There is a fine line between representing other people’s suffering and perpetuating it.
The market demands a quick-fix solidarity, living-room worldliness and that cushy sense of ideological superiority. We all love being flattered by our own ideological credentials, and demand criteria that go beyond the rigid dichotomies of fascination versus critique, voyeurism versus empathy, help versus profit. The issue is particularly pertinent in contexts of heightened military violence, which usually elicit predictable examples of sentimentalized (counter) propaganda or even more depressing retreats into insular navel-gazing.
Ever since the Iliad, the spectacle has been part and parcel of the narratives by which human affliction has been communicated, and the artist has played an honoured role in this regard. To quote Tom Holert, the ultimate prize for any ambitious creative worker must be a war of one’s own, the way the Spanish Civil War will forever be Ernest Hemingway’s and Pablo Picasso’s.

For an example and an exception, please check out - Regina José Galindo - winner of the Golden Lion award for the best young artist at the 2005 Venice Biennale.
http://www.bombsite.com/galindo/galindo.html

...and with thanks to Tirdad Zolghadr

... what sentences, paragraphs, poetry, or blurg can you create from these?

approach, scale, death, fiery, red, raw, investigate, rhythm, smear, would, cigarette, latex, instrument, capture, ism, sculpt, angry, waste, metaphor, joy, empty, throw, shard, never, open, shimmer, you, glorious, only, suffer, wild, scream, create, passion, break, aesthetic, absurd, see, our, junk, compose, through, ask, grace, say, subject, water

The Monkey Fist

- nellanutella

"Flying is the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing." - Douglas Adams

The winters are sooo long in Canada.... the soles of my shoes are tired of being wet...

Painting - Byron Bay - Brett Whiteley

A crucial yet overlooked aspect of the current debate re the publication of the Danish cartoons, is the balance of power between the offended Muslim communities and the media that have published the cartoons (and the socio-political elites that those media represent). In Denmark, where the row originated, Muslims largely inhabit a social underclass, experiencing real difficulties accessing employment and a stake in the economy more generally. In a country where an anti-immigrant right-wing is in the political ascendancy, bigotry plays no small part in determining the social status of Danish Muslims (for instance, it seems that one Danish MP described the Muslim presence in Denmark as a "cancer"). To many of them, the issue has as much to do with politics as it has to do with religion. The cartoons are an overt expression of the bigotry that has a material effect on their daily lives, and this experience is a common one in ghettos all across Europe. Add this to the historical record of Western foreign policy towards Muslim majority countries, up to and including the serious crises of the present day (Palestine, Iraq, Iran), and the context in which the cartoons are likely to appear from a Muslim perspective is hard to miss. The cartoons themselves figure next to nowhere on the scale of crimes committed by Western governments against the Islamic world, but they are, in the context, a puerile and gratuitous jab in the eye - the needless addition of another insult to a thousand injuries.

The posture struck by many in the European media has been one of brave defiance against the threat of religious dogma (though such bravery was in short supply three years ago when the Danish paper that published the caricatures of Muhammad refused to publish satirical depictions of Christ on the grounds that they might “provoke an outcry”). Given the balance of power between the media and the Muslim communities in Western countries, and between the West and the Islamic world internationally, the courageous pose is a hard one to take seriously. If the European media had a strong record in (a) documenting the relationships between their governments and autocratic regimes abroad, and (b) reporting on the lack of economic opportunity and consequent restriction of social freedom experienced by the domestic underclass, including Muslim first and second generation immigrants, then the current principled stand for freedom might deserve some credit. Again, the balance-of-power element of the issue, presented inversely by the newspaper editors who chose to publish the caricatures, is unavoidable. One can think of few less impressive sights than that of social elites affecting airs of heroism by valiantly standing up to the fearsome tyranny of those who reside under their boot.

But perhaps the most significant aspect both of the publication of the cartoons and of the subsequent reinforcing of the dichotomies discussed here is the effect they will have on the prevailing political discourse in the West and the government policies that emerge from or acquire legitimacy through the terms of that discourse. It is no coincidence that those who most enthusiastically peddle the fiction of a “clash of civilisations” also portray the opposing “other” as a force that seriously threatens to destroy “our way of life”, and therefore advocate an aggressive US-led military strategy across the Islamic world. Manichean rhetoric eulogizing the liberal idealism of “our values” and the necessity of defending them against those who “hate our freedoms” has been the very essence of Western pro-war advocacy in recent years. Observing essentially imperial foreign policies being depicted as altruistic endeavours aimed at bringing enlightenment to backward, inferior (if exotic) cultures, or at least at defending us against them, hardly places us in unfamiliar territory. Indeed, subjugation almost invariably goes hand in hand with the deliberate dehumanisation of those who are being subjugated by those responsible for or whose acquiescence is essential to the act of subjugation. And in terms of domestic social relations, the direct contribution made by stereotypical depictions of certain social groups as in some way inferior to the mistreatment of those groups by the majority is again a dynamic that's hardly unfamiliar, not least in Europe.

Meaningful dialogue between Muslims and Westerners is eminently possible. History shows that the common human values of freedom of expression, worship and conscience have emerged in both cultures at various points in time, to greater or lesser extents. The barrier to dialogue is not the necessary antagonism of two diametrically opposed value systems. Nor is the real question at hand one of whether freedom of speech should be curtailed by the demands of religious dogma. Rather, for us as Westerners, the question is whether we will continue to be complicit or to acquiesce in the denial of freedom to others. Declining to publish the caricatures, in light of the political context in which this issue has arisen, would not be a compromise but an affirmation of the values we in Europe purport to uphold.


- Extract from an article by David Wearing - ZNet -
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID=9771

Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just toe me an inch, no -
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.

That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake
Masked among black rocks as a black rock
In the white hiatus of winter -
Like my neighbours, taking no pleasure
In the million prefectly-chiselled
Cheeks alighting each moment to melt
My cheek of basalt. They turned to tears,
Angels weeping over dull natures,
But didn't convince me. Those tears froze.
Each dead head had a visor of ice.

And I slept like a bent finger.
The first thing I saw was sheer air
And the locked drops rising in a dew
Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay
Dense and expressionless round about.
I didn't know what to make of it.
I shone, mica-scaled, and unfolded
To pour myself out like a fluid
Among bird feet and the stems of plants.
I wasn't fooled. I knew you at once.

Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.
My finger-length grew lucent as glass.
I started to bud like a March twig:
An arm and a leg, an arm, a leg.
From stone to cloud, so I ascended.
Now I resemble a sort of god
Floating through the air in my soul-shift
Pure as a pane of ice. It's a gift.


- Sylvia Plath

Charles Eames was once asked, "Does form follow function?" And he answered, "Yes, as long as your definition of function remains open." It is good if your definition of function remains open, but not endlessly open. There is some beauty too in the fact that objects are discrete entities.

Photograph - Loretta Lux

http://www.sabian.org/alicech1.htm

Of tight pursed cheeks
And humid balls
Goose pocked flesh
And baboon calls

Of leather cuffs
And strawberry jam
Of gimps, and
Lovers pushed in prams

Of goats and horses
Brash behaviours
Of men who pay
For womans favours

Of lovers spanked
For fun, for tears
Of whispered winds
In lovers ears

Of cherry centres
Lips so small
Of turgid romance
Steeped in gall

So Valentines
A winsome farce?
Or day to find
Some red-hot arse?

Illustration - Dasha Shishkin