Category Archives: Post Human

As South Carolinas leaders pledge to end human trafficking and prosecute its perpetrators, a Lowcountry woman is pulling their focus to thesurvivors of such horrors.

Kat Wehunt, who survived years of sex trafficking as a teenager, knows shes lucky to have escaped. But she worries that her peers in the Palmetto State dont have a simple, thorough and accessible system to help them maintain a life free from abuse.

Her solution is The Formation Project, the states only survivor-led nonprofit dedicated to ending human trafficking. While law enforcement, legislators and faith leaders work to pull victims from their abusers, Wehunt focuses on the next step: connecting them with resources to make sure theyre able to thrive for the rest of their lives with the physical and emotional support they deserve.

Kat Wehunt, the founder of The Formation Project, poses for a photo with her artwork in her home studio on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021 in Goose Creek. Andrew J. Whitaker/Staff

A woman named Heaven drove her to do it.

Heaven, a mother of three whod pulled herself out of trafficking, was succeeding by every measure. Wehunt worked with her for about four years, she said, and watched as the woman saved her money, bought a car, took on a management role at her Orangeburg plant and regained custody of her children.

By every measure that Wehunts colleagues followed, Heaven was a success story. Shed stayed out of trafficking, pushed down a heroin addiction and started sharing her story with others. Even Wehunt figured she was safe.

But one day, when Wehunt had already moved to Charleston but not yet started The Formation Project, she got the kind of call for which shes always preparing and never prepared. Heaven had overdosed and died.

To volunteer at or get resources from The Formation Project, call 843-375-6635.

The news shocked Wehunt. The pair had become good friends, she said, and Heaven never mentioned needing help.

Years before, Heaven had called Wehunt from a hotel room.

I need you to get here, she said. My trafficker is on his way and if you get here before him, then Ill go with you. But if he gets here before you then Im gone.

Wehunt raced to the hotel, speeding through her mental catalogue of which emergency shelters, rehabs and hospitals might have room for her friend. But Heaven had a different plan.

Take me toCVS and Ill get myself detoxed, Wehunt remembered Heaven telling her. Just drive me, I can take care of the rest.

So Wehunt was especially shocked when Heaven died without warning.

It almost made me leave the field, Wehunt said years later. Its so easy for organizations to get someone a job, or into rehab, and then check them off as a survivor. ... So shes been my driving force.

For every atrocity Wehunt has survived, she keeps a tally of the privileges that made it easier for her than many of the victims she serves. Shes White and grew up with good grades and a stable family income. An older man began trafficking her at 14, she says, but she was able to safely cut ties with him before her 18th birthday.

Wehunt knew she'd need help to heal from the sexual abuse, and the particular trauma of trust was betrayed by the man, whom she knew. But perhaps in part because she said she'd always thought of sex trafficking as a crime committed by violent strangers she didn't realize she'd survived it until learning the definition in a social work training clinic.

I was like, oh, Im in the wrong place, Wehunt said, gesturing to a cluster of survivors. I think Im supposed to be there.

Nearly 10 years later, she hasn't publicly identified her abuser but wants to share her story so that other victims can recognize the abuse.

Wehunt had never seen a trafficking survivor with her story. She knew of women whod been kidnapped by strangers, made desperate by addictions and denied education. Theyre overwhelmingly marginalized: transgender, undocumented, impoverished or women of color. They shared core experiences of abuse, but Wehunt stays conscious of her blind spots.

On the one hand, its exhausting, being the only survivor whos an organization leader here, and its really painful when people dont seem to listen, Wehunt told The Post and Courier. I think its about using your privilege to open doors and then bring (marginalized survivors) in and put them on the stage.

Wehunt said shes eager to share more stories of South Carolina survivors, but stopped short of pressuring them to join her. No public awareness or education is worth a persons wellbeing, she said a lesson she learned the hard way.

Kat Wehunt, the founder of The Formation Project, continues to paint on her artwork of Mona Lisa after work in her home studio on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021 in Goose Creek. When she was a teenager an older relative trafficked her for sex and uses painting to help cope with her past. Wehunt is now the only survivor in South Carolina to found her own organization aimed at connecting victims to resources. Andrew J. Whitaker/Staff

How do you move forward from the worst part of your life while surrounding yourself with reminders of it?

Its something Wehunt has meditated on but never found an answer to. In her early days as a social worker, she used all her energy to help others, and it took a full burnout for her to realize shed need to prioritize her own happiness like she does other survivors.

It feels selfish to even take a lunch break, when the people youre trying to help dont even have food or health care or a job, she said. I still struggle with that.

Over the past couple years, Wehunt said, shes gotten better at taking care of her own needs. She turns off her phone after work and spends her evenings painting or playing music with her husband, uninterrupted.

Ive started taking a step back and remembering that if a survivor I was helping told me she worked 16 hours a day, Id see that as a major block to her healing, Wehunt said. That would be a failure.

So every time Wehunt starts feeling overwhelmed or demoralized, she reminds herself of the joy she feels when another survivor finds a therapist, lands a job or starts a healthy relationship. If theres hope for one of them, she said, theres a future for all.

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This SC human trafficking survivor is drawing from her past to tackle the problem - Charleston Post Courier

Science fiction, tech, and games inspire each other; what was once science fiction is becoming technological fact. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, has often said that were living in science fiction. And thats the topic of the latest VR event by GamesBeat and Oculus, Science fiction, tech, and games, coming up February 17, 10-11 a.m. PT.

In this hour-long conversation, computer scientist and accomplished science fiction writer Ramez Naam, Tim Chang, partner at Silicon Valley venture capital fund Mayfield, and GamesBeats Dean Takahashi, will talk about the inescapable connection between science fiction and technological fact, and how it can foreshadow the future.

Before he started writing novels, Naam spent 13 years at Microsoft, leading teams working on machine learning, neural networks, information retrieval, and internet scale systems. That unique background positions him as a bridge between science fiction and technology, helping him create visions of the future tied to what is technologically possible now.

His ideas are now more relevant than ever, given the advances in AI and other digital technologies that have the potential to push us closer to a post-human future. Naam speaks to that future, as well as the possible risks that companies driving toward it may not see.

His Nexus trilogy, set in 2040, is also striking in its ability to foresee the political ramifications of technology. In the series, a mind-altering drug called Nexus immerses users in an augmented version of reality. The creator of Nexus is a brain-hacking civil libertarian who believes that it will free humanity and allow people to move on to a post-human future, where their minds can live on, independent of their bodies.

But in the novel, the U.S. government sees Nexus as an illegal drug, something that can drive a wedge between humans and enhanced humans. The governement wants to stamp it out, and crush terrorists who plan to use it to disrupt society. Chinese researchers conduct frightening experiments that use Nexus to blend humanity and AI. Freedom-minded hackers are caught in the middle.

In addition to the Nexus series, hes penned two non-fiction books: The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet, and More than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement. Naams books have earned the Prometheus Award, the Endeavour Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, been listed as an NPR Best Book of the Year, and have been shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke award.

Naam happens to be good friends with venture capitalist Tim Chang. Changs focus is finding startups that fit into a vision of what the future could be. As he said at a recent GamesBeat event, when people brainstorm ideas to imagine that future, they either end up as storylines or businesses, or both with the two really influencing each other. Hes been twice named to the Forbes Midas list of Top Tech Investors and received the Gamification Summit award for Special Achievement. His venture capital experience includes leading investments at Norwest Venture Partners and Gabriel Venture Partners, and hes funded game companies such as Ngmoco and Playdom. His operational experience includes working in product management and engineering across Asia for Gateway, Inc., and General Motors.

And of course, our moderator is GamesBeats own lead writer, Dean Takahashi, who has spent 24 years covering games.

The event will include live Q&As, opportunities to interact and socialize with fellow attendees, and more. If you have an Oculus headset, youll be able to use the Oculus Venus app to view the panel in VR. You can also enjoy the conversation in our Zoom Webinar.

Ways to join the conversation:

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GamesBeat + Oculus present: Science fiction, tech, and games in VR - VentureBeat

It looks like a new collab from Jeris Johnson and Bring Me The Horizon may be in the works.

Earlier this week, Jeris Johnson unveiled his massive new remix of a BMTH classic which quickly caught the attention of Oli Sykes.

Jeris Johnson has grown in popularity over the years thanks to his viral remixes on platforms such as TikTok. Last month, we saw Johnson take his work to the next level when he teamed up with Papa Roach for Last Resort (Reloaded). The explosive remix allowed both Papa Roach and fans to revisit the iconic track 20 years after its release. In fact, Jacoby Shaddix and Johnson exclusively told Alternative Press just how one of Johnsons remixes led to the collab.

Now, it looks like one of Johnsons new remixes may have sparked another collaboration. This week, Johnson posted a massive reworking of Bring Me The Horizons classic Can You Feel My Heart. For his version, Johnson added in his musical flair and some new lyrics to make the Sempiternal track more his own.

Shortly after the remix was released, it caught the attention of Oli Sykes who shared his reaction in a TikTok duet. According to the caption, it looks like a new collab may be in the works.

holy shit WE LOVE THIS Jeris check ur inbox lets do something

Within hours, Johnson shared another TikTok confirming he had received an email from Bring Me The Horizon regarding the possible collab.

bro i am sending this to u rn hahaha.

Now, this wouldnt be the first collab from Bring Me The Horizon in recent months. Back in October, they debuted their new EP POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR which features BABYMETAL, Amy Lee, Nova Twins and YUNGBLUD.

Late last month, Sykes confirmed BMTH are simultaneously working on their next three POST HUMAN EPs. As of right now, theres a good chance fans may get a taste of the material from all three releases soon.

Were just beginning really, he said. Were actually working on parts two, three and four simultaneously and working on ideas from all the records. Theres a good chance that we might release songs from each before we release the next record.

However, Sykes also revealedwhy it might be a while beforeBring Me The Horizon release their next EP in full. As well, it looks like this second EP will be very different fromSURVIVAL HORROR.

Weve literally started working on one song from the record, and whether thats any good or will stay I dont know, he said. Part one was very heavy and quite dark. For me, it all feels like a very low-frequency energy. It took a lot out of me and I dont think I could do it again not straight away, anyway. The next record is going to be emotional in a different way, it just has to be. Emotional is the word, with higher emotions. Not necessarily happier.

Just like Johnson, Bring Me The Horizon have also been very active on TikTok lately. Earlier this month, they revealed just how they were able to sneak an elephant noise into their latest single Teardrops.

What are your reactions to Jeris Johnsons Bring Me The Horizon remix? Do you want the two artists to collaborate together? Let us know in the comments below.

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Jeris Johnson Bring Me The Horizon TikTok remix l - Alternative Press

By Josh Marsh - 12 February 2021

With demand for digital skills increasing by 36% in the last 12 months, digital upskilling in schools, colleges and businesses will be key to Chesterfield thriving post pandemic. That was the message from leaders at this years Chesterfield and North Derbyshire Employability and Skills Conference.

At the virtual, live-streamed conference, it was revealed that the pandemic has brought digital skills to the forefront of work and education and opened up a number of exciting new employment opportunities in the low carbon economy.

Leaders speaking at the fifth annual conference stressed that collaboration between education providers and businesses is key to young people taking advantage of these opportunities post 16 and thriving in the workforce post pandemic.

Speaking at the conference Rachel Quinn, Head of People and Skills at D2N2 LEP said: Covid has given us the impetus to push forward to use and develop technology to connect people and work better. However, we have to make sure that everyone can participate and make sure the connectivity exists and that everyone has the digital access and skills they need to succeed and thrive. Getting that connectivity right, for the economy and through into our education system is absolutely essential.

Chesterfield College reported growth in the demand for digital skills in the area and has invested in a digital skills centre. James Lund, Interim Director of Sales at The Chesterfield College Group said: Apprentice recruitment is starting to return to pre-Covid levels, and we anticipate digital skills being a growth area over the next two to three years. Similarly, we have also seen a growth in demand for apprenticeships in health and social care and construction.

To ensure young people maximise the opportunities, headline speaker, author and former headteacher, Richard Gerver urged the conference to look to our inner child in order to succeed and thrive in a post pandemic workforce.

He said: By changing our mindset and encouraging people to meet change and uncertainty with curiosity, awe, wonder and questioning rather than fear, young people will see the opportunities rather than obstacles.

He warned of the long-term impact of change and uncertainty on the self-esteem of young people and urged people to remember the importance of softer skills alongside technical skills.

Mr Gerver added: Covid has been the most horrific experience in most peoples lived experience but it wont be the first or last time we have to cope with profound levels of change in our personal lives. All too often our reflex when dealing with a problem is to go direct to the technical or strategic solution, but we need to understand the human first andthat has never been more true than it is now, particularly when thinking about our future workforce.

Dialogue between educators and businesses is more important than ever to support young people with career development. Real partnership is the key to success.

Councillor Amanda Serjeant, Deputy Leader of Chesterfield Borough Council and Vice Chair of Destination Chesterfield reassured the conference that the council is committed to partnership working in order to ensure the future workforce have the post pandemic skills required by local employers.She explained: Were not standing still in Chesterfield. We and our partners recognise that with change comes innovation and with challenge comes resilience. Building resilience and raising the aspirations of future generations is a priority for Chesterfield.

Our aim is to continue to strengthen links between education providers and local businesses to ensure that our school and college leavers have the skills to access career opportunities available in the borough.

The annual, free Chesterfield and North Derbyshire Employability and Skills Conference is organised by Chesterfield Borough Council, D2N2 North Derbyshire Careers Hub, and Destination Chesterfield, and is open to businesses, schools and education providers from across North Derbyshire.

Chesterfield businesses that wish to work with the Careers Hub, provide work experience or workplace visit opportunities, recruit apprentices or upskill existing employees, are encouraged to get in touch with Emily Williams, Skills Delivery Officer at Chesterfield Borough Council by emailing Emily.Williams@Chesterfield.gov.uk or calling 01246 959717.

Excerpt from:
Conference hears how digital upskilling and a human-first approach is key to developing resilient post pandemic future workforce - Destination...

The European Parliament has approved a resolution calling for stronger measures against human trafficking. The situation for victims many of them migrant women and children has gotten even worse since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the resolution's sponsors.

The European Parliament approved a new resolution calling for tougher measures against human trafficking on Wednesday, with 571 votes in favor of the report and only 61 votes against it.

In the resolution, the MEPs called on EU member states to criminalize the conscious use of the sexual services of human-trafficking victims; they also demanded more collaboration in the monitoring and production of reliable data on the phenomenon.

The members of parliament (MEPs) said the situation for victims of human trafficking had worsened since the start of the pandemic. Resolution co-sponsor Juan Fernando Lpez Aguilar said human trafficking had "increased due to the COVID-19 crisis and online tools that are increasingly used to trap people."

In a press release, the resolution signatories pointed out that "sexual exploitation remains the most prevalent and reported purpose for which people are trafficked in the EU, predominantly affecting women and girls, and perpetrated mostly by men." Migrant or refugee women and children are particularly vulnerable to this type of crime, MEPs said in the statement.

"We are calling on the Commission to review the anti-trafficking directive, so that all member states explicitly criminalize the use of services provided by victims of human trafficking," Aguilar said. "We have to support and help the victims, and ensure an end to the culture of impunity surrounding this transnational crime."

"The trafficking of human beings violates life, physical and mental integrity, sexual freedom and human dignity," said Maria Soraya Rodriguez Ramos, another co-sponsor of the resolution. "The alarming increase in child trafficking particularly hits undocumented migrants."

The resolution also denounces the lack of guidelines for authorities in facing cases of exploitation related to categories of people with specific needs, such as migrants, members of the LGBTI community, people with disabilities and people who belong to discriminated racial groups.

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EU Parliament wants tougher measures against human trafficking - InfoMigrants

Tarkovsky, despite his avant-garde leanings, ultimately gravitated toward nineteenth-century Romanticism and its fin-de-sicle mystical offshoots. His diaries channel Goethe (The more inaccessible a work is to reason, the greater it is) and Schopenhauer (We are all dreaming the same dream). He displays a misogyny that is retrograde even by nineteenth-century standards; a womans real purpose, he writes, is submission, humiliation in the name of love. He pictures himself as a messianic artist beset by lies, cant, and death, in quest of a hieroglyphic of absolute truth. The aim of art, he declares, is to prepare a person for death.

You would expect him to have been a terror on set, and Tarkovsky had his tyrannical moments. In Micha Leszczyowskis 1988 documentary, Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, which chronicles the making of The Sacrifice, assistants can be seen walking into a meadow muttering, Everything yellow must go. For the most part, though, Tarkovskys crews became swept up in his quixotic passions. The directors son Andrei recalled how Sven Nykvist, Bergmans longtime cinematographer, who shot The Sacrifice, described the prevailing mood: We were giving totally for Bergman because we were afraid of him, and we gave everything to Tarkovsky because we loved him.

You could take fifty stills from any Tarkovsky film, mount them on gallery walls, and make a stunning exhibition. The drenching richness of his visual imagination is evident in the first few minutes of Ivans Childhood, his dbut feature, released in 1962. Burlyayev plays a boy named Ivan, who has lost his family during the Second World War and is exacting revenge by scouting behind enemy lines. The opening sequence appears to be a flashback or a dream. The initial shot is a slow pan up the trunk of a treea reverential gesture that is replicated at the end of The Sacrifice. Idyllic imagery of nature, with the camera taking flight through treetops, leads to a closeup of the beatific face of the boys mother. The sound of gunfire cuts the sequence short, and Ivan awakens in a dark, menacing space, which turns out to be the interior of a windmill. These juxtapositions of dream memory and historical nightmare recur throughout the film, with the demarcations between the two states steadily disintegrating.

Ivans Childhood won a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and received praise from Jean-Paul Sartre. It also made a profound impression at home, its freewheeling technique helping to embolden Tarkovskys colleagues. The Armenian director Sergei Parajanov unleashed an anarchic visual feast in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965), which centers on life in a traditional mountain village in western Ukraine. Larisa Shepitko, perhaps Tarkovskys most gifted contemporary, created her own hallucinatory realism in The Ascent (1977), set during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union; Susan Sontag once called it the most affecting war film ever made.

To be sure, Tarkovskys breakthrough relied on his V.G.I.K.-trained crew, particularly the cinematographer Vadim Yusov, who might be considered the co-creator of the Tarkovsky style. A famous scene in Ivan shows the boy and two soldiers making their way at night through a flooded forest in a boat, with flares exploding high above them. The cinematographer Roger Deakins has named one lingering shotin which a stand of bare trees is silhouetted against a gray expanse of land, water, and skyhis favorite in movie history. Yusov had scouted the location and mapped out the scene before the director arrived for the shoot. Still, Tarkovskys collaborators were working in his spirit. Yusov recalled, Tarkovsky frequently could not understand the limitations, and this ignorance made him bold.

For Tarkovsky, the question was always whether he could find a narrative structure to match his pictorial visions or whether he should discard narrative altogether. Rublev, which he co-wrote with Andrei Konchalovsky, is his monumental exercise in the epic mode. It unfolds in discrete episodes, not all of which focus on Rublev. We witness a primitive experiment in balloon flight; the cavortings of a doomed jester; the sage musings of an elder icon painter, Theophanes the Greek; an orgy among pagans; the savage court of the Grand Prince, who punishes a group of stonemasons by having their eyes gouged out; an attempted coup by the princes brother, resulting in the sacking of a cathedral in the city of Vladimir; Rublevs retreat into a vow of silence; and the casting of the bell. These chapters add up to a formidable architecture: grim pillars of historical reality support the extravagance of the whole.

The film is a portrait of an artist in which we almost never see the artist at work. Tarkovsky thus avoids the trap of the standard artist bio-pic, in which celebrity actors thrash around pretendingto be Michelangelo or Frida Kahlo. Rather, we are shown the storehouse of experiences that shaped him. Rublevs proxy is the camera, which glides through immense, chaotic scenes like an invisible observer, becoming distracted by irrationally beautiful details. A black horse rolls on its back; geese flutter above the mayhem of battle; a cat prowls among bodies in the plundered cathedral. The viewers awareness that Tarkovsky has planted those details does not detract from their world-building effect. One moment has always mesmerized me. During the sacking of Vladimir, the camera comes to rest on the dazed face of the princes brother. A tasselled censer swings behind him: three times, it floats into sight from the left side of the frame and then floats out of sight again. Without explanation, it fails to appear a fourth time. Whenever I watch this brief shot, I have the same involuntary reaction: the cessation of movement causes an interior shudder.

Soviet bureaucrats, having accused Rublev of both obscurantism and excessive naturalism, delayed its Russian release until 1971, five years after its completion, although a print was shown at Cannes in 1969. Tarkovsky made various cuts but stuck to his original plan. (A superb Criterion Collection release contains the initial version, The Passion According to Andrei, which runs three hours and twenty-six minutes, and the final cut, which is twenty-three minutes shorter.) Johnson and Petrie, in their Visual Fugue book, argue that Tarkovsky suffered less under the Soviet system than many of his contemporaries. His main weapons were his fearless self-assurance and his unrelenting stubbornness. He was too much of an individualist to fit the profile of the dissenter, and opposition to his work was rooted more in incomprehension than in anything else.

While Tarkovsky was pondering his next project, he saw Stanley Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he both disliked and envied. He set about making Solaris (1972), his own attempt at transcendental science fiction. The source was the eponymous novel by the Polish sci-fi writer Stanisaw Lem, in which a sentient ocean planet invades the consciousness of human visitors and drives them mad. Unlike Kubrick, Tarkovsky showed little interest in the mechanics of space travel, dwelling instead on the haunted memories and unresolved conflicts of his protagonist. (Steven Soderberghs 2002 remake, also titled Solaris, is more faithful to Lems text.) Hallmarks of the later Tarkovsky come to the fore, for better or for worse: majestic long takes, rambling philosophical dialogues, extended scrutiny of classic art works, bouts of Bach on the soundtrack. The lead actor, Donatas Banionis, is all too palpably trying to figure out what kind of movie he is in.

Tarkovsky was probably right when he named Solaris his weakest film, but it is transfixing all the same. As Julia Shpinitskaya points out in ReFocus, Tarkovsky almost emulates Kubrick in a nearly five-minute-long sequence that consists largely of highways and tunnels as seen from a moving car. A thick overlay of electronic sound, fashioned by the composer Eduard Artemyev, helps transform the footage into a voyage no less mind-bending than the one at the climax of 2001. By the end of Solaris, Banionis seems to have returned to a country house on Earth, but increasingly lofty vantage points reveal that he is on an island in the seething Solaris ocean. Bachs chorale prelude Ich ruf zu dir gives way to a cataract of noise.

My aim is to place cinema among the other art forms, Tarkovsky wrote in his diaries. To put it on a par with music, poetry, prose, etc. He fulfilled that ambition spectacularly in Mirror, which came after Solaris. A deeply personal work that re-creates scenes from Tarkovskys childhood in fanatical detail, Mirror is at the same time a tour-de-force assemblage of stream-of-consciousness memories, dreamscapes, paranormal occurrences, poetry recitations, and grainy newsreel footage. Watching it is like attending a sance of the twentieth-century Russian soul. The first time I saw Mirror, I experienced it as a gorgeous, sensuous bewilderment. It was equally rewarding to watch the restored film in conjunction with Johnson and Petries fastidious analysis. Mirror, like Ulysses or The Waste Land, is the kind of work for which you welcome a guide.

The cinematographer for Mirror was Georgy Rerberg, who had a knack for making drab interiors and dusky landscapes shimmer with unseen forces. From the start, irrational events ensue: a barn bursts into flame, a jug crashes to the floor, ghostly presences materialize, people levitate. Heightening the uncanny atmosphere, the actor Margarita Terekhova plays two distinct characters: one based on Maria Tarkovskaya, Tarkovskys mother, and the other based on Irma Raush, his first wife. Tarkovskaya is also cast as herself, in scenes set in the present day. At the end, Tarkovsky creates chronological pandemonium by having his mother share the frame with a representation of her much younger self. The situation is ripe for psychoanalysis, which the filmmaker and historian Evgeny Tsymbal, once Tarkovskys assistant, supplies in ReFocus. One has the sense that Tarkovsky held his mother partially responsible for his fathers departure, and that this feeling perhaps became a source of his warped attitudes toward women. But the film transcends the directors misogyny on the strength of Terekhovas expressively harried performance. She holds fast against the tide of male neurosis rising around her.

Stalker, Tarkovskys final Russian film, has become his most celebrated work, almost a pop-culture phenomenon. It has inspired a brilliant free-associative study by Geoff DyerZona, from 2012as well as a series of first-person-shooter video games. In Tallinn, Estonia, where much of the film was shot, you can take a Tarkovsky-themed bike tour. The cult of Stalker is surprising, because, at first encounter, it is the most cryptic of Tarkovskys hieroglyphs. Based on Arkady and Boris Strugatskys sci-fi novel Roadside Picnic, it contrasts an ashen outer world with an eerily verdant place known as the Zone, which appears to have been visited by aliens. Inside the Zone is the Room, where all wishes are said to come true. Although military guards shoot at anyone who tries to enter the Zone, guides known as stalkers lead illegal tours. The film follows three men named Stalker, Professor, and Writer, who are played with laconic grit by Alexander Kaidanovsky, Nikolai Grinko, and the hypnotic, hooded-eyed Solonitsyn. Their inching progress across booby-trapped, supernatural terrain unfolds like a slow-motion, hyper-abstract thrillera zombie apocalypse without zombies.

Nothing in Tarkovskys work has elicited more awestruck comment than the sequence in which the travellers pass into the Zone. Claire Denis, in conversation with the director Rian Johnson, said of this moment, I remember I thought I was going to faint. My heart stopped beating for a second. The first part of the movie, which shows Stalker leaving home and meeting his clients, is shot in desiccated sepia tones. The trio makes it past the guards and travels toward the Zone on railroad tracks, riding a motorized flatcar. A numbing series of shots of irregular lengthforty seconds, ninety-six seconds, seven seconds, seventeen seconds, sixty-two secondsfixate on the sides and backs of the mens heads, giving only vague glimpses of the surrounding terrain. The clanking of wheels is at first percussively harsh and then fades into an electronic blur. In an abrupt cut, color replaces sepia, and we find ourselves in a landscape of dark-green vegetation, skewed telephone poles, and abandoned vehiclesa leap into a post-human paradise. The flatcar glides to a halt as the men gaze, rapt. It is, Tarkovsky scholars point out, a bleak homage to The Wizard of Oz. As with the censer shot in Rublev, the sudden absence of motion generates a kind of internal vertigo, accentuated by an onrush of silence.

Pontara, in his absorbing study of Tarkovskys use of music and sound, shows how much of the spell of Stalker depends on its extraordinary audio track. Artemyev, who specialized in electronic composition before collaborating with Tarkovsky, devises a seething soundscape in which otherworldly ditties alternate with upwellings of noise. Tarkovsky throws in some classical selections, but they are alienated from their usual ennobling role. When, in the scenes set in Stalkers home, trains rumble past, railway sounds intermingle with faintly audible strains of La Marseillaise, Wagners Tannhuser overture, and Beethovens Ninth Symphony. Landmarks of Western music are reduced to technological detritus. Pontara suggests plausibly that Tarkovsky is exposing the catastrophic failure of industrial and cultural progress alike.

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The Drenching Richness of Andrei Tarkovsky - The New Yorker

With ahuge arena tour also to contend with this year, Bring Me The Horizon have just added to their 2021 live schedule with three very special live dates inSeptember.

The rock titans will be performing their 2020 EP Post Human: Survival Horror live in full for the first time at these newly-announced dates, which will take place on September 16in Kingston (two gigs at 7pm and 9pm) and Liverpool on September 18. Understandably these shows are going to be pretty popular, so tickets are limited to four per person, and will be available from bmthofficial.com/live. Liverpool goes on sale today (January 27) at 5pm, and Kingston goes on sale tomorrow (January 28) at11am.

Of course, Bring Me The Horizons Post Human is currently in achart battle for the Number One spot this week, with the EPs physical release pushing its positioning up from Number Five upon its digital release lastyear.

Read this: The 10 best EPs of2020

Speaking to Kerrang! in December 2020 about the bands arena tour tour, Jordan Fish enthused:We havent done an arena run like that since about 2015. We havent done the O2 for awhile, so there was abit of nerves about that going on sale. But unless youre Justin Bieber or someone youll always feel like that about it. But theyre selling really well, it looks like itll sell out, and Im really looking forward to having big shows like that to play its going to be such avibe.

Were planning on playing most of the new record, but that makes achallenge because you have to think how youre going to fit everything in. Our drummer [Mat Nicholls] was like,I guess we have to play for fucking ages, then. My dream is to do three hours, basically, which is an ongoing battle between me and him! We may have another record out by then aswell

Catch Bring Me The Horizon at the following live dates thisyear:

September

16 Kingston Pryzm (7pm)16 Kingston Pryzm (9pm)18 Liverpool Uni Mountford Hall20 Hull Bonus Arena21 Glasgow The SSE Hydro22 Cardiff Motorpoint Arena24 Sheffield FlyDSA Arena25 Birmingham Utilita Arena26 London The O2Arena

Read this: The 25 greatest three-album runs in rock andmetal

Posted on January 27th 2021, 4:19p.m.

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Bring Me The Horizon to play Post Human: Survival Horror in full at intimate UK shows - Kerrang!

Image: Bring Me the Horizon/Facebook

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Bring Me the Horizon have finally revealed how they managed to sneak actual elephant sounds into their single Teardrops.

The band took to TikTok (naturally) to explain exactly how the heck elephant noises made their way onto the track.

The video shows frontman Oli Sykes researching elephant sound effects on YouTube before settling on one.

First youve got to get the perfect elephant sound, then youve got to spend half an hour convincing the band its a good idea, he said.

Once youve done that, just fuck with the pitch a little, maybe add some reverb, and voila! Elephant mosh, he concluded.

Teardrops was the third single from thePost Human: Survival HorrorEP, which was the first EP in a line of four that all fall under the umbrella name of Post Human.

In an interview with NME, Sykes explained that the band are currently working on all three of the remaining EPs.

Were just beginning really, he said. Were actually working on parts two, three and four simultaneously and working on ideas from all the records. Theres a good chance that we might release songs from each before we release the next record.

Sykes went on to add that the second EP in particular will be different from Survival Horror.

Part one was very heavy and quite dark. For me, it all feels like a very low-frequency energy. It took a lot out of me and I dont think I could do it again not straight away, anyway. The next record is going to be emotional in a different way, it just has to be. Emotional is the word, with higher emotions. Not necessarily happier, he said.

Survival Horrorwas a call to arms record that didnt necessarily answer any questions. It was just gathering people who felt anxious, angry and paranoid. This second record should be about trying to answer those questions what do we do to feel better? What do we do to make things right?

original sound BRING ME THE HORIZON

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Apparently those were real elephant sounds on Bring Me The Horizons Teardrops - Brag Magazine

Alejandro Cardenas is the Chilean artist best known for his interdisciplinary artworks that portray acrobatic, fluid characters set against lush landscapes and surrealist interiors. Cardenas has also served as the lead textile designer and art director for the influential fashion label Proenza Schouler for over a decade. He was also a founding member of Lansing-Dreiden a New York-based transdisciplinary art collective that created musical albums, a literary journal, and artworks.

The artist is currently the focus of a solo exhibition at New York Citys Almine Rech gallery. Entitled Alexandria, Cardenas unveils new abstract figurations across paintings and sculpture in the presentation that explore a post-human world wherein the relationship between human-forms and the environment is one of unity and coexistence, described the gallery in a statement.

The title of the exhibition, Alexandria, is a cheeky reference to the artist himself, but also the Egyptian city. The intellectual and cultural center of the ancient Mediterranean world for much of the Hellenistic age and known to be a place where scholarship of the East and the West was studied on an equal footing with the goal of creating a unified source of knowledge, as per a statement. Cardenass new body of work, which comes at a time of profound global unrest that has resulted from rampant climate change, the ongoing health, and economic crises, and social injustice, came forth as a way to reflect on the present moment.

Cardenas champions the human body language in his studio practice that is populated with faceless humanoids of various forms and postures. His narrow wire-frame sculptures and subject matter are often composed of colorful patterns of zigzagging lines that lie, sit or stand casually in minimalist architectural environments. Unlike us, these faceless humanoids appear to lack all sensory organs, yet they are not deprived of their sensorial ability. Instead, they convey emotion through body language, resulting in a wide variety of suggested emotional expression.

Check out installation views for Alexandria in the slideshow above. The exhibition is on view through February 23, 2021, visit Almine Rechs website to learn more.

Elsewhere in art, Pieter Ceizer has made a selection of cheerful wooden sculptures for Valentines Day.

Almine Rech39 East 78th Street2nd FloorNew York, NY 10075

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Alejandro Cardenas Unveils New Paintings and Sculptures of Faceless Humanoids - HYPEBEAST

Krista Marple January 31st, 2021 - 11:48 AM

After much speculation, Bring Me The Horizon has officially confirmed that they are working on a new album as a part of their Post Human series. Oli Sykes, frontman for Bring Me The Horizon, took to his personal Instagram account to make the announcement by posting a photo of himself with the caption Time for record 2 (&3, &4..). The release will be part of multiple installments of their recent Post Human: Survival Horror album release.

Were just beginning really. Were actually working on parts two, three and four simultaneously and working on ideas from all the records. Theres a good chance that we might release songs from each before we release the next record, said Sykes to NME.

Post Human: Survival Horror was just released on October 30 of last year. To Sykes, the album was a dark and heavy record. He elaborated on the fact that he doesnt feel he could emotionally create another album on that level anytime soon. However, that doesnt necessarily mean the next release will be completely optimistic. The next record is going to be emotional in a different way, it just hast o be. Emotional is the word, with higher emotions. Not necessarily happier.

Their recent album was first announced last October when the band posted the album art and track list on social media, which confirmed the collaborations with BABYMETAL, Amy Lee and more.

In January of 2019, they released amo, which was their first album release since Thats The Spirit in 2015. Not even a whole year later, they released a surprise album titled Music to listen to~dance to~blaze to~pray to~feed to~sleep to~talk to~grind to~trip to~breathe to~help to~hurt to~scroll to~roll to~love to~hate to~learn Too~plot to~play to~be to~feel to~breed to~sweat to~dream to~hide to~live to~die to~GO TO. The eight-track album dropped in late December of 2019. Halsey was among a few artists that were featured on the surprise release.

In recent news, Greenfield Festival in Switzerland announced their 2021 lineup, which features Bring Me The Horizon on the bill. The festival is currently scheduled to take place June 3-5 this year. Bands like Korn, Rise Against, Bad Religion and more are listed alongside Bring Me The Horizon.

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Bring Me The Horizon Reveal They Are Working On A New Album - mxdwn.com