end-of-culture &laquo; WordPress.com Tag Feed http://en.wordpress.com/tag/end-of-culture/ Feed of posts on WordPress.com tagged "end-of-culture" Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:25:27 +0000 http://en.wordpress.com/tags/ en <![CDATA[We Will All Die Friendless and Alone]]> http://517calderwood.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/we-will-all-die-friendless-and-alone/ Fri, 10 Feb 2012 06:42:39 +0000 jessicacalderwood http://517calderwood.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/we-will-all-die-friendless-and-alone/ Prompt: For this week create a blog post that comments on a recent article about Facebook (or other social media website, like Google+, Twitter, etc.). (You can find articles at the New York Times, Huffington Post, Wired, etc.) Be sure to link to the article in your blog post. Try to make a new point about the issue discussed in the article, rather than just repeating the points in the article.  

I think possibly the best article I came across while researching for this blog post (and definitely not at all clicking on an article because it was about cupcakes) was “Cupcakes are Ruining Everything” by Cassie Murdoch posted on Jezebel.com (personally one of my favorite sites of all time). The article is somewhat of a re-hash of a Washington Post article discussing ‘The psychology of cupcakes‘, which attempts to conflate the recent popularity of gourmet cupcakes with (what I think is, and they agree) pretty weak pop-psychology.

How does this relate to Facebook, you may ask? Well, the original article states: “The popularity of cupcakes directly tracks the rise in cultural narcissism that has resulted from the Internet’s impact on our individual and cultural psyche. … Through cupcakes, seemingly innocent little ‘treats,’ we can project fantasies of who and what we desire to be. Instead of connecting us to others, however, cupcakes keep us separate and add to our sense of isolation.” Murdoch laughs at this conclusion, pointing out “God, who knew there was such a connection between cupcakes and the internet? Also, why have we never realized that a humble mix of flour, sugar, and butter is slowly causing our society to crumble into a pile of totally delicious crumbs?”.

I think this entire article goes with a rant I made on our class’ discussion board regarding extremist views of the repurcussions of social networking (Facebook, namely). I find that far too many writers and bloggers and commentators feel the need to make a name for themselves by being anti-Facebook or anti-internet (or, in this case, both anti-Facebook and anti-cupcake) by using venues like the internet and Facebook and using weak justifications for irrational fear – cupcakes are making us more isolated? Why, because they’re individual and not connected to a larger cake (ie, the world)? Or is it because they come in weird flavors and we don’t just have to choose chocolate or vanilla anymore we can have specialized flavors that lead us to further separate from society? Or is it because we are so involved in our iPhones and our Blackberries that we can’t get proper nutrition or love from our mothers and have to buy our feelings in cupcakes? Is it because we don’t make cupcakes for ourselves and give the remainders to our friends, we just purchase them instead???

Or is it because you walk by a shop that sells only cupcakes and you think “Oh that’s interesting I wonder what they have” and then you walk in and see that they have cupcakes with Fruit Loops on it or something and you think “Hey I want to try that” and then you buy it and eat it?

OUR NARCISSIM WILL DESTROY US.

]]> <![CDATA[The First Four Trumpets - Barbarian Storms]]> http://ministerofblog.wordpress.com/2011/05/28/the-first-four-trumpets-barbarian-storms/ Fri, 27 May 2011 20:30:00 +0000 ministerofblog http://ministerofblog.wordpress.com/2011/05/28/the-first-four-trumpets-barbarian-storms/


The First Four Trumpets – Barbarian Storms
Chapter Four

8:1 And when he had opened the seventh seal there was silence in heaven for about the space of half an hour.
Silence: probably then onlookers were struck with awe because of the content of the seventh seal.
 
 
8:2 And I saw the seven angels which stood before God, and seven trumpets were given to them.
 
 
The seven angels with the seven trumpets constitute the seventh seal, making plain the sequential design of the unfolding of the symbols.
 
 
8:3 And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer, and there was given to him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.
 
 
Another angel: to distinguish and to mark him as being no part of the seven. Since they stand by until this angel performs his acts, before they begin to sound, it is indicated that what is prefigured is related to the beginning of the sounding, but not a part of the trumpets.
 
 
8:4 And the smoke of the incense [which came] with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand. 8:5 And the angel took the censer and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast [it] into the earth; and there were voices. and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.
 
 
These verses indicate that a great deal of prayer is offered concerning imminent events as the time approaches toward the beginning of the sounding of the trumpets. The cause of the prayers may be the secular commotions indicated by voices, thunder, and earthquake.
 
The latter indicates that at the end of the last period of the unprecedented growth of the number of the saved, there would be violent secular upheavals which will alter the world. We call attention to the preface of chapter seven.
 
 
7:1 And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.
 
7:2 And I saw another angel ascending from the east having the seal of the living God; and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, 7:3 Saying, Hurt not the earth nor the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.
 
 
Since the sealing is now over, it must mean that the winds are now going to blow and the earth, sea and trees are now going to be hurt by the winds or angels who have been held back until now. The first four trumpets seem to be loosed here, as though one would say, Loose the four winds.
 
 
8:6 And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.
 
 
Thus showing the events that prepare these trumpets, the prayers, commotion and earthquake, precede the sounding of the trumpets.
 
 
8:7 The first angel sounded and there followed hail, and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and the third part of trees was burned up and all the green grass was burned up.
 
 
This and each of the first four trumpets deliver blows that fall on one third of the world. This will set the stage; the first four affect the first one third of the world, the fifth trumpet will affect one third and the sixth trumpet will complete this part of the scheme, affecting the final third.
 
This is understood for the fifth trumpet but clearly stated under the sixth trumpet, as in: Rev. 9:15; And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, to slay the third part of men.
 
 
Historical interpreters, with whom I concur, ascribe the first four trumpets to the successive barbarian invasions beginning with the Goths under Alaric, followed by the Vandals, the Huns and finally the Ostrogoth, Odoacer, from whom all historians date the beginning of the dark ages and at which the first third of the Roman Empire fell. This is explained further below.
 
 
8:8 And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea; and the third part of the sea became blood; 8:9 And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea and had life, died; and the third part of ships were destroyed. 8:10 And the third angel sounded and there fell a great star from heaven, burning like a lamp, and it fell on the third part of the rivers, and on the fountains of waters; 8:11 And the name of the star is called Wormwood; and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many died of the waters because they were made bitter.
 
 
Star from heaven: as in other places this figure refers to a person to whom is ascribed divine powers, or to one of the pagan gods.
 
 
8:12 And the fourth angel sounded and the third part of the sun was struck, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so, as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shined not for a third part of it and the night likewise.
 
 
Land, Sea, Rivers, Light: These figures will be repeated under the vials in chapter 16 where earth, sea, rivers, and source of light are plagued in the same order under the first four vials. Not that the same locations are necessarily depicted, but that there is design in the book. One of those things designed is that the first four events in each of the predicted series, seals, trumpets, and vials, are interrelated.
 
 The first four horses are all related in some way as has been shown. These first four trumpets are related to events that affect one third of the earth, and that is the progressive attacks which brought about the fall of the Roman Empire in the West.
 
 
The first four vials also are poured on earth, sea, rivers, and sun. They too, therefore, should be related to some series of four, related to one historic event in the fulfillment, as these former are.
The fourth trumpet, which darkens one third of the sun, moon and stars, could not be a better picture of the beginning of the dark ages.
 
 
8:13 And I beheld and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, Woe, Woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels that are yet to sound!
 
 
Woe, Woe, Woe: This is a very plain clue to the design of the book. Trumpets five, six, and seven are “Woe” trumpets. Rev. 9:12 says, “The first woe is past, behold, There are two woes yet to come.” Thus making plain that the sixth and the seventh trumpets are woe trumpets.
 
Then in Rev. 11:14, just before the sounding of the seventh trumpet it says: “The second woe is past; behold, the third woe comes quickly,” which plainly shows the seventh trumpet is after the sixth trumpet. The woes of the seventh trumpet can not therefore be concurrent with any of the events of the first six trumpets.
As stated in that place, too, the “Woe” of the seventh trumpet is not outlined in chapter eleven, but is comprised in the seven vials, or bowls, which are all woes.
 
 
These are clues as to the design of the book. As the seven trumpets are contained in the seventh seal, so the seven vials, or bowls, are contained in the seventh trumpet. The design of this book is so intricate as to be difficult to discover, but once discovered its precision is so perfect that it is evidence that divine inspiration has produced the design.
 
 
The First Four Trumpets
 
 
We have arrived at the end of the fifth century in our paralleling history with the symbols. The triumph of Christianity and its unprecedented growth in the Empire is pictured under the sixth seal and the interlude of the seventh chapter.
 
The eighth chapter opens with the church offering much prayer just before the sounding of the trumpets and an event that causes much commotion in the earth. It must be these events for which the prayers are offered.
 
 
Then the trumpets begin to sound and successive blows hit the earth, sea, rivers, and then the lights go out. All of this affects one third of the locations. The events in history that begin just after the great growth of believers in Christ of course lead to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West and the beginning of the dark ages.
There could hardly be a more fitting set of symbols to show these events.
 
 
The earthquake, as no part of the seven trumpets but related to them, no doubt marks the battle of Hadrianople in 378 A. D. which itself is like a trumpet. At least it gave a clarion call to those awake that the world was changing. Rome had existed many centuries and many wars had been fought; mostly but not always victoriously.
 
 
However the Battle of Hadrianople in 378 A.D. marks the first time that a Roman Army was decisively and completely defeated by an invader inside the boundaries of the Roman Empire! Compounding this, the Roman Emperor Valens was killed in the battle.
 
 
Consequently the Battle of Hadrianople is one of those pivotal battles that altered the course of the history for all of us on this planet. Besides the death of the Roman emperor, Valens, killed in the battle, the nations comprising present Hungary, Rumania and much of Yugoslavia fell to the Goths and the Arian heresy of Christianity.
 
 
Gratian succeeded Valens who died at Hadrianople. He gathered an army and was traveling to meet the Goths and rescue what was left of Valens’ army. A long treatise on the Christian faith was written by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, at the invitation of Gratian. Gratian wanted a clear statement and proofs of the trinitarian doctrine so that he could convince the Goths and people dwelling in the areas they now controlled of the truth of the orthodox faith!
 
 
The tumult in the Empire and the church caused by these developments is clearly seen in Ambrose’s writings which are contemporary with Hadrianople.*
* Ambrose: Christian Faith; Book III, 2.
There was much commotion that preceded and followed Hadrianople.* The movement of the Barbarian nations had already begun. The Huns had left their home north of China and had migrated with no small stir across central Asia into the former home of the Scythians — at that time occupied by the Goths.
 
 
These semi-civilized Gothic barbarians were forced from their homeland north of the Black Sea through Dacia into the Roman Empire. The disturbances symbolized by the voices, thunder, lightning, and earthquake would coincide with these events brought on by the defeat at Hadrianople, and the consequent roaming at will of the nation of the Goths within the confines of the Empire with no one to stop them.
 
 
How the Christians must have prayed as they saw these events disturb the tranquility of the Roman world! These events preceded and led up to the four blows against Rome that would end the Empire in the West in 476. Wells says as much:
*Gibbon, Edward, Barbarism and the Fall of Rome Vol. II Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, abridged and edited by Jacob Sloan, Pub. Collier 1962 pgs 19 – 57 Gibbon describes this period from the year 365 to 395, which he styles: First barbarian invasions, progress of the Huns from China, flight of the Goths, their crossing the Danube, the war, death of Valens to the peace settlement with the Goths, which latter, of course, was immediately breached.
“Before we go on to tell of the blows that now began to fall on the Roman Empire… we may say a few words about… these westward drifting barbaric Mongolian peoples… who were spreading toward the Black and Baltic Seas… and fell at last like an avalanche upon the weak-backed Roman Empire.”*
* Wells, H.G. The Outline of History; Pub. first 1920, Garden City Publishing Company. pg. 636 This is a popular history and has enjoyed scores of reprinted editions.
In the following pages Wells does as good a job as any historian giving the facts which coincided marvelously with the prophecy. There were four groups of barbarians who in the years following 400 A.D. made assaults on Rome attacking land, sea, rivers, and “lights out” in that order, all of them entering the city of Rome itself.
 
 
The first blow on the earth and vegetation is fulfilled in the invasion and sack of Rome in 410 by the Goths led by Alaric. It was his policy to burn the orchards and vineyards, fill cultivated fields with stones and generally destroy agriculture.
 
 
The second blow was made by the Vandals who had crossed the Mediterranean, reached and rebuilt Carthage by 429 and attacked Roman commerce from the sea, first the islands and the coast of Spain and finally sacked Rome in 455, loading their pillaged goods into their boats and carrying them off.
 
 
Attila rose as leader of the Huns and began his depredations of the Empire after the Vandals.* According to Gibbon’s lengthy account all his major battles were ought on rivers. His strategy was to lure the Roman armies into crossing the rivers after he has feigned a retreat. While the armies were crossing the rivers he ordered his troops to attack. Attila claimed to be the son of Mars. Gibbon describes the time when Attila’s horse bloodied his foot and upon retracing his steps he found the point of a sword sticking out of the ground.
 
 
Digging the sword out he declared it the sword of Mars having been cast down from heaven. He then claimed to be the son of Mars. This incredibly fits the symbol of a star falling from heaven and bloodying and making the rivers bitter, with many dying in the rivers! Attila also made a direct assault on Rome and not only entered the city, but also came away with the princess and took her to his mountain palace where he hoped to wed her.
 
 
But Oh! The ironies of history! He died on his wedding night — before the consummation of the marriage! The Huns disappeared from history after the death of Attila.
* Ibid. pg. 484.
Conditions Described by a Contemporary
 
 
The conditions which disrupted all of Italy and daily life are adequately described by Rufinus who lived through the Barbarian experiences. Rufinus translated most of the important portions of the Greek Ante Nicean Fathers into Latin. He had been assigned these labors by various Christian leaders.
 
 
His task was assigned during the first of the Barbarian invasions. In his introduction to his translation of Eusebius Church History he eloquently shows the irony of the timing of the invitation to make this translation. He likens it to a doctor who prescribes medicine as a defense when a disease is endemic. He wrote to Chromatis, whom he calls a venerable father,
“At the moment when the gates of Italy were broken through (400 A.D.) by Alaric, the commander of the Goths, and thus a disease and a plague poured in upon us, which made havoc of the fields and cattle and men throughout the land. You then sought a remedy [for the minds of the afflicted nation by translating from Greek to Latin the Eccleastical History of Eusebius.]“*
* Rufinus; Vol iii pg. 565
In his preface to the translation of Origen’s commentary on the book of Numbers in the year 410 when Rome fell to the Goths and Italy was torn up completely from north to south, Rufinus who had fled Italy complained that the times were not conducive to translating. To Donatas he wrote,
“How can the pen move freely when a man is in fear of the missiles of the enemy, when he has before his eyes the devastation of cities and country, when he has to fly from dangers of the sea, and there is no safety even in exile? As you yourself saw, the Barbarian was in sight of us; he had set fire to the city of Rhegium, and our only protection against him was the very narrow sea that separates the soil of Italy from Sicily. In such a position what leisure could there be for writing, and especially for translating.”*
* Ibid pg. 568
What amazing coincidence this has been so far. Blows on earth, sea, and rivers. The fourth trumpet was then marvelously paralleled and fulfilled when Odoacer the Ostrogoth entered Rome and in 476 sat on the Imperial throne. An unlettered barbarian was now king of Rome. From that event in history most historians date the beginning of the dark ages.
It was the end of civilization in the West, and the amenities accompanying it. There would no longer be an education system — no schools, no roads, no centralized commerce. The light of culture had surely gone out and the progress of systematic learning would not be rediscovered again in the West until the Renaissance of the 1500′s.
]]> <![CDATA[The Death of Death]]> http://edwardellison.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/the-death-of-death/ Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:44:40 +0000 Admin http://edwardellison.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/the-death-of-death/ or

Who wants to live forever? Over my dead body!

How fortunate we are to live in such interesting times, although never imagined by even the greatest of creative minds. There have been many great writers of speculative fiction, often relegated to the bargain bucket of Sci-Fi, but whose vision has far exceeded the scope of their times. At the same time, many of them have been guilty of imagining a future far more romantic, more hopeful, more chic that the reality.

We are fortunate because we live in that imagined future, and have the benefit of a vast library of versions of our current future, imagined by some of the most inventive minds in literature. H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark and many others have speculated upon that we are now within.

The short story “Roller Ball Murder” (1973) by William Harrison imagined a future where corporations, rather than political parties, rule the world. Harrison imagined a time that had seen a great “Asian War” in the 1990′s and a decadent 21st Century.

“But the rules: I hear of games in Manila, now, or in Barcelona, with no time limits, men bashing each other until there are no runners left, no way of scoring points. That’s the coming thing. I hear of Roller Ball Murder played with mixed teams, men and women, wearing tear-away jerseys which add a little tit to the action. Everything will happen. They’ll change the rules till we skate on a slick of blood. We all know that.” – Roller Ball Murder (1973) – William Harrison

Sound familiar? Well, not exactly, but it rings a lot of bells. Roller Ball Murder is a game invented to please the masses. It is a spectacle of speed and violence that is not allowable in our liberal age. The 1975 movie “Rollerball” (screenplay also by William Harrison) extends the reach of the original story and introduces the idea of the game’s brutality being specifically designed to make it impossible for players to survive for very long and thereby demonstrate the futility of individualism.

In this current future, our present, the anti-personality levelling of the game Roller Ball Murder has been realised by the humiliation culture of television shows such as “X Factor”, “Britain’s Got Talent” and “Big Brother”.

In the story Jonathan E is a threat to that system because he, his personality, his celebrity, becomes larger than the game, and his persistent survival in a violent game with a dwindling rule system serves as nothing more than an irritant to the corporate bosses who rule the game, the country, the world. Whereas Harrison’s Rollerball metered out its judgements using the traditional methods of violence and sudden death, our own methods have proved to be far more subtle, more de-humanising and far more destructive to the cult of the individual. More importantly, the winners in our time are the the blandest, most malleable, most easily-digestible pastiches of talent that can be imagined. Consequently, the power of the individual is consumed by democracy. The most broadly acceptable, good-looking-ish, good-singing-ish contestant wins. Not by being the most outstanding, or the most charismatic or the most talented, but by being the least offensive to the greatest number of micro-paying punters.

Who would have imagined that humiliation could be a death of a thousand stabs in the back, and more destructive than knives, guns and bombs. The shadows of the vaporized nobodies, preserved in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, embody nothing of the fallibility of the individuals that masked their surroundings from the glare of 100 suns. Nothing, that is, save for an innocence unimaginable by Simon Cowell. A fall from grace, 100 times more terrifying, is the billion unblinking eyes and unmoderated opinion that allows the most inconsidered and prejudiced of bigotry to be published across the globe, instantly, and re-published over and over again via YouTube, Twitter and FaceBook, until every nobody on the globe is aware of your least indiscretion.

Immortality has never been more accessible, nor more short-lived, and the payoff for the 15 minutes of fame is the forensic examination of every blemish, every flaw, every abandoned bastard or ill-conceived comment. How are the mighty fallen in the midst of this battle? We are not allowed the grace of forced retirement due to injury or death, but the inevitable ignominy of exhaustively-documented drunkenness, divorce, weight-gain and bad hair days.

Immortality, though, is not the exclusive territory of celebrity, and some misguided souls actually want to live forever! Like, literally!

Some fools try to extend their live with the restricted-calorie method to keep their daily intake of food carefully limited. This is, apparently, a documented way of extending life expectancy in mammals, although unproven in primates and humans. Unfortunately, it has ironic side effects including suppressed libido, so you’ll look great for your unusually extended age but have no sex drive and probably will not reproduce. It is interesting to consider how it is that these dimwits consider themselves so important that they should live longer than the rest of us.

If I had to contemplate the prospect of denying myself the pleasures of food, drink and sex, well, I would rather die.

The irony piles up so quickly you need wings to stay above it.

We were made as well as we could be, but not to last. Death is normal and an absolute necessity. Aging and death are not enemies but fundamentally part of the cycle that maintains ours, and all other species. Western society is accumulating a prejudice against death that cannot be maintained. Already we are talking about the “Demographic Time-bomb” where we will be burdened by an aging and increasingly invalid population, progressively supported by a dwindling minority of productive individuals. People are living too long. A demographic A-bomb could help us out here.

Perhaps it is time to re-connect with the pre-industrial age and allow pestilence, famine, war and death to solve our population problems, just like in the good old days.

If I had to choose, I would prefer to see the amoral, blood-soaked destruction of William Harrison’s vision, rather than the liberal apologism of the committee-written, pre-approved, uplifting, artificial positivity delivered by a barely adequate aesthetic from whichever nobody wins the X-Factor zero-personality contest, or for that matter, the albino, Tourette’s syndrome, white-trash, malnourished, uneducated, rehab freak show of Big Brother.

However, maybe I am missing a trick. Do we have to choose? Is it too much to hope that the logical conclusion to the advertising trap, bar-raising of humiliation and personality destruction could actually be William Harrison’s Roller Ball Murder? How can the ratings be increased, or even maintained, when the conclusion of X Factor is to select for fame the most uninteresting talent in the entire contest. Even the dwarfing stage, the dancers, the childrens choir and carefully  choreographed pyros cannot ameliorate the almost palpable anti-climax.  Maybe we should make the finalists slug it out on a circular roller derby track and put the judges on motorbikes in order to protect their protégés and see whose boyish good looks can survive a punch in the face from a studded fist. At least that would give Cheryl something to cry about. It might add some otherwise absent meaning to the over-managed, carefully crafted positivity of the designer lyrics.

“The struggles I’m facing,
The chances I’m taking
Sometimes they knock me down but
No I’m not breaking
The pain I’m knowing
But these are the moments that
I’m going to remember most yeah
Just got to keep going
Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!*”

(*Suggested additional line, added by me).

If culture is dead let’s hope it died with its roller boots on.

EEx

]]> <![CDATA[Futurism is History - It's the end of culture as we know it, and then some]]> http://edwardellison.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/futurism-is-history-its-the-end-of-culture-as-we-know-it-and-then-some/ Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:21:27 +0000 Admin http://edwardellison.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/futurism-is-history-its-the-end-of-culture-as-we-know-it-and-then-some/

Or – The first forty years in the wilderness are the hardest. The pints of tea are on me.

 

I recently spent four days in London at leisure, and decided to dedicate this rare opportunity to seeing some of the major art shows.

 

I started at Tate Modern and, on a whim, actually paid to see the “Futurism” show. This is not usually my taste but I initially found it quite exhilarating, particularly to see Umberto Boccioni’s (1882 – 1916) work. I can’t deny being inspired by the unrestrained arrogance, the self-confidence of them, the sheer energy. That is, however, until I read some of their manifestos. The tedious and imbecilic fascism of the Futurists made me think “Divert the canals to flood the cellars of the museums!” plus the galleries and archives and do it now! I’ll take my chances in the shuttle!

 

Like the surrealists, the Futurists were a bunch of spoilt schoolboys, sniggering and giggling at the back of the classroom and using mumbo-jumbo, claptrap cynicism to undermine every other’s effort and to elevate their own meandering by provoking doubt in its criticism. This trick has been learned well by curators and critics alike. Contemporary art is the same lie as improvised jazz. It’s indigestible, vacuous, over-indulged trash but no-one wants to say they don’t like it, or understand it, in case they seem uninformed. Surrealism, Dadaism and Futurism (etc etc) opened the floodgates for any old incompetent Sunday painting to be accepted as an artist and, in turn, to be exhibited in the hushed, do-not-touch cathedrals of Tate Britain whose petrified curators cannot, or dare not, see the rotten wood for the fallen trees in case they be branded as heretics in the witch-hunt mentality of contemporary art criticism.

 

So, from the ridiculous to the sublime. Richard Long’s (b. 1945) “Heaven and Earth” at Tate Britain starts so promisingly with a huge mud painting, impressive in it’s scale and minute delicacy. This work is in the free-to-public area and I soon wished I had stayed on that side of the bored invigilators. Richard Long is one of those artists who, I am entirely convinced do not foster this reputation themselves, are understood to be unimpeachable in their credibility.

I saw a smaller show of Long’s within the last 2 years and could not, at that time, identify what I found so unsatisfying. Here, in room after room, it became very clear. His photographic documents of interventions, scraped into remote, wilderness landscape are enigmatic, mysterious, beautiful and full of wonder. But the text and map works are tedious, over-managed, exercises in excruciatingly pointless documentation that bored me beyond words can express. I had not been able to put my bony and blasphemous finger on it before, but in this major show, after reading about a dozen versions of the “Walked West for a bit, Walked East for a bit, Slept for a bit, Got up and walked a bit more” text works, I realized that I just don’t give a damn. These works merely serve to transmit a few clerical details, but nothing of the solitude, or the beauty, or the fear of these places.

The floor sculptures are superb, individually, but I’d like to know which idiot decided to put 6 of them in the same room? The real failure of this show lies not with the artist, but with the curator. Just because you have a large gallery there is no reason to fill it with art that should never have seen the inside of a building, never mind a white space gallery.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2009/jun/01/richard-long-tate-britain

 

And so I moved on. Irony of ironies, the work I long to see, in the flesh, is Jake and Dinos Chapman’s “Fucking Hell” (2008), a reproduction of the original “Hell” (1999) that was destroyed by fire in 2004 (?). They were unfazed by this and just made another. They showed that the art is in the exhilaration of experiencing the spectacle, not in the object-fetish of the material itself. Such a shame to see them tittering and winking at each other in the hallowed, vaulted cathedral of Tate Britain. This schoolboy one-liner exhibit is a collection of, initially convincing, pseudo-primitive masks and fetish sculptures, entitled “The Chapman Family Collection” (2002). I can just imagine the 2 brothers, like Beavis and Butthead, nudging and pinching each other as they brainstormed this latest product in the Chapman Unhappy Meal franchise. It is very well executed and free-entry so worth a visit, if you’re already there. It is also worth a laugh to read the desperate grasping of some drowning-not-waving curator in the White Cube Gallery’s blurb about this work.

http://www.whitecube.com/exhibitions/chapmanfamilycollection/

 

The imbeciles at the Tate could not recognize the shallowness of this joke any more than they recognize the staggering irony of paying for any of Damien Hirst’s continuing satire on the valuelessness of material wealth.

 

Of all the shows I saw in this period, by far the most striking was the exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery of hundreds of copies of the portrait, by Jean-Jacques Henner (1829 – 1905), of the fourth century Saint Fabiola. Francis Alÿs’ collection of variable-quality reproductions of the, now lost, original, has a very moving result that is equally both contemporary and classical.

http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/event-root/francis-alys-fabiola.php 

If you haven’t seen the show there are many images online and the effect can be reproduced in an even more contemporary fashion by simply doing a Google image search using the keywords “Saint Fabiola”. Also try searching on the single word “Fabiola” for an interesting and educational variation.

 

By day 4 I did not want to see another gallery show as long as I live, and Jeff Koons’ monomania at the Serpentine would be the very last on any list. So, I spent the day at leisure, responding the the overtures of a busy, working city. This was my most rewarding day, enjoying the perverse spectacle of Canary Wharf and the banking districts, as a tourist / flaneur / aesthete.

 

Ironically, the Futurists were correct by recognizing the transitory nature of their own talent and, in turn, consumed by the very chaos that they championed. Art has no value except in the aesthetics of change, creation and destruction. Satisfyingly, art institutions up and down the country are failing because funding has been withdrawn or rationed, due to the failing of trusts and investments, and Lottery money being diverted to the 2012 Olympic Games. This event itself a celebration of speed and split-second momentary glory. It is almost pornographically satisfying to realize that the money that would have funded the current crop of knee-jerk, sub-psychologist, demi-intellectual concept artists is being diverted to the embarrassingly popular and identifiable pay-off of the Olympic games. However, I dread to think what easily-digested, community-friendly, feel-good spectacle we have in store for the opening ceremony. Whatever it is, it will be hard pushed to compete with the re-branded, sub-military, show-of-power that the Chinese rolled and rolled and rolled out, 8 abreast, ad infinitum, for their opening ceremony in Beijing 2008.

 

The galleries and museums are bankrupt, literally, and conceptually too. Art is dead and they don’t even know it, although they can probably feel it in their tightening belts. Art can only be resurrected by the Sunday cave painters that soldier on at their own expense, no matter what, just like in the Good Old Days, before the Arts Council, before the White Cube, before Saatchi.

 

My advice is don’t buy art, don’t collect art and don’t contribute to the mutual masturbation that is the art industry. Only visit the the free-entry shows and when all of the galleries have closed, make your own art and barter it it with other artists, or etch it directly onto the high plains of Peru, where it can’t be spoilt even by a highway being built through it. Don’t be guilted into making a donation and don’t be afraid to call canned faeces, no matter how complex, shit.

 

EEx

]]> <![CDATA[The End of Culture and the Last Five Girls]]> http://edwardellison.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/the-end-of-culture-and-the-last-five-girls/ Sat, 08 Aug 2009 11:42:27 +0000 Admin http://edwardellison.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/the-end-of-culture-and-the-last-five-girls/

 

The End of Culture and the Last Five Girls

 

“If you are shorter than five feet ten, older than eighteen years and and weigh more than eight stone, you can go home now! The remaining five, follow me!”

 

In 2000 or 2001 I saw a TV programme called “Model Behaviour”. Young people from all over the UK had been invited to apply to compete for 2 places in the portfolio of a leading UK model agency. Thousands of teenagers were marched up and down sports halls around the country and tantalized with a promise of a career in modelling. It was perfectly obvious to any untrained eye that 99% of the competitors should not have even been allowed to pass the registration desk – manned by wannabe-interns, with, no doubt, a similarly unfounded promise of a glittering career, and equally unfettered by the tiresome requirements of talent, hard work or patience.

 

Although I am sure the phenomenon began earlier, this is the moment that I became aware of the recent and continuing trend for entertainment relying on the aesthetic of consensual humiliation and the voyeuristic celebration of failure.

How ironic that I was introduced to the word schadenfreude in the 1980’s by a sickly smug car advertisement. Schadenfreude is a word coined by philosopher Theodor Adorno as “largely unanticipated delight in the suffering of another which is cognized as trivial and/or appropriate.” Even Adorno could not have imagined how this horror-show  of rubber-necking could have been evolved into a new expressive form itself. This victim-based art has bred a cultural underclass of shopping-mall personality-assassins, spookily predicted by Kornbluth’s “The Marching Morons” (1951). In this award-winning short story, planet Earth is vastly over-populated by people with little intelligence and run by a minority of elite. The titular moronic populace is sated by empty promises, such as cars that create artificially bloated engine noise, barely sophisticated enough to even hide their own artifice.

 

Nowadays this miasmic tissue of lies is entirely transparent but immune to its own contempt due to its thoroughly digested familiarity. The cynicism of the 2008 series of “The X Factor”, that selected the adequate talent of Alexandra Burke for adulation, is so breathtaking that I cannot help but admire its monolithic ugliness, equalled only by the staggering ignorance of choosing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” for a carefully timed Christmas hit. This TV behemoth demonstrated the impregnability of the tower made of ivory and glass, a structure so ingrained in our vacuous culture, that we can ignore it whilst in plain view. It beggars belief that probability would allow such a broadly demographic selection of moderate talent to survive a genuine judging and/or voting process: a young one, a black one, a mixed race one, a boy band and a male singer etc. – I doubt it.


However, the unexpected cultural fall-out of the choice of “Hallelujah” was to promote both its author and the neglected talent of one of its defining versions, by Jeff Buckley, despite the grotesque confusion of its title with the Christmas message. It doesn’t take a poet to understand the song is about the voluntary emasculation of sexual pleasure and the bitterness that follows rejection and loss. I wonder at the confused nascent cultural awareness of trans-pubescents exposed to their parents’ collections of Christmas music. Hallelujah!

 

The judging panel itself is a travesty akin to a 3-legged steeplechase, vaulting over the crucified and strangulated corpse of feminism, comprising tired, middle-aged parasites, decorated by a daubed and frosted bauble who was, in turn, plucked from the masses of wannabes. The only qualifying talents required of these clockwork beauties being warm ‘n’ fuzziness and tears-on-demand. None of these bankrupt demi-gods possess enough taste for themselves, let alone their footballer husbands or a nation of hungry mouths with forked tongues.

 

Born out of the voracious consumption that is the search for so-called talent aka product aka income steam, the group Girls Aloud is an example of the acceptable package required by the grasping hands of the entertainment industry in order to deliver a flawless gob of moderate talent for the undiscerning pecking beaks of the general public – all bout the same height, al about the same weight – two blondes, two brunettes and redhead. And no blacks. Javine Hylton, clearly the prominent talent in the 6 girl finalists, was rejected from the line up in favour of a more modestly talented, but more visually-coherent, group. The cynicism is stunning.

 

“Britain’s Got Talent” continues to break the ice-cap of history by further reducing the definition of culture – channeling that primordial frost into dollops of easily swallowed, high fat and low brow, ice cream. That soon-to-be-shredded sail of desperate hope, driven by the whispered breath of false promises, lifted Susan Boyle from her equally embarrassing and awkward obscurity, into the simultaneously tear-stained and bloodshot eyes of the twin masks of an industry that will drop her as soon as the Youtube hits stop accumulating. And then those ravenous interns will look for the next peculiar but voyeuristically fascinating talent, stretched over too much flesh and propped up by a similarly imperfect symmetry with an identical guarantee of failure. However, I look forward to the story being recycled in future no-budget TV spots of talking heads giving their opinions on “100 Greatest TV Humiliations”, unaware that their very presence on these productions acknowledges the limit of their own meagre appeal, as they claw at the dwindling appearance fees.

 

We already live in an dystopian future, although previously unimagined. Unfortunately, it does not have the sophisticated retro-chic of Charles Node and the cinematic majesty of Vangelis, but the pret-a-gaspiller of Christian Lacroix and the trashy clatter of Lady Ga Ga.

 

EEx

]]> <![CDATA[]]> http://gerrycanavan.wordpress.com/2007/06/02/197/ Sat, 02 Jun 2007 14:11:00 +0000 gerrycanavan http://gerrycanavan.wordpress.com/2007/06/02/197/ Ray Bradbury has come clean: Fahrenheit 451 was never about censorship, but is instead a “story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.”
“Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was,” Bradbury says, summarizing TV’s content with a single word that he spits out as an epithet: “factoids.” He says this while sitting in a room dominated by a gigantic flat-panel television broadcasting the Fox News Channel, muted, factoids crawling across the bottom of the screen.

His fear in 1953 that television would kill books has, he says, been partially confirmed by television’s effect on substance in the news. The front page of that day’s L.A. Times reported on the weekend box-office receipts for the third in the Spider-Man series of movies, seeming to prove his point.

“Useless,” Bradbury says. “They stuff you with so much useless information, you feel full.” He bristles when others tell him what his stories mean, and once walked out of a class at UCLA where students insisted his book was about government censorship. He’s now bucking the widespread conventional wisdom with a video clip on his Web site, titled “Bradbury on censorship/television.”

As early as 1951, Bradbury presaged his fears about TV, in a letter about the dangers of radio, written to fantasy and science-fiction writer Richard Matheson. Bradbury wrote that “Radio has contributed to our ‘growing lack of attention.’… This sort of hopscotching existence makes it almost impossible for people, myself included, to sit down and get into a novel again. We have become a short story reading people, or, worse than that, a QUICK reading people.”

That Ray at Home has a ton of interesting video clips—it’s worth checking out.

]]> <![CDATA[]]> http://gerrycanavan.wordpress.com/2007/06/01/188/ Fri, 01 Jun 2007 23:28:00 +0000 gerrycanavan http://gerrycanavan.wordpress.com/2007/06/01/188/ Wait… so the cops knew internal affairs was setting them up? Holland’s kidney-donor reality show (blogged earlier this week) has been revealed as some sort of inscrutable hoax.

]]> <![CDATA[]]> http://gerrycanavan.wordpress.com/2007/05/30/158/ Wed, 30 May 2007 14:36:00 +0000 gerrycanavan http://gerrycanavan.wordpress.com/2007/05/30/158/ Dutch reality TV never disappoints.
A Dutch TV station says it will go ahead with a programme in which a terminally ill woman selects one of three patients to receive her kidneys.

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