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Culture

May 12, 2005 - 6:58am -- nolympics
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

"The Problem With Music"
Steve Albini, negativland

Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says "Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke". And he does of course.

May 6, 2005 - 9:40am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

Dan Clore writes:

Garbage Guerrilla

Jon McMillian, New York Press

In the late 1960s, Ben Morea was the notorious leader of an unsavory Lower East Side anarchist collective called Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker. As a young historian who studies that period, I'd spent almost three years trying to locate him. All the leads I'd followed went nowhere. It was as if Morea had vanished, every bit as thoroughly as a jet contrail.

May 2, 2005 - 2:20pm -- hydrarchist
Announcements
Culture

Anonymous Comrade writes:
Stephen Wright talks on Use-Value and Art-Related Practice


Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th floor (directions below)


When: Monday Night 05.02.05 @ 7:30 Pm Who: Open To All

2. The Future of the Reciprocal Readymade: An Essay on Use-Value and Art-Related Practice


Stephen Wright

In a late text, Marcel Duchamp set out to distinguish several different types of readymades. Of particular interest here is the genre which he punningly described as “reciprocal readymades.” Anxious, he claimed, “to emphasize the fundamental antinomy between art and the readymade,” Duchamp defined this radically new, yet subsequently neglected genre through an example: “Use a Rembrandt as an ironing-board.” (1) More than a mere quip to be taken at face value, or a facetious mockery of use-value, Duchamp’s example points to the symbolic potential of recycling art – and more broadly, artistic tools and competence – into the general symbolic economy of everyday life. For in that respect, the reciprocal readymade is the obverse of the standard readymade, which recycles the real – in the form of manufactured objects – into the symbolic economy of art. Historically speaking, the readymade is inseparably bound up with objecthood: it refers to a readymade, manufactured object Yet, it would be reductive to confine the readymade to its objective dimension alone, if only because it provides such a strong general image of the reciprocal logic between art and the real.

April 27, 2005 - 9:53am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Culture

Emrah Göker writes "

ON TURKS, ARMENIANS, AND IMPOSSIBLE ENCOUNTERS

Emrah Göker[1]

"There is no right life in falsehood."

Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia[2]

I am looking at my screen in a sad, though not perplexed, mood today. Allah knows, I want to get furious, but find myself unable to. I also feel embarrassed for not being shocked; the thought of getting used to all this right-wing nationalist bullshit is disturbing and embarrassing. One of the most adamant Turkish racist electronic venues diffusing hatred in English, Turkish Forum, invites me, along with many other citizens of Turkey currently residing in the US, to protest Armenian-American lobbies in front of the White House. I am told that the "enemy" wants to have the 1915 Genocide recognized, force Turkey pay $20 billion in reparations, have both countries open their borders, and claim a huge chunk of Turkish territory. Curiously, Armenians (I am warned) also want to steal the province of Trabzon. It is the only province mentioned in the text, where, recently, four left-wing prison activists were almost lynched by a 2000-strong, incurably masculine, deliriously nationalist crowd, who were led to believe that these pamphleteers were about to burn the Turkish flag.[3] This propaganda war of denial and falsification (shamelessly borrowing the US imperialist slogan, "United We Stand") is also advertising a hit list of "Turkish turncoats", some of them my dear friends and excellent scholars, who are accused to ignore Armenian atrocities against Turks and for being "bought" by Armenians. The language being used is homologous to the Aryan Power rhetoric about "self-hating Whites"; or the Zionist one about "self-hating Jews". It is strange that the nationalists are selling their version of McCarthyism in the US, at a time the neo-cons are busy brewing their own brand in the universities. Now, there was an English proxy of that Turkish proverb. Ah, of course. Birds of a feather, flock together.

April 21, 2005 - 12:18pm -- nolympics
Culture

David Rovics IWW Starbucks Workers Union Benefit Show

New York City, April 22, 2005


David Rovics one of the country's most beloved folk singers, will be in New York City for one night only during his international tour!


Come support the union effort at Starbucks by joining us for some great music and cheap beer.


Also featuring political comedian Katie Halper and
spoken-word champion Amina Munoz-Ali. After David
Rovics, dance to inspired DJ rhythms late into the
night!


$5-$12 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds


Friday, April 22
8 pm 'til late


DUMBA
57 Jay St. in Brooklyn
F Train to York, walk two blocks towards the river

April 21, 2005 - 12:09pm -- nolympics
Announcements
Culture

Paula Panzarella writes:


Outcry for Justice: Poetry In The Struggle For Freedom Of Sacco And Vanzetti

New York City, May 7 and May 14, 2005

Theater for the New City
155 First Avenue (between 9th and 10th Sts)
New York City
Saturday, May 7 and May 14

2 PM — $10.

Poetry, music and commentary about Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian immigrant anarchists and labor leaders executed by the State of Massachusetts in 1927.


Cast members: Marlene Buchanan, Joan Cavanagh, Stephen Kobasa, Frank Panzarella, Tony Rosso, Sylvia Forges Ryan, Glenn Stevens, Maggie Testa and Shula Ruth Weinstein. With cello, mandolin and guitar. Produced by Paula Panzarella.

Contact Theater for the New City for tickets:
212-254-1109

April 21, 2005 - 7:26am -- jim
News
Culture

Critical Art Ensemble Auction Raises $167,000

U.S. Government Intensifies Investigation

On Sunday April 17, an art auction to benefit the CAE Defense Fund
raised $167,700. The auction, held at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York
City, featured over fifty artists who donated their work to the cause.


The amount raised was over three times more than had been raised (and
spent) in the eleven months preceding the auction. Still, two to three
times as much may be needed to successfully defend Steve Kurtz, a
founding member of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) and Professor of Art at
the University of Buffalo, and Robert Ferrell, a Professor of Human
Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, throughout the entire trial
process.

April 18, 2005 - 6:23am -- hydrarchist
Reviews
Culture

"Fourth World War", a lavish production (on a shoestring budget) including footage from Mexico, Canada, Korea, Plaestine, Argentina and South Africa has recently been released on DVD, but is also available for download over the net. You can find a torrent version here, or a copy on FTP here. If you are using FTP make sure to use a client that can restart a download in case of interruption. Subtitles are available in french and italian from the link for the FTP above. Below you'll find an interview with a member of Big Noise Films, Rick Rowley (the other being Jacquie Soohen) which was printed in the NY Indypendent last year.

Indypendent: What is the Fourth World War?

Rick Rowly: We first heard the term ‘Fourth World War’ from the Zapatistas in 1996. It’s a conflict that transcends the logic of states. It is a war without a singular enemy or fixed battlefields. There are not two sides in the Fourth World War. It is a system at work everywhere violently reorganizing our lives.

April 16, 2005 - 12:16pm -- hydrarchist
Announcements
Culture

Mukhin writes:
Capitalism and other Kids’ Stuff

Calling all anti-capitalists. This is to alert you to a new film – “Capitalism and other Kids’ Stuff” – that has recently been uploaded to the www and can be seen at www.socialist-tv.com , and which argues the anti-capitalist case in simple language.

This is not some crappy Lenininst/Trotsykist effort, but a damned good attempt at explaining the revolutionary case against capitalism in non-copnfrontational language.

The film, made by 4 members of The Socialist Party in the UK, is 49 minutes in duration and, beginning with a look at how we treat our children, explains in non-jargonised terms, the insanity of a system that places profit before human need. Please note, this is not some leftie Party political broadcast, just a sane look at an insane world that is very much crying out for real change, change that can only be brought about by a majority, acting in their own interests and without leaders.

(The Socialist Party was formed in 1904 and has not compromised its principles since its formation. It is a leaderless organisation that rejects reformism and has as its object the abolition of the money system, the common ownership and democratic control of the world's natural and industrial resources by and in the interests of all people).

Comradely regards,

Mukhin"

April 15, 2005 - 9:33am -- hydrarchist
Reviews
Culture

Alan Moore writes:

"Culture Jam 101" at Grassroots Media Conference

Alan Moore

I visited the NYC Grassroots Media Conference, an annual gathering of community-oriented media in New York City (April 9-10, 2005; http://www.nycgrassrootsmedia.org/) at New School University just for the panel called “Culture Jam 101: You Are a Thinly Veiled Threat.” This was William Etundi Jr., of Complacent.org, Swoon who is with Toyshop, and Reverend Billy (Bill Talen) and his partner Savitri D. Promo:


“Here we are in the thick of a culture grown complacent on consumerism, complicity and coercion. A sustainable movement is empowered by confronting and evolving the cultural assumptions of the moment – a goal not easily achieved through traditional protest. Here lies the world of culture jam, of renegade art, of guerrilla actions aimed at shaking the foundation of Apathetic America. This hands-on workshop will ‘teach’ you nothing. Our goal is to awaken the brilliance you already have. Short video introductions and brief anecdotes of our experiences in the street will open to an interactive dialogue on the logistics, challenges and possibilities in cultural evolution. We will explain the tools we use while working with you to build your own seditious solutions – after all you are not a consumer, you are a thinly veiled threat.”

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