Last winter, I drove from Berlin to London. Waiting in Calais to take the Channel Tunnel train to the UK, I took a dozen pictures of asylum seeker-related graffiti. My own family was displaced internally, within France, during WWII, so I connected with the graffiti a little more personally than usual. “Droits humains?” (Human rights?) Downtown, November 25th.
Most mornings I wake up in my personal panopticon and set myself to making quiet guitar, tape or music box pieces over coffee. This collection includes some such pieces encompassing the past year or so.
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April 18-24, 2011 was Digital Detox Week, conceived and encouraged by Adbusters, along with other campaigns (i.e. Buy Nothing Day, Blackspot shoes) to “reclaim our mental and physical environments.” I’ve always been impressed by the magazine’s design-savvy ads, whose sleek look share in the aesthetics of their corporate equivalent, the presumed enemy. (More…)
Italy is renown for its political posters. Marxist, nationalist, racist, multicultural. Every city is its own open-air art gallery. Aside from “schiave” (slave), this poster shouldn’t require much translation. Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Turin. April, 2011.
This poster is currently plastered on roadside rest areas throughout the state of Texas, which is big enough to enclose a good deal of Europe and therefore an object of dread for many long-distance drivers. (More…)
Daniel Levy is one of the most respected Israeli peace advocates in the United States. Best known for his role as a senior policy adviser to former Israeli Minister of Justice Yossi Beilin, Levy was a member of the Israeli delegation to the Taba Summit with the Palestinians in January 2001, and of the negotiating team for the “Oslo 2” Agreement from May to September 1995, under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. (More…)
Arizona’s extreme right deludes itself that it occupies a central place in American politics. However, there is a difference between being influential, and throwing legislative temper tantrums that gain global notice. Its leading political figures have become internationally scorned, which doesn’t trouble them, and does not harm their electability either. The disjunction between local and external opinion is a matter of local pride, an insularity characteristic of oppressive governments in many areas beyond the American Southwest. (More…)
The briefcase isn’t quite wide enough. However, it makes for a macabre pedestal. Marche aux Puces St-Ouen de Clignancourt, Paris. June, 2010.
It was a sight I never imagined I’d see. I was watching a reenactment of the 1946 bombing of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel on British TV. One of the last episodes of The Promise, aired in February on the UK’s Channel Four, the miniseries succeeded in touching a lot of nerves. This one touched mine. (More…)
Children’s programming is complex in every culture. Field recording public television, Turin. April, 2011.
I’ve always been surprised by the fact that the original Starbucks is an inconspicuous cafe in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. Its anonymity stands in stark contrast to the legendary coffee company’s aggressive marketing style. After all, this is where it all started. Shouldn’t this be obviously branded a landmark? Not if your bottom line is numbers. No CEO really cares about his legacy. Just his stocks. The more signs you see on the street, the less likely you are to go inside and drink coffee. (More…)
Turkey broke the mold. Whether Germans were questioning the right of Turkish migrants to become citizens, Americans were attacking its leadership’s positions on Israel, or Syrians were complaining that Ankara manages to preserve favored status despite its policies towards the Kurds, Turkey is shorthand for , “Yes, but. . .”, a way for practitioners of Realpolitik both to define a “state of exception”, and assert its value. (More…)