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secretradiobrooklyn · 3 years

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New York State Tax Edition | 3.20 & 3.27.21

Secret Radio | 3.20 & 3.27.21 | Hear it here.

Liner notes by Evan (except * for Paige), Art by Paige

1. Antoine Dougbé - “Towe Nin”

There was a while during which I tried to listen to every single T.P. Orchestre song that could be heard via discogs.com. They’ve released dozens of albums, probably close to a hundred if you count all of the albums attributed to various members, so that was a very daunting task… though really what it highlighted was the sheer volume of songs that just are not available to be heard in digital form. Those songs take on a sort of mythic quality as we listen to the huge variety of styles and periods that this band passed through in their prolific and very obscure career. But the ones that loom in the imagination the largest, for Paige and me, are the songs attributed to Antoine Dougbé. He writes for the band but doesn’t record with them, and in most cases Melomé Clement arranges the songs — and these are some of Melomé’s finest arrangements, in my opinion. “Towe Nin” isn’t a propulsive powerhouse like the Dougbé tracks on “Legends of Benin,” but it does have tons of style, and the band sounds extremely confident. My favorite detail of many — like, listen to the shaker solo in the middle! — on this track is the final passage, where three voices suddenly meld into an extremely Western, Beatle-y harmonic finale (with an unresolved final chord). Where did that come from?! It blows my mind to think about how these guys were hearing music and writing music in Benin in the ’70s…

2. Hürel - “Ve Ölüm” - “Tip Top” soundtrack

The other night we watched a DVD that was part of our Non-Classic French Cinema Program that Paige has been drafting for us, featuring movies she figures French people would know but that didn’t get exposed to American audiences. This one was… baffling — the problems were French cultural ones that we really didn’t grok at all. Which was kind of cool. An odd detail was that this song featured prominently throughout the trailer and the film, though we couldn’t figure out, like, why. But we knew immediately that it was awesome.

And… this track sent us down the rabbit hole of Anatolian rock, which turns out to be Turkish psych music from the ’60s & ’70s. We’ve played Erkin Koray’s “Cemalim” and thought that was cool, but had no idea it was a burgeoning scene with tons of creative writers and amazing songs. We’ve spent a lot of time checking out Anatolian music since, and I can tell we’re just getting started. So: thank you to a giant French crowdpleaser movie for the Anatolian clue-in!

3. They Might Be Giants - “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Clothes”

I was not expecting to experience a They Might Be Giants renaissance at this point in my life, but this is just further proof that time has a lot of tricks up its sleeve. This song tells me a lot about what I like now by re-presenting what I liked then, showing off completely new facets I hadn’t yet appreciated. This song is lousy with insights… including that super Slanted Malkmus-y scream at the very end!)

4. Jacqueline Taïeb - “La fac de lettres”

Jacqueline Taïeb is probably my single favorite French pop artist, even though her body of work is way smaller than most of the runners-up. (I would say the closest contender is Jacque Dutronc.) She’s so full of irrepressible character, it just bubbles up out of the vocal performances. Her biggest hit was “7 heures du matin,” in the character of a bored, rock-obsessed teenager trying to figure out what to wear to school that morning, and “La fac du lettres” kind of picks up the thread: now she’s in the auditorium at school, learning about British history — the invasion of Normandy, the Hundred Years’ War — and pining to get back to the recording studio.

5. La Card - “Jedno zbogom za tebe”

I didn’t know what circumstance would call for Yugoslavian synth pop warped by endless cassette plays, but it turns out that driving a thousand miles west in one fell swoop requires a certain amount of ’80s vibes. Turns out Yugoslavia had a pretty rich punk/new wave scene in the ’80s, and even though the songs were often critical of the Communist government, they were not only allowed to be played but, to a certain extent, supported by the government, and there were also several magazines covering punk, new wave, ska (!), and rock music in Yugoslavia.

6. Suicide - “Shadazz”

Maybe it’s the band name, but I was never able to find a place for myself in the music of Suicide, despite how many bands I dig who cite them. But Paige pulled this track, and now I’m starting to get it. I also really like how the kick drum fits against the cymbal-ish sound loop that leads the percussion.

7. Girma Beyene - “Ene Negn Bay Manesh”

Man, Ethiopia was swingin so hard in the ’60s and ’70s! This track combines the organ-driven band dynamic with a smooth Western vocal croon that I’ve never quite heard before.

8. Os Mutantes - “Trem Fantasma”

I still can’t believe that I haven’t been listening to this album my whole life — it’s so freaking amazing from beginning to end. Every song feels like its own complete cinematic experience, with narrative twists and turns, a high-drama dynamic, and each voice taking on a host of characters, independently and together. “Trem Fantasma” is an entire album contained in a single song — and that’s what it’s like with every song on their debut album. PLUS it’s got the coolest possible cover. Truly, I’m still in awe at this album. It makes me wonder: what did the Beatles think of this record?!

9. The Beatles - “Think for Yourself”

This is one of those songs that I feel like established whole new harmony relationships in Western pop… and this likely isn’t even one of their top 50 songs for most Beatles fans. Apparently, they had the main tracks recorded already — this is one of George’s first songs, it’s just 1965 — and they threw the harmonies on in “a light-hearted session” between two other things they were in the middle of, because they were under pressure to get this album finished. That’s amazing! Also, this song is the first one to use a fuzzbox on a bass: Paul played one (excellent) part on clean bass, and another one one all fuzzed out, which became the lead guitar — in fact, John had a guitar part but scrapped it to play an organ instead. What a righteous song to kick off the concept of lead bass guitar! That was Harvey Danger’s big compositional secret: Aaron wrote and played most of the lead guitar parts on bass, and had a fantastic sense of what he could do with the tone of his instrument.

10. Erkin Koray - “Öksürük”

Anatolian rock! It has its own note scale, that gives it this Eastern tonality while working in Western rock shapes and with what feels like a very relatably wry sense of humor. Erkin Koray is right up there in the firmament for us — the whole genre is full of welcome discoveries, but Koray is a really unique guitarist and composer beyond any particular genre. This track plays up his lead guitar passages while maintaining a pretty undeniable disco downbeat, and his vocal delivery strikes me as more French than anything. And yet the whole thing is so deeply and fully Turkish.

11. Vaudou Game - “Pas Contente”

We’ve been so head-over-heels for Beninese funk and rock from the ’60s and ’70s that our fantasies about that music are completely separated from any music happening today. But Vaudou Game is led by Peter Solo, a Togolese musician who grew up on the sound of T.P. Orchestre and decided to work with it himself. His band is handpicked and mostly I think French — the sound is I think a really impressive take on classic Beninese style but with very modern feel. This track is from 2014. I’m looking forward to digging in some more, because it’s a thrill to find a live wire in this music style.

12. Cut Off Your Hands - “Higher Lows and Lower Highs”

This is one of my favorite tracks from the last 5 years. I get so absorbed in the way the bass part relates to all of the other pieces. The bass is absolutely the reason this song works — just tune into it and check out how the whole world of the song bends to accommodate it.

The Gang of Roesli - “Don’t Talk about Freedom”

Years ago, when I took over Eleven magazine, there was a giant stack of mailed-in CDs in the editor’s office. I didn’t hang onto many of them, but there was a set from Now-Again Records that just looked like something we should spend more time with. Turns out that one of them was “Those Shocking Shaking Days,” a collection of trippy, heavy Indonesian rock. I didn’t get it at the time, but lately I’ve certainly been picking up what they were laying down. The baroque keys, the vocal la’s, the hitched-up bass and guitar, that little bass lick, the harmonica… I would love to have been around for the session this came from.

13. Warm Gun - “Broken Windows” - “PAINK”

More paink from France, in the mode of Richard Hell, short sweet and rowdy.

14. Duo Kribo - “Uang” - “Those Shocking Shaking Days”

This is another amazing Indonesian track — amazing for a completely different reason than The Gang of Roesli. Such a note-perfect rendition of chart-topping American (and German — what’s up, Scorps?) rock, but their own song nonetheless! This song attracts me, repels me, attracts me, repels me, on and on in equal measure. To me the kicker is the outro section, which sounds like something Eko Roosevelt came up with… thousands of miles and many genres away from Duo Kribo.

15. The Real Kids - “All Kindsa Girls”

Even as the theoretical pleasures of Facebook overall continue to recede, I find myself glad of a FB group somebody let me in on: Now Playing. The only stipulation about posts is that you have to include a photo of the actual record that you are actually playing — beyond that, it could be any genre, any period, whatever. People post interesting albums all the time, and will often write up their thoughts or memories about the band when they do. Boston’s The Real Kids just sounded like something I should know about, so I hunted it down and man, they were not wrong. Not everything on the album was for us, but right from the African-sounding guitar intro, “All Kindsa Girls” certainly was. Lead guitar/vocal guy John Felice was an early member of the Modern Lovers and a fellow VU devotee with his neighbor Jonathan Richman — he also spent time as a Ramones roadie. I’m tickled by how much the penultimate guitar riff sounds like something off the first Vampire Weekend album, and the final riff was destined to become a punk classic.

16. De Frank Professionals - “Afe Ato Yen Bio”

We broadcast the first part of this episode from the cockpit of the van rocketing between New York and Illinois. Not long after we got here to the woods, a package showed up from Analog Africa with our new “Afro-Beat Airways” reissue, as well as their first indispensable T.P. Orchestre collection, “The Skeletal Essences of Afro-Funk 1969-1980.” We’re celebrating that record with this absolutely killer song by De Frank Professionals, a band about whom very little is known. I am in love with every part of this song, from the sixth-beat hi-hat accent to those tandem vocal parts and that beautiful guitar tone. This track has quickly risen to being one of our all-time faves. Bless Samy Ben Redjeb and everyone at AA for doing the work to find these amazing recordings, track down the musicians, pay them for rights to release, and making these miraculous finds available!

17. Ros Serey Sothea - “Shave Your Beard”

Concurrent to our African fascination has been the gorgeous and thoroughly tragic revelation of Cambodia’s richly talented and expressive rock scene that was utterly destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. There were so many amazing musicians in the scene, but certainly the most flat-out amazing voice was Ros Serey Sothea’s, as this track makes clear. I also love just how sophsticated and innovative these Cambodian song arrangements are — they really take Western ’60s pop into a new world, with intricate guitar parts and really solidly satisfying instrumental structures.

18. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - “O.N.E.”

This is a hard band to keep up with, for a variety of reasons — they can be so intense, and their guitar-rock prog virtuosity can get a bit off-putting if you’re not ready for it. This track, though, reminds me of a host of favorite reference points from the last twenty years of rock. This recording makes me wish that they could have played with Bailiff in Chicago in 2012 — I think everyone would have gained a lot from that connection.

Also, the video is so beautiful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkZd2lBQb2c

19. Ettika - “Ettika” - “Chebran: French Boogie Vol. 2”

French culture is shot through with African references. Ettika was an early ’80s hit with musicians besotted by synths and American rap styles. This band was produced by a noted French composer who was married to a Cameroonian and very much into African groove. This “French Boogie” collection is full of African-style gems heavily refracted through the decade’s new technology.

20. Spice Girls - “Wannabe”

I yield the floor.

*As I mention in the “broadcast” it just felt right. That confident opening line. What are guilty pleasures? How do you feel listening to this song? And y’all already have our phone numbers, so that’s no surprise!

- The Gang of Roesli - “Don’t Talk about Freedom”

21. Steely Dan - “Reelin’ in the Years”

Gut reaction: do you actually love this song? Do you actually hate this song? Do you find that your reaction changes moment by moment within the experience of listening to the song, where your personal experience clashes with your cultural memory associations? Me too.

22. Zia - “Kofriom” - “Helel Yos”

I don’t remember how I got to this track, but holy smokes am I glad we did! It’s pretty freakin hard to find out anything about Zia. The cover of this album portrays an older man with dyed hair and a white blazer over a black collar… but I did actually find a video of Zia performing this song on Iranian public television, and he looks considerably younger and less flash than that. In fact, he’s sporting a tan three-piece suit with a wide tie, all alone on a heavily mirrored stage, and he kind of looks like he might be running for a senate seat in his spare time. It’s a very weird effect. But meanwhile: this whole album is super cool, very expressive of an emotional state I definitely don’t understand. The handclaps are absolutely top notch in the rhythm — they remind me of Ayalew Mesfin’s awesome “Gedawo.”

23. Jo LeMaire & Flouze - “Je Suis Venue te Dire Que je M’en Vais”

Doesn’t this sound like something you could have had intense adolescent feelings to?

*I first heard this song in the trailer for Boy Meets Girl and then later in the film. (Not my personal favorite Carax but definitely great, and the music and sound design is top notch.) Then my French teacher suggested I check out a song, and it was this song. So that’s neat!

24. Rung Petchburi - “Pai Joi” - “Thai? Dai!: The Heavier Side of the Lukthung Underground”

We’re still just getting to know Lukthung music, but for the last couple weeks we’ve been getting deeper and deeper into Thai rock, psych, surf and funk. It’s a rich vein, and it shares some really interesting characteristics with seemingly unrelated regions, like Turkey and Ethiopia.

Black Brothers - “Saman Doye”

I’m telling you, “Those Shocking Shaking Days” will improve your life immediately.

25. Nahid Akhtar - “Dil de Guitar” - from “Good Listener Vol 1,”

This collection just came out this month, which was a surprise because we just stumbled across this track by reading about Nahid Akhtar elsewhere. What an AMAZING track! This was recorded and released in Pakistan in 1977, and I can’t even imagine how they wrote it, much less recorded it. The drum loops seem like they hadn’t been invented yet… but there they are, cranked up to their highest speed. It’s a collage of ideas and hooks, all just crammed together into a single song. the main hook reminds me a bit of “Jogi Jogi,” our favorite Pakistani song on WBFF thus far. I feel like I could listen to this song a hundred times and hear something new each time. Akhtar’s voice is so expressive and confident in those long held notes — and who is that ogre doing call and response with her? So weird. So cool.

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 6 years

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The mighty power of the simple Post-It Note protest

In the emotional days following the November 2016 election that put President Donald Trump in power, no one had any idea they might find a shred of solace in words scribbled on a mundane office supply. But underground, in the depths of a New York City subway station, a powerfully expressive initiative fueled by thousands of Post-it Notes was underway.

In the weeks that followed, thousands of people in search of catharsis paused their commutes to write down rejuvenating messages of hope, solidarity, and reassurance and stick them to the walls for all to read. Soon a colorful mosaic of an estimated 50,000 Post-its, now known as the Subway Therapy project, spanned the walls of Manhattan's Union Square station.

It was a simple act during an especially dark time, but the colorful collection of Post-its helped the country's outlook seem a little bit brighter.

SEE ALSO: NYC's 'Subway Therapy' wall is transformed into a brilliant interactive holiday card

For nearly 40 years, Post-its have been a go-to resource for annotating documents, writing to-do lists, and leaving reminders. But somewhere along the line people around the world realized just how multi-functional the sticky squares could be.

Image: Vanessa Carvalho/Brazil Photo Press/LatinContent/Getty Images

In pop culture, Post-its have been used for infamous break ups and vow writing, and in the real world, people use them to pull pranks, make grand romantic gestures, create art, and even mourn lost icons like Apple's Steve Jobs. In the past few years, sticky notes have also been used to aid in something far more impactful: peaceful protest.

The power of post-election Post-its

I first spotted the Subway Therapy Wall on Thursday, Nov. 10, my first day back in the Union Square station since the Nov. 8 election.

Happening upon the words of complete strangers — simple messages like, "Your emotions are valid," and "We need each other," — was a reminder that goodness still existed. And after talking to others who contributed to or encountered the wall, it's clear I wasn't alone.

View this post on Instagram

Don't forget that there are some truly remarkable people in this world.

A post shared by Nicole Gallucci (@nicoleworldd) on Nov 14, 2016 at 3:26pm PST

"I was in a state of shock," said 23-year-old Chelsea from Yakima, Washington (who preferred not to share her last name,) recalling how she felt in the days after the election. "It felt as if the floor had been pulled from underneath me — like I was going through the five stages of grief simultaneously."

In an attempt to do something productive with her negative feelings, Chelsea traveled New York City for the first time.

"I actually stumbled upon the wall without even knowing it existed," she said. "That moment when I looked up from what I was doing and I saw that wall filled with those colorful bits of paper was indescribable. It was as if I could see the strings connecting everybody in their need for change. It was a therapy session that was free and I could write anything I wanted and not have to worry about feeling alone."

The 14th street subway has a thing called subway therapy and u express yourself on a post it note and put it on the wall. It was incredible. pic.twitter.com/3k3NRpTdDq

— chelsea lately (@chelsea_rane) December 5, 2016

Chelsea read as many notes as she could, absorbed the messages, and says she finally felt like things might be alright. "Those pieces of paper were tiny messages to us as humans that we can be change. If we try hard enough."

"It was a coming together of strangers across the country who wanted to make a simple statement that this is wrong and not normal, and we don't need to accept it," Sarah Flourance, a 31-year-old from Alexandria, Virginia said.

Flourance, who traveled to New York to visit a friend after the election in hopes that it would lift her mood, said she spoke with a few strangers at the wall, some of whom were in tears. "Right after the election, the isolation is what got to me and a lot of other people," she said. She felt the display helped ease her feelings of hopelessness.

Added my post-it to the 14th St/Union Sq subway station wall today #fdt #MotivationalMonday pic.twitter.com/zRzQ2j0qah

— 𝔖𝔞𝔯𝔞𝔥, 𝔟𝔲𝔱 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔠𝔥𝔶 🌒🌕🌘 (@BookishFeminist) November 15, 2016

Kevin Nadal, psychologist and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center at City University of New York says he also contributed a Post-it to the wall.

He wrote a message of solidarity to "the most marginalized populations whose rights would be threatened" by Trump's rise to the presidency, and said the expansive unity of strangers helped restore hope for him.

"I wanted people to know they weren't alone," Nadal said. "I definitely felt scared, betrayed, and angry. The Post-it wall was validating."

And while he knew others in New York City would share his post-election sentiments, Nadal said seeing seeing all those emotions "manifested in one place was viscerally powerful."

If you want to feel some hope, visit the Post-It Wall at Union Square Subway Station. Here are my favorites. #LoveTrumpsHate pic.twitter.com/GgiM3hZMFX

— Kevin Nadal, Ph.D. (@kevinnadal) November 21, 2016

So why Post-its?

In early 2016, well before the November election, "Subway Therapy" creator Matthew "Levee" Chavez set up a table, two chairs, and a sign that read "Secret Keeper" in a New York City subway station.

His setup included a blank book in the hope that passerby might decide to unload some internal stress by writing their secrets down on paper. Despite this, he often found that people preferred face-to-face conversations.

"For the next eight months or so, I had individual conversations with people that would stop by to sit and talk...About whatever they wanted to talk about."

After the election, he said things changed.

Matthew Chavez near his public art project: "Subway Therapy."

Image: Volkan Furuncu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Chavez says he believes that "during crisis, writing can be a more effective and accessible form of expression than conversation." It's what inspired him to bring sticky notes and writing materials into the subway that November. The Post-its helped him reach a wider audience, since several people could write their thoughts down simultaneously, rather than waiting to chat with him one-on-one.

"The wall took a form that was fun, beautiful, and expressive," Chavez recalled. "In mass, sticky notes are incredibly inviting and they definitely helped people to open up."

A history of Post-it protests

Though it's been nearly two years since Chavez's Subway Therapy project, many of the notes have since been archived online and in several books, and memories of the wall remain for those who contributed or passed by. Though Chavez helped create one of the most memorable Post-it Note protests in recent history, his was far from the first.

In 2011, Wisconsin residents used the tactic when they protested policies by Republican Gov. Scott Walker that would weaken in-state unions. In addition to months of marches and other organizing efforts, protesters left hundreds of Post-it Notes at the Wisconsin State Capitol entrance in an attempt to share their concerns. Despite the protests, Walker's proposal ended up passing.

Post-it Notes on state capitol in protest of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's budget repair bill.

Image: Allen Fredrickson/Icon SMI/Corbis via Getty Images

Later that year, Post-its made their way to London to serve as a beacon of light in the wake of a divisive act of violence. In August 2011, riots broke out across London in protest of a deadly police shooting that killed local resident Mark Duggan. In Peckham, London, thousands of community members responded to the tragedy with a "Love Wall" covered in notes with messages of hope and unity. The sentiment was so powerful that it spread to walls in Manchester and in other areas of London.

A wall covered in Post-it Notes supporting Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement.

Image: Thomas Campean/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The people of Hong Kong also used Post-it Notes to show support for the pro-democracy movement of 2014, when many called for the resignation of leader Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying. During what's since come to be known as the "Umbrella Revolution," activists and protesters wrote words of encouragement and their reasons for demonstrating on Post-its, creating a colorful display outside government offices. People in Sydney even covered the walls of Australia's Hong Kong House in solidarity.

The benefits of sticky note self-expression

While expressing oneself via Post-it Note has shown to be a therapeutic and unifying response to large-scale events, these notes can also provide comfort to individuals on a day-to-day basis.

"Self-affirmations are really helpful in helping to negate any harmful self-doubts or cognitive distortions," Nadal said, explaining that writing positive, reassuring messages on Post-it Notes "can help in increasing one's self esteem and decreasing any cognitive distortions."

A 2007 study by Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at California's Dominican University, found that the act of writing one's goals down seems to make a person significantly more likely to accomplish those goals. The study also found that writing reminders or to-do lists before bedtime may help people fall asleep faster.

Image: screengrab/subway therapy

It's clear the humbler Post-it has made the transition from bland office supply to powerful statement maker. Remi Kent, the global Post-it business director for 3M, said that the product's move beyond the confines of the workplace has only encouraged the brand more.

"Everyone who uses a Post-it Note puts their own unique touch on it — and it's exciting to see how consumers make it their own," she wrote in an email. "We believe in getting your thoughts out and your voice heard — and our products are the tool to help people do that."

Post-it Notes may be small, but they have the power to make mighty statements.

WATCH: This artist uses Post-it notes a canvas for art

#_uuid:81567f49-da45-3bb0-ad6c-e361bb420ad5 #_category:yct:001000002 #_author:Nicole Gallucci #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_revsp:news.mashable

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: Required Reading

A very unique monument is being unveiled in Ireland, according to reporter Naomi O’Leary: “Sculpture to be unveiled in Cork to remember generosity of the Choctaw Nation, Native American tribe that sent famine aid to Ireland in 1847.” It’s by artist Alex Pentek. (via Twitter/NaomiOhReally)

Writing for the Washington Post, Philip Kennicott suggests that arts groups cannot afford to take Koch Brothers funds anymore, considering the world’s climate is at stake:

It is impolite, in critical circles, to link the politics of major donors to the cultural institutions they support. Many of our cherished arts organizations were created by Gilded Age plutocrats, yet are no longer tethered to the Darwinian social views of their originators. But cultural organizations exist in a complicated moral world, in which every dollar they collect is a dollar that isn’t being used to ameliorate poverty or cure disease. Most of us tend to deal with this dilemma by arguing that the good done by cultural organizations can’t be quantified and thus it is unwise to place it crudely in the balance with other social needs.

That’s because we think of the good offered by a museum or opera house as a potent but intangible improvement to the general character of the society. They make us better in some way, perhaps more intelligent, or empathetic, or sensitive in ways that increase our capacity to be and do good.

The logic is tenuous, but defensible, at least so long as the world isn’t in a state of extraordinary crisis. But it becomes much more difficult to argue for the arts relative to other social needs when the planet is threatened by wars, plagues, and other calamities, with the survival of civilization itself in the balance.

John-Paul Stonard writes about the Palace Museum in Taipei, which is a nice read (particularly if you’re unfamiliar with that great museum):

The other great tradition in Chinese painting is that of the scholar-artists, or ‘literati’, which developed in various guises between the tenth and 16th centuries. They typically painted in a rough, expressive style, using ink sparsely to reflect their aristocratic manners and to dissociate themselves from the paid professionals of the imperial court. Many of them became recluses – it seems to have been the fashion – and spent their days in the mountains, or studying ancient examples of the ‘three perfections’: painting, poetry and calligraphy. They refused to sell their works, preferring to exchange them or give them as gifts. Here, at least, the Palace Museum has a first-rate example on display, Wen Zhengming’s Zhong Kui in a Wintry Grove, a hanging scroll made in 1534. The demon-queller Zhong Kui stands huddled in a leafless forest, the trees sketched with thin, dry brushstrokes. Nature is the animating force in Wen’s paintings, the human figures remain passive, listening to the world around them.

Centuries before landscape became an independent genre in the West, painters in China were finding ways to represent the meeting of the human mind and the natural world. Paying little attention to conventions of perspective and lighting (there are almost no cast shadows in the early works), Chinese painting instead conveys a unique and absorbing sense of time. At the Palace Museum four handscroll paintings are displayed completely unrolled, including the Qing dynasty Gathering of Scholars, painted with great charm and liveliness of detail, and the much earlier Elegant Gathering in the Western Garden, a Ming dynasty scene of Chinese scholars occupying themselves with calligraphy, music, painting and conversation. These scrolls, some of which are eight or nine metres long, were designed to be read from right to left; as you shuffle along the unfolding scenes you lose yourself in the painting.

Redditors had a lot to say about this press image (roughly 2,000 comments) of Comey testifying:

Sasha Trubetskoy created this attractive imagining of the Ancient Roman road network as a contemporary subway system:

Katy Peary’s new album gets a thumbs down from the Washington Post:

What a demented thing to say on such a solipsistic, flow-sustaining, unwavy, missionless, momentum-deficient, same-old-place kind of pop album. At best, Perry sounds like she’s trapped in a purgatory, pantomiming progress, giving an endless pep talk to her own reflection. She wants to look out into the world, but she can’t look away from the mirror.

Funny or Die gives President Trump’s perma-tan the satirical treatment:

Is Apple’s new, futuristic HQ a step forward or back? Wired reports:

The fitness center has a climbing wall with pre-distressed stone. The concrete edges of the parking lot walls are rounded. The fire suppression systems come from yachts. Craftspeople harvested the wood paneling at the exact time of year the late Steve Jobs demanded—mid-winter—so the sap content wouldn’t be ruinously high. Come on! You don’t want sappy wood panels. This isn’t, like, Microsoft.

You can’t understand a building without looking at what’s around it—its site, as the architects say. From that angle, Apple’s new HQ is a retrograde, literally inward-looking building with contempt for the city where it lives and cities in general. People rightly credit Apple for defining the look and feel of the future; its computers and phones seem like science fiction. But by building a mega-headquarters straight out of the middle of the last century, Apple has exacerbated the already serious problems endemic to 21st-century suburbs like Cupertino—transportation, housing, and economics. Apple Park is an anachronism wrapped in glass, tucked into a neighborhood.

An extensive New York Times Magazine profile of recently released “leaker” Chelsea Manning:

Manning told me her decision to provide the information to WikiLeaks was a practical one: She originally planned to deliver the data to The New York Times or The Washington Post, and for the last week of her leave, she dodged from public phone to public phone, calling the main office lines for both papers, leaving a message for the public editor at The Times and engaging in a frustrating conversation with a Post writer, who said she would have to know more about the files before her editor would sign off on an article. A hastily arranged meeting with Politico, where she hoped to introduce herself to the site’s security bloggers, was scrapped because of bad weather. “I wanted to try to establish a contact in a way that it couldn’t be traced to me,” Manning told me. But she was running out of time. She describes a clearheaded sense of purpose coming over her: “I needed to do something,” she told me. “And I didn’t want anything to stop that.”

On Feb. 3, 2010, Manning signed onto her laptop and, using a secure file-transfer protocol, sent the files to WikiLeaks.

New hi-tech tools are helping researchers uncover the mysterious and violent fates met by the “bog bodies” of Europe:

Scholars tend to agree that Tollund Man’s killing was some kind of ritual sacrifice to the gods—perhaps a fertility offering. To the people who put him there, a bog was a special place. While most of Northern Europe lay under a thick canopy of forest, bogs did not. Half earth, half water and open to the heavens, they were borderlands to the beyond. To these people, will-o’-the-wisps—flickering ghostly lights that recede when approached—weren’t the effects of swamp gas caused by rotting vegetation. They were fairies. The thinking goes that Tollund Man’s tomb may have been meant to ensure a kind of soggy immortality for the sacrificial object.

“When he was found in 1950,” says Nielsen, “they made an X-ray of his body and his head, so you can see the brain is quite well-preserved. They autopsied him like you would do an ordinary body, took out his intestines, said, yup it’s all there, and put it back. Today we go about things entirely differently. The questions go on and on.”

Lately, Tollund Man has been enjoying a particularly hectic afterlife. In 2015, he was sent to the Natural History Museum in Paris to run his feet through a microCT scan normally used for fossils. Specialists in ancient DNA have tapped Tollund Man’s femur to try to get a sample of the genetic material. They failed, but they’re not giving up. Next time they’ll use the petrous bone at the base of the skull, which is far denser than the femur and thus a more promising source of DNA.

The continuing tragedy facing indigenous Christians in Iraq:

The arrival of IS was only the “tipping point” of a trend already gathering pace, as Christians experienced an “overall loss of hope for a safe and secure future”, according to the report, produced by Christian charities Open Doors, Served and Middle East Concern.

It noted that, for the Christians who have settled elsewhere, there is “little incentive” to return, with several saying “the Middle East is no longer a home for Christians”. Less than half of the people displaced from the Nineveh Plains, just outside Mosul, are expected to return, according to the report.

Your museum laugh for the week:

A friend after going through the National Gallery: "Well, that's Western art for you. A thousand years of crucifixions, then stripes."

— Sandra Newman (@sannewman) June 13, 2017

And, after the Sessions hearing this week, this helped me laugh it all off:

If you say "Kamala Harris" into the bathroom mirror 3 times, an old white man interrupts you.

— Benjamin Siemon (@BenjaminJS) June 13, 2017

Required Reading is published every Sunday morning ET, and is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.

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