In Poland, activists call out a film festival’s financial ties to genocide

The uneasy relationship between cultural spaces, states, private funding, and artists has spawned widespread outcry and boycotts this year. That’s a good reason to turn your eyes to Wrocław, Poland, where activists have criticized a festival with a financial giant right in its name. BNP Paribas Nowe Horyzonty, an international film festival that also features musical acts like Kangding Ray, Mo Ayoub, and soft, stands accused of ties to genocide through its lead sponsor.

In Phantasmagoria of Jathilan, enter the trance of a horse dance

Handmade instruments and electronic rhythms weave together with bone-chillingly moving vocals in the latest epic from Raja Kirk. This is serious anticolonial music: Jathilan recalls the horses enlisted in the fight against Dutch colonial forces, during a war that tore early 19th century Javanese society apart.

Peter Kirn - July 19, 2023

The Insolventunclesam is a synth about printing money, by Gijs Gieskes

Enigmatic Dutch synth inventor Gijs Gieskes has a musical instrumental response to the strangeness of late capitalism – and it’s oddly poetic. And patchable. It’s a synth about finance. There’s a millennial, lost in an electronic forest – with a gender encoder you can use to set their gender. (Needs a “f*** your gender” panic […]

Peter Kirn - July 27, 2021

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