They're all the same, but each one is different from every other one...

A recent comment by black symphony reminded me of Smoke, a tender film directed by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster, who also wrote the screenplay. It includes one of the best reflections on photography ever articulated: it is in the scene where Auggie Wren (Harvey Keitel), the manager of a small tobacco shop in Brooklyn, explains to the writer Paul Benjamin (William Hurt) why he photographs the same place, from the same angle, every morning, all these years.... 

 

Heroes for Ghosts: a new video by The Gathering

The Gathering have just released a video for Heroes for Ghosts, a new track from their upcoming album. The video is directed by Marcus Moonen. It is actually a short film – and a rather brilliant one.  The sadness usually associated with the end of a relationship is coupled by a sense of empowerment – see for example the shots of Silje Wergeland in the driver's seat, smiling while the open road lies ahead of her...

  

Skies, #1

 Athens, 20.09.2006, 19:21

There is an infinite number of stereotypes associated with photographs of the sky, and particularly those of the sunset.  This hardly comes as a surprise. There is something annoyingly possessive about pictures; they are often taken so as to 'immortalise the moment,' as the cliché goes. Such a quest is of course vain,  as well as in vain. Whatever value a picture may have, aesthetic or other, lies in itself rather than in its subject; the latter is long gone as soon as a camera's button is pushed. Even linguistically, immortality contains its opposite; which is why such attempts to deny death, both symbolically and literally, only serve to verify it.

Life, however, is a much better reason for looking at pictures, let alone taking them. As the clouds move, the light changes, and the colors alter, any particular image of the sky is constantly replaced by another; and rather than capturing one, it may be more interesting to follow the change. After all, change lies at the core of all things living, is it not? And then there is also the multiperspectival nature of the sky. The sun may be one, but the sunsets are many; each one may be seen from a practically endless number of locations, all are  different, and none exist without the angle each of us is looking from. But then again, isn't difference also at the core of all things living?

Athens, 20.09.2006, 19:24

Forgotten Land: Riverside's 10th anniversary

Forgotten Land (edit) introduced Riverside's new EP Memories In My Head. This material constitutes a reflection upon the band's musical career to this day. As bassist and vocalist Mariusz Duda explains, "[w]e have consciously gone back to our beginnings to create a certain kind of a circle". The EP has already been available during the band's 10th anniversary tour, while an official release is to follow. 

Riverside are significant musicians because their impressive technical quality is not an end in itself but a particularly effective means of expression. It is on this basis that they develop atmospheric and emotionally intense sonic environments: their melancholic melodies and often dark lyrics are harmoniously fused with their dynamic musical output. In terms of visual aesthetics, their album covers are designed by Travis Smith.

Scars & Stars

It is often the case that there are no easy answers, and more so when it comes to things that really matter; how is one to deal with the pain, how is one to face it, to contain and overcome it, to transform it into perceptiveness, compassion, empowerment?

I do not claim to have answers; not least of all, each of us inevitably formulates their own set of answers, in their own time.

I do, nonetheless, have my own fair share of scars. They're kind of ugly. As they lay silent on me, most of the time I forget they're even there. Scars tend to fade into black, unless of course there is something coming along the way. They then turn into delicate little stars, always glowing in the dark and whispering softly in my ear that it is of no importance how many more times it will get me down; the only thing that matters is how many times I will get back up again.

Now, I know this may not be a solution to everything, but isn't it a fine place to start?

For M.

The Gathering  Your Troubles Are Over   (Home, 2006) 

Towards the light
I will move on
And so I learn to move
The one before the next
The steps I take
Will pay the road ahead of me

I woke this morning
Wondering if I was alive
My head was spinning in circles
Turning to the other side
Bare and broken I hold on to walk

I stumbled over my body
I stumbled over my words
On control upon all wasted
As if I were beyond belief
Bare and broken I hold on to walk

Towards the light
I will walk
I will walk
Towards the light
I will walk
I will walk
Towards the light

Faster than
The speed of mind
Both my arms are wrapped around
This new experience

My head in clouds
My feet firmly on the ground

Towards the light
I will walk
And wrapped my arms around the ground
Beneath my feet

Towards the light
I will run
I will run
I will run
Towards the light

Towards the light
I will move on
And so I learn
To move
The one before
The next steps I take
Will pay the road ahead of me 


Words by Anneke van Giersbergen

Cotton, Iron, Poppy, and Hazelnuts

We are from Famagusta city in the island of Cyprus. We live at a university campus. We are Melek's friends, she and the students are taking care of us.

I am Pamuk (Cotton, in the middle of the picture). A student abandoned me when he/she was leaving Cyprus. I have been on the street for seven months. In the winter when it rains I go to Melek's office, and she feeds me with very nice food. I like chicken very much.

I am Demir (Iron, behind Pamuk). One day a fish hook got stuck in my nose, and Melek called the vet who said this is a very big hook used for catching very big fish. I had to have an operation so that the doctor could remove it. Then I slept in Melek's office until got better. Now I am ok, hanging around with other dogs and visit Melek's feeding and watering points.

I am Gelincik (Poppy, in the front). One day Melek found me and my babies in the garden. My owner threw us out here when I gave birth. Melek used to call my kids Findiklar (Hazelnuts). She fed us and tried to find homes for my kids because the security guards and the restaurant owner did not want us here. Four of them found very good homes. The last one was with me for a while, and then one day she disappeared. Hope she is ok.

Recently the university and the municipal authorities have started a massacre and they killed six other dogs living in other parts of the campus. Melek was so afraid that we were killed too. We, Demir and Pamuk, are still around but we have not seen Gelincik for some time. We are really worried. Hope she is somewhere nice...

We will keep you posted...

Love from our sunny Cyprus...

Open horizon

Pasaport Pier, Izmir, April 2009

Barbara Kruger and the politics of aesthetics

Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1989     Source

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master—that's all.'

Lewis Caroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1871)

Words run through Barbara Kruger's work – clear, strong, and evocative words, mediated through her characteristic application of font and colour. Meaning, however, is conveyed by both synthesis and contrast. Rather than conditioned by the words themselves, the work's textuality is constituted, firstly, by the formation of often fragmented blocks of phrases, words, or letters. Colour is the decisive visual determinant in this textual layer, and  is chiefly represented by the intense contrast between white, black, and red. 

A second layer of juxtaposition emerges as such coloured blocks are dispersed over, and simultaneously contrasted with,  original or pre-existing black and white images. Content is thus organised in the textual spaces within, as well as between, the plural formulations of contrast which constitute Barbara Kruger's signature visual language. Such a creative context does not only offer an insightful critical anatomy of cultural stereotypes, advertising clichés and propaganda aesthetics; it effectively stands them on their heads. 

Untitled (I shop therfore I am)  (II), 1987     Source

The politics of this approach is reminiscent of Michel Foucault's concept of problematization, defined as the development of a domain of acts, practices, and thoughts which pose questions for politics. Foucault argued that he always tried "to ask politics what it had to say about the problems with which it was confronted," and "question it about the positions it takes and the reasons it gives for this." Ιn this respect Barbara Kruger's work may be read as a visual form of questioning established norms and practices. As she pointed out in her egg interview, "I'm really interested in questions more than answers. Everybody's got answers, and I think it's more generative and engaging for me to think about questions and to think about doubt."

Barbara Kruger's work addresses issues such as gender, identity, and the politics of the body; consumerism and commodification; conformism and discipline. What underpins and interrelates these subjects is her understanding of power; as she argued in the same interview: "Power is the most free-flowing element in society, maybe next to money, but in fact they both motor each other. And it's in this room right now, it's at every dinner table, every board room, every bedroom; every social situation is rife with the consequences of power. And I feel compelled to address that, because it is the major constituent in determining what our lives feel like, what our every-days feel like, what our days and nights feel like." 

This is again parallel to the work of Foucault, who theorized power relations as imminent in, and not external to, other kinds of relationships, such as those constituted in the context of economic processes, knowledge and sex (The history of sexuality, Volume 1: The will to knowledge, Penguin, 1978).  Power relations are seen as rooted in the system of social networks and their differentiated forms are irreducible to any single binary opposition (Afterword: The subject and power, in H. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow, eds., Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, University of Chicago Press, 1982).

Untitled (We have received orders not to move) 1982    Source

Jacques Rancière holds that "[p]olitics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time" (The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, Continuum, 2004, p. 13). Rancière's formulation of two politics of aesthetics which exist simultaneously, the politics of the becoming life of art (le devenir vie de l’art) and the politics of the resistant form (la forme resistante), constitutes a fruitful framework  for an analysis of the relation between art and the political sphere. 

The aesthetic qualities of Barbara Kruger's forms and practices are paradigmatic of art's political significance. One of her best-known works, 1981's Your gaze hits the side of my face, sharply subverts the objectification of women by the male gaze. For Rancière, the image is effective as it abolishes the distinction between "the disembodied abstraction of words and the vitality of bodies" (Do pictures really want to live?, Culture, Theory & Critique, 50, 2-3, 2009, p. 130). And as Barbara Kruger has eloquently argued, "art is still a site for resistance and for the telling of various stories, for validating certain subjectivities we normally overlook."

Your gaze hits the side of my face   1981    Source 

Give way

Charing Cross Rd / St. Martin's Pl, London, 19.05.2011

Gil Scott-Heron, r.i.p.

 

  Source

Gil Scott-Heron was an emblematic poet, writer, and musician. He was also a key figure in the African American community from a political point of view, and was influential  in the evolution of its music culture, with the development of hip-hop being a characteristic example. His last album, the brilliant I'm Νew Ηere, was released in 2010.

BBC's documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: A film about Gil Scott-Heron (2003, dir. Don Letts), interprets his work within a vast musical context ranging from the blues, jazz, and classic soul, to hip-hop artists such as Public Enemy. It also examines its relation to the political and social context in the era of the Civil Rights Movement,  Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers. 

Part 2/4      Part 3/4      Part 4/4

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised has been one of the most significant as well as popular poems/tracks by Gil Scott-Heron, a modern classic indeed. I'm posting its original version below, from the album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox (1970). You can listen to the subsequent full band version here, while information on references included in the lyrics is available here. 

 

                                 

                                 You will not be able to stay home, brother

                                 You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out

                                 You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and

                                 Skip out for beer during commercials

                                 Because the revolution will not be televised

                                 The revolution will not be televised

                                 The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox

                                 In 4 parts without commercial interruptions

                                 The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon

                                 Blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell, 
                                 General Abrams and Mendel Rivers to eat

                                 Hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary

                                 The revolution will not be televised

                                 The revolution will not be brought to you by the 

                                 Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie Woods 
                                 And Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia

                                 The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal

                                 The revolution will not get rid of the nubs

                                 The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner
                                 The revolution will not be televised, Brother

                                 There will be no pictures of you and Willie May

                                 Pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run

                                 Or trying to slide that color tv into a stolen ambulance

                                 NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32

                                 Or report from 29 districts.

                                 The revolution will not be televised

                          

                                 There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down

                                 Brothers on the instant replay

                                 There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being

                                 Run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process

                                 There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy Wilkens

                                 Strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and Green

                                 Liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving

                                 For just the right occasion

                                 Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction

                                 Will no longer be so goddamned relevant

                                 And women will not care if Dick finally screwed Jane

                                 On Search for Tomorrow because Black people

                                 Will be in the street looking for a brighter day

                                 The revolution will not be televised

                                 There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock news

                                 And no pictures of hairy armed women liberationists

                                 And Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.

                                 The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,

                                 Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones,

                                 Johnny Cash, or Englebert Humperdink

                                 The revolution will not be televised

                                 The revolution will not be right back after a message

                                 About a white tornado, white lightning, or white people

                                 You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom

                                 The tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl

                                 The revolution will not go better with Coke

                                 The revolution will not fight germs that may cause bad breath

                                 The revolution will put you in the driver's seat

                                 The revolution will not be televised
                                 Will not be televised, not be televised

                                 The revolution will be no re-run brothers

                                 The revolution will be live