Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: aesthetics, augmented reality, book covers, calligraphy, CIA, documents from the U.S. espionage den, espionage, ettela'at, farsi, graphic design, intelligence, iPhone, iran, iranian, kashmiri, nineteen eighty bore, persian, political, posters, revolution, script, surveillance society, technocracy, typography
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I came across these killer Iranian graphics from Belog today – mostly posters and book covers, and all pretty sick. I don’t speak farsi so I can’t be sure but the one on the left seems to say something like “(her?) song incites/stirs”? Speaking of the script, I taught myself to read it when in Mumbai/Srinagar earlier this summer – it’s pretty close to Arabic, except with a few more letters and joined differently. Which works fine reading Urdu, but Kashmiri not so much – though I do have a fair amount of years before I’d need fluency for PhD research. |
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 3amiya, arabic, athens, fusha, graffiti, intifada, l'insurrection qui vient, lyon, msa, pigs, police, riots, semiotext(e), stencils, street art, surveillance society, tarnac 9, the coming insurrection, translation
[picture from biphop in Lyon]
Or al warida? Some consideration to be made – dictionary in hand – as we look to translate the coming insurrection/l’insurrection qui vient (recently re-translated by Semiotext(e)) to Arabic – hopefully both Fusha/MSA, and the Egyptian colloquial 3amiya.
I’m in Cairo for this month; it’s more than a little overwhelming, but pershaps in a really comforting gulf (pre-emaar and nakheel) meets india way. My own 3amiya is improving a fair bit which is a nice validation of my last summer-of-doom spent (re)learning arabic, perhaps. Next up, perhaps to (de)learn it? I do love the sentiments of these four Athens stencils from Magic Krtek in, from the disciplinary interrment, to anti-semiotic and anti-flic:
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: consumerism, dubai, film, surveillance society, the future, occupy everything, l'insurrection qui vient, brotest, BURP, braxis, tiqqun, comite invisible, university of minnesota, invisible committee, new school in collaboration, beer, sleep dealer, dystopia, electrodes, internet, image, censorship
Ignore the start picture – the video at the end is a Tiqqun one from 2001, and well worth watching. It’s dedicated to the lost children; here’s some other lost children in the hipstershapes of the Bro University Radicalization Project (BURP) which focuses
on redirecting the socially repressive forces of alcohol towards spontaneous anarchy, salutes the snap attack on sober conformity, a non-hierarchical attempt to liberate U spaces in favor of their natural free-form Bro-ness and Duder-tude, with chillaxing required for any kind of mutual aid, Miller or Bud.
This in turn begs the crucial question: BROTEST + BEER(Y) + BRAXIS = BURP??. Tiqqun’s invocation of electrodes is anyway fascinating in that the short was made in 2001, and is uneasily echoed in this year’s dystopian film Sleep Dealer, set in Mexico. I won’t rehash it here, but in brief, it depicts a near-futurist world of hypersurveillance and control, and a hypercapitalism that succeeds in total virtual alienation. Exploited workers thus ‘plug in’ to machines to remotely work across the border in America, through nodes in their bodies – put in by the technified coyoteks (!). The nodes themselves strongly resemble the 1/4 jack holes where you would plug a lead into a guitar or bass – it’s interesting to map this back to the connections that humans have with their own favourite shapes of wood (as opposed to perhaps a forest). In a final cessation of humanity, people can even leech and commodify their own emotions and memories (hello, NGO-industrial) and even plug into each other’s nodes – via a computer of course.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: activism, anarchism, anthropology, arabic, BDS, bebsi bolitics, books, brotest, cairo, dissent, egypt, gender, maps, palestine, space, state security, summer, surveillance society, traces, up the broletariat
No hyperinsightful solutions, unfortunately. I don’t actually know too much about bolitics in Egypt right now at that, though I really should. ‘Egyptian freedoms’ are probably more of an oxymoron than I realise. This illustration though, lovely no? From a 2nd grade Arabic language reader from 1938, it was donated by Christian Awaraji in Beirut 1997, and used to belong to his aunt, Flavie Awaraji who was born in 1938 and died in 1947 in a bicycle accident. Its inside cover reads “This book belongs to the honorable mademoiselle Flavie Awaraji, 11th (2. elementary) 1944, Lycée Français in Beirut”. I am slightly overwhelmed by these kind of traces of unknown people, like forgotten pressed flowers in the pages of old books. Traces of the geographical kind are becoming fascinating too, after burying (bunkering?) self in Paul VIrilio’s work lately (and of course the recycked Weizman fetishisation. I need to segue away from print back to image though, perhaps even film (which shouldn’t fizz out with a castrated film major?)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: halloween, kentucky, surveillance society, war on terror, war on zombies, zombies
Since when did the War on Terror become the War on Zombies? In an especially weird twist, (and so well timed for Halloween!) a high school student from Kentucky has been arrested, and faces felony charges. Why? for writing a short story He got turned in by his grandparents, to boot, and is currently being held at the Clark County Detention Center, under a $5000 bail (raised from a grand, with prosecutors citing the ’seriousness of the charge’).
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, capitalist casualties, cities, consumerism, d*face, macdeath, public art, street art, surveillance society, tattoos
Street improvements of the best kind? This is from D*Face in London, an artist who seems to tread the line between street art and commercial graphic design. I wonder if one always comes before the other? Some of his work is really sick though:
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Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, ☭☭☭, BLF, busan, china, hongdae, kay 2, korea, south korea, street art, surveillance society
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I came across these sick hyperrealist pieces by Kay 2 in Busan, South Korea today over at wooster. The double orange effect on the left too. I can’t tell of the kid is crying against the wall or hiding and counting. Either one illustrates how Arabic is making me feel right now. A plugholish life-consuming Loch Ness type monster would also do.
And as for Kay 2 I can’t seem to find anything about her/him (zir?) which got me looking for other South Korean street art, and some of this stuff is pretty sweet: |
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, ☭☭☭, banksy, cctv, china, civil liberties, film, FISA, free speech?, privacy?, spy bill, street art, surveillance society, western freedoms
[photo by view-askew]
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So everyone’s all up about their western freedoms and civil liberties, post-Sweden. The FISA affair can only mean another little Democratic heartbreak, though perhaps nothing will top the ‘Public Finance? Eh, No Thanks’. Chris Dodd remains a kind of baller though, or as much as once can be while still plugged into recementing electoral politics? While they’re busy buttressing up the telecoms anyway, some more cctv related stuffs, including a Manchester band that filmed a video entirely on CCTV, for want of cash. Is this what post-lofi looks like?
In Montreal, even the fashion police are in on the act, using it both to track suspected criminals and, ridiculously, monitor the brand spreading of corporate logos. I wonder if it would make people start dressing more consciously – a kind of Hearst/ Condé Nast elevator effect? Hopefully those ridiculous Louis Vuitton and Gucci monogrammed prints will be the first to come under fire? |
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Above is a sweet stencil found in Marseilles by Tai Bright. It’s a little scary how similar they are in shape. I guess photography can be kind of violent though, with all the shooting terminology?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, ☭☭☭, billboard, billboard liberation front, BLF, civil liberties, consumerism, culture jamming, FISA, obama, privacy?, spy bill, surveillance society, western freedoms, wiretapping
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I’m not much of a Kant fan to be honest. Or of universal morality in general (sorry Megan, Sarah, that guy at the next table who moved to the other end of the Hungarian Pastry Shop). This culture jammed billboard by the aptly named Billboard Liberation Front, however, I can definitely get behind. |
A pretty rad anticonsumerist (and often anti-smoking, it seems) group, the BLF have been altering/improving billboards for a few decades now. I especially like that the original advertisers of each project are listed as the ‘clients’ that these subversions are executed ‘on behalf of’. You can find their pretty solid anti-advertising manifesto here.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ☭☭☭, civil liberties, google, lex orwell, patriot act, privacy?, surveillance society, sweden, western freedoms, wiretapping
 [photo by karmalize] |
Whoa. So something very akin to the US Patriot Act has just been passed in Sweden, authorising the government to wiretap. Pretty sneakily, given the nighttime vote + Euro Cup timing. Phones, faxes and email are now all fair game.. And OK so I no longer believe it to be the socialist happy paradise I once thought it was, but this is somewhat unbelievable? It doesn’t seem like Scandinavia in general is anywhere on any terror organisations’ radars. At most, maybe Denmark, after the Mohammad cartoon controversy (which seems to have seen a reprise that I missed, but eh, Sweden, really?
Seems like there’s a mad backlash on the blogosphere but to no avail. Shockingly, even Google is refusing to host its servers there anymore. They’re still collaborating in China, though – guess there’s not so much dough to be sucked out of Sweden. As a Swedish friend noted, ‘if Google cares about human rights you know its bad. |
| Interestingly, I haven’t been able to find all that much in english about this. Apparently the Swedish blogosphere is dominated by teenage fashionistas? Not that I could find many of those either, save for démode. Perhaps (un)surprisingly, they all don’t seem to mention the new act. lifeiscarbon has some sweet design stuff though, and a look at (even more) fashion inspired by Piet Mondrian. |  |
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