30 September 2008
the very worst thing
Peter Morici, professor of business at the University of Maryland, said: '...the economy will go into something much worse than a recession.'
An Old One? A giant rampaging pig spitting tainted blood on the heads of anyone who ever had savings? A cataclysmic destruction of space-time that will simultaneously herald a new ice age and an all-consuming fire-ball that will destroy the totality of living matter for all eternity?
An Old One? A giant rampaging pig spitting tainted blood on the heads of anyone who ever had savings? A cataclysmic destruction of space-time that will simultaneously herald a new ice age and an all-consuming fire-ball that will destroy the totality of living matter for all eternity?
29 September 2008
le cochon danseur, czech porn and animal affection, part 1.
Roger sent me this astonishing 1907 clip of a dancing gentleman pig and girl. It manages to fuse in one brief flurry my vintage porn collection with my nightmares, which in turn are indistinguishable from any other kind of dream. The pig, male, for a change, as almost all of our contemporary pigs are women, from Palin to Darrieussecq's porcine-sex toy in Pig Tales, does his best to seduce the girl in her frills and bonnet. First he curtseys, then he kneels. She shoos him away, eager to return to folding laundry. The pig tries to get fresh, swapping gentlemanliness for straightforward physical intervention. At this point, the girl gets cross, kicks him and pulls his suit jacket and shirt off. As she dances with, the pig holds his stomach in shame, and this is genius, even though it was on display when he was wearing his suit. There is no better definition of shame, perhaps, than trying to hide what was already in plain sight.
The gentleman pig tries to cover himself with a newspaper whilst the girl thrusts a stick with ribbons on the end into his trotter. He forgetting his nudity, and she forgetting her irritation - they dance together for a while before walking away, the girl leading from behind by pulling at his tail. They return, trotter in delicate hand, for a final encore. A curious, and rather terrifying addendum, sees the pig, alone, flapping his ears and jutting out his tongue in disturbing fashion before grinning to reveal a set of vampiric teeth, a scene which can have only been the inspiration for this cover that China once sent me:
Swivelling his snout and opening his eyes, the monster dancing pig with his many and varied seductions, reminds us that behind every animal archetype (Jung's all too predictable faithful dog, enduring horse, devious cat) lies a mass of confusions, oneiric, sexual and geopolitical. This is partly why the pig has proved to be so fascinating - hairless enough to be uncomfortably human, obscene enough to be a capitalist, beady-eyed and barrel-chested enough to be a cop, curiously both smart and stupid, dirty and clean, loathed and loved, the pig is unplaceable in the attempt to forge a simple anthropomorphic exchange. Jung's archetypes fail because far too many animals are far too mysterious. Far better Neurath's isotypes in all their glorious, generic universalism:
The science of communication is infinite in its simplicity. Arntz designed around 4000 such signs, a systematic attempt at a kind of benevolent internationalism that would take signs for wonders, in a good way:
'Why should not everybody get a chance to learn a lot by means of pictures?' - Neurath.
But how much can we learn? When animals are occasionally allowed to intrude into our dream-worlds, the results are astonishing:
The big other, the little others, or the animal other? Only the lovers are blind...
Jindřich Štyrský, illustrator, writer and editor of the Czech Erotická revue and founding member of the Surrealist Group of Czechoslovakia is peerless as a practitioner of the simultaneously archaic and modern, in both form and content. As Karel Teige put it: 'the poetic image is the book illustration, the photograph, the photomontage'. This flexible recording of the unconscious in the age of lightbulbs can still be seen in the likes of Samorost, a wordless Czech computer game just as you had always fantasised about but never thought would actually exist. Here machines, discarded consumer objects, nature and animals form a world both depthlessly strange and curiously attractive. Švankmajer hopefully plays this as he sits in Prague, dreaming of animations to come.
It is in this combination of the tension between constructivism and poetism that the animals reside. But it is too late for us. Teige again: 'In the period whose essence is formed by contradictions, we must have the psychological ability to perceive strange almost paradoxically sharp contrasts.'
Štyrský's sexual dreamscapes draw attention to these contrasts, revel in them. In the promotional flyer for Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream', a short sexual reverie, illustrated by Štyrský's own photomontages (including the one above) tells us that 'with scissors one is able to sever any type of inseparable double' (recall the scene in Daisies where limbs and heads start getting lopped off and the very material of the film is no longer safe from snipping (you can watch it here (at 1:57)).
What are we asked to do but 'perceive strange almost paradoxically sharp contrasts' and yet pretend as if everything is 'as usual'!
24 September 2008
no visuals
Curse you blogger! I have this big weird post lined up, plus some more alphabets, but the pretty (and not so pretty) pictures just won't stick.
Keep the apocalypse rolling, by the way. I think this is going to be the biggest and best yet...we'll put all submissions on the site after the event (unless anyone tells us not to, of course).
In other news, here is a video of a pig suckling some tiger cubs (thanks Dave). And a pig goes bad by holding a woman hostage (thanks again Dave). In fact I got sent the story twice (thanks Mark). Actually three times (thanks Paul). It's like there's this whole pig newsfeed system out there!
Rangers say the pig will be captured and taken to a piggery.
Ms Hayes became distressed when council officers tried to take the pig away and asked them to leave her property, a council spokeswoman said.
"This morning, I wanted to go to my toilet, which is outside. I opened up the door and the pig pushed me that hard, it pushed me back into my room, where I fell over," she said.
"I picked up a broom and poked him out with it and he snapped it in half with his mouth."
In not-totally-unrelated news I am reliably informed that Goldsmiths College was overrun by Paparazzi today as Princess Beatrice arrives to take up her History degree. Hopefully she will become a groupie of the silver-voiced Howard Caygill and start writing slightly wayward essays about the history of energy.
And recently someone I know was touched by Perry Anderson! Apparently he really does look like this. As soon as I think of any more unconvincing academic/fame vignettes, I'll be sure to let you know.
And another thing! In a fit of listlessness, I came up with a list of academic types, manufactured by putting an extra letter in front of the word. Thus:
Cacademic - simply, a bad academic
Hackademic - someone who spends much of their time writing articles for non-academic publications (ahem...)
Knackademic - a tired academic, perhaps by about week 10
Lackademic - an academic found slightly wanting/a female Lacanian academic
Mcademic - an academic who writes solely about popular culture
Packademic - a group of academics, such as one might find roaming at a conference, drunk
Quackademic - someone who accepts money from pharmaceutical companies to write lies
Sackademic - an academic who has recently lost their job...as I probably should for even thinking of these...
UPDATE:
Spakademic - an academic filling in for another academic
Blackademic - an academic who is/was a goth
Chiracademic - a corrupt academic [three from Helen]
Yackademic - an old academic so depressed by the state of academia, he/she talks to himself in the staff room alone in a corner, the younger staff no longer listening
Shackademic - all those academics who talk about people living in shacks but never actually go and hang out in shack land and talk to shack dwellers et cetera et cetera...[from anon.]
UPDATE TWO:
Crackademic: an academic who has developed a worrying addiction to the latest Hot Theory or Theorist
Jackademic: an academic who seems to enjoy nothing more than complaining how jack of academia they are* (*Australian usage)
Trackademic: academic on the make who always seems to have the most connections, publications, grants, etc; generally destined for ridiculously rapid tenure/promotion/professoriat
Fracademic: academic who enjoys fragmenting departmental harmony whenever possible, whether through gossip, criticism, white-anting, bullying, legal threats, or other creative diversions
Tackademic: academic who luxuriates in trash culture, obscene jokes, profanities, and general buffooonery designed to impress their students or colleagues.
Yackademic: academic whose primary research activity involves standing around the corridor holding forth about declining student numbers, creative assessment, pro-active learning, falling literacy standards, the Decline of the University, etc.
Faceademic: academic who has spent far too much time on Facebook amassing student friends and joining dubious Theory fan clubs (all from Robert).
Keep the apocalypse rolling, by the way. I think this is going to be the biggest and best yet...we'll put all submissions on the site after the event (unless anyone tells us not to, of course).
In other news, here is a video of a pig suckling some tiger cubs (thanks Dave). And a pig goes bad by holding a woman hostage (thanks again Dave). In fact I got sent the story twice (thanks Mark). Actually three times (thanks Paul). It's like there's this whole pig newsfeed system out there!
Rangers say the pig will be captured and taken to a piggery.
Ms Hayes became distressed when council officers tried to take the pig away and asked them to leave her property, a council spokeswoman said.
"This morning, I wanted to go to my toilet, which is outside. I opened up the door and the pig pushed me that hard, it pushed me back into my room, where I fell over," she said.
"I picked up a broom and poked him out with it and he snapped it in half with his mouth."
In not-totally-unrelated news I am reliably informed that Goldsmiths College was overrun by Paparazzi today as Princess Beatrice arrives to take up her History degree. Hopefully she will become a groupie of the silver-voiced Howard Caygill and start writing slightly wayward essays about the history of energy.
And recently someone I know was touched by Perry Anderson! Apparently he really does look like this. As soon as I think of any more unconvincing academic/fame vignettes, I'll be sure to let you know.
And another thing! In a fit of listlessness, I came up with a list of academic types, manufactured by putting an extra letter in front of the word. Thus:
Cacademic - simply, a bad academic
Hackademic - someone who spends much of their time writing articles for non-academic publications (ahem...)
Knackademic - a tired academic, perhaps by about week 10
Lackademic - an academic found slightly wanting/a female Lacanian academic
Mcademic - an academic who writes solely about popular culture
Packademic - a group of academics, such as one might find roaming at a conference, drunk
Quackademic - someone who accepts money from pharmaceutical companies to write lies
Sackademic - an academic who has recently lost their job...as I probably should for even thinking of these...
UPDATE:
Spakademic - an academic filling in for another academic
Blackademic - an academic who is/was a goth
Chiracademic - a corrupt academic [three from Helen]
Yackademic - an old academic so depressed by the state of academia, he/she talks to himself in the staff room alone in a corner, the younger staff no longer listening
Shackademic - all those academics who talk about people living in shacks but never actually go and hang out in shack land and talk to shack dwellers et cetera et cetera...[from anon.]
UPDATE TWO:
Crackademic: an academic who has developed a worrying addiction to the latest Hot Theory or Theorist
Jackademic: an academic who seems to enjoy nothing more than complaining how jack of academia they are* (*Australian usage)
Trackademic: academic on the make who always seems to have the most connections, publications, grants, etc; generally destined for ridiculously rapid tenure/promotion/professoriat
Fracademic: academic who enjoys fragmenting departmental harmony whenever possible, whether through gossip, criticism, white-anting, bullying, legal threats, or other creative diversions
Tackademic: academic who luxuriates in trash culture, obscene jokes, profanities, and general buffooonery designed to impress their students or colleagues.
Yackademic: academic whose primary research activity involves standing around the corridor holding forth about declining student numbers, creative assessment, pro-active learning, falling literacy standards, the Decline of the University, etc.
Faceademic: academic who has spent far too much time on Facebook amassing student friends and joining dubious Theory fan clubs (all from Robert).
apocalypse not quite now
We've got some great pieces in already, but a couple of people have requested extended deadlines. To that end, please can we have all kino fist apocalypse pieces in by Sunday 28th. Toddle-pip and please enjoy the termination of the world...
Btw, Serious publishing problems with Blogger. Can't put anything new up. Hopefully will be resolved soon.
22 September 2008
monu call for papers
Monu have a call for papers on 'Holy Urbanism'. I don't think the picture gets any bigger, but you could email them if it's the sort of thing you might like to write about.
Reminder: Kino Fist wants your Apocalypse-related texts/ images by 24th Sept.
21 September 2008
sexy professors...hmmm
This recent New York Times feature on academics and fashion is a curious thing. 'These professors make academia look good.' But, erm, do they? I'm not sure. If anything, they look exactly how you'd expect academics to look in pointlessly fashionable clobber. There's the still-sexy older Lit professor, there's the tweedy guy with a bow tie, and not one, but two(!), perky young science women ('Im in yr labs, confoundin yr eggspegtashunz!' - urgh, sorry), erm, and some older blokes hanging around looking sheepish and out of place.
I'm seriously glad that RateMyProfessors.com never really caught on over here, as the thought of students discussing the relative hotness of their lecturers fills me with a curious kind of horror (not least because one of my lovely new colleagues is an ex-model, o ho ho ho). Still apparently, if you're deemed 'hot', you students tend to also think you're a good lecturer, which seems unfair to everyone (This argument is apparently made in this paper: 'Attractiveness, Easiness, and Other Issues: Student Evaluations of Professors on RateMyProfessors.com'). Still, you can't get away from the fact that if you fancy a subject, you tend to fancy the people who know more about it than you do. There's no cure for that. Last year I had a student who developed such an affection for me that his grades improved from borderline fail to a high 2:1 with several first class marks. Whilst he did monopolise my office hours, my emails and gave me new scribbles to read constantly, the episode clearly demonstrates that, with enough subjective will, you can do almost anything.
Here's to a new term!
20 September 2008
the ghosts of presents past
[All haunted paper images created by ICJ in the pub on Sunday with the help of newspaper ads and a rubber (that's an 'eraser' for my American friends). All photos of billboard ghosts by me, obviously]
England is famously the most haunted country in the world. While all that is solid may have melted into air, particularly of late, as savings and mortgages evaporate into the ether, there is a residual kind of heaviness to our cities, even as their specificity is subsumed under identikit shops and forms of employment that could be done anywhere. This leftover past is marketed as 'history' to tourists, bemused as to why all the pavements are really small and why it costs £5 for a horrible sandwich. The National Trust and English Heritage, with their over-staffed prissification of manor houses and obsessive protection of pre-historic sites, perversely destroy the darker side of this nation's history, such as that recorded by English Heretic with his black plaques (a joyously grim counterpart to English Heritage's blue plaque series). All the official ghosts have been rounded up and tagged...
Ads observes in passing that it would be much harder, though perhaps more interesting for this very reason, to formulate a hauntology of New York. The 'old' York is of course overflowing with spectres, several competing nightly ghost walks, and at the last count they had 140 officially recognised spirits...
But ghost stories are strangely comforting...Far more disturbing are the ghosts of the present: the architectural spectres of the billboards, adorning the sides of luxury flat developments that may never now get built. These corporate, contentless bodies that populate public spaces, waiting for history to begin again...
Even when some kind of realism is attempted, cheap body doubles appear; the women with the red bag and red top stops to talk to a couple, horrified to see her future self five seconds in the distance.
This mysterious man - a mafioso of the old school, or perhaps its more contemporary Russian variety - stands at the bottom left of the architectural projection, menacingly regarding the construction as if his very financial security depended on it...but perhaps it does...
An advert for domesticity made morbid in facelessness. The present makes a dubious pact with its future and comes off badly. No need for nostalgia, even, as the failures of the future are already with us.
19 September 2008
fetch me my belt...
Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve and Hank Paulson, the Goldman Sachs tycoon who became US Treasury secretary, have done more for socialism in the past seven days than anybody since Marx and Engels.
Like a spoiled child, what big finance wanted big finance got. This week saw the arrival on the scene of Supernanny; big finance now faces a long spell on the naughty step.
- Larry Elliott, who looks like Peter Cook, but is in fact an economics journalist.
Like a spoiled child, what big finance wanted big finance got. This week saw the arrival on the scene of Supernanny; big finance now faces a long spell on the naughty step.
- Larry Elliott, who looks like Peter Cook, but is in fact an economics journalist.
17 September 2008
oh those new university academics...
The THE (The THE?!)...anyway, them. They ran a marking experiment. But who can this mysterious 'Marker 4' be?!
Within the sample, those who taught at new universities gave the lowest average mark, even when the zero is excluded - apparently debunking the popular perception that new universities are less academically rigorous than their older counterparts.
The zero mark came from Marker 4, an academic at a new university, who said the essay contained extensive paraphrasing and insufficient referencing, which meant that it, in the academic's view, fell into the category of "plagiarism and/or poor study skills". Under normal circumstances, the academic would have asked the student to resubmit the work.
Strikingly, Marker 4 was the only one to identify the paraphrasing, from a commonly used textbook, Descartes, by John Cottingham, professor of philosophy at the University of Reading.
Within the sample, those who taught at new universities gave the lowest average mark, even when the zero is excluded - apparently debunking the popular perception that new universities are less academically rigorous than their older counterparts.
The zero mark came from Marker 4, an academic at a new university, who said the essay contained extensive paraphrasing and insufficient referencing, which meant that it, in the academic's view, fell into the category of "plagiarism and/or poor study skills". Under normal circumstances, the academic would have asked the student to resubmit the work.
Strikingly, Marker 4 was the only one to identify the paraphrasing, from a commonly used textbook, Descartes, by John Cottingham, professor of philosophy at the University of Reading.
woeful wednesday
This afternoon I visited Canary Wharf...
But before that I went to the JobCentre in Woolwich (no, not for me, not yet, not yet). Opposite the building is a Funeral Home, now closed. It had this notice on the shutters.
Next door is a giant building site where they will apparently build a Tesco. Some signifiers had gotten mangled in the rush for construction.
Then I went to the 'Wharf. The atmosphere was tense. I wanted to try and find some weeping bankers. I didn't quite manage it, though there was much swearing, which I failed to capture on camera. One man said 'it's a carcass', though Bat later pointed out at our Keynes reading group that he had probably actually said 'car crash'.
The now infamous 'Slug and Lettuce' where unemployed city types go to get drunk. They were offering 50% off all food on Mondays.
The many clocks in the station area of the 'Wharf now appear to be counting down rather than up.
Where? Into the ocean? Into the ocean!
There was some strange competition to win a car going on. People seemed interested in the car, but unsold tickets covered the ground.
This one needed no caption.
But before that I went to the JobCentre in Woolwich (no, not for me, not yet, not yet). Opposite the building is a Funeral Home, now closed. It had this notice on the shutters.
Next door is a giant building site where they will apparently build a Tesco. Some signifiers had gotten mangled in the rush for construction.
Then I went to the 'Wharf. The atmosphere was tense. I wanted to try and find some weeping bankers. I didn't quite manage it, though there was much swearing, which I failed to capture on camera. One man said 'it's a carcass', though Bat later pointed out at our Keynes reading group that he had probably actually said 'car crash'.
The now infamous 'Slug and Lettuce' where unemployed city types go to get drunk. They were offering 50% off all food on Mondays.
The many clocks in the station area of the 'Wharf now appear to be counting down rather than up.
Where? Into the ocean? Into the ocean!
There was some strange competition to win a car going on. People seemed interested in the car, but unsold tickets covered the ground.
This one needed no caption.
15 September 2008
free films 19th sept
(Organised by 56a)
Date: 19 September, 2008
Time: 7.00pm for 7.30pm start
Location: The Pullens Centre, Crampton St, SE17
Programme:
Elio Petri, The Working Class Goes to Heaven/La Classe Operaia va in Paradiso (1971) 111 min.
I was a piecework laborer, I followed the politics of union, I worked for productivity, I increased output, and now what have I become? I’ve become a beast, a machine, a nut, a screw, a transmission belt, a pump!
Steeped in the volatile political conflicts taking place in Italy at the time, the Hot Autumn of 1969, the rejection of the compromises of the Italian communist Party (PCI), the refusal of work, factory and university occupations, Elio Petri's film The Working Class Goes to Heaven explores the struggles in the factory in all their contradictions; between consumerism and work, alienation, libidinal desire, self-destruction and, potentially, collective action. The Working Class Goes to Heaven demonstrates an impressive and inspiring illustration of the exploitation of capital society and the alienation of workers under this system. It showed us how the ruling class manipulates the ideology into people’s mind by alienating them through work, and how the workers are exploited with and without being conscious of that. Furthermore, it also gives us a sketch of the futility of reformism and the issues which will be confronted in the process of revolution. [taken from: here]
Harun Farocki, Workers leaving the Factory/Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik (1995) 36 min.
Workers Leaving the Factory - such was the title of the first cinema film ever shown in public. For 45 seconds, this still existent sequence depicts workers at the photographic products factory in Lyon owned by the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière hurrying, closely packed, out of the shadows of the factory gates and into the afternoon sun. Only here, in departing, are the workers visible as a social group. But where are they going? To a meeting? To the barricades? Or simply home? These questions have preoccupied generations of documentary filmmakers. For the space before the factory gates has always been the scene of social conflicts. And furthermore, this sequence has become an icon of the narrative medium in the history of the cinema. In his documentary essay, Harun Farocki explores this scene right through the history of film: 'I have collected images from several countries and many decades expressing the idea "exiting the factory", both staged and documentary - as if the the time has come to collect film-sequences, in the way words are brought together in a dictionary.' - Harun Farocki quoted here.
Date: 19 September, 2008
Time: 7.00pm for 7.30pm start
Location: The Pullens Centre, Crampton St, SE17
Programme:
Elio Petri, The Working Class Goes to Heaven/La Classe Operaia va in Paradiso (1971) 111 min.
I was a piecework laborer, I followed the politics of union, I worked for productivity, I increased output, and now what have I become? I’ve become a beast, a machine, a nut, a screw, a transmission belt, a pump!
Steeped in the volatile political conflicts taking place in Italy at the time, the Hot Autumn of 1969, the rejection of the compromises of the Italian communist Party (PCI), the refusal of work, factory and university occupations, Elio Petri's film The Working Class Goes to Heaven explores the struggles in the factory in all their contradictions; between consumerism and work, alienation, libidinal desire, self-destruction and, potentially, collective action. The Working Class Goes to Heaven demonstrates an impressive and inspiring illustration of the exploitation of capital society and the alienation of workers under this system. It showed us how the ruling class manipulates the ideology into people’s mind by alienating them through work, and how the workers are exploited with and without being conscious of that. Furthermore, it also gives us a sketch of the futility of reformism and the issues which will be confronted in the process of revolution. [taken from: here]
Harun Farocki, Workers leaving the Factory/Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik (1995) 36 min.
Workers Leaving the Factory - such was the title of the first cinema film ever shown in public. For 45 seconds, this still existent sequence depicts workers at the photographic products factory in Lyon owned by the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière hurrying, closely packed, out of the shadows of the factory gates and into the afternoon sun. Only here, in departing, are the workers visible as a social group. But where are they going? To a meeting? To the barricades? Or simply home? These questions have preoccupied generations of documentary filmmakers. For the space before the factory gates has always been the scene of social conflicts. And furthermore, this sequence has become an icon of the narrative medium in the history of the cinema. In his documentary essay, Harun Farocki explores this scene right through the history of film: 'I have collected images from several countries and many decades expressing the idea "exiting the factory", both staged and documentary - as if the the time has come to collect film-sequences, in the way words are brought together in a dictionary.' - Harun Farocki quoted here.
only the best pig story eva...
When pigs ruled the world! (thanks Bat)
Pig-like creatures ruled the world millions of years ago during the porcine age, according to palaeontologists.
Oh, for a new porcine age...
v is for valise
Ha! And you thought you knew what 'v' was going to be. Well, truth be told, I don't own one of those, which is probably as shocking as owning one was fifty years ago...ah, history! How tawdry you make yourself!
This is, without doubt, the most stupid thing I own. It's a pointlessly small and expensive Samsonite case that is unable to carry anything more than a novel and an apple. Actually, hang on. That's pretty good. In fact, I like this object a lot, although I didn't take it out of the house for six months as I felt silly for having spent so much money on it. But everyone seems to like it when I do: it has a particularly scarlet kind of red and makes a reassuring clicking sound when I open the catches. It also looks like I'm carrying a kind of attache for elves, in which all official documents are A5 or smaller. I like to think of myself as an ambassador for the Elf world.
Whilst I do not understand why women are supposed to like handbags, or why they need so many, or why they have those ones that look like they could contain several severed heads, I do appreciate the need for the right bag. To this end, I have three. The one above, a small brown pouch such as one might have seen on the childrens' television programme 'Knightmare', and a proper academic one in soft leather which is invariably filled with giant tomes entitled 'Metaphysics' and 'Being and Nothingness' (or Time, or Event).
I'm teaching Metaphysics proper for the first time this year: a bit intimidating. If anyone knows of a good clear secondary textbook, please let me know so I can recommend it to my students. Primary texts are all covered by this book, which has the advantage of including the historical texts (Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant etc.) in which the original metaphysical problem is introduced. Funny how I find that material so much easier to read than Davidson, Lewis, Snowdon, etc. Doncha just love those courses where the lecturer is teaching themselves as they go along! It's all very Rancière...
the misery of mondays
This lolcats hedgehog is rather timely.
Some left the bank carrying their belongings in cardboard boxes, while others sorted out their expenses or spent the balance of their credit at the canteen. Some staff even spoke of heavy drinking up on the seventh floor of the building.
14 September 2008
kino fist: apocalypse
After a 'summer' break, Kino Fist returns in a different place. In the wake of financial disaster, constant rumblings about nuclear perils and the many discussions about how the Large Hadron Collider might polish us off for good we will be showing films about the apocalypse as part of this event:
'La Soufrière' (Werner Herzog, 1976) (something about it here)
'Threads' (written by Barry Hines/directed by Mick Jackson, 1984) (see here for more details) [Warning: 'Threads' is very likely to be the single most depressing film you'll ever see. Please don't come if you're feeling a bit down or weird - seriously, I'd feel awful about it]
We will be here:
The Wenlock Building
50-60 Wharf Road, N1 7RN
We will screen:
October 5th
roughly 2-5pm
As always, there will be a magazine. Please send texts (200-2000 words), illustrations, images to infinitethought[at]hotmail.co.uk
by September 24th (that gives you ten days!).
pursuing palin
Had to pull the Palin piece temporarily as it's going on the FlowTV Site instead. Still, Shaviro is obviously right - a psychoanalytic approach (not my usual one, incidentally) is no replacement for a historically materialist one. I would hope they could be compatible, as I certainly don't disagree with this (or any of it, really):
'Palin is a paradessence, and hence a wildly popular commodity, because she combines the family-centeredness of the ideal suburban Mom with the ruthlessness of a corporate "warrior" in the dog-eat-dog neoliberal economy, or of a hard-core ideologue/foot soldier for the Far Right.'
I got an interesting email from Paul on the Palin thing:
I was struck while reading your Palin piece by her role as 'vast female plenitude'. A corollary, it seems to me, is that she is also 'The (Feminist) Subject Supposed to Be' on behalf of women everywhere. For prototypical conservatives, her sudden elevation not only wards off any lingering doubts about the hypocrisy of liberals (Hilary didn't even make the VP slot) but also sanctions a life divorced from the public sphere. Since Palin is politician extraordinaire and hockey mom, remaining 'merely' a mom is given a libidinal boost by identification with her (and her milf-ness) and striving for more becomes unnecessary, since she is achieving on their behalf. The contradiction of which points to what is really frustrating about the right - that they know that what they are saying about feminism is guff, but are quite happy to lie to legitimise all things reactionary (cf. Honderich's general view of Conservatism).
If anything, the situation with liberals is worse. They too have taken Palin as not only exemplar but substitute - it is as if politics can only ever handle one woman at a time, and the Republicans have beaten them to it. Now, instead of a healthcare-loving, cosmopolitan, political insider, all womankind are to defined by Palin's toxic blend of religious extremism (woman as irrational) and blatant hypocrisy (woman as deceiver). This is identity politics at its worst. The Hilary-Palin dynamic has reduced the entire issue of feminism to the candidate's reproductive organs rather than the impact of their politics on women (as befits our staged-managed democracies) and paralysed whatever progressive feminist impulses there were on the Democrat side. It is hard to imagine a bold position on abortion or child-care now emerging from the Obama-Biden ticket. Nor will McCain need to advance one - Palin's presence is what allows substantive debate on anything feminist-tinged to disappear, unless we mean media 'scandal' over phrasing.
12 September 2008
marinetti would probably like it
A work email today tells me of the introduction of 'new financial management software as part of the Hat-Trick Agresso Re-implementation Project' (I cut and paste, as all students must be punished for). It's not even nu-language, it's beyond Dada, you couldn't make it up...
We are all Hat-Trick Agresso Re-implementation Projects now!
We are all Hat-Trick Agresso Re-implementation Projects now!
11 September 2008
two things to watch if you haven't seen them already
no-values voters - nihilists for democracy: Lee Edelman for pres!
sport is existentialism.
10 September 2008
snout
I knew it'd come down to pigs in lipstick. if only everyone had worked out the human/pig thing in advance (cough, cough)! I coulda been a contender....
Miss Piggy soon developed into a major character, as the Muppet creators recognized that a lovelorn pig could be more than a one-note running gag
public reading rooms take to the street
Forthcoming events:
Friday September 12th noon - The first PRR demonstration. This will be in support of the artist Damien Hirst - Sothebys New Bond Street [on the pavement]
Banner slogans will include:
Damien's art is good!
Damien's art is undervalued!
Damien will be famous one day!
Art is safer than houses!
Buy now while stocks last!
Bring your own slogan - this is an open event.
Tuesday September 17th 2pm. The PRR will begin a non-stop screening of Guy Debord's entire cinematic output. This will take place in the basement of 5 Caledonian Road. This will continue during the hours of 11am and 6.30pm for one month. Malcolm Hopkins will introduce the films. This event is free.
Saturday September 27th at 7pm - the first PRR monthly meeting will take place at 5 Caledonian Road. This will follow a presentation by John Green who will be discussing his new biography of Engels. The earlier meeting will begin at 5pm.
Wednesday October 1st. PRR member Dr Paul Flewers will be introducing his latest book on the Soviet Union 7pm.
The third issue if Icteric is now nearly sold out. Let us know if you would like a copy - £3 plus £1 post.
Email andrew[at]andrewburgin.com for more information.
u is for utensil
Dull, I know. But it was either this or 'underpants', and I figured most people wouldn't want to see those, and those that did, I probably wouldn't want them to. Ah desire! How complicated and yet so tedious at the same time.
As you will know, I don't/can't cook, so I only have a loose grasp of what this is for. Straining seaweed, or something. I quite like it though, as an object. It seems nicely designed, and sort of fetishy, if only it wasn't for something as boring as aiding the movement of food.
Actually, utensils and their crockery and cultery ilk have presently been unusually irritating, due to their constant need to be cleaned. As money has been tight of late, as for everyone in the UK (minus the people who do really badly at their jobs but receieve £25 million 'golden handshakes' and that sort of thing), I have been eating more at home. Hence, more washing up. Often, like Elizabeth Wurtzel deciding not to wash her hair ever again (the only thing I remember from the excruciating Prozac Nation, apart from her forgetting her mother's birthday as she was 'too depressed' - no excuse, I say!), I simply refuse to do it. Which is not nice.
But, Christ, the depressing nature of endlessly repeated tasks! A moment of revelation as a younger pig, refusing as an act of existential despair to do up all the buttons on my duvet cover, as what would the point be, it'd only have to be taken off again...I fear I may soon resort to eating directly from the pan, or taking out giant loans so as to eat out every evening. Last days of Rome! Last days of Rome!
08 September 2008
forthcoming crmep seminars at middlesex
Thursdays, 5.30-7.30pm, Saloon, Mansion House, Trent Park campus, Middlesex University, Bramley Road, London N14 4YZ.
These seminars are open to anyone wishing to attend. Directions for getting to Trent Park are available here.
Semester One, September - December 2008
2 October
Women, Philosophy and Stupidity
Eva D. Bahovec (University of Ljubljana)
16 October
Local Cosmology
Elie During (Ecole Normale Superieure)
30 October
Animal Presence
Andrew Benjamin (Monash University)
20 November
title to be confirmed
Peter Thomas (University of Amsterdam/Jan van Eyck Academie)
11 December
What is a Speculative Empiricism?
Dider Debaise (Universite Libre de Bruxelles)
Semester Two, January - June 2009
24 January
Conference: Undoing the Aesthetic Image
29 January
Leroi-Gourhan and the Limits of the Human
Christopher Johnson (University of Nottingham )
19 February
title to be confirmed
Donna Haraway (University of California, Santa Cruz)
5 March
title to be confirmed
Alix Cohen (University of Cambridge)
26 March
title to be confirmed
Dustin McWherter (Middlesex University)
7 May
title to be confirmed
Ali Alizadeh (Middlesex University)
21 and 22 May
Conference: Concept and Form: The Cahiers pour l'analyse and Contemporary French Thought
Enquiries: p.hallward[at]mdx.ac.uk
07 September 2008
do columnists read blogs? hmm....
Judging by the first paragraph of today's Observer piece, I think Ms Burchill must be an IT reader:
'Women are a rum do. Born everywhere without high heels - and then seeking to cripple themselves at the first opportunity by adopting them as some ludicrously alleged weapon of liberation and empowerment - 'killer' heels, my arse! Look at Posh Spice's ever-mis face - a bunion-wracked testimony to a life lived on the balls of one's trotters.'
Or perhaps I am Julie Burchill pretending to be a Philosophy lecturer, who knows...
'Women are a rum do. Born everywhere without high heels - and then seeking to cripple themselves at the first opportunity by adopting them as some ludicrously alleged weapon of liberation and empowerment - 'killer' heels, my arse! Look at Posh Spice's ever-mis face - a bunion-wracked testimony to a life lived on the balls of one's trotters.'
Or perhaps I am Julie Burchill pretending to be a Philosophy lecturer, who knows...
hoydens of the twentieth century
Four Saucy Seaside Girls from Dominic, found in a second-hand bookshop in Tenby. The girl in the middle is either describing something in an animated way or she's trying to move away from the yellow straw that the bottom left girl is attempting to tickle her with. The off-the-shoulder look of the bottom right girl is particularly fetching, and the shorts on all four outfits are obviously splendid. Why must today's swimsuits be both horribly revealing and physiologically unflattering? The top of one's thighs should remain covered in public pools. And in general.
THE SUFFRAGETTE - "I will see the Government!' This is a fantastic recent find: one of the many anti-suffragette postcards from around 1910. Most anti-suffragette postcards depict stern-looking battle-axes and women in ties looking to take over the Houses of Parliament, or bulldogs in bonnets (perhaps Palin should have used that line instead). One says 'While in the act of voting, Mrs Jones remembers that she has left a cake in the oven!'. The one of the little girl is unusual, in the sense that the Suffragettes are depicted here as politically immature, rather than aggressively mannish, or unnatural in some other way. The girl has just the right degree of pout, and the posture of the policeman ignoring her is perfect.
There's an argument that says that the saucy seaside postcards of the 1930s and 40s are directly influenced by the the anti-suffragette pictures. George Orwell in his excellent essay on the major artist of saucy postcards, 'The Art of Donald McGill' from 1941, puts it like this:
'Another survival is the Suffragette, one of the big jokes of the pre-1914 period and too valuable to be relinquished. She has reappeared, unchanged in physical appearance, as the Feminist lecturer or Temperance fanatic.'
Orwell uses the postcards of McGill to diagnose the repressed underside of a superficial austere Britishness, and indulges instead in what Rebecca West described as 'extracting as much fun as possible from smacking behinds in basement kitchens'. As Orwell says:
'What you are really looking at is something as traditional as Greek tragedy, a sort of sub-world of smacked bottoms and scrawny mothers-in-law which is a part of Western European consciousness.'
According to Orwell, seaside postcards follow precise rules. Take, for example, the conventions of the sex joke:
'(i) Marriage only benefits women. Every man is plotting seduction and every woman is plotting marriage. No woman ever remained unmarried voluntarily.
(ii) Sex-appeal vanishes at about the age of twenty-five. Well-preserved and good-looking people beyond their first youth are never represented. The amorous honeymooning couple reappear as the grim-visaged wife and shapeless, moustachioed, red-nosed husband, no intermediate stage being allowed for.'
But Orwell ultimately defends the saucy seaside card, pointing to a longer bawdy continuum whose outlets have been sadly curtailed:
'In the past the mood of the comic post card could enter into the central stream of literature, and jokes barely different from McGill's could casually be uttered between the murders in Shakespeare's tragedies. That is no longer possible, and a whole category of humour, integral to our literature till 1800 or thereabouts, has dwindled down to these ill-drawn post cards, leading a barely legal existence in cheap stationers' windows. The corner of the human heart that they speak for might easily manifest itself in worse forms, and I for one should be sorry to see them
vanish.'
I wonder what 'worse forms' currently speak for this corner of the human heart.
valley of the dogmeme
Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls is a treatise on time to rival anything Heidegger ever wrote. Far more than the 'dolls' - the depressants, uppers, sleeping tablets and diet pills of the title - it's time that proves the real downer, stripping the girls of their looks, pulling power and careers by the age of twenty-five. Horizon of possibility? That's a showbiz lifespan to rival the mayfly. And unlike Heidegger's death, which, after all, simply coincides with the end of Being-in-the-world, even if one paradoxically can't quite live one's own demise ('Dying is not an event'), for the aging girls of Valley of the Dolls one is, in the blink of a heavily made-up eye, dead within life - 'washed up'. If you haven't taken care to get a trustworthy husband, secure your finances and preserve your reputation, then you might as well take too many pills and get it over with. Die, you flabby, sexless bastard!
What would a washed-up little hasbeen like you know about a vibrato? I've been on top for thirty years and I'll stay on top as long as I like. But you better keep singing for free, because that's all you'll get. Sure you'll get applause - any audience will applaud for something extra they get for nothing. But you're finished, washed up.' - Helen to Neely
Anne, the mimsy-pimsy heroine of the novel, despite having been ridiculously chaste, kind (read: boring) and well-behaved for the whole of the book ends up lying in her bedroom listening to the sounds of her wayward husband getting it on with a teen starlet, who stumble in unaware of her presence. Anne thinks to herself:
She could always keep busy during the day, and at night - the lonely ones - there were always the beautiful dolls for company.
No longer 'young' (though not yet thirty), no longer able to compete with the latest crop of teen girls, Anne commits a kind of temporal crime, an offence against authenticity, by creating a kind of temporary death within life (a life which is itself over). For Papa Heidegger, death may well reveal itself as that possibility which is one's ownmost, and not comporting oneself towards it might be an existential mischief punishable by twenty years hard idle talk at the coal-face of Being, but he never had to worry about wrinkles, did he?
[This post has officially broken every Dogmeme rule assigned to it (no women, no philosophy, no books, no complaining, no sex, no yearning for a world free of capitalism, no humour, no flippancy of any sort, no exclamation marks or rhetorical flourishes). Dogmeme08 has now been dissolved. All outstanding Dogmemes are henceforth cancelled]
06 September 2008
godard in hackney + chris petit
Jean-Luc Godard’s HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA (18) (Fr 1997-98) dir. Jean-Luc Godard 265m Subtitles Digital Screening to be introduced by Chris Petit
The UK’s first theatrical presentation: Sunday September 28 at 1.00pm
Unexpurgated: All 265 Minutes
Admission £10/£8 Concessions
107 Kingsland High Street
Dalston, London E8 2PB
020 7241 9410
Book online at riocinema.org.uk
05 September 2008
scarcity
Ads with a reflection on scarcity, and the odd shifts in the things we regard as in limited supply. As someone who lived in a place in which for many years there seemed to be a fixed number of things - my parents' books, my Pa's records, even the food with its same five permutations (both my Ma and my brother were allergic - and I mean properly ill allergic - to anything containing tomatoes, milk, cheese, cream, almonds, colourings, caffeine, chocolate). My Pa cooked everything, terribly, but given the restrictions, sweetly - but dinner was often the same: potatoes, broccoli, liver; mince, kale, carrots; the occasional jam tart when the baker called round in his van; a Fray Bentos pie as a treat. All in little separate portions and lumpy or overcooked. Properly healthy, as much rationing food tends to be. I've no doubt I'd be far sicker than I already am as an adult were it not for this plain, blunt diet.
Homeostasis ruled. In a minimal sense it fulfils Ads' fantasy:
I wonder sometimes what it would be like to live in a world where nothing at all was scarce.
It helped we had no Tv for a long time and when we did I never thought the adverts related to me: it never even occurred to me that I could buy anything for myself until I was about eleven. I realise this sounds insane, ludicrous, unbelievable. But it's true - beyond my Pa's cooking, my Pa's Fairport Convention and early Genesis records, the copies of Updike, Mailer, Drabble, what more could there be in the world?
Sartre in the Critique of Dialectical Reason has a story to tell about scarcity 'the whole of human development, at least up to now, has been a bitter struggle against scarcity. A cruel reader might suggest that Sartre had merely reified his previous theories of existentialist incompleteness, turning the worm at the heart of being into the giant nematode in the middle of history, but this would be unfair: scarcity is the self-imposed but real truth of human history - a scarcity made all the more pressing as it becomes increasingly clear that we've used up almost everything and drastically curtailed the 'bounty' previous generations tended to think was God-given or infinite, at the very least. The way, even though we have more than enough food to feed the world's population, markets conspire to ensure that steaks get dumped round the back of restaurants every night while most people live on far, far less and many simply starve.
There's a strange way in which the ghost of scarcity creeps back, in the very places where it should, on the face of it, be most banished - in the related shows Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm there is a double logic of excess and lack. The often-noted 'time porn' of the former, where people who have very little free chronos after work spend their limited leisure time watching people who seem to possess vast swathes of time, and the fake scarcity of the latter, in which, despite having enough money/space/life for anything, individual objects take on a fetishistic quality, both temporally and emotionally - my prawn noodles, that jumper, that cake, that bracelet. The one thing you can't say is 'no, that's fine, I have enough.' Because what would happen then? New needs must be created, even as the boring old ones (food, shelter, health) are unmet.
Homeostasis ruled. In a minimal sense it fulfils Ads' fantasy:
I wonder sometimes what it would be like to live in a world where nothing at all was scarce.
It helped we had no Tv for a long time and when we did I never thought the adverts related to me: it never even occurred to me that I could buy anything for myself until I was about eleven. I realise this sounds insane, ludicrous, unbelievable. But it's true - beyond my Pa's cooking, my Pa's Fairport Convention and early Genesis records, the copies of Updike, Mailer, Drabble, what more could there be in the world?
Sartre in the Critique of Dialectical Reason has a story to tell about scarcity 'the whole of human development, at least up to now, has been a bitter struggle against scarcity. A cruel reader might suggest that Sartre had merely reified his previous theories of existentialist incompleteness, turning the worm at the heart of being into the giant nematode in the middle of history, but this would be unfair: scarcity is the self-imposed but real truth of human history - a scarcity made all the more pressing as it becomes increasingly clear that we've used up almost everything and drastically curtailed the 'bounty' previous generations tended to think was God-given or infinite, at the very least. The way, even though we have more than enough food to feed the world's population, markets conspire to ensure that steaks get dumped round the back of restaurants every night while most people live on far, far less and many simply starve.
There's a strange way in which the ghost of scarcity creeps back, in the very places where it should, on the face of it, be most banished - in the related shows Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm there is a double logic of excess and lack. The often-noted 'time porn' of the former, where people who have very little free chronos after work spend their limited leisure time watching people who seem to possess vast swathes of time, and the fake scarcity of the latter, in which, despite having enough money/space/life for anything, individual objects take on a fetishistic quality, both temporally and emotionally - my prawn noodles, that jumper, that cake, that bracelet. The one thing you can't say is 'no, that's fine, I have enough.' Because what would happen then? New needs must be created, even as the boring old ones (food, shelter, health) are unmet.
