Re: [-empyre-] Do You Still Own Your Reality? (forwarded from Geri Wittig)

["tobias c. van Veen" <tobias@techno.ca>]

Although sometimes I feel the stealth approach, unless as disguised as the
ultimate model, the mythical Hashasheen, is simply an excuse for faking the
chameleon and reaping the benefits of the system while espousing its
downfall. The latest Parachute magazine, for example, very much favours a
definition of artist-as-producer, often argued in the name of philosophies
such as Deleuze's, which self-congratulatorily ridicules early positions of
counterculturalists (the '60s) as well as the avant-garde. Both easy targets
these days when you get to digitize and disseminate your cake and then
re-order it online to-your-door too.

I'd be interested in hearing more about 'The Society of the Spectacle' remix
I saw in Paris by the Dept of Art & Technology including Trace Reddell ..

In some ways it treads this line: its "light" sampling of Debord's difficult
film (infamous, but at points as dull as fascinating, like most of his often
infuriatingly brilliant cinema) is as flashy as advertising yet incorporates
a sense of movement and rhythm so lacking in the heavy-handedness of a
strict counter- approach (Marxist, etc.). Yet I remain divided: its impact
is substantially less than Debord's; its equivalence is almost that of a
commercial -- too fast, too quick, it loses its sense of discourse (and I'm
not sure what the discourse running across the bottom was really trying to
tell me: were the detournements of Debord's writing meant to be mock parody
or serious?)/ // the work's ambivalence I feel is also part of this '90s
strategy that has seen some kind of confrontation with the big
eschatological meltdown .. I won't go so far as to say, like the Right, that
there is a line in the sand ('with us or against us'), but that rather
ambivalence itself maintains, like Nader, that ever slim, threatening
margin... 

Oooh, the excitement is building for November, isn't it? What will happen?
Another "attack"? Will it hit level Red? Will Kerry really be able to win?
And who will be there to write the obituary to the American Dream now that
HST has retreated to Owl Farm to drink away the oblivion? Who will pen that
vicious, brutal lament if Bush moves to consolidate his throne?

Well, at least we've got Michael Moore. Is he the HST of the 21C?

Geesh.


tV

> I think there's a very clear understanding of the power of the media
> and has been for a long time in academic, publishing, art, media,
> etc. fields. I just don't think this "rhetoric" is effectual, in my
> opinion it's not shedding any new light. I think this strategy echoes
> a political activist art practice that worked well in the 80's and
> early 90's, but we're in a different even more media savvy time that
> I think demands an even more stealth approach.
> 
> geri wittig
> 
> 
>> The statement was posed rhetorically, clearly not everyone is asleep...
>> 
>> The problem is: 45% of the country can't be awakened from their
>> hypnosis. They will vote for Bush even if he is campaigning for the
>> apocalypse (which, by the way he is). If the rest of us are
>> searching for ways to confront our "nation of robotic brethren," to
>> quote Abe Golam, we must have a better understanding the power of
>> the media as the opiate of the masses.
>> 
>>> ----------
>>> 
>>> From: Geri Wittig <gwittig@adobe.com>
>>> Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2004 08:35:17 -0700
>>> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Do You Still Own Your Reality?
>>> 
>>> I completely understand the sentiment of this post - the Bush opposition
>>> movement in this country has been critiquing the power of the misinformation
>>> and fear mongering that comes out of the Bush administration - this is not a
>>> new observation and has been duly noted for years. I watched the
>>> Cheney/Edwards debate and had the same analysis of Cheney's uncanny ability
>>> to hypnotically put forth inaccuracies that an uninformed public would take
>>> at face value without question, but to lump all of "America's reality" into
>>> one basket is a disservice to the many in the trenches who have been
>>> fighting the good fight to oppose the Bush administration in all of it's
>>> varied negative policy impacts upon the world. For example, in these last
>>> few weeks of this campaign, the work that many grassroots voter registration
>>> efforts have been doing are showing results - the late voter registration
>>> has been surging. A friend of mine who recently moved to North Carolina, a
>>> Republican stronghold, informed me that late voter registration is running
>>> 60% Democrat, 12% Republican. Yes, we need to continue to critique and point
>>> out the insane "reality" that the Bush administration is trying to pull over
>>> the uninformed American public's eyes, but we need to also acknowlege where
>>> the work in action is gaining some ground. On a psychological level it's
>>> going to be important to help boost any momentum that is being gained by the
>>> Bush opposition, as it's going to be very important for getting out those
>>> left leaning voters who do not support Bush's policies, but who haven't
>>> voted in years because they've become disillusioned with the system and have
>>> gone into inaction. Critique is vital, but without action and
>>> acknowledgement of the successes that that action may be attaining, the
>>> critique is futile.
>>> 
>>> geri wittig
>>> 
>>>>  (((((((((( We the Blog Update: Do You Still Own Your Reality? ))))))))))
>>>> 
>>>>  October 07, 2004
>>>> 
>>>>  The Republicans are heightening the attack, ramping up their spin
>>>>  strategies to reinforce disinformation in order to fool the country
>>>>  into re-election.
>>>> 
>>>>  Straight out of the playbook from Orwell's 1984...
>>>> 
>>>>  They continue to retool their highly refined doublespeak tactics to
>>>>  maintain a stranglehold on the reality of unsuspecting Americans.
>>>> 
>>>>  Have the Republicans co-opted your reality?
>>>> 
>>>>  According to columnist Tina Brown in the Washington Post discussing the
>>>>  VP debate:
>>>> 
>>>>  "Cheney found a more primitive way to bluff with a bad hand... In a
>>>>  culture of blatherers, Cheney intimidates with his silences, his
>>>>  stingers, and above all his awesome capacity to stare down the evidence
>>>>  and assert that black is white."
>>>> 
>>>>  Despite the fact that this week, the administration's own Paul Bremer,
>>>>  Don Rumsfeld, and the weapons investigator Charles Duelfer have all
>>>>  declared the reason's for going to war were deeply flawed,  as well as
>>>>  the so called follow-up plan, Bush and Cheney not only stand their
>>>>  ground, the tighten their tenuous grip on a fictional narrative
>>>>  designed to disguise their true ambition to control the oil-rich middle
>>>>  east.
>>>> 
>>>>  The real issue in this election though, is America going to wake up to
>>>>  the dream (or nightmare) it finds itself in? Can we lift the veil on the
>>>>  disinformation pouring out of the White House. Can we take command of
>>>> our own reality?
>>>> 
>>>>  Or has America's reality been permanently hijacked by the Republicans
>>>>  and their media propaganda machine?
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 
> _______________________________________________
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tobias c. van Veen -----------++++
http://www.quadrantcrossing.org --
http://www.thisistheonlyart.com --
McGill Communication + Philosophy
--- New School Philosophy --------
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