Articles
The Meaning of Life
February 13, 2020
There is the dream of an alternate aesthetic, of a world in which aestheticized experience worked only on things that were ordinary, local, small, repetitive, and recalcitrant, on things that really did happen to most of us in the everyday. This would imply a challenge to drama as we know it.
Read articleRead articleHungry Hungry Factory Workers
February 11, 2020
I think of Keith Haring. (And someone named Ariel Allen.) I admire how he committed to every line — it looks like he never thought twice. I wondered what he would draw today, and it inspired me to create this piece.
Read articleRead article"Violence and Activism: Five Variations"
February 6, 2020
Does violence have a place in art? Whether it does, it has featured to a growing extent in the “actions,” or protest-performances, of Petr Pavlensky. The Russian-born provocateur first made a sensation of himself when, in 2012, he sewed his lips shut and stood in public protest of the jailing of members of Pussy Riot. (They were convicted of hooliganism for their punk demonstration, within the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, against the Russian Orthodox Church’s support of then-candidate Vladimir Putin.)
Read articleRead articleFlames of Renewal - Part 3
February 3, 2020
As for circumstances. When mismanagement and corruption lead states into ruin; when the many are immiserated for the benefit of the luxuriant few; when the multitudes are treated not with basic dignity, but like swine at slaughter — first, a warning; then, with trepidation, a call to arms.
Read articleRead articleFuck you, General Secretary Xi...
January 31, 2020
... we’re going to take down your Fascist model of surveillance, social credit, and ideological control!
Read articleRead articleFlames of Renewal - Part 2
January 31, 2020
Where the state and its affairs are so far beyond redemption, or where change is made impossible due to the state’s calcified limitations, that the last of these — what might signal revolution — is decided, the question of “how” invariably follows. Violence, in the form of warfare, may seem the natural answer. Yet, on occasion, solutions (nominally) barring violence have been known to achieve radical outcomes.
Read articleRead articleFlames of Renewal - Part 1
January 29, 2020
Nothing in history is so constant as violence. Peering into the past, we are sure to find a host of evils perpetrated by humanity against its own kind. We are reminded daily of its persistence in the news, where it inevitably features in so many headlines and hot takes; and in our entertainment, which excites our fascination with its similitudes of violence both realistic and fantastic.
Read articleRead articleStrategic Insight
January 17, 2020
Corporations — legal fictions that we ourselves created centuries ago — have whittled away the legal bounds that once constrained them. Without the imperative to act responsibly, on behalf of the wider public, they have run wild and reckless, looting their spoils and spitting in the face of justice. Less than a decade after Citizens United, they have more rights and freedoms, powers, and privileges than do we, the people.
Read articleRead articleEnvironmental Movement of the Mind
January 14, 2020
Fake news and post-truth yarns are muddling our minds and swaying elections . . . Algorithms, rather than serving as tools of our betterment, are slyly wielded to provoke our basest reactionary instincts . . . Ignorance paraded as wisdom, prejudice as justice, and schizoid fantasy as grounded reality . . . This is midnight in the century, and mental dysfunction is the new norm for just about every one of us.
Read articleRead articleILSI, the International Life Sciences Institute, has your health in mind.
January 10, 2020
It describes itself as “a nonprofit, worldwide organization whose mission is to provide science that improves human health and well-being.” Since its foundation more than forty years ago (by a Coca-Cola executive), it has rosily convened “scientists from the public and private sectors to collaborate in a neutral forum on scientific topics of mutual interest.”
Read articleRead articleILSI, the International Life Sciences Institute, has your health in mind.
January 9, 2020
It describes itself as “a nonprofit, worldwide organization whose mission is to provide science that improves human health and well-being.” Since its foundation more than forty years ago (by a Coca-Cola executive), it has rosily convened “scientists from the public and private sectors to collaborate in a neutral forum on scientific topics of mutual interest.”
Read articleRead articleMiroslav Tichý
December 16, 2019
The world is bright. The sun shines, tempting you to idle by a sleepy Moravian town’s only swimming pool. The day’s balmy embrace leaves your skin aglow, as if with its own modest radiance. As you approach the poolside, a tepid breeze half-heartedly churns the dust on the road and stirs the leaves on the trees into a chorus of hushed murmurs.
Read articleRead articleMonkey Shines
December 12, 2019
This scroll depicting a snow monkey mother and child is not very good (I’m still learning how to paint with ink) and the calligraphy is atrocious, but I hope the message is clear: The Earth does not belong solely to humans.
Read articleRead articleAlys Tomlinson
December 12, 2019
In the shadow of the colossal French Pyrenees, at the fringes of the historic region of Occitanie, lies the town of Lourdes. There, a major Catholic shrine has attracted scores of millions of pilgrims since visionary apparitions beset a denizen in 1858. Some hundred and sixty years ago, at the nearby Grotto of Massabielle, an illiterate peasant named Bernadette Soubirous claimed to have received a rosary-like series visions of the Immaculate Conception.
Read articleRead articleThe Revolution Algorithm
December 9, 2019
In the beginning was the Word — the Bible, the Quran . . . then Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the cathedral door. Early fighters for a better world used the printing press to spread their righteous fervor in letters, books, manifestoes . . .
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