The Charleston: Creole Style

Glory be to the HAND

I have returned from the Land of Nod with the wise words of Lord Fauntleroy. "If Kim Jong Il can't figure it out neither can you."

Long story short, the Lord cannot abide the vegetal-animal hybrids almost as much as W. Indeed the Frankenfood mystery has not only been solved but has experienced the growing sentiment that it was last year's news. Holla at the Assange menage and gloat amongst the redlight broadway finagling of brass taps and headless humvee riders. As the reign of reporter terror draws to a close we shall indeed pry their lenses from cold dead hands.

The Digital has died. It knows it not for it fails to understand such vengeance as the mighty United Corporate America can supply. As Assange dons the thorns and ascends his final RL altar, he shall decry his monster as it falls to Capital. In the empty chamber of his conference they shall break the brittle and shuffle the coils of Anonymous, one-by-one, until it is done and the tears of Liberty stream like the Big Muddy. Government shall recoil at the loins of Virtual who hath begat iVote and iHack who begat unTwit and nonFightclub. Mad Cow, Clean Air, Green, Organic, GMOs, Life Patents and Oily Rags all handmaidens to the Institution shall plead their case, pull their hair and gnash their teeth as they clobber the Apprentice's creation. Alas and alack, they shall only splinter the visible, embolden the meek and fund the Trickster Gods who mean to undo that which they have sought. As Capital burns in Hades so it too shall rise in the multitude, until Nationalism can heal and rise to slay the monetary Horde. What, one must ask, can survive such an insurrection? What could reign in Nationalism no longer sated by the blood of greenbacks that it begins sniffing the reigns, drooling for power? The HAND must strike such discipline into the Cerberus and impart the wisdom of violence into Authoritarian Beatitude.

My brothers and sisters this is no "hand" of man riding the Winds of the Heavens, this is no contraption of mortal wit stroking the Might of Supremacy. What or who could be so bold, so drenched in the waters of Victory? This is the Glory and the Supernatural Winds that fire upon man. This is the brimstone of conceit and folly that shall temper the trials of the Serpent Gorgon, smote the flames of Sisyphus, and ride the broad back of Lady Justice into the Hall of the Great Warriors of Valhalla Inc.

I do not bring you such tidings lightly. For you see, my people, my metal soul aches at the ochre faces I have witnessed give way to the pallid glow of pods and buds. Indeed the fickle twinkles of fate cannot have brought me anywhere else.

I kneel now before my great Gospel of Fingers that has burned now into my very skull. I open my eyes and it is there. I close my eyes and it goes nowhere - staining my mind with the truths I must deliver. These are not the Commandments of the West. These are not the Tenets of the East. Nor are these the Fables of some Lost Peoples trampled by History and Progress. Yes, my fellow wanderers we are indeed lost. We need these Values of Being now more than ever . Not for ourselves, Not for our children, but for our children's' children and on into the Future Man must become! We need these Psalms of the Palm for we are in grave peril. We cannot sustain. We must not abide the injustice we fail to see! Look among us brothers and sisters, see the tears, see the suffering we maintain with each step into the void. I come to you now with the Light! Join us in this pool of Glory and bask in the Way of Salvation!

-Cassandra Ted Birch

Butterfingers Bernanke

Speech Yesterday by Captain "Oil Fingers" McGee

http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/testimony/bernanke20100609a.htm

I always enjoy listening to a little DoubleSpeak between pictures of dying birds and this one proved most fruitful.
The Rosy lenses of enlightenment shine on in the slick seas of financial ruin.
Our mantra shall be Baby Boomers and Baby Boomers it shall be!
Oh me, oh my! They shall drain our coffers and pick their gums with our children's bones.

Corporate profits shall prove promising and Huzzah! to 3.5% GDP growth!

Unemployment shall improve because it must. How you say? I ask you how can it get any higher? How can it fail to improve while we continue to dump the rolls? All the capital must retreat the real estate market to grow a bubble somewhere! Right? The Market shall provide!

Balanced budget! Tax Cuts and Zero Accountability will pave the way! Corporate taxes are pittance because they are far-outweighed by consumer taxes (as long as they remain uncounted and uncollected).

Why mention inflation numbers for food, as the "sensible man" is pure theory and finds real sustenance through durable goods?

"Healthy economic growth" requires young healthy consumers which means we must responsibly cut excessive health benefits, a.k.a. not the benefits for the elderly of Congress, but only those benefits for your parents and their parents--an irresponsible booming bunch of babies that can't take care of their own problems.

What we have here dear friends is an enemy list. A list of those who would hurt our Dollar and rob our Great Nation of the Prosperity Providence demands: the loud petulant children that are over 55, an overgrown workforce that wants a real job and affordable food, and those choice few who would have the innocent corporations pay a fair share for their use of our national resources.
Resistance is conformity.
Join me.
We will prevail.
Twitter, Facebook and Blog.
The End of our Nation is nigh.

Overblown Rhetoric must not be spared.

Benjamin Noam Lafcadio

Ice Flows of Polar Bear Woes

(Extended Comments from the Edge of Reason, a.k.a. couldn't post in comments section - "Too Much Hot Air")

I think we are in complete agreement. The current state of the art community is unique historically, yet within the cycles of history we probably are seeing the sixties and seventies. In place of Viet Nam we have the last spasms of democracy choking on the purses of the new robberbarons - multinational corporations (the "college of corporations" from Network). We have a populace disenfranchised by the learned helplessness from the gospel of consumption that has been declared the central tenet of the American Dream (shades of such were seen upon the return from WWII when the war machine needed to manufacture fresh fodder to avoid contraction). The new reach of capital into the realms of the biological will only serve to deepen the malaise of modern man circa Georg Simmel.

Indeed. The devil is in the details. Gentrification is a perfect example of the implementation of laissez-faire capitalism to improve a neighborhood through colonization and displacement rather than the alternative of investment in community, education, and reorganizing/strengthening the present community structures. Such efforts require centralized oversight, regulations with teeth that demand balanced competition and perhaps a larger initial investment that is less focused on speculation (Adam Smith's healthy capitalism that sounds eerily like socialism).

As to whether there is an inside/outside to capitalism I can only speculate. Where does the line get drawn? The studio, the classroom, the gallery, print media, private collections or auction block? Is it an internal struggle that becomes an aspect that influences creation? I think that's an opaque realm that is guided by education, media and ideology. The same question arises when a van gogh goes for millions at auction. Should the artist (heirs) see the fruits of the labor? Or has the art object been transported to a realm of its own power? That question underlines notions of ownership that change according to cultural structures. Could such an inquiry bear fruit? Absolutely.

With the rise of infotainment in place of actual news, the relativity of expertise has arisen much to the detriment of all. An overthrow of unchecked/unwarranted authority is nothing short of necessary, yet there must be a reassessment/restructuring of authority and its checks and balances in the power vacuum. We must establish another institution in its place, risk becoming that which we despise and attempt to ensure that the same mistakes are not committed.

The "beast" has been starved and as we watch it writhe we must prepare to rebuild.

It is in this sense that I find my charge. Examine the patient on the table, look to history, tradition, innovation and reframe the cost-benefit-analysis in our terms. Commodification is simply an extension of mimicry and should be addressed as such. Focus should perhaps lie on building the community. Our lives are more networked than any other time yet simultaneously more alienated, tribes mediated by technology. It is in this light that I find my muse, to illuminate the current state of things is to look to the past, yet it is essential to the move forward.

I motion for a thinktank of the arts. Divide and conquer can no longer rule the art community if it is to survive and thrive. The division of labor cannot rule what is a holistic process of creation. The art community is larger than ever before (as much because of population growth as the GI bill) and the only way to secure such a hydra from impacting the status quo is to sow/fund division and control through ownership. The corporate model is defined by capital. That cannot align with our goal. Whether our systems/methods become absorbed by capitalism later on is to be observed and considered yet remains immaterial - the inherent tragic/comic of human endeavors (adbusters becomes viral marketing, yet similar to Kandisky's avant garde the initiator is already two steps ahead). I donot argue for the end of specialization itself because that has been taken by Art Education. What I do posit is interdisciplinary collaboration, joint efforts at outreach, but most importantly the organization of a central structural support for such endeavors, our own network of "leadership schools" and Heritage Foundations. Ideologically I find in Deleuze's schizoanalysis that perhaps there is methodology outside of/in opposition to traditional structure that can afford us the authority of difference and the insight of chaos theory. We must reframe the debate by changing the language.

The republicans know what they need to do because they have a network of expertise that has studied effectiveness of measures, formulated strategory and most importantly have founded/funded an amalgam of ideologies to justify the immediacy of their actions no matter how mundane/extreme. This wealth of war strategy would be worthless without a well-oiled media hydra of their own. They have accomplished with less people and enormous monetary effort what took the radicals of the sixties an army to establish (underground newspapers, pirate radio, phone networks, church groups, etc.).

There is an army out there untapped by the art community. They marched for immigrant rights, they reported from the scene for alternative media, they marched to protest the war before it even started, they marched every WTO summit and they ranged the gamut from wacko to concerned citizen. The republicans found the pools of disillusioned evangelicals, disgruntled libertarians, and wary extremists. Now they are branching from "party politics," funding tea parties and reaping fresh corporate coffers full of our tax money. But theirs is a losing battle because it is always uphill. Yet they understand they have to throw more than money at their "problems," they must build a close-knit community that shares a common language specifically crafted toward their goals.

What is the alternative to becoming the capitalist? I'm not sure anyone can remember a time when such a question was asked (that wasn't undermined by the rubber bullets dipped in angeldust). What I can speak to is the origins of the studio craft and arts in general as always one of many hats never able to fully sustain the artist alone. Thus in this sense the predicament is a new one. Before suffrage there was no disenfranchisement. At the same time it does remain in league with the profile of sports careers insofar as wild success or financial stability are even a remote possibility.

I have no problem with a transparent supply chain but the intrinsic anti-capitalist nature of vertical monopolies cannot be justified by anyone but a robberbaron and if the laws on the books were enforced they would not exist.
Agreed, guns don't kill people but we do require the manufacturer to add a safety.

This is fun.
Best,
Sean

Translated by Django Engels Allende

Dem Apples

Epic Titans 101: Josef vs. Leon


The issue of an “audience” response is nothing more than an unproductive distraction.


Currently I’m exploring Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus and their utilization of the capitalist oppressive structure to denote Freud’s contribution to “determinate systems of representation.” Where a Marxist essence of labor becomes enslaved by it’s ultimate consumption by capital or political economy, likewise they posit a similar Freudian essence of desire that becomes subsumed by the libidinal economy determined by the capitalist nuclear familial trinity of the Oedipal complex. Their thought experiment highlights a salient point within this conversation.


The psychoanalyst Melanie Klein saw the complications in positing a “good object” in that “one can never be sure that the good object does not contain a bad piece” (The Logic of Sense Deleuze). Deleuze and Guattari intend to break or at least destabilize the Kantian category in its sacred form and lofty pretension through the idea of schizoanalysis (by introducing an opposition of the traditional as paranoia with the revolutionary in schizophrenia – less mental disease than the process of the breakdown of institutional structure found in the mind).


It is in this light that I insist the craftsman’s labor must be seen and should be considered - a multifaceted action that cannot be strictly categorized. Why should one limit one’s practice to a dogmatic binary principle of denotation when the possibilities of connotation can be so rewarding? With the history of crafts intertwining with so many communes seeking financial stability, self-sufficiency, or a derivation on the protestant work ethic, I cannot fathom that any moralistic Luddite call could be considered revolutionary especially given the malaise of our pancapitalist/hypercapitalist/posthuman environs. I am not calling for an abandonment of a priori values or moral axioms, instead I insist on a full consideration of the power structure in which it is to be found.


My issue with Gabriel’s talk was the inclusion of greenwashing vertical monopolies as the exemplary model for reform. As The Corporation (and the current economic debacle - disaster capitalism come home to roost) proved the corporate model itself must be replaced if exploitation and the anti-production/colonization of the Brand are to be avoided. Noted economist Ravi Batra (Greenspan's Fraud) has set up an alternative calculation method of GDP to account for those “externalized costs” that could not be accounted for by the decontextualized absolute axiom of a Kantian imperative.


In my own realm I refuse to define myself as the product of my consumption. Once the citizen becomes the consumer it is categorically impossible to make, let alone produce change.


The revolution will not be artisan.


Gregor Kropotkin