Marcel Duchamp 1926 (6:00 silent)

The work was completed with help from Man Ray.

It'd be nice to think that we all got a bit of Dadaist in us.

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."

Mark Twain said that.

Lately it's been so cold (-20 C) that all art has been done indoors. Naturally, the cold got me thinking about the flu season, why people freak out so much about things like that, and what the next cause of alarm might be. Maybe we can look to history to find out which threat will be the next to direct the heard.


(I'm hoping it will be little green men)

Charles Bukowski - Poetry - On the hustle

"...The truth at last."

Guy Debord - Society of the Spectacle (~90:00)

"The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images.

Critical theory must communicate itself in its own language — the language of contradiction, which must be dialectical in both form and content. It must be an all-inclusive critique, and it must be grounded in history. It is not a 'zero degree of writing,' but its reversal. It is not a negation of style, but the style of negation."

"The society that reshapes its entire surroundings has evolved its own special technique for molding its own territory, which constitutes the material underpinning for all the facets of this project. Urbanism — “city planning” — is capitalism’s method for taking over the natural and human environment. Following its logical development toward total domination, capitalism now can and must refashion the totality of space into its own particular decor."

Video files are here: http://www.ubu.com/film/debord_spectacle.html
Text translation of the film is here: http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord.films/spectacle.htm

Fox - study of motion & form (0:58 seconds)

Refillable CMYK Spraycans

Designer: Young-suk Kim, Jin-ho Oh, Yong Lee & Woo-sik Kim
http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/12/30/refillable-cmyk-spraycans/

Chomsky & Foucault (6:51)

Here's more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky

I like the beginning "[Creativity : The fundamental characteristic of humanity]" That's what I'm sayin'

Heidegger Speaks. Part 1. English subtitled. (7:28)

Funny title of a video. Here's more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidegger

Henri Lefebvre - 1972 Interview - Part 1 (9:26)

He's the shit. Here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Lefebvre

Music Videos - Devo & Kid Loco

Devo "Mongoloid" 1978


Kid Loco - "She Wolf Daydreaming" 2000

I find it interesting how society revolved so much around images even then - 1986.

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

It's probably not yet obvious with most works published here that I am interested in (to shortly and vaguely state it) examining humanity's place in reality and virtuality and where they meet (Particularly; Urban Space & Virtual Communities). I ran across this quote which characterizes one avenue of my exploration. (Much of the quote could use rewording, but it's Wikipedia, good enough for starters)

"There is the illusion of a public sphere, according to [Jürgen] Habermas. Citizens have become consumers, investors, workers. Real news (information which helps free people stay free) is being elbowed out by advice, soft-porn, catchy garbage, celebrity antics, and has become infotainment, that is, a commodity competing in a mass entertainment market. It matters less whether news is right or wrong, and matters more whether it's gripping."

-from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structural_Transformation_of_the_Public_Sphere

In thinking about the work itself I'm reminded of two problems with both Democracy and Epistemology; they always seem to be made up of "appropriate communities." (I'd bet money that's a Bryan Norton quote from "Sustainability" [probably the only decent English definition of the term although it's boring as hell to read])

Wikileaks - 10 min. (Part 1 of 7)

Perhaps the most important information reporting system in the world today.

Support it if you can.

It's human history. (the real version of it for once)



Here's the link: http://wikileaks.org/

Creativity & Productivity

What is creativity? What is productivity? How do we understand such ideas in our place and time? What factors foster & what factors hinder these concepts?

Here's what wikipedia thinks of them today:
Creativity - "a mental and social process involving the discovery of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts."
Productivity - "a measure of output from a production process, per unit of input."

However, I think of them in this way; creativity is the act of producing a new (or you could call it different) idea, and productivity is the act of creating a new material object (software, hardware, etc). I see creativity as essential in defining our humanity and productivity as the physical manifestation of our ideas, perhaps less essential as we move into the future. Colloquially, I believe productivity to be too attached to industrialization and societies of consumption, and I see creativity as being too attached to the arts. It seems that, for whatever reason, western cultures have placed an enormous division between the arts and sciences.

A change is overdue and I don't believe it will be found in the literature of establishments. Like many of humanity's more positive social changes, I'm betting it will come from the people.

Democracy & "A People's History of the United States"

"If democracy were to be given any meaning, if it were to go beyond the limits of capitalism and nationalism, this would not come, if history were any guide, from the top. It would come through citizen's movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking, boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they needed." -Howard Zinn "A People's History of the United States"

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice, a structure, which produces beggars, needs restructuring." -Martin Luther King Jr.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12112009/watch2.html

Democracy Now! (2009 in review)

Or read the transcript here: Hope, War and Resistance: 2009 in Review

Happy New Year!

Neuköln


Friedrichshain