#free kekistan or know your meme

There is an artist from Saint Petersburg calling herself Pepelangelo who is portraying the meme that’s become rather abused by being appropriated by the Alt-Right as a symbol of hate in oil on canvas.
Perhaps the artist is trying to salvage the character’s good name and innocence by putting him in the context of fine art before Dear Leader adopted it by sharing—during his campaign, which I suppose never ended—a parody of himself as the frog but I think that the associations are at least for the present inextricable. The hashtag in the title refers to the Ancient Egyptian amphibian god Kek and his homeland, followers who are in certain circles conflated with Pepe—but I’m sure that they wouldn’t tolerate such idolatry or much less hang it on their walls. These works are currently sold out but you can still peruse the growing gallery of Olga Vishnevski, should you be so motivated.

gig ‘em aggies

Rather than busily dismantling the agency he was charged with destroying, the US energy secretary is taking umbrage with the fact that the student council has elevated the runner-up to student body president of his dear alma mater, Texas A&M (formerly standing for Agriculture and Mechanics from the school’s past but now official are just letters) University.
The candidate who garnered the most votes was subsequently disqualified because he intimidated voters and failed to disclose all his financial interests and rather than suffering an invalid administration or holding a new election, the student council choose to install the trailing candidate. The Energy Department head (who is also responsible for the US arsenal of nuclear weapons) decided that that was a miscarriage of justice that he would not let stand—never mind the fact that the runner-up is the first openly gay young man to hold the office and the ousted individual was the son of a Republican party fundraiser and vocal supporter of Dear Leader’s campaign for high office—a bid which the former Texas governor failed at himself.

delft on the shelf

I recalled reading about these contact lenses inspired by Delfts blauw pottery courtesy of Nag on the Lake a few weeks ago but we failed to appreciate the larger context—notionally just one entrant in an annual contest that the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam holds that calls for submissions of artworks informed by objects in the museum’s collection.  This year’s Rijksstudio Awards—to be put up to a vote by the public to name the winners—also includes, besides this work of retinal concept art, a Night Watch night shirt and prophylactic wrappers adorned with etchings of Biblical liaisons by Dürer. Check out the links at the top to learn more and to perhaps get inspired to hold a similar homage for the collections in your own local galleries.

upper caucasia

Justifiably doubtful whether chaperones could not guarantee the personal safety and security of non-white students at its southern frontier thanks to overt and covert racist border-control policies, Canadian schools and youth organisations are cancelling field trips to America. A statement issued by the Toronto district school board offers that the cancellation of all planned excursions reflect their commitment “to ensuring that fairness, equity and inclusion are essential principles” and nothing to compromise in the face bigotry and harassment.

haute clôture

The US Senate voted to grant domestic internet service providers full access to the browsing history and thus the habits, health and well-being of its customers and sell that data to the highest bidder—all without the consent of the user.
Lawmakers opposed to the bill are rebranding the initialism ISP as “information sold for profit” or “invading subscribers’ privacy” and it is really chilling to think what sort of trails of bread-crumbs we leave behind that makes judgment rather than justice swift and instant. Companies beholden to no regulation and with no consequence for spillage, mischaracterisation that could deny an individual a job or a loan, would horde vast amounts of data for actuarial purposes and targeted advertising. The bill is not yet become law but we’re not expecting the opposition to prevail—but perhaps the new policy of containment can confine it to the USA.

ho/horizon/on

Reporting on the Getty Centre’s latest acquisitions Hyperallergic introduces us the visual verses of Scottish poet and playwright Ian Hamilton Finlay known as concrete or pattern poetry, typified by meaning being conveyed by the typographical effects as much as the choice of the words themselves. Though the works are ultra-modern this reminds me of this recent study of ancient calligrams. Visit the link up top to see a whole gallery of Finlay’s poems plus those of fellow pioneer and correspondent Brazilian Augusto de Campos.

star child

Via Kottke we discover that an architect, artist duo in Los Angeles have recreated an exacting replica of the iconic, other-worldly bedroom from Stanley Kubrick’s epic production of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
After disabling HAL, Doctor David Bowman confronts older and younger versions of himself in this setting when he goes to investigate a mysterious monolith in orbit around Jupiter. The bedroom film-set is in a massive warehouse transformed into an exhibition hall and thematically it is part of a series of displays meant to take visitors on a hero’s journey, an homage to Joseph Campbell’s trope of the monomyth.

despotting

What is even more remarkable than the dread phenomenon that is Dear Leader and his goon-squad and the spinelessness of fellow party members in the legislature is his media presence that’s beholden to no one and certainly not to the law of the land or to even factual events.
And while this behaviour and deportment will never be normalised no matter how it might be ground into our faces by jack-booted thugs or by more troublesome, subtler methods (like the nudges and cues that resulted in Dear Leader’s miscalculated triumph), it’s absolutely unbelievable how whatever the latest paroxysm is, it’s always on-message. However detached from reality or counter-factual it is, in the unmediated moment, it is Dear Leader’s account that lingers even if wholly refuted by other media sources—whom Dear Leader dismisses as “the enemy of the American people.”