BarryTaylorBlog

carmageddon II

Well, this weekend was meant to be the sequel to the event that didn't really happen the first time round. An over-saturated car-culture loses one of its most important freeway connections and it all goes to hell. That was the hype anyway last year, and it was completely negated as people took the opportunity to explore their own neightbourhoods and avoid travelling across town to buy cheese or whatever else it is that has us all criss-crossing this vast metropolis for hours on end. This weekend was the return of trouble supposedly--more work on the bridge that demanded the closing of the freeway. It's not over yet, but once again, we seem to have managed without this freeway, which is telling on some levels. Obviously, a weekend of re-routing or not driving is very different from a lifestyle change--and it is also the weekend so the roads are free of a huge amount of worker traffic commuting everywhere, but it does seem that it is possible to reduce driving and still function as a city!! They say the work is going well, it's due to finish before the Monday morning rush-hour, lets hope so, or we might see the carmageddon everyone is breathlessly talking about on the telly.

pulp fiction skull

emmylou makes everything cool

 I like Mumford & Sons--I am not mad about them, but I like them. But this piece which features them joined by Emmylou Harris (and Terry Douglas) takes it all to another level if you ask me. As far as I am concerned you can put Emmylou Harris into the mix with anyone and things will become special. Wrecking Ball, the album she did with Daniel Lanois, remains one of my favourites.

I met her many years ago in Bristol of all places. I was touring with Hall & Oates and she and her band played the night before--we were in town and went to the show. James Burton played guitar and it was just stellar-we hung backstage with band and crew for a bit afterwards, just chatting about music, touring and life--memorable.

piss christ? YES PLEASE!

A soon to open Andreas Serrano retrospective exhibit is stirring up controversy once again, thanks primarily to his piece entitled, Piss Christ, which features a crucifx submerged in urine. "I call on President Obama to stand up for America’s values and beliefs and denounce the ‘Piss Christ," was the call from at least one politician. It's not just Americans who repsond negatively to this image, last year the photo was damaged when it was attacked by a group of French protesters armed with hammers. There is a planned protest set for the opening today (Thursday) by a group comprised of members of the Catholic League. One of the organizers, Bill Donohue declared that, "decent people know it is unacceptable." Do they really? And why exactly is this piece of art deemed unacceptable. I think a couple of factors play into it's reception. Firstly the title, if it wasn't called that, who would even know--the title seems to take a moment of beauty and turn into into an act of heresy and degradation. Andrew Hudgins captured that and more in his peom, Andreas Serrano, 1987.

If we did not know it was cow’s blood and urine,
if we did not know that Serrano had for weeks
hoarded his urine in a plastic vat,
if we did not know the cross was gimcrack plastic,
we would assume it was too beautiful.
We would assume it was the resurrection,
glory, Christ transformed to light by light
because the blood and urine burn like a halo,
and light, as always, light makes it beautiful.

We are born between the urine and the feces,
Augustine says, and so was Christ, if there was a Christ,
skidding into this world as we do
on a tide of blood and urine. Blood, feces, urine—
what the fallen world is made of, and what we make.
He peed, ejaculated, shat, wept, bled—
bled under Pontius Pilate, and I assume
the mutilated god, the criminal,
humiliated god, voided himself
on the cross and the blood and urine smeared his legs
and he ascended bodily unto heaven,
and on the third day he rose into glory, which
is what we see here, the Piss Christ in glowing blood:
the whole irreducible point of the faith,
God thrown in human waste, submerged and shining.

We have grown used to beauty without horror.

We have grown used to useless beauty.

Another issue is the sterility that religion has often descended into--something referenced in a post today by my friend Kester. He does such a great job, there is no need to add my thoughts, read his. I will only add that this issue of dirt and purity is at the centre of the judeo-christian religious thinking and the subversiveness of jesus was to challenge conventional notions about both purity and dirt.

nevermind the bollocks!!!!

It's the 35th anniversary of this slice of anarchy--a record that ignited the world of music and changed the face of pop culture--graphics, music mags, fashion, music, politics--it was all involved. I recommend listening at high volume--a read of Griel Marcus' seminal work, Lipstick Traces, and a good 5-minute pogo around the living room in honour of Johnny and the boys.

 

the future in 1962

It was fifty years ago today that The Jetsons first aired on American tv. It was the first show to air in colour on ABC-TV. presented as a sort of space-age answer to the Flintstones, it was everything you might expect from a country, and a world, excited about the potential of the future. It was a glimpse into American self-identity--carried into a new age--carried into a new age, but very much of its own time--no people of colour, no alternate life-style families--just George Jetson, his long-suffering wife, kids, pets, and the future, all offering up a look at the future that was ideologically the same as its present, just with more space-age gadgets. In keeping with the views of the times, George moaned about work--his three-hour work week was getting to him all the time--well, why not consider the future as an age of less work, it had been the trajectory since the introduction of Labour laws and a host of other societal shifts brought about by the industrial revolution etc. No-one envisioned a future with more work, or with the lines between work and leisure blurred by technology as it is today--you can work on the way to work...and on your way home from it, today.

The family unit was intact, there were no derivations, no alternate lifestyles--and gender roles were still clearly laid out--men did men stuff, women--well, their place was in the home, even if it was a ranch-style futuristic abode with a parking spot for your own flying saucer. Jeffrey Tucker, said of it,

"The whole scene — which anticipated so much of the technology we have today but, strangely, not e-mail or texting— reflected the ethos of time: a love of progress and a vision of a future that stayed on course ... The Jetsons' world is our world: explosive technological advances, entrenched bourgeois culture, a culture of enterprise that is the very fond of the good life."

What the Jetsons reminds us is that we are not very good at predicting the future--it's why I love the site paleo-future so much--its a lesson on our presumptive follies. "a future that stayed on course" Tucker writes--yeah, not so much, that future disappeared really quickly, a future we can predict is really no future at all, it is an assumption that we have arrived rather than an observation that we still have places to go---We certainly can't predict the future based on what we assume is concrete. Not long after The Jetsons aired, a new future did arrive in America, and much of the rest of the world, it wasn't the same world just with shinier gadgets--it was a whole new way of being human--it's still playing out before our eyes, it will not take trajectories we assume it will--it will be different, it will be the future, it will feel much like now--and I doubt we will be piloting personal space-craft, but what do I know? The future holds its own secrets, its the present that holds my interest.

we got you covered

The Roundel: 100 Artists Remake A London Icon, is a new book featuring, yes, you guessed it, one hundred aritsts playing with, rearranging and re-inventing the iconic London Underground roundel (the blue line dissecting the red circle for those of us who are less well-informed:)) created in 1908 as a device to aid in the noting of station names which were being lost in a sea of advertising. Calligrapher Edward Johnston and a London transport manager, Frank Pick developed the original, and now iconic symbol. The book comes out next month, looks to be fabulous.

after the apocalypse

I have been thinking a fair bit about this fascination that there seems to be with the idea of post-apocalypse, post-technological collapse. It's evident in things as diverse as The Hunger Games, The Walking Dead andnow, even more, the new JJ Abrams produced, Revolution, which explores the world post-electricity. It seems to echo the on-going love/hate relationship we have with technology. On the one hand we are enraptured with what technology can accomplish and how connected it allows us to be, and what it can deliver, literally into our hands. On the other hand, we speak a lot about the downside of technology-the loss of face-to-face communing, i-pod isolation, hyper-individualized mediation, and these shows seem to be wrestling with those duelling forces at work in our lives.

I begin a class next week on Theology and Media Culture and I might begin with this question, this issue, in the class, get us thinking about the role/s technology plays in enhancing and diminishing our lives. There is an interesting article in Esquire magazine online about this very thing--a worthwhile read. This is something that Marshall Mcluhan addressed with his laws of media tetrad, putting forward the view that technology, any technology, causes four major effects upon the user-it (whatever it is)enhances, retrieves, reverses and obsolesces. We seem to live somewhere in the tension between those dynamics, each of us being pulled by various preferences, positions, access etc. 

There are often times when I would happily give up my cell-phone, but the idea of going back to a pre-electric world--one that would also herald a return to the 'dark' in so many other areas, is not one that I care to visit. I think we have to find our own balance with technology and its use, misuse, disuse.

Much like Hunger Games--Revolution presents a sort of frontier-survivalist mentality--both interestingly, are heavily led by females--the girl with the crossbow in the NBC ad would not look out of place at all in the HG artworks, advertising and narrative ideology--this idea of living close to the land, technology-free, surviving off of ones wits and ancient-or older, close-to-earth wisdom, holds great appeal.

We rely so much on technology--and for most of us, most of it is a mystery in terms of how it actually works--i'm still stuck on radio-waves!!! Derrida used this idea to great degree in his writing on knowledge and our relation to technology. For him, the space created between our reliance upon and ignorance of, technology, was precisley the cause of a revived and renewed interest in animis, magic and mystery--i.e. religious belief is affected by technology relation.

And of course, all these shows draw heavily upon the American Obsession with all things apocalyptic--which continues to be expressed at the heart of much of our culturally mediated imagination. Oh, and AC/DC are still cool!

the story of stuff

 

I'm back in 'advertising mode.' History of advertising is this terms focus. Here's an interesting project called The Story of Stuff--about where things come from and where they go

its that time of year again...

I am back to the books--classroom books that is. The Fall terms are racheting up--Theology and Media Culture, Hostory of Adevertising, other lectures on Gospel of matthew, a couple of 'academic' papers to prepare for--books, books, books...