nevermind the bricolage

Sputnik Observatory

Jonathan Harris is at it again. On the heels of We Feel Fine and Universe comes Sputnik Observatory for the study of Contemporary Culture, a lens through which we can observe what is happening in the culture. The site features hundreds of video interviews with all kinds of thinkers offering up numerous perspectives about the world around us. Harris himself says,
"The central premise of the Sputnik project is that everything is connected to everything else, and that topics and ideas that may seem fringe and even heretical to the mainstream world are in fact being investigated by leading thinkers working in fields as diverse as quantum physics, mathematics, neuroscience, biology, economics, architecture, digital art, video games, computer science and music. Sputnik is dedicated to bringing these crucial ideas from the fringes of thought out into the limelight, so that the world can begin to understand them."

Corporatism

Douglas Rushkoff got mugged, outside of his home in Brooklyn. The mugging, and even more, the rather strange responses he got from some of his neighbours, drove him to reconsider the shape and focus of his life. His view is that life in the 21st century is far from pleasurable, in fact, according to Rushkoff, we have allowed ourselves to live at the mercy of corporatism, and corporate values shape our lives, detrimentally. Life Inc: How The World Became A Corporation And How To Take It Back, is his latest book. It is intensely readable and quite provocative, as Rushkoff tends to be. He explores the disconnection from community that he feels is rampant in our world via the Industrial Age, and rails against a world where corporate values are prized over neighbourliness and community well-being. Working and consuming get plenty of exploration and critique, as does the romanticizing of what neighbourhood living is all about. His over-arching premise is that we need to start investing in one another and in our local communities, rather than falling into a pattern of corporatism and consumption that simply does not lead to good living. There is a video of Rushkoff speaking about the book here. The book is formatted rather like Playing the Future using binary oppositions and shifts as a means of exploring various aspects of corporatism in our lived experience. I like Rushkoff, and find his writing quite accessible, I appreciate his willingness to challenge the status quo and not only challenge, but offer a way forward from present predicaments.

O, It's their fault!!

My brother alerted me to this lovely piece of understatement from the always reliable Evening Standard. London's end-of-day news rag is prone to hyperbole and whipping up frenzy.

Zizek on Iran

A copy-right free essay from Zizek.

WILL THE CAT ABOVE THE PRECIPICE FALL DOWN?
Slavoj Zizek
When an authoritarian regime approaches its final crisis, its dissolution as a rule follows two steps. Before its actual collapse, a mysterious rupture takes place: all of a sudden people know that the game is over, they are simply no longer afraid. It is not only that the regime loses its legitimacy, its exercise of power itself is perceived as an impotent panic reaction. We all know the classic scene from cartoons: the cat reaches a precipice, but it goes on walking, ignoring the fact that there is no ground under its feet; it starts to fall only when it looks down and notices the abyss. When it loses its authority, the regime is like a cat above the precipice: in order to fall, it only has to be reminded to look down…
In Shah of Shahs, a classic account of the Khomeini revolution, Ryszard Kapuscinski located the precise moment of this rupture: at a Tehran crossroad, a single demonstrator refused to budge when a policeman shouted at him to move, and the embarrassed policeman simply withdrew; in a couple of hours, all Tehran knew about this incident, and although there were street fights going on for weeks, everyone somehow knew the game is over. Is something similar going on now?
There are many versions of the events in Tehran. Some see in the protests the culmination of the pro-Western “reform movement” along the lines of the “orange” revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, etc. – a secular reaction to the Khomeini revolution. They support the protests as the first step towards a new liberal-democratic secular Iran freed of Muslim fundamentalism. They are counteracted by skeptics who think that Ahmadinejad really won: he is the voice of the majority, while the support of Mousavi comes from the middle classes and their gilded youth. In short: let’s drop the illusions and face the fact that, in Ahmadinejad, Iran has a president it deserves. Then there are those who dismiss Mousavi as a member of the cleric establishment with merely cosmetic differences from Ahmadinejad: Mousavi also wants to continue the atomic energy program, he is against recognizing Israel, plus he enjoyed the full support of Khomeini as a prime minister in the years of the war with Iraq.

MJ

There was a time when Michael Jackson's life wasn't one long freak show--hard to imagine, but true.

Earthwatch

Am at a benefit for Earthwatch at Gjelina, a very cool restaurant on Abbott-Kinney in Venice-- lots of interesting people and some great field- researchers talking about their projects

Fulguration

Not exactly an autobiography and not completely a biography, Not Being God is a colloquy, a conversation in the first person really, about Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo. I read consumed this book in a day, and I haven't been able to say that about a book for a while now. It is immensely readable, short essays, somewhat linked chronologically, which cover everything from Vattimo's education, Italian left-wing politics, to his views on peers, and of course, how he came to hs much debated theory of 'weak thought.' Vattimo has been quite an influence on my own thinking, and of course, his weak thinking has shown up most visibly in the more recent writings of John Caputo, whose weak theology, is taken from Vattimo's idea. Zizek, is the philosophical rock-star who seems to get most traction with theologians, but I think Vattimo has some serious stuff to offer theology as well. He is a Catholic, his return to faith aided by the work of Rene Girard, although he essentially takes a polar view from Gerard in the end. Girard was big on the idea of the scapegoat, and to him, Jesus Christ is the scapegoat par excellence. Vattimo feels that Christ comes to renounce the 'sacrality and necessity of the victim,' and Vattimo calls him the first great desacralizer of the natural religions--rather than called to sacrifice we are called to friendship. It's thoughtful stuff, and this leads him to make declarations like this: "postmodern nihilism is the up-to-date form of Christianity," and "I think that Christianity is a religion that self-annuls, in the sense that it annuls all forms of dogmatism. Hence, God willing, a religion and a nonreligion."  

(fulguration: to give off flashes, like lightning)

iArtist

The wonderfully named, Naroa Lizar Redrado is the bright mind behind iArtist, an economical way for anyone to recreate a major piece of contemporary art. Fancy doing your own Damien Hirst skull, but you don't have 100 million lying around? Then for about 50 quid you can purchase the For The Love of God kit, which includes skull, rhinestones and everything else one might need to chase after the Hirstian creative strand. Or perhaps you feel a bit more self-reflective and want to do something more personal--then follow Marc Quinn's example and make a cast of your own head and make it with your own blood, just like he did. Pretty funny idea, that you can check out here.
 

Ray S Anderson

Ray Anderson, one of the most influential theologians in my time at Fuller Seminary, died yesterday. Ray's class, on systematic theology (and it was systematic in the broadest sense of the word--a system for human flourishing) was the first I took as a Masters student many years ago, and I have to say that I probably would not have stayed at the school had I not encountered him and his work. He was a maverick, never fully embraced by his peers, mainly because of his tendency to buck systems in favour of human flourishing. He introduced me to Barth and Bonhoeffer, to incarnational theology, to the integration of theology and well-being. He worked tirelessly--when he retired last year, he had over 200 students in his final class and he marked and graded every paper with his usual insightful and challenging eye. It was Ray who first opened my eyes to re-thinking approaches to scripture and text, and while we would part company on many issues theologically, his approach was generous and open. When I read Pete Rollins talking about Judas I was reminded of the work Ray did on him years ago and how his treatment of Judas empowered me to take paths in my own theological journey that would prove to be quite crucial to me in the long run. He will be missed. Sorely missed. He used to include death and dying in his theological grid, relying quite heavily on Kubler-Ross' book on the stages of death, I can only imagine the quiet dignity with which he left this life, surrounded by friends and family

It's Father's Day and Jim Reeves was a favourite of my dad's. I don't know if he liked Horace Silver, but I do.