Journeys In Sound - Simon Raymonde
2 hours ago
Sunday 11 July 2010
WTF???
A new video by Sputniko! (http://sputniko.com/blog) I'm a female artist and the machine is not for men either, it can also be worn by women in future when menstruation might become something obsolete - I'm not suggesting when or by whom this machine would be used - after much research with Reproductive Scientists (which I write in my website) I know that the psychologies which people associate with menstruation is too complex to make the reason for using such a device so simple - this music video is just one example of many possibilities.
http://www.sputniko.com/works/sputnik..
http://www.sputniko.com/works/sputnik..
Do People Heckle? (1966)
In 1966 one of the most brilliant American New Wave movie directors - Joseph Strick - made a documentary for the BBC. It was about heckling in the British general election of that year. It is great piece of verite film-making.
Strick is still making films, and lives in Paris. He has now approached me because he wants to do a film about this year's general election - and wants to film heckling. My first reaction was to tell him that I don't think people heckle any longer. He says he is convinced they do heckle - and will heckle - because of anger over MPs etc. Political journalists I have asked don't know how widespread heckling is these days - because they don't tend to stray outside Westminster.
I think it raises a really interesting question. If people don't heckle any longer is it because they no longer believe in politics, or is it because they no longer believe in themselves?
Is it that they have come to see their politicians as creatures who no longer have any ideas or vision, and who have absolutely no idea or understanding of what is happening in the world, so there is no point in heckling them any longer?
Or is it that we, the people, have no ideas and no understanding of the world ourselves? That we have no vision any longer of what the world could be like, or what changes we would like made - so we have nothing to say? And thus nothing to heckle about.
So however angry we are we remain mute and sullen.
Or maybe we do still heckle? It would be very interesting to find out - please let me know.
Here are some extracts from the film.
In the film you can see both an old Britain and fragments of the new Britain that was emerging side by side in the audiences.
Empire Loyalists shout about the betrayal of Rhodesia and the loss of the last bits of the empire, while in the same audience - towards the end of the film - you can see early examples of British counter-culture. Long hair - but still beatnik, not hippie, fashion - with the slogan "Anarchy - don't vote, Anarchy don't vote".
It was the beginning of the rise of individualism and the modern retreat from politics
Strick is still making films, and lives in Paris. He has now approached me because he wants to do a film about this year's general election - and wants to film heckling. My first reaction was to tell him that I don't think people heckle any longer. He says he is convinced they do heckle - and will heckle - because of anger over MPs etc. Political journalists I have asked don't know how widespread heckling is these days - because they don't tend to stray outside Westminster.I think it raises a really interesting question. If people don't heckle any longer is it because they no longer believe in politics, or is it because they no longer believe in themselves?
Is it that they have come to see their politicians as creatures who no longer have any ideas or vision, and who have absolutely no idea or understanding of what is happening in the world, so there is no point in heckling them any longer?
Or is it that we, the people, have no ideas and no understanding of the world ourselves? That we have no vision any longer of what the world could be like, or what changes we would like made - so we have nothing to say? And thus nothing to heckle about.
So however angry we are we remain mute and sullen.
Or maybe we do still heckle? It would be very interesting to find out - please let me know.
Here are some extracts from the film.
In the film you can see both an old Britain and fragments of the new Britain that was emerging side by side in the audiences.
Empire Loyalists shout about the betrayal of Rhodesia and the loss of the last bits of the empire, while in the same audience - towards the end of the film - you can see early examples of British counter-culture. Long hair - but still beatnik, not hippie, fashion - with the slogan "Anarchy - don't vote, Anarchy don't vote".
It was the beginning of the rise of individualism and the modern retreat from politics
Adam Curtis @'BBC'
Saturday 10 July 2010
Until Cryonics Do Us Part
There are ways of speaking about dying that very much annoy Peggy Jackson, an affable and rosy-cheeked hospice worker in Arlington, Va. She doesn’t like the militant cast of “lost her battle with,” as in, “She lost her battle with cancer.” She is similarly displeased by “We have run out of options” and “There is nothing left we can do,” when spoken by doctor to patient, implying as these phrases will that hospice care is not an “option” or a “thing” that can be done. She doesn’t like these phrases, but she tolerates them. The one death-related phrase she will not abide, will not let into her house under any circumstance, is “cryonic preservation,” by which is meant the low-temperature preservation of human beings in the hope of future resuscitation. That this will be her husband’s chosen form of bodily disposition creates, as you might imagine, certain complications in the Jackson household...
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