MySpacecide, magazines and peace
Apr. 29th, 2006 09:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusIf 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!
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!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 02:13 pm (UTC)Except I'm afraid to, and I refuse to do it unless a couple of my friends do it with me.
Group suicide?
Dance, monkeys, dance!
Date: 2006-04-29 03:04 pm (UTC)American Stories
Date: 2006-04-29 03:07 pm (UTC)American Stories (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/catalog/data/023111/0231117906.HTM).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 03:11 pm (UTC)I never caught on to the myspace phenomenon. I can't say it ever intrigued me.
Those magazines do intrigue me though. I'll have to take a gander.
Re: Dance, monkeys, dance!
Date: 2006-04-29 03:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 03:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 03:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 03:46 pm (UTC)There's also Unruly, which features great small-press writers like Pia Z. Ehrhardt, Kevin Sampsell, J. Robert Lennon, Deb Olin Unferth, Kim Chinquee and more, plus comix from myself, Alex Robinson and Shannon Wheeler.
http://www.batemania.com/unruly
Re: Dance, monkeys, dance!
Date: 2006-04-29 04:32 pm (UTC)"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
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 04:34 pm (UTC)Of course, myspace isn't really that. Just a spam board of "Look at my pictures" and "leave me comments".
I also used to to find dates (or have dates find me), but I've broken my need to find people online to date.
(Growing up queer in mighty Mississippi, I couldn't really ask guys out at school - it became a habit, but that's another topic entirely).
www.myspace.com/jubilee_please
is my page.
i think it's a mix between visual vomit and relevant information, but that's pretty indicative of my person.
but yeah, i predict i'll delete it within a matter of weeks, as soon as i muster up the courage.
knowing that i have to have courage to delete a profile is kind of frightening, but who said suicide was easy? ^_^
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 04:43 pm (UTC)I'm deleting it today.
I finished the Wired article, and it's rediculous, Myspace is.
I'm doing it tonight, after I post several bulletins with a link to the Wired article.
Thanks Nick/Momus!
You've set me free!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 04:49 pm (UTC)Speaking of ghosts on the web... (http://alistapart.zeldman.com/old/orson.html)
Re: Dance, monkeys, dance!
Date: 2006-04-29 05:22 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 05:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 05:34 pm (UTC)However, most of the bulletins that I see are wasteful and quite frankly, annoying chain bulletins that I refuse to take part in.
I've almost deleted it on occasions, but can't get rid of it on account that I'd be using my time better if I didn't have it. So while the positive is fairly miniscule, it's enough to keep me from being putting my page out of it's misery.
i'd go to a clique opera meet-up....
Date: 2006-04-29 05:49 pm (UTC)&hey i recently befriended Digiki and Toog via myspace.
i will also be at Tonic, so i'm covering my virtual and real-life bases.
i'll check out A Public Space for the Murakami interview.
Re: i'd go to a clique opera meet-up....
Date: 2006-04-29 07:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 07:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 08:02 pm (UTC)I never really used it much anyway. It was just something I started because like you, I felt I was herded in to it. But now I'm glad it's gone.
How long are you going to be at the Whitney? I ask because some time in June I'll be heading down from Toronto to Connecticut to visit my cousin and I think I may make a stop in New York to go to the Whitney to see the exhibits and meet you.
Re: i'd go to a clique opera meet-up....
Date: 2006-04-29 08:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 08:39 pm (UTC)-O.
Re: Dance, monkeys, dance!
Date: 2006-04-29 09:22 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 09:23 pm (UTC)isn't this just reverse snobbery?
Date: 2006-04-29 09:48 pm (UTC)Why do I have the feeling that if MySpace originated in Japan, "Tom" was some equivalently taste-free otaku who invented it in his 2-tatami, and the investors were, I dunno, Softbank or something like that, we'd be reading a long treatise about how it was an extension of the Japanese construction of the social self (as in Momus' own review of that movie recently, where the man is guided on his date by voices from the Internet, basically an updated Cyrano de Bergerac innit?) Because it comes from the West and embodies some aspects of Western culture (particularly the aspect of starting off a business quick and dirty), does that make it worthless?
As another commenter said, it's just a tool. It seems to have found its niche - kids, bands and music fans - and is successfully launching bands into the popculturesphere with its MySpace Records imprint. No-one is forced to use it, much as we're not forced to blog, either.
As for buying a new magazine, i cannot help but think "yet another rich kid's Nathan Barley-esque navel-gazing, clique-promoting hobby that really doesn't add anything new to our cultural discourse," but I've seen maybe a few too many of those around these days. Plus, do I want to contribute to deforestation? No.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 09:55 pm (UTC)Re: isn't this just reverse snobbery?
Date: 2006-04-29 10:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 10:40 pm (UTC)Re: isn't this just reverse snobbery?
Date: 2006-04-29 11:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 11:50 pm (UTC)Most people with a clear grip on reality do not spend hours and hours on it. I average maybe twenty minutes a day. I average about fifteen minutes a day staring at my ceiling and eight hours a night sleeping, during which I am completely useless.
It's just a website. I like giving my friends cute and uplifting comments. I still find time to read poetry and study and other activities of superior artistic worth.
Anyway, weren't you defending Japanese food blogs a little while ago? I don't see that much of a difference.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-29 11:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-30 12:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-30 02:13 am (UTC)Re: isn't this just reverse snobbery?
Date: 2006-04-30 02:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-30 02:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-30 02:19 am (UTC)Might it finally be time for a Friendly dictator?
Date: 2006-04-30 03:27 am (UTC)Re: isn't this just reverse snobbery?
Date: 2006-04-30 04:05 am (UTC)Does it make me an inverse-snob? -a reverse snob? I dunno, but I'm not pleased about MySpace and the way that it's essentially banalized communication. And don't even get me started about how much I hate music clips that automatically start playing when you visit someone's page. As if no one is already listening to their own music!
Re: isn't this just reverse snobbery?
Date: 2006-04-30 04:46 am (UTC)Re: isn't this just reverse snobbery?
Date: 2006-04-30 04:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-30 05:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-30 07:12 am (UTC)Oh no, art and personal pic stealing!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-30 08:47 am (UTC)(click)
There, that's better.
Re: isn't this just reverse snobbery?
Date: 2006-05-01 02:20 am (UTC)Sure, MySpace is full of banal genre-specific clone bands, but in reality, all these bands were already out there, MySpace just sort of collects them all in one virtual place. I will say there are some people out there making good use of MySpace - small galleries, artist-run spaces and events, etc. - as a cheap and cheerful way to manage address lists, inform people of upcoming gigs, etc.
It would be lovely if it were all free and anonymous (or completely user-supported and ad-free) but someone has to pay to keep the servers running. And anyway, no-one's forced to use it or look at it, but if you want in, the price is kinda posted at the door.
It seems disingenuous to knock it, because obviously *some* people find value in it, and the arguments presented really seem down to a question of taste. To tell people to give up the admittedly populist MySpace in favour of something relatively obscure and probably only of interest to a very few people living in the gravitational field of New York City seems a trifle...I don't know...elitist?
I mean, if you think the premise of MySpace is good but it's not done well, then get some programmers together and start your own competing social-networking / music-sharing site...and nothing says people can't be on MySpace *and* read The Colonial, culture is not a zero-sum game.
markEsmith + wyndham
Date: 2006-05-01 03:41 pm (UTC)~r
social network vizualisation
Date: 2006-06-08 09:37 pm (UTC)http://ljmap.net/index.jsp?name=imomus&zoom=50 - you on the map
I like this...
Date: 2006-12-17 10:11 pm (UTC)This is very nice site!!!
Forever Rules!