Hyperallegic directs our attention to a modest gallery owner and art broker in a small Tuscan village who is responsible for the vast majority of North Korean art—inspiration, motivation placards, ephemera, propaganda posters and fine art—that enters into Western markets. The article also discusses the thousand-strong studio that produces much of what the gallery resells and that has executed monumental consignments for various institutions and world leaders at steeply discounted prices.
Tuesday 5 June 2018
la repubblica popolare democratica di corea
Monday 4 June 2018
hang in there, baby!
privatising profits, socialising losses
Much as there is dishonesty at the root of the gangster Trump’s specious argument of “national security” to justify the tariffs on steel and aluminium on US allies and significant trade partners, Boing Boing is reporting that the Department of Energy will invoke antiquated emergency powers in order to subsidise unprofitable and polluting coal and expensive and resource-intense nuclear power and turn away from more innovative and agile sources.
Not only will delays in the scheduled retirement of facilities continue to do damage to the environment for all of us—though there’s no emissions at the end-stage of atomic reactors, mining of fissile materials is still a dirty business—and threaten to undermine innovation, US tax payers are buoying up these literal and figurative dinosaurs at a fairly high premium.
Sunday 3 June 2018
๐ช og sรบmersk trรบarbrรถgรฐ
As reported by BBC Monitoring and News from Elsewhere, in response to a surge in membership, Iceland’s Zuism community, a revival of the ancient Sumerian religion—considered the most venerable and precursor to all other forms of faith, is seeking permission to construct a two-storey ziggurat in Reykjavรญk as a meeting place for their growing congregation.
Having spread across Scandinavia, in part due to the fact that adherents are not subjected to the tithing that applies to other state-recognised religions and that instead the tax revenues are used to support social welfare projects, the name derives from the verb to know zu (๐ช) and references the thunder-bird god of wisdom Zรบ or Imdugud and the theogony also includes four main divinities: An or Dingir—the heavens associated with the north celestial pole who crosses the skies in the Little Dipper (constellation Usra Minor), Ninhursag, Mother Earth—or the Lady of the Mountain, Enki—the lord of the harvest and agriculture and Enlil, the weather god. There’s a whole cast of heroes and minor deities as well whose counterparts are readily recognised. He that you call Jupiter, we call Marduk. In addition to influencing religions to follow, the Mesopotamian civilisation also invented taxation and debt but with the understanding that in order to avoid the ill societal effects of a crippling burden, it was necessary to have the occasional debt-forgiveness—a practise which the Zuistar (what members call themselves) hope champion and to reintroduce as well.
i shot andy warhol
On this day, fifty years ago radical anarchist Valerie Jean Solanas (1936* - 1988†), playwright and author, turned herself in to authorities (later once deemed fit to stand for trial, for “reckless endangerment with intent to harm”) for firing shots from a pistol at Andy Warhol (wounding him) and associates at The Factory, his sixth floor studio in the Decker Building of Midtown Manhattan.
Remanded to psychiatric care and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, it is speculated that Solanas grew increasingly suspect of the ulterior motives of eccentric patrons like Warhol and those in the publishing industry who would undermine her message and claim her words as their own. Her SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto, a scathing criticism of modern norms which proposed eliminating the monetary system and the patriarchy by means of total automation, saw its initial publication the week of Solanas’ sentencing, which was two years plus time served.
