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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Excerpt from Ken Wiwa's "Look Out: There's a Flu Under Every Bush," from Saturday's Globe and Mail:
... [T]here is a school of thought that hopes Mr. Bush gets a second term, and I've already enrolled in that program.
I don't know whether it is my immune system's defensive reaction to Bush flu -- the shiver one feels at the thought of opening the papers to front-page pictures of a smiling George W. on Wednesday morning -- but I have already rationalized a Bush second term as serving my global interests. I've always subscribed to the notion that an empire is at its most vulnerable at the height of its power.
It is an immutable law of nature that condemns the powerful to overweening ambition: Think of the Roman Empire, Napoleon, Conrad Black and the New York Yankees. What with that monstrous budget deficit midwifing the economic miracle of a jobless recovery, the loud commitment to policing the world at any cost, and a seemingly implacable addiction to market forces in every public sector from education to health care -- another four years of Bush flu may be tough medicine. But it might, just might, weaken his country and make the rest of us stronger.
On the other hand, John Kerry might, just might, pull America from the brink of self-destruction -- that is, if he succeeds in balancing the budget at the same time as extending the reach of social programs. He just might succeed in getting the rest of the world to help America police the world, to continue to float America's trillion-dollar debt, to pull us all out of our irrational anti-American senses and persuade us that if America sneezes, we might all catch a cold.
Whatever the outcome, I'm going to get myself a flu jab.
link to Eminem's Mosh, (thanks Steve)
excerpt from Harold Meyerson, LA Weekly (thanks SB)
If John Kerry is elected next Tuesday, the tsunami of volunteer activity within the independent groups will be in large part responsible. Whether this tsunami can be bottled — whether this coalition will take on a permanent life of its own, become an enduring progressive presence in American politics — is a question of resources, opportunity, Zeitgeist and even law (the legal status of the 527s may be under attack if Bush wins). But the leaders of progressive organizations, Democratic elected officials, and the hundreds of thousands of phone bankers and precinct walkers, each for their own reasons, want the outpouring of 2004 to become a fixture of American politics. “Progressives have been waiting for decades for a citizen-based movement to happen,” says Ed Cyr. “One that’s independent of the party, that’s integrated, that’s effective.”
“This is it,” says Cyr. “It’s happened.”
These kiosks are from Lorna Mills' recent show at Robert McLaughlin Gallery. The texts running across the bottom of the screens are streams of race horse names, chosen for their punning, allusive qualities. For instance the kiosk on the right, titled "Greeter" contains about 250 names including:
Hello Duck Entoria Percipient Twisted Wit Hello Loneliness Beau Manners Sure Blade Meinberg Omi Par de Deux Devaluation Azazel Hassenack Ack Ack Haiati Muted Triple Fax Lillian Gish Marienbard Trupon On Chiecaworld Emblitterate Bullistic Slam the Door
 | The kiosks (seven in all), are accompanied by much earlier work, that also probes at colour, broadcast, and lateral meaning. I am particularly interested in a series of cibachrome prints (image on the left is a detail, re-shot from the catalogue by me), crappy screen shots of sports on TV, enlarged so that the image, already crunchy, dissassembles further into globs of RGB. There is horse racing, swimming, curling, golf... Sports are so specific, a particular type of cultural narrative that is delivered to us within a particular lexicon of words and pictures. Mills judders this broadcast and sends it back, adding information about the physiology of perception and the resonance of association. You could call this culture jamming, and you could call it abstraction at the same time. The show really got my gears turning but I am writing about it for a print magazine, so will not go on too much more about it here and now. |
Last night Luis Jacob, John Marriott, Michelle Jacques and myself did a talk at the AGO in conjunction with the show by Mark Lombardi. The evening was interesting, particularly the discussion afterwards. People seem generally to be concerned with truth, and where to find it. Michelle Jacques introduced Lombardi and his work. John Marriott spoke eloquently about the term "conspiracy theory" as a means of dismissal, and made a call that we alert ourselves to our ever increasing loss of privacy. Luis Jacob was inspirational in his thesis that "the truth will out." A copy of my talk, with dorky illustrations, is here.
There have been some good points on this event raised here, in an earlier thread.