heatherwick's bridge

JK Keller, Dirty Mousepads

"By switching a typical mousepad with a sheet of paper, I am able to collect an echo of my computer use over the course of a few months. The resulting drawing embodies both a warm earthy tone while also being indicative of the filth one accumulates through prolonged use of technology."

from the web site of JK keller, more of his projects are here

Sam Bassett, Lawrence Laducer

I stumbled upon this short film.

Discrete

mindlessly exhaling breathless constraints.
Attempting to fix patterns in a standard form.
Be very careful now.
and also, do everything.

reality plantin'

If Macedonia, a country of two million people, can plant six million trees, we can only imagine how many trees can be planted in other, bigger countries.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/CAS946961.htm

JOIN THE VIRTUAL SIT-IN FOR LOVE! JOIN OUR LOVE-IN!!

Electronic Civil Disobedience... join this Virtual Sit-in and help to crash websites of shitty organizations. FROM TODAY NOV 20 TO THE 23rd, PARTICIPATE...

"This call for a virtual sit-in represents a two-pronged attempt to gerrymander solidarity against the actions of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security established to allegedly guard national security by targeting "criminals" and "terrorists," and the actions of right-wing organizations which devalue and terrorize families in their attempts to define the category of Family in the narrowest terms imaginable. Constructions of immigrant and queer families as violable are rooted in long histories of aggression against humanity; which have and continue to establish hierarchies of personhood."

Community Living Room project

Parlor Park, Los Angeles

"Rather than fence off the trash-strewn lot beside its building—a stomping ground for drug-users and prostitutes—one downtown Los Angeles community center added, instead, a few benches and flowers. Soon, neighbors began to hang out there, and the less desirable denizens vanished.

By beautifying the lot, the center transformed its use, and herein lies the vision of the Community Living Room project, run by the Los Angeles-based nonprofit group Verde Coalition: turn grim scraps of public land—like bus stops, traffic medians, or dangerous street corners—into welcoming public spaces. In Los Angeles, where many low-income communities enjoy almost no park space, a new “living room” cheaply and quickly creates a mini-sanctuary from the fast-paced and sometimes ugly reality of the city. Twelve community “living rooms” have been constructed so far, and the mayor’s office may soon help fund 1,000 more across the city, makhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifing Los Angeles more habitable—two benches at a time."

Words By Jenny Price in Good Magazine from here

More on this here
and here
and

LA River Tours with FOLAR

FOLAR (Friends of the LA river) gives tours of the river. Good activity... supposedly lead by jenny price(see blog post below).

Jenny Price Article: Against Philanthropy (from good magazine)

Looking through a past issue of Good Magazine, I re-read this concise article. It challenges the philanthropic endeavors of corporations, and suggests a better ways to "help". Read this:
Against Philanthropy

"most philanthropic foundations are endowed by and invest their assets in these same companies, which create the very problems the foundations address."

"We can all be good citizens much, much more effectively in the course of making money than in the course of giving money away."

"In the Niger Delta, a $218 million Gates Foundation program provides polio and measles vaccinations. Yet the foundation invests $423 million in five major oil companies whose oil-plant emissions have created a regional epidemics of respiratory illnesses. These emissions have also been linked to immune deficiencies that make children more vulnerable to polio and measles."


"But what if Gates and Buffett simply applied their sentiments as philanthropists to their work as CEOs in the first place? What if they seriously prioritized employee salaries, benefits, and job security—from Seattle to China? And if they emphasized sound environmental practices, which reap long-term collective benefits at the expense of outsize profits and outrageous executive salaries? They might not have $30 billion to give away, but giving away that much might not be as necessary."

"The assets of the Gates Foundation now dwarf the World Health Organization budget. Does anyone really want any single private interest to exercise such extraordinary influence on international health policy?"

power

you get up there in front of that crowd, and you take aim. you try to give them an even toned look of intelligence and depth. You try most hardest to maintain. To keep that steady composure, that gravity. Because if you could only just maintain, everything spewing from you would hit, and that crowd would know, and understand.

interest areas (partial list)

loopy side notes

I wonder why women shave their legs
and why the monks must shave their heads.
It makes me feel I've got some trimming to do
but in the end i don't want to be you.
It makes me sad how much some care
for everything that's not really there.
And the things that are that none can see
like god and night and the air you breathe,
we fill them with polluted bread
you constantly bake in your polluted head.
When a man says kill, and we say you must
it's not a punishment, it's what we lust.
When the stars shine bright and we fade them away
you forget there's no difference between night and day.

(If there were dreams we could share
I'd invite you to play ball with the tots who run the world.
Powell's got the catch and he's doing a victory dance across the endzone.)

to be human

Is to be cliche. (It seems)
if your actions have purpose,
the purpose is perpetrated by the look on your face
or the feeling from your open eyes.
Disconnect to leave
these humanly ambitions to the human...
but this is not original.
It was done by Warhol who was
only the first bastard of his kind to be famous.
I am young still, i think
i know it all because i can feel.
Today i turn 8,000 days into a mass of flesh and bone
quivering in loneliness and laughter.

There's a good habit in quitting old habits,
but beauty is hard to substitute.
Go ask Edie S.
She can tell you what to like the best.
And in the reign of anarchy
you won't find more than one, two or three
who can still hold their heads above the water
and still breathe well while the weaker are slaughtered.

(Do you believe it when you hear
'I know it's not perfect, but it's all we've got'?)
No matter what we do
you have only your idea of how it will turn out.
For the love of god
be brave you human,
or enjoy your vacations and get back to work.

                                          i'm an asshole

post halloween (compost)

sexinart.net Post about Sexual Remnants

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Center for Land Use Interpretation

"THE CENTER FOR LAND USE INTERPRETATION is a research organization involved in exploring, examining, and understanding land and landscape issues. The Center employs a variety of methods to pursue its mission - engaging in research, classification, extrapolation, and exhibition."

Really impressive organization, Be sure to check out the land use database, which is an on-line computer database of unusual and exemplary sites throughout the United States. It is a free public resource, designed to educate and inform the public about the function and form of the National landscape, a terrestrial system that has been altered to accommodate the complex demands of our society.

Learn/see everything from the inner-workings of the LA waste management system, to the history of the now closed "largest solar energy plant.

surely an important resource.

why not

Change.gov The Website of the President-Elect.

Obama's got a new website, complete with a blog, and its own youtube channel (also you can apply for a job!)

CHANGE.GOV

you really have to appreciate the *audacity* (and cleanliness) of that url.
it makes me happy somehow to see the site. One thing i'm hoping obama will do is communicate openly with the people. We need a president who can tell us what he's thinking at any time. this could be a step in the right direction. A presidential website? why not!

Uncritical Exuberance?

Reality check on the election of Obama, I felt this needed to be posted in full:

Uncritical Exuberance?

by Judith Butler

Very few of us are immune to the exhilaration of this time. My friends on the left write to me that they feel something akin to redemption or that the country has been returned to us or that we finally have one of us in the White House. Of course, like them, I discover myself feeling overwhelmed with disbelief and excitement throughout the day, since the thought of having the regime of George W. Bush over and gone is an enormous relief. And the thought of Obama, a thoughtful and progressive black candidate, shifts the historical ground, and we feel that cataclysm as it produces a new terrain. But let us try to think carefully about the shifted terrain, although we cannot fully know its contours at this time. The election of Barack Obama is historically significant in ways that are yet to be gauged, but it is not, and cannot be, a redemption, and if we subscribe to the heightened modes of identification that he proposes (we are all united) or that we propose (he is one of us), we risk believing that this political moment can overcome the antagonisms that are constitutive of political life, especially political life in these times. There have always been good reasons not to embrace national unity as an ideal, and to nurse suspicions toward absolute and seamless identification with any political leader. After all, fascism relied in part on that seamless identification with the leader, and Republicans engage this same effort to organize political affect when, for instance, Elizabeth Dole looks out on her audience and says, I love each and every one of you.

It becomes all the more important to think about the politics of exuberant identification with the election of Obama when we consider that support for Obama has coincided with support for conservative causes. In a way, this accounts for his cross-over success. In California, he won by 60% of the vote, and yet some significant portion of those who voted for him also voted against the legalization of gay marriage (52%). How do we understand this apparent disjunction? First, let us remember that Obama has not explicitly supported gay marriage rights. Further, as Wendy Brown has argued, the Republicans have found that the electorate is not as galvanized by moral issues as they were in recent elections; the reasons given for why people voted for Obama seem to be predominantly economic, and their reasoning seems more fully structured by neo-liberal rationality than by religious concerns. This is clearly one reason why Palins assigned public function to galvanize the majority of the electorate on moral issues finally failed. But if moral issues such as gun control, abortion rights and gay rights were not as determinative as they once were, perhaps that is because they are thriving in a separate compartment of the political mind. In other words, we are faced with new configurations of political belief that make it possible to hold apparently discrepant views at the same time: someone can, for instance, disagree with Obama on certain issues, but still have voted for him. This became most salient in the emergence of the counter Bradley-effect, when voters could and did explicitly own up to their own racism, but said they would vote for Obama anyway. Anecdotes from the field include claims like the following: I know that Obama is a Muslim and a Terrorist, but I will vote for him anyway; he is probably better for the economy. Such voters got to keep their racism and vote for Obama, sheltering their split beliefs without having to resolve them.

Along with strong economic motivations, less empirically discernible factors have come into play in these election results. We cannot underestimate the force of dis-identification in this election, a sense of revulsion that George W. has represented the United States to the rest of the world, a sense of shame about our practices of torture and illegal detention, a sense of disgust that we have waged war on false grounds and propagated racist views of Islam, a sense of alarm and horror that the extremes of economic deregulation have led to a global economic crisis. Is it despite his race, or because of his race, that Obama finally emerged as a preferred representative of the nation? Fulfilling that representative-function, he is at once black and not-black (some say not black enough and others say too black), and, as a result, he can appeal to voters who not only have no way of resolving their ambivalence on this issue, but do not want one. The public figure wh o allows the populace to sustain and mask its ambivalence nevertheless appears as a figure of unity: this is surely an ideological function. Such moments are intensely imaginary, but not for that reason without their political force.

As the election approached, there has been an increased focus on the person of Obama: his gravity, his deliberateness, his ability not to lose his temper, his way of modeling a certain evenness in the face of hurtful attacks and vile political rhetoric, his promise to reinstate a version of the nation that will overcome its current shame. Of course, the promise is alluring, but what if the embrace of Obama leads to the belief that we might overcome all dissonance, that unity is actually possible? What is the chance that we may end up suffering a certain inevitable disappointment when this charismatic leader displays his fallibility, his willingness to compromise, even to sell out minorities? He has, in fact, already done this in certain ways, but many of us set aside our concerns in order to enjoy the extreme un-ambivalence of this moment, risking an uncritical exuberance even when we know better. Obama is, after all, hardly a leftist, regardless of the attributio!
ns of socialism proffered by his conservative opponents. In what ways will his actions be constrained by party politics, economic interests, and state power; in what ways have they been compromised already? If we seek through this presidency to overcome a sense of dissonance, then we will have jettisoned critical politics in favor of an exuberance whose phantasmatic dimensions will prove consequential. Maybe we cannot avoid this phantasmatic moment, but let us be mindful about how temporary it is. If there are avowed racists who have said, I know that he is a Muslim and a terrorist, but I will vote for him anyway, there are surely also people on the left who say, I know that he has sold out gay rights and Palestine, but he is still our redemption. I know very well, but still: this is the classic formulation of disavowal. Through what means do we sustain and mask conflicting beliefs of this sort? And at what political cost?

There is no doubt that Obamas success will have significant effects on the economic course of the nation, and it seems reasonable to assume that we will see a new rationale for economic regulation and for an approach to economics that resembles social democratic forms in Europe; in foreign affairs, we will doubtless see a renewal of multi-lateral relations, the reversal of a fatal trend of destroying multilateral accords that the Bush administration has undertaken. And there will doubtless also be a more generally liberal trend on social issues, though it is important to remember that Obama has not supported universal health care, and has failed to explicitly support gay marriage rights. And there is not yet much reason to hope that he will formulate a just policy for the United States in the Middle East, even though it is a relief, to be sure, that he knows Rashid Khalidi.

The indisputable significance of his election has everything to do with overcoming the limits implicitly imposed on African-American achievement; it has and will inspire and overwhelm young African-Americans; it will, at the same time, precipitate a change in the self-definition of the United States. If the election of Obama signals a willingness on the part of the majority of voters to be represented by this man, then it follows that who we are is constituted anew: we are a nation of many races, of mixed races; and he offers us the occasion to recognize who we have become and what we have yet to be, and in this way a certain split between the representative function of the presidency and the populace represented appears to be overcome. That is an exhilarating moment, to be sure. But can it last, and should it?

To what consequences will this nearly messianic expectation invested in this man lead? In order for this presidency to be successful, it will have to lead to some disappointment, and to survive disappointment: the man will become human, will prove less powerful than we might wish, and politics will cease to be a celebration without ambivalence and caution; indeed, politics will prove to be less of a messianic experience than a venue for robust debate, public criticism, and necessary antagonism. The election of Obama means that the terrain for debate and struggle has shifted, and it is a better terrain, to be sure. But it is not the end of struggle, and we would be very unwise to regard it that way, even provisionally. We will doubtless agree and disagree with various actions he takes and fails to take. But if the initial expectation is that he is and will be redemption itself, then we will punish him mercilessly when he fails us (or we will find ways to deny or !
suppress that disappointment in order to keep alive the experience of unity and unambivalent love).

If a consequential and dramatic disappointment is to be averted, he will have to act quickly and well. Perhaps the only way to avert a crash a disappointment of serious proportions that would turn political will against him will be to take decisive actions within the first two months of his presidency. The first would be to close Guantanamo and find ways to transfer the cases of detainees to legitimate courts; the second would be to forge a plan for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and to begin to implement that plan. The third would be to retract his bellicose remarks about escalating war in Afghanistan and pursue diplomatic, multilateral solutions in that arena. If he fails to take these steps, his support on the left will clearly deteriorate, and we will see the reconfiguration of the split between liberal hawks and the anti-war left. If he appoints the likes of Lawrence Summers to key cabinet positions, or continues the failed economic polices of Clint!
on and Bush, then at some point the messiah will be scorned as a false prophet. In the place of an impossible promise, we need a series of concrete actions that can begin to reverse the terrible abrogation of justice committed by the Bush regime; anything less will lead to a dramatic and consequential disillusionment. The question is what measure of dis-illusion is necessary in order to retrieve a critical politics, and what more dramatic form of dis-illusionment will return us to the intense political cynicism of the last years. Some relief from illusion is necessary, so that we might remember that politics is less about the person and the impossible and beautiful promise he represents than it is about the concrete changes in policy that might begin, over time, and with difficulty, bring about conditions of greater justice.

hopeless man outta rhythm

banter/lull (in the works, #2)

changed version from the first one posted. order different, added some lyrics.

Boxing

I just read a fascinating article about Mike Tyson and boxing. Here are the opening lines:
"The conventions of the ring demand that a fighter in training become a monk. For months at a time, he hardens his body on roadwork and beefsteak, and practices an enforced loneliness - even (tradition has it) sexual loneliness - the better to focus the mind on war. Mike Tyson's monastery in the Nevada desert is a mansion....and it could be said to lack the usual austerity...When Tyson is not preparing for fights, he keeps lions and tigers around as pets and wrestles with them. "Sometimes i go swimming with the tiger," he told a visitor. "But personally, I'm a lion man. Lions are very obedient, like dogs."

The article goes on to describe the way Tyson read Voltaire, Machiavelli and the Koran while in prison, also getting a taste for communism as evidenced by his tattoo of Mao Zedong.

The evolution of boxing, which began before the Civil War when slave owners would set up fights between their possessions (often until death), included the battle over shifting notions such as race, masculinity, decency and class. Black fighters in the 1960s were not fighting only for themselves, they were fighting for their race. In addition to this the amount of money and prestige which hangs over boxing; the idea of an 'event' and all that surrounds it, in the streets, in the ring, in the crowd; the entertainment and the gamble; all of this turns boxing into a spectacle which radically differs from other sports. Must think more about this.

A final quote:

"Boxing is ancient, simple, lonely. There is hardly any artifice at all. Padded gloves and the gauze and tape underneath do little to protect the fighters; they merely prevent broken hands, and allow for more punching, more pain. Boxers go into the ring alone, nearly naked, and they succeed or fail on the basis of the most elementary criteria: their ability to give and receive pain, their will to endure their own fear. Since character - the will of a person stretched to extremes - is so obviously at the center of boxing, there is an undeniable urge to know the fighters, to derive some meaning from the conflict of those characters."

"do school"

"Got your secrets?"

"Bravura." sketch

history, windy thoughts and some quotes

the intellectual individual as an entrepreneur: carrying an idea out into a material reality.

building institutions that last beyond our lives. ("think tank" et cetera)

the creation of space for individuals to participate, breathe, speak, etc.

race - economics-based, psycho-cultural fear, fear of other/difference
-----segregation keeping black individuals in the same places (community)...now a distance, a spreading out...

"the cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is."

History is important: Past Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote a history of Austrian and English relations stating that "history is the memory of the states" which one might optimistically say assumes a unity within the state. But history is usually the winner's story. Camus suggested that in "a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners."

Howard Zinn said: "to think history-writing must aim simply to recapitulate the failures that dominate the past is to make historians collaborators in an endless cycle of defeat. If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare."

History as CREATIVE.

My darlings Foucault and Nietzsche also emphasize this - focusing on the discontinuities, the ruptures in history. Not falling into the trap of assuming a continuity or an ultimate Truth. Knowing there are moments where things abruptly shifted, trying to determine what factors came into play, what episodes created conditions upon which a foundation for "something different" was built..? What are the key events? That is, what are the moments where power shifts so that one party loses it and another party wins it?

Lastly, the ultimate problem with Nietzsche: too much importance placed on hardness, isolation, individuality. Not enough compassion, love, forgiveness, etc. I think maybe i'm becoming soft in my old youth. But I feel more happy, stronger, more confident, moving in this direction, using the words of many to begin to construct a philosophy of my own, rather than living the philosophy of one, or a few, others. I'm changing directions, changing thought patterns. I've analyzed my self and what i believe to be my strengths and weaknesses. Now I'm moving into another domain. One which i feel alien to, but which tastes like lettuce i plucked out of the earth with my own hands. It tastes godly and makes me feel alive. it's spiritual.
The wind is thrashing outside my room and i will go to bed soon. New days are ahead which are going to be filled very differently, not only in terms of activity, but also in terms of thought. More love.
And criticism...
Criticism as a species of love.
a species?...

i'm also digging on a lot of quotes i've been reading this evening or in the past few day...

Churchill said: "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. "

Cornel West: "You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people, if you don't serve the people. "

MLK: "Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent. "

malcolm x: "Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. "

points

if i think this. ˙ʇɐɥʇ ʞuıɥʇ noʎ

slopes

this afternoon, still workin on it. 3rd take. needs more. had a good time with it though.

comic

The Powell Memo

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/powell_memo_lewis.html


Essentially the memo helped spark a grand and systematic movement to spread conservative ideology across the US...to make sure that conservatives were able to get control and keep it. Many terrible conservative organizations were started in response to this. And perhaps it helps explain why conservatives are much more organized and efficient in the political realm. Some call this the "right wing conspiracy" or something of a 'cold war' but I think the word conspiracy is a bit loaded and the document is in fact real. We should take it for what it is and learn from it. But we can also see how the "right wing" may be operating (behind the scenes) in perhaps a more organized and effective way than we might think possible. i don't know.
fuckin bastards.

dumpster diving

Just went dumpster diving. Got food from Henry's trash can. The time, 12 am to one am.
bounty, is everything imaginable. From coffee to mangos, to ready pack lettuce. To 86 bananas and 20 containers of strawberrys.

little more needs to be said about that.
(photos and films to come)