>There’s this hot Swedish forum called Loseup Sepe IV that I’ve been visiting for ages. The creative members once gathered for attack on MS Paint, the suckiest art software on this planet, to interpret some classic album covers, so here’s some mindblowing art for ya! Hope I got the names right… Clicking on some of the images will give you a larger version.
The separation wall in Israel/Palestine. Remember to click all images to enlarge!
This isn’t graffiti, but it’s part of the art crime scene and the idea is pretty much the same. Gigantic posters smeared all over, in your face, without authorization. Pretty much like commercials, except that graffiti ain’t trying to sell you anything, but to make you think.
JR is an art genius and a great photographer (he uses only a camera that he found once in the subway). His street art project Face2Face has resulted in the film Faces which has been broadcasted at the same period by the Israeli TV and the Arab channels. It is also presented by the International Festival of Muslim Films in Kazan as well as The UK Jewish Film Festival in London. This must be unique! Here’s the description of the Face2Face project:
When we met in 2005, we decided to go together in the Middle-East to figure out why Palestinians and Israelis couldn’t find a way to get along together. We then traveled across the Israeli and Palestinian cities without speaking much. Just looking to this world with amazement. This holy place for Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This tiny area where you can see mountains, sea, deserts and lakes, love and hate, hope and despair embedded together. After a week, we had a conclusion with the same words: these people look the same; they speak almost the same language, like twin brothers raised in different families. A religious covered woman has her twin sister on the other side. A farmer, a taxi driver, a teacher, has his twin brother in front of him. And he his endlessly fighting with him. It’s obvious, but they don’t see that. We must put them face to face. They will realize. We want that, at last, everyone laughs and thinks when he sees the portrait of the other and his own portrait. The Face2Face project is to make portraits of Palestinians and Israelis doing the same job and to post them face to face, in huge formats, in unavoidable places, on the Israeli and the Palestinian sides. In a very sensitive context, we need to be clear. We are in favor of a solution for which two countries, Israel and Palestine would live peacefully within safe and internationally recognized borders. All the bilateral peace projects (Clinton/Taba, Ayalon/Nussibeh, Geneva Accords) are converging in the same direction. We can be optimistic. We hope that this project will contribute to a better understanding between Israelis and Palestinians. Today, “Face to face” is necessary. Within a few years, we will come back for “Hand in hand”.
JR has also done some amazing paste work in Rio De Janeiro and the favellas, as well as in London, New York, Brussels, Carthagene… Well, pretty much everywhere. Here’s a mixture of his stuff. Check out more at his website.
The essence of Zionism is Jewish ethnic domination over Palestine.
Zionism is the real enemy of the Jews, since Zionism causes global anti-Semitism.
Some Israelis, Americans, Jews and Zionists are responsible for the situation I’m about to describe. Some are not.
Israel and Zionism have always been in the wrong throughout history. The wrongdoings of the Palestinians pale in comparison.
There are always grey areas, and I do not applaud Palestinian terrorism.
The modern Jewish State would not be in existence without the Holocaust having occurred.
Now that you know my point of view, let’s get on with the program…
Why is it that everytime Jews are criticized in discussions we get to hear that the ones with an opposing viewpoint are either conspiratorial or anti-Semitic? Even when Jews criticize Israel, the Israel lobby or the Holocaust industry (like Michael Neumann, Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein do) they are most often labelled ”self-hating Jews” by the Zionists. Instead of discussing the main point we get to hear that type of whining bullshit. It’s nothing but a cowardly low way to avoid touchy subjects. To dismiss a serious discussion by shouting ”conspiracy theory” is plain, simple and effective, though. The debate loses its credibility and its seriousness and the judeo-supremacists have won again. Nowadays there’s even a term called ”the new anti-Semitism”… Jeez. Try to learn the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism once and for all, will you? Opposition to Israel is not anti-Semitic. And since not all Jews are Israelis or supporters of Israel, to be against all Israelis or Israel is not to be against all Jews. You need to get that into your brain if we’re supposed to have an honest and open debate.
Now, let’s look at your so called conspiracy theory. You know, just because people are constantly bitching about conspiracy theories doesn’t necessarily make them conspiracy theories.
How shall we adapt to the fact that Jews are overrepresented in the American banking systems (the Federal Reserve Bank)? What about AIPAC:s great influence – established through hard facts – in American politics? America’s financial and military aid in favour of Israel (Israel still remains the top recipient of US foreign aid world wide, Bush requested an aid budget of $20 billion dedicated to Israel in February this year…)? These are just a few examples of very large Jewish overrepresentation and influence in the economic and political area. The question is, does the fact that these people are Jewish matter at all? Of course it does. That’s beyond doubt. But that the lobby is working ruthlessly to benefit its cause is in itself not odd at all. That’s what lobby groups do. It’s about realpolitik, economic interests, power and influence. So why label it ”conspiracy” then? Why bitch about conspiracy theories when presented with obvious facts? Is Norman Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry a conspiracy theory? If you think so, explain to me how.
If people were sane they would laugh at this very strange urge the Zionists have to label everything that votes against them as conspiracy theories or anti-Semitic. Unfortunately, the majority of the people are insane, brainwashed and untaught and finds even the most tiny criticism towards Jews as racist and politically incorrect (I bet you feel a bit uncomfortable reading this article, right?), and in a society like that, being labelled anti-Semite is as bad as being labelled pedophile. Not good, so to speak. The Zionists know this and hence use the term anti-Semite all the time to easily silence the opposition.
Here’s what Noam Chomsky has to say about conspiracy theories, and you might as well apply this to the discussion about Israel, Zionism, the Jews, USA or whatever conspiracy you’re talking about:
Part of the structure of corporate capitalism is that the players in the game try to increase profits and market shares – if they don’t do that, they will no longer be players in the game. Any economist knows this: it’s not a conspiracy theory to point that out, it’s just taken for granted as an institutional fact. If someone were to say, ”Oh no, that’s a conspiracy theory”, people would laugh. Well, what we’ve been discussing are simply the institutional factors that set the boundaries for reporting and interpretation in the ideological institutions. That’s the opposite of conspiracy theory, it’s just normal institutional analysis, the kind of analysis you do automatically when you’re trying to understand how the world works. For people to call it ”conspiracy theory” is part of the effort to prevent an understanding of how the world works, in my view – ”conspiracy theory” has become the intellectual equivalent of a four-letter word: it’s something people say when they don’t want you to think about what’s really going on. […] Every example of planning decisions in the society is a case where some people got together and tried to use whatever power they could draw upon to achieve a result – if you like, those are ”conspiracies”. That means that almost everything that happens in the world is a ”conspiracy”. […] Every business decision, every editorial decision is a conspiracy. […] Okay, obviously that’s not interesting: all decisions involve people. So the real question is, are there groupings well outside the structures of the major institutions of the society which go around them, hijack them, undermine them, pursue other courses without an institutional base, and so on and so forth? And that’s a question of fact: do significant things happen because groups or subgroups are acting in secret outside the main structure of institutional power? Well, as I look over history, I don’t find much of that. […] This term ”conspiracy theory” is an interesting one. For example, if I was talking about Soviet planning and I said, ”Look, here’s what the Politburo decided, and then the Kremlin did this”, nobody would call that a ”conspiracy theory” – everyone would just assume I was talking about planning. But as soon as you start talking about anything that’s done by the power in the West, then everybody calls it a ”conspiracy theory”. […] The guys in power aren’t idiots, after all. They do planning. In fact, they do very careful and sophisticated planning. But anybody who talks about it, and uses government records or anything else to back it up, is into ”conspiracy theory”. […] In other words, as soon as you describe elementary reality and attribute minimal rationality to people with power – well, that’s fine as long as it’s an enemy, but if it’s part of domestic power, it’s a ”conspiracy theory” and you’re not supposed to talk about it. […] There is just no doubt that a lot of very conscious planning goes on among intelligent people who are trying to maximize their power. They’d be insane if they didn’t do that. I mean, I’m not telling you anything new when I tell you that top editors, top government officials, and major businessmen have meetings together – of course. And not only do they have meetings, they belong to the same golf clubs, they go to the same parties, they went to the same schools, they flow up and back from one position to another in the government and private sector, and so on and so forth. In other words, they represent the same social class: they’d be crazy if they didn’t communicate and plan with each other. […] Now, the only significant question to ask is, is it intelligent planning? Okay, that depends on what the goals are. If the goals are to maximize corporate profits for tomorrow, then it’s very intelligent planning. If the goals are to have a world where your children can survive, then it’s completely idiotic. Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power
When I visited San Francisco last year (September/October 2007) I was amazed by this graff dude named Apex. I shot some of his art and am now glad that Fat Cap also pays respect to this master. If you ever visit SF, don’t leave without having been close to an Apex piece!
Photo: Mattias Indy Pettersson
Photo: Mattias Indy Pettersson (Not sure this one is done by Apex, but it’s nice anyway.)
Diego Beyró, Orgasm series 2008 (oil on bed sheets) Click the images to enlage
What about porn? It’s an established culture, deeply rooted in today’s modern consumer society. Porn is everywhere, and since the arrival of the Internet it is everyfuckingwhere – and people are fucking everywhere too! There’s no escaping porn. And people wouldn’t really want to escape porn, because then it wouldn’t exist, right?
I’d say most of us get sexually aroused by watching (some kind of) pornography, there’s no shame in that. It’s a combination of that suggestive attraction and our simple biological needs, I guess. Still there are people trying to ban porn and inflict censorship. I can understand that to some extent, but no porn ban will ever last. Porn is in the mindset of just about everything and it’s all over the mainstream media (MTV, Sex And The City, commercials, fashion…). Big cable operators offer adult channels and giant hotel chains offer porn on pay-per-view (as well as the mandatory Bible!). However, to me porn is more honest than hypocritical shit like Slitz, Café and Moore (Swedish equivalents to Esquire, GQ etc); auteur maestro Micke Eklöf’s olden goldies are definitely the most honest porn films in existance… Jesus. Christ. Spermafesten. Some might argue that that kind of men’s magazines are sensual, leaving a lot to the imagination… Hoho. Fuck that shit. Please. This is a consumer society (stuff you can put a price tag on is real, the rest is uninteresting) and pornography is big fucking business (and thus very real). The attitude in Slitz is just plain braindead and awfully sickening.
Here’s what I’m worried about, though. It seems like today’s extreme sides of porn are becoming norm. Degeneration is at hand when humiliation, throat gagging and ”forced sex” (a term I stumbled upon just recently) is what’s expected in commercial porn. This is what bothers me. Where’s the style and intelligence? All I see is commercialized crap. People making money off the humiliation of other people. To each his own, you might say, but of course it affects society in the long run. If rape sex and stuff like that isn’t forbidden fruit anymore – if it has become your everyday treat that you’re bored with – then what’s next? Commercial child porn? Yeah, I know it sounds sick, but society is grotesque and respect is nothing but a seven letter word. It lost its meaning a long time ago. This will show as porn is driven to new extremes… I have nothing against porn per se, but when degenerating extremes become commercialized norm… Well, I guess it’s a sign of the times. Zeitgeist.
To finish this off I’d like to quote a brilliant essay written by Lou Reed, an essay that might skyrocket this blog’s visitors count by millions. ;) Lou shows what commercial porn is all about: exploiting humiliation. I just love his take on that porn spam shit that contaminates our mailboxes every hour (thank God for Gmail, the best spam filter ever. Who reads these mails anyway?).
”Welcome Lou” by Lou Reed
Hey Lou! These chicks will do anything for a Buck. Horny bored Housewifes are waiting for you. Watch these Bitches be ANALLY DESTROYED. Big Black cocks! How do they do it! Insane Penetrations. A Fucking Baseball Bat. No B.S. These horny women will do Anything. Why Be alone. Japanese Hardcore Anime and Kentai Art. Nasty! Over 25000 xxx by today’s best Asian Artists. These women will moan for you. The Fleshpussy. Tighter and better than the real thing and they won’t TALK BACK! Order now Mr. J. Watson of Akron writes, ”I increased the lenght of my penis by 3 in. in one week. Girth by 2 in. My wife is delighted and so am I with your invaluable product. Bigfuckin African Bros put it to the white bitchin Ho’s. What these sluts won’t do. Facial Cum Shots and our Famous Cum Shake. Yes that’s Right – I want it – I have a HARD time saying NO! Check out my home tape collection from me and my HORNY girlfriends right now! I like it in the bumbum. LOU! See the girl next door being POUNDED! Ron wanted to shoot his wad all over MY BIG BOOBS! I finger myself at the same time. Watch The Glory Hole. These Bitches don’t care who they suck. Watch this Bitch vomit all over herself! Hear her gag and beg for MERCY! Facial Fantasies caught On Film! Sex Without Strings! Defanged and Declawed Gerbils For you Anal Ecstasy. Captain Croaker’s Anal Adventures on the Open Seas! Me and my crew go out on the open seas on the SS Stabem and find some Backdoor Virgins for your video/dvd delight. A millionaire a yacht and some sluts. INSANE PENETRATIONS! This guy said he loved my ass so much he would LICK IT! Hunting down Moms Across America. Watch these mature bitches take the Big Pony! This slut sucks a fuckin horse off till HE BLOWS IN HER MOUTH. what won’t these horny wives do for money. Why Be Alone. There out here waiting for YOU. College Chicks or their mothers, Lou. See celebrities caught on tape with their pants down. See your favorite stars. Morgue and mug shots. What did they REALLY DO?! Piss Place – watch them make a SPLASH! You’ll never miss a single drop. Live Web-Cam. On command – these sluts will DO ANYTHING YOU WANT! TABOO INSERTIONS! KINKY LADIES TAKING IT DEEP. See the Space Shuttle Booty! Thelma Tounge – Tight Asses Pounded Hard. Wet Teens. Homeless Black Women! Instant Access. Extreme anal Sex! More Extreme! Crazy! Wild! Ruining Rectums since 1998! Her first Lesson. Real Home Blowing! Young Sluts on Wheels. Watch what she does to that Bentley! Dirty Anal! Nasty Anal! My Body wants your body Lou! 1000’s of porn clips free free free! She put it in her mouth for the very first time, These BABES are waiting for you! Panty staining Teens! Cute young Babes with FARM ANIMALS! Smile your on Fisty Camera. My name is Young but I’m 18 and Horny! Women doing men Women doing Women! What’s Left. It’s Insane. Garbage mouthed pigs squirting cum shots and cooking pancakes at the SAME FUCKING TIME. Goddamnit get Loose. How does an ungly pig like me get the beautiful Bitches! I don’t know MONEY MONEY MONEY! Watch this Mom put AN ENTIRE REFRIGERATOR UP HER BUTT. It don’t get Better than this Jonesy. Latin Asian Greek chicks waiting for you!!!! Respond for Chrissake. Do you need Viagra – cheap cheap cheap. Horny dogs and their masters. Wowee! Waiting for you Waiting for you Waiting for you! Sex Crazed Whores with Big Tits! Respond! Respond! Snatch Party! They’ll Hunt You down To Suck you Off! Screwing Machine! Come See Huge Dicks pounding their tight Little Pussies as these Sluts Scream for more! Woman with PHD’s Taking it up the Dung Basket. Hear them BEG IN 5 DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. My God! Respond Please! Respond Please! These woman are Waiting For you. Fornicating Giraffes. Erect Baboons. What are you Waiting for!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
DOME, one of my favourite hardcore bombers. There’s a DOME piece pretty much everywhere you go in Gothenburg. Enjoy, and don’t forget to click the images to enlarge. Most of the photos are stolen from GbgGraff. Go there for more delicious art crime.
Yeah, you know, that old graphic novel (i.e. comic book) by Alan Moore (writer) and Dave Gibbons (illustrator) which is now being adapted to the screen. I love that comic. It’s kind of Ny Moral in a nutshell.
Because to me Watchmen is about the delusion and condemnation of humanity. It’s about what happens when we abuse power and responsibility, when ”soft-spoken” fascism dictates the rules of everyday life. When people who think they know what’s best for you tell you what to do. It’s about what needs to be done to save humanity. And it asks two questions: Who watches the watchmen? Does the end justify the means? The solution to humanity is rather dystopic and misanthropic, I’d say.
When Alan Moore unleashed Watchmen in 1986/87 he created a whole new way of looking at comics. All of a sudden comics where of literary value. When TIME Magazine picked the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present, Watchmen was right up there alongside The Catcher in The Rye (J.D. Salinger), Catch-22 (Joseph Heller), 1984 (George Orwell), Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy), Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller), A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess), Lord of The Flies (William Golding), Gravity’s Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon), Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut), The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) – to name my personal favourites – and other novels by William Burroughs, Doris Lessing, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ernest Hemingway, Salman Rushdie, Virginia Woolf, Graham Greene, Toni Morrison… The list goes on. Watchmen is also the only graphic novel to win a Hugo Award. All this elite stuff is almost hard to believe, but when reading Watchmen you’ll understand. Or else, in a fascist kind of way, they will make you understand, with the help of the written word, commercials, money, capitalism, corruption, chaos – a maximum overload of information. That’s how it works. But constantly being told what to do raises scepticism amongst individuals, and anti-authority works both ways; some like it, some don’t.
Watchmen thrives on the complexities of life, of being human, and adds to that the odd twist of what it would be like if superheroes – or rather masked ” heroes”, devoid of supernatural powers (Dr. Manhattan excluded), acting as vigilantes – really existed in our modern world. What if God all of a sudden walked the Earth? ”Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”, quoted from Genesis chapter 18, verse 25. Obviously, it’s not that easy. What Moore does is that he gives coherence to these complexities. In his own words: ”it is possible to think about politics, history, mythology, architecture, murder and the rest of it all at the same time to see how it connects”.
Information is funny stuff. In some of the science magazines I read, I’ve found it described as an actual substance that underlies the entirety of existence, as something that is more fundamental than the four fundamental physical forces: gravity, electromagnetism and the two nuclear forces. I think they’ve referred to it as a super-weird substance. Now, obviously, information shapes and determines our lives and the way we live them, yet it is completely invisible and undetectable. It has no actual form; you can only see its effects. Information is a kind of heat. I would suggest that as our society accumulates information, from its hunter-gatherer origins to the complexities of our present day, it raises the cultural temperature. I feel that we may be approaching a cultural boiling point. I’m not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing; I really don’t know because I can’t imagine it, quite frankly. But I think we may be approaching the point at which the amount of information we are taking becomes exponential, and I’m not entirely certain what kind of human culture will exist beyond that point. Except it will happen sooner than we expect, and the difference between us and the kind of people that will exist after such an event will be vastly different than the difference between us and the hunter-gatherer society we’ve evolved from.
You’re saying we might not be able to recognize human beings of the future that well.
Yeah, it could be a quantum leap, a sudden, massive and unprecedented leap. Boiling point is a good analogy, because what you have before that stage is water. What you have after it is something that does not behave at all like water; it’s a completely different substance altogether. And that’s what I see looming for society — and it’s probably necessary, probably inevitable, probably scary. That’s my prognosis. I suppose, as an artist, one of the obligations upon my work is to try and prepare people for the more complex world, to try and make it more palatable and accessible to them and not quite so frightening. That would seem to be a worthy goal, illuminating reality.
On another note: As for the nobel prize in literature I’d suggest we give it to Cormac McCarthy. Or Iain Sinclair. Or why not Alan Moore? But maybe it would do them and the fans more bad than good, so let’s not make it complicated.
PS. If you’re really interested in Watchmen, you should check out The Annotated Watchmen! And here’s a Watchmen Wiki… And this blog post pretty much concludes that Rorschach is a Jew… As you can see, we’re dealing with information overload here as well.
And as for the movies, From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V For Vendetta and Watchmen, here’s Alan Moore talking about his disgust for Hollywood, stating clearly that the comics ”were written to be impossible to reproduce in terms of cinema”. He obviously hates them all.
