shan

Black & white promo photo from The Mask (1961) featuring a giant hovering mosaic skull with eyeballs and mouth agape with some front teeth missing. A white woman with long blonde hair and black dress sits atop a tomb in the foreground. She is staring off into the distance and seems undisturbed by the giant disembodied skull.

a sepia icon in which a disabled man sits in a wheelchair breaking large chains. DISABILITY & IMPERIALISM ALL POWER BOOKS SUNDAY, JULY 27TH 6:00PM - 8:00PM ALL POWER BOOKS

allpowerbooks Imperialism doesn't just exploit land and labor, it systematically creates disability through war, toxic contamination, and structural violence. Join us next Sunday, July 27th at 6pm as we examine how empire manufactures disability as a tool of domination, while exploring socialist visions for an accessible and liberated disabled future. We will also be joined by organizer and COVID mitigation advocate Abby Mahler aka @pinball_wiitch (Mask Bloc LA, Airgasmic, others) as we connect imperial violence to disability politics today and highlight resistance movements fighting back against these systems of disablement. Masks required and available at the door. We also have 5 air purifiers on throughout the space at all times! For individual accessibility questions and requests, please email events@allpowerbooks.org and we will try our best to accommodate.

this coming sunday, i’ll be joining folks at LA’s all power books for a discussion on disability and imperialism, our present pandemicene, and what we’re doing to resist and care for each other to survive.

sunday, july 27 @ 6 pm

When the world rushed “back to normal” & abandoned Covid mitigations, we saw how much ableism & eugenics is ingrained in society.

Disabled people warned you it would give rise to fascism, mass death & disability.

You can’t abandon entire groups & keep your moral compass

YouTube video by Johnny Rocket PERE UBU Modern Dance Live@Sons d'hiver 2014

life stinks and I'm seeing pink and I like the Kinks and I need a drink.

Poster features a surreal painting of a woman's lower body attached to a rotary telephone.

Polish poster for KLUTE (1971), directed by Alan J. Pakula - BOTD in 1928

Cartoon-like painting of an abstract alien figure made up of symmetrical green, blue, and yellow shapes, surrounded by strange, possibly robotic figures floating around them. The background is bright orange with yellow squiggle lines.

Cartoon-like painting of an abstracted femme figure with blue skin seen from the front, with a yellow and blue pattern outfit and long purple gloves with squiggly fingers, and yellow and black hair that looks like fire or lightning. Behind them is a spiky black pattern over a purple background.

Cartoon-like painting in a warm palette of a standing figure made up of various colorful, abstract symmetrical shapes. Above them is the text "Screamin J Hawkin" in red and yellow letters. The background is bright red with abstract squiggle shapes.

Cartoon-like print of a large abstract orange and yellow head made up of various shapes and objects, with a blue hairdo. The background is bright yellow-green with dark green curving lines. Multicolor text at the bottom says "Whats the coinfusion I cant make heads or tails of it? Sum one flipped! Now that makes cents".

Works by American artist Karl Wirsum, 1960s-70s, a member of the Hairy Who group of Chicago artists known for their playful sense of humor and often maximalist, colorful styles.

If you’re fighting for social justice, wear a mask.

Mad about tariffs? Wear a mask.

Participating in Hands Off? Wear a mask.

Want to fight fascism? Wear a mask.

The Covid pandemic is not over. People are dying & becoming disabled every day.

Protect your health & the health of your community.

Photograph of Semar figure as a Javanese shadow play puppet. They have round body and chest, old person's face with smiling red lips, and slightly raised hairstyle often sported by children. They are naked except for a batik fabric wrapped around their waist to their ankles. Their hands and body are connected to three sticks for the puppet master to hold.

In Javanese wayang (shadow puppet) art, Semar is a guardian spirit disguised as a court clown. Often described as not man nor woman, Semar's appearance reflects the world and its dualities: smiling mouth with sad eyes, old face with a child's haircut, and earth-shaped figure. 🧵1/4

#WyrdWednesday

RIP MICHAEL HURLEY. the great snock has made his last wish for a potato. he made this planet a much better place to live & i miss him already

Me with Michael Hurley. Quite possibly the worst photo ever taken of him. The flaming lips were playing in the background and he said "what is this shit?" RIP

Mask bans are an issue of bodily autonomy, free speech, and disability justice. You have a right to health and to privacy.

You REALLY want to keep both during the rise of fascism.

Want to do community care? Resist? Be an ally?

Get loud about mask bans. Put on an 95. Give/get mask mutual aid:

“Pierre philosophale” (2013) by Les frères Chapuisat - A stone sculpture humorously juxtaposes a cigarette within a rock’s slit, blending natural form with human artifact.

the vibe

In a still from the 1999 Dardenne brothers film Rosetta, a young white woman with dark hair lies on a beige pillow and says “I won’t be left by the wayside.”

rewatched Rosetta and wow, I had forgotten this specific line that hits differently now

rest in ferocity Émilie Dequenne!

Image by Jess Snow

Image by Josh MacPhee

Image by Zola

Image by Roger Peet

As the bombing begins again, the genocide in Palestine returns to the front of everyone's minds. We have hundreds of free high resolution images available for use in your organizing. justseeds.org/graphics/?js...

Poster features hand-painted images of Meryl Streep with her head on backwards, Goldie Hawn with a huge hole in her torso, Bruce Willis experimenting on a cadaver, and a half-naked Isabella Rossellini clutching a dismembered human forearm.

Ghanian poster for DEATH BECOMES HER (1992), directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Bruce Willis - BOTD in 1955

YouTube video by Glow Gold Media Music Serenade by Roxy Music

Teatime tuneage. Nothing knowing or arch or ironic about this, just great pop. 3 minutes of bliss. I suspect one of the reasons Ferry still gets sneers is that he could do art smart AND pop smart. As Robert Wyatt said "we'd play like that if we could."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOUZ...

Me, a very light skinned Black woman in black wire glasses and big hair holding up a black poster that says "THERE IS NOTHING MORE EPHEMERAL THAN A WEBSITE" in gold ink

Now more than ever

Shelley Duvall, The Shining, Stanley Kubrick, 1980

mood 📽️

An ad that reads, in all caps, SIR ROHAN'S GHOST, and then, in only slightly smaller font, the same thing--SIR ROHAN'S GHOST.--THIRTY-ONE more times, ending with "THE NEW BRILLIAINT ROMANCE. For sale by all the Booksellers."

Ad copy for books used to be so much better

(New York Tribune, January 7, 1860)

A 1820 hand colored plate diagramming “elements of gesture.” In (later) pencil: an angry man trying to escape the gesture box, yelling “Let me out” and the boy responding “Be quiet my dear wait till I’m done spakin”

Amazing (if near invisible) addition to this plate on “the attitude in which a boy should always place himself when he begins to speak” from a 1820 elocution book

Color photo of Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Callas wears an elaborate blue and gold costume while Pasolini wears only sandals and colorful swim trunks.

Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini on the set of MEDEA (1969)

Pasolini was BOTD in 1922

David Byrne "I would like to live in another dimension" Space Ghost "We would all like to do something, David.

<3

How Disabled Mutual Aid Is Different Than Abled Mutual Aid “We were maybe not going to save the world, but we were going to save each other.¹”: How Disabled Mutual Aid Is Different Than Abled Mutual Aid Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha I want people to kno…

Comrade @heathercorinna.bsky.social just reminded me about this outstanding piece from @thellpsx.bsky.social in 2021 on how mutual aid in the disability community sometimes looks very different from that in nondisabled spaces! Very important read in this moment.

A letterpress style poster in red and blue ink with bold typography reading "FUCK THE FASC - WEAR A MASK!" Below in smaller text is an n95 mask illustration and text that reads "WE KEEP US SAFE" Design credit by @schmutzy

Just a reminder that community care can start with wearing a mask.

Lobby card features the painted images of a scary leopard and a sinister, feline-like woman.

Mexican lobby card for CAT PEOPLE (1942)

Claude Cahun with hearts on their face and I AM IN TRAINING DON'T KISS ME shirt

There is always something you can do to gum up the works of fascism.

A story. Claude Cahun. The queer nonbinary French-Jewish photographer.

Nazis conquered France, were training soldiers on Jersey, where Cahun lived w/their partner, Marcel Moore.

They did disinfo & morale smashing via Surrealism.

Something you can do to stand against RFK jr’s attempt to make us all sicker is wear a mask when you share air with others. Resist mask bans. People who cannot afford to get sick have a right to exist in public. Masking will protect your health from him too.

a message from ubuweb, a digital archive of text, film, television, and avant garde media that says: “UbuWeb Founded 1996 February 1, 2025 A year ago, we decided to shutter UbuWeb. Not really shutter it, per se, but instead to consider it complete. After nearly 30 years, it felt right. But now, with the political changes in America and elsewhere around the world, we have decided to restart our archiving and regrow Ubu. In a moment when our collective memory is being systematically eradicated, archiving reemerges as a strong form of resistance, a way of preserving crucial, subversive, and marginalized forms of expression. We encourage you to do the same. All rivers lead to the same ocean: find your form of resistance, no matter how small, and go hard. It's now or never. Together we can prevent the annihilation of the memory of the world.”

ubuweb remains one of the great inspirations in my life and work. their curatorial return is such great news.

the work of trustworthy knowledge sharing takes many forms and we can’t be afraid when the method must change. to make cultural touchstones visible is to change cultural imagination.