intellectual properties

Beyond Aesthetics: Occupy Art (post #12)

following up on my last #occupy post……

the Muppets have taught us so many things since 1976. and this week, they’ve taught us just how well popular Art can be used to call bullshit:

Watch: The Muppets Diss Fox News:

 Miss Piggy was more combative and political; the puppet added that the charge was “almost as laughable as accusing Fox News of being news.”

(this is a response to this)

have the Muppets always been so intense?

anyway, i love it, and this is a great segue for me to post some of that which i recently wrote for my art school application on the subject of the current state and intersection of art vs. politics in America. this is definitively the longest post i’ve ever published, but if you’re interested, read on….

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occupy everything. (post #11)

last night at the salon, a nice older woman sitting next to me asked, “so what happened with the Occupy? why did it all go so bad? it makes me so sad, i watch the news and i want to cry. i wanted good things to happen.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/the-first-casualty-of-fairness-is-the-truth/2012/01/30/gIQA2VYneQ_blog.html

“You know what you don’t see much of these days? Those moist-eyed bloggers’ odes to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Gosh, remember the columns telling us these people had a noble political agenda? Seems like just yesterday the lefty bloggers were picking through polls, telling us the American people embraced the OWS gang. But then protest turned to filth, and high-mindedness turned out to be just plain-old stench.

To write such loving tributes to OWS took extraordinary discipline, I suppose. Not to actually look (or smell) and determine who the real Occupiers (as opposed to the Occupiers refashioned for the readers of the New York Times and the Nation) were must have taken real will-power, especially since the encampments in major cities (as in the District) were only a few blocks from the journalists’ offices. Had they taken a peek or inhaled on the way to work they would have discovered the real Occupy movement.

Zack Munson reports: “There are lots of bearded folks (male and female), lots of dirty tents, some college students, the unemployed, the career homeless, some white people dancing out of rhythm to rock music played over a loudspeaker. The ‘movement’ itself is still a jumble of anti-capitalist/police/government rhetoric and pointless noise and pungent smells.” Oh, well, who wants to write about that?”

it’s true.  i haven’t wrttien about OWS/OccupyOakland in over a month, but it is not because i think the shine wore off to reveal a bunch of dirty hippies.  in fact, the opposite is true. i think once the new smell and initial popculture interest wore off, who was left was a bunch of super invested people who have since then been heads-down entrenched in making things happen, not out there in the camps but in smaller working groups, in meetings, behind closed doors. see: the Alternative Banking Working Group, for example.

and despite all the negatives, the movement has been effective — causing democratic change on issues local and global, from healthcare to home evictions to school funding, not only in the higher-profile cities like New York  and D.C. but also in small towns across the U.S. …. not to mentioned having kicked the door open for a lot of other progressive non-Occupy NGOs and social and cultural groups to take a stand. The Media, of course, chooses to only focus on the the bad apples.  this is true for nearly every single aspect of society, not just OWS, and everybody knows it. so why don’t people question what they see on the news more often?

i told the woman at the salon to try to look up other places to read about Occupy, and that while i am not actively involved much  personally, i know many amazing, hardworking people who are and i know, without any question or doubt, that they are doing good things with the right intentions.

“The breadth of this movement is one thing, its depth another. It has rejected not just the particulars of our economic system, but the whole set of moral and emotional assumptions on which it’s based. Take the pair shown in a photograph from Occupy Austin in Texas.  The amiable-looking elderly woman is holding a sign whose computer-printed words say, “Money has stolen our vote.” The older man next to her with the baseball cap is holding a sign handwritten on cardboard that states, “We are our brothers’ keeper.”

The photo of the two of them offers just a peek into a single moment in the remarkable period we’re living through and the astonishing movement that’s drawn in… well, if not 99% of us, then a striking enough percentage: everyone from teen pop superstar Miley Cyrus with her Occupy-homage video to Alaska Yup’ik elder Esther Green ice-fishing and holding a sign that says “Yirqa Kuik” in big letters, with the translation — “occupy the river” — in little ones below.” – Compassion Is Our New Currency

last weekend in Oakland  there was another Occupy vs. OPD clash when Occupy tried to take over an empty building.  before you keep reading,  WATCH THIS VIDEO.

the press and City Hall reported that the Occupiers were breaking into buildings and harrassing police and that, 6 months into the movement, all this is is a temper tantrum on the part of entitled youth and rabblerousers who should find better uses for their time and stop being a public nuisance.  but here is the perspective from Occupy:

http://occupywallst.org/article/regime-change-oakland/

“In Oakland, thousands of active community members chose to engage in true democracy by supporting the real and pressing needs of the people. The state, which supposedly represents these people, exercised extreme police brutality and violence to protect the 1%’s vacant assets. The explicit goal of the action was to build community—to open a desperately needed community center with a library, medical care, free education and emergency housing in a city that has suffered massive budget cuts, high unemployment rates and ravaged public schools. In response, the city government poured hundreds of thousands of dollars, bullets and canisters of tear gas into declaring open war on these parents, students, workers, artists, teachers, children and veterans. These people’s only offense was to believe so deeply in the American tradition of democracy, self-sufficiency, and sacrifice for the next generation that they were willing to put their bodies on the line to make this nation the empowering democracy that we know it can be.”

And here is a journalist’s first hand account of the situation, and being unlawfully arrested: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/journalists-arrested-occupy-oakland

so yeah, there are obvious issues with people taking over public buildings and setting up DIY healthcare units etc.  not up to code, health violations, blah blah blah.  but what i don’t understand is why the City can’t just,……let them try? see what happens?  wouldn’t that cost FEWER CITY DOLLARS AND RESOURCES than hiring an outside army of police to shoot rubber bullets at citizens, people trying to create for their communities what the government has neglected to protect or provide?

which leads me back to reiterate that the main success of this movement has been to get people to WAKE UP.  maybe they’re waking up to an American Dream Turned Nightmare, but if that’s the case then if Occupy stands for anything it’s this: STAND UP AND FIGHT. OCCUPY EVERYTHING that matters to you.

The Ultimate Culture Jam

http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/100/spiritual-insurrection.html

“We awoke one morning to the dark realization that humanity is being dragged into a black hole of ecological, financial and spiritual catastrophe … that our democracy has been seized by a corporatocracy … that every day two hundred species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become forever extinct … that a deluge of advertising is sleepwalking our civilization to the brink of insanity … and that unless we fight back in the most visceral and creative way possible all will be lost.

And yet, what sets our struggle apart in 2012 is that we are not fighting to save a distant future. We are not trying to prevent some terrible event that is still to come. This is not about our unborn grandchildren. Instead, many of us sense that the threshold has already been crossed; the tipping point has already happened and what we are fighting for is our present. We are living in that tragic moment of eerie stillness where the fatal damage has been done, widening cracks can be seen, yet the edifice still stands and business as usual continues … but for how much longer?

Our days may be shadowed by this dark realization, but there is reason to be deeply optimistic for “where danger is, grows the saving power also.” Never before has the tantalizing possibility of a Global Spring, a worldwide people’s insurgency for democracy, seemed as close. For perhaps the first time in human history, we just might be on the edge of an everywhere-at-once revolution against the financial fraudsters, corporate lackeys and the ideology of consumerism that has brought the Earth to the precipice of collapse.

In this, the era of the total and transcendent indignato swarm, we look to each other, not to the masters above, to find out what it will take to pull off the ultimate culture jam: spiritual insurrection.”

this post is to be continued, in the vein of CULTURAL TRANSFIGURATION: OCCUPY ART.

generally regarded as safe

i was at the Target human ant farm (TM) the other day and walking by the laundry soap/fabric softener aisle the smell was overwhelming.

how many chemicals do we cover ourselves in every day?

those automatic plug-in air fresheners are completely horrendous to me. constantly spraying chemicals into your breathing air? are you insane?

this would be funny except the scary thing is that acid from strangers is probably more reliable and less toxic than millions of things you might buy boxed, shelved, or frozen and sold as food or found in the cosmetics/bath/cleaning product aisles that you cover yourself, your home and your family with every day (at least 515?!).

who is more ridiculous? the hippie girl above, or the parents dosing their kids’ baths, food and clothing with unknown GMOs, chemicals, and petroleum byproducts?

skinny bashing and the body acceptance movement

part of me wants to do a longer post about the resurgence of what i’ll call the “marilyn vs skinny girls” debate i’ve seen this week on the web/facebook, wherein what should be a positive message (love all types of bodies!) is still framed as negative, pitting one kind of body against another, discussed here as “The Problem With Skinny Bashing” , (and reflected with a feminist bent here in Why The Sexy Equinox Yoga Video Pissed Me Off (ftr i personally think that yoga video is INSPIRING)) and how entirely self-conscious these things makes me feel about my own body issues and some of the things i do, and how making the other side feel bad because you feel bad is NOT THE POINT OF THE BODY ACCEPTANCE MOVEMENT, people – please stop comparing.

but that’s an enormous pandora’s box of judgments and feelings and so i’ll leave it at that.

just need to get up

philip glass and OWS (post #10)

“When righteousness withers away and evil rules the land, we come into being, age after age, and take visible shape, and move, a man among men, for the protection of good, thrusting back evil and setting virtue on her seat again.”

i admit i am getting more cynical by the day about the tactics of the Occupy movement, so i was almost relieved when this almost brought me to tears (the first few minutes are of protesters encouraging the opera goers to disobey the police and come down the steps; you can jump to the 2:45 mark for the Philip Glass appearance).

“The protest, which was directed not at the opera itself but at a certain disparity between its lofty moral message and the machinery of corporate arts funding, got under way during the third act…When the Satyagraha listeners emerged from the Met, police directed them to leave via side exits, but protesters began encouraging them to disregard the police, walk down the steps, and listen to Glass speak. Hesitantly at first, then in a wave, they did so. The composer proceeded to recite the closing lines of Satyagraha, which come from the Bhagavad Gita (after 3:00 in the video above):

“When righteousness withers away and evil rules the land, we come into being, age after age, and take visible shape, and move, a man among men, for the protection of good, thrusting back evil and setting virtue on her seat again.”

In accustomed style, he said it several times, with the “human microphone” repeating after him.”

–http://www.therestisnoise.com/2011/12/the-satyagraha-protest.html

sigh.

lots more about it is worth reading at http://www.theawl.com/2011/12/at-satyagraha-and-occupy-lincoln-center

on community and OWS (post #9)

i haven’t written anything about OWS in a while, because i’m not sure what to say now that isn’t being written and argued everywhere else. the issues are complex. the economics are gargantuan. politicians are evasive.  is it winning? are things happening?  yes. and no. but i will repeat again that what is indisputable is that it is changing the lives of people involved, people who were hopeless and disconnected who have now found a community. like this man.

and so on that tip, and along the same no-currency principles as burning man, someone is making a docu on the ideas of economics, loneliness and disconnection in humanity and why community is as much an important part of the Occupy Wall Street movement as political and economic reform:

Life is pretty bleak at the top too – and all the baubles of the rich are this phoney compensation for the loss of what’s really important. The loss of community, the loss of connection, the loss of intimacy. The loss of meaning.

Everybody wants to live a life of meaning. And today, we live in a money economy where we don’t really depend on the gifts of anybody. But we buy everything. Therefore we don’t really need anybody, because whoever grew my food, or made my clothes, or built by house, well if they die, or if I alienate them, or if they don’t like me, that’s okay because I can just pay someone else to do it.

And it’s really hard to create community if the underlying knowledge is “we don’t need each other.”

About The Film

Occupy Love will be a moving, transformative feature documentary that asks the question: how are the economic and ecological crises we are facing today a great love story? 

A profound shift is taking place all over the world. Humanity is  waking up to the fact  that the current system that dominates the planet is failing to provide us with health, happiness or meaning.  The dominant paradigm is based on separation, as exemplified by the financial system, and the corporate emphasis of profits before people.

more:  http://www.indiegogo.com/Occupy-Love

(we are all stardust)

do you need to feel better about life today?

watch this.  it’s illuminating.

Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — shut down one by one. An astonishing story.

(also: near-death seems like a real trip. i started listening to this in the middle and thought for sure she was talking about an acid trip.  )

.::.

or: if you can’t watch the vid right now and want something else to brighten your day, check out these 45 photos from the National Geographic annual photo contest, each one simply amazing.

you paper-bellied pang-wangling pretzel-bender you

Pang-wangle: “To live or go along cheerfully in spite of minor misfortunes.”

Paper-belly: “A person unable to drink liquor straight, or one who grimaces after drinking.”

Pretzel-bender: “A preculiar person; an eccentric; one who thinks in a round-about manner.”

(–11 Antiquated “P” Words From the American Slang Dictionary)

the red ink (#ows)

http://occupywallst.org/article/today-liberty-plaza-had-visit-slavoj-zizek/#

“They tell you we are dreamers. The true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. We are not dreamers. We are awakening from a dream which is tuning into a nightmare. We are not destroying anything. We are only witnessing how the system is destroying itself. We all know the classic scenes from cartoons. The cart reaches a precipice. But it goes on walking. Ignoring the fact that there is nothing beneath. Only when it looks down and notices it, it falls down. This is what we are doing here. We are telling the guys there on Wall Street – Hey, look down! (cheering).

In April 2011, the Chinese government prohibited on TV and films and in novels all stories that contain alternate reality or time travel. This is a good sign for China. It means that people still dream about alternatives, so you have to prohibit this dream. Here we don’t think of prohibition. Because the ruling system has even suppressed our capacity to dream. Look at the movies that we see all the time. It’s easy to imagine the end of the world. An asteroid destroying all life and so on. But you cannot imagine the end of capitalism. So what are we doing here? Let me tell you a wonderful old joke from communist times.

A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors. So he told his friends: Let’s establish a code. If the letter you get from me is written in blue ink ,it is true what I said. If it is written in red ink, it is false. After a month his friends get a first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theaters show good films from the West. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.

This is how we live. We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink. The language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom war and terrorism and so on falsifies freedom. And this is what you are doing here: You are giving all of us red ink.

There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember: carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after. When we will have to return to normal life. Will there be any changes then. I don’t want you to remember these days, you know, like – oh, we were young, it was beautiful…

…We don’t want higher standards of living. We want better standards of living. The only sense in which we are communists is that we care for the commons. The commons of nature. The commons of what is privatized by intellectual property. The commons of biogenetics. For this and only for this we should fight.

Communism failed absolutely. But the problems of the commons are here. They are telling you we are not Americans here. But the conservative fundamentalists who claim they are really American have to be reminded of something. What is Christianity? It’s the Holy Spirit. What’s the Holy Spirit? It’s an egalitarian community of believers who are linked by love for each other. And who only have their own freedom and responsibility to do it. In this sense the Holy Spirit is here now. And down there on Wall Street there are pagans who are worshipping blasphemous idols. So all we need is patience.

The only thing I’m afraid of is that we will someday just go home and then we will meet once a year, drinking beer, and nostalgically remembering what a nice time we had here. Promise ourselves that this will not be the case.”

–Slavoj Žižek in Liberty Square, NYC 10/9/11

i haven’t written or shared a lot about #occupywallstreet because i don’t really truly understand what’s going on or where it’s going, but mostly because i don’t know what to say that isn’t already being said by people like Zizek. i am reposting this for prosperity, as even outside the current context i found this truly uplifting, and it neatly loops back and ties up my not-so-eloquent thoughts on intersecting politics and philosophical world views in my two recent posts re: “reality-based” quote and the Bullet with Butterfly Wings encore.

also, now that #occupyeverywhere has been going on a while, i’m tired of people like the “Americans for Prosperity” claiming that the “free market” capitalism is the way to go and that anyone against Wall Street is a dirty communist. i think we learned a long time ago that top-down Reaganomics DON’T WORK because the top are a bunch of greedy bastards who don’t share the money and none of it trickles down.

if you think that the protesters are a bunch of idealist hippies and the whole thing a waste of time, consider this is a quote from Congressman Peter King (Long Island, NY) last Friday:

“[W]e have to be careful not to allow this to get any legitimacy,” he warned. “I’m taking this seriously in that I’m old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy,” he said. “We can’t allow that to happen.”

so thank you, Zizek, for your continued contributions to philosophical freedom and making this rainy monday morning feel more optimistic in the face of people like King.

want to participate/do something? find a place this Saturday, October 15, and rise up.