(2 August 1937 – 23 July 2015) was a Japanese video artist, sculptor and avant-garde performance artist, who mostly lived in New York City. She was one of the first artists to adopt the portable video camera Sony Portapak in 1970, likening it to a "new paintbrush." Kubota is known for constructing sculptural installations with a strong DIY aesthetic, which include sculptures with embedded monitors playing her original videos. She was a key member and influence on Fluxus, the international group of avant-garde artists centered on George Maciunas, having been involved with the group since witnessing John Cage perform in Tokyo in 1962 and subsequently moving to New York in 1964. She was closely associated with George Brecht, Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, Joe Jones, Nam June Paik, and Ay-O, among other members of Fluxus. Kubota was deemed "Vice Chairman" of the Fluxus Organization by Maciunas.

Kubota's video and sculptural works are mainly shown in galleries. Her use of the physical television as a component of her work differs from other video artists of the 1960s who made experimental broadcast programs as a move against the hegemony of major networks. Kubota is known for her contribution to the expansion of the field of video into the field of sculpture and for her works addressing the place of video in art history. Her work explores the influence of the technology, and more specifically the television set, on personal memory and the emotions. Some works for example eulogize while also exploring the presence of the deceased in video footage and recorded images such as her Duchampiana series, the video My Father, and her later works Korean Grave and Winter in Miami which eulogize her husband Nam June Paik. Kubota's sculptures also play with ways in which video footage and sculptures utilize videos to evoke nature, as in her Meta-Marcel, Bird, and Tree series' and in River, and Rock Video: Cherry Blossoms.

Early life and professional activity
Kubota was born as the second oldest of four girls to a family of monk lineage associated with a Buddhist temple in Niigata Prefecture, Japan, where she lived through World War II. She described herself as "of a religious Buddhist family," and familial connections to monastic life would inform later Zen concepts in her work. Because her father was a Buddhist monk, Kubota had often witnessed funerals as a child and spent time alone, supposedly playing with ghosts in a temple room where fresh bones were stored. She drew on these vivid memories of death in her video art.

Her parents appreciated the arts and supported their children in studying them, despite the expectation of women to work as part of the productive force at the time. Her maternal grandfather was a calligrapher and landowner who encouraged his daughter and his granddaughters to pursue various arts. Kubota's mother, for example, was one of the first female students at what is now the Tokyo National University of the Arts and Music. Art brought Kubota to Tokyo as a young adult as well: during her high school years, Kubota met an enthusiastic art teacher who urged her to apply to the Tokyo University of Education, where she earned a degree in sculpture in 1960.

Even early in her career, Kubota won recognition for her skill but was also noted as pursuing unconventional approaches. One of her paintings of flowers won an award in the well-regarded Eighth Annual Exhibition of Nika-kai (1954), one of the major juried-exhibition art associations. Though this painting is no longer extant, Kubota's high school teacher praised it for a "uniqueness characterized by strong lines and brushstrokes that do not appear to be executed by a girl." Perhaps because of such boundary transgressing, Kubota's aunt, Chiya Kuni—an established modern dancer—introduced her to the Tokyo-based experimental music collective Group Ongaku. Members of Group Ongaku included Takehisa Kosugi, Chieko Shiomi, and Yasunao Tone, who were all experimenting with tape recorders, noise music, and avant-garde performances in the early 1960s. This musical interest, in turn, led to her first encounter with John Cage and Yoko Ono at Tokyo Bunka Hall in Ueno when Cage was on tour across Japan in 1962. Kubota observed how untraditional the tour performers, including Yoko Ono, were in destroying every convention of music; she thus thought to herself that if Cage's music was accepted in New York, she should be accepted there, too. Kubota found affinities between herself and Cage because she felt unappreciated in the Japanese art world due to her unconventionality. But Ono also became an important contact for Kubota and other Japanese artists looking to learn more about American avant-garde movements such as Fluxus. Kuboto visited Ono's apartment in Tokyo in 1963 and saw Fluxus event scores, which inspired herself and other members of Group Ongaku to send their own event scores to George Maciunas, the founder of the Fluxus movement, in New York. Through this introduction, Kubota became involved in the Fluxus circle and began experimenting with a wider range of media, from text scores to performance.

In December 1963, Kubota had her first solo show, "1st Love, 2nd Love..." at Naiqua Gallery in Tokyo, an alternative/avant-garde space in Shinbashi, Tokyo, housed in a former office of internal medicine (naiqua means internal medicine), in which she "piled up fragments of love letters from the floor up to the ceiling of the gallery" and covered the stack with a white cloth, creating an unstable mound. "Visitors were forced to work their way up the pile of paper scraps" in order to see an array of welded metal sculptures placed at the top. The exhibition, which might be considered environmental sculpture now as inspired by Allan Karpow's notion of "environments," was accompanied by a score: "Make a floor with waste paper which are all love letters to you. Spread a sheet of white cloth on the floor. Skin your lips by yourself. Kiss a man who has a mustache in the audience." Through the gallery Kubota met and collaborated with avant-garde collectives such as Hi Red Center and Zero Jigen (Zero Dimension). However, Kubota noted difficulty in getting recognition and write-ups in newspapers and art magazines in Japan and later recalled that she "realized that female artists could not become recognized in Japan."

Later that year, in 1964, she moved to New York after exchanging letters with George Maciunas about the New York Fluxus scene. In a letter to Maciunas (written just before her departure for New York), Kubota expressed a mixture of anxiety and hope: "In every day I was very worry which is better to be in Tokyo or to be in New York in order to live as an only artist. But now I made up my mind to go to New York... It's my only hope to go to New York in order to live as an artist, but for you, it's no mention without the biggest trouble to you. But I'd like to touch, to see and feel something by touching a group of Fluxus and living myself in New York." She would be lifelong friends with George Maciunas until his death in 1978. Her live-work space in SoHo, which she occupied from 1974 to her death in 2015, was situated in a neighborhood at the center of the avant-garde art scene, due partially to Maciunas's Fluxhouse Cooperative project for affordable artist housing and studio spaces. Kubota's proximity to influential collaborators from this community included her immediate Mercer Street neighbor, the experimental artist Joan Jonas. She also actively maintained close relationships with Japanese avant-garde artists in Tokyo, especially bringing the activities of Hi Red Center to the attention of Maciunas and other Fluxus members. Kubota's first show in New York was on July 4, 1965 at Cinemateque as part of the perpetual Fluxfest, where she performed her famous "Vagina Painting." After this exhibition, Kubota exhibited her works regularly in New York. Kubota continued her studies at New York University and the New School for Social Research (1965–1967). She studied at the Art School of the Brooklyn Museum 1967–1968. In 1972 to 1973, Kubota came together with artists Mary Lucier and Cecilia Sandoval, and the poet Charlotte Warren in the feminist collaborative troupe White Black Red & Yellow (sometimes also rearranged to Red White Yellow & Black as a play on the "red, white, and blue" of the American flag) to put on three "multimedia concerts" at The Kitchen in New York.

Kubota taught at the School of Visual Arts, and was video artist-in residence at Brown University in 1981; at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1973, 1981, 1982, and 1984; and at the Kunst Akademie in Düsseldorf in 1979. She also helped to coordinate the first annual Women's Video Festival at The Kitchen in 1972. From 1974 to 1982 Kubota served as the first (and only) video curator, and one of the few women or people of color, associated with the Anthology Film Archives.  Kubota also collaborated with Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) to present Video Art Reviews at Anthology, further strengthening what EAI's director Lori Zippay called the "alternative ecosystem." In addition to studying, managing Fluxus events, and exhibiting internationally, Kubota also worked as a New York-based international critic for the Japanese art magazine Bijutsu Techo (Art handbook), for which she took photographs and wrote articles on the New York art scene until 1971, thus fostering artistic dialogues across linguistic, geographic, material, and gender divides. In 1991, the American Museum of Moving Image in New York presented a nearly thirty-year survey of Kubota's work.

She died in Manhattan, New York on 23 July 2015 at the age of 77 from cancer. Upon her death, Norman Ballard was named as executor of her estate in order to continue promoting her work and legacy. Ballard is an artist and long time close collaborator with her late husband, artist Nam June Paik, as well as a close friend of the Paik family. He became the founding director of the Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation, located in her historic home in SoHo. Seven years after she passed, the MoMA and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo had exhibitions dedicated to the life and art of Kubota. The MoMA exhibition, Liquid Reality, showed her most acclaimed video sculptures, while the Tokyo exhibition, Viva Video!, displayed works that had never been in an exhibition. Kubota emphasized eulogy in many of her artistic pursuits and was similarly eulogized by museums and the foundation created in her name.

Artistic medium and development
Kubota was one of the first artists to commit to video art and new media, long before its status as an art form was widely recognized. Her early work with Fluxus centered around 1965, after moving to New York City, before she moved on to explore new artistic directions and video. She was known for early video making on the Sony Portapak, one of the first compact individually-operated cameras, as previous models required whole crews. She described filming with this camera in gendered terms: "Portapak and I travelled all over Europe and Japan without male accompaniment. Portapak tears down my backbone, shoulder, and waist. I travel alone with my Portapak on my back, as Vietnamese women do with their babies." Her first experiments with a video camera were manipulated close-up self-portraits, made using the newly invented Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer while she, Paik, and artist Shuya Abe were teaching art CalArts in 1970-71. Among these tapes was A Day at the California Institute of the Arts, which evidence suggests was retitled as Self-Portrait and incorporated into the sculptural work Video Poem (1970–75). From these works, Kubota quickly pivoted to what would become her signature "video diary" approach, through which she documented personal and artistic journeys, added text or audio commentary, and integrated early image-processing techniques like chroma keying, matting, and colorizing to create a "fusion of video documentary and video art, aiming at the higher dimension of consciousness in style and semantics."

In the 1970s, Kubota also pioneered the medium of video sculpture by extending her videos into three-dimensional plywood, sheet metal, and Mylar forms, in collaboration with friend and artist Al Robbins. With these constructions, Kubota aimed to challenge widely-held notions that video art was "fragile," "superficial," "temporal," and "instant," as compared to more established art forms. Her sculptural practice also resisted video's association with mainstream media and corporate technology, by camouflaging the television's hardware. She stated, "I used plywood to cover the TV box, partly because I didn't want people to know what brand the TV was; I just wanted them to see it as a sculpture." Some of her first video sculptures pay homage to Marcel Duchamp, an artist with whom she felt a deep kinship and met twice in her life. Named within Duchampia series, Duchampia: Nude Descending a Staircase (1976) was proposed for acquisition by curator Barbara London after being included as part of The Museum of Modern Art's Projects series for emerging artists. It entered the museum's collection in 1981 under the Department of Painting and Sculpture, as MoMA's first acquisition combining video and sculpture.

In the late 1970s, in parallel with her Duchampaniana series, she began making video sculptures that foreground nature through the combination of what she termed (in a likely nod to Marshall McLuhan) "cool forms," creating volumetric sculptural objects referencing the contours of mountains, rivers, and waterfalls, with "hot video," in which her imagery of these features is colorized, fragmented, repeated, or totally deconstructed. Kubota's use of video embedded in landscape and topography becomes a means to contemplate the self. Kubota utilized especially the landscapes of the American West as an infinite and untamed expanse that recall the nomadic movements of people, including herself as a Japanese artist living in America and moving through the international art world. Works such as Three Mountains and River use constructed sculptures to evoke a sense of place and employ video integrations as a way to expand the horizons of both landscape and sculpture. Her interest in nature as a central theme in her video and sculptural work continued with sketches of Land art interventions that she termed "structural video" works, which would have embedded video monitors in the mountain ridges of Arizona and New Mexico. These works, though unrealized, illustrate the artist's imaginings of a synthesis of nature and technology, a lifelong subject of interest. In the 1990s, Kubota also drew on ecology to produce installations of work like Windflower (Red Tape) (1993), Videoflower (1993), Windmill II (1993), and Bird II (1994), and Videotree (1995) which take the form of twisted trees and flowers of metal embedded with small video monitors. At the same time, Kubota's hybrid objects transgressed boundaries between video sculpture and Minimalist sculpture, resembling at times Donald Judd's plywood, rectilinear volumes while simultaneously at odds with monocultural, male-dominated American art historical trends of the movement.

Kubota's relationship to the formal qualities of video extended beyond the physical camera and took varied forms. In a text about her work River, for example, Kubota drew connections between water and video: "A river is replicated in video in its physical / temporal properties and in its information-carrying and reflective 'mirror' qualities... Rivers connected communities separated by great distances, spreading information faster than any other means... Charged electrons flow across our receiver screens like drops of water, laden with information carried from some previous time (be it years or nanoseconds)." In preparatory sketches for works such as Three Mountains and Niagara Falls I, Kubota expresses the formal properties of video as malleable, like ink washes and line drawings. Having worked in video since its beginnings as an art form, her technical skills in adding texture and depth to her tapes included editing them on playback decks, incorporating computer-generated graphics, overlaying subtitles, reediting, reiterating, and resequencing footage. Later work explores memory processes in relation to video, both in its technological imperative to store and access recorded events and in its self-reflexive connection to autobiography.

Marriage
In 1977, Kubota married the artist Nam June Paik after divorcing her first husband, the composer David Behrman, in 1969. After Paik suffered a series of strokes in 1996, Kubota dedicated a huge amount of time and energy to managing his work and life, becoming his primary caregiver, and effectively slowing production of her own work at the time. They remained together until Paik's death in 2006. Despite Kubota's persistent and pioneering impact on the development of video art, especially video sculpture, her contributions have long been eclipsed within art historical discourse by Paik. While the couple collaborated throughout their thirty-year marriage, Kubota recounts that the concept of video sculpture was her own: "In the beginning, Paik only used the television set, just like that, bare, without anything. Then I told him that a television by itself is not a work. It could be found in any store, he needed to add something. He didn't listen to me, so I decided to do it myself, in the late Sixties. Video Sculptures with all kinds of materials, with super 8 and moving images from films."

Feminism
Whether Kubota's work can be described as feminist has been a topic of interest in the scholarship and presentation of her work. Kelly O'Dell writes that Kubota's references to Marcel Duchamp, Jackson Pollock, and Yves Klein, are used by feminist critics to describe Kubota's work as problematizing the interest of the Western canon in masculine rendering, to reclaim art for women. However, Kubota does not characterize her works as feminist. In an interview with the Brooklyn Rail, she said, "People can put me in the Feminist category all they want, but I didn't think I can make any real contribution other than my work as an artist." But artists who are largely considered feminist may not personally identify as such for a variety of reasons. Judith Butler argues that the label of feminism works against the integration of a larger spectrum of ideas relating to gender and identity into the discourses about art by encapsulating feminist arguments as a separate strain of history or art history.

Feminist art historians have also emphasized Kubota and other women artists' estrangement and marginalization from the Fluxus movement. Midori Yoshimoto writes that Kubota's Vagina Painting, which is her most explicit work about gender in art, was poorly received by her peers involved in Fluxus, similarly to ways in which Yoko Ono and Carolee Schneemann's performances were considered "un-Fluxus" because of their strong emphasis on feminine subjects. Still, in a 1993 exhibition catalog In the Spirit of Fluxus, art historian Kristine Stiles writes that Kubota's Vagina Painting "redefined Action Painting according to the codes of female anatomy," adding, "The direct reference to menstrual cycles seems to compare the procreation / creation continuum lodged in the interirity of woman with the temporal cycles of change and growth she experienced in her own art and life after moving from Japan to the United States." There is also interest in the overshadowing of Kubota's career by her husband Nam June Paik's as an issue of the gender biased art world.

In addition to Kubota's co-founding of the feminist video collective Red, White, Yellow, and Black, scholars suggest Kubota's video art coincided with the rise of second-wave feminism. As curator and critic Emily Watlington suggests, "unburdened by history and thus patriarchal conventions, its capacity for live, instant feedback allowed women to image themselves rather than be depicted by men." The collective used the experimental tool to their advantage, paving their way into a novel art form.

Installations and videos

1st Love, 2nd Love...
While in Tokyo, Kubota became friends with Yoko Ono, who was at the time involved in Fluxus and the New York art scene. Kubota and other members of Group Ongaku and began working on poetic "scores" and sending them to Yoko Ono's contact, George Maciunas, in New York. Midori writes, "the term Happenings was more popular than events in Japan, so Kubota called these poetic works 'Happenings.' Their form and poetic content, grew out of influences from Fluxus scores, such as instructions by Ono."

Kubota's first exhibition in 1963 titled, 1st Love, 2nd Love... exhibited these Happenings as conceptual works. The exhibition was at Naiqua Gallery, an alternative exhibition space in Shinbashi, Tokyo. Kubota exhibited tons of crumpled paper, which she called 'love letters' mounted on the walls and ceiling and covered in white cloth, which she called a Beehive. Her scores of instructions, A Beehive 1, A Beehive 2, and A Blue Love I, and A Blue Love 2 were included in the exhibition. The happenings and other printed items were sent to George Maciunas who printed them in Fluxus publications.

Vagina Painting
Vagina Painting was performed at the Perpetual Fluxus Festival in New York in July 1965. In the performance, Kubota assumed a crouching position over a sheet of paper on the floor with a brush affixed to the crotch of her underwear and painted abstract lines in blood red paint. The work is often cited as a female rejoinder to Jackson Pollock's action or drip paintings and to Yves Klein's use of the female body as a painting tool in his Anthropometrics of the Blue Period (1960) in which female models covered in blue paint imprinted their bodies in white paper on a floor. The red paint is reminiscent of menstrual blood, but also can be juxtaposed with Jackson Pollock's ejaculatory motion of his paintings. Kubota placed the paintbrush at the site of phallic lack, which breaks into a new type of female empowerment. The strokes of the paintbrush recall calligraphy, a reference to her cultural heritage. The work has been associated with feminist art, although Kubota never publicly expressed if she considered the work feminist or not. The work was largely criticized by the predominantly male Fluxus milieu but was later lauded as a historic act of feminist performance art.

In Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York, Midori Yoshimoto notes the possible relationship with Kubota's work and hanadensha ("flower train"), a geisha trick that including using their vaginas to draw calligraphy by inserting paintbrushes into the body. Kubota's vertical stance over the surface on which she paints could reference the masculine tradition of calligraphy drawing in Japan as well as the whole-body method of Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock.

Duchampiana Series
This series of works spans from the 1960s to 1981 and includes documentaries that Kubota filmed when she met Marcel Duchamp personally in the 1960s, and sculptural homages to Duchamp created after his death.
 Marcel Duchamp's Grave, 1972-1975: Footage of Kubota's visit to the Duchamp family's grave in Rouen, France is played on a freestanding plywood construction with more than twelve nine-inch monitors attached. A mirror is placed on the floor to reflect the footage. Kubota presents her blue book from film stills of her video Marcel Duchamp and John Cage to the grave. The installation was first exhibited at The Kitchen in New York in 1975.
 Duchampiana: Video Chess, 1975: A monitor in a plywood box plays Kubota's footage of Duchamp and Cage playing chess and a second version of Kubota playing chess with a naked Nam June Paik. The installation also includes a glass chessboard, a photograph of Duchamp and Nam June Paik playing chess, Kubota's book Marcel Duchamp and John Cage and handpainted wall texts.
 Duchampiana: Nude Descending a Staircase,1976: Television monitors are embedded in each of the four steps in a wooden staircase made by Al Robbins. Clips from Super 8 film of the filmmaker Sheila McClaughlin, rendered in brightly-colored pixels, walking down stairs loops in the monitors. The installation takes its name from Duchamp's painting of the same title. Kubota's wall text reads, "Video is Vacant Apartment/ Video is a Vacation of Art./ Viva Video."
 Duchampiana: Door, 1976-1977: A small room with two doorways next to each other on a corner, and one door able to open one and close the other at the same time. In the room, two monitors play a video of a photograph of Marcel Duchamp mixed with images of Old Faithful, and including audio of Duchamp's voice. Construction of the doors and wood frames was done by Al Robbins.
 Duchampiana: Bicycle Wheel, 1983 and Duchampiana: Bicycle Wheel One, 1990; Duchampiana: Bicycle Wheel Two, 1990; and Duchampiana: Bicycle Wheel Three, 1990: Bicycle wheels with small, five-inch color monitors attached to the spokes are motorized to spin.

Video Poem
In Video Poem (1976), Kubota's self-portrait is displayed on a small monitor that viewers can see through a vulva-shaped opening of a purple bag. A fan, placed inside the bag to keep the equipment cool, added pulsating movements. The bag had been given to her by her first boyfriend, Takehisa Kosugi, whom she used to support by working three jobs. Video Poem challenges male authority by her use of her ex-boyfriend's bag.

Meta Marcel: Window Series
This series references Marcel Duchamp's wood-framed 'Fresh Widow'. This series includes four separate video works which are projected behind a plywood box with glass windows framing a twenty-four inch monitor.
 Meta Marcel: Window (Snow), 1976-1977:  Kubota met Duchamp during a snowstorm while both were on a flight en route to Buffalo, NY in the year of his death, 1968. The video screen is filled with 'snow'– the effect achieved by image distortion on a television set, and the window pane is substituted for black leather, and the video is appropriately called Snow. This piece was part of Kubota's Meta-Marcel series.
 Meta Marcel: Window (Flowers), 1983: Footage of flowers.
 Meta Marcel: Window (Stars), 1983: Footage of stars.
 Meta Marcel: Window (Snow With Computer Writing), 1991.

River, 1979-1981
Consists of three monitors suspended screen-down over a crescent shaped metal structure filled with water. The videotapes playing on the monitors reflect in the water and the structure. Describing the moving images in River, Kubota states, "Once cast into video's reality, infinite variation becomes possible... freedom to dissolve, reconstruct, mutate all forms, shape, color, location, speed, scale... liquid reality." It was first shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art. It was restored in 2017 by the Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation, and installed in 2018 at MIT, and then SculptureCenter in New York, for the exhibition Before Projection.

Other installations and sculptures
 Fluxus Suitcase, 1964: Aluminum suitcase sent from Japan to George Maciunas in New York as mail art. Kubota has shown it as a memorial to George Macinuas and Al Robbins in recent years.
 Fluxus Napkins, 1965: Original paper napkins with collage made for a Fluxus dinner organized by George Maciunas for Kubota, Chieko Shiomi, Takako Saito, and Nam June Paik.
 Fluxus Pills, 1966: Empty gelatin pill capsules in a plastic box made for George Maciunas.
 Video Poem, 1968-1976: Kubota's color-synthesized tape Self-Portrait is encased within a nylon bag with zippered openings, which rests on a wooden pedestal. The bag was made by the Japanese artist Takehisa Kosugi (1963).
 Three Mountains, 1976-1979: Three freestanding plywood structures: two mountains with monitors inside, one of a pyramid with a monitor inside. The tapes include footage of a Grand Canyon helicopter trip; a drive on Echo Cliff, Arizona; and a Teton sunset.
 Video Relief, 1979-1981: Two plywood panels with round lenses and one with painted calligraphy– each showing the video Shigeko in Berlin (1979).
 Rock Video: Cherry Blossom, 1981
 Berlin Diary: Thanks to My Ancestors, 1981: Wood rope helps fasten a sheet of pink crystal with Japanese calligraphy of Kubota's ancestor's names on a five-inch monitor.
 Video Haiku– Hanging Piece, 1981: A round television with a closed circuit camera hangs over a round, concave plastic mirror ( diameter) so that the image is visible in the mirror.
 Green Installation, 1983: A large plywood structure that resembles a two-sided, freestanding staircase has five monitors  playing a color videotape of the Arizona landscape on each side.
 Niagara Falls I, 1985;Niagara Falls II, 1987;Niagara Falls III, 1987. A freestanding wall with many monitors projecting images of the four seasons, and covered in mirror shards. A speaker plays a recording of the waterfall at Niagara Falls. A sprinkler system hangs over the piece and pumps water from pipes over the wall to a basin below the sculpture.
 Rock Video: Cherry Blossoms: 1986, 12:54 min, color, silent: A five-inch monitor is embedded in a boulder and shows a single-channel video of cherry blossoms. Shards of Mirrors are placed around the rock.
 Dry Mountain, Dry Water, 1987-88: Seven plywood sculptures are covered with Mylar mirrors and shaped like rocks and abstract 3-D geometrical shapes. Video projectors on the wall and floor show a two-channel video of cherry blossoms.
 Adam and Eve, 1989-1991:  Two life-sized robot figures with eight embedded monitors total are paced near each other. Behind the Video is Video Byobu II (Cherry Blossoms)
 Video Byobu I (Cherry Blossoms), 1988;  Video Byobu II (Cherry Blossoms), 1991; Video Byobu III (Cherry Blossoms), 1991.
 Bird I, 1991, and Bird II, 1992: Videos of birds in sculptural installation.
 Study for Wheel, 1990
 Jogging Lady, 1993: Footage of women running marathons playing on monitors stacked to resemble a human form.
 Tree I and Tree II, 1993: Sculptures of a tree whose branches have become resting places for television monitors.
 Pissing Boy, 1993: A sculpture of a robot urinating into a tin. Kubota has said the sculpture is of Nam June Paik.
 Sexual Healing, 1998
 Nam June Paik I and II, 2007: An installation of metal piping sculptures with video monitors attached that suggest Nam June Paik's body. Footage of Kubota and Paik on vacation in Miami in 1996 plays on these monitors, and the video serves as a homage to Paik.

Videography
 Marcel Duchamp and John Cage: 1972, 28:27 min, b&w and color, sound: Shigeko Kubota recorded the Reunion performance of Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, a chess match in which music was produced by a series of photoelectric cells underneath the chessboard, triggered sporadically by normal game play. Kubota assembled this video using her own photographs and video. Reunion turned out to be the last public meeting of these artists. With her footage, Shigeko Kubota developed this videotape, a video-sculpture, and a book called, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, which she reportedly later placed on Duchamp's grave in Rouen, Normandy.
 Broken Diary: Europe on 1/2 Inch a Day: 1972, 30:48 min, b&w and color, sound: Europe on 1/2 Inch a Day is the first of Shigeko Kubota's series of video diaries. Kubota used a Portapak to create the video travel diary of her travels through Amsterdam, Paris, and Brussels– which includes footage of underground performances, Kubota's meeting with Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf, graffiti, and a visit to Marcel Duchamp's grave in Rouen, Normandy, which inspired her later sculptural work, Video Chess. The chapter Europe on Five Dollars a Day offers a realistic view of the complications of budget travel, for women in particular, meant to counter the unrealistic gloss of popular travel books.
 Riverrun– Video Water Poem: 1972: The video installation is made up of six distinct channels, four showing footage that she shot while filming Broken Diary: Europe on 1/2 Inch a Day - featuring the Seine, the Rhine, the Venice canal, and the Amsterdam canal. A fifth monitor showed the Hudson river. Finally, the sixth monitor shows a live feed of visitors drinking orange juice which spouts from a fountain in the installation. The video includes audio excerpts from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.
 My Father (Shigeko Kubota), 1973-1975: In the film she explains that when she found out her father had died of cancer she decided to film herself mourning, intoning, "Father, why did you die?" In the footage, Kubota cries while watching videos she recorded of herself and her father watching TV at his home in Japan. Kubota juxtaposes the banality of pop music and New Year's celebrations with the suffering relationship between the father and daughter pair. By revealing the ironic duality of a video image being so real and yet so unreal, Kubota leads the viewer to consider the meaning of death.
 Video Girls and Video Songs for Navajo Sky: 1973, 31:56 min, b&w and color, sound: In 1973, Shigeko Kubota began experimenting with image processing equipment at WNET's TV Lab and produced Video Girls and Video Songs for Navajo Skies. The video is a surreal diary of Kubota's stay with artist Cecilia Sandoval and her Navajo family on a reservation in Chinle, Arizona with footage of the family and the surrounding landscape.
 Allan 'n' Allen's Complaint: Nam June Paik and Shigeko Kubota: 1982, 28:33 min, color, sound
 Trip to Korea: 1984, 9:05 min, color, sound: The story of Nam June Paik's first trip to Korea after thirty-four years of being in the USA. Video includes footage of Nam June Paik's family, and his visits to a Korean village, and a graveyard where his ancestors lay.
 SoHo Soap/Rain Damage: 1985, 8:25 min, color, sound:  Video of Kubota's co-op studio at 110 Mercer Street, New York, and rain damage during a storm.
 George Maciunas With Two Eyes 1972, George Maciunas With One Eye 1976 :1994, 7 min, b&w, sound
 Sexual Healing: 1998, 4:10 min, color, sound
 April is the Cruelest Month: 1999, 52 min, color, sound
 Winter in Miami: 2005 2006, 14 min, color, sound
 Korean Grave: 1993 (A homage to Nam June Paik)

Exhibitions
Source:
 Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany
 Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
 The Kulturhuset, Stockholm
 Japan Society (New York)
 The Kitchen, New York, 1972, 1975
 Rene Block Gallery, New York 1976, 1977
 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, 1979
 Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany
 Kunsthaus, Zurich, 1982
 White Columns, 1983
 New Langton Arts, San Francisco, 1986
 Documenta 6, Kassel, Germany, 1987
 Kongress Halle, Berlin, 1989
 Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
 Venice Biennale, 1990
 Sydney Biennale, 1990
 Retrospective: "Shigeko Kubota, Video Sculpture," American Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria, New York, 1991
 "Shigeko Kubota," Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1996
 "Duchampiana (1968-1995)", Galerie de Paris, 1996
 "Shigeko Kubota: Liquid Reality," Museum of Modern Art, 2021

Collections
 Hara Museum Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan
 Gino di Maggio, Fondazione Mudima, Milan, Italy
 Jorge Santiano Helft Fundacion San Telmo, Buenos Aires, Argentina
 The Museum of Modern Art, New York
 The Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, Japan

References

Bibliography
 Butler, Judith. Bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of "sex". New York: Routledge. 1993.
 Butler, Judith. Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge. 1990.
 Butler, Judith. Undoing gender. New York: Routledge. 2004.
 Cross, Lowell. "Reunion": John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Electronic Music and Chess". Leonardo Music Journal. 9: 1999. 35–42.
 Gever, M. "Pressure Points: Video in the Public Sphere," Art Journal 45.3, 1985.
 Gewen, Barry. "State of the Art". New York Times. 2005.
 Goldberg, RoseLee. Performance: live art since 1960. New York: Harry N. Abrams Publishers. 1998.
 Jacob, Mary Jane ed. Shigeko Kubota: Video Sculpture. New York: American Museum of the Moving Image, 1991. Includes: Roth, Moria, "The Voice of Shigeko Kubota:' A Fusion of Art and Life, Asia and America,'" and Hanley, JoAnn, "Reflections in a Video Mirror."
 Mark, Lisa, WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2007.
 O'Dell, Kelly, Fluxus Feminus, MIT Press (TDR) Vol. 41. No. 1, 1997. 43–60.
 Ruhrberg, Karl; Honnef, Klaus; Fricke, Christiane; Manfred Schneckenburger, Ingo F. Walther, Art of the 20th century. Taschen. 2000. 596.
 Sackler, Arthur M. American film. American Film Institute. 24–28. 1980.
 Schneider,Rebecca, The Explicit Body in Performance. New York: Routledge, 1997.
 Smith, Roberta, "Review/Art; Sleek Video Sculptures By Shigeko Kubota". The New York Times. (24 May 1991), 26.
 Stiles, Kristine, "Between Water and Stone: Fluxus Performance, A Metaphysics of Acts," in Armstrong and Rothfuss, In the Spirit of Fluxus.
 Warr, Tracey, and Amelia Jones. The Artist's Body. London: Phaidon. 2000.
 Yoshimoto, Midori. "Self-exploration in Multimedia : the Experiments of Shigeko Kubota," in Into performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York.'' New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press. 2005.

External links
 EAI: Biography of Shigeko Kubota and a list of video works by the artist.
 Shigeko Kubota in the Video Data Bank
 Kubota performing one of her Vagina Paintings
 Interview with Phong Bui in Brooklyn Rail from September 2007
 http://www.fungcollaboratives.org/ny-gallery/artists/sexual-healing/exhibition-description/

1937 births
2015 deaths
20th-century Japanese women artists
21st-century Japanese women artists
Japanese contemporary artists
The New School alumni
Japanese video artists
Japanese women sculptors
Japanese performance artists
Fluxus
Artists from Niigata Prefecture
Japanese emigrants to the United States

Shigeko Kubota


Bad Hair is a 2020 American satirical comedy horror film written, directed, and produced by Justin Simien. The film stars Elle Lorraine, Jay Pharoah, Lena Waithe, Kelly Rowland, Laverne Cox, Chanté Adams, James Van Der Beek, Usher Raymond IV, Blair Underwood, and Vanessa Williams.

Bad Hair had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2020. It was released in a limited release on October 16, 2020, by Neon, followed by digital streaming on Hulu on October 23, 2020. The film received moderately positive reviews from critics.

Plot
In the late 1970s, a young Anna attempts to relax her hair with the help of her older cousin Linda. Her hair has a bad reaction to the cream and leaves a permanent scar at the back of her head.

Many years later, in 1989, an adult Anna is an assistant at Culture, a television station featuring African-American music artists. Aspiring to move up in the industry, she is devastated when her mentor, Edna, the current head of programming, is ousted by the station's owner, Grant Madison, and replaced with former supermodel Zora. Anna suggests her idea to expand the station's reach by diversifying the Culture VJs' style and showcase a live music video countdown show. Impressed, Zora takes her on as her assistant, but demands that Anna change from her natural Afro-textured hair to a weave to fit the station's new image. Zora gives her the address of her upscale hair salon, Virgie's. The process is painful, but Virgie gives Anna a pink bottle of hair product and tells her never to let the weave get wet.

Anna's new hair helps her succeed, getting her noticed by an old work flame, Julius. She expresses the desire to become host of the countdown. Despite the VJs' reluctance to change to a more commercial appearance, Anna convinces them to sport the new weaves. However, she begins to notice strange phenomena, such as the hair moving on its own, intense hunger pangs, and dreams of hair being cut on a plantation. When her drunk landlord, Mr. Tannen, attempts to rape her, Anna's hair becomes active and stabs him. It then surges into the wound and drains Tannen of his blood, killing him. Anna is horrified. At a party, Zora asks cryptic questions about whether Anna is still using the hair product, leading her to suspect that Zora is similarly afflicted. She is confronted by Edna, who is disappointed by Anna selling out Culture's image and criticizes her weave as indicative of her lack of integrity. Anna is crushed when she learns that Zora has made herself host instead, and has been having an affair with Julius. When Anna later has sex with Julius, the hair possesses her, and she angrily stabs him. The hair feeds on his blood.

Terrified, Anna flees to a natural hair salon to have the weave removed and runs into Edna. She tearfully apologizes for disappointing her, but as the stylist attempts to cut her weave out, the hair kills everyone in the salon. Anna recalls an African American slave lore tale called "The Moss Haired Girl" from a book given to her by her uncle, a Black studies professor. A slave fashions a wig from tree moss to replicate the straight hair of her masters, but finds the moss is actually the hair of dead witches who possess the woman. Frantic, Anna finds that Zora and others who received weaves from Virgie's are possessed. Zora attempts to break free from the possession and is killed by her own hair. Now fully controlling Zora and the others, the hair chases  Anna through the building. Trapped in a sound booth, she lights a cigarette in preparation for her death. However, she spots a sprinkler and triggers it, causing water to soak her and the others, weakening her hair and allowing her to cut it off.

As she moves back into her uncle and aunt's home, Anna learns the hair product is made with pig's blood, intended to help feed the hair. She sees new advertisements for Culture featuring Zora, who survived and is now fully possessed by the witches' hair. She finishes reading the story of the Moss Haired Girl, which tells of the plantation master's descendants continuing to farm the hair, knowing of its controlling abilities. A truck with the same logo of the tree moss illustration drives out to a plantation, where it loads up boxes of hair, and unloads the corpses of the hair's victims. The plantation owner is revealed to be Culture station owner, Grant Madison, and the tree, rife with writhing hair, grows nearby. Anna's cousin Linda announces she managed to get an appointment at Virgie's to have a weave put in.

Cast

Production
In August 2017, it was announced Justin Simien would direct, write, and produce the film, with Oren Moverman serving as an executive producer under his Sight Unseen banner.

Release
It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2020. Shortly after, Hulu acquired distribution rights to the film. It was released in a limited release on October 16, 2020, by Neon, followed by digital streaming on October 23, 2020.

Reception
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of  based on  reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critics consensus reads: "Bad Hairs unwieldy ambitions are easy to respect – even if the film's tonal jumble and uneven execution are impossible to ignore." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 61 out of 100 based on 23 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

References

External links

2020 films
2020 comedy horror films
2020 independent films
2020s satirical films
2020 black comedy films
African-American comedy horror films
Films scored by Kris Bowers
Hulu original films
Neon (company) films
FilmNation Entertainment films
2020s English-language films
2020s American films

Bad Hair (2020 film)


Zanzibar is the name of an archipelago in the Indian Ocean 25–50 km off the coast of East Africa. There are many small islands and two large ones: Unguja (the main island, sometimes informally referred to as 'Zanzibar') and Pemba Island.

The archipelago was once the separate state of Zanzibar, which united with Tanganyika to form Tanzania (derived from the two names). Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous within the union, with its own government.

The capital of Zanzibar is Zanzibar City. It is on the island of Unguja.  The city's old quarter, known as Stone Town, is a World Heritage Site.

The people are mostly African Bantu, with some Asians of Indian origin.

Politics
Zanzibar has its own government, known as the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar. It is made up of the Revolutionary Council and House of Representatives.

The main Parties are the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) and the Civic United Front (CUF). Since the early 1990s, the politics of the archipelago have been marked by repeated violent clashes between these two political parties.

Independence claimed
In October 2009, Zanzibar President Amani Karume met with CUF Secretary Seif Shariff Hamad at the State House to discus how to save Zanzibar from future political turmoil and to end the backlash between them, a move which was welcomed by many people including the USA and political parties. It was the first time CUF agreed to recognize Karume as the legitimate president of Zanzibar.

The relationship between Zanzibar government and Tanzanian Mainland has not been good in recent years since Tanzania Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda's remark about the Isles' sovereignty. He said that Zanzibar is not an independent country outside the Union Government, within which it can only exercise its sovereignty.

Members from both the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), and the opposition Civic United Front (CUF) disagreed with Mr Pinda's interpretation and stand firmly in recognizing Zanzibar as a fully autonomous and full state. The move was not recognized by the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania.

In 2008, Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete tried to silence the debate when he addressed the nation in a live conference by saying that Zanzibar is a state internal but semi-state international. There the matter rests for the time being.

A proposal to amend Zanzibar's laws to allow rival parties to form governments of national unity was adopted by 66.4 per cent of voters, after official results of a referendum which was held on July 31, 2010.

Religion
Zanzibar is 95% Islamic in religion, and has been so for hundreds of years. It was once part of the Persian Empire, then under the Caliphate of Oman. It was ruled by a Sultan. Zanzibar was conquered by the British in the late 19th century. The islands were involved in the Arab slave trade, and the British conquest was an attempt to stop this. They appointed puppet rulers, and Zanzibar became a 'protectorate', not a colony.

Zanzibar gained independence on 10th December 1963 from the British.

Spices
Zanzibar's main industries are spices (which include cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and pepper), raffia, and tourism. Zanzibar is also the home of the endemic Zanzibar Red Colobus and the elusive Zanzibar Leopard.
The word "Zanzibar" probably derives from the Persian زنگبار, Zangi-bar ("coast of the blacks") and it is also known as Zanji-bar in Arabic. Zanzibar is sometimes referred to as the "Spice Islands," a term that is more often used for the Maluku Islands in Indonesia. Pemba Island is the only island apart from Zanzibar that still produces cloves on a major basis which is the primary source of spice income for the islands.

Economy
The islands are poor, and the economy is in trouble. Zanzibaris are living a hard life compare to the mainland. In 2000, the annual income per capita was US$220.

During May and June 2008, Zanzibar suffered a major failure of its electricity system, which left the island without electricity for nearly a month. Another blackout happened from December 2009 to March 2010, due to a problem with the submarine cables and the local plant. This led to a serious and ongoing shock to the island's fragile economy, which is heavily dependent on foreign tourism.

Cloves
Zanzibar's economy is based primarily on the production of cloves (90% grown on the island of Pemba), the principal foreign exchange earner. Exports have suffered with the downturn in the clove market.

The clove, originally from the Moluccan Islands (Indonesia), was introduced to Zanzibar by the Omani sultans in the first half of the XIX century. Zanzibar, mainly Pemba Island, was once the world's leading clove producer, but annual clove sales have plummeted by 80% since the 1970s. Zanzibar's clove industry has been crippled by a fast-moving global market, and international competition.

Tanzania's failed experiment with socialism in the 1960s and 1970s, when the government controlled clove prices and exports, is also a factor. Zanzibar now ranks a distant third with Indonesia supplying 75% of the world's cloves compared to Zanzibar's 7%.

Other options
Zanzibar exports spices, seaweed and fine raffia. It also has a large fishing and dugout canoe production.

Tourism is a major foreign currency earner. A number of new hotels and resorts having been built in recent years.

The Government of Zanzibar legalized foreign exchange bureaux on the islands. The effect was to increase the availability of consumer commodities. The government has also established a free port area. This stimulates trade and support services. There is a management system for re-exportation of goods.

There is also a possibility of oil exploration in Zanzibar on the island of Pemba. Oil would help boost the economy of Zanzibar, but there have been disagreements about dividends between the Tanzanian mainland and Zanzibar, the latter claiming the oil should be excluded in Union matters. A Norwegian consultant has been sent to Zanzibar to investigate its oil potential.

References

Zanzibar

Zanzibar


Edward Leo Peter "Ed" McMahon, Jr. (March 6, 1923 – June 23, 2009) was an American television presenter and personality, actor, comedian, spokesman, and philanthropist. He was the announcer and co-host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson with host Johnny Carson. Ed McMahon has also been on Star Search. He was best known for being on television.

McMahon was born in Detroit, Michigan. He was raised in Lowell, Massachusetts and in Mexico, Maine. McMahon studied at Boston College and at The Catholic University of America. His career began in 1957 while broadcasting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

McMahon was married to Alyce Ferrill from 1945 until they divorced in 1974. Later, he married Victoria Valentine from 1976 until they divorced in 1989. Lastly, he married Pam Hurn from 1992 until his death in 2009.

McMahon died at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California from pneumonia, aged, 86.

References

Other websites

1923 births
2009 deaths
Deaths from pneumonia
American television presenters
American television personalities
American television actors
American philanthropists
Actors from Detroit
Actors from Massachusetts
Actors from Maine
Comedians from Detroit
Comedians from Massachusetts
People from Lowell, Massachusetts
Comedians from Maine

Ed McMahon


Coonawarra is a small town north of Penola in South Australia. It is best known for the Coonawarra wine region named after it.

The Aboriginal Australians living in the area when Europeans arrived were the Bindjali people, The word coonawarra is reported to have been their word for honeysuckle, although this meaning has also been ascribed to Penola by the same source. An alternative origin to the name is still rooted in the local indigenous language: "The name of John Riddock's fruit colony, started by him in 1895. "Coon" being the aboriginal word for "big lip", and "warra," for "house," and was applied by natives to a house in the locality in which a man with a remarkably big lip lived"

Coonawarra was a station on the Mount Gambier railway line, which opened in 1887 and operated until it closed to freight on 12 April 1995. The Limestone Coast Railway tourist trains stopped at the station from Mount Gambier until 20 March 1999.

The township of Coonawarra is a few hundred metres west of the Riddoch Highway which passes along the ridge in the middle of the Coonawarra wine region. The historic Wynn's Coonawarra Winery in Memorial Drive is listed on the South Australian Heritage Register.

References

Towns in South Australia
Limestone Coast

Coonawarra, South Australia


Antonio Marfori Bautista (September 17, 1937 – January 11, 1974) was an F-86 Sabre pilot who served in the Philippine Air Force. He served in the aerobatic display team the Blue Diamonds and fought against rebels in the south of the country. He was killed in action in January 1974.

Biography
Lieutenant Colonel Antonio "Tony" Marfori Bautista (serial no 0-4457) was a combat pilot of the Philippine Air Force (PAF). Tony Bautista was a former aviation cadet of the Philippine Air Force Flying School (PAF-FS) Class of 1958. He fought against government insurgents in the south of the Philippines in the 1970s.

He was a member of the Blue Diamonds Aerial Demonstration Team from 1964 to 1966 (with the 6th Tactical Fighter Squadron), the team leader of the 9th Tactical Fighter Squadron Aerobatic team "Golden Sabres" in 1972, and the team leader of the "Sabres", the combined 7th TFS "Red Aces" and 9th TFS "Golden Sabres" aerobatic teams in 1973.

Antonio Bautista graduated from The University of the Philippines in Los Baños in 1957 with a degree in Agriculture. He signed up for the Philippine Air Force Flying School in Fernando Air Base, Lipa, Batangas, graduating in 1958, and was sent to the 5th Fighter Wing stationed at Basa Air Base, Floridablanca, Pampanga. His first assignment was with the 8th Fighter Squadron, Nicknamed "Scorpions", flying piston-driven North American F-51 Mustangs. At about the same time, the Philippine Air Force was in the process of transitioning to Jets, so in 1959, in preparation for jet training, he was sent to Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, Japan, for Altitude Physiological Training. In 1961 to 1962, he took the U.S. Air Force's Jet Qualification Course at Randolph Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas. In 1962, he continued his training at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, for aerial gunnery and combat training.

When Bautista returned from overseas training, he was posted at Basa Air Base but was reassigned to the 6th Tactical Fighter Squadron flying the North American F-86 Sabre. In 1971, he assumed command of the 9th Tactical Fighter "Limbas" Squadron. His last assignment was as Commander of the joint 7th and 9th Tactical Fighter Squadrons of the Sulu Air Task Group (SATAG) which was deployed in Edwin Andrews Air Base, Zamboanga, for Counter-insurgency (COIN) operations against insurgent separatists in Mindanao.

Antonio Bautista is the only airman known to have served with all five fighter squadrons in the Philippine Air Force 5th Fighter Wing; the 105th, 6th TFS, 7th TFS, 8th FS, and 9th TFS.

On 11 January 1974, he took off from Edwin Andrews Air Force Base leading an element of two F-86 Sabres to support government troops that were under attack by a large number of armed rebels in Parang on Jolo Island, 200 miles away.

During the engagement he made several low attack runs, exposing himself and his aircraft to heavy rifle fire. When he finally broke off after two bombing runs and five strafing passes, his fighter was severely damaged; his wingman, Lt. Roger Crudo, informed him that the aircraft was on fire. He tried to divert to the nearby Jolo airstrip, but when his nose landing gear failed to fully deploy, he ejected at a low altitude of 1000 feet; the airplane exploded seconds afterward. Despite having bailed out over government-controlled territory, his parachute drifted back over enemy lines. Rescue helicopters led by Col. Luis Diano landed a kilometer away from him due to severe hostile fire. Despite the rescue attempts and efforts by Bautista to defend his position using his service pistol, he was overwhelmed by more rebels and killed before rescue forces could reach him.

Philippine Air Force TSgt Nonito Calizo and Airman Benjamin Lojo were the first rescuers to arrive at the scene and secure Bautista's body and were decorated for retrieving Bautista's body.

For his "uncommon bravery and tenacity in the face of overwhelming odds," the Armed Forces of the Philippines, under General Order 519, posthumously awarded Bautista the Distinguished Conduct Star on April 29, 1974. His widow, Alice Jane Rigor received the awards on behalf of her husband from then Philippine President, Ferdinand Marcos. For his gallantry, the Philippine Air Force base at Puerto Princesa, Palawan (island) was named Antonio Bautista Air Base in his honor when it opened on 21 March 1975. It is now home to the Air Force's 570th Composite Tactical Wing.

Gallery

References

"Soldier Heroes, A handbook on the winners of the Major Medals Awarded By the Philippine Constabulary and the Armed Forces since 1902-1980", (circa 1981), National Media Production Center, Manila, Pages 110, 143

External links
Bio of Antonio Bautista on Philippine Air Force website
On The Wings of Angels: The Last Flight of Lt Col Antonio M Bautista
Global Security.org Antonio Bautista Airbase

1937 births
1974 deaths
Aviators killed by being shot down
Filipino military aviators
Military history of the Philippines
People from Cabanatuan
Philippine Air Force personnel
Recipients of the Distinguished Conduct Star
University of the Philippines Los Baños alumni

Antonio Bautista


The Immortals of rugby league in Australia are players named as the nation's greatest ever. From 1981 to 2017 The Immortals were named by the Australian sports magazine Rugby League Week. From 2018, the National Rugby League took over The Immortals concept.

Established in 1981, the original group consisted of former Test captains Clive Churchill, Bob Fulton, Reg Gasnier, and Johnny Raper. Although Rugby League Week (RLW) did not hold any official affiliation with any of the governing bodies of rugby league in Australia, the release was met with much public respect and admiration for the players listed. To coincide with this announcement, Hunter Valley vineyard Elliots Wines released, in conjunction with Rugby League Week, four bottles of 1977 vintage port as a boxed set. Each player was represented on the label of each of the bottles. Returning eighteen years later, Rugby League Week announced in 1999 its intention to select a fifth member of The Immortals. However, the panel of experts chosen to pick the next Immortal was unable to decide on a sole player; it was then announced that the next additions to The Immortals would be Graeme Langlands and Wally Lewis. 2003 saw the addition of Arthur Beetson as the seventh Immortal.

Andrew Johns was inducted as the eighth Immortal at the Men of League Gala Dinner the week of the 2012 NRL Grand Final. The judges who deliberated over candidates were: Wayne Bennett (seven-time premiership winning coach, former Queensland Origin coach), Ray Warren (Channel Nine network television senior commentator), John Grant (Chairman ARL Commission), David Middleton (leading rugby league historian), Ray Hadley (radio and Channel Nine network television commentator), Phil Rothfield (News Limited), Roy Masters (journalist, Fairfax Media), Geoff Prenter (RLW Founding Editor 1970-81), Ian Heads (RLW Editor 1981-87), Norman Tasker (RLW Editor 1988-2000), Tony Durkin (RLW Editor 2001-02), Martin Lenehan (RLW Editor 2003-11) and Mitchell Dale (RLW Editor). The current living Immortals (Fulton, Raper, Langlands, Lewis and Johns) were also granted a vote. Fulton, Raper and Langlands have since died.

Although the tag of Immortal continues to be a highly respected one for any player to obtain, it was initially criticised for only being awarded to post-war players. However, it was agreed by the first judges in 1981 (Frank Hyde, Harry Bath and Tom Goodman), that they could only judge on players they had seen in action. Furthermore, to overcome entrenched criticism over Johns' admitted use of recreational drugs during his playing career, the rules were altered so the candidates can only be judged on their playing ability alone, and nothing else.

With the closure of Rugby League Week in 2017, the concept was taken over by the Australian Rugby League Commission.

On 1 August 2018, a further five players were announced as Immortals, bringing the tally to thirteen. They were Dave Brown, Frank Burge, Mal Meninga, Dally Messenger, and Norm Provan. It was the first time that the three pre-World War II champions could be considered for this recognition, as it had previously been an award restricted to post-World War II players.

Eligibility Criteria: To be eligible to be considered, the player must be a member of the National Rugby League Hall of Fame.

Living Immortals
There are three living Immortals: Andrew Johns (age ), Wally Lewis () and Mal Meninga (). The last Immortal to die was Johnny Raper, on 9 February 2022.

References

Rugby league trophies and awards

The Immortals (rugby league)


The Siren's Reign is a 1915 American silent drama film directed by Robert G. Vignola and starring Alice Hollister, Harry F. Millarde, Anna Q. Nilsson, Robert Walker and Henry Hallam. An upright young man marries a siren, a drunken, unfaithful woman, who mothers his child, and then ruins him financially and morally.

Plot
Story of a man who disregards the quiet affection of a fine girl to marry a frivolous actress with whom he is infatuated. Several years later, after the woman has wrecked his life, the husband gives up in despair and shoots himself. Not until then does he realize the other woman's affection towards him. When he does he places his little daughter in her care.

Themes
The characters played respectively by Alice Hollister and Anna Nelson are "contrasting roles (that) make for an interesting commentary on the changing role of women in the early 20th century."

Cast

 Alice Hollister as Grace - a Soubrette
 Harry F. Millarde as Hugh Blake - The Husband
 Anna Q. Nilsson as Marguerite Morrison - The Other Woman
 Robert Walker as Morrison - Marguerite's Brother
 Henry Hallam as Hardy - a Faithful Employee

References

External links

1915 films
American silent short films
American black-and-white films
Silent American drama films
Films directed by Robert G. Vignola
1910s American films
American drama short films

The Siren's Reign


In Lithuania, there are around 100 cities (in Lithuanian: singular – , plural – ). The term city is defined by the Parliament of Lithuania as a compact urban area with more than 3,000 people, of whom at least two-thirds work in the industry or service sector. Settlements with a population of less than 3,000 but with historical city status are still considered to be cities. Smaller settlements are called  (plural ) which is translated as "towns". Even smaller settlements (villages) are called  (plural ). Often the official status is not clear and people refer to both towns and villages as  (plural ) which in essence means settlement.

The cities started to form in the 13th–14th centuries together with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The first to receive city rights was Klaipėda. According to medieval law, a city could have its own fairs, taverns, guilds, courts, etc. Some former cities lost their status and are now just towns or villages, for example Kernavė and Merkinė. Most of the cities in Lithuania were established before the 18th century. Their location is mostly determined by trade and transportation routes. Some of the newer cities grew because of railroad construction, for example Kaišiadorys, Vievis, Radviliškis, Ignalina and Mažeikiai. In the 20th century, cities grew next to big industrial centers, for example Visaginas, Elektrėnai and Naujoji Akmenė. Five cities (Birštonas, Druskininkai, Neringa, Palanga and Anykščiai) have a special resort status.

Most of the cities are small. There are only 14 cities with a population of more than 20,000. Cities are quite evenly spread out through the territory of Lithuania. At the 2001 census 66.7% of the population lived in cities, and the percentage is growing.

Cities with over 20,000 inhabitants

Cities with under 20,000 inhabitants

Map

Gallery

See also
 List of towns in Lithuania (Lithuanian: plural – miesteliai, singular – miestelis)
 List of Lithuanian cities in other languages
 Administrative divisions of Lithuania
 Counties (Lithuanian: singular – apskritis, plural – apskritys)
 Municipalities (Lithuanian: plural – savivaldybės, singular – savivaldybė)
 Elderships (or wards) (eldership, ward) (Lithuanian: plural – seniūnijos, singular – seniūnija).
 Seniūnaitija (sub-eldership)

Notes and sources
 Population sizes are given according to Department of Statistics to the Government of the Republic of Lithuania (Statistics Lithuania) data for the census of 2001.
 "City rights" means rights to self-government. For older cities this is usually the date when Magdeburg rights were granted. Most dates are obtained from Lithuanian Wikipedia which assembled the information from several different sources. One of the main sources was Population Statistics. This information cannot be completely trusted.
 Counties, municipalities and elderships are given according to Lithuanian Central Internet Gates data.
 Stasys Vaitiekūnas, Elena Valančienė, Lietuvos geografija (Geography of Lithuania), Alma littera, 2004, pages 160-162.
 Lietuvos Respublikos teritorijos administracinių vienetų ir jų ribų įstatymas (Republic of Lithuania Law on Administrative Units and Their Borders), Seimas law database, June 19, 1994, law no. I-558.
 At the time of the 2001 census, there were 106 cities in Lithuania. the Government of the Republic of Lithuania made these changes:
 On December 16, 2002 Juodupė lost city status and became a town
 On February 25, 2003 Kulautuva lost city status and became a town
 On April 8, 2003 Tyruliai lost city status and became a town
 Cities with no image of a coat of arms shown do not have one confirmed by the President of Lithuania. Municipalities share coats of arms with their capitals, with the exception of cities which are capitals of more than one municipality (i.e. a city municipality and a district municipality), in which case the city municipality shares the coat of arms with the city, while the district municipality has its own distinct coat of arms. Another notable exception is Trakai town, which has different coat of arms from its municipality (Trakai District Municipality).

Lithuania, List of cities in
Lithuania geography-related lists
Lithuania
Lithuania

List of cities in Lithuania


Pato is a game played on horseback.  It adds ideas from polo and basketball. It is the national sport of Argentina.

 is Spanish for "duck".  The early games used a live duck inside a basket instead of a ball. Pato has been written about since 1610. The playing field would often go between neighboring ranches. The first team to reach its own ranch house with the duck was the winner.

Pato was banned several times during its history.  This was due to the violence—not only to the duck; many gauchos were trampled underfoot.  Some lost their lives in knife fights started in the heat of the game. In 1796, a Catholic priest said that pato players who died this way should not get Christian burial. Laws saying people could not play pato were common in the 19th century.

During the 1930s, pato had rules added by ranch owner Alberto del Castillo Posse.  He made a set of rules based on modern polo. President Juan Perón made pato Argentina's national game in 1953.

Gameplay

In modern pato, two four-member teams ride on horses.  They try to get a ball which has six handles.  They score by throwing the ball through a ring that is vertical. The rings have a 100 cm (3.3 ft) diameter.  They are on 240 cm (7.9 ft) high poles. A closed net, going up for 140 cm (4.6 ft), holds the ball after goals are scored.

The winner is the team with most goals scored after the time is done.  Game time is six 8-minute "periods".

The field is: length 180 to 220 m (196.9 to 240.6 yd), width 80 to 90 m (87 to 98 yd). The ball is made of leather, with an inflated rubber chamber and six leather handles. Its diameter is 40 cm (15.7 in) handle-to-handle.  The weight is 1050 to 1250 g (2.3 to 2.8 lbs).

The player that has control of the  (i.e. holds the ball by a handle) must ride with his right arm outstretched.  He offers the pato so rival players have a chance of tugging the pato and stealing it. Not holding his arm out while riding with the pato is an offense called  (refusal).

During the tug itself, or , both players must stand on the stirrups and not sit on the saddle. The hand not tugging must hold the reins. The tug is usually the most exciting part of the game.

Pato is similar to the game of horseball played in France, Portugal, and other countries.

References

Sport in Argentina
Equestrian sports

Pato


Hobo: A Young Man's Thoughts on Trains and Tramping in America, () is non-fiction, autobiographical book written by Eddy Joe Cotton (though this is a nickname, with his real name being Zebu Recchia).

History
The book was first published in 2002 and describes the adventures of the author as he travels under the disguise of a hobo for over a year, keeping a detailed journal of his experiences and the lingo he learns along the way.  His journey begins in Denver, Colorado and conclude in Las Vegas, Nevada, but he also passes through California, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Texas.  Throughout the course of the book, the author manages to conceal his true identity and befriends and interacts with many true hobos, which he travels with and acts as an apprentice to.

While it is presumed that the events described in the book are genuine, the reference in Chapter 14 (dated November 14, 1991) refers to events at the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas.  The Hard Rock was not opened until 1995.

The end of this book acts as a "hobo-dictionary", containing over a hundred commonly used slang terms in the hobo lexicon.

References

 Cotton, Eddy Joe. Hobo. Harmony Books, 2002.
 Author's Website

2002 non-fiction books
Travel autobiographies
Itinerant living

Hobo (book)


A khalat  ( / ALA-LC: xalat), also known as khelat (), is a loose, long-sleeved outer silk or cotton robe common in Central Asia and South Asia and worn both by men and women, although in differing styles.

History
Historically, richly adorned khalats have been used as honorific awards, similarly to mantle. The word khalat/khilat was also used to denote the ceremony of awarding the honorific robe. Such social aspects of clothing have been known in many societies. By the 19th century in British India the word khillat had come to mean any gift of money or goods awarded by the Government of India in return for service from tributary princes, khans and tribal leaders.

Cultural variation

Central Asia

Central Asian khalats can be a thin, decorative garment, or thick, full length robe, and good protection from both exposure to heat and light and the cold.

Eastern Europe
The word khalat is one of many borrowings to be found in Russian, where it has come to be a generic term for various robes.

In Romanian the word is halat is used, meaning dressing gown, bathrobe, smock, camouflage cloak, etc. A similar garment is known as Chapan in Turkic.

The khalat (sometimes called khlat in Yiddish) was also worn by Ashkenazi Jewish men in Eastern Europe, until the early 20th century. These were long, close-fitting coats with shawl collars and pockets. In Jewish communities, these were cotton garments meant for everyday wear; more luxurious versions were made of velvet or silk and worn for Shabbat or other holidays.

See also
Kaftan
Chapan
Robe of honour

References

Further reading
 Stewart Gordon, "Robes of Honour: Khilat in Pre-Colonial and Colonial India". Oxford University Press, 2003,

Pakistani clothing
Indian clothing
Bangladeshi clothing
Robes and cloaks

Khalat