Category Archives: Viva!

Frida Kahlo’s Only Known Voice Recording May Have Been Found

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I once went to a grad school costume party with three different Frida Kahlos and can’t remember the last time I visited a museum gift shop without seeing her self-portraits printed on coffee mugs alongside those of Van Gogh. But while her paintings are some of the most famous and recognizable in the art world, perhaps…

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The Harriet Tubman $20 Bill Was Nearly Done, Then Trump Happened

Racism pure and too simple in America and especially in
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When Steven Mnuchin announced that the redesigned $20 featuring Harriet Tubman would be delayed until 2028, he claimed the setback was beyond his control—a buffer to work out anti-counterfeiting measures. But a new report from the New York Times calls bullshit, showing that the Treasury had already hammered out a…

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Hear What’s Likely the Only Known Recording of Frida Kahlo’s Voice (1954)

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Perhaps no artist in modern history, save Andy Warhol, has been so well documented, and self-documented, as Frida Kahlo, or has used documentary methods, surrealist and otherwise, to so unflinchingly confront ideas about disability, gender, sexuality, national identity, and relationships. These qualities make her the perfect celebrity artist for our times, but unlike the average 21st century star making art out of self-presentation, Kahlo’s voice has never been heard, though she lived in a time almost as saturated with mass media—of the radio, TV, and film variety—as our own.

That is, perhaps, until now, with the unearthing of what the National Sound Library of Mexico believes to be a recording of her voice, “taken from a pilot episode of 1955 radio show El Bachiller [“The Bachelor”],” writes Steph Harmon at The Guardian. The show “aired after her death in 1954,” likely the following year. Though the program does not introduce her by name, the presenter does refer to her as recently deceased, and she does read an essay about her husband Diego Rivera, which happens to be written by Frida Kahlo. The case seems fairly conclusive.

Previously the little evidence of what she sounded like came from written descriptions, such as French photographer Gisèle Freund’s characterization of her voice as “melodious and warm.” Hear for yourself what is very likely the recorded voice of Frida Kahlo in the audio above. In her typically florid yet unsparing style she paints a verbal portrait of Rivera full of unflattering physical detail and layers of emotion and admiration. In one English translation, she calls him “a huge, immense child, with a friendly face and a sad gaze.

Rivera’s “high, dark, extremely intelligent and big eyes rarely hold still. They almost pop out of their sockets because of their swollen and protuberant eyelids—like a toad’s.” His huge eyes seem “built especially for a painter of spaces and crowds.” The Mexican muralist, she says is like “an inscrutable monster.” These are the words of a writer, we must remember, who was passionately in love with her subject, but who did not pretend to ignore his physical oddities. As she had practiced loving herself, she loved and admired Rivera because of his unique appearance, not in spite of it.

Researchers are making continuing efforts to verify that the voice on the recoding is Kahlo and searching through about 1,300 other episodes of the show, recorded for Televisa Radio, to find out if there are any more recordings of her. Given Frida’s flamboyant persona and minor art stardom in her lifetime, it’s hard to imagine we won’t hear more of her, if this is in fact her, as other archives reveal their secrets.

Related Content:

Frida Kahlo’s Passionate Love Letters to Diego Rivera

Discover Frida Kahlo’s Wildly-Illustrated Diary: It Chronicled the Last 10 Years of Her Life, and Then Got Locked Away for Decades

A Brief Animated Introduction to the Life and Work of Frida Kahlo

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

Hear What’s Likely the Only Known Recording of Frida Kahlo’s Voice (1954) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don’t miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooksFree Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

UK rights advocate co-owns firm whose spyware is ‘used to target dissidents’

money corrupts

Exclusive: Yana Peel co-owns NSO Group that licensed Pegasus software to authoritarian regimes

A leading human rights campaigner and head of a prestigious London art gallery is the co-owner of an Israeli cyberweapons company whose software has allegedly been used by authoritarian regimes to spy on dissidents, the Guardian can reveal.

Yana Peel, the chief executive of the Serpentine Galleries and a self-proclaimed champion of free speech, co-owns NSO Group, a $1bn (£790m) Israeli tech firm, according to corporate records in the US and Luxembourg.

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COMMENT: USDA Disregards Congress, Plans to Relocate Research Agencies to Kansas City

FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE

Contact: Reana Kovalcik
National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition
202-547-5754, rkovalcik@sustainableagriculture.net

USDA Disregards Congress, Plans to Relocate Research Agencies to Kansas City, MO
NSAC urges Senate to take a final stand against relocation of ERS and NIFA

Washington, DC, June 13, 2019 – Despite ongoing opposition from core stakeholders and multiple warnings from Congress not to proceed, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has chosen to act with unprecedented disregard for good governance. Today, USDA charged forward with relocation and reorganization plans for two key federal research agencies: the Economic Research Service (ERS) and National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), announcing its decision to relocate a majority of the agencies’ services and staff to Kansas City, MO. The move is being carried out with little to no oversight from lawful federal procedural rules, and has been broadly opposed by Congress Members and many key stakeholders. In response to this announcement, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) issued the following comment:

“We are shocked and dismayed that USDA has from the beginning refused to go through the proper channels – including the solicitation of public comment and adhering to the directives of Congress – for such a significant and disruptive change as relocating essential government research agencies,” said Juli Obudzinski, NSAC Interim Policy Director.

“The fact that USDA has totally ignored good governance guidelines and congressional directives in their efforts to reorganize and relocate ERS and NIFA sets a dangerous precedent for the future. No Secretary has previously or should now have the authority to unilaterally uproot federal agencies and undermine core functions of government. Despite claims that this relocation will better serve American agriculture, the truth is that USDA’s decision has led to a mass exodus of highly trained experts from both ERS and NIFA. The resulting agency brain drain will ultimately cripple both agencies’ research functions, an effect that will be further exacerbated by isolating the offices more than a thousand miles away from key partners and collaborators in the nation’s capital.

NSAC is deeply troubled by the unilateral decision to uproot these core scientific agencies, and by the significant collateral damage that is sure to result. We call on Congress to fulfill its essential role in providing the proper checks and balances on the use of Executive power and urge the Senate to follow the House’s lead by standing against this ill-conceived proposal. We urge both Chambers of Congress to use their full authority to restrict USDA from using any current or future agency funds to relocate or reorganize either ERS or NIFA.”

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About the National
Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is a grassroots alliance that
advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic,
and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural
communities. Learn more and get involved at: http://sustainableagriculture.net

The post COMMENT: USDA Disregards Congress, Plans to Relocate Research Agencies to Kansas City appeared first on National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Spouting off: Trump boasts of meeting ‘Prince of Whales’

WLOL

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Another Twitter typo from US president sparks widespread mockery

Donald Trump has provoked widespread laughter on social media with a typo suggesting he had recently met a VIP marine mammal among a roll call of world leaders.

Listing “the Queen of England (U.K.)” and the leaders of France, Poland and Ireland, Trump wrote on Thursday that he had also spoken to “the Prince of Whales”.

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