memory

Posters of the Spanish Civil War from the University of San Diego Southworth Collection. Read the intro then skip right to the thumbnail index. See also drawings made by Spanish children during the war.

Some links about the “Diggers of the Underground Planet,” a group of urban adventurers exploring the tunnels beneath Moscow. Discoveries include a 3,000 seat bunker under a cathedral, deserted chemical warfare labs, ancient stashes of skulls, alternative housing, a ring of metro stations never used by the public, and possibly a mass grave from the Stalin era.

Found via Metafilter.

“Photographs can lie. They certainly do in the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953, the years of Joseph Stalin’s dictatorial rule. Stalin’s agents routinely arrest and kill as ‘enemies of the people’ anyone who disagrees with his politics. Communist Party workers then try to remove any trace of these people from the photographic archives, and so from the media. The Commissar Vanishes exhibition explores this censored history.”

Found via American Samizdat.

“For nearly 55 years, the Bulletin [of the Atomic Scientists] clock (a.k.a. the ‘Doomsday Clock’) has been the world’s most recognizable symbol of nuclear danger. The first representation of the clock was produced in 1947, when artist Martyl Langsdorf, the wife of a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, was asked by magazine co-founder Hyman Goldsmith to design a cover for the June issue.... This simple design captured readers’ imaginations, evoking both the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of military attack—the countdown to zero hour.... The idea of moving the minute hand came later, in 1949, as a way to dramatize the magazine’s response to world events.”

See the current time.

“Joe Paff tells me that when he grew up in the late Thirties in a steel town on the edge of Pittsburgh, ‘as long as my father was unemployed and we were dirt poor, we ate very well. My father made his own beer. My mother baked bread and canned her stewed tomatoes, and my brothers brought home rabbit, pheasant and other game. As soon as my brothers and my father got jobs in the booming steel mills, we were now well off. My father had a new car. We ate Wonder Bread, store-canned tomatoes, and my father drank Iron City Beer. Moral: The victory of these debauched foods was the product of American prosperity and TV advertising that made my mother and father think that’s what they ought to eat to emulate the middle class they saw on TV shows. My mother finally denied having actually baked bread.’”

See the column by Alexander Cockburn.

A handbag depicting New York’s September 11 terrorist attack has been slammed as insensitive by the family of an Australian victim. The $159 handbag, being sold by the Melbourne fashion chain Quick Brown Fox, is almost sold out.... Quick Brown Fox owner Tess Reeves said she had bought the bags in Beijing. “I thought they were an artistic interpretation of what is a tragic event,” she said. “They are the sort of thing high fashion would do. Thousands are being shipped to Europe every day. “It’s not necessarily a negative thing and, as with all tragedies, time heals. In time it won’t be as controversial.” See The Australian.

Found via The Guardian.

“The Ribbon Project was created in 1991 by the Visual AIDS Artists Caucus, a group of artists who wished to create a visual symbol to demonstrate compassion for people living with AIDS and their caregivers. Inspired by the yellow ribbons honoring American soldiers serving in the Gulf war, the color red was chosen for its, ‘connection to blood and the idea of passion — not only anger, but love, like a valentine.’ First worn publicly by Jeremy Irons at the 1991 Tony Awards, the ribbon soon became renowned as an international symbol of AIDS awareness, becoming a politically correct fashion accessory on the lapels of celebrities. While this has caused concern to many activists, who worry that its meaning has become trivialized, as well as denigrated by the proliferation of ‘kitsch’ ribbon objects, the Red Ribbon continues to be a powerful force in the fight to increase public awareness of HIV/AIDS and in the lobbying efforts to increase funding for AIDS services and research.”

“Christopher Hitchens reminds us that of the three religions of Abraham—Islam, Christianity, and Judaism—Islam is the only one that admits the legitimacy of the other two [‘Minority Report,’ April 15]. A further reminder: The reason Jews have been able to pray at the Waling Wall for nearly 500 years is that Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent... ordered his chief architect to construct a porch for them to pay their duty to God at the most visible surviving portion of their ancient temple.”

Richard Klein, letter to The Nation, May 27, 2002.

In 2001, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced a competition

“to focus the world’s artists, architects, and visionary thinkers on a problem that has all but stumped the world’s policy makers, scientists, and leaders: the problem of plutonium disposal. Plutonium stays radioactive for thousands of years, can be made into nuclear bombs, and is deadly if ingested. But simply hiding it away prevents the world from learning anything from its folly. The challenge: to design and build a facility where all the world’s plutonium can be safely stored for all eternity (or 240,000 years, whichever comes first), where tourists can visit and acknowledge the folly of creating as much explosive plutonium as humanly possible, and something that’s beautiful and grand and awe inspiring.”

There are quite a few technical considerations. Check out the contest rules and the winning designs.

The World Monuments Fund is a New York-based non-profit dedicated to preserving and protecting endangered works of historic art and architecture around the world. The World Monuments Watch issues the List of 100 Most Endangered Sites every other year. Some of these sites are also on the UNESCO World Heritage List.