The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassions, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
Saturday, 27 April 2013
The most beautiful people we have known
Tuesday, 23 April 2013
“Here everyone is in charge”: Some Other Gazes, by Subcomandante Marcos
It’s a street, a milpa, a factory, a mine shaft, a forest, a school, a department store, an office, a plaza, a market, a city, a field, a country, a continent, a world.
The Ruler is seriously wounded, the machine broken, the beast exhausted, the savage locked up.
The changes in name and flags didn’t work at all, the beatings, the prisons, the cemeteries, the money flowing through corruption’s thousand arteries, the “reality shows,” the religious celebrations, the paid newspaper articles, the cybernetic exorcisms.
The Ruler calls for his last overseer. He murmurs something into his ear. The overseer goes out to confront the masses.
He says, asks, demands, requires:“We want to speak with the man…”Doubt crosses his face, the majority of those who are confronting him are women.He corrects himself:“We want to speak with the woman…”He doubts himself again, there’s more than a few “others” who are confronting him.He corrects himself again:“We want to speak with whomever is in charge.”From amongst the silence an elderly person and a child step forward, they stand in front of the overseer and, with an innocent and wise voice, they say:“Here everyone is in charge.”The overseer shudders, and the Ruler’s voice during his last scream shudders.The gaze wakes up. “Weird dream,” is said. And, without the geography or the calendar mattering, life, struggle, resistance goes on.S/he only remembers a few words from the odd dream:
“Here everyone is in charge.”
Information and links about the Zapatistas:
Saturday, 20 April 2013
Friday, 19 April 2013
Wednesday, 17 April 2013
On the edge of the world: Dave McKean's cats
Dave McKean is one of the most original and multidimensional contemporary artists. He also happens to have another quality which is of particular importance to a cat lover like me: he is unmatchable when it comes to drawing these incredible animals. The above image is one of his illustrations for S. F. Said's novel Varjak Paw, while below are the first two pages of his pivotal graphic novel Cages.
Monday, 15 April 2013
Democracy and the eurozone crisis: quotes #13
For more than two years, European leaders have pushed a cocktail of fiscal austerity and structural reforms on troubled countries like Portugal, Spain and Italy, promising that it will be the tonic to cure their economic and financial ailments. All the evidence shows that this bitter medicine is killing the patient.
[...]
From the beginning, it was clear that economic austerity (cutting government spending and public benefits) and structural reforms (relaxing tough labor laws and privatizing state-owned companies, for example) could not be accomplished simultaneously during a deep recession. And that painful reality is playing out with no end in sight.
In Portugal, the government of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho cut spending and raised taxes so much that the fiscal deficit has fallen by about a third from 2010 to 2012. He also pushed through reforms to phase out rent control for tenants and legal changes that make it easier for companies to fire workers. The result is that the country’s unemployment rate has risen to close to 18 percent, from 12.7 percent in 2011. Economists say Portugal will likely have a bigger fiscal deficit this year than it agreed to in exchange for loans from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund, because national policies, not surprisingly, have made the recession deeper than anticipated.
Saturday, 13 April 2013
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Tuesday, 9 April 2013
Lovers on the roof: Will Eisner's New York City
New York is where Will Eisner was born, where he lived and where he worked; the city became his source of inspiration, and naturally found its way into his work. Will Eisner was a pioneer and an innovator of the art of comics, both in terms of graphic design and visual narrative. His groundbreaking graphic novel A Contract With God, and Other Tenement Stories characteristically draws upon his memories of growing up in the Bronx, while his city was the very subject of works such as New York: The Big City, City People Notebook, The Building, and Invisible People, which also form parts of the collection Will Eisner's New York: Life in the Big City. It is hardly surprising then that the relationship between the artist and the city became the subject of a major exhibition at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in 2011:
Will Eisner both knew and loved New York; which is why I think he was disinterested in glamour, and neither glorified the city, nor turned it into an exploitative spectacle, as it is often the case. He preferred to focus on the atmosphere of poor neighbourhoods, and the memories of abandoned buildings; most importantly, his work overflows with affection for, and understanding of, the dispossessed and the marginalised, struggling to get by. Another insightful aspect of his work is that it offers a fascinating view of the supposedly familiar aspects of living in the city, such as the experience of time while commuting, the everyday smells one may come across, or the sense of space in both crowded and empty streets; in the context of Will Eisner's art, they all become extraordinary and unique experiences.
If I was to choose just one representative example of Will Eisner's relationship with New York, that would be Life, one of the six images included in City: a narrative portfolio, which was released in 1980 and is sadly out of print. Life is an amazing panel both in terms of scope and detail – and, perhaps more importantly, in terms of atmosphere, which has been a trademark feature of Will Eisner's art (right-click on the image to enlarge):
Friday, 5 April 2013
Democracy and the eurozone crisis: quotes #12
Antony Gormley, Between You and Me, 2009 [antonygormley.com]
Decisions on the financial, economic and institutional problems of Europe, crucial as they are for the future of the EU, must be measured against the strength they bring to democracy in Europe. The order of priorities as it stands must be reversed, and the central question of European democracies must be thus: “How are we to give life to Europe’s project of civilisation, based on peace, democracy, equality and the priority of the collective, plural and diverse above the identity of individuals?”
In this respect, the persistence of Roma ghettos in Slovakia, Romania, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, the anti-Semitic murders in France, that of the Roma in Hungary and those of Turkish origin in Germany, the annual demonstration of the past SS in Latvia, the Utoya massacre in Norway, the stigmatisation of Muslims and the rise of racial discrimination are unacceptable cases, which much be denounced with vigour.
In particular, the decay of the constitutional state in Hungary and the authoritarian trend in the Orban regime must be fought with the same energy as the burial of national debt.
Above all, the policies of Germany and Europe regarding Greece will not be solved by endless austerity, which deepens every day the social hopelessness instrumentalised by the neo-Nazis, Golden Dawn.
Europe: democracy, or barbarism? An open letter to Angela Merkel
Benjamin Abtan (European Grassroots Antiracist Movement)In a chilling echo of history, extremist political parties across the Continent are feeding on the instability and hardship caused by the euro crisis. And nowhere is the phenomenon starker than in Greece.There can be no doubt of the Golden Dawn party's toxicity. Its symbol is uncannily close to the swastika; its members use the Nazi salute, and there are reports of black-shirted vigilantes attacking immigrants and those from ethnic minorities.
Tuesday, 2 April 2013
En-lightened protest: the Overpass Light Brigade
The Overpass Light Brigade was forged in the activist climate of the Wisconsin Uprising. Our messages shine over highways at night. We believe in the power of communities coming together in physical space, as well as the importance of visibility for grassroots and progressive causes. We are a loose and inclusive affiliation of people dedicated to the power of peaceful and playful protest.
I first came across the Overpass Light Brigade when I read an Occupy Wall Street post on the protest in Michigan against anti-union legislation in November 2012. What the OLB does is obviously effective as a means of communicating critical perspectives to vast numbers of people. Holding light-up letters in the dark is a strong idea, and the way in which words and phrases are articulated when activists stand together seems to me like a vintage metaphor for collectivity, cooperation, and solidarity. And just in case anyone is getting any ideas, here's their how-to video:
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