adam in the world

The above pictures are from Georgia and South Ossetia this past week. More pictures at The New York Times here and here. Some of them disturbingly beautiful.

What happened last friday makes me feel sick - will the stupidity never end. Probably not. And while Putin enjoys the possibilty of a fresh little war to keep the minds of his ignorant voters occupied for another decade or so, I am really, really wondering what dreams and hopes president Sakhasvili had last thursday when he send in the troops.? Or rather - what the fuck was he thinking? Naive thoughts of future greatness? This war seem so absurdly meaningless. It's outcome so depressingly predictable.

The only one to benefit from this is Putin and Russia.

By Surrend via Politiken. It's an ad the Danish artgroup Surrend put in the biggest Georgian Newspaper some days ago.

Surrend are great. They've done a number of other artistic interventions like this.

We need more disinformation. Otherwise we go mad.

Georgia Georgia
no peace I find
Just an old sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind

We need to get more political here. Even in my quiet corner of the world it is turbulent times like never before in my lifetime... perhaps I should blog about it... but for now we'll zoom out a bit and have a little lesson about political communication:

Frede tipped me of on this one ... and now i see he has made yet another well written post about it (in Danish)
.

Do yourself a favour - read last sundays Doonesbury.

...oh, and remember to check the news, left column - this was on today:

Iran is to break new ground by setting up an architecture research center named after the renowned late Iranian architect Hadi Mirmiran.

Things are going on in the world. On and on.

Today I saw the movie 9/11 revisited. It supports the claims that the official explanation of the collapse of the towers are completely inadequate. And it hints at implications of the more (only?!) plausible explanation. Watch it. It's seems interesting and relevant... but also to good/bad to be true. Certainly not boring.

LINK

I, on the other hand have my own theory... dug out of an old Donald Duck magazine... how couold they have known, years before. Disney? Well, he's conveniently dead... to good/bad to be true you say....hmmmm...

UPDATE!!

An anonymous (...hmmm .... yes - I am suspicious too... ) comment to this post has revealed this picture:

Coincidence? I don't think so! This smells of... something....

.

I have a very ambiguous relationship to Cuba - on the one hand I have a great passion for the music and have been wanting to go there for many years. On the other hand it has dawned on me what tremendous asshole Fidel is and what a cruel dictatorship he is running.

Recently a friend of mine brought to my attention the Cuban installation artists Los Carpinteros (The carpenters). Their stuff is really nice, beautiful, on the border between art, design and architecture. But I can't help wondering how artists like that can work under strict censorship from the state. Is what we see just a faint shadow of what they would produce under other circumstances. There is however a lot of bridges, crumblings walls, even some watchtowers among their drawings and installations. And then, there's this drawing, Floatable Pool.

I believe it must be inspired by Rem Koolhaas' swimming pool, described in Delirious New York, powered by Soviet dissidents and constructed to escape to New York. With the cruel twist to the story that, for some reason which I don't remember at the moment, New York is not so alluring when they finally arrive. So they turn the pool around and head back.

Enjoy the weekend.

Here's a fast little update, just 'cause I'm sort of in a hurry but have a bad conscience for not updating for several days ;)

The site of the day contains images from 2 photoalbums bought at a fleamarket in Beijing. "The albums are amazing artifacts of a time and place that most Westerners have no connection to". Old pictures are always nice, but these offer an inside view of the cultural revolution - a rather terrible point in history, where Mao did what he could to erase all traces of knowledge from the past, history and traditions. Quite interesting to get a different view of this if you ask me.

Scrapbook of the Revolution

from money not art

We got a very positive email from the EASA-organizers the other day regarding our workshop, so I'm more than optimistic. I will however not reveal anything about the project yet, though I know you're all just about to burst with exitement.

For now you'll simply have to do with a couple of projects that we've come to have some similarities with, in the sense that we're also gonna be two Danes wearing suits and bringing some luggage, containing alternative realities, with us.

Danish artists Nielsen and Rasmussen decides shortly after the american invasion, to bring democracy to Iraq.

"...Nielsen & Rasmussen decides to transform The Democracy to a smaller, portable aluminium flight container, thereby adapting the utopian, universal space of The Democracy to the conditions of the particular."

This is not just a mocking satire - it is carried by a sensere concern and it brings them in contact with people, discussions and events. All very relevant and interesting. LINK

The ID-sniper rifle designed by Jakob S. Boeskov, is cabable of shooting a microchip, tracable by sattelite, into fx people at a demonstrotion. As a representative of fictive weapons company Empire North, he went to the Cina Police 2002 weapons exhibition in beijing. Bringing along just a suit and some renderings - the only place the rifle actually existed. LINK

"Danes fo Bush", also by Jakob S. Boeskov and Mads Cortzen, is a bit more light hearted. They went on a tour through the U.S. during the elction campaign - pretending to represent the organisation "Danes fo Bush". Although basically just a satirical hoax, this really got peoples emotions running wild. LINK

What they all have in common, also with our workshop, on a more interesting level, is the method - by putting on suits and carrying certain props, they build up an alternative reality around them, through which they can explore and interfere with "the game" from within.

Were you also dissapointed that the papal election were done with so fast - mere two days gathering of the conclave before the black smoke miraculously turned white... yes, I could have wished that bunch of elderly magicians be locked up in a room for longer. And who did they choose then? None other than the chief of the noble institution which untill 1910 had been known by the name of the inquisition!

So why did they choose such a reactionary as the panzer cardinal. Well, he was apparently a compromise. He satisfied the conservative hardliners of the church by being an immensely conservative hardliner himself. And the more liberal can live with him too because at 78 he can not be expected to hang around for too many years. What excellent qualifications.

To entertain you in the meantime here is a really well made russian flash site: Conclave Obscurum with lots of very nice little movies... hope you can find your way around there...

As my mother allways says when moments of unrecognized genious hits her: "we're sourrounded by idiots". And while that is true, there are different degrees of idiocy. From plain dumb (which will apply to any of us now and then ) to scaringly mindless and ignorant...

To the second group I will include all the young men and women with more hair than brains, namely neo nazis. But as we all know nothing comes out of nothing, except the fluffy stuff we find in our bellybuttons, and nazis too were once neglected children who peed in bed and had wellmeaning but brutal parents. As they grow up they find themselves in a confusing world, members of just one minority group amongst thousands, all with special needs and problems integrating with regular society - as this informative video tells us!

To celebrate the recent lack of succes for the Italian government - may it go far, far away and never come back - we bring you THIS, a song :)

And if you liked it here's two more with some friends of his: Gorgie & Tony and Jean-Marie. They're actually even better...

Brought to you by atmo.se/read my lipss

UPDATE: Wow, now he really resigned. Which means that he managed to tell the rest of the governmetn he would resign, then change his mind and then resigning anyway - in just a few days! That man sure's something special.