Paying at the pump, payback at the polls

It doesn't take a marketing expert to devise an effective campaign ad for the Democrats. It takes Greg Saunders:

Gas prices

Oil company stock profits

Campaign contributions

Bomb-shelter modernism

SLLB Architects in London have plans to convert a Cold War A-bomb bunker into a modernist home. But as The Rat and Mouse writes, the firm doesn't yet have clearance for such creative reuse; a council member is reported saying, "There are various conditions to be satisfied which involve the use of appropriate materials and the preservation of important historical features such as the plant room and a central map room surrounded by a circulatory corridor."

(Via Things.)

The Last Folk Hero

"Black vernacular art," says Bill Arnett in his inimitably exaggerated style, "is the most important cultural phenomenon of our time. This is like the Italian Renaissance in its scope, breadth, and depth. It's just that the people are the wrong color."

This quote from Andrew Dietz's book The Last Folk Hero begins to capture both the audacity and passion of Arnett, one of contemporary folk art's biggest benefactors and, according to some, its greatest villain. Accused of exploiting self-taught artists like Lonnie Holley, Thornton Dial, and the famed quilters at Gee's Bend through exclusive sales deals, Arnett is also arguably the top promoter of these artists. But after finishing Dietz's book, I'm still unsure who the last folk hero is. Arnett? At times he's presented as an unlikable and pompous boob, as Dietz chronicles him unheroically compiling enemies' lists, stepping on the toes of those in southern museums who can help his cause, and waxing paranoiac about those who are out to get him. At others, he's a charming, impassioned guy with genuine concern for these under-recognized artists.

More likely, the heroes are the artists who use housepaint or wire, tree roots or scraps of fabric to create works of art every bit as powerful as those of their schooled contemporaries: Former Whitney director Max Anderson says, "Lonnie Holley and Thornton Dial are the equals of any artists in the United States," and The New York Times' Michael Kimmelman called the Gee's Bend quilts "some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced. Imagine Matisse and Klee (if you think I'm wildly exaggerating, see the show) arising not from rarefied Europe, but from the caramel soil of the rural South in the form of women, descendants of slaves when Gee's Bend was a plantation." (Compare Linda Pettway's quilt, below, with Hans Arp's 1916-17 collage Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance) and you start to see where Kimmelman's coming from.)

From these tenaciously unconventional artists to Arnett's testy clashes with southern collectors to Dietz's own experiences, The Last Folk Hero is truly an "outsider" journey. At one point Dietz quotes Peter Marzio, longtime director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, who revealed that even on an institutional level, this art is far from accepted. Disappointed that no museums signed on early to tour the quilt show, he said:

The other museum directors just didn't think it was art. This kind of art is threatening to the academy, the traditional art infrastructure. It throws up to them that the creative world can take many routes--outside of the main channels they control. The people of my generation, who were so antiestablishment, are more reactive and defensive culturally now than the nineteenth-century academy was to the advent of modern art.

As I've written before, self-taught and "outsider" art offers us not only an alternative to the fickle machinations and trends of the art world, but also to mainstream consumer culture, where creative autonomy is often packaged as hip consumption--our creativity is demonstrated by our buying choices instead of how true we are to our own visions. These artists, in their eccentric and unswerving dedication to their own expressions, offer a compelling model of true American independence.

Maybe that's why I'm writing so much about The Last Folk Hero. Dietz's project has that kind of autonomous spirit. Written in spare time while running a business and raising two children, he ended up self-publishing the book. He founded Ellis Lane Press, a moniker that combines his daughters' middle names, "to remind them that we cannot wait to be annointed as valid or creative by unseen, random others but rather we need to take the responsibility to validate ourselves and put something positive into this world."

But there's another reason: no one would publish the book.

"I completely lost patience with the big publishers who all said the same thing about the early proposal: 'We love the story; great characters; terrific writing; WE would love to read the book...but...we don't publish books about art because they don't sell,'" he wrote in an email. "Well, I thought that was like saying that Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was just a story about antiques in Savannah or Seabiscuit was just about some horses."

Summing it all up, then, is a great quote by George Bernard Shaw that Dietz uses in the book. It's as fitting for Pettway or Dial, Arnett or Dietz, or, hell, any of us who have a vision. Writes Dietz:

"All progress is the result of the unreasonable man." Of course, when I asked Bill Arnett what he thought about that he answered, "Shaw wasn't talking about ME, I never met the man!"

Artwork (top to bottom): Thornton Dial's Ground Zero: Nighttime All Over the World (2002); Linda Pettway's Blocks and Strips, 2003

Condi the Leaker?

It's hardly worth noting, but how 'bout that hypocrisy? The CIA agent who leaked information on Bush's warrantless (and illegal) domestic wiretapping program has been fired, while the leakers who outed Valerie Plame have, three years later, still to be punished. But here's a bigger bit of irony: Condoleeza Rice is now accused of leaking. The Washington Post: "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaked national defense information to a pro-Israel lobbyist in the same manner that landed a lower-level Pentagon official a 12-year prison sentence, the lobbyist's lawyer said Friday."

And whether Cheney was dozing during a meeting or not, don't

Miró's family goes after Google

Yesterday's Google logo, inspired by the works of painter Joan Miró, upset the artist's family and Artists Rights Society, the overseer of copyrights for more than 40,000 artists. They requested Google take down the logo, alleging copyright infringement; Google complied.

American purity.

Another view...

Fuselodge.

Frank Gehry was on to something: he revolutionized architecture by using aerospace engineering to create wavy panels of structurally sound stainless steel and titanium. But two new projects follow his inspirations in more literal fashion: by incorporating actual airplane parts into the structures.

The 747 Wing House by David Hertz of Syndesis Inc. aims to provide an ecological living arrangement that capitalizes on the feminine curves of a 747 body. Designed for Francie Rehwald, owner of one of California's biggest Mercedes-Benz dealerships, the home in the Malibu hills will reuse airplane parts, including a nose cone that will become a meditation pavillion and wings that'll form a roof supported by rammed-earth walls. While the Syndesis website goes a bit overboard on claims of sustainability ("As we analyzed the cost, it seemed to make more sense to acquire an entire airplane and to use as many of the components as possible, like the Native American Indians used every part of the buffalo."), the project isn't cheap: BBC reports that the pricetag for plane parts won't top $100,000, but total construction, starting in June, is "likely to cost several million dollars."

Meanwhile, not so far away in Guadalajara, the design and architecture firm LO-TEK has conceived of a library made from fuselages of decommissioned 727s and 737s. As Worldchanging quotes:

The fuselage is the only part of a decommissioned airplane that cannot be effectively recycled. The cost of its demolition exceeds the profit of aluminum resale. A huge amount of fuselages lays in the deserts of the western states. Boeing 727 and 737 are historically the most sold commercial planes and therefore the most common in these graveyards. They are sold at very low prices completely stripped and in great structural conditions.

For more on the Jalisco Library, visit Noticias Arquitectura.

Hair Peace

Dubbing his Hair Project "bad hair for a good cause," a guy in Washington, D.C., has decided to cut his hair after 22 months, but the twist is he's invited blog visitors to vote--at $1 per vote--on his hairstyle, with proceeds going to support NGOs addressing genocide in Darfur. Given options ranging from the the "Comb-Over/Gallagher" to a samurai topknot, the votes were tallied and this week, a Krusty the Clown 'do was administered, raising nearly $4,000 for Doctors without Borders, SaveDarfur.org, Oxfam, and others.

(Thanks, Kate.)

Oil jam.

When Jeremy Mora sent his image of an LA billboard under a pristine blue sky, I thought it had already been culture-jammed--or, if not, it soon would be, given the easy target it poses. This morning, I spotted The Daily Irrelevant's link to a Billboard Liberation Front-altered version of the ad:

Dept. of Corrections: As Visual Resistance points out, it was the California Department of Corrections, not BLF, who did this jam. Apologies for not reading the fine-print.

Thai street art

From Wooster Collective, this one, by artist BON, says "Do you see Thailand?"

P.S. Happy Thai New Year (last week)!

Forlorn flame

Just before the rains came...

Beckoning...

Pig Knuckle Avenue was taken.

My photo of a directional sign to the town of Nimrod paled in comparison to this one...

Long dead

Aptly named.

Transport for the long dead...

Liberty, fraternity, pornography!

I had to stop the car on Hwy 10 to capture this juxtaposition of stars-n-smut. The sex shop Pure Pleasure's Perkins-sized American flag seemed to be saying something about our national aspirations.

White Earth

After a weekend in Wisconsin for Easter, I drove up to White Earth, Minnesota, far out of cellphone range and email access to interview activist, author, and 2000 Green Party vice-presidential candidate Winona LaDuke for an upcoming book (more on that later). LaDuke heads up the White Earth Land Recovery Project, an NGO that works to reclaim lands taken from the White Earth Anishinaabe people as well develop methods and technologies for sustainable living, from Ojibwe language classes to windpower, organic farming to an enterprise that sells Anishinaabe crafts, locally harvested maple syrup and honey, and Nicaraguan fair-trade, organic coffee roasted in Northern Minnesota. Above, I'll post a few shots from the drive from Minneapolis along Highway 10 to LaDuke's boisterous, yet cozy home in Ponsford.

Save Wild Rice: A plug for WELRP's current project. White Earth is the largest wild rice-producing area in Minnesota and, possibly, the country. But their crops are threatened by genetic drift from commercial paddy fields that produce genetically modified "wild rice." To take action--especially those of you in Minnesota--click here.

Campaign to ouster Rumsfeld

With a fifth retired US general calling on Rumsfeld to resign, the New York Times reports that the generals' complaints are actually part of an organized campaign to get the Defense Secretary to step down.

MN church: no legal marriages, only spiritual ones.

In contrast to the Minnesota Christians who don't seem to be Christ-ians, here's a local congregation that's refusing to perform legal weddings--only religious ones:

"I will no longer sign marriage licenses. Opposite gender couples will have to go to the judge at city hall to have them signed," said Pastor Don Portwood from the Lyndale United Church of Christ.

Members of the 120 year old church in South Minneapolis voted unanimously to support the move. "We have decided that we are no longer going to discriminate against same gender couples, that we will only do religious weddings and religious ceremonies for same gender or opposite gender couples."

This is the second metro area church to stop performing civil unions. Reverend Victoria Safford from the White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church stopped signing marriage papers three years ago. "What we have found is that the members of our congregation have supported this decision wholeheartedly." She also acknowledged that the decision gives couples one more hurdle, "there is an extra step now, in addition to meeting with me, and with their caterer, and planning the ceremony, they have to find a judge or civic authority who will sign their marriage papers."

In other religion news: China's hosting a 30-country Buddhist conference. Absent, of course, is the Buddhist in Chief, the Dalai Lama, who didn't get an invite.

Inflatable USB drive

From Coin-Op:

This inflatable USB drive called the “Flashbag” grows in size (using micro air pumps) as more data is loaded into it and keeps its shape even when unplugged. The idea is that you can have an instant “visual” sense of how much space you have left on your external drive.

Spare change?

Nice. Via Fresh Creation, this ad campaign, apparently for Homeless Awareness Week was created by Little jacket for the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless.

House of Soy and Spinach

The winner of the Buckminster Fuller Institute's C2C Home design competition is a single-family home with a twist: it has a photosynthetic and phototropic skin made with spinach protein and produces enough energy to run a household and then share the excess with neighbors. Designed by Matthew Coates and Tim Meldrum, the building features soy-foam wall panels and a natural water treatment system:

This design integrates building with landscape, a vegetated roof system collects and filters stormwater into the building core. The core collects and supplies all household plumbing elements contained within it. Black and grey water are released to a primary septic tank below the core and eventually released as effluent to the "living garden". Garden beds along the entry receive irrigation and nutrients to provide site-yield vegetables. This system is engineered to accept and treat residential wastewater from neighboring homes in addition to the primary residence to lessen off site dependency.

The contest's title, C2C, and the core principles its entrants must abide by are taken from William McDonough and Michael Braungart's book on sustainable design, Cradle to Cradle. Coates and Meldrum's house, unlike designs for other competitions, will actually be built.

Via Off Center.

No WMDs, no "biological laboratories."

Is everything the Bush administration told us about the war in Iraq false? Seems like it.

New falsehood: Remember when Bush declared, fifty days after Baghdad fell, that US forced had discovered mobile "biological laboratories"? "We have found the weapons of mass destruction," he said.

Nuh-uh:

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

Street skeleton

From Wooster Collective.

Who would Jesus tolerate?

As a suburban Twin Cities church refuses to care for a transgendered woman at their government-subsidized service center, nationally things aren't looking much better: a 22-year-old student at Georgia Institute of Technology--citing her deep Christianity--is suing the school to overturn tolerance policies including harassment, diversity training, and anti-discrimination rules.

"Christians," says Rev. Rick Scarborough (speaking in defense of that plucky sect that counts more than 78% of Americans as members), "are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian."

An Inconvenient Truth

"Ten of the hottest years on record have occurred within the last 14 years," and the hottest of all occurred in 2005. So begins the trailer for Al Gore's new documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, about the mounting threat of global warning. "This is not so much a political issue as it is a moral issue," says Gore. He cites rising temperatures that lead to killer, Katrina-style storms, and melting icecaps that threaten to submerge parts of Manhattan. Sound hyperbolic? Consider:

Kilamanjaro 30 years ago:
Kilamanjaro last year:

"Is it possible," asks Gore, "that we should prepare for other threats besides terrorists?"

Watch the trailer, then see the movie.

Huh?

So Bush admits it, he's the leaker. But he says he declassified portions of the National Intelligence Estimate, instead of leaking it ("I thought it was important for people to get a better sense for why I was saying what I was saying in my speeches" [about evidence for launching a war against Iraq]). If that's the case, what was Scooter Libby indicted for?

Guerrilla crafters.

Reminscent of the crafty tag crew Knitta, here's the Tree Sweater.

Cut Piece

It's far to easy to deride Yoko Ono. She "broke up the Beatles," her peace-and-love message is far too earnest for today's world. I disagree: I think her work, especially in the early years, was brave and visionary. And Cut Piece has a lot to do with it.

Considering the time (1964), Ono's gender and Japanese heritage, the work is, to me, profound and frightening, conjuring thoughts about sacrifice, the outward manifestations of power and class, and the very real possibility of a simmering deviance beneath the surface of our culture (in one performance, a man stood over Ono with the scissors drawn as if to stab her). In the piece, Ono simply knelt quietly on stage while people came up and cut pieces of her clothing off. When the Japan Society's exhibition Y E S YOKO ONO came to the Walker several years ago, two of my friends performed the piece: Lisa d'Amour and, at the request of Kim Gordon, who was speaking at the Walker for the show, Jim Bovino (one of the rare men to perform the work). In the 21st century, they found the work to be unnerving and difficult, and requiring a lot of meditation, preparedness, and--in a nondenominational way--faith. Yoko's Buddhism, she's said, permeated the work. I can't help but read the following quote through that lens: when all else is cut away--our markers of power, gender roles, or fashion... or whatever facades we throw up--what's left?

"People went on cutting the parts they do not like of me,” Yoko explained later. "Finally there was only the stone remained of me… but they were still not satisfied and wanted to know what it’s like in the stone."

View Ono's 1965 performance of Cut Piece

Skinheads of all colors

Anyone with a swastika tattoo is scary, but this one is particularly unnerving. The man at left goes by the name Swastika Pete (due to language, link is probably NSFW). A bit of the story behind his tattoo:

Earlier this year, I made a bet with a Nazi skinhead from Orange County. He said he'd come and spend a weekend with my family if I got a swazzie tattoo. We both fulfilled our side of the bargain and both our eyes have been opened as a result... I'm a bit more quiet and reserved about my racism. I'm pissed with certain elements of Somalians, West Indians, and Nigerians. They called my mum a black bitch on the bus...

Silly walks, sheep jam band.

Good clean fun on a Sunday morning:

Make your own rock-n-roll ba-a-a-nd using drums, bass, and keyboards, at Sheep Beats, or pull Palin's strings at Monty Python's Silly Walks Generator.

Imagining a different Bush.

In The Past is Over, a community art project by Helena Keeffe, 7-to-10-year olds at a San Francisco Elementary School were asked to "imagine a speech given by president Bush that would convince you that he has had a change of heart and could actually be the president of your dreams." The resulting speeches, read by a Bush impersonator, run the gamut, from "Bush" admitting that his Twinkie addiction has harmed the country to this imaginary president promising to provide homes for the homeless. (My favorite is by Lumi Sugazawa-O'Neill.) The winners of Keeffe's project won $50 that went toward a cake party for their class.

Govt. website shows how to down Air Force One

The San Francisco Chronicle points out how this administration can't seem to secure itself (much less the entire country):

the Air Force reacted with alarm last week after The Chronicle told the Secret Service that a government document containing specific information about the anti-missile defenses on Air Force One and detailed interior maps of the two planes -- including the location of Secret Service agents within the planes -- was posted on the Web site of an Air Force base.

The document also shows the location where a terrorist armed with a high-caliber sniper rifle could detonate the tanks that supply oxygen to Air Force One's medical facility.

Eight lies.

George Bush, who allegedly OK'd Scooter Libby's leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson's name, denied it eight times previously. Thus spake Bush:

President Bush, 9/30/03:

"I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action."

President Bush, 9/30/03:

"If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of. . . . I have told our administration, people in my administration to be fully cooperative. I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business."

President Bush, 10/28/03:

"I'd like to know if somebody in my White House did leak sensitive information."

President Bush, 6/10/04:

Reporter: "Do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?"

President Bush: "Yes. And that's up to the U.S. Attorney to find the facts."

President Bush, 10/28/03:

"I want to know the truth. ... I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is, partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers."

President Bush, 7/18/05 issue of USA Today:

"If someone committed crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

White House Press Secretary, 9/29/03:

"The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration."

White House Press Secretary, 10/7/03:

"Let me answer what the President has said. I speak for the President and I'll talk to you about what he wants . . .If someone leaked classified information, the President wants to know. If someone in this administration leaked classified information, they will no longer be a part of this administration, because that's not the way this White House operates, that's not the way this President expects people in his administration to conduct their business."

Holzer does Beckett

Starting at 7:30 pm GMT tonight, Jenny Holzer will bring her famed truisms to building facades across London. Presented as part of the Barbican's Beckett Centenary Festival, celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Irish poet Samuel Beckett's birthday (April 13), the light projections will feature words drawn from the writings of Beckett and others. Jenny Holzer: For London runs through April 14, from 7:30 to 11 pm.

Via Coolhunting. Cross-posted at Off Center.

The I Squish Your Head Flickr Pool

Here.

Roundup

Lots going on these days. A few items of note:

Man of the Day: Harry Thomas told Bush what we all wish we could: "I -- in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency..." There's more: text, video.

Bush busted? Indicted Cheney aide Scooter Libby testified before a federal grand jury that it was Bush himself who "specifically had authorized" the revealing of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to the press. The Smoking Gun has the entire 39-page Fitzgerald filing.

Pot, Kettle, Black: Instead of slinking away quietly, ethically challenged House retiree Tom DeLay has the gall to threaten a ethics complaint against Cynthia McKinney, who whacked a Capitol cop.

Dems on censure: From The Progressive publisher Matt Rothschild's email missive yesterday: "Did you know that 29 Democratic Senators and 9 Republicans were on record as favoring the censure of the President? President Clinton, that is. And if you compare what Clinton did to what Bush is doing, you'd think that more Senators would be on board with Russ Feingold. But only Barbara Boxer and Tom Harkin have signed on to censuring Bush, though Patrick Leahy is leaning that way."

Surprise, surprise: Who did Bush's tax cuts benefit most? Guess. "Americans with annual incomes of $1 million or more, about one-tenth of 1 percent all taxpayers, reaped 43 percent of all the savings on investment taxes in 2003. The savings for these taxpayers averaged about $41,400 each."

Broadcasting BS: A 10-month study by the Center for Media and Democracy found that 77 TV stations nationally used fake news--canned Video News Releases--without indicating that the VNRs were produced not by a news crew but a PR agency.

P.U. Even Fox News has Bush stinkin' up the polls, with a dismal 36% approval rating.

"Food." The government has a disconcerting habit of telling us that the presence of cancer-causing agents in our food is nothing to worry about. Minneapolis' own Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy finds that lots of conventional chicken producers voluntarily add arsenic to kill bacteria and promote growth. The FDA says that cancer-causing "benzene has been found in soft drinks at levels above the limit considered safe for drinking water"--four times as much as allowed in drinking water. Neither of which warrants a public health problem, or so we're told.

Which gallery?

Via The Daily Irrelevant.

Feingold on same-sex unions.

Russ Feingold's got principles. The only US senator to vote against the Patriot Act, he's been a constructive voice of dissent about the Iraq war, domestic wiretapping, and now constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. “The proposed ban on civil unions and marriage is a mean-spirited attempt to divide Wisconsin and I indicated that it should be defeated,” Feingold said. “It discriminates against thousands of people in our communities – our co-workers, our neighbors, our friends, and our family members. It would single out members of a particular group and forever deny them rights and protections granted to all other Wisconsin citizens. It would also outlaw civil unions and jeopardize many legal protections for all unmarried couples, whether of the same or the opposite sex. We shouldn’t enshrine this prejudice in our state’s Constitution.”

The Washington Post:

Feingold called the amendment "a mean-spirited attempt" to single out gay men and lesbians for discrimination and said he would vote against it. But he went further, announcing that he favors legalizing same-sex marriages.

That puts him at odds with many prominent Democratic politicians who support gay rights but not same-sex marriage. Should Feingold decide to run for the party's presidential nomination in 2008, his position would put him to the left of many likely rivals.
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"Obviously, it's a very difficult issue and evokes a lot of emotions," Feingold said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I think it's something ultimately that people throughout the country will accept, but it's not an easy issue." He accused the Bush White House and the Republican Party of using same-sex marriage as a wedge issue "to hurt Democrats who are against discrimination."

In the party of wishy-washy John Kerry and Republican Lite Joseph Lieberman, Feingold is a refreshing reminder of the truly democratic principles the party is named after.

Wisconsin weighs in on war: In a symbolic message to Washington, 24 of 32 Wisconsin cities, from Milwaukee to Lacrosse, Madison to Ladysmith, approved a resolution calling for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Fifty-one soldiers from Wisconsin have been killed serving in Iraq.

Building Beijing's birds nest

Archinect links to construction shots of the Herzog & de Meuron-designed Olympic stadium in Beijing.

Santiago Sierra's synagogue gas chamber

From paying unemployed men to let him tattoo a line across their backs to paying people to publicly masturbate, Spanish artist Santiago Sierra rarely fails to outrage. But some say his latest work--inviting Germans to don gasmasks and walk through a former synogogue pumped full of car exhaust--has crossed a line: it was shut down by officials of the town of Pullheim-Stommeln after Jewish leaders protested.

The project used six parked cars to push toxic exhaust into the space. Visitors, accompanied by a fireman and wearing a gasmask, were allowed in for only five minutes at a time. While Sierra says the work's intent is the opposite of what he's charged with, "trivializing the holocaust," Stephan Kramer of the Central Council of Jews disagrees:

"Anyone who thinks it's art to simulate a 'gas chamber' via highly toxic car exhaust fumes, and in a former synagogue at that, in an attempt to convey supposed authenticity, is hurting not just the dignity of the victims but also that of the Jewish community. This has absolutely nothing to do with a culture of remembrance."

I haven't experienced this work in person, so I'm not sure how I feel about it. I see the resurgence of Nazism in Germany, and a spooky version embraced by pop culture, hip hop, and fashion at that, which makes me wonder if Dachau's "Never Again" is forever a thing of the past. On the other hand, is this really a work of cleansing? If it is, it's cleansing through spectacle.

New Art, where I found this story, tries to put a finger on this uneasiness. Is this Holocaust Porn?

If Sierra was actually after the creepy feeling that all this was real, if he wanted to "remember", he could have simply made a trip to Auschwitz. It is a horrible, horrible place. I'm still not sure if I think it is a good thing for it to exist. Its struggle for memory gets scarily close to a fascination with death, the same one that makes us look at an accident or listen to a horrible story. Yes, it makes us remember. But I'm not sure if the cost is not, well, some sort of a pornography, if you may, an indecent exposure of something that really should have been put to rest. Nonetheless, it exists - it's there to see for anyone unsure if his memory is correct, unsure if he has enough disgust for what people can do to other people. I don't think we need Santiago Sierra to remind us of that.

Rooting out progressives in US academia

The Guardian tracks the rise of progressive-hunting in American academia, from Fox's Sean Hannity, who urged students to record "leftwing propaganda" by professors to air on his show and righwinger David Horowitz's book/blacklist The Professors: the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America to efforts in Pennsylvania and elsewhere to remove the International Baccalaureate (IB) program from high schools because, among other reasons, it's deemed "un-American," marxist, anti-Christian, part of an international communist conspiracy, and suspicious simply because it was "developed in a foreign country" (Switzerland).

"There is a cunning behind the battyness," says Todd Gitlin of Columbia, one of Horowitz's most dangerous academics. "It's not just the self-aggrandisement. It's an assault on one of the few social enclaves that the right doesn't control. There is a scattershot bellicosity whether the fortunes of the political right are up or down. They find it useful for fundraising if nothing else."

Serial No. 3817131

Born in Ohio but raised in Israel, Rachel Papo found herself serving as a photographer in the Israeli Air Force at age 18. Her serial number then--3817131--is the number in the title of her new photo series, shot in 2004, that captures young women during their mandatory military service in Israel. She writes:

The life of an eighteen-year-old girl in Israel is interrupted when she is plucked out of her environment at an age when sexual, educational, and family values are at their highest exploration point. She is then placed in a rigorous institution, where individuality becomes a secondary matter, making room for nationalism. “I solemnly swear…to devote all of my strength and to sacrifice my life to protect the land and the liberty of Israel,” repeats the newly recruited soldier during her swearing-in ceremony. She enters the two-year period in which she will change from a girl to a woman, a teenager to an adult, all under a militaristic, masculine environment, and in the confines of an army that is engaged in daily war and conflict...