Tony Hannibal Blair
Aug. 3rd, 2006 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusThese, it seems, are the last days of Tony Blair. It's looking increasingly likely that he'll be deposed in a bloodless coup this weekend while he's away on holiday in the Caribbean, or toppled at the Labour Party conference next month. Perhaps he'll crusade on for another year and fulfill his ambition to outlast Margaret Thatcher. At any rate, we should be preparing our valedictions now.
I was planning to write a scathing piece about Blair's career today. But, really, what's the point? There's nothing I could say that isn't already being said all over newspapers like The Guardian in op eds, blogs and commentary pieces. So I've decided to stay one step ahead, to do something a bit more original. I'll take the water of Tony Blair's deeds and pour it into an ice tray moulded, not in the shape of his own head, but someone else's; the concrete poet, artist and architect Vito Hannibal Acconci. I call this method Parallel Profiling. (Private property fans, please note: this technique is copyleft. Anyone can use Parallel Profiling without paying for it, as long as they don't charge for it either.)
So, here goes.
Tony Blair: Neither an installation artist nor an architect -- let alone a poet -- Tony Blair did not shoot to fame with an action called "Seedbed" which involved him lying under a raised platform masturbating while broadcasting his sexual fantasies to all comers. Although he erected millions of security cameras around the UK, he never got interested enough in what people do to follow someone around until they passed from public to private space, then type up the results and send them to a friend, or hang around piers, telling a selected stranger "something that I’m ashamed of and that under normal circumstances I wouldn’t tell a soul, something that – if it were made public – could be used against me." On the contrary, Blair always insisted on his own complete rectitude.
Although others filled up hours and hours of video tape with his "conviction" speeches, Tony Blair has signally failed to investigate the medium of video himself, let alone push it into new areas. He hasn't made a single piece in which he, for instance, explores his own naked body or lies back smoking, playing music and addressing viewers as if we're lovers being ardently pursued.
Despite sitting weekly around a big conference table bullying and pontificating, Tony Blair never considered actually designing a table, a radical conference table, for instance, which juts through a window and then eight feet over the street below. He also never made a building which, remarkably, with the swing of a few hatches, can be opened entirely to the sidewalk, becoming a metaphor of transparency (like the Storefront for Art and Architecture on New York's Kenmare Street, currently showing the exhibition Portable).
Vito Acconci: I'll be brief. Vito Acconci hasn't been responsible for the biggest erosion of democratic power -- the power of the judiciary, parliament and the cabinet -- that Britain has ever seen. He hasn't taken a nation to war under completely false pretences. He hasn't declared that he's shifted from being a utilitarian to more of a belief that there's such a thing as "natural law". He isn't Britain's most religious prime minister since Gladstone, "seeking authorisation for war, as well as personal spiritual solace, in the Gospels."
Never having purged a socialist party of all its socialists, Acconci doesn't now insist on seeing every single conflict in the world as a battle between extremists and moderates. He's never compared himself smugly to Jesus by declaring that "Jesus was a modernizer", and he doesn't insist on calling any piece of capital-friendly, clock-turning-back legislation "reform". Acconci hasn't offered "cash for peerages" or become a sort of Hollywood butler to the most right-wing president in American history. Acconci doesn't believe that democracy can be rained down on other countries in the form of heavy munitions, or that the state of Israel is right whatever it does.
Whereas it's possible to see Acconci believing that history can be written in human seed, nobody could accuse him of trying to write it in blood -- and creating, in the process, precisely the sort of "failed states" and hardline Islamist terrorism he claims to deplore. Acconci doesn't then define the resulting anger as an "arc of extremism which must be confronted", hinting that he will attack yet more sovereign states, in defiance of all international law.
Vito Acconci leaves the world better for his actions, Tony Blair leaves it worse. But at least -- any day now -- he leaves.
I was planning to write a scathing piece about Blair's career today. But, really, what's the point? There's nothing I could say that isn't already being said all over newspapers like The Guardian in op eds, blogs and commentary pieces. So I've decided to stay one step ahead, to do something a bit more original. I'll take the water of Tony Blair's deeds and pour it into an ice tray moulded, not in the shape of his own head, but someone else's; the concrete poet, artist and architect Vito Hannibal Acconci. I call this method Parallel Profiling. (Private property fans, please note: this technique is copyleft. Anyone can use Parallel Profiling without paying for it, as long as they don't charge for it either.)
So, here goes.
Tony Blair: Neither an installation artist nor an architect -- let alone a poet -- Tony Blair did not shoot to fame with an action called "Seedbed" which involved him lying under a raised platform masturbating while broadcasting his sexual fantasies to all comers. Although he erected millions of security cameras around the UK, he never got interested enough in what people do to follow someone around until they passed from public to private space, then type up the results and send them to a friend, or hang around piers, telling a selected stranger "something that I’m ashamed of and that under normal circumstances I wouldn’t tell a soul, something that – if it were made public – could be used against me." On the contrary, Blair always insisted on his own complete rectitude.Although others filled up hours and hours of video tape with his "conviction" speeches, Tony Blair has signally failed to investigate the medium of video himself, let alone push it into new areas. He hasn't made a single piece in which he, for instance, explores his own naked body or lies back smoking, playing music and addressing viewers as if we're lovers being ardently pursued.
Despite sitting weekly around a big conference table bullying and pontificating, Tony Blair never considered actually designing a table, a radical conference table, for instance, which juts through a window and then eight feet over the street below. He also never made a building which, remarkably, with the swing of a few hatches, can be opened entirely to the sidewalk, becoming a metaphor of transparency (like the Storefront for Art and Architecture on New York's Kenmare Street, currently showing the exhibition Portable).
Vito Acconci: I'll be brief. Vito Acconci hasn't been responsible for the biggest erosion of democratic power -- the power of the judiciary, parliament and the cabinet -- that Britain has ever seen. He hasn't taken a nation to war under completely false pretences. He hasn't declared that he's shifted from being a utilitarian to more of a belief that there's such a thing as "natural law". He isn't Britain's most religious prime minister since Gladstone, "seeking authorisation for war, as well as personal spiritual solace, in the Gospels."Never having purged a socialist party of all its socialists, Acconci doesn't now insist on seeing every single conflict in the world as a battle between extremists and moderates. He's never compared himself smugly to Jesus by declaring that "Jesus was a modernizer", and he doesn't insist on calling any piece of capital-friendly, clock-turning-back legislation "reform". Acconci hasn't offered "cash for peerages" or become a sort of Hollywood butler to the most right-wing president in American history. Acconci doesn't believe that democracy can be rained down on other countries in the form of heavy munitions, or that the state of Israel is right whatever it does.
Whereas it's possible to see Acconci believing that history can be written in human seed, nobody could accuse him of trying to write it in blood -- and creating, in the process, precisely the sort of "failed states" and hardline Islamist terrorism he claims to deplore. Acconci doesn't then define the resulting anger as an "arc of extremism which must be confronted", hinting that he will attack yet more sovereign states, in defiance of all international law.
Vito Acconci leaves the world better for his actions, Tony Blair leaves it worse. But at least -- any day now -- he leaves.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 09:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 09:21 am (UTC)I'm also dreading the day I get the Parallel Profiling treatment. "Unlike Florence Nightingale, Momus..."
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 09:29 am (UTC)And I guess this makes sense too - More Britons target foreign move (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5237236.stm). Ahead of your time, you are.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 10:38 am (UTC)but who on earth is writing Blair's recent pronouncements?
Are these wordsmith's the real "power" behind Blair's talking head simulacrum?
"Arc of Extremism", "renaissance". They almost have the way to handle the forces of change but their intentions appear to be to maintain the dualism.
Blair used to bleat on about a "third way". He was so close. Reading the manifesto of Udi Aloni for his movie "Forgiveness" there is almost a hint of a triangulation of the extremes creating as he puts it a ladder to the heights out of the remnants of the dividing wall.
I am early in this analysis, need more research, but it seems that's why Zizek is supporting this movie. By saying what things really are as opposed to confirming their alterity we can perhaps mutually rise from the duality.
Was Blair ever really there? Do we really know anything about this man?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 11:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 11:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 12:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 02:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 03:01 pm (UTC)I once heard on a documentary that Blair has been a prime minister with one of the most early-twentieth century mindsets you could find, and as such strongly echoed some British colonialist/imperialist sentiments. I'd say that's proof.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/08/01/mideast.blair/index.html
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 03:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 03:28 pm (UTC)Apparently he's writing them himself. Certainly the ones he gave last week in California, the "arc of extremism" ones, that's his own work.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 03:33 pm (UTC)One could quite easily be forgiven for thinking he was talking about The Bush Gang.
Invasion of privacy?
Date: 2006-08-03 04:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 04:29 pm (UTC)<< I'll take the water of Tony Blair's deeds and pour it into an ice tray moulded, not in the shape of his own head, but someone else's >>
My brain is made of ice cubes? Wow that means I can recast in any shape? Excellent!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 04:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 04:47 pm (UTC)next stop, he would go to the caribbeans for a coconut syrup and lomi-lomi massages....
meanwhile...
there are kids dieing in the middle east.
but hey! c'est la vie, non?
**at least he's pretty optimistic abt the end of the war....
Parallel Profiling
Date: 2006-08-03 05:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 05:22 pm (UTC)You guys should come check out my art sometime. I do this art where I depict jesus in various sexual acts. It's _SO_ transgressive and innovative. Nobody has ever done transgressive art before, I am the first one out there. If only the brainwashed christians could understand the importance of my work.
-henryperri
Re: Parallel Profiling
Date: 2006-08-03 05:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 05:29 pm (UTC)Re: Parallel Profiling
Date: 2006-08-03 05:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 06:29 pm (UTC)Re: Parallel Profiling
Date: 2006-08-03 06:44 pm (UTC)Garbo is cool, guttural, and silky. She hides away from the camera a good portion of the time, as if it would burn her, she is lunar. She has the dusky, mineral loneliness of a planet. In her walk, she leans forward with her shoulder, throwing around her lanky bones like a cadaver. But when she falls in love onscreen, you believe it-- her laugh is like a child's, musical, vulnerable and awkward. She changes from glum to excitable in an instant. Somehow you stare at this screen goddess, completely made of silver, and notice that her hair is frizzy, and that by turns she is ugly. She seems lost in a hazy world of her own, not quite able to focus, but turning guilelessly toward love. Today, such qualities are not thought of as sexy. They may even be seen as "un-American"! And Garbo, like my Norwegian grandmother or aunts, possesses a Scandinavian femininity. She was a Swede. The modest masculinity required to do farm chores, coupled with a quiet, poetical pastoralism that relishes white gloves and full dinner service. A serious scowl broken by deep enjoyment of a bawdy joke. A clean earthiness with a metallic aftertaste. The ability, perversely like that of Julie Andrews, to make sentimental cliches new again, like when you are in love.
Joan Crawford could only prove fascinating but shrill in comparison. Undoubtably very pretty, but not beautiful, she seems to avariciously seek the camera. Every take begins with her adjusting her facial expression, as if she is preparing to be seen. From what I've heard of her early life, she had a very hard way to go, and the look of hard ebullience on her face is lovely but desperate. Kind of like when you look at Britney Spears and see that pit of desperation in her eyes, smile as she might. Crawford is brassily American, though she comports herself in the "Continental" way. I would so badly like to have seen her in a quiet moment, smoking a cigarette and chewing gum, her face fallen into a sullen stupor. I can't help but think that her legendary abuse of her adopted daughter came out this desperation, for things to be ideal for a change. She seems like the kind of woman who would affectedly say, "Who? Me?" when told she was pretty. Like the kind of woman who would deftly manipulate men's eyes and pocketbooks, but go home alone because real intimacy would be impossible. In this movie, she cannot manufacture a believable grief response to the death of the man she loves. Dunawaye's portrayal, though artful, foxy, and hard, does seem to be missing this vulnerability.
John Barrymore gives a delightful turn as the admittedly oily thief-slash-Baron, with both women pining for him. Gene Wilder seems to borrow his genteel, bemused air, mascaraed lashes, and weaselly moustache. He professes his love for his only constant companion, a...wait for it... weiner dog. This dog was so adorable, I could see his eyes yearning for Mandy Henderson, circa 2006. He seemed to opine, "If only time's cruel hand had not parted us...".
There is a phenomenon that takes place in movies like these, love at first sight. It could be perceived as incredibly sexist and counter-progressive. But I love it. The man comes along and recognizes some vulnerability in the woman. And something unique. He throws himself in defense of her honor, in exchange for her utmost trust and fidelity. So crazy, it just might work!!
The other thing about movies like these: those doors. I'm talking about inlaid wood-veneer parquet doors, with crazy Cubist patterns. Remember when all rooms had doors between them? Not like your subdivisions with naked drywall portals. And these doors are not your American farmhouse doors: these doors say, "America is the new Paris". These doors come from a time when the Empire State Building would be the terrorist's locus of attention. From a time when people who drove cars everywhere were called "automobile enthusiasts" and wore goggles to do so.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 06:49 pm (UTC)I think, as I was saying yesterday with Governor Schwarzenegger - it is great to be with him. I phoned my wife up and she said to me: "How do you feel being with Arnie Schwarzenegger?" I said: "Actually I felt acute body envy really." But anyway we were discussing climate change."
Ok It seems he did write his own "thesis" over seven weeks..but singlehandedly?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 07:18 pm (UTC)trix
Re: Invasion of privacy?
Date: 2006-08-03 09:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 09:21 pm (UTC)Thom Yorke (http://pitchforkmedia.com/page/news/Thom_Yorke_Versus_Tony_Blair#37715)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-03 09:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-04 12:00 am (UTC)National Demonstration In London
Date: 2006-08-04 02:21 am (UTC)Hopefully this will put further pressure for a political solution to the war in Lebanon i.e; a ceasefire. Also further pressure to push Blair out. There is apparently already a huge number of people attending from all parts of Britain.
I am an ass
Date: 2006-08-04 02:47 am (UTC)momus you troll
Date: 2006-08-04 03:36 am (UTC)what a bunch of jerk offs. including momus.
Re: momus you troll
Date: 2006-08-04 03:42 am (UTC)makes my heart swell!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-04 05:49 am (UTC)The longer you're getting any degree of reverence as an artist, Mr. C, the more you seem to lose touch with the huge portion of the population that doesn't have the head, wallet or nose for contemporary experimental art. Where's our semi-populist hero of the era before the whitney show?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-04 07:22 am (UTC)Art improves the world.
Art teaches people how to think in an original -- and empathetic -- way.
What does being extremely wealthy have to do with going to the Sonnabend Gallery and witnessing an Acconci performance? Having Acconci talk in real time to you? Or follow you? Or tell you a secret? What "head, wallet or nose" do you need for these activities?
There's nothing so hard to understand or afford here. All you need is the willingness to think freshly. And you can carry that fresh thinking over into your own life, and into politics. If that isn't a "populist" message, what is? Or do you think populism only means a stereotypical political speech about "evil" whipping the listeners up to make war on another nation? Or a corny blockbuster film that makes people cry with "universal" scenes scored with an orchestra? If that's populism, fuck it, it's murderous and mediocre.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-04 07:47 am (UTC)I share your concern about Blair because he's religiously motivated. But let's also apply that standard to Nasrallah (and his "God Party"), Ahmadnijad and others. I have noticed that many people sneered at Blair's religiosity while "understanding" Muslim death threats over the MoToons. Again, make your mind up which way you want it.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-04 07:55 am (UTC)That money enough to fly across ocean after ocean finds its way into your hands, and that you seem to eat or drink out at least twice a week makes you downright affluent, even if you are thrifty about clothes and haircuts. The average American is fat, kind of ugly, and has much bigger concerns than how charming it is to be followed around by a public masturbator.
You don't have to be idiotic to be populist, but is the jutting table anything more than calculated whimsy? Disregard all the bad shit that either man did, and didn't Mr. B bring a million more smiles to the world than your Mr. A ever will? What happens at the largess of a very small and very elite set of people usually behind closed art gallery doors, even in the lives of those that appreciate it and have the education, or snobbery to make heads or tails of it, is at best meaningless, at worst just another brand of conspicuous consumption.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-04 08:48 am (UTC)While it may seem fair to call for a level playing field, to call for "consistency" in deciding who should and shouldn't transcend their ethnicity, I don't think it is. As I said in my Secret Life of Eurabia (http://imomus.livejournal.com/2006/01/09/) essay:
"This "Boo hoo, it's not fair!" attitude ("why are they allowed to cover their faces on ID cards, and we aren't?") leads to accusations of "asymmetrical multiculturalism", identified by right wingers as a weakness of the liberal position. Why do we encourage minorities to celebrate their ethnic specificity while making it taboo for the indigenous majority to do the same? Why are we tolerant even of the intolerance of others? The answer is that power changes everything. It is because we're the majority that we must indulge minorities but not indulge ourselves. Deconstruction theory tells us that every binary has a dominant and a repressed element. There can be no "fairness" in treating those elements as if they were equal, and even less in proposing, through sci-fi scenarios like "Eurabia" and "dhimmitude", that the repressed element is somehow about to become the dominant one. Multiculturalism needs to be asymmetrical because power imbalances make asymmetry the reality."
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-04 09:04 am (UTC)I completely disagree with your analysis. Bush and Blair have been disastrous politicians, but I'm far from saying that all conventional politics is bad. Where were you on Monday when I blogged enthusiastically about the sustainability movement, LOHAS? Where were you the Tuesday before that when I blogged enthusiastically about the European Union? How have you missed the fact that every entry I've made about art has stressed that there's political work going on even in what seems completely unpolitical? And how could you fail to see that Acconci's conference table, jutting out from private space into public space, is an extremely populist political gesture, saying that decision making needs to be extended to "the street"?
As for Blair "bringing smiles to the world", you're a lunatic! How many smiles do you see in Iraq, descending into civil war, with 100 civilian deaths a day? The world would be a better place if Blair had done absolutely nothing since 1997.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-04 09:48 am (UTC)Second, it's often people within these minorities who are most at risk from multiculturalism. The UK government recently dropped a proposed law against forced marriages for fear of upsetting Muslim elders. This means abandoning teenage Muslim girls to potential abuse. It's interesting that Sarfraz Manzoor has now emerged as the most vocal opponent of religious schools in the UK. He recently did a radio report contrasting the attitude to sectarian religious schooling in Northern Ireland - where everyone says it's bad - with England, where multiculturalists think it's good.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-04 10:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-04 11:14 am (UTC)We're pretty arrogant if we think that what Freud described as the murderousness of "the narcissism of small differences" can be solved by something so boring and bureaucratic as samll readjustments in funding policies, subsidy or legislation. My understanding of the Birmingham riots is that they were sparked by sexual issues; unfounded rumours of molestation of one community's women by the other. Also, having married the daughter of the then-President of the Bangladeshi Welfare Association in London's Brick Lane, I can tell you that those community elders speak for more than just themselves, even if they don't speak for the whole Bengali community. I respect my ex father-in-law's attempts to preserve Bengali traditions, even if in the end I married his daughter against his wishes. Immigrant communities must be allowed to keep their own traditions. It's completely irrelevant that they're "unelected"; they get where they are by legitimation processes which are meaningful to their community (for instance, by being a hafiz, someone who's memorized the whole Koran).
Enforced marriage should be struggled against by the people involved (as Shazna and I struggled against it, successfully) rather than by blanket legislation forcing people to assimilate rather than merely integrate. (The difference: you integrate by being accepted as you are, you assimilate by trying to become like someone else.)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-04 11:19 am (UTC)I agree with your second sentence, but not your first. A multiculturalism which only subsidised people who were racially the same would not be multiculturalism at all. This is "unfinished sympathy".
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-04 01:32 pm (UTC)No, I think you are turned upside down in your analysis.
Momus sees that art is important, and so he makes art.
He doesn't say that art is important to serve himself; he is following the art.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-04 03:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-04 11:00 pm (UTC)zzberlin's probably right that you have had this sort of viewpoint for a long time, and you becoming an artist, and talking much more lately about contemporary conceptual artists just makes it feel like you're sliding.
I do think you miss entirely that the populism of the leisured wealthy doesn't mean a thing to most people. If a plank of wood was jutting from a window in some alley for several minutes, days, or months, was anything created other than a couple of vaguely interested sighs? Are you sure he didn't mean it to look like a diving board to suggest that executives should kill themselves? or an unfinished bridge to show the complications of M&A style business? The meaning you give it is based on a pretty pirvileged set of knowledge. Do you single a single person who didn't know the story of that jutting board thought, "what a populist gesture!"? That sort of populism is about as meaningful as paris hilton getting high on E and opining, "I should help more people" in the back room of a m(b)illionaires-only party.
I doubt that most of the people followed home, or the wharf-goers accosted by Mr. A really felt better about life for the experience. No more than you would if someone began acting like an aggressive schizophrenic around you.
The values that an ultra-elite, as yet unmarried, globe-trotting relativist wishes to bring to the world don't necessarily benefit it. Moral evangelism doesn't cease to be evangelism just because you believe in the cause.
I'll confess I don't know much about Blair other than his lapdoggery for the US, and that I think him a miserable leader for what I do know, but if he rearranged the tax code in a way that benefitted more people than it punished, or did something to actually increase efficiency and reduce mortality in state hospitals, if he did a single positive thing as a politician, he beats Mr.A in the populism department. I agree that it has been all offset by his bad deeds... and again, that he's a shitty leader, but even a great leader, your favorite leader, would look terrible stacked next to your icon of amoral elitism, because he would have done things on a global scale.
For all I know, Mr. A beat his wife and molested his children, but going on your account, his minor misdeed of stalking a stranger for a short while, or his minor good deed of masturbating in an art gallery don't seem to have any real impact, and can't be critiqued beyond what degree of artisitc cleverness they've brought to their limited number of viewers.
A raucous drunk who is the life of the party would probably have impacted more lives in a positive sense, or a woodworker who's dedication to quality has made a rocking chair that can be handed down for generations. Your artists fall in that category mentioned in today's entry: it "adds some ... value but you can't say where or when".
And that's what I mean when I say you've gone "art good, politics bad". Harmless noodling around with ideas on the money of the trust-fund crowd sort of inevitably looks good when you compare it with statemanship.