From conceptual comics to Turner prize winners: the best of culture online
Can’t find anything to watch on TV, and looking for something a little more stimulating than the usual fare on YouTube? Here’s a slightly off-piste suggestion: why not see some art instead? Don’t worry, I wouldn’t suggest leaving the house during February. But there’s plenty of art you can enjoy from your sofa or bed, as long as you have an internet connection and screen-based device (which you definitely do if you’re reading this newsletter).
Let’s leave aside all the dull, and often difficult to navigate, 3D virtual exhibitions that museums and galleries were churning out at the onset of the pandemic – when no one had a choice about whether to leave their homes. The experience of looking at art in a physical space is not something that can be replicated online very effectively. However, screens can be the perfect channel for other kinds of aesthetic experiences, especially those involving work made using what is known as “time-based media”: film, video, computers, etc.
Probably the best-known online repository of art is UbuWeb, a sprawling archive of avant-garde material which was created all the way back in 1996 by the American poet Kenneth Goldsmith. The contents – downloadable PDFs, streamable videos, and explanatory texts – are organised by category, from the more conventional “film and video” to “conceptual comics”. Nothing on there has been cleared for copyright but the site has never been sued (“never even come close”, apparently); everyone loves it too much. It could even be considered an avant-garde artwork in its own right. As of this year, the site is no longer active, but a text on its homepage assures us that “[t]he archive is preserved for perpetuity, in its entirety”.
Several more polished – and legally above board – platforms have since cropped up. These include the Video Lounge, where you can stream about 220 works from the private collection of the Düsseldorf- and Berlin-based Julia Stoschek Foundation. The sleek platform design is modelled on Netflix, allowing you to scroll or search by keyword. Except instead of “Comedies” and “Romance” the keywords include “8mm film”, “Artificial lifeforms” and “Performance art”. One of my favourite works on there is The Woolworths Choir of 1979, the 20-minute digital video with which Elizabeth Price won the Turner prize in 2012.
MattFlix is an ongoing series of online projects initiated by the London-based Matt’s Gallery in April 2020. Following the template of temporary exhibitions, the works were initially screened for a set period of time, but most of them can happily still be accessed for free via a page on the gallery’s website. (The next project, with Scottish artist Graham Fagen, is set to launch in March.) Interestingly, the latest contribution to MattFlix was not a video but a game. Nepenthe Rifts (2023) was a specially commissioned text-based RPG adventure by Lawrence Lek. You can play the game, which involves a quest to find a magical power-generating dog after an electricity blackout, on your desktop browser.
I am barely scraping the surface here. There have been countless projects released by artists on the internet since the era of dial-up modems. Many of these are also produced independently, with their own websites or apps, so the older ones in particular can be difficult to find unless you know to look for them (and that’s before you even get into the problem of how ephemeral digital media can be, navigating expired domains and broken software).
So to round this off, I’ll mention one classic standalone work of online art, which has stuck with me since I first came across it. Passage is a video game released in 2007 by Jason Rohrer. Deceptively simple yet deeply moving, the game is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York – a clear testament to its artistic significance. Rohrer, who doesn’t believe in copyright, has also placed the game in the public domain: you can play it online here. I won’t say anything else though, as the less you know going into it the better.
Take Five
Each week we run down the five essential pieces of pop culture we’re watching, reading and listening to
TV – The New Look
The latest big-budget offering from Apple TV+ is a historical drama about Christian Dior, who rose to fame with his first fashion collection – called the “New Look” – in 1947. The series is sumptuously shot, with an impressive cast including Ben Mendelsohn as Dior and Juliette Binoche (above) as his great rival, Coco Chanel. John Malkovich as another couturier and Claes Bang as Chanel’s Nazi lover also feature. You just have to get past the fact that they are all inexplicably speaking in accented English rather than French. The first three episodes are out now; new episodes on Wednesdays.
Want more? Having binged (and been destroyed by) One Day last week, I’m intrigued by Channel 4’s Alice & Jack – another story of a romance spanning many years. Plus: here are seven more shows to stream this week.BOOK – Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories
Amitav Ghosh started researching the opium trade and its role in the British empire while writing the Ibis trilogy, his bestselling cycle of historical novels set in the 1830s, during the lead-up to the first opium war. Now he has channelled that material into an ambitious work of nonfiction documenting the devastating effects of a single commodity – the narcotic poppy – from the past to the present. You can read an excerpt on Literary Hub.
Want more? Another history book this week: in James and John, Labour MP Chris Bryant pieces together the lives of the last two men to be executed for the “crime” of sodomy in the UK.FILM – The Taste of Things
A big week for Juliette Binoche! Fittingly released on Valentine’s Day, this romance centres on the relationship between a restaurant owner (Benoît Magimel) and his longtime chef (Binoche). Set during the Belle Époque, the story is adapted from a classic French novel entitled The Passionate Epicure (1924). Vietnamese French director and screenwriter Trần Anh Hùng scored the best director prize at Cannes last year for his efforts.
Want more? Steel yourself for Someone’s Daughter, Someone’s Son – a documentary by Lorna Tucker, rooted in her own personal experiences, about the homelessness crisis in Britain. Colin Firth steps in as narrator.ALBUM – Caroline Polachek: Desire, I Want to Turn Into You: Everasking Edition
On 14 February, exactly one year after the release of Caroline Polachek’s Grammy-nominated Desire, I Want to Turn Into You, the indie-pop star put out a deluxe version of the LP. The “Everasking Edition” has six extra tracks, four of which are newly released – it’s as eclectic and genre-defying a selection as you would expect from Polachek. I especially like the reworked version of Butterfly Net, delivered here as a duet with Weyes Blood.
Want more? Phasor, the eighth studio album from American musician Helado Negro – real name Roberto Carlos Lange – is a lovely and gentle listen.PODCAST – Varnamtown
This is a quirky one. Actor Kyle MacLachlan (of Twin Peaks and Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives fame) and investigative journalist Joshua Davis have teamed up to host this limited-series podcast. Over eight episodes they dig into a strange rumour that MacLachlan heard a couple of years ago about a small coastal town in North Carolina that reputedly did a deal with Pablo Escobar: an endless supply of cocaine in exchange for letting the drug lord land his planes and dock his ships here. New episodes weekly.
Want more? Before he died in 2022, the American director Peter Bogdanovich was working on a podcast featuring conversations with contemporary film-makers about their “icons of cinema”. Now a team including his ex-wife Louise Stratten have brought the project to fruition. New episodes weekly.
Read On
Jon Ronson sat down with the New Yorker to discuss the new series of his BBC Radio series Things Fell Apart – and the always thorny question of what it means to report on people who have very extreme views.
This G2 interview with Martin Scorsese ranges from his reflections on Taxi Driver, and the copycat violence it spawned, to his recent forays into TikTok.
J-Lo (pictured above) gave Variety a juicy interview ahead of the release of her new album, This is Me … Now (out today), which is accompanied by a musical film and documentary about her “lifelong journey toward love”. In the profile she reveals she put $20m of her own money into the project because no one would fund it.
You be the Guide
Last week we asked for your favourite breakup songs. Here are a selection of your favourites:
“It has to be Yes by McAlmont & Butler. Once you’ve got past the crying phase, stopped checking your phone every 30 seconds and looking for them everywhere you go, listening to Yes is the ultimate ‘eff you’ song to sing and dance to all on your own!” – Julie
“Oasis’ Married with Children, the amusingly dyspeptic final song on Definitely Maybe. Liam’s elongated vowels memorably rhyme a complaint about being kept up all night with a blunt assessment of his ex’s taste in music.” – Richard
“No Distance Left to Run by Blur. She took every piece of furniture. This album had just come out, I think, the same day, and so it literally was just me, a hastily bought blowup bed and the stereo, which was all mine. All I could do was play music. I think one time I didn’t even get as far as the first “over” before sobbing!” – Antony
“As heartbreaking songs go, you can’t get much more plaintive than I Heard It Through the Grapevine, specifically Marvin Gaye’s version. The way he delivers the lines “You know that a man ain’t supposed to cry, but these tears, I can’t hold inside, losin’ you would end my life, you see, ‘Cause you mean that much to me” kills me every time. Sublime!” – Rob
“Has to be Love on the Rocks by Neil Diamond, and especially in its original context of The Jazz Singer film (1980 version). My own marriage was rocky at the time, as is Neil Diamond’s character in the film when he’s composing it – and Diamond (with Gilbert Becaud) did write it – but it’s a fabulous song anyway, even without such a strong personal connection.” – Daphne
Get involved
It’s the Baftas this weekend, so as the great and good gather to celebrate all things cinematic, we’d like to know your favourite British films.
Let us know by replying to this email or contacting Gwilym on gwilym.mumford@theguardian.com
