The White Album

Yesterday, the news broke that NYC-based artist Rutherford Chang had passed away last month at the age of 45. In his memory, we’re re-syndicating a short piece written by Daisy Alioto in 2021, about Chang’s long-running project We Buy White Albums. Scroll down for more links from Daisy.

In Larissa Pham’s Pop Song (Catapult 2021) she describes the ways in which a series of Agnes Martin paintings called The Islands “reward looking.”

I get a similar sensation scrolling through the Instagram account @webuywhitealbums, a tribute to the blissfully minimal sleeve of The Beatles’ 1968 album. Scroll through, and the differences are subtle–the uneven weathering of time being the greatest differentiator.

But once in a while a true punctum emerges: a post-it note, the original owner’s signature or an ink outline of the meekly embossed band name. In the five years that I have been following the account, I’ve come to look forward to the coffee stains and vandalism. One recent photo even had strong echoes of Jasper John’s White Flag. —Daisy Alioto

PLAYBACK

Snippets of streaming news — and what we’re streaming.

• Very intrigued by the ‘Netflix of Maine’ (Portland Press Herald)

• “Investors are betting on billions of dollars moving to TV and away from ads on platforms like Meta and Google” (Axios)

• U.S. Copyright Office says text-prompted AI art can’t be copyrighted (artnet)

• Tituss Burgess comes to Oh, Mary! (Vulture)

• Pre-order Jeff Weiss’s Waiting for Britney Spears (MCD)

• The Mara sisters are starring in a new Herzog film. (Deadline)

• Elton John’s grumpy ass in the studio with Brandi Carlile (Billboard)

• America’s foremost Shirley Temple influencer is 11 years old (New York Times)

• Ottessa Moshfegh says her next novel is meant to feel like “Brighton, England in the ’90s” (i-D)

• “DJ X isn’t another person. He is more like a homunculus, a shadow puppet locking us into a musical rut of our own perverse creation.” Will Gottsegen on Spotify’s bland DJ. (LARB)

• The White Lotus returns on Sunday. (HBO)

• Emily Sundberg and Feed Me were profiled in The New York Times. Listen to Emily on Tasteland here.

• HTRK represses Marry Me Tonight on vinyl and god is it beautiful. (Ghostly)

• Signal Hill is a new audio magazine. (Signal Hill)

• NowThis turns a profit.

• Dirt contributor Zach Schonfeld on Sharon Van Etten’s new album. (Pitchfork)

• Drop Site profiled in CJR.

MIXTAPE

Good links from the Dirtyverse.

• A poem about tennis, shaped like a tennis court. (Frontier Poetry)

• Proust’s doomscroll (aeon)

• Alimentari Flâneur’s Valentine’s Day Catalogue

• MIT has a new quilt-like sculpture (MIT)

• What does a Rolls-Royce smell like? Now, Amyris, Cedarwood and Rosewood. 

• Rayne Fisher-Quann profiled in The Walrus: “I was praying that my mom wouldn’t die, and praying that my dad would be happy again, and then also praying that one day I could write a book.” (The Walrus)

• “The bacon-wrapped hot dogs with grilled onions and peppers outside major events.” LA Times readers on the smells of Los Angeles.

• The first work of avant-garde prose from Latin America was written the same year as Ulysses (Insert Press)

• A profile of your favorite book cover designer, Na Kim. (NYT)

• Gucci has a creative director problem. (Vogue)

• Wake me up when the Joan Didion therapy notes press cycle ends. (LA Times)

• “I know I’m not the only one who feels that reality has been knocked off its axis…” Tobi Haslett on a single painting (Triple Canopy)

• Walton Goggins do you want to check out Taiga with me…

• Friend of Dirt Trey Taylor launches perfume brand Serviette. I will be ordering the Discovery Set.

• “By assigning value to valueless things, we do nothing but ruin our own digital worlds.” Julia Alexander on Meta’s plans for AI. (Posting Nexus)

• New Yorkers pay tribute to St. Marks. (PUNCH)

• From 2018: Kanye West vs. Fame (Vice)

• New status symbol just dropped: indoor playgrounds. (Curbed)

• Andrea Long Chu on Pamela Paul.