"For if they fell upon one kind of strictness, unless their care were equal to regulate all other things of like aptness to corrupt the mind, that single endeavour they knew would be but a fond labour: to shut and fortify one gate against corruption, and be necessitated to leave others round about wide open. If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man. No music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and Doric. There must be licensing of dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth, but what by their allowance shall be thought honest; for such Plato was … [Read more...]

There are several thoughts that are really just addendums to my last post, and then a brief discussion of a couple popular new TV shows that seem worth looking at in terms of their popularity. But first: One of my very favorite artists, among the very best I know, is photographer Frederike Von Rauch, who lives and works out of Berlin. Rauch works with only an analog camera, and changes nothing in her enviornment. She simply waits. She waits for the right conditions, and her own inner clock. In this sense she is another version of Trevor Paglin. Rauch keeps the camera at eye level, and never shoots if the sun is shining. It is a kind of study of space, and of architectural space, even … [Read more...]

" Mediation is no less to be inferred from the relation of art to nature, than from the inverse; art is not nature, a belief that idealism hoped to inculcate, but art does want to keep natures promise. It is capable of this only by breaking that promise by taking it back in to itself. Art is inspired by the negativity, specifically by the deficiency of natural beauty, in the sense that so long as nature is defined only through its antithesis to society, it is not yet what it appears to be. What nature strives for in vain, artworks fulfil; they open their eyes. Once it no longer serves as an object of action, appearing nature itself imparts expression, whether that of melancholy, peace, or … [Read more...]

The link below, from the N.Y. Times, reports on the expansion of TSA security to areas outside the airport. There are additional stories around about the trend toward replacing TSA security with private security firms. Couple these together and what you get are, in many cities now, private security personel stopping and searching people wherever they deem neccessary. No probable cause is needed -- and part of the justification for this is because of the inclusion of "Behavior Detection Officers" as part of these roving teams. It is very hard, if not essentially impossible, to find out what training is required to be a certified "Behavior Detection Officer". However, from one "scholarly" … [Read more...]

This week I had a number of strange exchanges on facebook and other media sites. All of them with people I have never met in person. Now, this was on the heels of my discussion with Guy Zimmerman last week on formula writing and narrative. It was also the week Bradley Manning was convicted. My feeling though had to do with the sense of how twitter and facebook, and other social media platforms, are shaping not just discourse, but also how the culture is coming to view ideas such as friendship and intimacy, and perhaps most of all, privacy. There are also several other items that I feel were sort of related to this. I had a walk around the Trondheim Museum of Art this week. … [Read more...]

Dialogue with Guy Zimmerman: On Formula and Doors to read click link: http://john-steppling.com/dialogue-wguy-zimmerman-formula/ … [Read more...]

Marcuse wrote in 1942, in an essay titled "The New German Mentality": "We may distinguish between two layers of the new mentality: 1) The Pragmatic Layer ...matter of factness, the philosophy of efficiency and success, of mechanization and rationalization. 2) The Mythological Layer...paganism, racism, social naturalism." Marcuse saw what he called a new "cynical matter of factness". A cynicicm that integrated the political in everything, but only a very narrow definition of the political. Business had become political...and vice versa. The new "brutal pragmatist" saw in terms of quantities, not qualities. Now, coupled to this was a neo-paganism. Marcuse saw in National Socialism a … [Read more...]