White Trash (the rice experiment) on Vernissage TV

[imomus]

Vernissage TV has covered White Trash (the rice experiment), the performance I've been making for the last couple of days at the Bridge Art Fair (separately covered by Vernissage here).

At 5pm today there's a Q&A session in which we reveal the results of the experiment and break open six two-litre cartons of sake rice spirit, so come along if you're in Berlin (Schonhauser Allee 5, Mitte).

Comments

[obliterati.livejournal.com]

Such an excellent idea. Something tells me that you're too nice a person though to properly make rice feel bad. I can totally see the rice listening to what you have to say and changing its habits around instead.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

That's a kind thought!

We found that a lot of people felt too sorry for the "bad" rice to say really horrible things to it, and I agree that this goes against our "parental" wish to treat siblings fairly and equalize their chances by equalizing their treatment. But there's a conflict between egalitarianism and diversity -- you have to treat things differently to foster difference. You have to allow and accept that different treatment really will have different outcomes. And it's a cop out to say "different but equal: everyone is different, but worth the same". In the real world, you really can't have difference without there being different values assigned to things. Those different values may be discouraged, legislated against, hidden (and that may be the right thing to do), but they'll keep popping up despite that. And they'll be -- oh god, what's the opposite of "incremental"? The curve will accelerate -- the advantage or disadvantage will become overwhelming and feed a sharply rising curve. (There's a word for this, it's on the tip of my brain...)

[obliterati.livejournal.com]

parabolic?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Exponential!

[obliterati.livejournal.com]

exponential?

[obliterati.livejournal.com]

Brilliant!