Die Antwoord - Dis Iz Why I'm Hot (zef remix)

Don't be fooled by the theatrics. These people are artists. Their latest video upload. Here's another.

The de Antonio Legacy - Part Four

Emile de Antonio died a few weeks after this interview. He is a great American and his work lives on. I learned he was a wing commander in the United States Air Force. To become an artist and documentary maker later in life is quite remarkable and it's easy to see why the FBI (The Secret Police) and John Edgar Hoover specifically hated him and what he stood for.

Emile de Antonio - Reality Is Radical

Art is many things but one thing that is definitely art is doing something deliberately for the first time. In this respect Emile de Antonio is one of United States greatest artists of all time. There are so few from the privileged classes who had the courage to report on what the power elite were doing. Even fewer reported on their peers.

Banksy On Advertising

“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like, wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”

For further Banksy posts click the banksy tag below

The People's Artist - Banksy - One of a kind - Respect

Call Me Ishmael

Recently I've taken to using art as a tool for the manifestation of the collective unconscious in a Jungian sense, and so as Moby Dick has been prodding me for over a year now since Hong Kong, for reasons I couldn't quite fathom, I set up an RSS feed and curated a mood stream of every new piece of original art being shared with the world on the topic, and supplemented that with bits of data plumbing Jedi Knightery, to see if I can compile an emerging narrative. 

The learning so far is unsettling and an anomaly in expressionistic terms when looking back at history. It seems one of the key themes is not just the death of Captain Ahab and crew, but the death of Whales. Spooky whales levitating above the sea as if drawn in a state of mourning; lamenting the transit to a marine afterlife.

And then I awoke up from a nap just now, and for the umpteenth time was reminded of the book by The Guardian who week in and week out out are echoing the questionably tinnitus driven peals, ringing in my head and then out of nowhere, I realised the part of Moby Dick I had been so eager to share when reading this unusually off-topic novel for me that I find hard to follow. I overcame the age and relative formality of its language through the time tested clamour of Bangkok Go-Go bars. I find the neon, noise and nubility more soothing than when left a difficult text, alone in the distracting silence of home.

In any case, I meant to write how extraordinary it was learning of the whaling business in its heyday with respect to being the precursor for the entire edifice of imminent planetary industrialisation. That is to say, built upon the global scale of a wind powered floating business, in singular pursuit of yet another of natures exclusive and historically irreplaceable organic yields. If asked it is for this reason I argue leaving the oil in the ground instead of fuelling jet engines in the air for an economy levitating on the hologram of endless financial growth. What if say quantum entangled oil is the spice melange of a future interstellar life? To me, the what-ifs are a full nelson on the what-the-fucks line of reason.

I'll leave you with Melville's passage that left a slow burning mark upon me with a lesson on gateway drugs of the monkeys (homo consumericus) obsession with whale oil that was only displaced  when the black stuff leaking from the ground, looked like it had something going for it. 

Why did the Dutch in De Witt's time have admirals of their whaling fleets? Why did Louis XVI of France, at his own personal expense, fit out whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some score or two of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why did Britain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties upwards of L1,000,000? And lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of America now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world; sail a navy of upwards of seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteen thousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth, at the time of sailing, $20,000,000! and every year importing into our harbors a well reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How comes all this, if there be not something puissant in whaling?

Moby Dick - Chapter 24 -The Advocate

Pussy Riot Supporters Are Stinking Hypocrites?

 

I like anarchichal thinking. I believe humans don't need to be instructed what to do but are intuitively and instinctively brilliant at self organizing and problem solving. In this respect Pussy Riot appeal to me and I believe they raise the profile of other information/expression/art freedom fighters like Bahrain's Human rights activist Nabeel Rajab and Wikileaks' Julian Assange.

However Pussy Riot organizer Marat Gelman is a Russian Jewish art collector. He has been connected with previous anti-Christian art actions and so my question to you is if Pussy Riot did their demonstration in a synagogue; Is that anti-Semitic? The same applies to a mosque. Is it anti-Islamic? These are questions that I'd love your feedback on. The rest of the post from Philosophers Stone is below:

A British journalist marvelled: they produce no music, no song, no painting, nada, rien, nothing. How can they be described as “artists”? This was a severe test for their supporters, but they passed it with flying honours: that famous lover-of-art, the US State Department, paid for their first ever single being produced by The Guardian out of some images and sounds.

Pussy Riot never wrote, composed or painted anything of value at all. Chris Randolph defended them in Counterpunch by comparing them with “the controversial Yegor Letov”. What a misleading comparison! Letov wrote poetry, full of obscenity but it still was poetry, while the Pussy Riot have nothing but Public Relations.

Hell-bent on publicity, but artistically challenged, three young women from Russia decided – well, it sounds like a limerick. They stole a frozen chicken from a supermarket and used it as dildo; they filmed the act, called it “art” and placed it on the web. (It is still there) Their other artistic achievements were an orgy in a museum and a crude presentation of an erect prick.

Even in these dubious pieces of art their role was that of technical staff: the glory went to a Russian-Israeli artist Plucer-Sarno of Mevasseret Zion, who claimed the idea, design and copyright for himself and collected a major Russian prize. The future Pussy Riot members got nothing and were described by Plucer as “ambitious provincials on the make”, or worse.

Lately they have tried to ride on a bandwagon of political struggle. That was another flop. They poured a flood of obscene words on Putin – in Red Square, in subway (underground) stations – with zero effect. They weren’t arrested, they weren’t fined, just chased away as a nuisance. And they did not attract the attention of people.

Eventually the young viragos were mobilised for an attack on the Church. By that time they were willing to do anything for their bit of publicity. And the anti-Church campaign started a few months ago, quite suddenly as if by command. The Russian Church had 20 years of peace, recovering after the Communist period, and it was surprised by ferocity of the attack.

The alleged organiser of the PR, Marat Gelman, a Russian Jewish art collector, has been connected with previous anti-Christian art actions which involved icon-smashing, imitation churches of enemas. His – and Pussy Riot’s problem was that it was difficult to provoke reaction of the Church. Pussy Riot made two attempts to provoke public indignation in the second cathedral of Moscow, the older Elochovsky Cathedral; both times they were expelled but not arrested.

The third time, they tried harder; they went to St Savior Cathedral that was demolished by Lazar Kaganovich in 1930s and rebuilt in 1990s; they added more blasphemy of the most obscene kind, and still they were allowed to leave in peace. Police tried their best to avoid arresting the viragos, but they had no choice after Pussy Riot uploaded a video of their appearance in the cathedrals with an obscene soundtrack.

During the trial, the defence and the accused did their worst to antagonize the judge by threatening her with the wrath of the United States (sic!) and by defiantly voicing anti-Christian hate speeches. The judge had no choice but to find the accused guilty of hate crime (hooliganism with religious hate as the motive). The prosecution did not charge the accused with a more serious hate crime “with intent to cause religious strife”, though it could probably be made to stick. (It would call for a stiffer sentence; swastika-drawers charged with intent to cause strife receive five years of jail).

Banksy & The Olympics - The People's Artist

The only artist who consistently puts people first is Banksy. The rest are painting their navels.

We Need To Kill Them All Dead. They're Fucking It Up For The Rest Of Us.

The Artist Taxidriver @chunkymark is essential listening. He's not asleep at the wheel like most of the British Isles.

Alexander Brener & Barbera Schurz - Extreme Curating

Terence McKenna - Opening the Doors of Creativity

I've heard this many times but never seen this video upload. It's great to see the smile behind the voice that you can hear in his introduction. It's worthwhile knowing that Terence said that when talking to a crowd he was channelling something other than himself though he felt uncomfortable with the word channelling. You decided.

John Waters - Divine Blasphemy

'It wasn't illegal, it's not even a sin in the Bible or the Catholic church' - John Waters on the dog shit-eating scene in Pink Flamingos.

Update: I now realise this work is part of the social engineering of degeneracy for mankind.

Arundhati Roy - অরুন্ধতি রায় - Our Strategy

Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness -- and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling -- their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

DBG #9 Skip Skip Benben | La' Lasta

Totally fresh music and a video made with love straight outta Beijing. Gives me hope. Here's a relevant post from a long distant galaxy far far away.

Skip Skip Benben are a patchwork of different bands and different genres, with Monkey (猴子) on drums, Steven Zhou (周乃仁) from Birdstriking and ½ Heavy Korean on Bass and Benben (斑班 ) from Freckles, Boyz & Girl and Carsick Cars on guitar and vocals. Our meeting with the band was preceded by weeks of anticipation, for a lot of which we didn't even know the name of this brilliant new[ish] Beijing act.

Back on the 18th October 2011, we walked into a surprise show from Beijing indie stalwarts P.K.14, at D-22 in Beijing's university district. Shortly after arriving, our friend Josh of China music and culture blog, pangbianr slid out from behind the bar to say hello. In passing, he mentioned that he knew a Taiwanese folk singer called Benben that he wanted to introduce us to later that evening, "I think she'd be great for your DaBaoGe project," he said.

In the haze of the beer, smoke and distorted guitars, it was another two visits in as many weeks, to the now defunct D-22 venue, before we pieced together the story behind Skip Skip Benben: an appealing blend of alt-folk, psychedelic indie rock and down-tempo, tropicana grooves. Off-stage, Benben is intensely shy and we tried, in vain to convince her to venture outside the crocheted-kitch security of her nostalgically decorated apartment. We could hardly blame her though; it was easily one of the coldest days we'd seen in 2011.

One song. One take. Skip-skip done, done. We reviewed the sound and it was...magical. In fact, we've had the audio take from this recording looping over and over in our music library, listening to it every day since that frigid morning in December. We hope you enjoy it too.

Check out more knick-knacks from the band on their blog.

If you're in Beijing or Shanghai, you can catch them live at one of their upcoming shows:

25th Feb in Beijing with The Pains Of Being Pure Heart @ 愚公移山 (Yu Gong Yi Shan)

8th Mar in Shanghai with Next Year's Love @ 育音堂 (Yuyintang)

Andy & Charles

DaBaoGe

Miu Miu - Alchemical Magic & Pentagonal Sunglasses

There's been a sharp uptick in the use of, reference to and presence of magic in my life so I thought I'd pass on Miu Miu's 'The Woman Dress' Video. 

I'm too jaded to ignore that it's less about 'The Woman Dress' than about flogging the handmade Pentagon sunglasses. However the all female narrative, use of magic and alchemical transformation, Kubrickesque Eyes's Wide Shut reversed music and speech references are signature Miuccia Prada who I have said before, knows a lot more about how the world ticks than most other designers except for Karl Lagerfeld and the late Alexander McQueen.

Triumph Of The Commons - Leland Maschmeyer

It's not easy to tell who has ripped off who in these two excellent videos and that's as good an introduction to Lee's Triumph of the Commons making it into the P2P foundation Wiki as I can think of right now.

My personal solution? Why can't we let the greedy people go off and live off each other while we get with sharing and art. Not only do I think it can be done, I think it might be done.

Die Antwoord - I Fink U Freeky (And I Like You A Lot)

Art in music videos is alive and well. Well what did you think? Beats by Dr Dre were fly? Here are the lyrics:

Sexy boys, fancy boys 

Playboys, bad boys 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

Mother fuckers get... 

Guess who's got the party jumpin'? 

... you fucked the system! 

My system bumps... 

Skip it to my world, now... 

... you go to Jesus. 

... these bad boys like to smack me in the... 

... bumping you're facing on 

You fucked the... 

So who the fuck is... 

Chorus: 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

Hold up -- whoa -- whoa -- wait a minute -- minute -- Jesus Christ 

Your momma and DJ... 

back in the day... 

They didn't wanna believe in us. 

Little did they know that they was in for a mother fucker a big surprise. 

Left on locked in my Zef Zone. 

Ready for it... 

What a fuck, I guess so... 

What a fuck, heads get blown. 

But everything will free like... head phones 

When I get home, my... is on my... phone 

Make momma happy cause I get so brave 

... Techno rave 

I can take you around the world, let's go wave 

When I step up and do my thing 

I put you in the throne... 

Fuck what you think, I do what I want 

I can make a million 

Make the mother fuckers jump 

Jump mother fucker 

Jump mother fucker jump 

Jump mother fucker 

Jump mother fucker jump 

Jump mother fucker 

Jump mother fucker jump 

Jump mother fucker 

Jump mother fucker jump 

We will increase the beat... at the party 

We'll pop the joy off for everybody... 

Chorus: 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot 

I think you're freaky and I like you a lot

Song download free here because Hollywood and FBI douchebags don't get what the sharing economy is all about

Holy F**K

I get a fabulous kick out of seeing how the next generation of break dancers (or just young people doing their thing) have taken the art form (and pretty much everything else they touch) to a level that makes the men's floor gymnastics at the Olympics look tired and formal. Well worth taking a peek.

Via Iain.

Celebrities Devoid Of Art Jamming Creativity Down The Toilet

I'm semi reluctant to plug Christopher Knowles interview here because I'd hate to see this post contributing to wider attention and better bill paying gigs that distract him from his book writing and excellent blogging. Christopher is the first person to credibly explain to me why The Clash were so good. I've never been into them but knew I was missing something from friends explanations, and it's nailed in this awesome interview about the secret history of Rock & Roll which connects straight back to the mystery schools and Dionysian waywardness.

If you don't learn a lot from this interview then you shouldn't be reading this but instead should be interviewed yourself. Christopher makes the interesting point that Rock & Roll can't be reinvented like say Nirvana did with the current hipster scene in music bars too self concious to bounce off the walls in case they look silly on Facebook pic uploads. He's a first class observer of the times and I urge everyone to listen to the excellent and erudite interview originally done by Cosmic Gnostic

This Is What Happens When You Give Thousands Of Stickers To Kids

More details on this truly delightful art installation in Brisbane by Yayoi Kusama over here. 

Terence McKenna On The Permission To Abstract From Nature That Printed Text Imposes

I've always wondered why there is so little scientific evaluation of the effects of Television when it was introduced. I have no idea how populations went from spending an hour or so around or with the radio to six and half hours a day glued to a screen without the scientific establishment doing the appropriate analysis or even pointing out that in terms of drugs it's as toxic as heroin given the stare-reflex it solicits disconnecting entire countries from the actions of their military abroad and the far reaching consequences of their consumption at home.

Terence draws on Alduous Huxley and Marshal McLuhan in this short audio clip. In some ways it's also about the art of advantages to drawing.