propositions press... 2.0

after s.c.

Bill Clinton, whatta guy. In the days leading up to the South Carolina primary, Clinton refreshed everyone's memory of how unbelieveably slimy he was, and much to the detriment of his wife's campaign, still is. If anybody thinks it's a problem that I refer to the candidate as 'his wife,' well, all I can say is, dragging out hubby to bare his teeth hardly a feminist makes.

Having this two-headed figure emerge with it's noted ambition fully revealed, after about seven years of relative quiet--a period during which, apparently, their twinned hunger for power only grew--makes me reconsider all that I thought I knew about the impeachment of Clinton 42. I used to believe that the Republicans of the time, ie Gingrich, Armey, Lott, &tc, were an evil, petty bunch, hell-bent of distracting the country with culture wars while enriching their class of elite robber barons. And that hasn't changed! But to that I now add:  Clinton was caught in the Lewinsky snare and held to the fire by the Right 'til well-seared not for anything but his otherworldly slime quotient. It wasn't the family values angle, at all. Those in the Congress couldn't give a rip about marital infidelity and sexual indiscretion. It was a competitive thing. The Republicans hated Clinton, in the end, mostly for the reason of his sheer greasiness, the way they could never pin him down on. . . anything. Clinton made Reagan's teflon seem like a brittle force field; a soft, infinitely shaped politics, capable of entering the smallest spaces of detail, covered with an oily sheen, was Clinton's style. And the Republicans hated him for it, and this time they had his butt against the wall, where they could force him to finally admit, for the entire world to see, that he is a slimy and deceptive bastard, even toward his wife.

And with Bill on the stump that's what we have again: not inspirational speech, but silver tongues that contain daggers. Thankfully (imo, that is), many of those voting in the primaries have gotten to hate it, too. And, many of those under the age of thirty were never seduced by Clinton to begin with, because they were too young to have been paying attention back in the nineties. Many from within the Democratic grassroots now see the Clintons clearly, not even necessarily as a problem, but simply as limited (which, I guess, is the real problem).

What is Hillary gonna do? She used up the teary-eyed, voice-cracking 'I just care so much about you and change' act. That was a one-time stunt, now spent. Immediately, there is the question of whether to stick with the strategy of a fully miked Bill campaigning hard or take him off the job--this is the dilemma of the Clinton camp, after Obama's massive victory in S.C.

This article from the Guardian makes a similar point.  

madison, summed up...

. . . in three vanity plates spotted within mere minutes:

KREE8

HMN RTS

MERMAYD

 

Hippy dippy? You bet.

disasters of war

And now, we're in the after-vacation period:  laundry, catching up on bills, emails, house cleaning, grocery shopping, getting back to our regular diet and sleep schedule, etc. For me, this return to and resettling of home also means tidying up the work space and going through the piles of accumulated stuff clogging my work area.

One thing I found while neatening and filing was the exhibition poster for the show Meanwhile, in Baghdad. . ., which was on view at the Renaissance Society for much of November and December of last year. I liked the show very much, but didn't have any time to write about it. Now I can at least direct visitors to this exhibition essay by Hamza Walker. It is a fine piece of writing, especially the first part, comparing Norman Morrison and Malachi Ritscher's respective acts of self-immolation. A highlight of the show was Ann Messner's free giveaway publication The Disasters of War, which deserves a larger audience than just gallery goers. This was the second edition; the first was published as part of a show at the Zilkha Gallery of Wesleyan University in 2005. I hope we see a third edition of the project someday.

travelogue continues

Two short days in Budapest are not enough. The Szechenyi baths were worth every minute of our long hike finding it. Heavy mists over hot mineral baths outdoors as night falls in the middle of the winter, old men playing chess under the fountains of naturally heated water–this was a pure Budapest experience. A terrific dinner at a restaurant we happened upon randomly, Menza, and the Luc Tuymans retrospective at the Kunsthalle Budapest, together made for a fairly complete day. Though I must say the Tuymans retrospective was a bit thin–only a handful of early works and almost nothing beyond 2005, so how is that a retrospective? Unfortunately, no time to look up the people of Dinamo, the space I'd been told about by colleagues who'd visited the city in recent years. But next time. . . .

depot post-mortem

Still a little jet-lagged, but getting up in the middle of the Budapest night does give me a chance to blog.

I've been trying to process Monday's event at the Depot. The format was somewhat flawed from the beginning. There were three of us: me as presenter, and then Edelbert Koeb, director of MUMOK, and Peter Pakesch, from the Kunsthaus Graz, as respondents. My dear friend Beatrix Zobl was charged with the thankless task of moderating. I was given only 25 minutes to make a case for a different curatorial treatment of new art from China than has become standard on the Euro-American museum circuit in the last ten years or so. What I chose to focus on was the significance of the '89 social movement centered in Beijing, the role of art in the lead up to it, and how the shadow of that event (the mass demonstration phase of which, of course, ended with the martial crackdown in Tiananmen Square) colors the post-89 period, including in China's world of contemporary art, and how

china/avant-garde '89

the analysis of this movement is typically only served a superficial treatment in most big survey shows. It was difficult to make my points (although Sarah keeps saying I need to stop beating around the bush) in the allotted time, given that the audience on balance had only a simple knowledge of Chinese history (if at all), not to mention the '89 social movement in particular. And it was basically impossible to directly address the big China–Facing Reality show up at MUMOK in its details, as I had only seen the show that morning. By mid afternoon I was napping, which always results from the combination of jet lag and boring art.

So the stage was set. But there were positives as the event got underway. For one thing, the audience was big. The room was filled to capacity, SRO. Probably fifty people in a space the size of Mess Hall. And everybody seemed engaged as I went through my thing, which I ended more or less on time.

And then, disaster. Pakesch proved to be a mumbler, and a long-winded one at that. His points were not in anyway germane to anything that I had said only moments before, and were mostly general observations about the 'transition' taking place in China nowadays. Which is precisely the ideological trope Wang Hui demolishes in his critiques of the post-'89 period, and which I strongly echoed in my presentation.

Five minutes into Pakesch's response, a bloc of probably ten people conspicuously walked out.

Koeb wasn't much better. Despite the announced event language, he chose to speak in German, against the protests and irritation of the organizers, and especially to the everlasting chagrin of Beatrix, who tried to right the ship several times but was basically ignored. (I was not so irritated; after all, we were in Vienna.) But it didn't even matter because his comments, as well as I could understand them through translated segments and my own elementary German, were about as relevant as Pakesch's. He basically told stories of how he put the China–Facing Reality show together, and what he had intended to do, and how he had some problems managing the artists. He admitted to deficiencies in the show, but offered almost no analysis on why that happened to be the case, and zero evidence of self-awareness as a Western curator trying to work in a cultural world about which he knows nothing. It never seemed to occur to him that the artists in China, as well as his Chinese co-curator, might be playing him like a song, even though he readily admitted that he could never seem to escape the same circle of the same artists who are already internationally known.

More people left before Koeb finished.

The discussion part was better, partly because the drone of the two respondents finally ended. But it wasn't really their styles that bothered me. It was the fact that they didn't actually respond to what I said. Knowing what I know now–that they are basically cultural functionaries, having been appointed to their positions by the government–I am not really surprised. But at the time, I could only wonder, did these guys even listen? If not, then why did they even bother to take part?

But of course, the main thing was having an opportunity to communicate with an audience outside of the mediation of big institutions, to see the Depot, and re-connecting with Martina Reuter, who works as the Depot's manager, as well as with the great WochenKlausur. All of that was terrific, and, in the end, counts as the real work.

a decent movie for flying

Finally, a movie on a plane that I could watch. I'm talking about Into the Wild. I had a friend who read the book back when it came out in the late Nineties. He told me then that the story reminded him of himself at nineteen, when he acted the grandiose, uncompromising adventurer intent on drinking in the Purity of Life, from whatever cold, clear source he could find. I told him, yes, I remember when we were both that way. Except it was only for a little while, and the realities of adventuring (after our fair share) humbled us as we moved into our twenties. The movie did a good job telling the story of a guy, full of that love for the Truth of Life, who just couldn't or wouldn't be humbled, at least not until it was too late.

What I liked most about the movie was the way it delivered a picture of the late Eighties and very early Nineties as belonging to a different era. It made me nostalgiac for that time, when it still seemed possible to get away by choice, to take your turn doing the Thoreau project, when we didn't leave data trails everywhere we go. When we didn't. . . um, blog. Alright, so maybe the communications revolution did away with that particular drop-out fantasy. But nineteen and twenty year-olds are (I hope) almost by nature grandiose and uncompromising. So what are the particulars of the younger generation's analogous fantasies now?

not quite as entertaining as ted haggard. . .

. . . but this guy really was sending people to hell (prison), and then, for some of them, death (the gurney). Don't you love it? I mean, I hate to take pleasure in somebody else's misery, but when truly powerful people go down (apparently this guy directed the district attorney's office which since '82 has convicted about a quarter of all the prisoners executed by the state of Texas--that's power!), I can't help but just enjoy a tiny quiver of pleasure, even if I feel sorry them and their families.

post-iowa, pre-new hampshire

Time to weigh in on the national political race, two days after Iowa and two days before New Hampshire.

First, some observations on tonight's ABC News 'debate.' (Are these events anything like debates in the classic mode? Not.)

Two things to say about the Republicans. First, Mitt Romney really got beat on by the rest, except for, maybe, John McCain, who seemed to hang on the outside of the pummeling. Romney weathered the attacks well enough, but in strictly CEO style, which is to say rather than sling it back in their faces, he countered with explanations. Some of which were not half bad (I mean for a Republican), but that's hardly gonna win you votes among the Right's technocratic-phobic electoral base. And, second, Fred Thompson's really going for the Neanderthal vote. I mean, the straight Asshole ticket. The 10% of Americans who still love George W. Bush, precisely for all his macho posturing and big bully persona, have their man in Fred Thompson, that's for sure. All I can say is, what a dolt. He makes Giuliani seem highly civilized.

The Democrats–apart from being altogether more intelligent–struck a much more unified front against the Republicans, who could not really finesse their way around the Bush 43 disaster, and so chose to mostly ignore the current administration. Obama was right there, right on, mostly sounding sharp and avoiding the detailed policy explanations that had him boring people to death over the summer. I was surprised by how inarticulate Bill Richardson sounded at times, but I did appreciate his nod to the consequences of historical mistakes–some remark about the Shah of Iran and how we're still paying the price for having backed him. More of that, please.

Much has been made of Hillary's inability to escape the 'old news' problem, especially after delivering Thursday's Iowa speech conspicuously surrounded by the Clinton old guard. But what's going on in New Hampshire is fascinating. Lots of reports like this one lead me to believe that Obama has the Clinton's totally freaked out, and more to the point, unprepared for a real contest of competing ideas combined with ground organizing. They are playing two different games, and with the newer one winning, and the older one has no answer. The Republicans will be just as stuck in their political game book when it comes to contesting an Obama wave, and that is what I just can't wait to see.

What has been particularly interesting to me is how Hillary sees Obama's mastery of the emotional register somehow as his great weakness. You can't just hope for change, she keeps saying. Well, she's got it exactly wrong. A leadership that awakens the emotions are what the Dems have been missing all along, Bill Clinton's sympathetic fakery notwithstanding. It is her–ie Hillary's–greatest weakness, and calling attention to Obama's finger on the emotional pulse of a nation longing for the future–it can't get here fast enough for those who hate W–only puts her own thin emotional game on display, again and again.

sometimes good things come to an end. . . long after they've gone bad

The funny thing about living a split existence between two places is how you end up paying attention to local issues, but they don't really affect you fully because, well, you are not there half the time.

I wonder if that is why I am not so sad about the imminent demise of the Hyde Park Co-op, a neighborhood institution that both inspired and infuriated me over the more than ten years I lived in Hyde Park. The consequences of its closing–well, let's just say it. . . of its FAILURE–won't really be borne by me in any immediate way. But I don't think that is why I am not sad. Even if I still depended on the Co-op as my local grocer, I would be in the same emotional state because, basically, I was sad for probably a good five years already. For the last couple of years I've been totally numb to the incredible series of missteps on the part of the board and management. After a while even the unbelievably lousy service, which was sometimes downright rude, rolled right off of me. I think probably quite a few formerly loyal Co-op members had this experience of desensitization. But really, the Co-op's death warrant was signed long ago, at least as early as its ill-conceived expansion plan, and only the willfully blind could not see it. So, by the time the Co-op finally shuts down later this month, many of us, including we who believe in co-ops and democratic business models, will have already gone through the stages of grief and accepted the death of this once-amazing institution.

But I am feeling some anxiety about Madison's Willy Street Co-op. It, too, is expanding. It makes me wonder, has any food co-op successfully grown to more than one store? The Berkeley Co-op died a pretty ugly and sad death from all that I've read. Outpost in Milwaukee seems to be managing growth well, but that is only my totally superficial impression. And any number of food co-ops have died as small storefront operations. Is every case different, or are there patterns that can guide young and future co-ops (like the Dill Pickle Food Co-op), to perhaps travel that middle ground between cultivating a big enough market for economic viability, but staying small enough to maintain a functioning democratic structure? Thoughts, anyone?