Radical media, politics and culture.

Culture

Lagren writes

European Free Arts Demonstration
Strasbourg, Nov. 12, 2005


European Demonstration of Sound Systems

Meet at 14:00 (13:00 GMT) in Place de la Republique in the center of Strasbourg

We demand the right to exist,


We demand the end of systematic and unjustified repression against us,


We demand the condemnation of countries such as the Tcheck republic for brutally repressing our organised events for no justifiable reason,


We demand the right to be treated as socio-cultural performers; because our events are unrestricted, self -managed and with no financial interest, they fall outside the norm of commercial cultural events,


We demand access to Art and Culture as a fundamental right and its expression to be state-approved,


WE DEMAND NOT LAWS BUT RIGHTS!

Against arbitrary repressions of named "Teknival" and "Free Parties".


These events just are an artistic and cultural manifestation of free expression with no commercial purpose, open to all in order to share, develop and enrich their culture.


To ensure that what happened in the Tcheck republic does not happen again!


We will not tolerate that, in a newly emerging constitutional Europe, member nations ignore and destroy our spaces for creative freedom through violent police action or security laws.


We will not give up against these discriminatory actions.


We will not give in to intolerance.


We will not be silenced.


We will carry on and inform the public.


In order to achieve this, WE NEED ALL OF YOU...

Chairman Mao Hyped as a Hero for the Tourist Masses

David Eimer, UK Independent

The Chairman's image is dangling from the mirror of the taxi that takes me
to Mao's childhood home in Shaoshan in southern China. "He's my good luck
charm," grins the driver. However surprising this may seem, it certainly
appears to be working.


Since China's State Council designated this year as the year of Red Tourism,
an initiative designed to re-kindle faith in the present-day Communist Party
(CCP), a booming Shaoshan has become an unlikely must-see on the tourist
trail.

Revered Chinese Author Ba Jin Dies at 100

By ELAINE KURTENBACH

Associated Press Writer

BEIJING (AP) -- Ba Jin, one of China's most revered communist-era writers who attacked the evils of the pre-revolutionary era in novels, short stories and essays, died Monday of cancer in Shanghai, the official Xinhua News Agency said. He was 100.

Best known for his 1931 novel "Family," the story of a disintegrating feudal household, Ba Jin also translated the Russian writers Ivan Turgenev and Pyotr Kropotkin.

Ba Jin worked well into his later years writing essays and compiling anthologies of his work.

He was part of the young intelligentsia in the early 20th century that looked to Western philosophies - Marxism, anarchism, and liberalism - for solutions to China's backwardness and social inequality.

Punkerslut writes:

"The Rights of Squatters"
Punkerslut

"The finder of something which the owner was probably sorry to lose, cannot take it up with the intention of withholding it from the owner when he comes to inquire. But when the owner does not appear, the finder has a right to retain it for himself." — Samuel Von Pufendorf, The Rights and Duties of Man and Citizen, Book 1, Chapter 13

I had always believed, before I was adoringly aquainted with the philosophy of Humanitarianism, Rationalism, and Justice, that squatting ought to be a right, and not a privilege. To see so many vacant houses, standing side by side like disease, and to hear of so many unemployed and so many houseless as though they were the worst lot of humanity — to see the present state of conditions as they exist, I had always believed that squatting is a right. On the one hand, there is an army of unemployed, houseless, starving, cold, freezing, without even the least sympathetic touch of humanity, not reaching out because of their pride, and they exist in the multitudes. And nobody can be blamed other than megacorporations, whose assets exist in the trillions.

Trillions of dollars, I say! As a close friend of mine tells me, in New York City, they can invest to have enormous television sets sitting on the sidewalk, yet every apartment is infested with vermin and cockroaches. We have delapidated buildings, beggars on the street, homeless children without even enough clothing to pass the decency laws. All this misery, this poverty, and this crime! Oh, and of crime! What shall I say of it!

When men are grown up in an environment where everyone around gathers their paycheck in the form of a possessed wallet or a confiscated purse, where their fathers are robbers and members of thieves guilds. Should we expect the children to grow up any differently? Should you take a child from the ghetto, and honestly ask him that he will grow up to be the CEO of a megacorporation, only that the megacorpration will be one that exploits and does nothing but destroy the environment and violate the rights of indigenous peoples!?

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Godpolitics" Information Sought

This is a request for people to forward articles, information and ideas regarding the rise of religious literalists in public spheres, for the blog/site:
http://www.bewareofthegod.com/

Creative Industries in Beijing: Initial Thoughts

Ned Rossiter

During a teaching stint at Tsinghua University in May this year, and then following the trans-Siberian conference organised by Ephemera Journal in September, I started preliminary research on creative industries in Beijing. What follows is a brief report on my experiences, perceptions and meetings in Beijing. My interest is to discern the constellation of forces that might be taken into consideration in future analyses as the research project develops. I should also state that this brief overview of Beijing’s creative industries is part of a collaborative project that undertakes a comparative study of international creative industries. The research seeks to go beyond economistic interpretations of creative industries by focussing on inter-relations and geo-political tensions between trans-local and global cultural flows as they manifest around issues such as labour conditions, intellectual property rights (IPRs), social-technical networks and cultural practices.

From the start, there are many factors and variables that make it questionable to even invoke the term “creative industries” in the Chinese context. Such complications amount to a problematic in translation of the creative industries concept. For the most part, there is little variation at a policy level as governments internationally incorporate the basic ingredients of creative industries rhetoric (clusters, mapping documents, value-chains, creative cities, co-productions, urban renewal, knowledge economies, self-entrepreneurs, etc.) into their portfolio of initiatives that seek to extract economic value from the production of cultural content and provision of services. This would suggest that creative industries, as a policy concept, is divorced from the materialities that compose cultural economies as distinct formations in national and metropolitan settings.

Culture Articles from The New Masses

Available in PDF Format here.

Title of article in The New Masses — Date of Publication —
Pages

“Author’s Field Day,” NM 12 (July 3, 1934): 27-32 nm001.pdf

Mike Gold, “Proletarian Realism,” NM 6 (September 1930): 5 nm002.pdf

Gold, “Go Left, Young Writers!” NM 4 (January 1929): 3-4 nm003.pdf

Philip Rahv, "The Literary Class War," NM 8 (August 1932): 7-10 nm004.pdf

Gold, “Notes of the Month,” NM 5 (January 1930): 7 nm005.pdf

Harlan Miners materials, NM Dec. 1931 nm006.pdf

Anatoli Lunacharski, “Marxism and Art,” NM 8 (Novemebr 1932): 12. nm007.pdf

Stanley Burnshaw, "Revolutionary Poetry," NM February 1930 nm008.pdf

Edward Dahlberg, "Review of Farrell, Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan," NM February 1930 nm009.pdf

Wallace Phelps, ‘The Methods of Joyce,” NM 10 February 20, 1934): 26 nm010.pdf

Eugene Gordon, “Black and White, Unite and Fight!” NM 13 (October 23, 1934): 24-25 (rev. of Endore, Babouk) nm011.pdf

Obed Brooks, “In the Great Tradition,” NM 13 (November 27, 1934): 23 nm012.pdf

Granville Hicks, “Revolutionary Literature of 1934,” NM 14 (January 1, 1935): 38 nm013.pdf

Edwin Seaver, “Socialist Realism,” NM 17 (October 22, 1935): 23-25 nm014.pdf

Joshua Kunitz, “In Defense of a Term,” NM 28 (July 12, 1938), sect 2: 145-47 nm015.pdf

Harold Leventhal, Promoter of Folk Music, Dies at 86

Margalit Fox, New York Times

Harold Leventhal, an internationally renowned folk music promoter who in 1963 presented an unkempt 21-year-old named Bob Dylan in his first major concert-hall appearance, died on Tuesday at New York University Medical Center. He was 86 and lived in Manhattan.


The death was confirmed by Nora Guthrie, Woody Guthrie's daughter and the director of the Woody Guthrie Foundation and Archives, of which Mr. Leventhal was a founder and trustee. Mr. Leventhal had been Woody Guthrie's business manager and later his executor.

Catholic Church No Longer Swears by Truth of Bible

Ruth Gledhill, London Times


The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.


The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible.


“We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision,” they say in The Gift of Scripture.

further_bunny writes:

"Open Season"

London, October, 2005


NODE.London presents : Open Season, London, October 2005

This October the UK government, as part of its presidency of the EU is holding a pan-European conference on how to consolidate regulation and control of intellectual property, copyright and technology.

Looking for creative alternatives, NODE.London is declaring this October an 'Open Season' on technology, media, culture, politics and art with a diverse and challenging series of events – building towards London-wide media arts events in March 2006.

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