02/01/2011
Orion Rigel Dommisse
Gus Cannon
Jimmy Cliff, The Harder They Come
Istvan Orosz
Brothers Quay
His Name Is Alive
Koji Wakamatsu
Negativland
Silvio Berlusconi
JS posted this originally. I love it so also posting it on my profile. Enjoy.
Gus Cannon ... and an allusion to current events.
I remember being riveted by Jimmy Cliff's intense performing of this song in the film by the same name when I first saw it. One of my favorite films.
M.C. Escher fans might like this. A book on Istvan Orosz is available, in the Vision of Design series, Index Book, 2007. Get it before it's out of print.
Lavish simplicity.
Can't go wrong with the pairing of His Name Is Alive and Brothers Quay.
Koji Wakamatsu's 'Ecstasy of the Angels' is one of my faves, an incisive portrayal of the unraveling of revolutionary militancy-cum-terrorism. The consequences of the contradictions of revolutionary vanguardism are felt today in more and more reactionary forms, insurrection taking cues from State terrorism.
Negativland song and new video. Everyone knows that Jesus was a communist ;).
As Guy Debord observed in 'Society of the Spectacle' (59): "Behind the glitter of spectacular distractions, a tendency toward banalization dominates modern society the world over, even where the more advanced forms of commodity consumption have seemingly multiplied the variety of roles and objects to choose from. The vestiges of religion and of the family (the latter is still the primary mechanism for transferring class power from one generation to the next), along with the vestiges of moral repression imposed by those two institutions, can... be blended with ostentatious pretensions of worldly gratification precisely because life in this particular world remains repressive and offers nothing but pseudo-gratifications. Complacent acceptance of the status quo may also coexist with purely spectacular rebelliousness — dissatisfaction itself becomes a commodity as soon as the economy of abundance develops the capacity to process that particular raw material."
02/02/2011 David Harvey The Cloisters, Robert Campin, Merode Alterpiece Karl Lagerfeld
Harvey seems to think that such dialectical "human needs" and their "social need" do not proceed from so-called ahistorical thinking and moreover from the worst suppressive determinist ideology, this crisis-commodity. But shit, gotta "mobilize those resources" whether human or natural, because "social change" needs to be prioritized in the need hierarchy.
And the worst part of it all, nature must participate in some counterfeit co-evolution with such human hubris, which is the most chintzy ideology. Gotta hand it to him, he's a good Marxist.
Robert Campin's Merode Alterpiece is here, 6:15. The painting must be seen in real life, very palpable. The Cloisters is very nice too ).
***YouTube video of Karl Lagerfeld's short film for Chanel 'Remember Now' Part 2 no longer available*** You know where to get Part 1. In any case, it's postmodernist ironic frivolity that's exhibited rather honestly, so it shouldn't be readily dismissed as merely pretty fluff, which is also the less affected ultimate point. It's an accelerated and inverted take on Walter Benjamin's formulation: "Every epoch not only dreams the next, but while dreaming impels it toward wakefulness."
02/03/2011 Etienne de la Boetie The Cramps Charles Bukowski New York Dolls
Keen but problematic treatise. The translator Murray Rothbard was problematically an anarcho-capitalist, a position that many of today's libertarians would be too guilty or stupid to admit. Despite all their brouhaha, neoliberal libertarians are still politico-economically conservative generally, so they'll keep washing their laissez-faire baby in the statist bathwater.
And the Tea Party is even more politico-economically conservative, so it'll just use the Constitution to wipe down the messy kin. Btw, the Constitution does make a good napkin.
Lady Gaga ain't so avant-garde ...
Beware ...
I've been listening to this song a lot lately, off and on. Good stuff!
02/04/2011 Richard Dadd
Arguably the most accurate fairy painter. It's all in the "deranged details" ...
02/05/2011 Unica Zurn Panopticon Shepard Fairey, Barack Obama Country Teasers
Hans Bellmer's muse. Zurn's book 'Dark Spring,' a forboding of her suicide, is morbidly pristine - highly recommended.
Has some pithy points... However, the elision becomes the case for the elided, and prepares the way for its normativity. A more or less personal and local self-policing is the more or less futural "rationality."
******
Of course, my conniption is poorly disguised coveting...not for his oh so tremendous talent but for the $$$. If ya can't hope then ya can at least obey...
It is my duty to post this song...
02/06/2011 Elem Klimov Henry Cow Bertrand Russell, Idleness
Elem Klimov's great film. Incidentally, his plan to adapt Mikhail Bulgakov's 'The Master and Margarita' fell through.
One of the best critiques of industry in all its forms...
I also recommend Yoshida Kenko's 'Essays in Idleness' and Bob Black's 'The Abolition of Work.'
