We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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In the week of the increasingly embarrassing Turner Prize, here (I found it via these people) is news of some art that Samizdata can really get behind:
Since 1998 Italian artist Antonio Riello has been making very special weapons as artworks. Assault rifles, pistols, machine guns, carbines, sub-machine guns, hand grenades, rocket launchers and any kind of contemporary military guns are restyled by the artist as high fashion accessories for sophisticated ladies.
And for a certain sort of gentleman, I’m guessing. (Although those ball and chain things at the top of the picture collection don’t look to me like they’re for self defence at all.)
Weapons from all over the World are used: American M16, Russian Kalashnikov, Israelian UZI, Italian Beretta and many others. Recently also armours in steel, plastic and Kevlar are made to protect ladies against urban dangers.
Globalisation. Good.
In this artproject the glamour of fashion system is mixed with the common perverse and morbid fascination for weaponry.
Yeah yeah. They have to say that.
These works – made using leopard skins, brightly lacquered colours, jewels, furs, trendy fabrics and special technological appliances – play along the thin line between fashion and trash.
Miami Vice aesthetics you might say.
LADIES WEAPONS are a sort of hybrids born from the most outstanding contemporary Italian features: the obsession for personal security and the passion for elegance and fashion.
I would have preferred passion for personal security and obsession for elegance and fashion, but like I say, they have to say that guns are bad. This is Italy remember, not Arizona.
Every artwork has a name of a woman (“CLAUDIA”, “TAMARA”,….) and exists only in one exemplar.
Where is allowed the artist uses real weapons, in the countries where is forbidden artworks are based on perfect replicas.
“Where is allowed.” There’s your problem. And of course, “perfect replicas” are only allowed “where is allowed” also. This art is presumably illegal wherever replica guns are flaunted in places “where is not allowed”. Oh well, it all adds to the buzz.
My guess is that the Art Nazis, to coin a phrase, won’t allow this stuff to qualify, because it is itself far, far too “obsessive” about guns to be allowed into polite Euro-society. As “art”, it will never catch on. It’s typical Euro-trash half-baked goodness/uselessness, in other words. More work is needed.
This guy should stop titting about with “only in one examplar” nonsense, go to America, and mass produce these things. Forget art. Embrace the gun culture, and help to make it (even more) fashionable.
When he gets there, he will course have to deal with the fact that in America they presumably have a lot of this kind of kit already, selling healthily (not to say obsessively), with no thought of art at all.
(By the way, and flying off at somewhat of a tangent, “Art Nazis” is a phrase I recently invented, which I think may have a future. I say invented, but I googled for it after thinking of it for myself, and I did find this use of the phrase, to describe the idiot/villain art critic at the centre of Tom Wolfe’s splendid little book The Painted Word.)
Lawrance M. Bernabo, Amazon reviewer #2 with 6700 reviews behind him faces a Hamletesque (Hamletian?) dilemma:
To review, or not to review: that is the question:
Whether ’tis better to post reviews and cover
The pros and cons of action figures,
Or to write reviews about best sellers,
And by reviewing diss them? To critique: to review;
No more; and have a life again we end
The long-nights and the thousand misspeeled words
and buy things instead, ’tis a consumption
Amazon devoutley wish’d. To critique, to review;
To review: perchance be voted: Yeah, there’s the fun;
For in those votes for reviews what ranking may come
Whence we may achieve a cute little badge,
Must make us crazed: such obsession
Surely makes such big time fun of reviewing life;
For who would bear the wit and scorns of posts,
The counter review, the second page oblivion,
The pangs of negative votes, posting delay,
The insolence of edits and revisions
The steady rise of the unworthy reviewer,
When anyone might their ascension make
With some extra accounts? who would freebies take,
To read and review someone’s new book,
But that the fun of something never reviewed,
The undiscover’d product for the nounce
No reviews critique, inspires the mind
And makes us rather review everything we have
Than review those things that we know not of?
Thus ranking does make competitors of us all;
And thus the constant cry re: ranking
Is debated o’er with constant call for reform,
And reviews of great length and insight
With words counts the elves judge too high,
Do lose the chance of posting.– Submit you more!
Fair Amazon.com! Jeff, on thy pages
Be all my reviews spotlighted.
We conclude that he needs a blog. Now!
Via Many-2-Many
The time of year has arrived for the annual Turner Prize for modern art: an exhibition of dreary, talentless, post-modernist rubbish fawned over and slobbered upon by a carnival procession of dreary, talentless, post-modernist critics, groupies, poseurs and assorted hangers-on (lots of ‘dog-turd-in-a-bottle’ type installations, hailed as a ‘devastating social critique’).
I don’t care who won it or why but I could not possibly let this scandalously hypocritical bit of dreck pass by without comment:
Described by some critics as “a deeply weird artist”, Perry makes classically shaped pots, which now fetch between £8,000 and £15,000.
But his decorative motifs – transfers, photographs and squiggly drawings – are anything but traditional. Inspired mostly by what he calls his unhappy childhood in Essex after his father left home, many are scenes of child abuse or erotica or angry social comment on class or the consumer culture.
Obviously the ‘deeply weird’ Mr Perry is so angry about ‘consumer culture’ that he could not possibly let one of his home-made pots go for less than 8000 smackers!
Not only am I trying to cope with the steady flow of work related parties that have started to appear in my diary in the run up to Christmas, but I agreed to go out on Friday with Andrew Dodge to the Monster Magnet launch party at the Barfly in Camden, not that it takes much persuading when there is free beer and good music on the agenda. We were treated to a live set from Monster Magnet, and if you have ever been to the Barfly you will know it is not a big place, so it was a real treat considering they were playing the Forum the next day (and that’s a big place). As Andrew points out in his posting covering the same gig we were mixing with the likes of Kelly Osbourne and Die So Fluid , however what he does not mention is that he had the hots for Grog, their lead singer,
so we spent a large proportion of the night chatting to her, not that I was complaining until the next day when I discovered I had lost my voice.
The following night was spent at the Brixton Academy watching The Darkness play. Again I was with Andrew with the added value of Anna of leather catsuit fame from the bloggers party, although this time it was not planned as we had both got tickets separately. I have seen them live before, and they did not disappoint on a second viewing. Their mixture of Rock and Irony (give me a D… Give me an Arkness…) is refreshing in the current world of dance and manufactured pop music you hear on the radio all the time. On the way out we bumped into Nik who had arranged the Monster Magnet party and his voice was worse than mine. At least I was able to talk by Saturday evening!
I linked to this story earlier today on my Culture Blog. And then I had supper at Perry’s earlier this evening, consisting of the leftovers from the Blogger Bash on Saturday, and I told him about it. He laughed, so here it is here. It’s from the Guardian, which has a Strange Things section:
In Romania, local media report that the country’s “first” institution of higher learning, the University of Arts, in Iasi, was the scene of an official investigation this month after police removed the corpse of a man believed to have hanged himself on the campus. Builders and students at the university had initially mistaken it for a modern work of art.
According to Reuters, the body hung for a whole day in a sculpture-laden garden building that had been re-opened for repairs before onlookers twigged to what it was and called the cops.
Cue commenters with stories about how granny went to sleep in Tate Modern and got confused with an exhibit. These are old gags now, in fact they go back to Duchamp’s Urinal, but as long as Art goes on being ridiculous, they will go on being funny.
Jeremy Clarkson’s Top Gear program is, without any shadow of a doubt, the finest piece of current broadcasting on British television; I will brook no argument here. It is also the only place on the BBC where, except for the Hutton affair and the related war against Iraq, fierce dissent against the centralising thrust of New Labour’s Euro-loving socialism is both tolerated and welcomed.
I would love to see Jezzer’s contract, the one he signed a couple of years back, to revive the moribund Top Gear franchise. ‘I want a race track,’ he will have said. ‘I want a large garage-cum-showroom for a studio, and I want to make as many closet libertarian and anti-Tony Blair statements as I damn well please.’
The BBC won’t have liked it, but with one of their biggest money-spinners, the Top Gear Magazine, in a probable sales decline, without its matching TV series, and programs like the cunningly titled Fifth Gear picking up multi-million sized audiences on rival terrestrial channels, there was only one option for even the BBC, that car-hating, carrot munching, First Class train riding, pampered elite of Old West London town. Even with the compulsory tithe of the BBC license fee, even they, the chosen ones, have to sometimes make programs which Jonny Englander, at home with his shotguns and his bulldogs, might actually want to watch, to stop them turning off the BBC altogether in favour of such exotic delights as Men and Motors. → Continue reading: Jeremy Clarkson: Surely God in disguise
A small independent label in Great Britain, Loca Records, is reversing the traditional record industry business model. It is giving the rights to the artists – and anyone else who wants to use the music, too.
The idea is to foster experimentation and freedom in music by building a stable of free music which can be shared, remixed and manipulated by anyone. Songs are not locked by digital rights management technology.
Artists earn a percentage of any record sales; Loca Records makes its money through record sales, gigs it promotes and merchandise. David Berry, managing director of Loca Records and an artist himself, known as Meme says:
You’re free to copy it, give it to your friends and you can play it. If you’re really interested, you can sample it and then re-release it. Because at the end of the day, if you sample the work and create a fantastic remix, we think you’re entitled to try and make some money from it.
Loca Records licenses its music using Creative Commons and offers free copyright licenses to anyone who wants to share his work with the public while reserving some rights. Using these licenses, Loca Records permits anyone to copy and distribute the content, make derivative works and sell it, as long as they attribute the work to the original creator and distribute it under the same “share alike” license.
I do worry that copyright is getting out of control. This gives us an opportunity to create a new culture and a new sound. If we are greedy and we lock down our culture now, there will be nothing for the next generation.
Apparently, some artists at first do not know what to make of the new type of contract, but once they understand how it works, their response turns to positive.
There are others that are experimenting with new forms of music distribution and collaboration. Magnatune, an independent label in Berkeley, California, also offers music for download and sharing, and Opsound invites any musician to submit songs to its website, where others can listen, share and remix them. Both labels license the music using Creative Commons.
As David Kusek of the Berklee College of Music points out, historically, building upon one another’s music was common. Jazz, in particular, was based on improvisation, theme and variation and “who could outdo each other” with each interpretation of a piece.
It was the differences that were more interesting. We lost a lot of the spontaneity that was inherent in music when it became a package that could be stamped a million times and resold. The existing labels of the last 50 or 60 years have been all about controlling the expression, the packaging, the distribution and the scarcity of the music in order to turn a profit. That forced music to be defined as a product. It can be a product, but in its pure form it’s entertainment.
I am all in favour of new business model for the record industry. The reason for the falling profits is not just by-passing of copyright and licenses by their customers but ridiculous pricing and distribution of their product. Let’s hope artists take notice.
Music is a very subjective thing and so it is hard to say something is ‘good’ music without adding what that really means is that it is good for me. I had assumed for quite some years that the fact I regarded almost all the popular music I heard on the radio or TV as dismal crap was more indicative that I had reached a certain age where I was just perminently out of phase with younger tastes, rather than some sudden collective inability of the modern pop music industry to be creative… No, it had to be me. Maybe 10 years ago there was a narrow tributary off the seething mainstream that I could swim in musically, but that was clearly no longer the case.
Well, maybe not. Whilst wandering past the Virgin Megastore on the King’s Road in Chelsea yesterday I heard what sounded like a rather danceable bit of vaguely sinister pop/darkwave/electronica that sucked me into the shop irresistibly.
Upon asking at the desk what was being played, I was surprised to discover it was a track called Vertigo (extended mix), which is a remix of bubblegum popstress par excellence Holly Valance‘s latest song ‘State of Mind’ on a CD EP single. It sounds like Siouxsie & The Banshees (think ‘cities in dust’) being morphed with Kylie at her most virally and annoyingly catchy… yeah, yeah, I know… hard to imagine. I bought the extended play CD single and slunk out into the street worrying about the state of my ‘cred’… and have been unable to stop playing it since.
Anyway, I guess it is nice to know that, circa 2003, a teen singer in a tiny skirt can front something that brings a pleasing snarl even to the lips of a doomed and jaded old geezer such as myself… plus I rather liked the delightfully arrogant and essentially meaningless video for ‘State of Mind’ on the CD. Ah the joys of Western civilisation.
Holly does darkwave, sort of… and surprisingly well
Australian pop singer and possessor of one of the world’s finest rear ends, Kylie Minogue, says she is shocked and aghast at the amount of sex in today’s pop culture.
I am rather partial to the Aussie songstress, so I won’t be cruel but, bejeesus, on what planet has the lovely lass been residing these past few years? A convent? Ever since the days of Jazz, Blues and the rest, sex and All That has been central to pop music. That is why the ‘moral’ scolds are always against it.
Oh well, next we will be hearing from the Pope on how he is shocked at how Christianity has got too much stuff about miracles and Jesus in it. Or how there is too much contemplating of violence in the armed forces.
Kylie strikes a demure pose to discourse on sex, of all things!
It sucks.
Really, really sucks.
Mark Steyn has a equally damning review of the film in this week’s Spectator (no link, I am afraid) where he also has no time for the portentous, and pretentious, manner in which everyone speaks:
“I’m afraid hope is an indulgence I don’t have time for”. Or maybe “Indulgence is a hope I don’t have time for”. Or “time is a hope I don’t have indulgence for”. Makes no difference. It’s modular furniture.
Oh, and plenty of cod theology, just like in the last one…
The only good moment in the film is during the fight between Neo and Agent Smith who angrily and hatefully asks Neo the big WHY. Why does he fight him, why does he fight at all?! Himself, other people, duty, honour, or even something as insipid as love? The answer is Because I have a choice.
And. you. dear reader. have. a choice. of not. going. to see. the film.
One of the many hats and t-shirts I wear is that of the National Space Society (NSS). We need a cultural component to our spaceward movement. It is not just to bind the ‘oldtimers’ together. We must spread the ‘frontier meme’ where it is extinct and nurture it where it still lives. It takes more than talk to do this. It takes art.
Prometheus Music in conjunction with NSS will soon release To Touch The Stars. It is now available for pre-release order.
I think this is a fascinating site, specialising in before-and-after plastic surgery star photos, which I found via one of my regular favourites, b3ta.com. “Crap plastic surgery”, they call it, but I say that there’s a bit more to all this than just the chance to jeer at silly celebs with fat lips and boobs that go in an out from one year to the next. As always, where the celebs go now, millions more will follow.
One of my absolute favourites, Meg Ryan, as is pointed out at the site itself, has been made to look like Susan Dey (of LA Law fame). I adore both these ladies, but even so, what Ryan has done to herself is to me off-putting. She’s just not Meg Ryan any more, which I suppose it the whole idea. Presumably Meg Ryan was fed-up with making dark, serious, scary, explosive movies, packed with implausible action and profound human wickedness, and everyone saying “We preferred you in When Harry Met Sally“, so she decided to smash up her original face and change herself into something else.
When I first saw the MR “trout pout” on the cover of a trashy made-up-news-mag, I thought, ugh!! But maybe the magazines had photoshop-enhanced it. According to this it’s not too bad.
However, according to this, she’s turned herself into Molly Ringwald.
What Britain’s TV equivalent of Meg Ryan, Leslie Ash, has had done to herself is, however, truly scary. Google google. See what I mean.
What makes the Ryan and Ash lipo-enhancements so unnerving is that we’ve got used to these ladies with their regular faces. So when you see them now, you can’t forget that that isn’t the real shape of their faces and they’ve got bits of their bums in there. That’s not good.
And would you believe: Al Pacino? He seems to have said: “Make me look more like Dustin Hoffman!”
On the face of it this is all down-market tittle-tattle of the trailer-trashiest sort, of interest to the kind of lunatics who (like me) enjoy all the mad rubbish that b3ta links to, but to nobody else. But as so often with b3ta there’s deadly serious stuff in among the photoshopped squirrels with eagle-heads and pictures of weird people with huge eyes for no reason. It’s clear that something very profound is going on with our culture here. We have entered the age of the artificial body.
What’s going on? It starts with the obvious, which is that people who now want to change their bodies now can change their bodies.
It reminds me a bit of what Alice Bachini was blogging about yesterday, which got a lot of admiring attention. That posting was about a person changing their entire voice and become a different person, without necessarily meaning to. With plastic surgery, you change your entire look, and become a different person while very much meaning to, in much the same way that Meg Ryan seems to want to be a different sort of actress.
The strangest transformation of all which I found at Awful Plastic Surgery is that the charming Marie Osmond has had herself re-engineered into the monstrous Ruby Wax. Why would anyone want to make that transition? The answer is probably: she didn’t. Plastic surgery is still only a bet that it will turn out better than before rather than worse. (Ask Leslie Ash!) But already it’s a bet that millions are placing.
Personally I think it is all most undignified, like changing your name because you don’t like the one you’ve got.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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