Harold Pinter: Art, Truth & Poetry--Nobel Address

Jean Dubuffet: NYC December 2008

bonne annee

Chris Hedges: Party to Murder--with Audio/Video/Photo Media File

Sabbah's Blog

Happy New Year? Posted: 31 Dec 2008 12:21 PM CST This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Chris Hedges - Party to Murder Posted: 31 Dec 2008 02:16 PM CST Sabbah's note: As of now, 400 killed and more than 2000 injured. TruthDig.com editor's note: In light of the recent fighting in Gaza, Truthdig asked Chris Hedges, who covered the Mideast for The New York Times for seven years, to update a previous column on Gaza. Can anyone who is following the Israeli air attacks on Gaza-the buildings blown to rubble, the children killed on their way to school, the long rows of mutilated corpses, the wailing mothers and wives, the crowds of terrified Palestinians not knowing where to flee, the hospitals so overburdened and out of supplies they cannot treat the wounded, and our studied, callous indifference to this widespread human suffering-wonder why we are hated? Our self-righteous celebration of ourselves and our supposed virtue is as false as that of Israel. We have become monsters, militarized bullies, heartless and savage. We are a party to human slaughter, a flagrant war crime, and do nothing. We forget that the innocents who suffer and die in Gaza are a reflection of ourselves, of how we might have been should fate and time and geography have made the circumstances of our birth different. We forget that we are all absurd and vulnerable creatures. We all have the capacity to fear and hate and love. "Expose thyself to what wretches feel," King Lear said, entering the mud and straw hovel of Poor Tom, "and show the heavens more just." Privilege and power, especially military power, is a dangerous narcotic. Violence destroys those who bear the brunt of its force, but also those who try to use it to become gods. Over 350 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians, and over 1,000 have been wounded since the air attacks began on Saturday. Ehud Barak, Israel's defense minister, said Israel is engaged in a "war to the bitter end" against Hamas in Gaza. A war? Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps and slums, to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command and control, no army, and calls it a war. It is not a war. It is murder. The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, has labeled what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza "a crime against humanity." Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as "a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention." He has asked for "the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law." Falk's unflinching honesty has enraged Israel. He was banned from entering the country on Dec. 14 during his attempt to visit Gaza and the West Bank. "After being denied entry I was put in a holding room with about 20 others experiencing entry problems," he said. "At this point I was treated not as a U.N. representative, but as some sort of security threat, subjected to an inch-by-inch body search, and the most meticulous luggage inspection I have ever witnessed. I was separated from my two U.N. companions, who were allowed to enter Israel. At this point I was taken to the airport detention facility a mile or so away, required to put all my bags and cell phone in a room, taken to a locked, tiny room that had five other detainees, smelled of urine and filth, and was an unwelcome invitation to claustrophobia. I spent the next 15 hours so confined, which amounted to a cram course on the miseries of prison life, including dirty sheets, inedible food, and either lights that were too bright or darkness controlled from the guard office." The foreign press has been, like Falk, barred by Israel from entering Gaza to report on the destruction. Israel's stated aim of halting homemade rockets fired from Gaza into Israel remains unfulfilled. Gaza militants have fired more than 100 rockets and mortars into Israel, killing four people and wounding nearly two dozen more, since Israel unleashed its air assault. Israel has threatened to launch a ground assault and has called up 6,500 army reservists. It has massed tanks on the Gaza border and declared the area a closed military zone. The rocket attacks by Hamas are, as Falk points out, also criminal violations of international law. But as Falk notes, "… such Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel's imposition of a collective punishment of a life- and health-threatening character on the people of Gaza, and should not distract the U.N. or international society from discharging their fundamental moral and legal duty to render protection to the Palestinian people." "It is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the entire 1.5 million Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to survive in terms of their health," Falk has said of the ongoing Israeli blockade of Gaza. "This is an increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people without the will to live. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live." Before the air assaults, Gaza spent 12 hours a day without power, which can be a death sentence to the severely ill in hospitals. Most of Gaza is now without power. There are few drugs and little medicine, including no cancer or cystic fibrosis medication. Hospitals have generators but often lack fuel. Medical equipment, including one of Gaza's three CT scanners, has been destroyed by power surges and fluctuations. Medical staff cannot control the temperature of incubators for newborns. And Israel has revoked most exit visas, meaning some of those who need specialized care, including cancer patients and those in need of kidney dialysis, have died. Of the 230 Gazans estimated to have died last year because they were denied proper medical care, several spent their final hours at Israeli crossing points where they were refused entry into Israel. The statistics gathered on children-half of Gaza's population is under the age of 17-are increasingly grim. About 45 percent of children in Gaza have iron deficiency from a lack of fruit and vegetables, and 18 percent have stunted growth. "It is macabre," Falk said of the blockade. "I don't know of anything that exactly fits this situation. People have been referring to the Warsaw ghetto as the nearest analog in modern times." "There is no structure of an occupation that endured for decades and involved this kind of oppressive circumstances," the rapporteur added. "The magnitude, the deliberateness, the violations of international humanitarian law, the impact on the health, lives and survival and the overall conditions warrant the characterization of a crime against humanity. This occupation is the direct intention by the Israeli military and civilian authorities. They are responsible and should be held accountable." The point of the Israeli attack, ostensibly, is to break Hamas, the radical Islamic group that was elected to power in 2007. But Hamas has repeatedly proposed long-term truces with Israel and offered to negotiate a permanent truce. During the last cease-fire, established through Egyptian intermediaries in July, Hamas upheld the truce although Israel refused to ease the blockade. It was Israel that, on Nov. 4, initiated an armed attack that violated the truce and killed six Palestinians. It was only then that Hamas resumed firing rockets at Israel. "This is a crime of survival," Falk said of the rocket attacks by Palestinians. "Israel has put the Gazans in a set of circumstances where they either have to accept whatever is imposed on them or resist in any way available to them. That is a horrible dilemma to impose upon a people. This does not alleviate the Palestinians, and Gazans in particular, for accountability for doing these acts involving rocket fire, but it also imposes some responsibility on Israel for creating these circumstances." Israel seeks to break the will of the Palestinians to resist. The Israeli government has demonstrated little interest in diplomacy or a peaceful solution. The rapid expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank is an effort to thwart the possibility of a two-state solution by gobbling up vast tracts of Palestinian real estate. Israel also appears to want to thrust the impoverished Gaza Strip onto Egypt. Dozens of tunnels had been the principal means for food and goods, connecting Gaza to Egypt. Israel had permitted the tunnels to operate, most likely as part of an effort to further cut Gaza off from Israel. This ended, however, on Sunday when Israeli fighter jets bombed over 40 tunnels along Gaza's border with Egypt. The Israeli military said that the tunnels, on the Gaza side of the border, were used for smuggling weapons, explosives and fugitives. Egypt has sealed its border and refused to let distraught Palestinians enter its territory. "Israel, all along, has not been prepared to enter into diplomatic process that gives the Palestinians a viable state," Falk said. "They [the Israelis] feel time is on their side. They feel they can create enough facts on the ground so people will come to the conclusion a viable state cannot emerge." The use of terror and hunger to break a hostile population is one of the oldest forms of warfare. I watched the Bosnian Serbs employ the same tactic in Sarajevo. Those who orchestrate such sieges do not grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence and abuse. A father or a mother whose child dies because of a lack of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget. A boy whose ill grandmother dies while detained at an Israel checkpoint does not forget. A family that loses a child in an airstrike does not forget. All who endure humiliation, abuse and the murder of family members do not forget. This rage becomes a virus within those who, eventually, stumble out into the daylight. Is it any wonder that 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza recently said they wanted to be a "martyr"? The Israelis in Gaza, like the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, are foolishly breeding the next generation of militants and Islamic radicals. Jihadists, enraged by the injustices done by Israel and the United States, seek to carry out reciprocal acts of savagery, even at the cost of their own lives. The violence unleashed on Palestinian children will, one day, be the violence unleashed on Israeli children. This is the tragedy of Gaza. This is the tragedy of Israel. © 2008 TruthDig.com Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America."

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WARNING: Porno & Mercantile Spam On the Poetics List--- the New Extreme Experimental American Pornoetics--the Author as Hacker--

---

From: davidbchirot@hotmail.com
To: poetics@listserv.buffalo.edu
Subject: Warning Porno & Spam Mercahnts on poetics list--maybe is hacked?
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:34:50 -0600

this is a warning
files coming in on th poetics list contain porno links and various marketing campaigns

VISIO-TEXTUAL SELECTRICTY in The House

Daily Notes on Poetry & Related Matters

December 31: An Announcement: Visio-Textual Selectricity, the anthology of favorites of their own work chosen by 21 visio-textual artists, is now finished.

Electronic Civil Disobedience in Solidarity with Greek Anarchists

Hola all,

This e-action is being done by ECD krews in the E.U. and beyond.
Do not be afraid to download and join - they have done a really lovely
addition of ECD (super upgrade!).

My very very best to all of you in these hard times in a mad mad world!

Ricardo
>>>>>>(Forward Widely)>>>>

Electronic Civil Disobedience in Solidarity with Greek Anarchists

(Forward Widely)
Hackers Against Oppression have called for Electronic Civil
Disobedience in Solidarity with Greek Anarchists on Wednesday Dec 31,
the final day of December. December is the month in which Alexandros
Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old Anarchist, was murdered in cold blood by
Greek Police. It is also the month that will forever be remembered by
all those who struggle. Minutes after his murder, thousands of Greek
residents took to the streets as did thousands around the world. Even
liberal groups have called for the resignation of the Greek
government. The streets were taken back for the people, police
buildings were firebombed, and banks were turned into empty charred-
out boxes. This entire time, the Greek government has been fighting
and oppressing people with guns, tear gas, and the media. It's time
that we take them down.

We will be attacking the websites of the Greek Police and the Prime
Minister. They are directly responsible and we will directly respond.
They will no longer be able to spread their lies to the media about
what is going on in the streets. You can either load the file on the
day of the action or download it ahead of time. We suggest
downloading it ahead of time in the event that our site get shut down.

Please download the file you will need from one of the following
mirrors we have set up. When the time comes, open it in your web
browser ( ie Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer) and help us take
them down! This action is part of a series of actions that will
unfold over the next few weeks, targeting those who participate in
and benefit from oppression.

http://www.filefactory.com/file/a0081df/n/test_html
http://w19.easy-share.com/1903035989.html
http://www.usaupload.net/d/emm2u0uz3j1
http://freefilehosting.net/download/43d0h
http://FileHost.JustFreeSpace.Com/601test.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/41232831/test.html

To view our site and start ECDing NOW or to download the file:
http://www.stormpages.com/greeksolidarity/test.html

You can also just open www.primeminister.gr and www.astynomia.gr in
your browser and keep refreshing them. There are plenty of add-ons
for Firefox that will do this. Just go to Tools>Add-ons and search
for it. This will be a useful tool in further actions.

To a thousand more Decembers of resistance!

Carlos Latuff: Interview with the Cartoonist Activist

Carlos Latuff 25/12/2008

http://palestinethinktank.com/2008/12/25/an-interview-with-carlos-latuff-cartoonistactivist/

An interview with Carlos Latuff, cartoonist/activist

By Carlos Latuff • Dec 25th, 2008 at 23:50 • Category: Artwork, Biography, Grassroots Activism, Interviews, Israel, Newswire, Palestine, Religion, Resistance, War, Zionism

 

(Ben Heine © Cartoons)He has been alternatively praised and vilified in the press for his depictions of suffering in places like the Palestinian Territories, Iraq, and the slums of Latin America. But Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff says he is not out to please anyone. MENASSAT spoke with Latuff on the heals of a newly released series of cartoons about Iraqi journalist Muntazer Al-Zaidi.
By JACKSON ALLERS

Scenes from Carlos Latuff's comic-book, Captain Iraq - flank a real-world hero in the Arab world: the Iraqi shoe-throwing journalist, Muntazer Al-Zaidi. © Carlos Latuff

BEIRUT, December 23, 2008 (MENASSAT) — Carlos Latuff, 40, is nothing short of a one-man cartoon wrecking-ball when he hits the ink.
Based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Latuff has spent the last 15 plus years crafting a style that can best be described as "populist cartooning." He has touched on issues like Apartheid in South Africa, the plight of Native Americans in the US and the oppression of Tibetans in China.

But perhaps his most controversial series to date is "We are all Palestinians," in which he compares the actions taken by the Israeli government towards Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip directly to the Nazi's treatment of Jews.

In a December interview with the Jewish cultural scholar Eddy Portnoy, Latuff said, "It happens to be Israeli Jews that are the oppressors of Palestinians. If they were Christians, Muslims or Buddhists, I would criticize them the same way."

Latuff's cartoon series of world leaders like former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, outgoing US president George W. Bush and British PM Tony Blair conjure up the distorted, monster-like depictions of UK-based stencil graffiti artist, Shepard Farley.

And his irreverent take on recent issues like the Bush shoe-throwing incident with the Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi has continued to stir-up hundreds of online comments equally praising and decrying his work.

i-heart-girl writes in one online forum, "Your pieces have inspired me to keep hoping, praying, and working for peace and the end of corruption, no matter how fruitless the attempt may seem. I hope you can continue to bring awareness to the ignorant."

MENASSAT reached Latuff in Rio de Janeiro and conducted this on-line interview.

MENASSAT: Can you tell us about your personal history? Your biography says you're 40-years-old. How long have you been a cartoonist?

CARLOS LATUFF: I have been a professional artist since 1989. I started as an illustrator for a small advertising agency and then worked as a political cartoonist for leftist trade union papers in 1990. But I've been drawing since I was a kid.

MENASSAT: Why did you decide to focus on issues relating to the Arab world?

CARLOS LATUFF: My work doesn't only concern the Arab world. I also draw cartoons about concerns closer to home, like the police brutality in Brazil, the right-wing conspiracy against Evo Morales and his administration in Bolivia, and elsewhere, about events like the Russia-Georgia crisis, the riots in Greece, and so on. I do have a special focus on Palestine because of the time I spent there. When I was in the West Bank in 1999, I decided I would support the Palestinian struggle with my art.

MENASSAT: You've characterized your work as controversial. What is at the heart of your cartoons that makes them controversial?

CARLOS LATUFF: Touching the taboo of the Palestinian-Israeli [conflict] is always controversial, especially when you take the side of the oppressed. My art intends to break the common perception of the issue and it challenges the mainstream version of the conflict.

MENASSAT: Your work has been featured on Independent Media Center sites (www.imc.org) worldwide and in more mainstream publications like The Toronto Star. Which outlets have more impact on the public and does that matter to you?

CARLOS LATUFF: Having my cartoons shown from time to time in the mainstream media is only a consequence. The method I rely on the most to distribute my drawings are the good people throughout the world that are willing to reproduce my images online, via email, on their websites, etcetera.

MENASSAT: Your cartoon series, "We are all Palestinians," published on the Swiss Independent Media Center (IMC) site in 2002 prompted a Jewish organization to level the charge of anti-Semitism towards your work. A Swiss court suspended the criminal proceedings, but do you think it was anti-Semitism?

CARLOS LATUFF: Regarding cartoons and anti-Semitism, I have a recent interview with Eddy Portnoy, which clarifies my opinion about this on my blog, Tales of Iraq War. As a cartoonist, I feel comfortable enough to make any comparison I think necessary that expresses my point. Metaphors are the key point to political cartooning. Of course Israel isn't building gas chambers in the West Bank, but surely we can find some similarities between the treatment given to Palestinians by the [Israel Defense Forces] and the Jews under Nazi rule.

Inaccurate or not, it's important to highlight that such comparisons have been made worldwide—not only by cartoonists but by people such as Yosef 'Tommy' Lapid, Ariel Sharon's former Justice Minister and a Holocaust survivor [who died in June of 2008.] He said in 2004, during an interview, that a photo of an elderly Palestinian woman searching through rubble reminded him of his grandmother who died in Auschwitz. For me, this is more painful than comparisons of how Palestinians live under Israeli occupation.

My cartoons have no focus on the Jews or on Judaism. My focus is Israel as a political entity, as a government, their armed forces being a satellite of US interests in the Middle East, and especially Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. It happens to be Israeli Jews that are the oppressors of Palestinians. If they were Christians, Muslims or Buddhists, I would criticize them the same way. I made cartoons about George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Tony Blair, [former Mexican President] Ernesto Zedillo, [former Chilean dictator Augusto] Pinochet, and none of them were Jewish.

I mean… you insult the Muslims with a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a [suicide] bomber and claim the right to freedom of speech, but if you make drawings about the Holocaust, then it's hatred against the Jews.

MENASSAT: On your deviant art page, you list Sebastião Salgado as a big influence. A lot of his work has dealt with the oppressed and downtrodden in societies, and
 his assignments are often lengthy ones. Do you look to replicate this documentary approach with your cartoon work—as opposed to a one-off political cartoon?

CARLOS LATUFF: The cartoons I make aren't directed at middle-class, bourgeoisie readers, so I really don't care about what they think or believe. I make art for people living in Gaza, in Baghdad, in the slums of Latin America, ordinary people, the populace. I hope this art can serve to boost the morale of people suffering and the freedom fighters in every corner of the planet.

LATUFF ON THE WEB:
► http://latuff2.deviantart.com/

► http://tales-of-iraq-war.blogspot.com/

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Tagged as: Activism, Ben Heine, Cartoons, Latuff, Palestine, Political cartoons

Carlos Latuff is a friend of Palestinian people.
Email this author | All posts by Carlos Latuff

Source Material--Appropriated Texts--Spell #3

From: House Press <housepress@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 1:27 AM
Subject: Source Material: A Journal of Appropriated Text
To: House Press <housepress@gmail.com>


Download the new issue of Source Material here

In this issue:
Calvin & Hobbes by Russell Pascatore                               
Light Remains by David Baptiste Chirot                             
Cyber Money by Shane Meyer
Patented Brides by Barrett Gordon                                  
Basic Principles of Speech by Devan DeCicco
Jean Michel Basquiat by Andy Warhol by Damian Weber
A Word About The Ditch by Jonathan Skinner
The Optimist by Brian VanRemmen

Including work by Eric Gelsinger, Michael Basinski, Kevin Thurston, Linda Russo, Michael Slosek, & David Mauro

Call for submissions for Source Material 04

Thanks, Damian

 

Patrick Burgaud: E-Card Change-Yes We Can-- Happy New Year 2009

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: pburgaud <pburgaud@laposte.net>

dears,

  one more year

  one e-card more.

I am happy to have made this card.  I can create again.

 Through this card my best wishes for this new year

 

 

http://www.aquoisarime.net

 

 

 encore une année,

 encore une carte de voeux électronique.

Je suis heureux d'avoir pu réaliser cette carte. Je recommence à produire..

Tous mes meilleurs voeux pour cette nouvelle année grâce à:

http://www.aquoisarime.net

Clenente Padin: Happy New Year 2009

FELIZ 2009 - HAPPY 2009

 

 

Clemente Padín ensayando con el Club de Fans de Buenos Aires, Argentina, para su nueva presentación en el II Festival de Arte Urbano, Linz, Austria, 2009 (Foto RAIN RIEN).

 

Clemente Padín rehearsing with the Club of Fans from Buenos Aires, Argentina, for his new presentation in II Urban Art Festival, Linz, Austria, 2009 (Photo RAIN RIEN).

 

http://www.beatrizramirez.com.ar/videosdeCP.htm

 

http://clementepadin.blogspot.com/

Sacco & Vanzetti Fotos--their arrest was 9/11 1920

Sacco e Vanzetti

Le foto

 

Bartolomeo Vanzetti e Nicola Sacco

 

 

 

Nicola Sacco

 

Bartolomeo Vanzetti

 

Monumento funerario di Nicola Sacco
Cimitero di Torremaggiore (FG)
Info: www.torremaggiore.com

Foto della deposizione delle ceneri di Sacco nel nuovo monumento funerario

 

 

Nicola Sacco

Bartolomeo Vanzetti

Storia

Foto

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Feneon's Faits Divers Brevity at work in 1908 Catalog Entries forThadee Natansons' Vuillards--"Further Developments" of the Faits Divers

These necessarily brief Catalog entries give another view of Feneon's response to working within a form, like the Faits Divers, that is already formed for one, an already-there constraint which offers a challnge to the writer.

Another constraint is the need for a concise, efficient precision in the descriptions
of paintings which are going to be held up for auction.

Feneon was widely considered the best French art critic since Baudelaire; here, as in the Faits Divers, he is finding ways to give both the exact information required, and within such narrow limits, to create via a written style and an aesthetic eye the invitation to the potential buyer to "both read and see," as W C Williams has it in Spring and All. Williams' book is dedicated to the painter Demuth and makes use of a black and white newspaper reproduction of a painting by Juan Gris.

The perceptual actions in the writing make visible in the reader's eye both the words and the painting as black and white "negatives" which are "developed"
into color pictures.

Fig. 1 Édouard Vuillard, Le corsage rayé, from the Album series, 1895. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon (1983.1.38). Digital image © 2002 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. © 2002 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Fig. 2 Édouard Vuillard, L'album (detail), from the Album series, 1895. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection, Partial Gift of Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg, 2000 (2000.93.2). Photograph © 1994 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. © 2002 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Fig. 3 Édouard Vuillard, La tapisserie, from the Album series, 1895. Oil on canvas. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Estate of John Hay Whitney (294.1983). Digital image ©The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by Scala/Art Resource, NY. © 2002 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Fig. 4 Édouard Vuillard, La table de toilette, from the Album series, 1895. Oil on canvas. Private collection. © 2002 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Fig. 5 Édouard Vuillard, Le pot de grès, from the Album series, 1895. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Digital Image © Christie's Images, New York. © 2002 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New       Feneon on Paintings by Vuillard from Cataloge   The panels mentioned by Vuillard in his journal are without a doubt the present five paintings, which were sold by Thadée Natanson at auction in 1908, several years after his divorce from Misia. In the catalogue written by Félix Fénéon to accompany the sale, the five paintings were entitled and described in terms of a decorative ensemble. For Fénéon the unity of the series is most readily perceived through Vuillard's continuous development of an exquisite, overall chromatic harmony. Since Vuillard's suggestively imprecise, densely textured paintings are at times hard to read and his sumptuous accords of color difficult to reproduce accurately in color reproduction, it seems worth reprinting Fénéon's catalogue descriptions here: L'album (fig. 2): In the center, a group of three women on a canapé, looking at an open album. Another woman, to the right, is arranging flowers. Two others are grouped together at left; the seventh is at the edge of the frame. . . . An overall effect of red and green enlivened by yellow. This effect is condensed in the background, in small juxtaposed dabs, but is diffused in varying tones in the rest of the composition, the red descending all the way to chestnuts and blacks in order to ascend as far as vermilions and pinks, the yellow fading all the way to beige. The paint [is] sometimes applied in tiny brush strokes, at others is spread in barely nuanced solid areas (masses), the two procedures contrasting nowhere more than in the center.9 Le pot de grès (fig. 5): On a table where flowers, odds and ends of cloth, notebooks, and boxes are lying about, a stoneware vase holds a bouquet in full bloom. Four women grouped in pairs, one seated and three standing, surround the vase moving from the right-hand foreground to the left-hand background. Almost all the color components seen in L'album and La table de toilette.10 La table de toilette (fig. 4): Between two bouquets of flowers and at different ends of a table, two women. Of one nothing appears but the top of the head, a part of the blouse, an arm, and the skirt with its folds; of the other, only the chignon, the hidden profile, the nape of the neck, the back, and the arms; in the foreground, her hands rest on a draped piece of furniture. The still life includes a vase, a box, a mirror, and some pieces of cloth. What distinguishes the general impression here, analogous to that of L'album, is two dull tones of gray harmonized with tender pinks and beiges, and enlivened by reds, a flashing orange accent, a red heightened with black, and a green and orange accord.11 La tapisserie (fig. 3): With her left hand a young woman embroiders her yarns on the stretched canvas; on her knee her right hand holds a skein of yarn from which strands hang down to the balls of yarn in the basket. Between the weaver and the window, the curtain of which is being drawn back by the two hands of a young girl, a bush of flowering branches intervenes. Opposite the young woman, another child of whom we see only the upper torso. The only particularity, a large black area on which a bright red arabesque stands out.12 Le corsage rayé (fig. 1): Two women are smelling flowers arranged in vases. A child enters in the rear. The general effect, here more condensed, appears all the more precious. The new feature would be, along with a yellow and pink flash in the upper right, a woven patch of red and beige.1

The New Extreme Experimental American Poetry and Arts: Holzer's "Projects" & "Movies & Classes at Guantanamo"

"Like Putting Lipstick on a Pig"


Guantanamo Detainees Offered Classes and Movies

A Poem Using Found Quotations from Reviews, Newspaper Articles, Artist & Gallery Statements & Images

from the ongoing series
The New Extreme Experimental American Poetry and Arts


For decades American "avant-garde" poetry has detached the military meaning of "avant-garde" from that of the arts.
Te early founding 20th Century Avant-Gardes" were based on this connection made by a shared use of the term--Itlain Futurism embraced "War, the world's hygiene"
Dada began as an anti-War, anti-All Institutions Sound Poetry Scream and Rant Performance.

For decades the American Avant-Garde has pretended to be "resisting" the system which it works for by amputating its connection with the military meaning of Avant-Garde.

Taking refuge in Formalist gestures & games, there is no "resistance," but instead nothing but reflections--a Hall of Mirrors of self-obsessed self-promoting "poets and artists" who also are the reflections of the society in which they "work" and "contemplate" and "produce."

The New Extreme Experimental American Poetry is an ongoing project to find, examine and present the ways in which the torture, Apartheid, illegal surveillance, massive disinformation practised by the State is reflected rather than resisted by the "avant-garde" American poetries & arts.

The massive turning of language into Newspeak and Doubletalk, Sophistry is born of the effort to deny that what exists exists, so that one may have "clean hands," and become the citizens of any Totalitarian State are taught to be, blithely unaware and unconcerned with the daily Horrors, Genocides, Ethnic Cleansings they would otherwise see is happening all around them, instead of unquestioningly supporting a great deal of these.



Detainee wearing light proof goggles & sound proof headphones



Much has been learned about media outreach to hearts and minds since Vietnam 1963, Holzer’s “Projections” Show

"Bean bag chairs are becoming more and more widespread in the world of business as research companies have declared them conducive to a more productive environment than regular chairs."

Today new methods, influenced by the corporate world and the increased focus on the nexus of language and high-tech imagery, screens and projections, offer a much wider range of means for reaching the hearts and minds of workers at all levels of the corporate-State-military complex, insuring an ever smoother transition into the functioning of the individual within a language centered program designed for maximum control while ensuring the greatest degree of comfort and creativity. To attain the equilibrium of these is, indeed, to balance the scales of poetic justice.  Language is the key to the New Sentencing guidelines.

"There is nothing that bean bag chairs cannot do."

 

"Companies have recognized the fact that a more comfortable and less formal place to work actually encourages people to up their work rate as well as enabling creativity to flourish."

The Associated Press, interview with Army Col. Bruce Vargo

 

Vargo, who commands the military's Joint Detention Group at Guantanamo, says it is important to give the detainees more to look forward to each day.

Some of the best-behaved detainees now get TV night, with DVDs of movies and TV shows shown on a high-definition Sony TV. A classroom in Camp 4, designated for the most compliant detainees, has metal desks and plastic chairs, although detainees remain shackled by the leg to the floor in class.

Language courses have begun in English, Arabic and Pashto, Vargo said in the interview last week. He intends to soon offer classes on subjects as diverse as oceanography.

"If we can get them to focus on humanities programs, if we can get them to focus on recreation, then their sole focus is not going to be on the guard force," Vargo said. "It is my thought that if they are focused on those things, then the level of assaults and things of that nature will go down."

In it, the artist projects words onto the walls, ceiling, and floor of the football field-sized gallery,  while patrons are invited to lounge in giant silver bean bag chairs and take it all in. Jenny Holzer's installation "Projections,"  . . .  is a fluid, magical piece, with projected poetry sweeping across the football-field-size gallery. . . . the piece is a flood of light and language spilling over the beamed surfaces of the building, and intermittently blinding the spectator. The result is almost unviewable . . .  but truthfully it's a little hard to read the poem texts, though I'm not complaining

                                                      Holzer designed enormous beanbags for the show, to be

 scattered around the floor of the space

.

Others sprawled about on several enormous bean bag couches kicking back and trying to read and absorb the slw scroll of text projected with blinding intensity from both ends of a vast space about the dimensions of a double football field.

 

"Holzer's spectacle tends toward aestheticized politics ,the power of which is in its overwhelming scales and the subjugation of the viewer."  . . .
they sweep back and forth across the space from projectors at both ends, elongating illegibly along the side walls.

The room is massive — almost the size of a soccer field — so it's a bit like stepping into the opening sequence of the Star Wars films

 . . .  the slow scroll of text projected with blinding intensity from both ends of a vast space
about the dimensions of a double football field.

 

a

You may not realize at first that you are part of the installation, as illuminated text from the other end rolls up and over your body, glaring as it hits you in the eye.The only objects are large beanbag chairs on the floor, inviting you to lie down and enjoy the light show.

It's a magical experience, and that's partly because of the interior setting.

We walk across the room, back to the entrance, and stand in the doorway. The words are small and legible as they emerge from the floor, then stretch and distort - what Holzer refers to as the "Star Wars thing" -

"Stand at the gallery's entrance, and as poems such as "In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself" scroll upward against the far wall, the effect is epic, like watching the opening text of "Star Wars" at an IMAX theater."

Anyway, the scrolling star wars movie credit like typography art was cool . . .





“What? STAR WARS borrowed from Nazi Propaganda? “

“As you probably know, the above image is from the award ceremony at the end of STAR WARS: A New Hope.



from Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" Lighting Projections by Albert Speer

"There's our composition," Holzer says. "You go in and out of reading text and looking at funny lights. So that's our little trick."

"Ms. Holzer found these documents at the Web site of the independent, nongovernmental National Security Archive (nsarchive.org), which obtained them through the Freedom of Information Act."

The NSA also has its own Jenny Holzer Gallery, with images of one of her texts in a show In Vienna, the words of which are an essay by NSA Director Thomas Blanton on Holzer, which first appeared in "Foreign Policy" magazine.

By using the Archives Holzer is also advertising the Archives, which carry a Gallery of her works using the Archives. A mutual promotional campaign is thus also being waged via the use of the war related documents.

Art Before Power
Jenny Holzer Exhibition Showcases Archive's Documents

12 days before the opening of "Projections" the Archives announced an excellent new Gallery, which has its own unexpected similarities with Holzer's works using the Archives.

Holzer is presenting painted versions of the documents--just as Colin Powell's Power Point presentation to the UN closely preceding the Invasion of Iraq used--paintings of documents.

The Record on CURVEBALL
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 234
Edited by John Prados
Posted - November 5, 2007

Each of 15 same-size, medium-large canvases, stained purple or brown, bears an all-black, silk-screened reproduction of a PowerPoint diagram used in 2002 to brief President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and others on the United States Central Command’s plan for invading Iraq . . .



"The projected poems may relate to these, but truthfully it’s a little hard to read the poem texts"

“Included in this series are maps, originally part of a PowerPoint presentation, that reveal various planning stages prior to the invasion of Iraq. Holzer’s display of maps and documents reveal the bureaucratic administration of war through the cloud of paint and the weight of a looming installation.”

Yet the original documents were ALREADY paintings . . .

and during the arguments over using the information provided by Curveball, when one government official, asserting the government had "proof" of Curveball's "veracity " and "accuracy" was challenged as to where these "proofs" had been found--she replied--"the Internet"--

to which her opponent roared: "Where do you think he (Curveball) found them!!!"




A situation mirrored in Holzer's finding in the Archives the materials she uses for her works which are in honored by a gallery of her works using the Archives--at the Archives' web site.

One of the methods used at Guantanamo is much like that used by Holzer. The detainees are forced to wear for months at a time light-proof goggles, sound-proof headphones. At some point in time, they are snatched out of their blind and deaf solitary confinement cells and subjected to an immense barrage of high intensity pulsing lights--not unlike the "Projections" which viewers find "blinding" and "unviewable," with words "illegible." This is combined with the blasting of super high decibel sounds, music, noise.

The detainee is subjected to a reenactment within Walls of the experience of "Shock and Awe" of the original "Shock and Awe" bombardments of Iraq and Afghanistan.

As Naomi Klein explains in her great book "The Shock Doctrine," these techniques are applied to persons and entire countries, in order to breakdown, disorient and confuse the "subject" so that while they are in this state, huge changes they would otherwise resist are forced through to completely alter their "realities" according to prepared scripts and programs.

One example Klein uses is the rushed pushing through of the Patriot Act and its hundreds subsequent related bills and actions by the Bush government in the period of "Shock and Awe" immediately following 9/11. While the population is disoriented, Authority can dare to accomplish things it otherwise would not.

Rather than critiquing these methods, Holzer's mirror them--
creating spectators who unquestioningly accept the message of "Authority"--
delivered as a "light show" or as paintings of paintings of "information"--"found on the Internet"--

The eerily similarily phrased praise heaped on Holzer's work then is a reflection of the public's and the critic's recognition of its function as "Authority," to which a mass-mind assent is to be given.

"The Power of the Work" is its reflection of the Work of Power through the uses of lighting and "art" in creating a "reality" in which gallery goers and prisoners begin to approach each other ever more closely in their roles of "spectators" and "captive audiences."

"Power Point" and the "Point of Power" --
to coerce, convince, control--

"The PowerPoint paintings give the impression of a cool, rational, step-by-step logic born of technocratic hubris . . . 

"Kappell had expected to see photographs, hard evidence.  Powell's illustrations weren't proof.  Powell had used artists' conjectures . . . 

Ms. Holzer is practicing a form of political action with these paintings."

" . . .   based on analysts' interpretations of Arabic-to-German-to-English translations of debriefing reports of a manic-depressive defector the Americans had never talked to."

"Without question, her latest acts of protest look strangely elegant and go for wildly high prices"

 

 

 

 

 

this is from the ANNALS OF THE NEW EXTREME EXPERIMENTAL AMERICAN ART & WRITING
except for the first paragraph, by d-b chirot, all texts are taken from reviews of Jenny Holzer's "Projections" exhibit at MassMoCa, which is still showing there.
The amazing similarity of language and images used to describe the show from one reviewer to the next is not a little eerie--
as though the entire spectacle, like those of Riefenstahl and Speer and at Gitmo, is tightly controlled to produce the same effect in everyone, destroying individuality and creating the new mass which, as Naomi Klein writes in The Shock Doctrine, is the patient, the prisoner, the people, who are shocked into a degree zero,become a blank, zombie , a blank page, canvas or screen--
on which the Authoritative artists at the service of the State inscribe and display the subjection of the person, the people, to the "The Triumph of the Will" of the State