Monthly Archives for April 2009
STIMULUS, ASS-BACKWARDS by Douglas Rushkoff
Stimulus, Ass-Backwards
by Douglas Rushkoff
April 16, 2009
I’ve been trying to figure out exactly why President Obama’s approach to the economic crisis upsets me so much, so regularly, and I think I figured it out.
His impulse—perhaps as someone with more faith in the power of centralized, top-down decision-making than I have—is to fix our economic problems by supporting existing institutions. In the president’s view, the best approach now is to pump some necessary short-term assets into flagging institutions to help them make it through the rough patches in the economic road, and then get them to pay it back to the government once times are better. That’s the approach he’s taken to the banks, the automotive industry, and even the insurance industry.
What the Obama Administration doesn’t seem to understand is that the institutions they are attempting to prop up are the very ones whose solvency depends on the continuing extraction of wealth and value from the real people and places making up America.
Every Friday 8-10AM EST on East Village Radio
Cool Places is a global music show hosted by Dean Bein of the True Panther Sounds record label (Lemonade, Girls, Standing Nudes) and various co-hosts. Each week features a mystical musical journey to a new group of countries or geological area of the world, such as mountain regions, the tundra, the Polynesian triangle, and so on. Tune in each week from 8-10AM EST to hear it live at eastvillageradio.com, or download the podcast and listen to it whenever you please!
"HEART OF LOVE" by Al Columbia
Another haunting vision from The Land of Broken Hearts by Al Columbia.
"Half Pipe" by Greg Shewchuk
Half Pipe
A boy stands on the edge of a ramp. He is a child, really. 11 years old. It has taken him these years to grow from infancy, to learn to move, to make his way to the top of this massive curved structure. His body is just learning to express its desire for action and communion. His skin is soft and clear, his eyes wild, a determined look on his face, yet still innocent.
He leans forward and drops in. His legs unweight as he plummets in the perfect path of gravity. Nothing restrains his descent. He is 12 now, 13, his adolescence flying by as his wheels lightly grace the surface of the ramp. His eyes water, there is a trace of wisdom in the corner of his glare. He has shed his anxiety, his fear of the darkness, as he falls.
The ramp curves beneath him. Now he is a teenager, his attitude is changing. His style is more pronounced and there is a singular aggression in his stance. His strong legs absorb the increasing impact, his hands trailing at a perfect angle, like a painter holding a brush. He looks forward, no longer unsure of his footing, ready for the eventuality of his committed plunge. The ground rises up to meet him, embroiling him in a battle with light and sound. He is 18, 19, he has come of age, he is in his 20’s, a young man, fierce and intent.
His path straightens. He skates across the flatbottom at full speed. He stands upright, confronting the wind. His eyes take in the expanse of his surroundings, yet remain focused on his path. Time moves so quickly. He is 25 now, 30, releasing himself from his adolescent naiveté, letting go of his judgments and arrogance. The past streams behind him and he wonders how he can have come so far. He feels lucky to be alive, blessed to have seen so much of life’s kaleidoscope.
He is 40 years old. He approaches the oncoming wall at the same breakneck speed. The monolith rises above him and he bends his tiring knees, looking up, absorbing the shift in movement and feeling the wind pushed from his chest. His arms, knotted with muscle and pocked with scars, coordinate to pump his way up the wall like a bird in flight. He knows the answers now, he has freed himself from his misconceptions, he prays for the grace to keep moving, to keep breathing.
He shoots up the transition, a man in his 50’s, 60’s, his skin becoming thin and pale, his eyes retreating in space yet shining bright in luster. His regrets have faded, he has made his peace. His yellowing teeth revealed through a smile, his old legs pushing through the soles of his feet with a familiar assuredness. This is what he has always done, yet it feels as new now as when he was a child.
A 70 year old man reaches the vertical plane of the ramp, casting away the anchors of inertia, set free into the wind. His skateboard takes flight, his wizened frame delicately connected as they rocket into empty space. Rising into the sunlight. He is 80 now, 90, his bones frail but his heart still pumping blood, his thoughts lilting and simple, as if they never meant anything at all. He reaches the apex of his aerial at the age of 100, a centenarian, complete.
Having made the great ascent, he releases himself from his bodily form as his crude mass diminishes into dust and his essence releases into the ether.
He is 1000 years old now, having dissolved into the air and the clouds. He rolls above the earth, observing the movements and inhabitants with an impartial radiance.
100,000 years old. He is the light from the stars, reflecting off the planets and moons through the emptiness of space.
Now he is one million. He has absorbed the deepest, darkest secrets of the cosmos. The half pipe is gone. He is gone.
-GMS, 4/16/2009
April 19, Cinema 16 Night, with Noveller and Julianna Barwick
Still from Sarah Lipstate’s “Memory Scars”, courtesy of the artist
On Sunday, April 19th, Cinema 16 returns to The Bell House in Brooklyn with another round of experimental shorts and live musical accompaniment. Brooklyn musician Julianna Barwick performs original scores to Kenneth Anger’s “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome” (1954) and Joel Schelmowitz’ “1734” (1997), followed by a performance by Parts & Labor’s Sarah Lipstate (as Noveller), set to a selection of her own films.
Independent curator Molly Surno, who founded the series last year, offers an unusual explanation for bringing the silent film—and Cinema 16, a New York avant-garde film society founded by Amos Vogul in 1947—back to life: “In the era of silent film, live music enhanced the moving picture and brought communities together with a visceral, interactive audio-visual experience. Today, when the film experience has been reduced to the tiny screens of our laptops and ipods, oftentimes experienced alone, Cinema 16 offers a revival of community” (Bellhouse website).
Sunday, April 19th, 6pm doors, 7pm show
149 7th Street
$10, with complementary beverage
Brooklyn, NY 11215
Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint – Šaban Bajramović!
April 16 — Šaban Bajramović
Serbian Romani, gypsy musician, prisoner, libertarian.
APRIL 16, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Liberating the Rainbow Lost in the White Light Festival
ALSO ON APRIL 16 IN HISTORY…
1689 — Aphra Behn, novelist, spy, playwright, dies, London England.
1828 — Spanish painter Francisco Goya dies, Zaragoza, Spain.
1844 — French novelist Anatole France born, Paris, France.
1854 — “Army of the Poor” leader Jacob Coxey born, Masillon, Ohio.
1871 — Ivan Turgenev arrested for publishing banned obituary, St. Petersburg.
1896 — Dada co-founder, theorist Tristan Tzara born, Moinesti, Romania.
1936 — Romani musician, prisoner, cultural activist Šaban Bajramović born, Nis.
1971 — Vietnam Veterans against the War throw their canes and medals at U.S. Congress at demonstration, Washington, D.C.
2005 — American humanitarian aid worker Marla Ruzicka killed, Baghdad, Iraq.
Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective
April 25th – Plant Out Party at Factor e Farm near Kansas City, Missouri
Factor E Farm Plant Out!
Saturday April 25, 2009 11 am to sunset
Greetings Friends and Interested Parties,
Here at Factor E Farm we are very eager to grow more of our own food and complete our 5 Kingdom Community Gene Bank so that we can help others propagate their own edible landscape. As part of that plan we need to plant some annuals after the first frost. Planting a big garden is a lot of work, and we appreciate any help we can get. It’s a great opportunity to learn how to build a raised bed, check out the hustle and bustle of the farm and contribute to what will hopefully be the Best Harvest Ever. I can’t make any promises until things start to grow, but I hope to be leading lots of food processing workshops in the late summer and fall. Look forward to kimchi and sauerkraut workshops (take home your own crock of kimchi!), pesto workshops (take home your own homemade pesto!), wild fermentation workshops and much more.
We invite you all to come join us on Saturday April 25 to build a raised bed and plant our seedlings which have already started growing in the greenhouse.
Continue reading
BACK TO THE LAND IN JAPAN
Arik Roper hipped us to this piece from page one of today’s Wall Street Journal:
Solution to Japan’s Jobless Problem: Send City Workers Back to the Land
By YUKA HAYASHI
Wall Street Journal – PAGE ONE – APRIL 15, 2009MASUTOMI, Japan — Kenji Oshima lost his job in February at a seat-belt factory. So he applied for a highly competitive job-training program in an area he felt had more potential: farming.
The 35-year-old, dressed in his old factory uniform, spent a recent morning in a remote village three hours from Tokyo. He was digging an irrigation ditch around a rice paddy, contemplating which tool was more effective, a hoe or a shovel.
“I know it’s a hard life” compared with his former job as a bookkeeper, Mr. Oshima said. “But I want to become a farmer and use my own hands to do everything, from sowing seeds to shipping boxes.” He hopes to soon rent land nearby to start farming full time.
As the global financial crisis sinks Japan into its worst recession since World War II and hundreds of thousands of jobs are slashed in factories and offices, farming has emerged as a promising new career track. “Agriculture Will Save Japan,” blared a headline for a business weekly magazine. Farmer’s Kitchen, a popular new Tokyo restaurant, plasters its walls with posters of hunky farmers who supply the eatery with organic vegetables.
Seeing agriculture as one of the few industries that could generate jobs right now, the government has earmarked $10 million to send 900 people to job-training programs in farming, forestry and fishing. Japan’s unemployment rate was 4.4% in February, up from 3.9% a year earlier, but still lower than the U.S. or Europe. Some economists expect the figure to rise to a record 8% or so within the next couple of years.
Policy makers are hoping newly unemployed young people will help revive Japan’s dwindling farming population, where two in three full-time farmers are 65 or older. Of Japan’s total population, 6% work in agriculture, most doing so only part time, down from about 20% three decades ago.
“If they can’t find young workers over the next several years, Japan’s agriculture will disappear,” said Kazumasa Iwata, a government economist and former deputy governor of the Bank of Japan.
Mr. Oshima and eight other young prospects, including a software engineer and a former teacher, snared spots in a 10-day state-funded program after beating out 110 other applicants and writing passionate essays about their interest in farming.
But life in the sticks is no vacation. The nine trainees in Masutomi, a mountain village with 650 residents, were housed in an abandoned inn with a single bathroom with no shower or flush toilet. With no mirror in sight, one trainee struggled to put in his contact lenses. They huddled around a single kerosene heater in the kitchen when the temperature dipped below zero.
“On my first day, I went to sleep feeling cold and woke up feeling cold,” said Mami Hinataze, a 23-year-old woman from a Tokyo suburb who worked at a cafe until recently. Later, Ms. Hinataze learned to use six layers of covers to keep warm at night.
Then there was the grueling workload, which included setting up a greenhouse and collecting chicken droppings from a poultry farmer to use as fertilizer. One afternoon, the trainees tackled weed-picking with enthusiasm, competing to see who could dig up the largest clump. But soon, the conversation turned to a nearby hot spring they all wished they could visit to ease their achy muscles.
“It’s kind of tiring, I mean mentally, to get covered with dirt,” said Hironari Ota, a 25-year-old who used to work at an online retailer. Mr. Ota, the son of a Tokyo pawnshop owner, said he still wasn’t sure he wanted to become a full-time farmer, but liked the idea of having a job that didn’t require handling money.
BULL TONGUE "TOP TEN #2" by Byron Coley & Thurston Moore
April 14, 2009
TONGUE TOP TEN #2
Martin Kippenberger. Untitled from the series Dear Painter, Paint for Me (Ohne title aus der serie Lieber Maler, male mir), 1981.
1. There is currently a huge Martin Kippenberger retrospective show up at MOMA in New York City. It’s called “The Problem Perspective”, and it is an incredible tribute to this wild artist, who created a fairly unbelievable amount of stuff in a trajectory that lasted only 20 years. We first became aware of Kippenberger in the late ’70s or very early ’80s because of his musical work with the band the Grugas (with Christine Hahn and Eric Mitchell), and for his association with the performance space, SO 36. There’s not much evidence of that aspect of his work here, but the multi-floor museum exhibit (and the dandy ass catalogue accompanying it) is a massive mind-blow. Went with some kids and one of ‘em was most impressed by the endless array of sketches, collages and whatnot Martin did on the stationery paper of fancy hotels. Another almost lost it when she realized how mean and funny the sequence of paintings of Picasso’s last wife was. But there is something for everybody here. And the book is excellent. It reprints a long, legendary interview Kippenberger did with Jutta Koether, and includes some extremely useful essays, plus a huge selection of eye candy produced by a guy who was the most influential German artist of his generation.
Leah Peah
2. Hampton, Virginia has been throwing down hard lately with its weirdo sick homegrown noise skuzz scene. The group Head Molt seems to be the chief instigators, particularly with the inclusion of wild woman Leah Peah. Leah’s solo cassette, peah pop & the baby lion show on Anti-Everything/AEN tapes is a peek into the furious sensibility she seemingly has raging through her consciousness. Lots of junk psychosis noise swill dementia. But it’s her split tape with freak loop weirdos Cheezface that really caught our attention. A highly contagious flow of sense bliss destruction.
3. A couple of jazz reissues just came out that are so savagely great it would be a goddamn shame to imagine there are homes without them. Both are on Eremite, both are LPs, and are packaged with amazing care via-a-vis sonics, wax quality & visual/heft appeal. The first is Sonny Murray‘s Big Chief, originally released on the French Pathe label, not to be confused with the sessions released under the same name by Shandar. Recorded in January ’69, Murray leads a wild international octet (supplemented in spots by the expatriate jazz poet, Hart LeRoy Bibbs) into insane, ragged bursts of gorgeous beauty. The material they tackle is a fine sample of Murray’s early compositions and the brakeless genius of the group (Francois Tusques, Ronnie Beer, Beb Guerin, Bernard Vitet , , Kenneth Terroade, Alan Silva and Becky Friend!) is the perfect compliment for the moment. Long a lost piece of the Murray discography, it is finally back the way it should be.
The same is true of Red, Black and Green by Solidarity Unit Inc., a rather obscure St. Louis combo led by Charles “Bobo” Shaw, which was essentially an expanded version of the legendary BAG (Black Artists’ Group). The band this evening is Richard Martin, Oliver Lake, Floyd Leflore, Joseph Bowie, Carl Richardson, Clovis Bordeaux, Danny Trice, Baikaids Ysaeen (aka Baikida Carroll) and Kada Kayan. Here, they present a concert, dedicated to Jimi Hendrix, recorded on the day he died, and filled with some of the craziest electric guitar ever, courtesy of the late Richard Martin. The sonics have the same raw galacto-fidelity associated with Arkestral recordings of the same period, and this is a great goddamn explosion. You bet!
From Demons’ “Life Destroyer” dvd
4. Steve Kenney has always been the wild card lost cog in the Michigan noise underground – the true wizard, the most insane of the insane. An original member of the legendarily fucked up Beast People along with Aaron Dilloway,and a current member of Demons with Wolf Eyes’ Nate Young and visualist Alivia Zivich, Kenney is just now beginning to bust out some releases of his own. His axe is the synth and with the proliferation of interest in synth investigations going on in the Midwest with Cleveland’s Emeralds et al and even out East a la Infinity Window and pals–it’s gotta be said: SK rules the fucking roost. The guy’s brain might as well be a modular synth smoked with toxic fuels it sounds that jazz. A great place to lose yrself in his sweet swarm is the cassette In the Sphere I am Everywhere on Nurse Etiquette. Majestic excellence.
Arthur Magazine 