nagai go manga gaiden

Via Miss Cellania, we are graced with the musical stylings of Italian show-master and performer Stefania Rotolo (*1951 – † 1981) in her fantastically choreographed number of the theme song to the Super Robot manga series known to audiences familiar with the artist as Goldrake—or as its title for English-speaking export markets, Force Five: Grandizer, the inspiration for Voltron, Thunder Cats, etc.

Confusingly and roughly contemporaneously, the title also referred to an adult comics series. Those are fantastic costumes and look like Flash Gordon surplus. Rotolo was best known for hosting a popular television music programme called Piccolo Slam—Little Hits—in the late 1970s and launched her recording career with studio album, Uragano Slam (1978)—referencing the show and her nickname, “Hurricane Girl.” Her rising stardom was cut tragically short by cancer, but she is still fondly remembered and a dance prize has been awarded annually since 2011 in her name.

triadic ballet

In keeping with the theme of all the pieces featured in this year’s Performa in New York City that paid tribute to the Bauhaus movement on its centenary anniversary, Kia LaBeija’s contribution takes the outline of the third act of Oskar Schlemmer’s 1922 experimental choreography (previously here and here) and expands it as a showcase not only for her talent but moreover as a reappropriating of a school which for all its subsequent influence and resonance was rather still a product of its age and the domain of the few—not representative of the reach that the members’ aspired for.  The costumes not only exaggerate the dancers’ figured and invites one to think on the function that belies our conceits but also what sort of prosthetics and inventions we can avail ourselves of, not just in terms of image and health but also as something enhanced beyond human weaknesses.  Much more to explore at the links above.

courtesy ensign

Recently trending on a well-visited webring focusing on the vexillological arts, we are delighted to discover a number or national and sub-national banners reflagged in the style of that of Kazakhstan, the template designed by Shaken Onlassynovich Niyazbekov (*1938 – †2014) in deference to the flag of the Soviet Socialist Republic. Charged with the emblem of the Sun or some other guiding principle, a bird of prey soars beneath with the hoist decorated with a complex ornament. Variants pictured include the United States of America, Canadian, Prussia, Brazil and South Korea.

sametová revoluce

Commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of what had been inscribed on calendars across the globe as International Students’ Day, when in 1939 Nazi forces stormed the University of Prague and arrested over twelve hundred pupils and professors, the series of demonstrations that precipitated from this gathering, massing to a half a million people, turned against the Communist ruling party of Czechoslovakia.
The first large-scale and enduring rally since the Prague Spring, the peaceful Velvet Revolution, riot police often rebuffed with flowers and the spirit of change being something quite infectious and not limited to the metropolitan areas, the name for the movement being selected by the dissident students’ translator Rita Klímová (*1931 – †1993) and later the country’s last ambassador to the US before splitting into its constituent republics, and continued through the of the year, unseated the ruling Old Guard, opened the borders and brought about the first democratic elections held in the country since 1946 with rebel poet and human rights activist Václav Havel (*1936 – †2011) voted into the office of president on 29 December.

hold me closer, tony danza

Even before seeing these reality show characters arguing across dimensions with a meme cat became a coordinated ugly Christmas sweater, we were fascinated with the phenomenon and really appreciated the backstory courtesy of Nag on the Lake.
The singularly unimpressed cat is called Smudge by his humans and resides in the suburbs of Ottawa, who despite what’s being served insists on having a seat and a setting at the dinner table. The image of the cat scowling at a salad garnered quite a bit of attention and admiration in its own right but really explored virally, redone with countless different captions when inexplicably juxtaposed it with an angry 2011 screen-grab from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills of Malibu beach party hostess Taylor Armstrong crying and pointing accusatorily. Which sweater would you be wearing to your holiday celebrations? Do remix your own and be sure to share.

mmxxix

Though we can know one event to happen ten years from now with some certainty, A Message from Earth was beamed by a high-powered radio signal towards exoplanet Gliese 581c in 2008 will be in reception range, it bears recalling the adage, via the always engaging Things Magazine, by scifi author William Ford Gibson that “The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed”—with nearly a year’s worth of 2019 headlines focusing and informing how 2029’s reporting might look if we continue on this same trajectory.  While perhaps not in the expected milieu and sacred settings of blockbuster movies no epic flooding yet of New York City or London but we are on the cusps of experiencing such cinematic disasters Delhi or Jakarta and instead of delivering us to a life of leisure and a forty-minute workweek, we are instead fretting over mass robotic-redundancy and unemployment, so Gibson’s quote resounds with perspective. What do you think about these predictions? The past is good council but the present may make us all come up short.

årets ord

Collins Dictionary has unveiled, beating out other neologisms, most of which are main-streamed and in common-parlance to the point where they need no definition, that played heavily into our conscious these past months like deepfake, bopo (body-positive), influencer, cancel-culture, rewilding and non-binary, its selection for Word of the Year as Climate Strike, a sustaining and motivating bit of traction and Trost (though we have had quite enough of the solace of hope without action) in a world otherwise pummelled with anxiety and confusion.