Alice, Uovo, mongoloids and meat
Sep. 7th, 2008 12:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusHisae and I went last night to a launch party for the new Berlin offices of Uovo magazine, which happen to be directly below where my Berlin record label, Bungalow, used to be ten years ago.
We managed to miss the Davide Balula performance (though we chatted with him awhile) because we had to rush off to see the performance Ujino Muneteru was giving in a warehouse in Mitte.
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Muneteru uses drills and mixers and hairdryers and things to produce "domestic-industrial" sound. He also has turntables rotating physical objects which produce rhythm loops, and rigs up smashed vehicles (a Trabi and a truck, last night) with chandeliers and blinking lights. His work reminded me of Pierre Bastien's:
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Tonight we're having a food-and-film supper, projecing for Japanese neighbours a recent NHK programme about Japan's food self-sufficiency -- or lack of it. NHK shows what the average Japanese supermarket would look like emptied of food not grown in Japan; pretty threadbare! They also make two men live on a diet of Japanese-only food for a week. They soon get pretty bored -- there isn't even any soy sauce!
After the NHK doc we're showing Our Daily Bread, the award-winning 2005 commentary-free documentary showing (with stunning Andreas Gursky-like photography) the industrial processes of food production usually hidden from the consuming public:
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Ever since having vegans Joe and Emma to stay, Hisae and I have cut way down on our meat consumption. We both used to be vegetarians at one point (me for four years). It's interesting to see headlines in today's papers relaying advice from the UN Climate Change panel saying that eating less meat could temper the ill effects of global warming.
Finally, here's my favourite pop song of the week, discovered in Polypunk 34, the latest DJ mix from Digiki. It's Schneider TM's take on Popchor Berlin's take on Devo's classic satire Mongoloid (which I bought in 1977 when it first came out as a single, c/w Jocko Homo -- I was a teenage Devo fan, naturally!).
Mongoloid (Schneider TM's take on Popchor Berlin's cover)
Schneider TM's version came out in 2007; here's Popchor's a capella version, from 2004. But wait, can that chronology be right? Because if you listen carefully you can hear the Schneider TM version spilling from Popchor Berlin's cans.
The Wikipedia entry on the song says, cautiously: "Although it is a positive song (a rarity for DEVO at the time of the song's recording), it has received much criticism due to its controversial title. Alternatively it is an ironic song referring to the level of intellect and education of the average American being equivalent to a mongoloid, so that he was undetectable in modern American society."
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Finally, a rather spookily addictive song someone called Pogo has made using only sounds sampled from Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" -- a film I've never seen, by the way, and never will; I absolutely don't accept Disney's right to have made it in the first place. I do, though, accept the right of someone to cut up the Disney version for scrap and samples. Which raises an interesting spectre: that some of us are encountering recontextualised appropriationist art without having experienced the original contexts in the first place. How do we know how much of what we're responding to is Pogo's and how much is Disney's? It's a bit like eating a vegan burger that simulates meat just a wee bit too well.
We managed to miss the Davide Balula performance (though we chatted with him awhile) because we had to rush off to see the performance Ujino Muneteru was giving in a warehouse in Mitte.
[Error: unknown template video]
Muneteru uses drills and mixers and hairdryers and things to produce "domestic-industrial" sound. He also has turntables rotating physical objects which produce rhythm loops, and rigs up smashed vehicles (a Trabi and a truck, last night) with chandeliers and blinking lights. His work reminded me of Pierre Bastien's:
[Error: unknown template video]
Tonight we're having a food-and-film supper, projecing for Japanese neighbours a recent NHK programme about Japan's food self-sufficiency -- or lack of it. NHK shows what the average Japanese supermarket would look like emptied of food not grown in Japan; pretty threadbare! They also make two men live on a diet of Japanese-only food for a week. They soon get pretty bored -- there isn't even any soy sauce!
After the NHK doc we're showing Our Daily Bread, the award-winning 2005 commentary-free documentary showing (with stunning Andreas Gursky-like photography) the industrial processes of food production usually hidden from the consuming public:
[Error: unknown template video]
Ever since having vegans Joe and Emma to stay, Hisae and I have cut way down on our meat consumption. We both used to be vegetarians at one point (me for four years). It's interesting to see headlines in today's papers relaying advice from the UN Climate Change panel saying that eating less meat could temper the ill effects of global warming.
Finally, here's my favourite pop song of the week, discovered in Polypunk 34, the latest DJ mix from Digiki. It's Schneider TM's take on Popchor Berlin's take on Devo's classic satire Mongoloid (which I bought in 1977 when it first came out as a single, c/w Jocko Homo -- I was a teenage Devo fan, naturally!).
Mongoloid (Schneider TM's take on Popchor Berlin's cover)
Schneider TM's version came out in 2007; here's Popchor's a capella version, from 2004. But wait, can that chronology be right? Because if you listen carefully you can hear the Schneider TM version spilling from Popchor Berlin's cans.
The Wikipedia entry on the song says, cautiously: "Although it is a positive song (a rarity for DEVO at the time of the song's recording), it has received much criticism due to its controversial title. Alternatively it is an ironic song referring to the level of intellect and education of the average American being equivalent to a mongoloid, so that he was undetectable in modern American society."
[Error: unknown template video]
Finally, a rather spookily addictive song someone called Pogo has made using only sounds sampled from Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" -- a film I've never seen, by the way, and never will; I absolutely don't accept Disney's right to have made it in the first place. I do, though, accept the right of someone to cut up the Disney version for scrap and samples. Which raises an interesting spectre: that some of us are encountering recontextualised appropriationist art without having experienced the original contexts in the first place. How do we know how much of what we're responding to is Pogo's and how much is Disney's? It's a bit like eating a vegan burger that simulates meat just a wee bit too well.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 10:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 10:35 am (UTC)"NEVER!" said the Mad Hatter (depicted by Tenniel or, failing that, Svankmajer or Jonathan Miller (http://imomus.livejournal.com/363991.html)).
lol vegan sausage
Date: 2008-09-07 11:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 12:22 pm (UTC)Without Disney, there would be no Tezuka Osamu, there would be no anime and manga as we know it today.
I also really like that Alice in wonderland song by Pogo.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 12:25 pm (UTC)As such, I would recommend downloading it, as I expect cease & desist notices soon.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 12:50 pm (UTC)You know, I've been invited to give a talk at the Architectural Association in London about the slippage between Pop (the series ties in with a Warhol show) and populism (ie right wing politics which appeal to the masses via celebrity culture etc), and I think I might title it "The ideology of the Iconic" and look at this weird expectation that everyone be familiar with mass market popularisations of things, even when they're not the best versions.
"Iconic" means that things are famous for being famous, become obligatory rather than voluntary, and attract by a planetary gravity which is cultural as well as commercial, or, rather, commercial-because-cultural. The iconic status leads to repetitions, and to a strange sort of inversion of the original categorisation of these items as entertainment.
Which, in turn, leads to the weird situation in which I'm scolded for not having seen Star Wars or Disney or The Exorcist or whatever, as if I'm letting myself down as a cultural commentator -- and can't be expected to be taken seriously as a serious critic -- unless I've seen these "iconic" populist artifacts (some of which are now, ironically, almost as academically historical as the originals they were parasites of, and in some cases treated with more slavish academic reverence).
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 12:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 01:04 pm (UTC)So she says of Madonna, for instance: "Love her or loathe her you cannot underestimate the impact she has had on music, or her iconic status." Notice that this implies that opting out of Madonna is not an option. It doesn't matter what you think of Madonna, she's iconic, so here she is again! And again! And again! It doesn't matter if she's interesting or boring, likeable or obnoxious, bereft of ideas or full of them! All these qualitative judgements are crushed by this "iconic" status, which has a finality and objectivity about it which -- apparently -- would still be there even if everybody in the entire world were bored sick of Madonna.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 01:49 pm (UTC)Neo-iconoclasm
Date: 2008-09-07 01:50 pm (UTC)Sometimes a certain mass market reaction to a cultural phenomenon is yardstick enough to base one's opinion of said phenomenon on.
I don't need to see the Godfather Trilogy to know I would not like it. I've seen enough clips, read enough articles referring to it and been bored enough by fans of it to know I would hate it.
I stopped buying the NME fourteen years ago when they began referring to Madonna in the same breathless tone as they hitherto reserved for undiscovered garage bands from High Wycombe.
Of course this determinist nonsense has it's own stifling, pernicious effect on art:
Pet Sounds is the greatest pop album ever made.
Citizen Kane is the greatest film ever made.
Perhaps if we are ever going to get out of the murk of post-modernism the toppling of these idols of the super-flat will be essential.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 01:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 02:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 02:20 pm (UTC)Why would someone bother with a second-rate copy when the original article is superiour? I guess when you treat them snapshots of populism from the past, It's hard not to find them interesting because that mass culture just doesn't exist anymore. I'd even go as far as saying it represents the aspirations, world views and aesthetics of a former generation, and you can't fail to find that curious when you approach from that angle. 'The whole is greater than the sum of its parts' sort of thing. To watch Disney's Alice in Wonderland today you instantly notice the English accents, the songs, and the animation style are all very old fashioned.
I recently started an Open University course called The Arts: Past & Present, and my first assignment is to look why certain things become popular and famous, and why others don't. I really can't wait to get stuck into this assignment. I think to only concentrate on marginal works of art is to miss out on understanding the cultural climate those marginal works of art existed in at the time, which detracts from your understanding and appreciation of them.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 02:27 pm (UTC)Going vegan is one of the few (and best) revolutionary acts available which requires neither ill manners nor conformist dressing. Difficult to do in Japan or the Netherlands, but easy in the US (and perhaps in Berlin?)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 02:33 pm (UTC)The subject of why some things fly and others don't is fascinating, but -- like your analogy yesterday of the high wire and the safety net -- it presupposes the evitability of inequality, and the impossibility of level playing fields. It might be worth looking at "iconic" repetition celebrity culture of the kind Kirsty Wark applauds as the cultural result of a society entirely wedded to high-Gini -- to the idea of an incommensurate gap between winners and losers.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 02:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 02:48 pm (UTC)Don't you think revolutionary gives resistance a bad press though?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 02:50 pm (UTC)Its the unexpected.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 02:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 03:37 pm (UTC)Miami Vice is a good description. I think. Actually, I've never seen Miami Vice. "He who is ignorant of history is condemned to repeat it."
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 03:44 pm (UTC)More like this?
Date: 2008-09-07 03:59 pm (UTC)But to me this is an "early Eno" look.
Re: More like this?
Date: 2008-09-07 04:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-07 05:08 pm (UTC)Re: More like this?
Date: 2008-09-07 05:14 pm (UTC)