Category Archives: New Utopia

Three years ago, when Katie Stelmanis started writing Future Politics her third studio album with her band Austra she had no way of knowing that one day soon Donald Trump would be president of the United States, and that, for many people, the future would feel very bleak.

She also couldnt have known that the album would eventually drop on the very day Trump was inaugurated. And yet, the timing feels exactly right.

Future Politics, with its references to utopias, new paths forward, Gaia and love, seems like a message in direct opposition to the hopelessness of the current political moment. Its definitely hard to feel optimistic, said Stelmanis. But shes hoping the album will push people to make their own way in the darkness, to help write a better future.

Its been nearly four years since the Toronto band has put out a full-length album, but Stelmanis piercing voice (she was classically trained from a young age) and the chilly, pared-down beats that underlie them, sound as familiar as ever. Its a sound that Stelmanis and her bandmates Maya Postepski, Dorian Wolf and Ryan Wonsiak plan to bring to the Mezzanine on Saturday, Feb. 11.

Future Politics is far and away Stelmanis most complete and holistic project yet. Thats partly a result of her taking the time to reset and charge after Austras 2013 sophomore album, Olympia, she said. I needed to direct my energy on something that wasnt music-related and wasnt personal.

Austras third studio album is called Future Politics.

Austras third studio album is called Future Politics.

So, she started reading. She sped through books about disaster capitalism and neoliberalism, books by Rebecca Solnit and Adrienne Rich, books by queer women writers who had imagined bold and better futures. She inhaled them and then started imagining her own future.

Before long, there was no separating all of that from the music she began to write. Rather than painting a picture of what the world could be in the lyrics, she worked to remind people that they can help shape it, even if it sometimes feels impossible. Im mostly interested in the discussion, she said, as opposed to any single answer or vision.

For all the criticism members of the Millennial generation get about being apathetic, Stelmanis said she sees them as constant fighters. Its all about resistance. Its always about resisting evil. Eventually, though, if its all fight and nothing to look forward to, people get tired. I dont think theres any or enough discussion about what comes next.

This sentiment is all over the album. I can picture a place where everybody feels it too/ It might be fiction but I see it ahead, Stelmanis sings on the first single, Utopia.

And then theres the title track. I look ahead and I think about it/ Theres still a hole somebody needs to fill./ I dont want to hear that its all my fault/ The system wont help you when your money runs out./ Realities beating, a grave has been dug,/ Im looking for something to rise up above.

Part of what makes the album so cohesive was a commitment on Stelmanis part to write all the lyrics. In the past, she said, others had done a good chunk of the writing. I felt like I had kind of lost something. I had given up a part of the song, she said.

Stelmanis also mixed the album herself, along with her girlfriend at the time. The learning process was steep, but it resulted in a clarity around her voice she hadnt managed in previous albums.

Future Politics creates a new future in its own, subtle way all production credits went to women. That might seem small to those who arent familiar with just how difficult it is for women to break into a male-dominated music industry, Stelmanis said, but I cant really think of any other record that has that credit.

A few days before Future Politics was set to be released before the 45th president of the United States was inaugurated Stelmanis didnt sound hopeful, exactly. But she did sound resolute. Even if there were no easy answers for creating that utopia she sings about, the first step, she said, is letting yourself envision one.

You just need to keep imagining, she said. Dont let them kill the imagination.

Ryan Kost is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rkost@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @RyanKost

Austra: 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 11. $20. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie St., S.F. http://mezzaninesf.com

To listen to Utopia: https://youtu.be/7rzmhbiKUo0

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Austra encourages listeners to imagine new, bolder futures - San Francisco Chronicle

One mans utopia is another mans dystopia, said British design critic Alice Rawsthorn two weekends ago at an opening festival for A/D/O, the latest creative co-working space to launch in New York City. What unites the widely varying examples of utopian visions throughout history, said Rawsthorn, is a simple and empowering definition for design: Design is an agent of change, which can help us to make sense of what is happening and turn it to our advantage.

That baseline certainly seems to be the driving force at A/D/O, a multifaceted space whose ambitious setup is best characterized, much like its moniker, with the help of a few backslashes. Backed by the automotive company MINI, the design workspace/accelerator/lecture hall/gallery/restaurant houses many resources in a 23,000-square-foot former warehouse in Greenpoint, Brooklyns Industrial Business Zoneand promises to do things differently.

A/D/O itself offers its own microcosmic and utopian proposal for creatives. An installation of a modular, reconfigurable furniture system by MOS Architects, made from shiny, perforated sheets of aluminum, provides communal seating for the open-plan interiors. Industrial beams are left exposed, in a nod to the original warehouse from which it was transformed by nARCHITECTS. A kaleidoscopic, mirrored skylight calledThe Periscoperefracts a collage of reflections from the street, the rooftop, and the Manhattan skyline in the near distance. The nondescript exterior, made from repurposed brick, features a patchwork mosaic of reshuffled graffiti murals. All told, A/D/O is as much a literal convergence of varying views as it is a metaphoric one.

In addition to shared studio space and a fabrication lab for its members, A/D/O also hosts Urban-X, an in-house startup accelerator co-sponsored by the HAX accelerator based in Shenzhen, China. Norman, an eatery by Scandinavian chefs Frederik Berselius and Klaus Mayer, serves up local seasonal fare. The restaurant, along with the gallery spaces and lecture hall, where A/D/Os Design Academy hosts a recurring series of talks, is open to the public. We are convinced that meaningful design cannot happen in isolation, said Esther Bahne, head of brand strategy and business innovation at MINI.

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Brooklyn's A/D/O Co-Working Space Is Building a Utopia for Creatives of All Kinds - Artsy

Marginalised Peasants, circa 1930, by Kazimir Malevich. Photograph: State Russian Museum

Lenin stands before a crimson curtain, his hand resting on some papers. It is 1919. A gap in the curtain reveals a demonstration in the street behind, banners aloft. Here he is again, in Petrograd, seated at a table, pencil poised, paper on his knee and more strewn over the table. And there is Stalin, yet more papers piled beside him. What is this thing about leaders posing with documents and pretending to write? Remind you of anybody?

And what do they write? Love letters? shopping lists? To what, in Isaak Brodskys paintings, must they put their names? Theyre writing the future, one supposes, their speeches and five-year plans, their goodbye signatures for the condemned, dead letters all.

Elsewhere in Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932, at the Royal Academy in London, we see Stalin resting in a wicker armchair, a dog outstretched at his feet. The mutt, in Georgy Rublevs informal 1936 portrait, looks much like a sturgeon. Maybe the leader is thinking of dinner as he glances up from Pravda. Nearby, scenes from Dziga Vertovs 1920s work Film Truth show footage of Lenins state funeral, while Sergei Eisensteins October recreates the revolution.

Photograph: State Historical Museum

It is all happening. Salute the Leader! is stencilled on the gallery wall, in this first section of an episodic, dense and sometimes bewildering show. This is not an exhibition about great art so much as a clamour of ideals and conflict, suppression, subjugation and totalitarianism. It takes us from the October Revolution in 1917 to the gulag, by way of food coupons and propaganda posters, architectural models, film footage, suprematist crockery (one teacup is decorated with cogs and pylons) and thunderingly bad sculpture. There are so many fascinating things here, largely drawn from Russian state collections, that the show might be seen as a corrective to the more narrow focus we often have on avant-garde art in revolutionary Russia.

In a wonderful series of photographs in the next section, Man and Machine, a muscular youth turns a great wheel of industry. Bolts are tightened, cables stretched. Photographs of oily crankshafts and vast generators turn up the tempo. In another of Brodskys paintings, sun catches the muscular back of a superhero worker on a hydroelectric dam. We visit tractor plants and textile factories. Women work at the new machines. Outside, a shirtless boy leads sheep along the street. Modernity and the old world are in conflict. Questions about arts purpose its freedoms and imposed responsibilities vie with one another throughout.

Among the photographs, the social realist and suprematist paintings, the folkloric scenes of Mother Russia and the death of a commissar, the exhibition embraces the contradictions of culture after the revolution, and before socialist realism was announced as the new and only true method in 1934. There is much to surprise, but less as visual pleasure than as a way of conveying the clamour, aspirations and contradictions of the times.

That said, this is a fun show, in spite of the density of the arguments that were waged in the new Russia. For every painting of a flag-bearing bearded Bolshevik, striding over onion-domed churches and crowded streets, there are Kandinskys abstract explosions and Pavel Filonovs crazed, teeming cityscapes, a wonderfully frightening world of boggle-eyed heads and tessellated skylines. One, from 1920-21, is called Formula for the Petrograd Proletariat. Whats the formula? The people look scared. Meanwhile, the thrusting, canted colour stripes of Mikhail Matiushins 1921 Movement in Space depict pure energy and urgency, irrevocable change. These artists, both the better and lesser known avatars of the Russian avant garde, were really going for it.

At one point, we come to a full-size mock-up of an apartment designed by El Lissitzky in 1932. Its clean, bare, multilevel spaces are a diagram for living. To encourage workers to go out and eat communally, the apartment has no kitchen, just a geometry of planes and steel handrails a hygienic machine for bare, uncluttered living. Later, I come to a painting of a man reading at his rustic table, a fish on a plate before him, a bottle and pipe at his side, somewhat different bare necessities to those proposed by Lissitzky.

Painting and film extolled collective farm labour and captured the astonishment that greeted the arrival of the first tractor. But modernity would not be bought so easily: there is nostalgia for disappearing ways of life, sentimental paintings of spring in the birch woods, troika rides in the snow, village carnivals and homely pleasures all contrasted with ration cards, food tax posters, the redolent ephemera of lean times.

Among the technological feats and heroic workers, the shock troopers of industry, the old peasant women and athletes, you find yourself looking for familiar faces in the crowd. They come at you as ghosts: Moisey Nappelbaums black and white portraits of the wonderful poet Anna Akhmatova; theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold in his leather coat in 1929, giving the camera a reproachful eye. Maybe he was hamming it up. In 1940, Meyerhold was arrested, tortured and killed. Akhmatovas first husband was also killed, while her second Nikolay Punin, the art critic and champion of the avant garde was sent to the gulag in 1949 after he described portraits of state leaders as tasteless. He died there, not long after Stalins death.

In 1932, Punin was one of the organisers of a huge exhibition, Fifteen Years of Artists of the Russian Soviet Republic, filling 33 rooms of the State Museum in Leningrad, as it was then. The exhibition was marked not only by its plurality but by the way the trajectory of art in Soviet Russia was skewed in favour of aesthetic and ideological conservatism. Vladimir Tatlin was excluded, while Kazimir Malevich was marginalised. Even so, the latter mounted an astonishing display of his own work, which has been largely duplicated in one of the high points of the exhibition.

Malevichs last version of the Black Square (the first was painted in 1915, this one dates from 1932) hangs high above our heads. Beside it is his Red Square (Painterly Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions, dating from 1915), above a symmetrical array of suprematist and figurative paintings. Even an early cubist work is here. Geometric painting jostles with faceless peasants, reapers and sportsmen clad in clothing designed by the artist. Malevich saw no distinctions between these different styles, his architectural ideas and his work in porcelain. He snuck his imagery in as and where he could, regarding his art as in service to his ideals. This display is a great counterpoint to Tate Moderns 2014 Malevich exhibition.

The plurality of Russian art was, by 1932, on the wane. Rather than suprematism, anodyne paintings of runners, soccer matches, a female shot putter, a girl in a football jersey became the acceptable face of Stalins utopia. Photographs celebrate parades and stadiums. Instead of a clean modernism, a heavy, overblown architecture was on the rise, with a gigantic Lenin towering over a Palace of the Soviets, which was planned to be the tallest building in the world.

At the very end of the show we come to a black box, a tiny cinema called Room of Memory. Inside is a slideshow projecting official mugshots of the exiled, the starved, the murdered in Stalins purges: housewife Olga Pilipenko, a Latvian language teacher, the former chair of the hydrometeorological committee, peasants, short-story writers, poet Osip Mandelstam, Punin the art critic.

It goes on. Beyond, in the gallerys rotunda, hangs a recreation of one of Vladimir Tatlins constructivist gliders, a prototype flying machine he worked on for several years. It circles the white space, part dragonfly, part bat. Tatlin saw it as a flying bicycle for workers, made from steamed, bent ash and fabric. It looks as light as air. It never flew or went anywhere, but turns in a room, endlessly.

Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 is at Royal Academy of Arts, London, from 11 February until 17 April.

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Revolution: Russian Art review from utopia to the gulag, via ... - The Guardian

The first teaser trailer for a new Stellaris expansion debuted on Thursday, confirming a new wave of content will soon be headed to the beloved 4X title, but there sure isnt much hard information in the Stellaris: Utopia trailer that Paradox Interactive published this week.

According to Paradox, Utopia offers the most significant changes to Stellaris core gameplay since the game was released in May 2016. In fact, the publisher calls it the games first major expansion and has already outlined much grander changes than weve seen in previous Stellaris add-ons, like the Leviathans story DLC or the Plantoids species pack. The biggest change (both literally and figuratively) will be the players newfound ability to assemble truly enormous space stations, called megastructures, including Dyson spheres and ring worlds.

The next Stellaris expansion also introduces a new set of perks, called Traditions, that Paradox says will ease your species expansion across the stars. Traditions will be enabled/adopted through the use of Unity points; however, we dont currently have any information on how that particularly currency will be collected. Players will also be given more microscopic control over how the rights and policies of their empire are applied across its populace.

For a sneak peek at Stellaris upcoming Utopia DLC, take a minute to watch the first teaser from Paradox Interactive. Head down to the comments and let us know if youre still playing Stellaris with any regularity and/or what youd like to see in Utopia.

Stellaris is currently available on PC, Mac and Linux. The games next expansion, Utopia, does not yet have a release date.

Be sure to check back with iDigitalTimes and follow Scott on Twitter for more Stellaris news throughout 2017 and however long Paradox Interactive supports Stellaris in the years ahead.

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'Stellaris' Utopia DLC Gets First Trailer; Will Introduce New Buildings And Perks - iDigitalTimes.com

Jon Baker TimesReporter.com staff writer @jbakerTRStaff Reporter

NEW PHILADELPHIA The start of construction of the 215-mile Utopia Pipeline through Tuscarawas, Harrison and Carroll counties will bring more than 300 temporary jobs to the New Philadelphia area.

Kinder Morgan, the company spearheading the project, and its contractor, Minnesota Ltd., will begin Wednesday with the process of removing trees from the pipeline right-of-way.

While work is being done, Minnesota Ltd. will operate a contractor yard in New Philadelphia on 16th Street SW, between the Eagle Truck Stop and the Tuscarawas County Job & Family Services building. It will be located behind Cardinal Fleet Service.

"This is going to be a big project for Ohio," said Allen Fore, vice president of public affairs for Kinder Morgan. "New Philadelphia has a particular significance to the project because we're also going to be locating one of our contractor yards here. Minnesota Ltd. is our contractor for the project. It's a union contractor. It's going to be utilizing union labor, so a lot of local workforce will be part of this.

"We anticipate, once we get up and running, we'll have over 300 workers working out of that construction yard for several months."

He predicted that those workers who come from outside the area will be patronizing local restaurants and hotels and purchasing items at local stores.

"These folks work very hard, but they're also paid well, and they're going to be living in the area temporarily or already residents here, so a it will be a good boon to the economy over the next several months," he said.

Kinder Morgan and Minnesota Ltd. employees gathered Tuesday at the Schoenbrunn Inn and Conference Center for an orientation session, where they were greeted by New Philadelphia Mayor Joel Day.

"I encouraged them to explore New Philadelphia, to come downtown and go to the east side, take in the restaurants and the Performing Arts Center," the mayor said following the meeting. "I asked them to explore New Philadelphia and told them I'm sure you'll be pleased with what you discover."

Day said the contractor yard will mean a boost in revenue for the city through income tax collections and the bed tax. "It gives us more revenue to do things for the city, and it exposes New Philadelphia to more people, which is a good thing. Some of them might move here."

He said he didn't know the exact amount of revenue the project would bring in. "We won't know until they start working and paying. They are well-paid workers, so it'll give us a nice bump."

The Utopia Pipeline will carry ethane gas from the MarkWest processing facility in Cadiz to an existing Kinder Morgan pipeline in northwest Ohio. From there, the ethane will be taken to the Nova Chemicals plant in Windsor, Ontario, where it will be turned into plastics.

Fore expects construction on the pipeline to begin in April or May and it will go into service on Jan. 1, 2018.

The company has already secured 90 percent of the right-of-way from properties owners that is needed for construction, and Fore said the company will reach 100 percent in the next couple of months. Kinder Morgan will have a 50-foot right-of-way for the pipeline and a 50-foot temporary right-of-way for construction.

Fore said Kinder Morgan works closely with property owners, sometimes making adjustments to the route to accommodate their wishes. The company also works with counties and townships on road use agreements and on how to repair roads after the work is done.

"This is a partnership that could potentially last generations," he said. "These pipelines are going to be in service for a very long time, so starting off correctly is in the best interest of the company because these landowner relationships, these relationships with elected officials are going to last a long time."

The pipeline will be buried a minimum of 3 feet underground. It will go to depths of 8 to 10 feet under roads and 30 feet when going under waterways, such as the Tuscarawas River.

Fore said maintenance of the pipeline will be a top priority after it is completed.

"Our pipelines are built to last a very long time," he said. "The reason that they do is because, first of all, you get good quality pipe. This is American-made pipe, good quality pipe. You test it. You make sure it's built to last.

"We also then coat the pipe with an epoxy that avoids corrosion, because if something is going to happen to a pipe, it will be corrosion or an external impact. We also use a highly-trained workforce to build it, to put it together, to weld it. And then we monitor it."

The pipeline will be viewed regularly from the air and the ground. In addition, Kinder Morgan has an internal inspection tool, called a pig, that is able to go through the line periodically to determine if something is not right.

"So there are lots of protections built into these systems that make sure that these things are built to operate safely and are built to last," Fore said.

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Utopia Pipeline project to bring 300 temporary jobs to New Philadelphia - New Philadelphia Times Reporter

Music, we all know, can change moods. But can it change minds as well? Just how crazy is it to expect a single violin to coax us toward utopia?

That is the mission of Luigi Nonos 45-minute masterpiece, La Lontananza Nostalgica Utopica Futura: Madrigale per piu Caminantes con Gidon Kremer. The work for solo violin, eight channels of violin-irradiated electronic music and, importantly, eight to 10 music stands was given a rare and wonderfully convincing performance by Mark Menzies on Friday night at Art Share L.A. downtown.

There is a lot to unpack here. La Lontananza was written in 1989, the year before the avant-garde Italian composer died. Also dying at the time was communism, a movement to which the politically intent Nono was devoted. Nostalgic Distant Utopian Future suggests that through distance the hope of the future might be found in the past, or something like that. Nono then calls the score a madrigal for many travelers with Gidon Kremer.

Kremer was the violinist not only for whom La Lontananza was written but with whose sound the piece is infused. Nono devised the eight-channel tape, operated live during performances, from recordings he made of Kremer improvising. The actual score leaves room for a soloist to find his or her own solutions, which means that each new violinist who takes on La Lontananza offers a new utopian vision applied to what went before in Kremers.

The music stands are spread around the performance space, and the violinist moves from one to the next. Six of the stands hold the music for the six sections of the work. The additional two to four have dummy scores. The performers journey is not linear. Menzies lingered between sections. He zigzagged around the space, sometimes stopping at the dummy stands before reaching his destination. No one said Utopia is just around the corner.

The music itself is like an anatomical, physiological and spiritual examination of the violin: what the instrument can do and what it can do to a listener. An imaginative virtuoso is required. The dynamic range is from what is only audible to a dog to the loudest sounds the instrument can humanly make. Everything Nono could think of doing to a violin with a bow, he has the violinist do.

The result is complex and ever changing. There can be the effect of a sweet singing voice and the effect of horror. Pitches that are familiar contend with microtones that are not. The violin is caressed and attacked with every inch of the bow.Parts of the score are skittish. The second section ended with crunching effects.

For the third, Menzies stood directly behind me, playing ghostly calm drones of sustained harmonics that felt as they entered the mind as vibrations bypassing earand auditory nerve. The room itself was suffused by waves of wondrous violin effects on the surround-sound loudspeakers. Rather than rely on the banality of virtual reality, Menzies and Nono produced virtualunreality, the feeling of levitation.

What is past and what is future, what is utopian and what is dystopian in this political theater of the violin and of the mind? Nono doesnt provide the answers. He shows us not where to go but how to go. Instead of being a destination, utopia is a process of opening up to experiencing the unfamiliar.

As to whether music can change minds, it can. John Cage happened to be at the London premiere of La Lontananza in 1990. Three decades earlier he had had a falling out with Nono, but Cage (who famously disavowed music as emotional expression) said after the London concert, I no longer hold a grudge against Luigi.

After 17 years on the faculty of CalArts and a mainstay in the L.A. new music scene, Menzies has returned to his native New Zealand. But he is back in town celebrating his 47th birthday with the ambitious series four in the time of seven, four solo violin and viola recitals of new and old music in seven days.

He had played La Lontananza here in 2003 at a Southwest Chamber Music concert. This time it was in collaboration with the new music collective wasteLAnd, and Menzies had the advantage of a room ideally reverberant and flexible. The executive director of wasteLAnd, composer Scott Worthington, handledthe electronics with alluring flair.

The program began with two short pieces. Ching-Wen Chaos robustly enigmatic violin solo Elegy in Flight, evoking the Buddhist recitation for the dead, and the premiere of a winningly lyrical viola solo, Elegy, written for Menzies by Erik Ulman.

Menzies seven-day odyssey takes him to REDCAT Monday for a mixed program of New Zealand, European and American solo pieces and to Monk Space in Koreatown on Tuesday for three of Bachs solo sonatas and partitas, an early example of the violins penchant for utopian thought.

------------

Mark Menzies

When: 8:30 p.m.Monday atREDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., L.A. Also at 7 p.m.Tuesday at Monk Space, 4414 W. 2nd St., L.A.

Tickets: $10-$20

Info: (213) 237-2800 or http://www.redcat.org; (213) 925-8562 or http://www.monkspace.com

mark.swed@latimes.com

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With violin in hand, Mark Menzies finds hope for the future in the past - Los Angeles Times

Between plantoids, Leviathans, and Alexis Kennedy-inspired Horizon Signals, Stellaris' post-launch updates have grown the space-flung 4x-meets-grand strategy game quite considerably since its May release last year. It's now announced its first major update, Utopia, which encourages players to develop their interstellar empires further still.

With a choice of following a biological path, a psionic path, or a synthetic path"with various options within these broad categories"players will determine how their species evolves and advances by way of 'Ascension Perks'. "Body, Mind or Machinehow will your species challenge the future," asks developer Paradox.

Building new types of space stations and constructions will further aid your domination of the universe, such as Habitat Stations which house larger populations for smaller planets within your increasingly confined empires. New Rights and Privileges keep your populace in check and allow players to choose "an egalitarian paradise or a caste system" and everything in between.

Perhaps the most exciting feature of Utopia, though, is the addition of megastructureswhereby players can build "wondrous" constructs such as Dyson Spheres and ringworlds, both of which add near-impenetrable levels of defence to your worlds.

More information on Stellaris: Utopia can be found this way, including details on the game's free Update 1.5 Banks which ships alongside the new expansion. Utopia is without a concrete launch date and price, however Paradox says both will be revealed at a "later date".

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Stellaris: Utopia expansion lets you craft megastructural ringworlds - PC Gamer

New York Times

Meanwhile in Canada Things Are Just as Bad New York Times But the belief that Canada is a liberal utopia holds only if you have no concept of Canadian history and little knowledge of current events, and only if you walk through its cities and towns without speaking to anyone who isn't white, middle class or male. and more »

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Meanwhile in Canada Things Are Just as Bad - New York Times

A family business significant commercial relationships are usually reflected in written agreements. But who is authorized to sign those agreements and to bind the company to the terms? Typically, a companys management will have actual authority to sign agreements. However, the company may give the impression to third parties that other employees (for example, purchasing agents, account managers and IT personnel) that those employees have apparent authority to sign contracts relating to their areas of responsibility and thus bind the company to agreements. It is therefore important for family business owners and management to clearly instruct their employees and agents and to communicate to third parties as to whether those employees or agents are authorized to sign contracts and other important documents on the companys behalf.

A recent trial court decision from New York Utopia Home Care, Inc. v. Revival Home Health Care, Inc. highlights the confusion and potential for liability that can arise when an employee signs a document on a companys behalf without express authority to do so. According to the Courts decision, Utopia is a family owned and operated business, with its president, her father and her brother being the companys sole stockholders and officers. Utopia provided home care services for patients referred by Revival. A written contract, signed by Utopias president, provided the terms of payment for these services.

After Utopia provided certain services, it sent invoices to Revival totaling over $60,000, which Revival refused to pay. Utopia filed a lawsuit to collect the unpaid balance. Revival defended by pointing to a document that it claimed was a written amendment to the contract that reduced the time within which Utopia must submit an invoice in order to receive payment. This amendment was signed by an employee who, Utopia claimed, was an administrator for [Utopias] New York offices only . . . and [who] had no authority to negotiate or approve any contract amendments.

According to Utopias president, only the family member owners and shareholders were authorized to enter into contracts on Utopias behalf and to bind the company. The Court credited this testimony and found that the administrator who signed the amendment was not authorized to sign it and thus could not bind Utopia to the shorter time limits for submitting invoices for payment. The Court noted that neither party called the administrator as a witness and further stated how it was somewhat remarkable that the key witness as to the issue of agency, authority, [and] apparent authority . . . was not called.

It is not clear how the Court would have ruled had the administrator been called as a witness, but one expects that Revival would have attempted to make it clear through that witness or others that Utopia represented or gave the impression that the administrator was authorized to sign the amendment and to bind the company to the change in payment terms. Such testimony, if the Court believed it, may have led the Court to rule that Utopia was in fact bound by the claimed amendment and thus not entitled to collect on the late requests for payment. Instead, the Court entered judgment in Utopias favor for the full amount of the unpaid invoices, concluding that the amendment was not effective to bar payment.

One takeaway from this case is that a family business should clearly notify all employees that only certain company personnel such as the family member owners and managers in Utopias case are authorized to sign any contracts, amendments or other legally binding documents on the companys behalf. The company also should take steps to not give the impression to third parties that unauthorized personnel actually do have the ability to sign and bind the company to agreements. Finally, the company should put oversight processes into place to ensure that such limitations on contract signing are enforced. By doing so, family businesses may be able to avoid claims that they are bound to terms of agreements that they did not intend to enter.

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Who is authorized to bind your family business to contracts? - Lexology (registration)

Sinkane's new album, Life & Livin' It, comes out February 10. Adam Tetzloff/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

Sinkane's new album, Life & Livin' It, comes out February 10.

In the pop music narrative that codified after punk nihilism excoriated hippie ideals, and disco's utopia was replaced by a hip-hop realism, representing hope has rarely been easy and almost never hip. Until poptimism's inherent diversity became a more readily accepted lense through which to engage upbeat earworms and different perspectives, preaching simple pleasures or their spiritual powers through popular song wasn't taken seriously, either. Even in the best of times.

Among the fascinating things about Ahmed Gallab and the music he's been making as Sinkane is its transcendence of such commandments of cool. There's obvious reason for that. Between his multi-cultural background (born in London, raised in Sudan, before his family took up political refuge in Provo, Utah), his musical aptitude (he's played with Caribou and Yeasayer, and toured the music of William Onyeabor), and his curiosity (his ingredients range from Krautrock to dub to disco), no box could hold Gallab for too long at times, maybe to his own career's detriment. Much of his creative progress was predicated on inclusivity.

Paradoxically, this is also why a large chunk of the New York music scene (Sinkane's home turf for nearly a decade) has been cheering on Gallab to make an album like Life & Livin' It for a long time. From the AFROPUNKs to the hipsters at DFA Records, Sinkane's audience and support groups were vocal in the belief that he could produce a record reflecting his myriad of musical and social influences, with songs that stood a chance of transcending commercial expectations, allowing Sinkane's optimism to escape a limited audience. The clarity, confidence and hooky-ness of Life & Livin' It justifies that belief.

The power of Gallab's conviction is apparent straightaway. The opening stomp of "Deadweight," a mid-tempo classic-rock chugger, is a rolling combination of beats and guitars, redolent of Tuareg desert-blues ensembles like Tinariwen, yet finds space for goth-y synthesizers. The song's central question is what to do with one's self-doubt; the relentless answer, "I don't know, but I keep trying," could be the mantra for all hope-y/change-y masses. "Deadweight" also introduces Life's central tenet: mixing non-Western, diaspora-delic elements (highlife, dub, North African tonalities) and the sonic history of New York's artsy, bohemian Downtown. Though it's hardly a novel conceit (see: Talking Heads and Vampire Weekend, among many), what distinguishes Sinkane's take on the formula is its marriage of borderless musical vocabularies with a forceful insistence (courtesy of lyricist Greg Lofaro) to transcend negativity, yet remaining wholly present, never descending into wish-fulfillment. Where other artists feel like tourists, Sinkane defines his new home.

Jangly guitars radiate all over the ode to how his "Favorite Song" makes him feel. On "U'Huh," brass lines echo Ethiopian jazz melodies and power a lyric that not only mirrors Kendrick Lamar's "we're gonna be alright" but translates that phrase into Arabic (how's that for timely?). Even the album's lone venomous exception "Telephone," a vague kiss-off that also seems suspiciously laser-pointed drapes its negativity in a groove that reflects Remain in Light or a great old Can track, chasing demons away by hitting the dance-floor.

Unsurprisingly, all these musical and metaphysical narratives align on the title track, a statement of purpose that is one of the young year's finest anthems. Lyrically, this is homegrown Buddhism, a guide to aligning life with one's own expectations and natural rhythms rather than the social norms; melodically, it distills Afro-Pop's effervescence, the cheer of Stevie Wonder's mid-'70s classics and TV on the Radio art-punk eloquence into something grand and regal. It is ambitious beyond belief, the way only a deeply personal statement can truly be. Further proof that you can't successfully fake optimism, and that maybe invoking it isn't as unfashionable as it once was.

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First Listen: Sinkane, 'Life & Livin' It' - NPR