oh man, the Walker Art Center is going to be closed on Friday (If you're not from the Twin Cities, this is like MoMA closing in support of a general strike—a very big deal)

I only realized it myself two days after, but esp. considering how it became such a prominent interpretive aspect of his work and ascendant fame, I remain surprised that there wasn't more acknowledgment that Jan. 9 was the 30th anniversary of Felix Gonzalez-Torres' death 🕘🕘

"The Generals," 1961-62, by Venezuelan-American artist Marisol buffaloakg.org/artworks/k19...

Sturtevant

Felix Gonzalez-Torres's Untitled (Death by Gun) is a stack of posters listing the more than 460 people killed by firearms during a single week in 1989. Viewers are invited to take a poster as the stack is constantly replenished www.moma.org/collection/w...

Film you’ve seen more than six times. Hard mode: no Stars (Wars nor Trek), LOTR, or Marvel.

David Wojnarowicz 1988

Francis Galton would like credit for this reinvention

“Individuals on the ground sent a message that reached us Monday morning that 1,200 were dead,” Nathaniel Raymond, the lab’s executive director, said. “By that evening, they said 10,000. By Tuesday, we couldn’t reach them anymore. We assume our ground contacts are dead.”

"By Knowles, with Knowles, through Knowles, we can locate models for collaboration and participation that remain tacky to the touch." www.artforum.com/columns/colb...

RIP Alison Knowles, the free-spirited and generous conceptual artist, a legend among legends in the Fluxus gang. 1933–2025. Tonight, we eat salad.

Happy John Brown’s Raid day to all who celebrate

What D’Angelo said Black Messiah means. It came out at the end of 2014 and it was so needed.

Pope Leo quotes Hannah Arendt: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist." www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

Ken Jacobs, Visionary Experimental Filmmaker, Is Dead at 92 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/m...

We should all be paying attention here — land acknowledgments banned at Ohio State University www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Trump's concentration camp builders and operators heavily funded his campaign and now are receiving massive non-compete contracts from DHS. This is definitional corruption.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Forbidden Colors, 1988, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

This is the same eugenic belief system that many still hold re: the ongoing pandemic. They believe people’s deaths from covid are acceptable if they’re medically vulnerable. It’s a disgusting ableist belief system and this rhetoric surrounding children in Gaza is the natural consequence of that

“how can one respect, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live the way they say they do, or the way they say they should?” -James A. Baldwin

I learned that Minneapolis Public Schools have a 🌟 Community Ed program that offers before- + after-school care, extra-curricular pgms for kids, and for adults: ESOL, digital literacy, citizenship + career prep, cooking, home remodeling, 🏊‍♀️ lessons, pgms for seniors + ppl w/disabilities, and more 🎉

Heartbreaking: Palestinian journalists Anas Al Sharif and Mohammed Quraiqa were killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted the tent of Al Jazeera correspondents near Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. May God have mercy on them and grant them paradise.

The VA’s unilateral termination of union contracts for ~360k workers represents a loss of 2.5% OF ALL UNION MEMBERS IN AMERICA. I’m not sure what it will take for the labor movement to get into crisis mode, but the crisis is here.

Palestinian activist Odeh Hadalin (a.k.a. Awdah Hathaleen), who was featured in the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, was shot to death in the West Bank on Monday.

“It fills me with so much peace, so much comfort, so much tranquility that I was never alone, from day one. There were many people who worried for me.” —Andry José Hernandez Romero

Raymond Saunders, known for his mixed-media assemblage paintings that layer fragments of printed matters with expressionistic brush marks, has died aged 90 artreview.com/raymond-saun...

Dozens of Palestinians were killed across Gaza on Sunday as they tried to get food aid, according to local health authorities, one of the deadliest days in recent months for those seeking assistance. By Joe Hernandez, @danielestrin.bsky.social and Anas Baba

NEW: The FCC under Biden passed rules to make phone calls from prison easier, to help keep people connected to their communities. Trump's FCC has now blocked that change. Phillip Smith, a man incarcerated in North Carolina, reports for Bolts on what this means for people behind bars:

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of artist Bas Jan Ader setting sail from Cape Cod aboard the pocket cruiser 'Ocean Wave.' Lost at sea, aged 33.

Every time. But especially this time. teachingamericanhistory.org/document/wha...

we told you the Supreme Court sucks

A reminder that in this 1936 editorial cartoon for the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, artist Romare Bearden identified the US Supreme Court as "The Great Barrier to Equality"

Hey did you guys know that part of the reason that there aren't a lot of small grocery stores anymore is because suppliers are allowed to negotiate lower prices for large chains which prices them out? And there is actually a *law against this* that they just *stopped enforcing* under...under...?

“ The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. “ - George Orwell, 1984

To help preserve her works, Cindy Sherman is offering to destroy and reprint old photographs. It is the first initiative of its kind in photography and could set a new benchmark for legacy care among artists. www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/06/16/c...

Downtown Los Angeles, 1937

the hong kong protestors used the phrase "do not split" to mean that the radical protest and peaceful protest arms of the movement should refuse to criticize each other.

As seen in the window of Page Against the Machine bookstore, Long Beach CA

thinking of this Catherine Opie photograph, "Mariella's Tacos/Uprising, 1992," made when the National Guard occupied Los Angeles. Mariella's is still in the same location 33 years later. (from last year's big exhibit at Regen, review here: 1000wordsmag.com/catherine-op...)

For some super arcane deep cuts, I've ported JT Nimoy's "Textension" vector font (1999) and Douglas Hofstadter's "Letter Spirit" gridfonts (c.1987-1996) to p5.js, now available in my archive of p5-single-line-font-resources: github.com/golanlevin/p...

The US Administration has indefinitely blocked *all* student visa applicants from getting a visa interview. Worldwide, unconditional, no end date. All. International students are crucial to the US university system, American innovation, and future US prosperity.

Marshall Allen has been on Planet 🌍 101 years today! He arrived in Louisville, Kentucky on this day in 1924. Allen served in WWII, joined the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1958, & has led the band since 1995 🚀✨🪐 📸 Jeff Caltabiano, NYC, 8.14.23

In 49 states and at the federal level, police can (unconstitutionally) buy your geolocation data (often harvested from smartphone apps) from advertising data brokers and bypass getting a warrant from a judge for it. Montana has become the first state to close this loophole.

Teach history. On May 13, 1985, over 500 Philly police fired over 10,000 rounds into dozens of Black homes. Then, cops bombed the larger block—using explosives including C4 explosives provided by FBI. Only 2 survived—one of whom was later jailed for 7 yrs on bs charges. No police were charged.

Ana Mendieta - Feathers on a Woman, University of Iowa, 1972 | Source -- SPECTRUM VIVACE | tiny.cc/ijs5az

"The aim of my resignation is to break free of powers that seek to limit knowledge and silence voice. To signal that certain boundary lines have been crossed. To insist that advisory roles must expand knowledge and be more than appendages to predetermined decisions."

More than a hundred libraries on federally recognized tribal lands across the country were notified that their congressionally appropriated grant had been terminated midcycle. Those communities are at risk of losing their local libraries and the history they hold.

John Brown was a real one. Born OTD 1800: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Br...