I had seen a few references in circulation but couldn’t quite manage to replay the film in head until reading this excellent but cringe-inducing analysis from Frank Swain.
The essay underscores how life imitates art, and rather than living in that under-privileged but blissful unawares computer simulation, we are in fact relegated to a rather bleak vision of 2017 from three decades hence—The Running Man. Complete with the billing of actors turn politicians in Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Venture and a game-show host more powerful than the president (now even more ironic considering that Schwarzenegger has been appointed Trump’s under-study as reality television-show master of ceremonies), the film is an uncanny reflection of our gladiatorial appetites. Even the technological state of affairs with the infonet and the infonet of things held up pretty well. What do you think? Perhaps we’ve not crossed the threshold to blood-lust and public execution of society’s maladroits but virtual sticks and stones and teapot tempests are certainly not that far behind and are effective ways to placate and manipulate the home-audience.
Friday, 6 January 2017
infonet
hail to the chief, as we pledge cooperation
It may seem, in the grander scheme of things, like something very rarefied and trifling, but the emergent protest and backlash regarding a Saint Louis art museum’s decision to loan the a painting by George Caleb Bingham—called The Verdict of the People—to loan the piece to the presidential inaugural luncheon as a prop really strikes me as one of the better, more thoughtful arguments that I’ve heard imploring institutions and individuals not to normalise a regime that’s already demonstrated disdain for not only convention but also civility and social justice.
Too often, I think, wounded pride and fear is coming off as the same shrill mantra of partisan politics that was mumbled by the opposing chorus throughout the whole terms. We know it’s different and there’s much at stake but I think there’s a serious risk of having grave concerns fobbed off as something political and therefore not urgent thanks to safeguards—sometimes called grid-lock, and glacial rates of change (albeit it this environment, maybe that’s becoming an ever poorer metaphor). This contested artwork is not Bingham’s only political allegory but does seem particularly unfit in a self-styled era of populist uprisings that didn’t manage to also capture the popular vote and seemed ultimately far from the people’s verdict.
shลgatsu
In what’s become a sort of annual tradition, Spoon & Tamago are featuring a gallery of some of their favourite New Years’ postcards (ๅนด่ณ็ถ, nengajล) for this upcoming year of the Fire Rooster. Although since 1873 Japan has officially adhered to the Gregorian calendar and celebrates the new year on 1 January, tradition still has a place for the lunisolar procession of the Chinese zodiac—which heralds in the year (and a second inflammatory one) of the rooster on 28 January with a week of festivities. Let’s hope that we’re getting an especially lucky sign this time around.
7x7
what sorcery is this: seemingly magical, Mรถbius-burrito method of putting the cover on a duvet (Plumeau, Bettdecke)
journeyman: large format, industrial three-dimensional printer installed in its own shipping container for ease of transportation
ัะตััะพัััััะธะทะผ: 1960 Soviet vision of the year 2017
furkids: funny and effective animal shelter promotional presentation produced on a shoe-string budget
f-bomb: despite older brother’s protests baby prodigy gets rather sweary
vinification statt gentrification: tiny urban vineyard in Berlin that was also home to the first programmable computer from the laboratory of Konrad Zuse
