UbuWeb | Summer 2015
The Fox (1975-76) Full run of the shorty-lived legendary conceptual art publication with key contributions by Sarah Charlesworth, Michael Corris, Preston Heller, Joseph Kosuth, Andrew Menard, and Mel Ramsden. [Three issues; PDFs]
UbuWeb Films on Mobile Media After two long years, we are proud to announce that all our
films are finally viewable on mobile media (smartphones & tablets), as well as on computers. Special thanks to Ubu volunteers
Meredith Finkelstein for the coding, Patrick Stein for the conversions, and
Art Design Office for the streamlining and ongoing technical support. We ain't YouTube. As befits the avant-garde, our films are cranky and lo-fi. They take a minute to load, but they should always play. We're happy to have finally made it into the twenty-first century!
Throbbing Gristle - TG24 (1976-80) [MP3] TG24 was originally released as a cassette boxed set in 1980. The set contains the first of Throbbing Gristles 24 shows.The set was presented in a small attache case with a personalised handmade collage and various autographed pictures but now has been ripped to MP3 thanks to
DIE OR D.I.Y.?
Robert Ashley, 1930-2014 UbuWeb mourns the passing of the great American composer Robert Ashley. You can listen to his music and invterviews
here, watch his films
here, read about him
here. If you're unfamiliar with his work, the best place to start is Peter Greenaway's documentary
Four American Composers: Robert Ashley (1983). His most well-known video work is
Perfect Lives (1978-83), a television opera in seven parts. He interviewed composers such as Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma in his epic video series,
Music With Roots in the Aether, where interviews are followed by performances. He will be missed.
POETRY WILL BE MADE BY ALL! UbuWeb,
89plus, and the
LUMA Foundation are pleased to announce the inaugural 89plus exhibition “Poetry will be made by all!” opening on 30 January 2014 at the LUMA/Westbau exhibition space within Löwenbräukunst in Zurich, Switzerland. The exhibition is co-curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Simon Castets and Kenneth Goldsmith, with Danny Snelson as exhibition advisor and program coordinator. Additionally, the exhibition features a film selection curated by Kevin McGarry. “Poetry will be made by all!” is partnered in association with
UbuWeb, the world’s leading collection of avant-garde material online. Over the course of two months, 1000 books will be published by poets born after 1989.
UbuRoulette Overwhelmed by the 3,000 + films and videos on UbuWeb and don't know where to start? Click on
UbuRoulette, a randomizer which will select a film for you. The site was built by
@MarievonHeyl and
@joaoflux to generate screenings for their monthly series in Berlin (here's a sample
playlist). The site's builders state, "UbuRoulette is our attempt to maneuver the overabundance of UbuWeb collectively while avoiding trodden paths." Many thanks for this feature!
Seven Films by Annika Eriksson (2000-2013) Annika Eriksson is a Swedish artist living in Berlin. Over the years, she has produced a large number of works in which the perception of time, structures of power, and once acclaimed social visions are called into question. Strategically Eriksson plays with the heated debates around the public realm and structures that regulate it, revealing the urban changes and how this is subject to unexpected political appropriations and inversions.
UbuWeb Sound Goes Streaming We're creeping into the twenty-first century. All of our
sound pages are now embedded with a player that can stream every MP3 on a page, one after another. While you were always able to stream one MP3 at a time, you can now, for instance, hear all 70 hours of Ubu's
History of Electronic / Electroacoustic Music continuously or listen to an entire,
unabridged reading of Finnegans Wake without interruption (takes about 35 hours). Oh, of course you can always download everything as MP3s to your hard drive. Many thanks to Aaron Rubinstein (
@rubinsztajn) for inventing and implementing this feature.
Visual Poetry - New Updates Ubu's
Visual Poetry page has just posted over 80 new texts including exceedingly rare editions of d.a.levy's magazines
The Buddhist Thirdclass Junkmail Oracle and
The Marrahwanna Quarterly and Ed Sander's
Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts. Complementing these magazines are PDFs of scarce editions by Canadian visual poets
David UU,
John Riddell and
bpNichol; Americans
Johanna Drucker and
Rosmarie Waldrop and International practicioners such as
Max Ernst, Marcel Broodthaers and
Bob Cobbing. This update focuses on small press magazines and highlights rarely-seen radical work in collage, overprinting and machine-based visual poetry.
Richard Foreman on UbuWeb We've just posted a bunch of
videos and films of theater director Richard Foreman on Ubu and it made us realize just how much of his stuff we've accumulated over the years. So it seems like a good time to share it with you. Films included here are:
City Archives (1978),
Strong Medicine (1981), and
Lava (1989). We also host a collection of his
sound loops, from Now That Communism is Dead My Life Feels Empty!" (2001), as well as hosting
the script [PDF] to that play along with script for
Bad Boy Nietzche (2000) [PDF], and
Slice [PDF], a poetry manuscript from 2001. We also have
Charles Bernstein in conversation with Richard Foreman first published in TDR in 1992. Richard Foreman's
sound page on Ubu is filled with readings, interviews and performances.
Paul Pfeiffer -- Video Works, 1998-2003 In his photographs and video installations, which often have religious titles, Pfeiffer utilizes new technology to destabilize the experience of viewing, whether through the erasure of the central athlete in sports spectacles or by splicing scenes so as to trap figures in endless repetition. Included here are eighteen videos including the erased boxers in "The Long Count" (2000-01) and several segments from Pfeiffer's deconstruction of Michael Jackson, "Live Evil" (2002).
Alison Knowles -- Thirty Years' Audio Survey, 1962-1992 UbuWeb is pleased to present the audio works of pioneering Fluxus artist Alison Knowles. Best known for her performances, constructions, and artists' books, this thirty-year survey focuses exclusively on her audio works. Often made from the residue of ephemeral performances, Knowles highlights the beauty and subtlety of the everyday, extending John Cage's musical ethos as filtered through a feminist perspective. You can download her seminal 1965 Great Bear pamphlet "by Alison Knowles"
here.
Internationale Situationniste (1958-1969) We're pleased to feauture PDFs of the the Situationist International's jounal, which was edited by Guy Debord and ran in a series of 12 issues. The journal includes articles and texts by Debord, Mohamed Dahou, Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio, Maurice Wyckaert, Constant, Asger Jorn, Helmut Sturm, Attila Kotanyi, Jørgen Nash, Uwe Lausen, Raoul Vaneigem, Michèle Bernstein, Jeppesen Victor Martin, Jan Stijbosch, Alexander Trocchi, Théo Frey, Mustapha Khayati, Donald Nicholson-Smith, René Riesel, René Viénet, and many others. This review was a testing ground for discourse and also a means of propaganda. View a
documentary about the Situationists and listen to
sound works by Guy Debord. You can find Debord's films
here. Thanks to our pals at
Monoksop for uncovering this treasure.
The Soundworks of Michael Snow (1975-2002) Michael Snow is considered one of Canada's most important living artists. A prolific painter, photographer, sculptor, jazz musician, and filmmaker, Snow's art explores the possibilities inherent in different mediums and practices. He has received many international awards, and his work is shown continually in retrospectives around the world. With each piece, Snow invites us to contemplate and put into question his chosen medium, in an oscillation between what is represented and its process and material. Presented here are soundworks including Music For Piano, Whistling, Microphone And Tape Recorder (1975), Two Radio Solos (1980), The Last LP (1987), Sinoms (1989), and Hearing Aid (2002). See also
Michael Snow's Films in Ubuweb Film.
John Cage & Kenneth Patchen - The city wears a slouch hat (1942), A Radio Play The city wears a slouch hat is one of those Cage works that many know about, but few have actually heard. Commissioned by CBS' "Columbia Workshop" to accompany a radio play by "Beat" poet/writer Kenneth Patchen--a surreal script centered around a mysterious drifter known as "The Voice" and his encounters with various characters of the urban landscape. Cage's music aptly fits Patchen's texts, scored for "sound orchestra" of 5 percussionists along with live and recorded sound effects, revealing Cage's gift for orchestrating the timbres of percussion. One can only imagine what unsuspecting families, seated around the radio for an evening's entertainment, made of this bizarre script and rambunctious music in 1942.
The Music of Henry Flynt Archival recordings and interview from this obscure, genius musician, recorded between 1966 and 2001. Flynt was initially (1962) a composer of the post-Cage school who quickly turned completely against modernist music and created his own Flynt genres, primarily through radicalizing Southern musical forms like Bluegrass, Country, and Country Blues-elevating them to an enchanted level, much as Coltrane did with the jazz of his time. His music is a parallel stream to his extremely distinct and radical philosophy (his primary work is as a radical intellectual, with visionary, wide-ranging work that is highly intellectually demanding).
The Films of Keiichi Tanaami (1971-75) Similar to the Pop sensibility of
Tadanori Yokoo or Peter Max, Tanaami's cartoon animations are precursors to today's Japanese pop artists such as
Takashi Murakami. With soundtracks ranging from John Lennon to musique concrete. Included here are
Good-by Marilyn (1971),
Good-by Elvis and USA (1971),
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (1975),
Crayon Angel (1975) and
Sweet Friday (1975).
BBC Prom 47: Cage Centenary Celebration (2012) The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's Principal Guest Conductor, Ilan Volkov, has curated a programme that reflects John Cage's iconoclastic thinking: his experiments with chance elements, star charts, pre-recorded tape; his fascination with nature and, not least, his ability to make ground-shaking statements about the very nature of music and the roles of both composer and performer, while also adding a streak of his self-effacing humour. Includes 9 pieces by John Cage, David Behrman, Takehisa Kosugi, Keith Rowe & Christian Wolff's "Quartet" and Christian Marclay's "Baggage." Prformers inlcude Joan La Barbara, Vicki Bennett, Rhodri Davies, John Tilbury, Frank Denyer, Aki Takahashi, Christian Wolff, Dylan Nyoukis, Christoph Heemann and many others.
Karlheinz Stockhausen - The British Lectures (1972-73) Seven lectures given by Stockhausen in England in 1972 and 1973, filmed by Allied Artists, London. All lectures were given in English. Includes Lecture 1 - (Musical Forming), Lecture 2 - Live Electronic Music (MIKROPHONIE 1), Lecture 3 - Moment-Forming and Integration (MOMENTE), Lecture 4 - Intuitive Music (IT), Lecture 5 - Four Criteria of Electronic Music (KONTAKTE), Lecture 6 - TELEMUSIK, Lecture 7 - MANTRA. See also
Stockhausen in UbuWeb Film and
Stockhausen in UbuWeb Sound.
Jon Leidecker - Variations A seven-part series history of appropriative collage in music, compositions made using recordings of older ones. It's a practice that in the '80s became known sampling — after the digital sampler — a breakthrough instrument which was designed to mimic traditional musical instruments by allowing the player to trigger recordings of them back on a keyboard. But it didn't take long for musicians to realize that the true strength of the sampler was the way in which it made it easy easy to collage and manipulate the best sounds from their favorite records into new pieces of music. This practice entered the popular mainstream by the 80s, long after observers had already identified collage as the defining new art form of the 20th century — and the roots of this music go back just as far. Over the course of this series, Leidecker looks at these roots, as appropriative collage developed across experimental and mainstream paths.
Presented in collaboration with Radio Web MACBA
Six Documentaries on the Life and Work of J.G. Ballard A variety of approaches, spanning the years 1970-2006. Mostly made for television, inlcuded here are:
The Atrocity Exhibition (JG Ballard and the Motorcar) (1970),
Writers in Conversation: J.G. Ballard (1985),
The Unmade films of JG Ballard (1990),
Shanghai Jim (documentary, 1991),
Profile: J.G. Ballard (BBC, 2003),
The South Bank Show: J.G. Ballard (ITV, 2006).
Andy Warhol Audio Archive Dozens of audio documentation about the life and art of Andy Warhol, recorded 1962-1987. The archive includes many rare interviews, phone conversations with Brigid Berlin and Viva, a lecture by David Cronenberg on Warhol, a tour through the various audio tapes Warhol made during his lifetime, a reading by Bob Colacello of his memoir in The Factory,
Holy Terror and a conceptual interview piece where the artist erased every word Warhol said except his iconc "uh, yes" and "uh, no." See also
Andy Warhol in UbuWeb Film
Jordan Wolfson - Animation Masks (2012) UbuWeb is pleased to present the web premiere of Animation Masks. The New York Times writes, "
Animation Masks, the 12-minute 29-second film that is the entirety of Jordan Wolfson’s New York gallery debut, has the hallmarks of a classic. It rejuvenates appropriation art through the incisive use of digital animation, achieving an intensity that rivets the ear and the eye while perturbing the mind." We've also added two older videos to
Wolfson's UbuWeb archive,
Basics (2008) and
The Crisis (2004).
Six Early Videos by Shelly Silver, 1989-1994 UbuWeb is pleased to host six seminal early works by video artist Shelly Silver (b. 1957). In Silver's enigmatic narratives of contemporary identity, truth and fiction are constantly in doubt, the veracity of what is seen and what is not seen is questioned, and the modes by which information is disclosed, withheld and mediated hold meaning. Appropriating the structures and codes of television and cinema narratives, Silver relies on the viewer's complicity — the expectation of how media stories are "read," the desire to believe and identify with their conventions and characters. Inlcuded here are
getting in. (1989),
Meet the People (1986),
Things I Forget to Tell Myself (1989),
We (1990),
The Houses That Are Left (1991), and
Former East/Former West (1994).
The Films of Toshio Matsumoto, 1961-1987 UbuWeb is pleased to feature 19 short experimental works by Matsumoto, ranging from early documentaries in the 60s, through abstract investigations in the 70s, finally ending with architectural deconstructions in the 1980. Matsumoto's subject matter often involves the collision of video art with traditional forms of painting or art making, as in his filmic documentary of Andy Warhol's visit to Japan in
Andy Warhol (Re-Reproduction) (1974). Of particular note is the fact that many of his films are scored by prominent Japanese avant-garde composers such as Toru Takemitsu, Toshi Ichiyanagi and Takashi Inagaki.
UbuWeb Dance A new section featuring the works of over 60 dancers and dance companies. While dance has long been a part of UbuWeb's
film & video collection, it begs to have a section of its own. Like the rest of UbuWeb, there is a lot of crossover and perhaps moments of purposely curated eclecticism, hence our rather unorthodox mix of pure, art, and pop dance forms. UbuWeb Dance is a work in process and will continue to grow, perhaps at a rate faster than the rest of the site. Thus the site will stay in beta mode until it is fully seeded with content. Until then enjoy, but understand that it may be a bumpy ride at times. UbuWeb Dance is presented in partnership with and is largely curated by
Contemporary Dance Video Database.
Zoe Beloff - The Days of The Commune (2012) "In the spring of 2012 I brought together a group of actors, activists and artists to perform Brecht's play
The Days of the Commune in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. Thinking about OWS as a radical theater of the people, inspired me to conceptualize this project as a 'work in progress' in a sense that all social movements are a work in progress and I wanted this work to be visible. Rather than stage the play in a theater, we performed it scene by scene in public spaces around New York City starting in Zuccotti Park. These public rehearsals ran from March through May, the months of the Paris Commune's brief existence in the spring of 1871." -- Zoe Beloff
Zoe Beloff - The Days of The Commune (2012) "In the spring of 2012 I brought together a group of actors, activists and artists to perform Brecht's play
The Days of the Commune in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. Thinking about OWS as a radical theater of the people, inspired me to conceptualize this project as a 'work in progress' in a sense that all social movements are a work in progress and I wanted this work to be visible. Rather than stage the play in a theater, we performed it scene by scene in public spaces around New York City starting in Zuccotti Park. These public rehearsals ran from March through May, the months of the Paris Commune's brief existence in the spring of 1871." -- Zoe Beloff
The Soundworks of Hermann Nitsch Although primarily known for his violently ritualistic Viennese Actionist spectacles, Hermann Nitsch has made dozens of hours of recordings. UbuWeb is pleased to feature a wide selection of his soundworks, recorded between 1977 and 2004. Ranging from full orchestras to single-player harmoniums to collage-like chaos, Nitch emerges as a singular composer, steeped in equal parts modernist classical tradition, performance art and Indian trance music. Also inlcuded here are rare radio broadcasts and interviews. You can see historical documentation of Nitch's blood-rituals in
UbuWeb Film.
People Like Us - New Updates Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us releases everthing she makes into the public domain. That might be because most of what she creates is made from the public domain itself. For the past decade Bennett has been beefing up her archive of
film and
sounds on UbuWeb. Her most recent update is her largest yet, comprising 25 full length albums and films, dating from 2002 to the present, including collaborations with
Wobbly and
Ergo Phizmiz, as well as her interpretations of the works of
Christian Marclay,
Jean Baudrillard, and
Jean Jacques Perrey. Of special interest is the compilation she curated for The Sonic Arts Network in 2008 entitled
Smiling Through My Teeth. In addition, Bennett has also selected the September 2012
UbuWeb Top Twenty.
Six Films by and about Pina Bausch (1975 - 2006) Get a sneak preview of UbuWeb's new
Dance section (still in Beta mode) with a retrospective glimpse of the career of Pina Bausch (1940-2009). Inlcuded here
Orpheus und Eurydike (1975);
Café Müller (1978);
Die Klage der Kaiserin aka The Complaint of an Empress (1990);
Kontakthof mit Senioren ab "65" (2000);
Orphée et Eurydice (2006); and a documentary by Anne Linsel,
Pina Bausch (2006). We should be launching the full Dance section in early fall.
The Videos of Sue de Beer (2004-2012) UbuWeb is pleased to present six videos works by New York-based arist Sue de Beer, inspired by everything from ideas of mysticism to the novels of
Dennis Cooper. Randy Kennedy, writing in
The New York Times says of de Beer's works, "Time itself is the most often repeated subject of de Beer's work, emerging from images and ideas related to the passage of time. Ghosts, haunting, adolescence, trace memory and erasure find a common ground within this theme." Featured here are
Disappear Here (2004);
The Quickening (2006);
Room 309 (2010);
The Ghosts (2011);
Silver and Gold (2011); and
Untitled (2012).
Obscure Records (1975-78) [MP3] The complete run of all 10 LPs from Brian Eno's legendary record label. The label provided a venue for experimental music, and its association with Eno gave increased public exposure to its composers and musicians. Included here are
The Sinking of the Titanic – Gavin Bryars;
Ensemble Pieces – Christopher Hobbs, John Adams, Gavin Bryars;
Discreet Music – Brian Eno;
New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments – Max Eastley, David Toop;
Voices and Instruments – Jan Steele, John Cage;
Decay Music – Michael Nyman;
Music from the Penguin Café – Members of the Penguin Café Orchestra;
Machine Music – John White, Gavin Bryars;
Irma – an opera by Tom Phillips, music by Gavin Bryars, libretto by Fred Orton; and
The Pavilion of Dreams – Harold Budd.
The Films of Nick Zedd A retrospective of works by filmmaker and theorist of
Cinema of Transgression, a postpunk movement which emerged out of NYC's Lower East Side, that included Lydia Lunch,
David Wojnarowicz,
Kembra Pfahler,
Jon Moritsugu,
Richard Kern and others. Included here in its entirety is Zedd's epic
War is Menstrual Envy (1992) and his cinematic retrospective
The Abnormal Sinema of Nick Zedd, which consists of short films and interviews. Zedd selected UbuWeb's
Top Ten for June 2012.
Stewart Home - Short Films of the Eighties & NinetiesTen rarely seen films by the British artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist, which combine pulp novel sensibilities with pornography, political agit-prop, and historical references to punk rock and avant-garde art. These vintage shaky Super-8 and VHS works include promotions for Home's books, advertisements shown at independent cinemas, Situationist film remakes and much more. Also included are two recent works,
Screams In Favour Of De Sade (2002) and
The Eclipse & Re-Emergence of the Oedipus Complex (2004). UbuWeb also hosts an extensive
Stewart Home audio archive [MP3].
Charles Bukowski Audio Archive (1968-86) A slew of orphaned and bootlegged recordings, inlcuding at-home performances, readings, radio shows & interviews. Included here are At Terror Street and Agony Way (1968), 70 Minutes in Hell (1969), King of Poets (1970), Poems and Insults (1973), Hostage (1980), Do You Use a Notebook? (1986) and Bukowski Lives! (undated). [MP3]
Bertolt Brecht's Audio Works A sweep of recordings and interpretations of Brecht's plays and speeches, both historical and contemporary. Includes Brecht singing two songs from "Die Dreigroschenoper" (rec. 1928/29), his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (1947), plays by the legendary Berliner Ensemble from the mid-50s, as well as archival radio plays of Brecht's work including "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui," "Mr Puntila & His Man Matti," "In The Jungle of Cities," "The Life Of Galileo,"The Trial of Lucullus," "A Respectable Wedding," "Schweik in the Second World War," and "The Threepenny Opera." [MP3]
Reza Abdoh - Videos (1986-93) Reza Abdoh [1963-1995] was an Iranian-born director and playwright known for his large-scale, experimental theatrical productions that utilized multimedia elements and violent sexual imagery. Abdoh died of AIDS on May 11, 1995 in New York City at the age of 32. Included here are are eight videos:
My Face (1986);
Sleeping with the Devil (1990);
The Hip-Hop Waltz of Eurydice (1990);
Bogeyman (1991);
Daddy's Girl (1991);
The Weeping Song (1991);
The Law of Remains (1992); and
Tight Right White (1993). This UbuWeb resource is presented in partnership with
Bidoun Magazine.
Alfred Jarry Finally Appears on UbuWeb From our
FAQ: Why is there no Alfred Jarry on UbuWeb? Answer: ;) It is our 'pataphysical joke. Sixteen years later, we've decided enough is enough. Hence, we've beefed up our
Jarry audio archive [MP3s] with some archival Ubuesque cabaret chansons penned by Jarry and his pals, a French radio documentary on Jarry [Alfred Jarry: Introduction à la vie et l'ouvre du créateur d' Ubu Roi] and a lecture by Jarry scholar Michael Taylor of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We've also posted the first of many
film versions of Ubu Roi to come, this one directed by Jean-Christophe Averty in 1965, which is a rollicking mix of live acting and animation, all in glorious black and white. We do hope you'll forgive us.
Robert Hughes - Shock of the New (1982) A classic eight part documentary that offers a comprehensive view on the development of modernist art in its cultural context. It focusses minly on painting and sculpting but pays some attention to architecture as well. The documentary is presented and narrated by the art critic Robert Hughes, whose views on modernism have left an unmistakable stamp on the film. It was originally aired by the BBC.
Mike Kelley (1954-2012) Ubu mourns the loss of this great artist. You can find his audio archive
here [MP3], his
videos here, and an interivew with him
here [PDF].
John Cage Centenary (2012) In preparation for the hundred-year anniversary of John Cage's birth, we've quietly been beefing up Cage's
audio and
films. In particular, we've just added a number of
lectures, interviews, and Q&A's with Cage, recorded between 1969 and 1991. There are also several of papers written on John Cage in
UbuWeb Papers, as well as a variety of works of his in
UbuWeb's Historical section. In fact, there's
so much John Cage on Ubu's site that we can't keep up with it.
Stanya Kahn "It's Cool, I'm Good" (2010) UbuWeb is pleased to present one of three films from Kahn's first body of solo video works, which continues Kahn's longstanding exploration of the blurred lines between fiction and document, performance and being, humor and distress, the scripted and the improvised. With a 22-track surround-sound audio score and over 20 locations featured,
It's Cool, I'm Good creates a visceral cinematic space in which place and action, landscape and soundscape operate literally and metaphorically, signaling a tenuous relationship between experiences of trauma and moments of agency. Paralleling the ways in which jokes simultaneously compress and expand meaning, here living and and naming collapse into each other, in a narrative that unpacks more along psycho-emotional lines, creating many small arcs in place of one grand one. You can
view the films of Stanya Kahn and Harry Dodge here.
Ten Women Who Use Film A special project curated by Jennifer Higgie for UbuWeb featuring dozens of works by women filmmakers of varying ages and nationalities. Included are
Juliette Blightman,
Jennifer Bornstein,
Bonnie Camplin,
Spartacus Chetwynd,
Beatrice Gibson,
Aleksandra Mir,
Frances Stark, Imogen Stidworthy,
Annika Ström and
Fiona Tan.
All rights for materials presented on UbuWeb belong to the artists. All materials are for non-commercial and / or educational use only.
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