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Henry Warwick emails the empyre list today, an online discussion forum where I am an invited but AWOL panelist, with some questions for the panelists, the majority of whom are also AWOL. I guess I could be accused of raiding empyre for content, but this is all public record--read on and see what you think. He writes:
I would like to see some greater sense of critical analysis in theI think I can handle this query, with reference to my work-in-progress "Wormy Animation":
discussion here regarding what is the artistic use of the blog vs.
"other" uses (online diaries, etc.) Also, a discussion of the
(un)conscious underpinnings of this art (dependence on fossil fuels,
resource extraction, geography as a class "formant", integration of
technology as a social object, etc.) and how these issues are expressed
or repressed in the works of the artists presented.
1. It's diaristic in that it's a pencil test of a longer work and I'm uploading frames as I make them. The GIF is art, though, not a diary. The finished GIF will be the finished art but by posting the pencil test I'm making it available for discussion as art (I don't expect a lot of discussion, to be honest, especially from the empyre-rs, who were speechless on 3/4 of the panelists' art).
2. The supposed excessive burning of fossil fuels vis a vis Internet use was a petroleum industry canard from the late '90s. In any case, I feel whatever I burn blogging is far, far outweighed by not driving a car.
3. "Wormy Animation" has much to say, I feel, on the subject of geography as a class "formant." (My best high school term paper lead sentence.) Growing up in Midland, Texas, having a college education, and living in NY for many years I am far more prone to make noodly art that displays, nay, revels in a bourgeois lack of concern for the oppressed. At the same time, the amorphous blobs, supposedly sublime objects beyond the reach of history, intertwine fecally as if yearning for the primal mud of the real, the invigorated soil of the peasant classes, which in Midland isn't so vigorous (it's in the desert) and depends heavily on pumping the aquifer dry. The underground water has much naturally occurring fluoride which is benign, healthy even, but has the unfortunate side effect of staining the locals' teeth yellow (including mine, a little bit--dentists have been trying to sell me on "bonding").
4. Integration of technology as a social object. Yeah.
5. "How these issues are expressed or repressed in the works of the artists presented." Well, as the artist I think I am very qualified to talk about what I am repressing in my work. See answers 2 and 3.
pencil test
Downing Street Memo... Downing Street Memo... Downing Street Memo...
The Downing Street Memo Story Won't DieThat's grounds for impeachment right there. Please link to this story, pass it around. The US press tried to bury it for Bush--they love him because he gives them scoops, and cute nicknames, and stuff.
By Jefferson Morley, washingtonpost.com Staff Writer, Tuesday, June 7, 2005; 9:18 AM
More than a month after its publication, the so-called Downing Street Memo remains among the top 10 most viewed articles on The Times of London site.
It's not hard to see why this remarkable document, published in The Times on May 1 (and reported in this column on May 3), continues to attract reader interest around the world, especially with British Prime Minister Tony Blair visiting Washington Tuesday.
The July 2002 memo, labeled "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY," reports the views of "C," code name for Richard Dearlove, the chief of British intelligence. Dearlove had just returned from a visit with Bush administration officials eight months before the war in Iraq began.
"Military action was now seen as inevitable," Dearlove told Blair and his senior defense policy advisers. "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
A separate secret briefing paper for the meeting said Britain and the United States had to "create" conditions to justify a war.
Digby has a good post on the Supreme Court's terrible ruling today on medical marijuana:
Rehnquist, Thomas and O'Connor dissented [from the majority's holding that Federal anti-pot laws trump state laws] on the basis of states' rights, which is also consistent with their position. Kennedy swung with the majority --- he has no discernible position. The "surprise" is that Little Nino [Scalia], who is proving himself to be more and more of a straight-up whore every day, voted with Ginsberg and Stevens and the rest. Not because he agrees with the legal doctrine involved --- nothing in his judicial history would suggest that --- but because he just doesn't want people smoking pot. Or perhaps he just thinks that federal power is ducky when it's in the hands of his friends. Either way, he's intellectually bankrupt.