MySpacecide, magazines and peace

[imomus]

If you read my Wired column this week, which modestly proposed that people commit MySpacecide by deleting their Rupert Murdoch-owned social networking pages, you may be wondering what I recommend as a replacement for the hours people are currently spending on MySpace. The answer is simple: go out and buy issue one of a new American magazine. There are some good new ones, just starting out, that need your support.



A Public Space is a new literary magazine. It has the format and layout of a collection of short stories in a paperback. Issue one has a section called Focus Japan which has interviews with Haruki Murakami, translator Motoyuki Shibata and the journalist Riyo Niimoto. "How do the Japanese see Americans through their literature? Does The Catcher in the Rye read the same in Osaka as it does in Omaha?" the magazine asks. There are also short stories from Yoko Ogawa (a particularly good one), Masaya Nakahara (of noise band Violent Onsen Geisha) and Kazuchige Abe. Unfortunately, issue one of A Public Space is now sold out, although you may still find copies on the shelves of booksellers.

The Colonial is a new magazine from LA, a sort of Californian Purple. There's an interesting polemical essay on Dylan by Ian Svenonius in the debut issue, as well as splendid essays on Robert Bresson, and the secret connection between Mark E. Smith and Wyndham Lewis (in a piece by my friends Michael Bracewell and Jon Wilde). The magazine is produced with a nice introverted feel, typed on rice paper, and the photos are good too. I may be writing something for issue 2. You can buy The Colonial in LA Chinatown at Ooga Booga, a store which contains a whole flotilla of interesting stuff.

Finally, if you're in New York, do come along to the Whitney this evening. We're celebrating peace, and we're celebrating the Peace Tower in the courtyard, built for the biennial by Mark Desuvero and Rikrit Tiravanija, by playing some free music. By "we" I mean Momus, New Humans, Japanther and Apeshit. There's also poetry from John Giorno, the Beat legend and master of "human delay", and an address from German artist Hans Haacke. The evening's events:

6:15--Opening "invocation": Nora York
6:20--Opening words: Irving Petlin, Arnold Mesches, John Weber
6:40--Hanging of Andreas Slominsky's panel
6:45--Performance: Momus
7:05--Speakers: Elise Gardella of Friends of William Blake (for Paul Chan), Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights), Lynne Stewart
7:20--Performance: Apeshit
7:40--Spoken word/poetry: John Giorno
7:50--Performance: New Humans
8:10--Speakers DeeDee Halleck & Matthew Day Jackson
8:20--Performance: Japanther
8:40--Speakers: Final words by Martha Rosler & Hans Haacke
8:50--Final Mingling: special ipod program by TBA
9:00--End

Peace, out!

Comments

Re: Dance, monkeys, dance!

[auto-nalle.livejournal.com]

this is hardly tangential, but what the heck.

"the monkeys know they're going to die. so they make up gods and worship them".

now i deliberately omitted "the monkeys want answers" of the beginning.
i'm just so bored with the whole concept of "of the fear of death arises religion!". since may be at the root of religion is not so obviously fear, but it could be something more like curiosity.
i'm an atheist-bigot emotionally, but with a heartfelt nostalgy for religion. my relationship to religious people is messy & complex and something i have to deal with 'most every day, thanks to my job. anyway, i feel religion as a kind of proto-science. got started out as a good, though vague, intention to interpret and understand. then later it all was of course refined into a perverted hierarchy-complex like most great ideas. think of such basic concepts as a soul or transcendence or whatever heavens and netherworlds. what would i make of a person first living, then dead, without any external modern day info? first he moves, breathes, then he doesn't. starts to decompose. something must have left. it is interesting how in many languages the words denoting a soul or spirit and the word for breathing share an etymology. as in finnish henki=soul,spirit and hengitys=breathing. i like mind games like this, if i weren't told, what would i think? like stars are so obviously some kind of holes and beyond is a world where it is always daytime.

+
"the monkeys shave the hair off their bodies in blatant denial of their true nature."
not all monkeys.
http://imomus.livejournal.com/110357.html

Re: Dance, monkeys, dance!

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I have to say, I'm not an atheist. I used to think I was, but I began to notice that actually, I wasn't. I tend to find atheism limiting: "I'll think this far, feel this far, speculate this far, but no further." That kind of thing. On the one hand, I just don't think we know enough about anything to hold to such a default position as if it is some kind of unbiased truth. On the other, I feel that religion is as natural as anything else in existence, and is not the enigmatic aberration it is often painted as. I don't really think of myself as religious, but I suppose I have less objection to the notion of 'mysticism'. In the end, though, it's all interpretations of actual experience. What many atheists fail to realise is that for religious people, God actually is a real aspect of their experience of life.

So, in terms of the film, I certainly don't think it's perfect. It's a little smug, in the sense of: "We who made this film are cleverer monkeys than you, because we know we're monkeys." Actually, this smugness suggests they don't know they're monkeys at all. And, what's wrong with being a monkey? If anything, the human monkey shows how 'experimental' and full of potential the whole of life is. 'Monkey' in the sense used in this film, is just as much an artificial concept as 'human'. Why favour the one above the other? I also think there is a slight lack of compassion in the film.

However, it is interesting, succint and thought-provoking, a kind of snapshot of where the human race is now situated philosophically and otherwise.

Re: Dance, monkeys, dance!

[auto-nalle.livejournal.com]

"What many atheists fail to realise is that for religious people, God actually is a real aspect of their experience of life."

despite usually identifying myself as an atheist, or maybe more accurately a kind of fervent pantheist, i've a very weak and adaptable persona that easily yields to more powerful forces. like being constantly exposed to hard-core catholics causes uncanny, at times wonderful shifts in my mindset. i might find myself pondering through such things as "what a funny, beautiful thing, god created sleeping!" maybe kind of like as conversational raw material, but almost completely fogetting the ifs included, you know, what a wonderful thing if i were to believe in it.

i don't know. i reconcile myself with religious people or constructions and place myself in those systems by thinking of myself as possibly a reprobate, a person with no soul injected, who just happens to be predestined to doom = no afterlife. to my mind it is all in a fairly nice accordance. anything could be.
believing is just something i don't do, it's not a rational choice.

all that said, some people still might find me religious after all. i'm very ritualistic, which to me comes out as investing meaningless things with lots of meaning and an overall devotion to things. my almost daily sauna-rituals would be superfluous if the purpose were just not to stink too bad.
life itself is one big meaningless ritual, though.