This Land is Your Land

This video is of the crowd at the "We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration" concert which is available online at HBO only to watchers in the U.S. and territories (darn!). HBO took down the original YouTube video which was a copy of part of their coverage of the concert. The video shown here, by KevanAndJessica, is the best I saw on YouTube of the concert from the audience viewpoint. A search on YouTube for will likely find many more versions of the song - the best search is on 'This Land' since it will give you a list of videos as well as other search terms to try. I found a video of the song by Woody Guthrie, who wrote it, as well as one sung by Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie, Woody's son.

There are many other versions of the song shown on YouTube but none so moving as the rendition by Springsteen and Seeger at the Inaugural Celebration.

I watched the concert live on HBO Canada, which is showing it several times this week. The highlight, for me, was the appearance of Pete Seeger, doing his thing and looking pretty happy about it. If you watch to the end of this video (or any of the videos that are still there) and click on the 'This is Your Land' link, you will see links to other videos of the concert, most taken from the crowd's perspective. You will also see that the comments include much discussion about the correct words to the song.

So I did a Google search and found the Wikipedia entry which has the lyrics and a discussion of alternate lyrics. It also includes a link to the 1956 copyright version of the lyrics on the Woody Guthrie Foundation's website. As you will see, the lyrics have changed over the years, depending on who is singing it.
[edited December 30, 2009]

Mark Lewis

Mark Lewis is a Canadian artist now working and teaching in London, England. It seems that most of his work is in film - wonderfully understated pieces that document ordinary scenes. I love the way the artist allows the camera to just follow what is happening, allowing the viewer to make up their own stories about what is going on.

Lewis' website has high-quality full length copies of his video works going back to 1995 so it's possible to see the progression of his craft. And, he has been selected as "Canada’s official representative at the 2009 Venice Biennale of Visual Art".

I tried a search on YouTube for Lewis's videos just so I could show one here. Unfortunately, 'Mark Lewis' is a pretty common name and the quality of the few I found that I could be sure were his was much worse than what is on his website. So go there and have a look around.

Marcel Duchamp and Andrew Stafford

Among other projects, Andrew Stafford has created this marvellous site, Making Sense of Marcel Duchamp, as well as adapted Aspen magazine for the web. Be sure to go to the last page of the website, to the 'Notes' section, since there are some extremely good links to works by and about Duchamp.

So, who is Andrew Stafford? A bookseller according to this NYT article. And a very conscientious one, I would say, since he went to a lot of work to get the essence of the magazine online. These types of magazines, by the way, may be available in the Special Collections (or similar department) in your local university or public library and are worth looking for, especially as an inspiration.

In case the link above doesn't work, I found the article by doing a search in the New York Times on Stafford's name.