Search Results for: let the games begin

"These sacrifice zones of the corporate state are expanding. The recent shooting of an unarmed young black man in Ferguson revealed the insidious disease of white supremacy and how easily U.S. cities can turn into a military occupied police state. With unprecedented persecution of whistle-blowers, the Obama administration continues to threaten press freedom and engage in extrajudicial killing through drone attacks for anyone who is on the receiving end of U.S. imperial foreign policy. The world is quickly becoming one big open-air prison." Nozomi Hayase “Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” … [Read more...]

"Sincerity is the beginning and end of existence; without it, nothing endures. Therefore the mature man values sincerity above all things.” Zisi (Tzu Ssu)子思子 "One day the man demands of the beast: “Why do you not talk to me about your happiness and only gaze at me?” The beast wants to answer, too, and say: “That comes about because I always immediately forget what I wanted to say.” But by then the beast has already forgotten this reply and remains silent, so that the man keeps on wondering about it." Nietzsche Use and Abuse of History "Much of education and journalism has been captured and superseded by entertainment. Even public discussions have to be entertaining and are judged … [Read more...]

"Autistic barriers are erected in order to avoid the pain linked to the traumatic awareness of the gap between self and object. They would appear to involve an overly-narcissistic relationship between the infant and one or other of the parents, a relationship based on the illusion of continuity." Prof. Didier Houzel "Frances Tustin's (1986) description of autistic barriers took this a step further. She showed that the autistic manoeuvres which are triggered in order to counter the experience of the intolerable gap between self and other not only highlight the traumatic trace of primitive experiences that have not been transformed but also create an obstacle to any new attempt at … [Read more...]

"The task would be not to grasp art, but first to grasp what is ungraspable about art" Theodor Adorno "The greater the work of a thinker...all the richer is what remains unthought in that work, that is, what emerges for the first time thanks to it, as not yet been thought" Martin Heidegger “Cryptic” could be a go-to word for critics describing “Mister John,” the quietly impressive sophomore feature from Irish husband-and-wife team Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy, but it’s ultimately the film’s avoidance of mystery that proves so effective and unnerving." Guy Lodge Last posting I was thinking about the increasing tendency to demonize the poor in film and TV. That the blatant … [Read more...]

"The general public now draws its notion of art from advertising , MTC videos, video games, and Hollywood blockbusters. In the contemporary context of media generated taste, the call to abandon and dismantle the museum as an institution has necessarily taken on an entirely different meaning than when it was voiced during the avant-garde era. When people today speak of "real life" what they usually mean is the global media market. And that means: the current protest against the museum is no longer part of a struggle being waged against normative taste in the name of aesthetic equality but is, inversely, aimed at stabilizing and entrenching currently prevailing tastes." Boris Groys "The … [Read more...]

“But you can’t allow a contradiction to stand! — Why not?… Ludwig Wittgenstein "Disneyland is a work of love. We didn't go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money." Walt Disney When Luis Barragan won the Pritzker Prize in architecture, the jury wrote "A stoical acceptance of solitude as man's fate permeates Barragán's work. His solitude is cosmic, with Mexico as the temporal abode he lovingly accepts." I remember when I first became aware of Barragan, I was probably about eighteen. I fell in love with the pink walls, the water, the sun off the blue or yellow facades, and the stables at Cuadra San Cristobal seemed the stage of a modernist play, a sort of tropical … [Read more...]

One of the problems with a lot of writing about film is this idea of "popularity". And with this idea, in the broadest sense in which it is used, comes an association of film as populist. One of the strange elements in Hollywood film, Hollywood naturalism (and in a way, all of Hollywood is naturalistic, even if its fantasy naturalism), and I could easily call this Hollywood corporate real-ism, is that the first thing eliminated from narrative are the frustrating and soul destroying trivialities of daily life. I remember watching several episodes of Ray Donavan (Showtime) this year, which takes place in Los Angeles. And Ray is forever driving all over the city, and seemingly gets from … [Read more...]

"Sports always recapitulates society, in terms of its character, dynamics, and the structure of human relations... We are already in a situation where we are expecting children to play games that they cannot afford to watch." Harry Edwards "To the extent that necessity is socially dreamed, the dream becomes necessary. The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep." Guy Debord Somtimes sports is a great metaphor, though usually less great than a lot believe. Still, I was reminded of something Tim Green once said in a radio interview. Green was a former NFL defensive … [Read more...]