Funny

From the funniest blog post, ever at The Bloggess

Fish art

My recent paintings of fish.

Still ill?

Morrissey has just been released from Hospital in Swindon, after collapsing during a concert the previous day. He appears to be on the mend. No word however on the state of his hair. From the look of this photo taken in October, something is not right. How can a man with hair in such need of care be released from hospital? Don't people realise anything?

The Harsh Truth of the Camera Eye

Churchillian legs
hair barely there
the harsh truth of the camera eye

Your eyes signal pain
because of the strain
of smiling
the harsh truth of the camera eye

telling you all
that you never wanted to know
showing what
you didn't want shown

My so friendly lens
zooms into
'the inner you'
and it tells the harsh truth
and nothing but

Laugh with us all here
that's if you can
then take the pictures home
and scream

telling you all
that you never wanted to know
showing you what
you didn't want shown

This photographer
he must have really had it in for you

Oh, I don't want
to be judged anymore
I don't want to be judged
I would sooner be loved
I would sooner be
just blindly loved - Morrissey

2009 Congress of The Communist Party of Australia (Stalinist)

Under discussion at the 2009 Congress of The Communist Party of Australia (Stalinist)is a plebiscite sponsored by the Newcastle (N.S.W.) Branch denouncing the government's proposed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) for Australia. The Congress passed the resulting resolution and a climate fightback campaign will be launched in December. The slogan for the campaign 'the bigger the boot the smaller the (carbon) footprint' was chosen by delegates to bring attention to both the climate and the taxing issue of boots.



Photo copyright AP / Eduardo Verdugo

Addendum

ahem. I have been asked to point out that since respectively 1991 and 2001 the Communist Party of Australia and the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) have had no affiliation with the Communist Party of Australia (Stalinist) and any resolutions made by the Stalinist faction have no authority on the above parties.


Addendum 2 (22 Oct.)
cough.. the Communist Party of Australia (Stalinist) have asked me to make it clear that opposition to the proposed ETS does not indicate that they are not concerned about climate change, in fact the obverse. However they do not believe that a 'bosses' scheme that does not involve firstly the workers control of all means of production, distribution and exchange is merely a smokescreen that will allow the ruling class to continue both to pollute and to make the workers pay more for that very pollution.


Addendum 3 (23 Oct.)


This is getting silly. From a leading Sydney newspaper:

Bookends or the end of the book

A 20th anniversary edition of Carol J. Adams book The Sexual politics of Meat has recently been released. How far have we travelled? Not far it seems. Except that the same images have now been recuperated from selling meat to selling Vegetarianism.

And also are not the use of these images perfect examples of second wave feminism and third wave feminism.

Tammy at the farm

Tammy liked working on the family farm. She especially liked to milk the cows. It was whilst milking Daisy the Jersey cow that Tammy suddenly realised that she was a Lesbian.


"I want to go live in a separatist household", Tammy said. "I'm sick of living in this breeders nightmare."

When a car reverses

"to follow the complex course of descent is to maintain passing events in their proper dispersion; it is to identify the accidents, the minute deviations - or conversely, the complete reversals - the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth to those things that continue to exist and have value for us; it is to discover that truth or being does not lie at the root of what we know and what we are, but the exteriority of accidents." - Michel Foucault



There could have been an accident, there could have been a car's reversal and here could be the aftermath. It was not my car, but I trust that it gave birth to something of value for someone. To me it was art.

Tiny Children

And here's an mp3 - link lifted from this excellent blog.

Lefebvre and the absurd

In popular culture via the notorious but seminal work The Da Vinci Code it has become more widely known that art (paintings and sculpture) traditionally contains/ed messages that were only revealed to those who were looking beyond the superficial. Traditionally these messages were to impart deeper meanings or for religious allegory. The symbolic messages could be contained in the hand gestures of the depicted protagonist/s (for instance a finger pointing towards a heart implies death). The symbolic maybe also in the colours used in the background or on clothes (for instance someone wearing blue would indicate purity or chasteness). There may also be artefacts or animals contained within artworks, sometimes held, sometimes pointed at or more frequently set aside in the background (or in the case of sculpture at the feet), these signs would indicate an emotional state or more quotidianly a profession or social status. There are in fact a huge number of possible clues, symbols or signs within artworks, and this is not just the case of Western art.


In identifying the ‘hidden’ messages in this supposedly simple work by Antonio Donghi, I have taken on the views as expressed by Henri Lefebvre in most notably his 1971 work Le manifeste différentialiste. Using Lefebvre’s Marxist analysis we see that the picture is purely political, however, I would contend that it is also possible to see the picture in a variety of other ways, whether structured by politics, religion or other dogma, or by the viewer’s own personal experience.


Within this work we see 2 clear protagonists. On immediate inspection, what we are seeing is the sublime and the ridiculous, the businessman and the clown, the fool and the wise. Take another look, the men’s faces are very similar, are we seeing then the two shades of a single person/personality. Look again, one is taller than the other, are they then not the same person but brothers? And so does the picture tell us that people raised (nurtured) in the same way can yet take widely transverse directions (revealing nature).


A further look and we see that the background is contained of 2 surfaces and colours, the clothes are also of 2 colours (or 2 negated colours in one figure). So we are seeing a clear intention by the artist to give us a binary or two-sided view, everything points us to a duality.


How then do we interpret Lefebvre’s reductive insinuation that this artwork is merely compromised of isms or ideologies and groups? Is the white of the Pierrot costume merely an indicator of a Conservative? Has he chosen White to indicate the political conservatism of ‘White Russians’ is the red clothing Poujadist because he sees Poujadism as somehow aligned to agrarian Socialism or is the Poujadist indicator pointing to the heart, thus saying we are all Poujadists in our hearts. This would be unlikely. Lefebvre I would contend is missing the human element and the artistic in his analysis.


It is possible to depict and discuss the political in art, without seeing the art as merely political. But Lefebvre has seen the ground as the domain of art, so at least we see that underpinning the whole enterprise is art, whilst above and behind it is depicted the curtain or the Fourth Estate – the publicist and disseminator. So we have 2 progenitors of the art experience, one producing, one disseminating, where then is the viewer? To stand before the work and be part of the conversation, it would seem necessary to annunciate ‘Je suis ici’ or more prophetically ‘Je suis le public’. This takes away the duality that the artist has gone to pains to promote, for we are now three. The duality of impoverished political theory is that of Conservatism vs. Communism. This basic view is not propagated here, for we see the shades of different (French) political opinion expressed, so where is the duality in Lefebvre.


Taking another view, the traditional duality of most life (life forms), is male/female (Adam and Eve, passim). Lefebvre here, as does the artist, speaks nothing on the subject. But denial of the feminine speaks louder. Donghi may be saying man has 2 parts, but he specifically is not saying that part of man is woman, or that woman is part of a fixed duality with man. Man is therefore alone in Donghi and Lefebvre’s view.
But let us look further at Donghi’s oeuvre, we find he paints women frequently. He paints them as women, in different roles, without recourse to mere titillation, we can see therefore that this work is not part of a fixed mindset. Looking also at his works we can see that the Pierrot is a frequent or constant figure in his imaginary landscape. Lefebvre however in using this work shows his grasp of the matter, he can identify aspects of all parts of the painting, but yet cannot see a role or sign for women. We can say therefore that he is not really looking. What Lefebvre misses by seemingly not looking is that the painting is relatively simple. It depicts two men, one a Pierrot the other a circus master (or ringleader cf. Morrissey), who though they look much alike are in different costumes, one is dressed in a traditional male attire of constrictive formal wear, the other is dressed to represent the joy and freedom of life, dressed as someone who recognises and embraces the absurd. What Lefebvre has missed is the absurd.

Little known British crisp facts

Little known facts about Hula Hoops

1. Hula Hoops were the favourite salted snack of musician Marc Bolan


2. The 1976 IMF bailout crisis in Britain was caused by false calculations made by then Chancellor of the Exchequer Dennis Healey whilst using Hula Hoops in a rudimentary self made abacus (it has been suggested that Joe Gormley the Trades Union leader had eaten one of the Hula Hoops during a meeting thus throwing off calculations by a decimal point)


3. Contrary to popular belief the hole within Hula Hoops if enlarged will not create a time portal


4. It is acceptable within canon law to marry using Hula Hoops as rings


5. The fact that Hula Hoops were first sold on the very day that JFK was assassinated is purely coincidental


6. Hula Hoops are not as cheesy as Quavers

Little known facts about Quavers

1. Since the accession of President Hugo Chavez in 1999, Quavers have been banned in Venezuela (although a thriving black market now exists catering to snack 'addicts')


2. The shape of Quavers is an actual representation of the single helix, and as such is one of the four Signs of God


3. Conversely, Quavers do not form part of any Illuminati conspiracy


4. Despite their name Quavers cannot actually be 'played'


5. Quavers were the official team sponsor of the England squad for the 1978 World Cup in Argentina. Following England’s failure to qualify, Quavers have never again been accepted for any football sponsorship


6. Quavers are more cheesy than Hula Hoops, but less cheesy than Wotsits

New edition of my bibliography

http://www.ivu.org/history/australian-bibliography.pdf

Congrats Herta Mueller

I am however surprised that you beat my favourites for the prize.

1. Michel Houellebecq


2. William Trevor


3. Paul Theroux


4. Paul Auster


5. Jeanette Winterson


6. Peter Ackroyd


7. A.S. Byatt


8. Haruki Murakami

Still it's nice that on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall that an anti-Communist won.

Trees again

and some musical accompaniament

Operation Vegetarian

Somewhat drastic, not without potential though, just needs tweaking, surely.

"Operation Vegetarian was a British military plan in 1942 to disseminate linseed cakes infected with anthrax onto the fields of Germany. These cakes would have been eaten by the cattle, which would then be consumed by the civilian population, causing the deaths of millions of German citizens."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Vegetarian

60 year anniversary

+ 10 years, it is still not time for China to relax.
as "After the enemies with guns have been wiped out, there will still be enemies without guns; they are bound to struggle desperately against us, and we must never regard these enemies lightly." - Mao Zedong

Head

The World is My Canvas

Wonder whether the quote (seen in Canberra) came before or after the Nokia advert.

Twittering with Denise Richards

You know I like Denise Richards. But she takes the meaning of 'Follow me on Twitter' a bit too seriously.



Update

Yeah, well, I suppose at least it's not Richie Sambora