And since it’s socially acceptable to pull out your phone and fiddle with it–after all, you may be turning it off so you can better concentrate on the conversation at hand–sneaking a glance at the clock doesn’t hurt the feelings of your fellow guests.
Author: greg
Bloghdad.com/Green_Zone
New at Bloghdad.com: Lucian K Truscott IV writes a sobering, scathing op-ed in the NY Times which points out the distance and gaps in experience and POV between troops actually deployed in Iraqi towns and the political appointee/apparatchiks at their “hardship posts” in the Green Zone, the Occupation HQ in Saddam’s former palace complexes.
Amar Kanwar at MoMA Documentary Fortnight
Ahh, that’s a better. Now I can endlessly praise the programming acumen of the MoMA Documentary Fortnight without it sounding like pure self-promotion.
Three of Amar Kanwar’s most recent works–including A Night of Prophecy, which I killed my Friday night in Miami for, and his unsurpassed A Season Outside, a poetic Cremaster-meets-nuclear-brinksmanship documentary which was one of the greatest finds at last year’s Documenta XI–will be shown as part of MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight festival. Three films screen together on Sunday December 21. Be there.
Related:
Complete schedule for this year’s MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight
A slew of Amar Kanwar posts from Documenta.
A post about Souvenir November 2001‘s screening at last year’s MoMA DF
V(S)IP at Art Basel Miami
The S is for Self, as in Self-Important. And I wasn’t alone. Far from it. The most unnecessary question of the day was the endearing, “Do you know who I am?” It wasn’t unnecessary because the Swiss minions running the art fair were so gracious, but because people were always telling you how fabulous they and their taste are anyway. My VIP card didn’t score me an early private screening of the only piece I wanted to see in the video program; fortunately, though, the snow conspired to keep me in town one more night. I saw Amar Kanwar‘s 2002 A Night of Prophecy, which he produced for last year’s Documenta XI.
I left the tawdry spectacle of NY art dealers singing karaoke for what turned out to be basically a series of subcontinental music videos. Kanwar filmed people singing calls for caste revolution and protests of various ethnic conflicts. It was alternately moving and didactic, always poetic, but hopelessly at odds with the shiny-as-a-C-print materialist, money-soaked, elitistriving artfest that hosted it. The thirty people at the start of the screening dwindled to less than half that, with only about 8-10 of us pinko Gandhi-ists watching the entire thing. Why some people wouldn’t want to spend their Friday night in South Beach being called (in melodic Hindi) an exploitative thief living off the sweat of the poor is beyond me.
(Of course, I’m writing this from the Delta Crown Room at the airport…the sweaty sunburned masses are already too much for me to deal with apparently…)
about living and writing
Offline occurrences, previously known as life, have preoccupied me lately, and I’ve been working, consuming, seeing, reading, and writing less, hence a lighter-than-usual posting volume. Well, actually, I did some writing last week, but I prefer not to post it here, at least not yet. It’s not that it’s irrelevant, just the opposite.
For more information, please refer to my post of 11.24.03
Corrections you probably won’t see in the Times or Post
Due to copyediting euphoria in the wake of Bush’s secret Thanksgiving daytrip to Baghdad, the following quote from Richard Keil of the Bloomberg News service was incomplete:
“Mr. Keil leaned across the aisle, shoved aside his i-Pod headset and grinned as he said, ‘The president of the United States is AWOL, and we’re with him. The ultimate road trip.’ ”
The full quote should read, “The president of the United States is AWOL again.”
Buy me an i-Pod. Buy you an i-Pod.
On the Meaning of Six Months
I remember when I found Wired, it felt written by people about six months ahead of me. After a couple of years, though, I stopped reading it when I felt I was about six months ahead of it.
In the early weblogging days, I felt six months or so ahead of the New York Times, but also felt that the Times has been closing the gap a bit lately.
I’m quite used to being six months ahead of Wired, but what does it mean when I’m three and six months ahead of boingboing?
[update: ditto. Xeni Jardin’s Wired Interview with David Byrne. And a direct link to that holiday gift of choice, David Byrne’s artist book/DVD, E.E.E.I. (Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information).]
Harpers.org Embarks on Path To Sentience By 2051
[via TMN] Harpers.org has been completely reconstructed using Paul Ford’s homegrown FTrain code. Is it enough to call it code? Here’s what Paul says about it:
The primary goal of Ftrain.com, the goal which all other goals serve, is to make the site fully conscious and self-aware by 2051. Conservative estimates place computer power as equaling brainpower by then, and after 10,000 nodes (200 a year for 50 years), there should be enough inside the site for it to come to its own conclusions. I will return to this topic at a future date.
Related: my first giddy, gushing post about exploring FTrain
As for Harpers.org, I’m very pleased they’re launching the site with The Proclamation of Baghdad (coming Dec. 4). Subscribe, sure, but get this month’s issue for the “Weekly Review”-style look at recent scientific findings on the back page.
(via cel) slc airport lines, by length:
3) tsa
2) starbucks
1) cinnabon
also, tsa doesnt know what a collar stay is.
Memorials: not as content-free as once believed
First, a cautionary tale about the what “just-the-facts”-driven memorials (e.g., victims’ tallies, 92 trees for 92 countries, etc.) inadvertently reveal about the times and people who made them. Muschamp, meanwhile, hits some right notes with what symbol-laden memorials inadvertently reveal about the politics and people who make them.
Related: My post last year on how the data in the Pentagon Memorial competition guidelines substantially dictated the designs.
Havana: about making films, about art
Excellent story in the Guardian by Chris Payne about a film school outside Havana whose students’ production–an actually independent feature film– doesn’t officially exist, but nonetheless is getting plugs for Sundance. There’s more story here to be told.
Also from Havana, the Biennial. Maria Finn’s Times article has an interesting angle: the economic impact of international art world attention on Cuban contemporary artists. Even emerging artist-level prices (ie, in the thousands or low five figures) enable artists to live like kings in the dollar-starved Cuban economy. But collector friends who just came back from Havana noticed how outsize success–or at least the trappings of it on the ground, which also often signal collaboration or acquiescence with the regime–polarizes artists.
From what I’ve heard, and from what Blake Gopnik’s ecstatic survey in the Post says, the quality of the art was incredible. But alongside the disparities it creates, an internationalized Cuban contemporary art market runs the risk of exploitation. In the Outsider Art market, this meme is already too well established: art world slickster “discovers” a naive, native genius, buys up all his work, establishes some “gatekeeper” stranglehold on his production, and manipulates the prices to her own–not the artist’s– advantage.
Maya Lin: The Problem, not The Solution for the WTC Memorial
While I’ve been contemplating what to write about the WTC Memorial, most of the ideas I’ve wanted to write about have been put out there.
At least they have now that Clay Risen’s article in the Observer lays into the stifling influence of Maya Lin’s minimalist memorialism. It’s a topic near to my heart (I complained last year that the Pentagon Memorial competition had “far too many Lins”).
Even so, Risen pulls his punches, and I underestimated the spread of Linphoma the competition finalists reflect. I only estimated 40-50% of the finalists would be Maya Lin mimics, but it’s more like 75-88%, depending on how you count. Six of the designs list”The Names” on a wall somewhere in their design. The three designs with alternate schemes (some have multiple elements; 6+3=8 here) go the OK City/Pentagon route, with individual “memorial units.” Out of the minimalist frying pan, into the fetishy individualist fire.
What’s most frustrating is the tremendous inspiration Lin has been to me and so many others; she was instrumental to the idea for my first film, after all. Still, whether its her juror’s eye or her daunting memorial legacy, we all just need to move on. I’m just about ready to call for the LMDC to scrap the eight designs, plus at least one juror, and go back to the hopper for some more appropriate ideas.
Agnes Varda Speaks (and shows film, of course)
[via GreenCine] Doug Cumming’s got an account of Agnes Varda discussing a screening of her latest short film in Seattle. Also, an earlier bonus Varda discussion at Filmjourney.
My Google Ad, which used to read, “Damn you, Agnes Varda/The Gleaners made me make a film/it’s showing at MoMA next month,” wouldn’t be allowed under Google’s prissier, clean up for the IPO-style terms of service. feh.
Today, though, Doug’s tells of an Errol Morris performance at a Fog of War screening. I disagree with Doug’s negative read on the conclusions Morris draws (or doesn’t, depending), but he’s worth reading. I found the movie extremely revealing of McNamara’s steel-willed self-delusion/preservation, and I think that self-righteous aggression rules the day in Rumsfeld’s Pentagon. Long story short: If you’re planning on feeling thankful for not having to relive the Vietnam war fiasco, I suggest you get a backup plan.
Shipping Containers, v. 4
It’s an inadvertent but recurring subject of interest here at greg.org: the architectural use of connex shipping containers. Sunday, NPR aired a puffy little interview with Zalmay Khalilzad, the new US envoy to Afghanistan; it turns out he’ll be living in a shipping container on the heavily fortified grounds of the embassy in Kabul. He’s not alone. According to this AP story on AfghanNews.net, over 100 containers were refurbished in Dubai to provide instant housing for the influx of US personnel. This picture comes from an account of someone posted to Kabul. Americans may have added microwaves, TV’s, private baths, A/C, “some tentative-looking shrubs and bushes” out front, and in one case, a pink flamingo to their containers, but except for their fresh coats of paint, they’d blend right in to the Kabul skyline. Except, of course, that US containers are reinforced with sandbags and ringed with concertina wire.
Don’t let a construction industry devastated by 30 years of chaos
get you down! Rebuild your marketplace with containers!
image: Barnaby Hall’s travelogue in Duke’s alumni magazine.
Turns out you can fit a lot of irony into a 40-foot shipping container. And just when you think it’s full, well, you can stuff in some more. Another Afghani-related compound, Guantanamo’s Camp Delta, is built from shipping containers. But so, it turns out, is the Army/CIA’s interrogation center at Bagram Air Base, the site of reported torture and human rights violations in the name of our war on terror. (As the WP quotes one official, “If you don’t violate someone’s human rights some of the time, you probably aren’t doing your job.”) They’re also the structure of choice for expanding Israeli outposts in the West Bank. Containers, concertina wire, and conflict apparently go hand in hand.
With their adaptability, rapid portability, and instant utility, containers are the architectural embodiment of “Flexible Response,” Donald Rumsfeld’s doctrine of military transformation. Of course, “Flexible Response” isn’t new; it grew from the Korean War, and Rumsfeld’s predecessor Robert McNamara implemented his own quant-heavy interpretation in Vietnam. The 21st-century version is just air-conditioned for our comfort.
Here’s the AP’s glowing, realtor-like description of Khalilzad’s new pad: “Three containers were used to create his relatively palatial hootch, with a formal dining room that can seat eight, a front sitting room and a side lawn. A wooden fence around the ambassadorial residence gives it privacy and a suburban hominess.”
A hootch? If you have to ask–and I had to– a hootch is soldiers’ slang for instant housing, particularly the aluminum sheds they inhabited in Vietnam.
Related: the Darren Almond shipping container post that started it all, plus some unexpectedly moving memorial realizations.
Talking like a gamer
I’ve been rewatching Gerry this past week, partly to prepare for an interview (stay tuned), partly to imagine a remake, and partly to just understand what Gus Van Sant & Co. were up to.
The dialogue keeps catching my ear, and not just because there’s so little of it. GVS, Casey Affleck and Matt Damon wrote in esoteric language and wrote out all explication. Discussion of a Wheel of Fortune player’s gaffe is specialized but recognizable to a TV audience. Other conversations are only comprehensible to much smaller populations, particularly gamers and the two Gerrys themselves.
Which made reading Greg Costikyan’s article/glossary, “Talk Like a Gamer,” so enjoyable. [thanks, BoingBoing]