CV

Look up and you’ll see a link to my CV, and from my CV links to lots of other lovely things.

America

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath –
America will be!

from Langston Hughes – Let America be America Again (1938) here

Beyond Vietnam: A time to break silence

One of the influences for the form of this work is the project 9 scripts from a Nation at War, a collaborative project between five artists that I saw at Documenta12, particularly the unscripted interview between students (young female students) and the scripted re-enactment of the trial. 9 scripts attempts to address a much wider range of relationship than my video, between interviewer, interviewee, speaker, writer and listener, and often does this by making these roles ambiguous, a writer reading aloud their own words, for example. In my work I am aiming for something far more orthodox. My interviews, though amateur, hope to replicate the style of a Channel 4 after-news slot mini-doc, and I want them to look at home on a TV. I want to replicate the mediation of access we have to American culture.

Here are two rough edits (only three interviewees) of my MLK video.

Part 1: Interviews

Part 2: Speech

500 words of intenet pseudo-politics

Let’s say there are two social classes.

There are normal people, who believe themselves to have power because they can choose their own path in life, what they do to earn money and what they then do with it. They can be whoever they choose to be through the choices they make. Let us call them the consumer class.

Then there are people who believe they have power because they have influence. These people make decisions that affect others. The writers who tell us our stories or the key to our weight-loss. The critics who tell us which writer is best. People with opinions whose opinions matter. Let us call them the political class.

Democratisation of the media offers class mobility. Normal people, bloggers, can have opinions, and their opinions can matter. They can create, comment and review faster and more frequently than their political masters. They are closer to the people whose choices they wish to effect, writers of their own narratives.

This is of course ridiculous. Mark Mardell’s Euroblog is not the same as my friend Rachael’s fashion diary. Bloggers are a petite bourgeoisie. They believe that by acting like the political class they will be the same as them, express your opinion and you will have influence. This is Web 2.0. Choice and opinion become the same thing. You don’t just watch YouTube, you express your opinion in 1-5 stars (“Thanks for rating!”). You don’t just read the Guardian, you comment and your comment displayed on the very same page! But what every blogger hopes is that their post will be picked up by a major (establishment) blog, or even better by a newspaper, and then their opinion will really matter.

But the political class are consumers too, and still a petite bourgeoisie, aspiring to be recognised as having the best, most influential opinions, as susceptible to influence as the little people, and not necessarily more aware of it.

The question is then one of where the power went. Obviously the power to influence the choice of the consumer is no real power at all. Parliament has little power, its members even less. No one really believes Alistair Darling has power, he is merely reactive to global forces outside his control. It’s tempting to see a reptoid class running the world for its own benefit. But does Rupert Murdoch really have all the power that we don’t? Is he really above the political class? His opinions have influence, on elections for example, but is he freer from global forces, and while they benefit him financially, are they any more in his control?

In a world that no one runs, in which we all have an unequal apportion of powerlessness, in which to influence is as disempowering as to be influenced, its difficult to know what to do, especially as an aspiring artist you aspire to the political class, to influence, to a place in art history. Maybe aspiration is the problem. But blogging is definitely bad.

Abhishek Hazra

I did some photo taking for Abhishek Hazra, current resident at Gasworks, on Thursday, documenting a performance in various locations in central and the west end, where he delivered a lecture on the work of some 1920 chemist who developed a theory of Solutions. Was good.

Abhishek’s talking at Gasworks on the 11th of March at 6:30 with Goldin+Senneby. I will go. More info…here.

National Unity

Kosovo Serbs under the banner reading “Kosovo is Serbia”, during a protest against the independence of Kosovo, Monday, Feb .25, 2008, in the Serbian part of the ethnically divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica. Kosovo Serb protesters rallied against Kosovo’s independence in the new nation’s tense north, and a few set fire to EU flags in what has become a daily challenge of the country’s secession from Serbia. (AP Photo/Srdjan Ilic) From Boston.com

In my last (performative) presentation I had as a prop a mug with ‘Gaza is Palestine’ written on it. I’ve just started making a work about (or rather using) Kosova, prompted by the playmobil 2008 catalogue my mother just posted to me.

Further Kosova/o/Palestine connections here and here with my comment (with my comments bellow)