Backbeat: New work
Introducing: 'A Generous Grift: Museums, Finance Capital, and the Clash of Cultural Workers and Collector-Trustees.'
“A Generous Grift: Museums, Finance Capital, and the Clash of Cultural Workers and Collector-Trustees,” a writing and research project supported by the Lab in San Francisco, expands previous analysis around SFMOMA to examine museums field-wide.
The first, introductory installment out today locates museums in the global circulation of capital, categorizes the interests of their ruling coalition, and raises some questions for artists and cultural workers. The second and third installments, out in the next few months, respectively focus on museum endowments and anticapitalist organizing in the arts. Designed by June LS. The complete report will appear in printed form this summer.
“Marshall Trammell’s Insurgent Learning,” commissioned for the Broadcast, profiles the titular Oakland percussionist and music research strategist. We discuss recent performances and projects, including the album and film Eleven Postures, and reach back through Trammell’s two decades of shuttling between and trying to integrate political organizing and underground music scenes in Oakland and San Francisco.
Suburban Lawns, 1981 eponymous full-length by the Southern California punk band, was recently reissued on vinyl by Superior Viaduct and packaged with new liner notes by myself (PDF).
Non Plus Temps, a new music project with several friends, has completed an album, Desire Choir, slated for release later this year. Discography, compiling almost every Preening release, along with a previously-unreleased bonus track, recently appeared on cassette through the Spanish label Discos Peroquébein. Proceeds from Discography through our Bandcamp support translation of the Oakland tenant rights handbook.