Agamben on Political Tattooing

For my Technoculture students, this is what we will be discussing on Monday: Look at the New York Times report from 2004 of Agamben’s cancellation of a US visit in protest at the policy of fingerprinting arriving visitors and employees from other countries. Malcolm Bull discussed this refusal in the context of his book State of Exception in a London Review of Books article, the text of which is available here. His open letter “No to Political Tattoing”, first published in Le Monde (11 Jan 2004), explains his reasons for refusing to travel to the USA.

Agamben’s faculty page at the European Graduate School lists some very good resources, including a bio, bibliography, some lectures, and videos.

Slavoj Zizek, “Knight of the Living Dead”, New York Times op-ed critiquing the normalization of torture in US politics (March 2007), referencing Agamben.

Yes Men Links

The Yes Men have a website with videos and overviews of recent interventions. Take a look at their fake World Trade Organization website as well (the real WTO is at http://www.wto.org/).

They have a number of clips on YouTube - here they are representing Dow Chemicals on the BBC.

Hynes, Sharpe and Fagan. “Laughing with the Yes Men,” Continuum 21, no 1, March 2007 (Informaworld access to the article here - use SwetsWise for access via U. of Greenwich library service).

Reykjavik walk

On Good Friday I walked all around downtown Reykjavik, enjoying the near-empty streets, and wondering what happened to the city centre. Laugavegur, the shopping street, is turning into a hollow core for a small city occupied by people in cars who prefer large parking spaces and malls.

Still, the graffiti takes on an intensity in the late-winter sunshine. I put some of the snaps on Flickr.

Somehow I didn’t have the heart to take photos of all the vacant buildings bought up by real-estate developers, rows of houses boarded up, waiting for the wrecking ball. Downtown Reykjavik is waiting to be rebuilt, one house at a time.

Fjölmiðlar og fámiðlar (Presentation at the Reykjavik Academy)

This post is an extended footnote with my presentation today at a symposium organized by Kistan.is, at the Reykjavik Academy (see press release in Icelandic). In addition to myself, the panelists are Elin Hirst (director of TV news RUV), Pétur Gunnarson (Eyjan.is), and Þröstur Helgason (editor, Morgunbladid).

Broadly, I argue that the distinction between print, radio and TV has become untenable, and we need different concepts for database-driven media platforms, their interfaces, their scale, temporality and modes of reception.

Here’s a collection of links to recent news stories on the topic (in English), most of which I refer to in the presentation. Except Chris Anderson’s article “The Long Tail,” from Wired (Oct 2004), which deserves pride of place anyway.

Remarking on TV and it’s ongoing dissolution, or rather the becoming-television of various media, I mentioned Joost, the open-source Miro, BBC iPlayer. In relation to music, particularly sites that encourage music discovery and the mapping of users’ tastes, I mentioned (in addition to iTunes, unavailable in Iceland), Rhapsody, Last.fm, and Musicovery.

And, naturally, I couldn’t resist mentioning Gawker and it’s spawn of specialist blogs (e.g., Consumerist, Defamer, Fleshbot, Gizmodo, and so on).

Now to write something up for Kistan.

The Observer’s Top 50 Blogs

Leaving aside the question whether these are “the world’s 50 most powerful blogs”, The Observer’s list is certainly useful and entertaining.

And if you’re planning to get on the list, read Cory Doctorow’s fine article, “17 Tips for Getting Bloggers to Write About You”.

Heima - all of it

All of SigurRós’ music documentary Heima, on YouTube, generously uploaded by the band themselves.

I have the DVD, which is worth every penny, and it makes me homesick every time, until I notice that everyone’s wearing a lot of clothes for summer…

Time, time, time

I’ve always been suspicious of people who mindlessly drive themselves and others to work, work, work, cheerfully spouting Ben Franklin’s dictum “time is money”. Time is many things, and it certainly is valuable, but it doesn’t equate to money - even when you’re getting paid by the hour. 

 

It turns out that worrying too much about wasting time, losing time, saving time, not having enough time, and generally treating time more like a thing than a quality is profoundly counterproductive. Hence my great pleasure at Stefan Klein’s op-ed piece in the New York Times, “Time Out of Mind”. It explains, but only partly, why time seems to pass at a fourfold speed whenever I so much look at a game of Scrabulous on Facebook…

Growing up Online

Another fine documentary from PBS’s Frontline series came to my attention: Growing up Online, broadcast 22 January 2008. I don’t know how, just yet, but I’ll have to make room in some of my classes to show at least some of the segments.

One good thing about this documentary is that it attempts to keep the hysterical “omigod, your kids are doing whatever they want online” attitude in check long enough to point out that socializing online is not a passing fad - it’s now part of the everyday media environment.

Watch the full programme and explore additional materials here.

Music industry woes

For my students, some of whom are making a documentary on music downloading, and others who just like music:

“It’s the Wild West out there” - interview with Guy Hands, EMI boss.

The music industry - from major to minor, The Economist, 10 Jan 2008.

Miranda Sawyer, It’s no way to make a living these days (The Observer), on the question of how much music is worth.

…and Miranda Sawyer again, Who calls the tune in the new music age?

Sociology is a combat sport

Video: La Sociologie est un sport de combat (2001)
This is, as far as I can tell, a full version of Pierre Carles’ La sociologie est un sport de combat (2001), an attempt to use the documentary film format to introduce the work of Pierre Bourdieu to a wider audience. Yes, it’s in French - apologies to my non-Francophone students - but watching this rather lo-res version has put the DVD on my next library order. Let’s see how long this stays online.