intelligence lurking in the leaves; Painted Bunting), 2020-2024. Photo collage, 71 1/2 x 46 1/2 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Marisa Newman Projects.

Folding Suns connects artists from the Western New York Region with those from Puerto Rico and the American South; it poses sun and water as real and metaphorical binding agents across geography, time, and identity.

Curated by: Pablo Guardiola

Pablo Guardiola is a visual artist. His work points to different modes of narration and how these are perceived and understood. Recently he curated with Yina Jiménez Suriel, one month after being known in that island (ways of working in the Caribbean). He is co-director of Beta-Local, an arts non-profit dedicated to support and promote contemporary art practices and aesthetic thought in Puerto Rico.

Featured Artists:

Genesis Baez
Chango4
Claudia Caremi
Adler Guerrier
Gregory Halpern
Ahndraya Parlato
Silas Rubeck
Paul B. Thulin

The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art, August 02, 2024 – September 21, 2024.

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The Guggenheim Bilbao was hardly the first iconic building, but it was the first to be credited with a measurable economic spin-off. And while that temporarily elevated the status of architects to near deities, it proved detrimental in the long run. After the Guggenheim, architecture was never quite the same. A single building had defied all expectation, only for expectations to defy all of architecture ever since. Economic success became the measure of architecture’s quality, to which architecture, in turn, had no choice but to apply itself. Architecture found itself in debt to promises it didn’t make and ultimately can’t fulfill. After Bilbao, ambitious museum projects could only fail. And they did.

architect, verb The New Language of Building, Reinier de Graaf

Funeral Homes Change Their Practices In Reponse to Coronavirus – NPR

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“We’re encouraging brevity,” he says. “It’s not ideal, but it’s the best we can offer to secure the safety and health of our community.”

But for some communities that treat funerals as celebrations with singing, eulogizing and fellowshipping, a few minutes to say goodbye is less than ideal.

“We understand that grief needs closure,” Wenig says. “Being deprived of that opportunity is a huge emotional blow.” NPR.

J. Michael Dash, 1948-2019

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Born in Trinidad, on 20th of July 1948, passed away on 2nd of June, 2019.

Professeur de Littérature française à l’Université de New York, Michael Dash était connu pour ses nombreux travaux autour de l’œuvre et de la pensée d’Édouard Glissant.

mediapart.fr

Also, know for his scholarship on Caribbean literature and literary history.

nyu.edu

worldcat

“Haïti est la terre mère idéologique de la Caraïbe, le lieu où la lutte pour la liberté a produit une conscience collective, une nouvelle façon de penser la question raciale et de concevoir l’identité nationale”, a relevé l’universitaire Michael Dash. lemonde.fr (2009)