Archives for December 2012

It being Christmas, and the fact of my being further north....with limited internet, this is a sort of abridged posting, or intro to further posting on the topic. That's assuming I actually know what the posting is about. So allow me to approach many disparate ideas by linking them to theories I have about theatre. Photography has always seemed to have a meaningful active relationship with theatre. With the poetics of theatre. With theatre space. Last post I had a photo by Atget at the top. For me, this is a mini play all by itself. You are heading to that darkness. It is a particular kind of darkness; for it possesses depth. It is not a black wall. It is also not an empty void. … [Read more...]

The recent school shooting in Newtown Ct is going to elicit a good deal of hand wringing and lip service to reform. The anti NRA liberals will demand action. It is clear that affulent white liberals are the most adamant about gun control. I suppose that makes sense, for they do not fear the police in the way the poor do. The poor know that it's just not a good idea to allow, in principle, the police to be the only group with weapons. I am in the process of trying to imagine an *Anti Institute for Cultural Research*... thats the sort of name I came up with. I am writing grant proposals and trying to see what it would cost to even have a single summer forum where a radical pedagogy took … [Read more...]

There seems to be a comfort level that western liberals cling to. This comfort zone keeps the relatively affluent liberals in a position to turn away from unpleasant facts as they exist throughout the world. Culturally, since that is mostly what I write about, this is reflected in an increasingly hallucinatory production of new revisionist historical projects, as well as just blatant jingoism, and an ever more frantic reinforcing of the status quo. The latter can be seen in the constant, but more hysterical, recycling of familiar motifs and narratives. What seems to have changed within this system is a new sense of almost desperation in the propping up of the childish and trivial -- the … [Read more...]

There are days when the sickness of capitalism is put into stark relief. The day to day soul sucking mental torture and emotional starvation of modern life in the West. In particular, however, in the United States. Today, for the working class in the U.S. daily life is simply endless frustration of one kind or another. The grind of low wage slavary, the fatigue that comes from longer hours and less pay, and less job security is linked to spikes in various illnesses, but also it is etched in the faces and bodies of the working poor. Layered over this is a general corporate de-humanizing of existence. It takes many forms. Try to buy an item on-line. Try to fill out forms on-line. Try to … [Read more...]