Jeanne-Claude and Christo in 2007 (photo by Bryan Obrien)
Last Wednesday, the artist Jeanne-Claude, wife and creative partner of the artist Christo, passed away. New Yorkers remember Jeanne-Claude and Christo’s ambitious 2005 piece, The Gates, a sweeping installation with 23 miles of saffron fabric fluttering throughout Central Park.
The Gates in Central Park, New York
The couple showcased their dramatic work all over the world, famously wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont Neuf in Paris in fabric.
The Reichstag, Berlin
The Pont Neuf, Paris
But Jeanne-Claude and Christo aren’t just known for the grand scale of their work; they’re also known for their determination to get past all the red tape to bring their colossal visions to life. Back in 2005, just before The Gates opened in New York, Studio 360’s Sarah Lilley talked with the couple about how they took “beauty into battle.”
It’s almost exactly 150 years since On the Origin of Species was published, so for this week’s show we decided to put evolution to the test. We learned a lot of cool facts in producing this hour: did you know the human species was nearly extinct — dwindling to just 2,000 people — 70,000 years ago? And if you ever worried about genetic engineering going awry, don’t miss the amazing sci-fi short story we commissioned from writer Lydia Millet.
All our brainstorming for this show got me thinking about a favorite old TV program with an all-chimp cast. But this week’s Studio 360 didn’t have room for this particular pop culture reference, so our blog is where my love for Lancelot Link and the Evolution Revolution will live.
Kids never do as they’re told. The lauded novelist Vladimir Nabokov asked that his unfinished manuscript The Original of Laura be burned upon his death. But lucky for us, his son Dmitri didn’t listen. This week marks Laura’s inflammatory publication, which means that fans of Nabokov’s will now have to decide whether to respect the master’s wishes or run to the nearest bookstore to crack open the spine of this much-anticipated book and bite into some forbidden fruit.
Written on 138 index cards in the final years of Nabokov’s life, mostly from a hospital room, Laura spent more than three decades under lock and key in a safe-deposit box somewhere in Switzerland. It’s the story of the aristocratic Flora Lanskaya’s life with her morbidly obese (and otherwise morbid) husband Philip Wild. After the passing of Nabokov’s own spouse, Vera, the question of whether or not to publish “Laura” fell upon Dmitri’s shoulders. In the end, the thought of not sharing his father’s final work with the rest of the world was apparently too much for Dmitri to bear… (coupled with the thought of not possessing the financial means to get from point A to point B: “It’s true that my wheelchair requires some costly modifications to fit into the trunk of a Maserati coupe,” he told The New York Times last year.)
Dmitri in front of a portrait of his father. Photograph: Patrick Aviolat/EPA/AFP
This isn’t the first time an author’s wishes have been overruled in favor of publication. Kafka wanted The Trial incinerated after his death, and long before that, Virgil requested that The Aeneid be destroyed. “Read the works!” journalist Ron Rosenbaum pleaded in 2005. “Life is too short to care more deeply about the life of the one who wrote them, whose secrets are usually irretrievable anyway.” Playwright Tom Stoppard had a different take: “It’s perfectly straightforward: Nabokov wanted it burnt, so burn it.”
Hard to believe, but the Muppets turned 40 this month! And my favorite segments from “The Muppet Show” are still “Pigs in Space.”
In honor of Carrie Fisher’s appearance on our show last week, we bring you a clip from 1980. It’s the Muppets do “Star Wars” – and even though Fisher didn’t make it aboard the ship, the Muppets offered a class act in her place.
Playlist anxiety this party season? It’s The Very Best to the rescue. Fronted by a Malawian Esau Mwamwaya, the band made mixtape history last year with its killer remixes of M.I.A’s “Paper Planes” and Vampire Weekend’s “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa.” Even without those tunes, the album offers dizzying layers of Afropop and sunny vocals in English and Chichewa over techno dance beats. The title track is a party-starter with its happy mix of textures: a deep heartbeat of a bass line, cowbell, choir-style back-up vocals, and toe-tapping guitar riffs. It just might move you to book a flight to Lilongwe, which is appropriate, because it turns out “Warm Heart of Africa” is Malawi’s tourism slogan too.
This week Kurt talks with the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, who’s made a career of films about passionate, quirky women: “Women On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!,” “Volver,” among many others. Almodóvar’s new movie, “Broken Embraces,” opens this weekend. Like his other films, it draws from a rich, quintessentially Spanish palette, filled with the vibrant streets, landscapes, and colors of Almodóvar’s home country.
Our listener David Sarpal wanted to know if Almodóvar would ever shoot a film in Latin America, and if so, where. In our featured web extra for the week, here’s Almodóvar’s response:
Listen to Kurt’s full on-air interview with Pedro Almodóvar here:
Ada (Catherine Walsh) in Druid Ireland's production of Enda Walsh's The New Electric Ballroom (images courtesy of St. Ann's Warehouse)
Last week, Irish playwright Enda Walsh’s The New Electric Ballroom opened to rave reviews at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Dumbo, Brooklyn. I fell in love with Walsh’s work reading his first play, Disco Pigs, while living in Cork City, Ireland. Walsh isn’t just a playwright, but a wordsmith in the truest sense; he blasts language to pieces and then re-invents it. In Disco Pigs, Walsh synthesized Cork slang and poetic puns into a new language for two wild best friends, Pig and Runt, creating “a whirl dat no one can live sept us two.”
Breda (Rosaleen Linehan)
Walsh has won tons of awards in Ireland and the UK, including three Edinburgh Fringe Firsts. Now, with the American premiere of The New Electric Ballroom, New Yorkers are lucky enough to get a taste of his brutal, beautiful work first hand.
The story takes place in a small fishing village on the west coast of Ireland, where three sisters, Breda, Ada, and Clara, attempt to resolve the traumas of their past. In Beckett-like fashion, two of the sisters spend night after night re-living a single memory from the 1960s, when they went to the New Electric Ballroom to hear a famous rock singer and left with broken hearts. The sisters appear trapped in their past until a fisherman arrives who might break the endless hold of memory.
Although themes of memory and transformation are part of the stock in trade of Irish drama, Walsh has created a linguistic “whirl” all his own. You won’t find anything else like this on either side of the Atlantic – so if you’re in town, be sure to get your tickets before it closes November 22!
If you don’t know anyone who’s served in the military, Veteran’s Day is a holiday that’s easy to disregard; even if you have the day off, for the most part, business continues as usual. We decided instead to take a moment to look back at some of the stories we’ve aired on Studio 360 that came from soldiers themselves. Below, a sampling of our favorites. Listening to these voices could be a nice way to pay tribute, and, maybe, help us get to know some vets a little bit better.
Songwriter Jess Klein and Sgt. Matt Lowy
“The Soldier and the Folksinger”
When we hear about the music listened to by troops in Iraq, it’s usually heavy metal or rap. Marine Sergeant Matt Lowy’s tastes are a bit different: Frank Sinatra, Cat Stevens — and the singer-songwriter Jess Klein. Not long ago, Lowy contacted Klein over the internet, and an unlikely friendship formed.
“Aha Moment: Born to Run”
When our listener Tom Long first heard the song “Born to Run” in the summer of 1976, he realized he was just like a character in a Bruce Springsteen song: living a life of quiet desperation in a dead-end job. So, Tom tells Kurt, he joined the army.
"Birkholz, 353 Days in Iraq, 205 Days in Afghanistan" by Suzanne Opton
“Soldier”
In 2006, billboards appeared along a highway near Syracuse, New York, just over an hour’s drive from Fort Drum Army Base. Each billboard showed a close-up of a young man’s head on a plain dark surface. In this story, we hear from Suzanne Opton, the photographer, as well as one of the soldiers she photographed.
“Black 47″
National Guard Captain Padraic Lilly related to Black 47’s music instantly. When bandleader Larry Kirwan started hearing from soldiers like Lilly, their experiences fed a new batch of songs about the Iraq war. But Black 47’s anti-war message doesn’t sit well with all of its fans.
Black Watch
“Black Watch”
Last year, Kurt talked with Gregory Burke about his play, Black Watch. It’s about a regiment of Scottish soldiers known as Black Watch that was sent to fight in the Iraq War in 2004. They were deployed to a region known as the “Triangle of Death.” Burke tells Kurt how he created the play from his interviews with real soldiers.
What did you think of these segments? If you’re a vet, is there a movie, song or book that you strongly connected with during or after your experience in the military? Let us know – leave us a comment. And thanks for sharing your stories.
I was lucky enough to be a fly on the wall for Kurt’s interview with David Hockney last week. It was a revelation to hear him talk about his way of seeing. And I was surprised to learn that he has started painting on his iPhone, using the “Brushes” application, to “paint” lovely little pictures that he then sends off to his friends.
Hockney has a history of successful experiments with new technology. He went into a faxing frenzy during the 1980’s, sending an entire show to the Sao Paolo Biennale in Brazil via the machine. Earlier this year he had an exhibition of work executed on his computer using Photoshop and Graphics Tablet. But I think the works on his iPhone are especially surprising and delightful.
In fact, I was so thrilled and inspired that I’ve decided to take the leap: henceforth, I will be a Touch Phone painter.
Have you made any art on your iPhone? We want to see it! Please post a link to your image in the Comments section.
This week Kurt talks with the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, who’s made a career of films about passionate, quirky women: “Women On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!,” “Volver,” among many others. Almodóvar’s new movie, 
