Randomness

[marsa]

Bologna, italy - 8th of april 2011

just witnessed a small group of people dressed in Rick Owens from top to toe - cut leather samples and discussing footwear at the Lineapelle fair in Bologna, Italy.

[Faust]

ok so maybe you danes have slimmed down but you still hit that beer and those cigarettes pretty hard. even your queen smokes like a chimney....

i find it pretty hilarious that quite a few most democratic countries still have kings and queens. although i was cracking up at a recent healdine, something like "swedish kind slams princess for not working hard enough."

[lost53]

^Monarchy aside.... I find it down right frightening that democratic countries (pointing directly at the UK & USA), can elect such pathetic and inadequate leaders...

And the choice of the electorate pales into insignificance when looking at from whom you must choose

[cjbreed]

here are a few passages pulled somewhat out of context from the following piece at the institute for advanced studies in culture. its a great essay that i highly recommend. one of many over there. but anyway these 2 passages rang true to what we are discussing and how it relates to the era we live in...

...With the rise of narrow-cast digital media, a revolution something like the one Marx envisioned actually took place—but in the space of representation, not in the land of bricks and mortar and machinery. In that virtual space, the “means of production” simply fell into the hands of the masses. And they proceeded to produce at a furious rate. But the revolution they accomplished wasn’t about workers displacing capitalists; it was about spectators displacing celebrities—it was about “you” being named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.” It was a virtual revolution in the Age of Facebook...

...Haunting the moment of “I can experience whatever I want” is the moment of the shrug, of “what difference does it make?”—of “whatever” in that register. That moment is essential to our mobility among the options. And we need mobility among the options because they are representations—even food and shelter partake of the representational, for how we live and what we eat says so much about us. But just insofar as entities are representational, they are no more than they appear to be. And so they are never enough. And so we move on—choosing among options, and creating more options, in an open-ended project of perpetual self-construction....

...A traditional left-wing politics, informed by historical depth, was inevitably diminished by the dynamic of optionality. The attendant emphasis on surfaces and intensities was a function of the centrality of virtual revolutionaries, presiding over the flow of their experience in custom-made me-worlds. Their attention was the scarce resource that mattered most and, because they were disposed to surf, surfaces powerful enough to arrest their attention were naturally selected. As the flattery of representation took hold, people felt motivated to coherent action only by something they could consistently “identify with” or, more occasionally, by something so compelling it could not be resisted, at least for as long as the excitement lasted...

...it is clear that the postmodern dynamic has shifted to new terrain. Obama’s Tea Party opponents and their affiliates have become the protagonists in a new political story of their own devising, starring themselves. A new pastiche of surfaces and intensities has arisen as if to mirror and invert the one that Howard Dean pioneered and Obama brought to fruition. In many ways, they are proving even more suited to this kind of public existence. For example, the seamless way the Right deploys its imagery of half-truths and lies (“government takeover” “where is his birth certificate?” “death panels”) testifies to a completely ahistorical sensibility in which the distinction between fact and convenient fiction is not merely blurred but obliterated. We are accustomed to thinking of progressive movements of one kind or another when we think of identity politics, but that is dangerously misleading. Ronald Reagan was the most successful postmodern practitioner we have ever had. His was the vision of the simulacrum that became the “real America,” the guiding light on the Right ever since...

...Consider all the outlandish costumes, the signs, the atmosphere of carnival—sometimes it’s an intensity of rage, sometimes of weepy nostalgia. But, either way, these aging representatives of Nixon’s silent majority are silent no more. They have joined the postmodern age at last—in the very act of refusing to be silent, in the very act of putting on their show. It is no accident that, from a sufficiently disinterested distance, they look like something Abby Hoffman might have thrown together for a Yippie happening back in 1969. As striking an instance of political specular doubling as you could ask for. And despite the relentless emphasis on history, the references to it are a breathtakingly shallow exercise in depthless surfing that might have been designed to illustrate the basic Jamesonian concepts. Could there be a trope more completely bereft of historicity, a more shameless exercise in pastiche than Congressman Todd Akin’s widely circulated account of the first Thanksgiving as a moment when the pilgrim fathers repudiated socialism?

[Shucks]

i find it pretty hilarious that quite a few most democratic countries still have kings and queens. although i was cracking up at a recent healdine, something like "swedish kind slams princess for not working hard enough."

For the record: I agree that it is absurd. I'm an active republican (not as in 'supporter of the US Republican party, but as in anti-monarchy).

[lost53]

I am not a royalist.. and agree it is absurd, however in all of the countries I am aware of UK,NL and Sweden they are just a token family without any real political sway.... So all in all, especially in the current scheme of things..not a big issue.
The big issue is the elected guys that can barely string two words together in an interview, and let alone in a political debate... i.e David Cameron, and without any personal political view or direction. The chap is neither left or right, and is clearly out of his depth!! Most of his previous P.M's wether I agreed with their political agenda or not.. at least they had one, and had some sort of conviction to their job. One who appears to come close would be the labour leader that bluffed his way through the 60's (Wilson), although even he with all his blunders made some worthwhile changes in the society he was ultimately responsible for...

[Faust]

I know it's not a big issue. Otherwise, I would write "serious" instead of "hilarious." I think it's just funny (except in the UK, where it costs the taxpayers millions of pounds, if I understand correctly).

[Faust]

here are a few passages pulled somewhat out of context from the following piece at the institute for advanced studies in culture. its a great essay that i highly recommend. one of many over there. but anyway these 2 passages rang true to what we are discussing and how it relates to the era we live in...

...With the rise of narrow-cast digital media, a revolution something like the one Marx envisioned actually took place—but in the space of representation, not in the land of bricks and mortar and machinery.

I am sorry, but you lost me right there, chief.

[lost53]

I am sorry, but you lost me right there, chief.

Too drunk for this one...I'll have a look tomorrow!

[theetruscan]

Every day I ski, life gets better. I've skied a lot this season.

[lazyguru]

I wish Rick used 2 way zippers on his leather's , I always look like I have a gut when zipped all the way!

[cjbreed]

I am sorry, but you lost me right there, chief.

i dunno makes sense to me. the essay starts like this:


What all media, all representations—from street signs to photographs to emoticons—have in common is this: they pay attention to you, they address you. Sometimes generically, as with street signs, sometimes precisely, as with person-specific ring tones. And all that attention is flattering—indeed, it is a form of flattery so pervasive, and so essential to the nature of representation, that it has escaped notice as such, though it ultimately accounts for the oft-remarked narcissism of our time. The very process by which reality and representation become fused in the age of the simulacrum is delivered to our psyches by the flattery of representation. We have been consigned by it to a new plane of being, a new kind of life-world, an environment of representations of fabulous quality and inescapable ubiquity, a place where everything is addressed to us, everything is for us, and nothing is beyond us anymore.

During the mass-media age (roughly co-extensive with the modernist period), the hidden blandishments of representational flattery were already at work. Broadcast representations were implanting in anonymous spectators a desire for public significance commensurate with their unconscious sense of centrality—for it was, after all, to them that all performances were addressed. But celebrities were monopolizing public attention, gorging on it. The most basic of specifically human needs—the need for acknowledgment, for significance, for a place in the world—was left unsatisfied. Spectators were craving, however inchoately, their fair share of that attention. All that was lacking were the means. Until recently.

This is a piquant historical irony that would reward more extensive examination than can be given here

then it says right here what he meant by "revolution".


In that virtual space, the “means of production” simply fell into the hands of the masses. And they proceeded to produce at a furious rate. But the revolution they accomplished wasn’t about workers displacing capitalists; it was about spectators displacing celebrities—it was about “you” being named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.” It was a virtual revolution in the Age of Facebook..

its a good essay u should just read it

this stuff may have more to do with whats being discussed over in ethics / esthetics thread...

[HWith]

I went clubbing last saturday and was wearing a white tshirt instead of the usual all black gear. It's interesting how colors changes the way people see you. Usually when I'm wearing all black people compliment me saying I look 'good' or 'cool' and the occasional drunk girl tells me I'm 'hot'. Wearing a white t-shirt these compliments changed to you 'nice' and 'cute' and have such a 'good vibe'. It's hard to describe, but it was actually pretty clear. Apparently black = bad ass, white = sweet and nice.

Another thing. What is it about people wearing sunglasses inside clubs? Do they think they're fucking P Diddy or something? Not only does it look pretentious and ridiculous, I'm pretty sure they can't see shit in the dimly lit rooms either..

[endersgame]

i just got my tax return done by this woman from madrid with the sexiest spanish accent...

it was like penelope cruz doing my taxes...wonderful!

[Fade to Black]

that sounds like the premise for a Woody Allen movie.