zan

Monday, January 26, 2009

Entropa -- Europe shows it's true colors on Free Speech

http://www.lexpress.fr/medias/190/entropa-9-belgium-entertainment-eu-art-czech_255.jpg

It is amazing -- Europe shows it's true colors when a work of art offends other Europeans. There is not a peep about freedom of speech and the artist's independence. The Czech government, first time holder of the EU presidency buckles under pressure, makes the Artist pay back the money he was paid, and pledge not to demand any payment for the six months that Entropa is on lease to the Czech Government.

Entropa, partly covered by a sheet

And Yes, it ordered the Bulgarian section of the work be covered with black cloth last Wednesday. In the process Czech Government managed to turn the event that was to celebrate Europe and it's newest members, into a commemoration of Stalinism. Just a look at the countries who demanded that the art piece be taken down, or in the case Bulgaria, she demanded (and had that demand met) that the part of the work depicting Bulgaria be covered by cloth. it seems that that the very countries who have most to celebrate for their freedom of speech, are the ones opposing it. Perhaps fascism can be eradicated from the political life of a country rather quickly, but to have it removed from people's hearts and minds is apparently more difficult.

A close-up of the part of the Entropa installation depicting Poland

In the meantime it looks as if David Černý has pulled off what he had intended -- by demonstrating the prejudices and stereotypes, he has helped bring them to light -- very nice indeed.

P.s. As a non-European can someone explain some of the jokes to me? Why is (Slovakia wrapped as a Salami in Hungary's Tri-Color) funny or offensive? Elephants and Hypos in Finland? Are there really that many gay monks in Poland?

Saturday, January 24, 2009

The End of Solitude

As everyone seeks more and broader connectivity, the still, small voice speaks only in silence

By WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ

What does the contemporary self want? The camera has created a culture of celebrity; the computer is creating a culture of connectivity. As the two technologies converge — broadband tipping the Web from text to image, social-networking sites spreading the mesh of interconnection ever wider — the two cultures betray a common impulse. Celebrity and connectivity are both ways of becoming known. This is what the contemporary self wants. It wants to be recognized, wants to be connected: It wants to be visible. If not to the millions, on Survivor or Oprah, then to the hundreds, on Twitter or Facebook. This is the quality that validates us, this is how we become real to ourselves — by being seen by others. The great contemporary terror is anonymity. If Lionel Trilling was right, if the property that grounded the self, in Romanticism, was sincerity, and in modernism it was authenticity, then in postmodernism it is visibility.

So we live exclusively in relation to others, and what disappears from our lives is solitude. Technology is taking away our privacy and our concentration, but it is also taking away our ability to be alone. Though I shouldn't ..........

Read more

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

13 Most Beautiful Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Who Does She Think She Is?

Website

Scott Brown Leads a Guided Tour of the Most Awesome Depression Ever

"I sink into a trashed Aeron chair, pull out my trusty ax, and click out "In the Great Big Google Mountain," a rueful utopian ditty about a fanciful wonderworld in which "aquacultured catfish feed the masses," and "electric cars cut greenhouses gasses," and "more transparent global markets function semi-rational-la-la-la-ly." The song brings tears to my eyes. Sure, it could be from drinking far too much bathtub Red Bull. Or maybe I'm weeping because this guitar is just so awesomely depressing to play when it's not actually hooked up to an Xbox."

By Scott Brown

12.22.08

Illustration: Julian Pablo Manzelli

Another Great Depression! Hardly are those words out when vast images straight out of Walker Evans trouble my sight: Hoboes! Okies! Hoovervilles! Women who resemble Harry Dean Stanton! It's all so very... 75 years ago. Our go-to icons of abject, debilitating American poverty are so nostalgic, so sentimental, so analog. Our recurrent national nightmare deserves an upgrade. Let's face it: Flat broke and rattling a mug full of pencils, we'll still be the same wiki-addicted, diversion-craving exhibitionists we are now. Of course, I'm no futurist. Just a hysteria-prone pessimist. But I don't want to live through another Great Depression. I want to experience the Awesome Depression: classic destitution with a whole new interface. I believe the Children of the Petabyte are perfectly capable of reviving classic Depression-era pastimes—train-hopping, bread-lining—while making them uniquely our own. So climb aboard as I, your neo-hobo guide, unfold a day in the life of the future unfortunate.

It's a typical morning in 2011: I start my day by bumming a few joules off a pal's bicycle generator to power up my BlackBerry and surf over to FoodTube, where starving viewers like myself salivate over clips of the "carbo-rati" noshing on hoarded snacks. (I try not to read the comments: "omg she is such a ho for eating that Combo!" "shup azz! u go girl! eat dat Combo!") One stray click and I'm rickrolled, prankishly diverted to the now-familiar footage of Rick Astley being devoured by a pack of London cannibals.