Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: advertisements, architecture, bernard tschumi, desire, ghost of petrodollar bubble past, meteorological eschatology, music, snowpocalypse, space
[via we find wildness]
There is no way to perform architecture in a book. Words and drawings can only produce paper space, not the experience of real space. By definition, paper space is imaginary: it is an image
Advertisements for Architecture (1976-7): a great series of postcard sized text-image juxtapositions from architect Bernard Tschumi. The accompanying text says, “Each was a manifesto of sorts, confronting the dissociation between the immediacy of spatial experience and the analytical definition of theoretical concepts”. Wonderful as these are, I don’t know that most people experience architecture through words and images—paper, and now the screen—as opposed to in physical space. Unless architecture cannot be experienced only from the outside, but requires actually traversing the space. This, or some sort of aesthetic hierarchy that relegates some structures as just being ‘buildings’, and not ‘architecture’. (more…)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: battle of algiers, bones, crass, dubai, francois robert, ghost of petrodollar bubble past, headspace, mount kimbie, music, photography, posters, punk, skeletons, zines
The weather’s really been turning lately, and with it comes new music. Or, new-old music—I’m currently reacquiring most of that late 80s extended dischord family turn to post hardcore. (And at that, can’t find Embrace anywhere). It’s not quite right though, and older hardcore and crust still seems a little too abrasive for the moment. Suggestions please? Otherwise it’s been a lot of dubstep, or post-dubstep, or whatever people are calling it lately. This weekend I saw Mount Kimbie at Public Assembly quite by accident – the first gig I’ve ben to in I don’t know how long. I don’t think I even know how to just listen to music anymore, nevermind obsessively live and consume. (more…)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: berlin, breaching the vortex, columbia, cortex, dead time, dispatchwork, dubai, eminent domain, flipper, gentrification, ghost of petrodollar bubble past, hardcore, jan vormann, occupation, open the gate, punk, the future
The picture above is from the Berlin that I won’t be revisiting in June – I think it’s from the alleyway/courtyard leading to Central Kino? Couldn’t agree/hope for more perhaps – capitalism is pretty much ‘civilised cannibalism’ anyways. Ditto with ecocide – I have issues with the “Earth-my-mother” vibe – but it seems that hyperconsumption and death-by fossil fuels looks a bit cannibalistic? And sorcery – I don’t remember where from but Paul Bohannon has opined that “men attain power by consuming the substance of others”. (For a desktop sticky note tells me so – I sense my life would implode slightly if the program ever crumbles). I’ve been thinking a lot about magic/sorcery and links to power and art lately following a recent final (and via Zerzan’s ‘Case Against Art’ – hopefully not the beginning of an awkward green-team foray) – more on this later perhaps. Also from Berlin though, this time to patch up the gaps of the past (not that the vortex hasn’t been breached already) is this lego brick project I’m really digging:
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anthropology, brownbook, dead time, deira, dubai, estrangement, evan collisson, expat anxiety, future gutter status, ghost of petrodollar bubble past, headspace, karama, skateboarding, summer, uae
Dubai again and a strange affection for a city that I guess is my home, little as it does want me here. Jobs here seem impossible at first hunt, perhaps I should look to skip and dip on standby tickets for the next two months? I will definitely be in Cairo (and not Berlin) for a fortnight sandwiched in June, and Kashmir/Mumbai for the first 2-3 weeks of July. Hopefully finding an affordable (!) sublet in NYC for August and couchsurfing for the last dredges of July til I can inshallah move in. My life is currently packed into six boxes in the radio station – I fascinatingly had five last year and four the year before. I suspect the number could go down though as I have scores of books to disperse (like theory, like cats) into the atmosphere, and several boxes lined with wake-up-an-hour-before-kickout-time dump and run panic. [you can't go home again..]
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1920s androgyny, baldness, batman, constellations, crass, elephant, ghost of petrodollar bubble past, herbert bayer, octopus, pink trash, planes, saturdays of the crass, signs, utopia, word on the street
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Saturdays of the Crass? More than a little cheesy perhaps, yeah. (This is from their 1979 album ‘Stations of the Crass’, their second, and the first my young (13ish?) self ever came across). Crass were amazing, and really important, probably the first band that launched me into political, and especially anarch@ and peace punk. (I love that in typing Spanish, and probably Italian and other romance languages too(?) you can degender a word or avoid the awkward o/a endings with just ‘@’). And along with it a crystallisation (of sorts) of ideology, I suppose. Yeah, Crass are a longish (or perhaps long winded) story, so I’ll leave it with these two for today: |
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, chintzy chintzy cheeriness, dubai, fugazi fridays, future gutter status, ghost of petrodollar bubble past, thaili distro
As of late, and lots of them. In wasting time in Dubai I have discovered that the internet has a lot of pictures. I might do these every day, possibly repping the bands that got me through said teenage years in the petrodollar bubble, then (and now? save for the elite end) cultural wasteland and what have you. Today could be ‘fugazi fridays, then? If and when I feel more motivated maybe I’ll write about the bands in question too. I always did want to be a music journalist when I grew up (Almost Famous and that scene singing Tiny Dancer on the bus contributed greatly to this!), which is probably where APPLECORPS and the distro came about. Uni paper music editors probably squished that fairly effectively, though maybe worth restarting?
