WHY DRUGS ARE BAD

Sorry, can't resist...

Movie critics tend to fall in the "assaultive," camp, but Foundas again puts Bay in context of recognized auteurs. "There's a lot of directors historically who like to move the camera a lot. They just tend to do it in one take instead of these short edits," he says. "But maybe he's kind of like Marcel Ophuls on methamphetamine."

Scott Foundas was so skullfucked by Transformers Trois that he a) is spewing meaningless absurdities like Serge Daney on GHB concerning Bay's style, and b) has confused the son with the father.

He's right though, I did detect a little hommage in the Clermont-Ferrand sequence of the first Transformers. now, Everybody get to rehab!

MORE FATWAS FROM BADIOU

Ok , amigos. Here are some helpful and practical aesthetic counsels from the Yoda of his generation (with my helpful parenthetical explanations)

9. The only maxim of contemporary art is not to be imperial. This also means: it does not have to be democratic, if democracy implies conformity with the imperial idea of political liberty. (OK, this means Socialist Realism is back, thank God!; also you can also enjoy Jew Suss and the Triumph of the Will (in the comfort of your home, of course.)

10. Non-imperial art is necessarily abstract art, in this sense : it abstracts itself from all particularity, and formalizes this gesture of abstraction. (Good news for Windham Hill, screensavers, and Ambient Black Metal.)

11. The abstraction of non-imperial art is not concerned with any particular public or audience. Non-imperial art is related to a kind of aristocratic-proletarian ethic : Alone, it does what it says, without distinguishing between kinds of people. (Don't worry about starving to death. Some of my ideas can be quite nourishing.)

12. Non-imperial art must be as rigorous as a mathematical demonstration, as surprising as an ambush in the night, and as elevated as a star. (Don't rock the drunken boat, Arthur Rimbaud, or we will all drown...)

13. Today art can only be made from the starting point of that which, as far as Empire is concerned, doesn't exist. Through its abstraction, art renders this inexistence visible. This is what governs the formal principle of every art : the effort to render visible to everyone that which for Empire (and so by extension for everyone, though from a different point of view), doesn't exist. (So, let me check with Empire for a list of approved objects, which is everything imaged, then I make art about the inexistent. But then must it go on the list of approved objects? And then I get confused. Heisenberg? Any light on this?)

14. Since it is sure of its ability to control the entire domain of the visible and the audible via the laws governing commercial circulation and democratic communication, Empire no longer censures anything. All art, and all thought, is ruined when we accept this permission to consume, to communicate and to enjoy. We should become the pitiless censors of ourselves. (OK, what the Imam is saying is that my thought is ruined by thinking it -- because I can only think things that the Empire has pre-thought for me. But if I do my own censoring, I am free.) 

15. It is better to do nothing than to contribute to the invention of formal ways of rendering visible that which Empire already recognizes as existent. (So, relax, and don't worry about the Empire. There is nothing you can do. Except keep buying my books. These aren't the droids you're looking for.)

Seems easy enough, right? Not just another crazy pied piper of Hamelin Adorno Bullshit Aesthetics wishlist! 
In other news, Badiou orders all babies to be hygienically disposed of along with their brackish bathwater.

ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS

Dominique Strauss-Kahn: The first book you’ve chosen isn’t about economics at all; it’s a work of science-fiction, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. But was it part of what inspired you to become an economist?

Paul Krugman: Yes. This is a very unusual set of novels from Isaac Asimov, but a classic. It’s not about gadgets. Although it’s supposed to be about a galactic civilization, the technology is virtually invisible and it’s not about space battles or anything like that. The story is about these people, psychohistorians, who are mathematical social scientists and have a theory about how society works. The theory tells them that the galactic empire is failing, and they then use that knowledge to save civilization. It’s a great image!! I was probably 16 when I read it and I thought, “I want to be one of those guys!” Unfortunately we don’t have anything like that and economics is the closest I could get.

We don't? You are too modest, comrade. To some of our cadres, you are, verily, an intergalactic savant. Please keep saving us. Thanks.

LESTER BANGS IS (STILL) DEAD

Ok, so there is this "musikant" out there that goes by the name of Spiagge Sporche or something like that. HE'S A GENIUS. Allow me to emphasize this. Genius, in that modern, loosey way we speak of genius, that is to say, he managed to get some attention for something fundamentally mediocre.

It's a simulacra of Suicide -- y'know that old funk band that Rev and Vega used to have. But not really, not at all, actually -- something has eluded the artist -- because Suicide, if they had anything, had ENERGY. This fellow has fervently copied the programming, (what do I know, he probably majored in post-punk at julliard, specialised in analog sequencers) but S.S. has apparently given him/herself some sort of date-rape drug in the art process. And so we finally get to the interesting part -- it's as if he is date-raping his muse (Suicide) & his own mediocre talent at the same time. This seems like usual practice these days -- anxiety of influence has dropped to anemic levels. Whose fault is that? Yours for listening. Lester Bangs, for being dead.

It's time to take back the NIGHT from these weasels!!

OEDIPUS ON THE ROAD

If someone copying a prototypical icon is unable to experience in himself that which he depicts, if while following the original he fails to make contact with the reality of it, then (being honest) he will try as precisely as possible to reproduce in his copy the prototype’s outward features; but it almost always happens that, in such a case, he will not comprehend the icon as an opening, and so, lost in copying the fine lines and brushstrokes, he will interpret unclearly the icon’s essence.

But if, on the other hand, through the prototype he is opened up into the spiritual reality depicted on it, and thereby comes to see it clearly (if secondarily) he will – because he posseses the living reality of his own aliveness – manifest his own viewpoint, and thus swerve from a strict calligraphic adherence to the original. In a manuscript you write describing a country someone else has previously described in an earlier manuscript, you will see your own words and phrases in your own handwriting; But the living basis of your manuscript is assuredly identical with that of the earlier one: the description of the country. Thus, the variations arising between successive copies of a prototypical icon indicate neither the illusory subjectivity of what is being depicted nor the arbitrariness of the iconpainting process but exactly the opposite: the living reality, which remaining itself, nevertheless will appear with those variations that correspond to the spiritual life of the iconpainter who seeks to comprehend that living reality.

Thus (ignoring mere servile reproduction) the difference between a prototypical icon and its iconic copy can approximate quite precisely that between an explorer’s account of a newly discovered country and a later journeyer’s narrative who visits that country because of the first explorer’s account; no matter the importance of the first account, the latter narrative may well be more exact and complete. Just so in iconpainting: sometimes an iconic copy can become particularly precious, one whose extraordinary indications confirm both its spiritual truth and it’s supreme correspondence to the spiritual reality it depicts. 

-- Fr. Pavel Florensky, Iconostasis

“Super 8 was never intended as an homage to any films in particular. Before we were shooting I told our cinematographer, Larry Fong—who I met at 12 making Super-8 films—that I didn’t want the film to look like it was made in 1979, but I wanted it to look the way we remember films looking from 1979. That is to say, it needed to be its own thing, with visual and rhythmic motifs that allude to a different era of moviemaking, but made using tools and techniques of today. I sort of wanted to build a bridge between then and now." – J.J. Abrams.

It is clear that modern commercial filmmaking is fetish oriented. But what is being Fetishized exactly? Is it “wonder” flitered through the filmmaker’s own set of nostalgic values? Is it the feeling of being overwhelmed, completely possessed by a prior image? It seems that this nostalgia is already oddly misplaced – that audiences no longer even connect with this religious or fetish power of the image at its most concentrated. They no longer believe in hollywood über alles. They are adherents of another, more diffuse, religion. This is no longer popular filmmaking, but cultish. Mystical communication between adept and master. Whispers.

THEY GOT GAME

According to a new study conducted recently by Saatchi & Saatchi S entitled “Engagement Unleashed: Gamification for Business, Brands and Loyalty,” approximately half of working Americans are engaging in online social gaming during a typical work day. But more importantly, 55% of Americans want to work for a company that utilizes gamification to increase productivity.

The most surprising result is that younger Americans, (read as Lady Gaga fans) which is also one of the demographics more largely out of work these days, are willing to be paid less to work for a company that is socially-minded. Thus, social interaction and the workplace culture are becoming more important than more money these days - at least to some people - even with a struggling economy.

Well, naturally.

The people have spoken. They want their serfdom to be fun and engaging. Yet, it is an undeniably brilliant move by the beneficent overlords to mirror-shift the honor culture of achievement/merit/humiliation from money and actual tangible goods to game performance. Ludic merit means more for everybody. Nobody's self-esteem suffers.