Born Free – MIA’s Poetry After Guantanamo

A piece written before this week’s release of Bad Girls, coming out soon in Social Identities. Abstract: The recent work of the Sri-Lankan-British musician and sonic ‘curator’ known as M.I.A. (real name: Mathangi Arulpragasam) is considered as a commentary on atrocity and read alongside the well known essay ‘The Storyteller’ by Walter Benjamin and comments [...]

trinketing

So, the trite thing to ask is ‘What would Benjamin have to say about the Boxing Day sales?’ If you think that the Arcades equation goes: Capitalism > Paris > Arcades > Flaneur > Snowdome then you have probably missed the entire premise. Condensation is not all that goes on here – the world is [...]

11 theses on art and politics…

(…continued – parts 2 & 3 - Part one was Do Bee Do Bee Doo: here). 2. The ‘secret omnipresence of resistance’ is Adorno’s enigmatic turn of phrase in The Culture Industry for a subtle judgement on art and politics. ‘It is a delicate question whether the liquidation of aesthetic intrication and development represents the liquidation [...]

Marcuse

LENIN’S TOMB has posted a Danish documentary about Marcuse, his support for the radical movements of the 1960s, and his clash with Governor Ronald Reagan. It includes commentary by people like his student Angela Davison (on his involvement helping kick down doors in occupations of the university senate at UCSD etc) , and he himself [...]

Long Sunday

This blogger blogging on blogety bloggery is elegant at the end, and starts off with choice Teddy, the cuddly critic who is always super sharp, like the razor’s used so well on Sunday Too Far Away. short sunday long – by CR “jane dark’s sugarhigh not only has some swift Adorno for us (especially good [...]