Initial Exchange/Exchange Meta/Occupy Meta

http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2011/11/15/368978/art-and-occupy-wall-street/

Adam Cahan · Colorado College

I totally disagree. Art can clearly be linked to social activism, but what Occupy has shown is that there is no replacement for people getting together in a space. Occupying space. Whatever it's other merits, a TV show or a play or a film doesn't do that. Both are indispensable components of a healthy culture. However I'd argue the best way to support the goals of Occupy is to occupy! There's no replacement for it.

Reply · Like · Unfollow Post · about an hour ago

• Alyssa Rosenberg · Top Commenter · Washington, District of Columbia

  I mean, that may be true, but if Occupy encampments are aggressively shut down, I'd rather come up with alternatives than let things burn out.

  Reply · Like · about an hour ago
• Adam Cahan · Colorado College

  Alyssa Rosenberg True. I totally agree with you, and my first comment was kind of strident. But I do think the 'big idea' is the importance of action. That any alternative should continue to bring people into the streets and empower them to accomplish something. And I feel that artists and people of conscience can't replace the importance and value of direct participation with art, though art has its own, important value. Though, I have yet to live up to my words..... :/

  Reply · Like · 44 minutes ago
• Adam Cahan · Colorado College

  Argh. Sorry about the egregious name repetition up front.

  Reply · Like · 40 minutes ago
• Alyssa Rosenberg · Top Commenter · Washington, District of Columbia

  Adam Cahan I mean, I tend to think that people have different things to contribute to movements. And if artists can get people talking about credit card debt or the non-dischargability of student loan debt, that's a productive contribution to the movement.

  Reply · Like · 35 minutes ago
• Adam Cahan · Colorado College

  Alyssa Rosenberg I agree. In part. We've all got different things to contribute. But in some ways aren't we overwhelmed and even tranquilized with certain kinds of awareness and talk? Goethe via Nietzsche: "Incidentally, I despise everything which merely instructs me without increasing or immediately enlivening my activity."

  Reply · Like · 15 minutes ago
• Adam Cahan · Colorado College

  That quote is an extreme position, but it's essence and source (The Utility of History) capture my point. Which, I guess, is that in an environment which in so many ways covers facts and rational thought behind a veil, it becomes essential to focus on what's most important - the _reason_ we wish to inspire conversation and raise awareness. That the means are too easily decoupled from the end, and what I see in the emphasis on action in Occupy is an unobstructed view of what our end, as citizens, is.

  Reply · Like · 4 minutes ago
• Adam Cahan · Colorado College

  Maybe I should be writing my own blog post :/...this is, like, sounding like an addendum as opposed to a critique. Thanks for writing a thought-provoking post.

  Adam Cahan · Colorado College

  Turned this thread into a blog post: http://zeroreference.blogspot.com/2011/11/initial-exchange.html

  Reply · Like · 2 seconds ago

Invisible Cafeteria at the Invisible College

The Cafeteria

always makes you sick,

never leaves your side,

knowing how much to eat, and what

is how you stay alive.

Oh, Ahab Swearers (draft)

time flies

and old soldiers never die

if babies still cry

politicians still lie

ruined cities lie still

with the ghosts

dragged out of their flesh

on accounts of merchants

diamond rings flashing

plucking the heartstrings

wet eyes like sailors, chasing spectacular bling

----

oh, Ahab swearers, my Kurtzian forebears

briefcase bearers and web--meme declarers

you Atlases of the super--structure

had to scratch an itch, so

you had to shrug your shoulders

----

passing trinkets to the dinks, snatching material aspects

surveying the planet

stealing magic. man is thought--less

centered in the profit web

silk threads hang out his ass

don’t ask

----

the mind’s turning

an eternal task

yet no one hoped for this

Sisyphus, I’ll take my pistol

and put it to

your temple

depress my firing stud, destroy

you bitch

execution style, as

my index twitch hear the

button click see

the beam squeal bright

and hot across the sky

through your drying eye

see your boulder rumbling down

squishing caterpillars

flowers and bugs

----

oh, Ahab swearers, my Kurtzian forebears

briefcase bearers and web--meme declarers

you Atlases of the super--structure

had to scratch an itch, so

you had to shrug your shoulders

----

paolo freire - prose fragment

“Please tell me you didn’t park on the deck Miranda.”
“I didn’t.....I didn’t, baby. And you know why I didn’t?” Their voices fade as they pass by me. I hear their footsteps passing too, in that narrow walkway which exists as a secret path from street to parking lot between my apartment complex and the next. I’d just taken a shit and was enjoying myself, reading Paulo Freire on the toilet. There was the mild odor of my excrement in the air, and sun shone through my tiny bathroom window onto the pink bathroom tiles. I wondered if they could hear me, if they could smell me through that small, high window. How would they feel if they knew I was there? What would they think of the slim, red volume I was holding between my hands?

< hello world />

the internet is a funny place. my current home, los angeles, has a lot in common with the web. all the wildeyed post-babble you've read about LA is true, plus its got a little grit (not grime there's an overflow of grime) and some really excellent food. the internet too has a culture, in the best, non-clinical sense of the word, and i think that soon digital networks will be the central medium of western culture - like the movies were. after celluloid and silicon (ha ha ha) where will the zeitgeist go?

just today i found (via william gibson's blog - where you can see high and very far away the spiral arms of military systems...) a youtube video of sheep art. farmers, presumably australian, used digital video, LED lights, and some pretty sophisticated sheepherding to create animated art, and to re-create animation. just search "sheep" and "art" and "LED" and "mona lisa" on youtube. i'm not going to embed this video, because the experience of typing those things in and actually finding something is one that i think's worth sharing.

that's art in the present. here is some scholarship of the past, archaeologically revived: Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucalt in a debate on dutch television. Their debate is genteel, civilized, erudite, and awesome. You can even read a transcript of the entire debate here, and there is also a book containing more interviews with each thinker.