ce399 | research archive

Nattefrost in his Bathtub, Oslo, 2005 (Hillary Clinton in Africa, American Utopias)

 
Nattefrost in his Bathtub, Oslo, 2005 - Peter Beste,  http://www.stevenkasher.com/html/artistresults.asp?artist=333

I can hypnotize a man without his knowledge or consent into committing treason against the United States.- Dr. Estabrooks - Chairman of the Department of Psychology at Colgate University, 

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has helped clear rubble and plant flowers as she visited two housing schemes near Cape Town, South Africa.

They cleared rubble from the site and planted flowers and a tree.

"This is what I really believe in," she was quoted as saying during the tour. "I mean, I have travelled literally all over the world and when people organise themselves and are given the tools and the training to really empower themselves and their future and build houses and communities, that's what's lasting."

When one woman asked if Mrs Clinton wanted to make a contribution she explained she had no money on her, and turned to Africa envoy Johnnie Carson, who drew a $50 note from his wallet. "These are good businesswomen," Mrs Clinton said.

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American Utopias

From the point of view of most Hollywood filmmaking, these utopian strategies are used to mirror the hegemonic structures found in society. Instead of imagining an alternate space as a resistance to dominant society, these films place USA as the utopian space. Such an argument follows what Jean Baudrillard provocatively argues in his book America: the US is utopia achieved and because of this, there are no poor people in USA. ”The have-nots will be condemned to oblivion, to abandonment, to disappearance pure and simple. […] And rightly so, since they show such bad taste as to deviate from general consensus.” (Baudrillard 111). Baudrillard’s argument must of course be understood as ironic, and as pointing to the ideological erasure of the poor, rather than a serious argument of no poverty in America.

...

Consider Gattaca (Andrew Niccol 1997) which portrays the struggle of Vincent who tries to become an astronaut despite being considered an in-valid, due to his faulty genes. Diagnosed with a life expectancy of no more than 30 years, Vincent goes on to prove the system wrong by living longer and becoming an astronaut in spite of the immediate rejection. However, this does not result in the film portraying the system as problematic, but simply presenting Vincent as a heroic figure. Society is not challenged, as Vincent is praised. Here, the film rejects sympathizing with the in-valids and by extension those that the in-valid symbolically represent: poor people and people of color. The film’s conclusion is the individual’s victory over the system, not the collapse or change of society. The individual succeeds in spite of the society, but this also indicates that anyone may succeed, despite the conditions they are born. Matters of race and class – folded into the image of the in-valids – are rejected as arguments for one’s situation. The geneticism Vincent faces can still be conquered, if you work hard enough: no social divide is so large that it cannot be overcome. While this may seem as a positive thing, it is also reactionary view which denies the need for change, since “the talented will overcome”.

(excerpts)

New Mappings (Denmark)

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ce399 note:

Do you really want to spend the rest of your life on this planet being a "photo-journalist" at Auschwitz?

The "Luggage Physics" of a "Chesse Dealer": Marcel Duchamp, Militarism and Patriotism

Duchamp's "Luggage Physics": Art on the Move

"Well, it had to come. How long will it last?" wondered Marcel
Duchamp in a letter to Katherine Dreier about the onset of World
War II following the invasion of Poland. "How will we come out of
it, if we come out of it?" At fifty-two, and thus too old for
military service, Duchamp envisaged doing "some civilian work to
help. What?? Everything is still a mess," he exclaimed. In Paris,
half deserted and in darkness, he was "waiting for the first bomb,
to leave for somewhere in the country."[1 <#foot1>] The eruption
of the war had Duchamp packing his bags again, just as he did
during World War I when he first came to America. In this period
he was producing materials for a box packed in a valise, a folding
exhibition space that would assemble reproductions of his artistic
corpus. Resembling a portable museum, The Box in a Valise
(1935-41) collected 69 miniature reproductions and replicas that
he intended to assemble in America.[2 <#foot2>] Traveling between
the unoccupied and occupied zones with a cheese dealer's pass in
the spring of 1941, Duchamp anxiously transported across the
German lines a large suitcase filled not with cheese, but with
materials for his boxes.

...

The materials for assembly
and reproductions for fifty boxes were shipped off to New York in
1941 in two cases, along with Peggy Guggenheim's recently acquired
art collection, under the label "household goods." By 14 May 1942,
when Duchamp got his papers and headed from Marseilles to New
York, most artists and intellectuals had already left France; this
escape route would soon be cut off.[4 <#foot4>] Fleeing the
ravages of war in the nick of time, Duchamp would once again
assume the migrant condition inaugurated by his arrival to the
U.S. during World War I.

Duchamp's repeated attempts to take refuge from war reflected his
enduring aversion to militarism and patriotism. Speaking of the
reasons for his first migration to the U.S. during WWI, he stated:
"I had left France basically for lack of militarism. For lack of
patriotism, if you wish" (Cabanne 59). He held this conviction
throughout his life, although after WWII it was colored by
ambivalence and regret.[5 <#foot5>] Even as early as 1905, "being
neither militaristic nor soldierly," he availed himself of the
exemption of "art worker" by becoming a printer of engravings (the
other option was to be a typographer) in order to reduce his
military service (Cabanne 19-20). Duchamp's aversion to war
largely overlapped his discontent with art and his sense that he
was incompatible with its endeavors. In a letter to Walter Pach
(27 Apr. 1915), he notes the combined impact of war and art on his
decision to leave France:

For a long time and even before the war, I have disliked this
"artistic life" in which I was involved.--It is the exact
opposite of what I want. So I tried to somewhat escape from
the artists through the library. Then during the war, I felt
increasingly more incompatible with this milieu. I absolutely
wanted to leave. (Duchamp, Amicalement 40)

His disenchantment with art is based on its exclusive cultivation
of visual aspects (what he called the "retinal") to the detriment
of intellectual expression. Trapped by professional and market
pressures that left artists to merely repeat themselves by copying
and multiplying a few ideas, he actively sought to escape. War
appears to have exacerbated this rising disaffection with art and
with the artistic milieu by bringing it to a crisis. However, the
challenge of implementing his decision to leave both war and art
behind and the questions this decision raises gained renewed
urgency upon the eruption of WWII.

http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.905/16.1judovitz.txt

The Psibernetic Arch: Cybernetics and ESP, Automation, Biological Cybernetics, Prefectibility of Predicitive Systems, Scientific Future Studies (notes)

Survival Research Laboratories. Los Angeles. 2005

Telematic Embrace: Visionary Ideas of Art, Technology and Consciousness. The Psibernetic Arch: Cybernetics and ESP

Automation is a universal law of development - the 22nd Congress of the [']Communist Party['] of the Soviet Union in 1961. Cybernetics = Science of Government and the perfectibility of systems. Which was the meaning the French physicist A.M. Ampere intended when he coined the word.

Cybernetic Systems/capability of correlating behaviours, trends and needs from minute to minute across the entire country. Economic prediction and scientific future studies. The research institutes of psychology and biological cybernetics/ statistics of psychic behaviour/comparative psychic research. Predictive systems. [Kahn and Weiner 1967]

Herman Kahn/Hudson Institute/[creation of] predictive systems that rely not on psychic perception or clairvoyance of an occult kind but on raw cartesian procedures of assembling hard facts and extrapolating into the long term future scenarios that have real economic and political value to the US government and corporations. [psychic predictions through technological means.]

 
SRL. San Francisco.1984. "Infernal Regions - Limited Seating"

Salvador Dali, Fascist

The year 2004, the centenary of Dali's birth, has been proclaimed "the year of Dali" in many countries. Led by the Spanish establishment, with the King at the helm, there has been an international mobilization in the artistic community to pay homage to Dali. But this movement has been silent on a rather crucial item of Dali's biography: his active and belligerent support for Spain's fascist regime, one of the most repressive dictatorial regimes in Europe during the twentieth century.

For every political assassination carried out by Mussolini's fascist regime, there were 10,000 such assassinations by the Franco regime. More than 200,000 people were killed or died in concentration camps between 1939 (when Franco defeated the Spanish Republic, with the military assistance of Hitler and Mussolini) and 1945 (the end of World War II, an anti-fascist war, in Europe). And 30,000 people remain desaparecidos in Spain; no one knows where their bodies are. The Aznar government (Bush's strongest ally in continental Europe) has ignored the instructions of the U.N. Human Rights Agency to help families find the bodies of their loved ones. And the Spanish Supreme Court, appointed by the Aznar government, has even refused to change the legal status of those who, assassinated by the Franco regime because of their struggle for liberty and freedom, remain "criminals."

Now the Spanish establishment, with the assistance of the Catalan establishment, wants to mobilize international support for their painter, Dali, portraying him as a "rebel," an "anti-establishment figure" who stood up to the dominant forces of art. They compare Dali with Picasso. A minor literary figure in Catalonia, Baltasar Porcel (chairman of the Dali year commission), has even said that if Picasso, "who was a Stalinist" (Porcel's term), can receive international acclaim, then Dali, who admittedly supported fascism in Spain, should receive his own homage." Drawing this equivalency between Dali and Picasso is profoundly offensive to all those who remember Picasso's active support for the democratic forces of Spain and who regard his "Guernica" (painted at the request of the Spanish republican government) as an international symbol of the fight against fascism and the Franco regime.

Dali supported the fascist coup by Franco; he applauded the brutal repression by that regime, to the point of congratulating the dictator for his actions aimed "at clearing Spain of destructive forces" (Dali's words). He sent telegrams to Franco, praising him for signing death warrants for political prisoners. The brutality of Franco's regime lasted to his last day. The year he died, 1975, he signed the death sentences of four political prisoners. Dali sent Franco a telegram congratulating him. He had to leave his refuge in Port Lligat because the local people wanted to lynch him. He declared himself an admirer of the founder of the fascist party, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera. He used fascist terminology and discourse, presenting himself as a devout servant of the Spanish Church and its teaching--which at that time was celebrating Queen Isabella for having the foresight to expel the Jews from Spain and which had explicitly referred to Hitler's program to exterminate the Jews as the best solution to the Jewish question. Fully aware of the fate of those who were persecuted by Franco's Gestapo, Dali denounced Bunuel and many others, causing them enormous pain and suffering.

None of these events are recorded in the official Dali biography and few people outside Spain know of them. It is difficult to find a more despicable person than Dali. He never changed his opinions. Only when the dictatorship was ending, collapsing under the weight of its enormous corruption, did he become an ardent defender of the monarchy. And when things did not come out in this way, he died.

Dali also visited the U.S. frequently. He referred to Cardinal Spellman as one of the greatest Americans. And while in the U.S., he named names to the FBI of all the friends he had betrayed. In 1942, he used all his influence to have Buñuel fired from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where Buñuel worked after having to leave Spain following Franco's victory. Dali denounced Buñuel as a communist and an atheist, and it seems that under pressure from the Archbishop of New York, Buñuel had to leave for Mexico, where he remained for most of his life. In his frequent visits to New York, Dali made a point of praying in St. Patrick's Cathedral for the health of Franco, announcing at many press conferences his unconditional loyalty to Franco's regime.

Quite a record, yet mostly unknown or ignored by his many fans in the art world.

The Jackboot of Dada: Salvador Dali, Fascist
Vicente Navarro
http://www.counterpunch.org/navarro12062003.html

Edgard Varêse and Le Corbusier: Poême Électronique (1958)

Edgard Varêse and Le Corbusier: Poême Électronique (1958)

First presented at the 1958 Brussels Worlds Fair with 425 speakers placed throughout the famous Philips pavilion, the placement of the speakers and design of the building gave the spectators a feeling of being housed within a concrete, silver seashell. A giant model of the atom hung from the ceiling and the sound & imagery premiered to standing room only crowds and I can only imagine was a complete mind-blower to all who witnessed the spectacle. Varese is considered to be the "father of electronic music", Henry Miller described him as the "stratospheric colossus of sound." When Philips (Philips electronic company) approached Le Corbusier to design a building for the fair, Le Corbusier said, "I will not make a pavilion for you (Philips) but an Electronic Poem and a vessel containing the poem; light, color, image, rhythm and sound joined together in an organic synthesis."

SOURCE: http://ifthebirdsknew.blogspot.com/2006/06/edgar-varese-le-corbusier-poem.html

Les Célébrations du Centenaire de la Mort d'Alfred Jarry

Le 1er Novembre, 2007 est le 100th anniversaire de la mort d'Alfred Jarry.
(Septembre 8, 1873 - Novembre 1, 1907)

Mais l'énorme notoriété du Père Ubu ne doit pas occulter les autres facettes de la bibliographie de son génial inventeur.

A l'image du premier livre qu'il publia, les "Minutes de sable mémorial", assemblage composite de proses, de poèmes versifiés et de fragments dramatiques, où le grotesque et le sublime se mêlent, l'œuvre de Jarry se caractérise d'abord par sa singulière diversité : bigarrure de romans classiques et de fictions expérimentales, de critiques littéraires ou artistiques, de textes pour les formes de théâtre les plus inattendues, de chroniques, de traductions – et des almanachs, et une opérette, et un opéra bouffe.

A sa mort, le premier novembre 1907, Alfred Jarry est misérable, isolé, oublié.

Qui parmi les rares compagnons qui l'accompagnèrent jusqu'au bout, qui dans le cercle étroit de ses lecteurs, aurait alors pu imaginer l'éblouissante postérité qui lui était promise ? Les surréalistes, André Breton en tête, le salueront dès les années 30 comme un grand maître de l'humour noir.

Il avait jeté dans son roman posthume, "Gestes et opinions du Docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien", les bases d'une science fantaisiste et paradoxale. Cette philosophie non conformiste - inventée par le Père Ubu en personne ! – lui survivra à travers un très solennel Collège de Pataphysique, institué en 1948 par un cercle d'artistes et d'intellectuels.

Un siècle a passé, et Jarry n'a pas fini de se rappeler à notre souvenir.

Le Père Ubu n'est pas près de retirer son nez pointu des petites et grandes affaires de ce monde.

Faustroll va continuer ad libitum sa navigation circulaire au milieu d'archipels sur lesquels le temps n'a pas prise.

Alfred Jarry a pour toujours vingt-trois ans, scandaleux dandy outrageant le tout-Paris des lettres, il a pour toujours trente-quatre ans, feu follet épuisé rendant son dernier souffle à l'Hôpital de la Charité, il est pour toujours l'enfant de cinq ans qui confie ses rêveries au fil paisible de la Mayenne passant sous le Vieux Pont de Laval.

Tandis que toujours résonnent, renvoyés des angles les moins prévisibles de notre littérature, des échos de sa voix unique.

• Les célébrations du Centenaire de la mort d'Alfred Jarry
• La Société des Amis d'Alfred Jarry
• Ubu roi (sur Gallica)
• Poèmes d’Alfred Jarry
• Gestes et opinions...
• Ubu’s Almanac: Alfred Jarry and the Graphic Arts, Spencer Museum of Art. Reproductions des œuvres graphiques de Jarry et des recueils qu’il a édités.
• E-book Ubu roi d'Alfred Jarry au format pdf
• Collège de ’Pataphysique

Alfred Jarry en vélo