Notes from Somewhere Bizarre

2003-06-30T16:01:00.000Z

Notes from somewhere bizarre has moved

A new, custom-built, rss-enhanced, comment-boxed version can be found at www.ashleyb.org. See you there.

2003-06-23T10:34:00.000Z

Nearly there

Slight delay! new ETA scheduled for later this week. The new site will be live by the end of June at the very latest. Redirect info to follow.

2003-06-12T09:21:00.000Z

Back Soon

Notes from somewhere bizzare is in the process of moving to new, improved lodgings.

I'll be back on line by mid next week (around 18/06).

Check back for redirect info.

2003-05-22T13:06:00.000Z

Tango and the Politics of Touch

"Tango, a signifier of darkness and illegitimacy, of desire and counter-culture, is more than a dance. As Horacio Ferrer writes, "before being an artistic expression, before tango came to light as such […] tango was a certain attitude, a way of life adopted by those of diverse cultures" (1995: 11). In its popular representations, Argentine tango is described as a dance that evokes illicit sexual desire through an acrobatics that often looks choreographed. But "Argentine" tango is much more than this mythic evocation of a movement of desire. Tango is everything from a dance of solitudes to a nomadic movement of cultural displacement to a fierce locator of national identity. It is a dance of encounter and disencounter, a voyeuristic embrace of repressed sensuality and a complex network of (mis)understood directions." (Negotiating Influence: Argentine Tango and a Politics of Touch)

2003-05-16T19:35:00.000Z

The making of Saving Private Jessica

"The American strategy was to concentrate on the visuals and to get a broad message out. Details - where helpful - followed behind. The key was to ensure the right television footage. The embedded reporters could do some of that. On other missions, the military used their own cameras, editing the film themselves and presenting it to broadcasters as ready-to-go packages. The Pentagon had been influenced by Hollywood producers of reality TV and action movies, notably Black Hawk Down." (The truth about Jessica)

2003-05-08T12:16:00.000Z

The Madonna remix project

What the fuck do you think you're doing?

2003-05-08T09:16:00.000Z

Mobile Mutations - an interview with Sadie Plant

The latest issue of ephemera carries an interview with Sadie Plant (no direct link, "mobile mutations" can be found under "vol 3, no1" on the homepage) which ranges across a series of topics from neuro-pharmacology to mobile phones.

A taster:

"...I am also interested in a looser conception of technical processes - one that would, for example, include drugs as a kind of internal technology, changing the perceptual apparatus, just as digital technologies change our outside world. I am also always keen to demonstrate something about, for want of a better phrase, the interconnectedness of things..."

2003-05-06T12:47:00.000Z

A Western Sahara of the mind

It’s time to explain. When I first started this blog (over a year ago) I registered it with Eatonweb and gave my physical location as being Western Sahara. Since then, nearly not a day has gone by without receiving some visit through this directory. After all, it is the only one! And recently I’ve been getting traffic from a German blog, seemingly bemused to find situationist theory discussed from deep within the desert…

While these days I am both fascinated and stimulated by the potentials implicit in embedding the web in the physical plane, I also still believe in the Internet residing out of space, existing as a laboratory where gender and geography can be subverted, a (non)place of play and symbol.

When this blog began I was not interested in binding it to London E18 (where I lived at the time – I now reside in northern Italy).

But the choice of Western Sahara was not a random act. As an act of digital poetics I placed Notes from Somewhere Bizarre out in the middle of nowhere, far away from the power nodes and consumption hubs of the global ghetto, where it could claim a nomadic ancestry, on the extreme border of the Empire, sandwiched between a desert of water and an ocean of sand, in a place few have heard of, where the landmines don’t make the headlines, and its conflict is forgotten together with its refugee camps.

2003-04-26T20:40:00.000Z

Displacement (pt. 2)

Via noborder network comes news of Go NoGo The Frontiers of Europe, a photo exhibition (currently on show in Amsterdam) depicting the attempts by economic migrants and refugees to break-in to fortress Europe. Photographer Ad van Denderen captures the landings in Andalucia, those that have been captured by police and immigration officers, those on the run, those running towards a dream, the smiles, the buzz, the horror, the poverty of ramshackle dwellings, the hole in barbed wire at Callais, the refugee camps in Turkey, the Greek-Albanian border. On the website there are 107 photos looped in a Flash slide show - the images reek of empathy and despair and hope, redolent of a battered humanity, they stink of the foulness of poverty. Ultimately powerful and bloody beautiful, they leave a scent of resistance and the aroma of the will to overcome.

2003-04-23T11:54:00.000Z

An apology for Pebbles

I have always been fascinated by pebbles, not really sure why. Perhaps because they hint at the beauty, the uniqueness, the infinite variety, the richness that resides in what, at first glance, may seem like coarse landscapes of poor sameness. The warmth of a pebble that carries questions weightier than those in tomes of philosophical dissertations. Intuitions of energy… or maybe the “simple” pleasure of throwing stones in mirrors of water.

Whatever the case, stones and pebbles collected by marixxx along the shores of the river Ticino are scattered like friends and guardians across our flat in Pavia. A small wicker bowl contains the mineral memory of summer day of smoked fish and sunflowers at Aldeburgh. The remembrance of pebbles past at Kettles Yard.

And today, the smoothly crafted reflections on pebble collecting in this article here.

2003-04-17T13:13:00.000Z

Questions from Iraq

In today’s Independent there is an article that questions the events that are unfolding in a “liberated” Iraq. It asks questions involving the destruction of a nation’s cultural heritage, the looting of its archeological treasures, the burning of its archives. It asks questions about what is being done to track down and bring to trial those responsible for torture and murder under Saddam’s regime:

“I have been to many of (the torture chambers). But there is no evidence even that a single British or US forensic officer has visited the sites to sift the wealth of documents lying there or talk to the ex-prisoners returning to their former places of torment. Is this idleness. Or is this wilful?… Iraqis are right to ask why the Americans don't search for this information, just as they are right to demand to know why the entire Saddam cabinet – every man jack of them – got away.”

The article is written by Robert Fisk, one of the very few (if not the only) western reporters on the field to provide a different perspective from the official version provided elsewhere by the Anglo-American media. An award-winning journalist, he has been covering the Middle East for the last 23 years. His writing is passionate, never sanitized. Whatever your views on (this) war, to follow the dictum of technology journalist Dan Gilmor (“If you want to be informed, roam widely. Watch and read things that support your own beliefs. Then look for commentary and data that don't. It's all out there”) I strongly suggest you check out his archives here.

And then take the time to read the harsh condemnation of the war by John Pilger.

2003-04-15T16:11:00.000Z

Calling all digital flaneurs

Why not try calling the ghost of Guy Debord during a mobile phone derive or take a walk on the monitored side with the Surveillance Camera Players?

Whatever your taste in urban psychogeographic games and explorations, New York is the place to get lost between May 8 and 11 at the first edition of Psy-Geo-Conflux 2003.

2003-04-09T10:52:00.000Z

Displacement

It has left a strange feeling no longer seeing him there. Bizarre how we can develop emotions for strangers, how some faces can burn their way through our retinas to imprint themselves in our minds like the icons of successful brands.

Enveloped in a haze of carbon monoxide fumes, he stood still on green, whatever the weather, far away from the shrapnel sun of his homeland. Stranded below an exit of Milan's ring road. In the heart of Italy's industry he watched lorries rattle by and people drive to work. He belonged to the lowest link of the employment food chain. To that class that stands at traffic lights across the globe's urban sprawls cleaning windscreens with dirty rags, selling paper tissues or disposable plastic lighters or rancid red roses, or simply begging.

He did nothing of these things. When the lights turned red he simply walked between the two lanes of traffic looking at no-one, asking for nothing, as if he were an eighteenth century patrician poet out for a stroll.

The sight was close to surreal, especially as he looked like North Africa's answer to Groucho Marx. He hobbled along with the pride of a defiant gypsy woman. Tenderness in his eyes. Once, when I saw him flash a smile, he looked just like my maternal grandfather, himself the son of Russian emigrants. In a flash the vision of an emergent humanity merging as one, lost to each other through six degrees of separation.

And then one day, after months of seeing him, he was no longer there. Gone somewhere: a different traffic light, expelled for being a sans papier...missing in action without any news coverage. Peace and prosperity after all, do not reside simply in the absence of war.

2003-03-18T21:47:00.000Z

Same old story?

A dear friend from south London sent me this quote today:

"Of course the people don't want war....that is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

My first thought was that it sounded very much like one of those rare off-the-record alcohol-induced candid remark made in a Westminster boozer at closing time by some politician, maybe only last night (after all, the guy that sent it to me is a journalist)...then I read on to find out that it was uttered by Hermann Goering.

The bitter taste of those words made me wonder if those who rule believe the can always whistle the same tune, and if (wo)mankind can, in reply, sing back a totally new song?

And then another quote came to mind, something Sadie Plant once said: "Intelligence is no longer on the side of power"

2003-03-07T13:37:00.000Z

Retro hobbies in mp3

Take a break: why not make a tape recorder or play a game of ping pong?

(both gems found here)

2003-03-05T20:31:00.000Z

Haiku blues

Sad faces, sadder
still under artificial
light; sun shines outside

2003-03-03T17:00:00.000Z

Trainstopping

Italian anti-war activists take up trainstopping.

2003-02-28T13:12:00.000Z

The Unstoppable litheness of Open-Sourcing

Three examples:

"We can take back an appropriate measure of control over the circumstances that literally govern our lives - we the uncredentialed, the nonexpert. We can teach ourselves what we need to learn, share whatever knowledge we glean, build on the insights of the others engaged in the same efforts. Just as the novice programmer is invited to learn from, understand, and improve upon - to "hack" - open-source software, the minimal compact invites us to demystify and reengineer government at the most intimate and immediate level. We can hack democracy."

"Free software is not only about computer science, technique or even licenses. It deals with freedom, equality and fraternity. Freedom to copy, to study, to modify and to redistribute software or documentations. Equality, same rights for every user, without discrimination. Fraternity, because we talk about sharing and mutual help. Moreover Free Software is already part of the mankind heritage, in fact. We are trying to obtain a UNESCO recognition."

The Rise of Open Source, Network-Based Movements

2003-02-27T10:16:00.000Z

In a bubble of silence surrounded by disembodied voices

As an appendix to my post yesterday, I just came across this wishful provocation: order your bubble of silence today!

On a related note: check out disembodied voices, a net.art meditation on the nature of public space in the age of mobile devices by Jody Zellen

(both links via the always-interesting neural.it)

2003-02-26T11:37:00.000Z

Media fasting (& voluntary device deprivation)

On Monday, marixxx and I carried out a one-day fast. A way to help cleanse the body, focus the mind and sharpen the spirit. It was a positive experiment. After Monday’s mental rerouting of the physical discomfort on to a reflective plane, yesterday offered a boost in energy and elation. We’ve now decided to repeat the experience on a weekly basis.

The whole thing got me thinking about forms of consumption. Take media for example, wouldn’t it be beneficial to abstain from information from time to time? But is it possible?

Even if I choose not to launch my browser, turn on my TV, open a newspaper, etc, can I really escape the infosphere? How do I cut out the television sounds that filter from my neighbour’s windows? How do I block out the billboards I encounter? How do I refrain from glancing at newsstands?

And if I try and avoid all form of data transfer and infotainment, shouldn’t I also close my email client, switch off my handset, interrupt the flow?

Let my media digestive system take a rest. Take time to reflect, time to ingest, time to ponder and time to savour.

2003-02-24T13:26:00.000Z

Religious Software

Market segmentation along the fault lines of faith: welcome to the first Christian Instant Messanger in the World! (thanks Hostinato)

2003-02-20T15:44:00.000Z

F15, the blogosphere and emergent democracy

Upon reading Joi Ito’s paper on Emergent Democracy yesterday, my first thought was that while the essay made some interesting points, it was too focused on the tools, on the technology, instead of on the human element.

As I commented on Ito’s site, “instead of being viewed as enablers, the tools come across as drivers of a process”. To which Joi replied:

“I tried to focus initially on the toolmakers because they are testing the medium and creating the architecture… Therefore, I am trying to get the toolmakers to understand that they are doing a lot more than building tools for diaries and that things should be built into the architecture from the beginning to enhance democracy, protect privacy, protect the commons, etc.”

This is a valid and interesting point. Interesting because it implies that we need to bring a variety of perspectives, a multidisciplinary outlook to the things we do (in this case designing and building). Valid because more often than not this does not happen (and here, as a random example, I think of “analog” architecture and all those supposedly functional concrete tower ghetto blocks that have virulently spread across the urban zones of the globe).

And yet it is vital that we bring a renaissance style of thinking to our activities – the ability to mix science and arts, ethics and imagination, can help ignite the
(r)evolutionary potential implicit in our digital artifacts.

We can employ our tools to help us design and implement a different world, a different way of living. Alternatively we can fall prey to the allure of techno-fetishist fantasies.

On 15 February 2003, for example, something unprecedented and historical happened as we witnessed and generated the first common action of a global people. The first planetary protest. Tens of millions across the globe, numbers never seen before. A whole network of demonstrations made up of nodes and hubs (Ironically, the largest of all coming from a city once the center of another empire: Rome, where up to three million people took part in the march against the upcoming war in Iraq.)

Now, beyond the importance of the event in itself, which highlights a sweeping opposition to the warmongers, what needs to be stressed is the emergence of a new awareness. The awareness of acting locally within a global context. The emergence of a common front to tackle planetary problems.

This can become a very powerful physical meme capable of bringing increased attention and demands not only on wars, but poverty, the environment, quality of life. On February 15 it was globalization sunny-side up.

It was also a great feat in communications and network(ing).

Which is why I was surprised, after a weekend spent offline reading print papers and checking out monolithic TV, to discover that the excitement, the possibilities implicit in such an awareness, were not really shared in the online social network I inhabit.

For the blogosphere, the main event to mark February 15 was the sale of Blogger to Google…. An important event, definitely, but a touch fetishistic perhaps? Let your own conclusions emerge.

2003-02-14T17:16:00.000Z

War sites

On the eve of the anti-war demos being held tomorrow, a few links to online-driven initiatives:

"Join us in challenging dangerous nations that produce and conceal weapons of mass destruction. Rooting Out Evil is sending a weapons inspection team to the United States to inspect the chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons produced and concealed by the Bush regime."

the wartime project: reflections on and reactions against wars, past, present and future by digital and network artists.

ANTI-WAR.US is dedicated to the free distribution of anti-war graphic material.

Webcam in Iraq project.

Poets against the war

2003-02-11T14:31:00.000Z

Spatial politics and cartographies of power

Cartography of excess (an article)
Geography and the politics of mobility (an exhibition)

Bureau d'études (storyboarding the songlines of power)
Multiplicity (the art of territorial investigations)
Frontera Sur RRTV (exploring mediterranean borderlands)

2003-02-11T10:18:00.000Z

Drug madness

Incredibly ironic to think that a country that continues its war on drugs goes to war on drugs.

And will use drugs to kill (from the NYTimes - reg. required): “the federal appeals court in St. Louis ruled yesterday that officials in Arkansas can force a prisoner on death row to take antipsychotic medication to make him sane enough to execute”.

2003-02-06T17:36:00.000Z

33 Links

It's marixxx' s birthday tomorrow. These links are for her:

Images of Argentina
Movie posters in Ghana (Antonio Banderas)
Sexy sculptures
Invisible clothes
Design playground
Lady D. paper doll
On the road
Gay superhero
High definition camcorder
Your laptop
William Gibson blog
Ghetto fabulous dolls
Cat clone
Phyllis Curott
Tokyo avant-garde
Estrazione lotto 7 febbraio 1970
London bloggers
Hollywood air
Smoking Heidi
Hollywood and pulp
Wild hearts and sacred arts
Air hostess uniforms
Magic(k)al tech
Ganguro (tokyo street fashion)
Bathroom mania
Sushi art
Zen
Viola
Ken
Barbie
Moodstats
Googlism (ashley benigno)
The 33rd is not a link, but a world wide web of joy, love and passion for you.

2003-02-04T14:46:00.000Z

Space invading memories

Came across this site today. Memories of Space Invaders as my first digital obsession:

I was a gangly prepubescent kid growing up in late seventies Rome, when the game came out; humble aliens bringing a massive paradigm shift after decades of pinball rule – from shiny steel ball to green pixel. Leaving early for school to stop off for a few morning games. Rushing out in the afternoon for a few more – seeking status in top scores. The invariably cigarette-scarred console conjuring a taster of proto-cyberpunk aesthetics, as junkies hustled for change in the streets outside and fashion hooligans made wheelies on souped-up Vespas with Pioneer sound systems embedded in the glove box.

2003-01-31T11:57:00.000Z

Narration Architecture

A couple of days ago I was laying in bed with hardcore stomach cramps, running a fever, when the memory of similar moments came flooding back: like the time I lay huddled against a betel stained wall of Mumbay's airport . Thoughts of travel led me to ponder once again the differences between neo-wanderers and nomads, the latter shrouded in the sound of songlines collapsing into Chatwin. Thinking of writers, I am reminded of Henry Miller and of how he was always going for walks, dreaming his world into existence during his strolls around Brooklyn. Then I think of current experiments like annotate space and 34n118w and I cant help but image myself wandering around NYC searching for Miller's thought blog on street corners, disused theaters and chinese restaurants.

Henry Miller walking around Paris, thinking up Tropic of Cancer, a novel that defied many previous literary conventions.

Finding new ways to tell stories; defining new ways to roam through space.

Walking and talking.

Evolving, transforming storytelling.

Vast landscapes that come into being through narration architecture.

And then I think of how delicate such stories could be. How fragile their permanence in time. How similar in essence to oral traditions. How vaporous our current digital production is. Websites that disappear, early software that can no longer be accessed, silent hardware. Will streets that start talking still be heard in decades, centuries to come?

And are there already stories embedded around us, we can no longer hear? Is technology linked to magic?

Then all questions, thoughts fly away as marixxx walks in and kisses me with paradise-soft lips full of haikus.

2003-01-30T17:58:00.000Z

Blogs - Virus and Mutation

The Guardian has an interesting article about the viral spread of blogging into the realm of business models and concepts - from Nick Denton's "nanopublishing" to knowledge management systems mutating into k-logs.

And on the subject of blog mutations, check out Augmented Moblogging (via headmap)

2003-01-23T11:08:00.000Z

Always-on people locked in overload now

My open-space neighbour and friend Fabio Sergio has written an interesting essay on the erosion of time by those technological devices that were once supposed to save us time. At one point he writes:

"Results of our rising expectations towards constant availability are already well known, like the disappearing boundaries between work and play, between our professional and personal life."

On this aspect, what is interesting is that we are not witnessing a balanced merge between work and play, but an invasion of our personal sphere by the forces of work. Ever had a day off, an evening out, a moment of play disrupted by a call from work that just couldn't wait? The "couldn't wait" part is important. A symptom perhaps of what Fabio has dubbed Interaction Anxiety; lets call it the immediate response syndrome, the need to answer an email, reply to a voicemail, provide a solution NOW. Hyper-speed in work practices becomes akin to driving full speed without taking into consideration the need to slow down to tackle the approaching bend. With bleak pessimism, digital (counter)culture theorist bifo writes (in italian): "A depression epidemic has hit planet earth. After 20 years of economic fanaticalness, superwork and competition have brought the psychic energies of humanity to the point of collapse".

"We live in the now" writes Fabio. This "now" however, does not free us from the tyranny of time, allowing us to bask in the richness and heat of the pure present. Instead it leaves us locked in overload now

2003-01-21T14:15:00.000Z

From the gift economy (and its interpretations) to open source, from copyleft to creative commons, the Net continues to act as a hotbed of socio-economic experimentation: if you don't want to sell the goods and cultural commodities you no longer want, why not try bartering?

2003-01-16T12:46:00.000Z

"What if you think of GPS as a kind of 3-D version of the Internet, a hypertext Web spun out in real-world geography?"

Steven Johnson asks the question in this article that illustrates some of the potentials behind the web's overflow into the physical environment.

2003-01-16T10:05:00.000Z

Brilliant remix of Bush' State of the Union talk (via Joho). A great example of the bastard pop philosophy applied to political commentary.

2003-01-10T13:10:00.000Z

Sony Ericsson goes hip-hunting in an attempt to make it cool to drool over a T300 with a classic viral marketing campaign. Feel the void vibrating to the sound of Leary tripping over in his grave as the kids "turn on...tune in...drool out".

2003-01-08T17:29:00.000Z

After the recent release of Pocket Blog, a Irish startup announced today FoneBlog. The software enables mobile phone operators to offer users internet blogs (text, image and sound based) that can be updated from their mobile devices. The communication potentials implicit in moblogging continue to spread and grow....

2003-01-08T14:08:00.000Z

As we settle down in front of our TV screens to view the kick-off of the latest installment in the soap opera we call war, here are some rare pictures from the mother of all media(ted) conflicts: the first gulf war. As Peter Turnley, the photographer, points out in the intro:

"This past war and any one looming, have often been treated as something akin to a 'Nintendo game'. This view conveniently obscures the vivid and often grotesque realities apparent to those directly involved in war. As a witness to the results of this past Gulf War, this televised, aerial, and technological version of the conflict is not what I saw and I'd like to present some images that I made that represent a more complete picture of what this conflict looked like."

With mainsteam media washing wars whiter than white, removing all those unsightly stains humans make, Turnley's photos remind us of both the horror of war and the censorship that surrounds that horror. But if technology is used to "hide" the full media picture - to paraphrase Kubrick's film - will new forms of war journalism emerge, following bottom-up news models, to counteract this trend? As video capture tools become embedded in mobile devices (here's today's product announcement), will they change they way we treat and deal with reality? Yesterday punto-informatico reported (in Italian) how the use of videophones has been banned in the changing rooms of some sport centres in Scotland (and in the whole of Saudi Arabia). "It doesn't exist if it's not in the frame", marixxx often says, quoting murnau.

2002-06-10T19:44:00.000Z

On the plane to Milan the other day I read the "Third Eye" by David Knowles. The artist versus the voyeur in a Manhattan summer setting makes for a crisp novel, but I found the ending very disappointing.

2002-06-04T21:06:00.000Z

Thinking of marixxx in delicate manga settings - my love a tattoo on my arm

2002-06-04T20:06:00.000Z

Watched Monsoon Wedding. Beautiful film, great acting, lovely soundtrack. Not really a comedy, like many reviews have said, unless we mean comedy in the Italian neo-realist tradition of social satire and bittersweet storylines. The film made all the more poignant by the current nuclear threat hanging over the region – when the madness of power and politics becomes more incredible than the most unbelievable fiction. Hoping only in an ending to the crisis reflecting the film’s closing shots, with the monsoon rains washing away all the bad karma and the pain…

Also from New Delhi - like the film's setting - come Arundathi Roy's comments on the crisis - Under the nuclear shadow.

2002-06-03T19:32:00.000Z

Surreal sight of the day: two motorcyclists dressed in full leathers and wearing matching black helmets, standing in line waiting for a bus.

2002-06-03T17:36:00.000Z

Been reading a book by Luther Blissett , called "Toto' Peppino e la guerra psichica 2.0". A multiple name that came into being in the mid-nineties, Luther Blissett (LB) has been behind a series of media pranks and acts of semantic terrorism in Italy and across Europe, reaching as far the USA. Difficult however to talk about LB in any 'historical' or 'truthful' way, when his essence is made of rumours. The book in question is actually a reprint in single volume of two earlier books by Luther Blissett, and is to be taken as a “serious” tome – unlike, for example, another book by LB called net.gener@tion which has been described as a hoax perpetrated against a major Italian publishing house. And a difference certainly exists between net.generation and Toto' Peppino e la guerra psichica 2.0. The first is definitely a trashy book dedicated to the internet, while the second is much more erudite in its descriptions of cultural warfare techniques. And yet things are not so simple, with the former containing the spirit of LB and the second peppered with Borges-like fictions. Strangely, one of the books that make Toto' Peppino e la guerra psichica 2.0 – mind invaders – has also been edited in the UK by Stewart Home, who is also rumoured to be a multiple name. Moreover, LB has also claimed responsibility for a false Hakim Bey book published in Italy, while the theorist of the TAZ himself is rumoured to be Peter Lamborn Wilson. Some theories have also linked LB to Umberto Eco, in what may simply be a neoist conspiracy….

For my part I pissed off LB before his ritual suicide back in 1999, with an article I wrote for Telepolis, and which was later picked up by the Spanish widow of LB, among others.

Beyond all the hoaxes and pranks, what is certain is that anyone interested in the thoughts and experiences borne from the intersection between radical politics, critical art, media sabotage and the living history of the European avant-garde should check out the lessons and legacies of the one and many Luther Blissett.

2002-06-03T14:46:00.000Z

Watched Zoolander on video last night. A very funny film - totally silly and never moronic. The storyline, with its male models and fashion conspiracy theories, felt like a light and frothy, sunny side up remix of Bret Easton Ellis' Glamorama .

2002-05-29T23:14:00.000Z

Finished reading "Galactic Pot Healer". I hadn't read any Philip K. Dick in quite some time. Good to remember his dry style of writing - sterile backdrops against which ideas run amok. So much more of a philosopher (a little crazed perhaps, in synch with his schizophrenic times) than a writer somehow, despite his vast pulp production. Definitely a great artist of the last century, a paranoid seer.

And funny to find the sci-fi visions of yesteryear among us today. At the start of this novel (published in 1969), an unemployed artisan sits in his cubicle playing a game with a crew of dole buddies scattered around the globe. The game consisting of feeding the name of books, films, and other cultural artifacts into computer translation programmes, and then retranslating back into the original - a game found on british radio these days, where listeners dial in to guess what song title the babelfish remix refers to. Also a foretelling of viagra when a radio playing in the book's narrative broadcasts an ad for "Hardovax will turn disappointment into joy..."

On a totally different note, also finished the breezy, eighties pop-flavoured first novel by Matteo B. Bianchi "Generations of love"

2002-05-26T13:09:00.000Z

As I sign in to access the offices of a multimedia company in the west end of London, the guard looks at me writing and starts to tell me how he has noticed a much higher percentage of left-handed people in the capital than elsewhere in Britain. "It's the creativity", this empiricist says as way of explanation, and beams a smile. I feel sad as I always do when I see intelligence flicker in the eyes of a security guard, and forget to ask him if he uses his left or his right.

2002-05-20T18:49:00.000Z

The future is now: Is it possible to make artificial fingers that fool fingerprint systems? According to Japanese researcher Tsutomu Matsumoto, yes - and easily too. A fascinating case study.

2002-05-19T19:20:00.000Z

Never mind Action Man, in times of war, get your military-correct toys here.

2002-05-19T14:01:00.000Z

Flamenco-flavoured remix of Manu Chao's "La Chinita".

2002-05-18T15:33:00.000Z

As I trawl for second-hand books, I overhear an animated conversation between two volunteers working in a charity shop. On the walls pictures of Eastern European children and printed words of woe. On the shelf above them, gypsy craft is on sale. The volunteers are two elderly women. Their hair is white, but their talk is dark. "...six kids, a council house and they don't even work". I missed the ethnic group under attack. Could have been any of the many (immigrants). The other could not agree more, in a discourse made common across the European Union. And then there is wonder that the extreme right extends its base.

2002-05-17T18:39:00.000Z

Hailed as "the world's first transgenic virtual pet game", the public beta version of Metapet was released a couple of days ago. The tag line reading: Are you ready to manage the worker of the future? Unfortunately, my bio-economy tamagotchi worker quit at the end of his first day and subsequently died of a speed overdose. What can I say?

2002-05-17T17:37:00.000Z

As the US media tread lightly around president Bush after releasing the news that he had received warnings prior to September 11 that al-Qaida planned to hijack US planes, a visit to the Canadian-based independent media group Centre for Research on Globalisation makes for some thought-provoking reads.

2002-05-17T17:13:00.000Z

The notion of 'somewhere bizarre' first came to me as marixxx and I sat in the back of a compact jeep being driven by a cousin I had not seen in many years through the streets of Sydney with his MTV presenter girlfriend sitting next to him and he spoke without stopping about life, people, places in the city, in australia and everything was 'bizarre'. While not a word I particularly use, that night it seemed to capture perfectly a feeling often found in the global ghetto. It has since stuck somehow. My cousin had booked us in to L'otel, a funky and glamorous little hotel. We were on a speeded up emigration process that lasted 40 days, like Jesus' time in the desert, before we headed back to Europe. But that's another story...

Along similar conceptual lines, Mondo Bizzarro has recently opened an exhibition featuring the work of Walter Bortolossi. Mixing pop culture icons, film stars and company logos with elements from past culture and mythologies, the paintings provide material for political and philosophical musings, through a breezy and brazen use of colour and a fluid juxtaposition of imagery.

2002-05-16T19:38:00.000Z

Been catching up on Underground Diary. It used to be a near daily read when I was commuting across London, travelling on tube and train. Its clipped sentences capture the rhythm of carriages running the lines and circles of the transport network stuffed with people as metaphors for isolated pods thinking thoughts of anxiety, madness, violence, sex, shopping and inanity. The narrating voice at times reminiscent of Patrick Bateman, but more cultured. The text littered with unexpected poetry.

2002-05-15T19:20:00.000Z

Hatten Baby!!!! a true masterpiece of the web.

2002-05-14T16:16:00.000Z

"If they send me down (to prison), I'll take english lessons", says a guy, looking confused by the form he is filling in, down a local government office in Ilford. A television in a corner. Above it, information blinks in red LED dots. In front of me a woman with an enormous front tooth. Reading Empire I wait my turn.

The grey of the sky in the corner of my eye. I drift into reverie and dream of being on the road with marixxx. Florida most likely. Hiding out in neon-lit motels having endless sex. Dressing up as drag queen divas and surfing gay bars and strip joints.

"The rule is, if you miss your number you go back to the end of the queue", a security guard says to an old man. Motels are implictly sexy. For some they are a fetish.

2002-05-14T09:47:00.000Z

As the Queen tours the country celebrating the golden jubilee of her tourist icon status, that other great British tradition - her bedfellow on london postcard racks - Punk, sees a series of tributes in the capital. The NFT is featuring Never Mind the Jubilee, while punk art gets a showing at the Centre of Attention.

2002-05-14T08:32:00.000Z

Burnt at the stake as a heretic, Giordano Bruno believed melancholia provided a key to better understanding.

2002-05-14T08:22:00.000Z

According to a shocking statistic on Adbusters half of all North Americans will visit a mental health professional or be prescribed a psychoactive drug. The issues of mental health and chemical treatement are explored in prozacspotlight, which highlights, among other things, the controversies surrounding the family of drugs known as the SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) and their links to suicidal tendencies, in addition to the marriages of convenience between medical research and big business. A random quote: "The eagle leans close to my ear. "Crazy is working 70 hours a week at a job you can't stand," he says."

While not denying mental illness, we should not forget the ideological and political use made of madness. Just one example out of many: it wasnt until 1973 that the trustees of the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from the list of officially recognised mental disorders (and continued to appear in certain text books throughout the eighties as "ego-dystonic homosexuality").

One of the images on the Adbusters report says that sadness is unamerican. We must remain productive. The customer service smile must be induced at all costs. In a world that feeds on fear and anxiety, it would seem insane not to fall prey to depression at times. Oh well, have a nice day.

2002-05-12T18:40:00.000Z

During a leisurely online stroll this sunday afternoon, I come across the work of a dear friend of mine on a japanese site - it's a small web, to paraphrase Steven Wright, but I wouldn't like to code it.

The work in question is for this month's online cover of Shift, featuring a new installment in the collaboration between Simon Pike, as grandmaster flash animator, and the cartoon world of Pete Fowler. Met Simon during the academically surreal days spent at the HRC. Remember him disappearing in a Fiat 500 one winter night in Rome. Worked on our first multimedia project together. Can see him talking art and Lacan in front of a Stella with his blood brother John Bunker who - as I always say - has a brilliant name.

2002-05-11T18:35:00.000Z

Finished reading "Prometheus: "The Life of Balzac" by Andre' Maurois. I am always fascinated by the prolific, just as I am by debt-ridden artists, and Balzac was both. The guy just wrote and wrote and wrote, finishing off short stories in a night and novels in the space of weeks. Like many of the greatest writers, his inspiration was driven by the need to make money. "Everything about me must breathe opulence, luxury, the wealth of the successful artist...", he once said as he avoided his creditors.

2002-05-09T19:04:00.000Z

Thinking of marixxx dressed in a electric blue saree, looking stunningly beautiful one summer afternoon at the villaggio globale in rome

2002-05-09T18:56:00.000Z

India as a nodal point again: hacktivism meets net.art in Mythic Hybrid by Prema Murthy. With a Google-like interface the work denounces the atrocious working conditions endured by women workers in indian e-factories through a mix of links to info sites, quotes from the workers and video loops, with corporate audio loops as voiceover. Also by Murthy, and worth checking out, is Bindigirl .

2002-05-07T15:09:00.000Z

Global paranoia through the eyes of CCTV - a web project by the French net artist Reynald Drouhin.

2002-05-07T10:38:00.000Z

There hasn't been much in the media about the massacres, the systematic killings that have been going on in the Indian state of Gujarat recently. With all the attention focused on Palestine and Afghanistan, some news just slips out of sight, like the war in Chechnya.

News of the violence in Gujarat has reached me mainly through postings on Nettime. While an excellent essay by Arundhati Roy provides both an angry and alarming take on these recent events. A random quote: "Genocides can become the subject of opinion polls and massacres can have marketing campaigns".

Roy's article is well worth reading, raising as it does questions regarding the current state of democracy, nationalism, a new rise in fascism. Questions that do not remain contained to the state of Gujarat, or to India, but involve us all.

It was sickening to read the opening paragraph. The sheer inhumanity of mob violence.

I remember an evening I spent in the town mentioned, Baroda. I remember buying some street kids an ice-cream and then a couple of young men offering to take me to the best ice-cream parlour in town. The streets teeming with people, vibrant with life. Beyond its vast oceans of poverty, a country generous in its hospitality. I felt at home standing against a car, talking the warm night away. I could have easily been in the south of Italy.

The south is metaphysical after all. It shares common dreams. Be it if you are from Bari or Baroda. The south is, nothing more. Like when you drive south from LA towards San Diego, and there is never any sign that tells you Mexico, or Tijuana, or whatever is not far. All the signs say is "THE SOUTH".

2002-05-05T13:54:00.000Z

Will the burqa be next? Maybe re-interpreted by Tommy Hilfiger or Calvin Klein, of course. Designed in the US and made in Samoa, upon presidential request. After not wanting to put a cap on greenhouse emissions, Bush doesn't want the young to wear condoms and calls for an end to sex lessons.

2002-05-03T08:48:00.000Z

An article Le Pen by Julian Barnes in today's Guardian makes for a good read over a morning coffee. a book read a couple of days ago made for a very eerie feeling when thinking of the extreme right raising its ugly, pig ignorant head in France these days.

Published back in 1996, Marie Darrieussecq's "Pig Tales" is a brilliantly lean novel, dripping with succulent food for thought. It is a postmodern fable that reclaims Kafka in its depiction of a young woman that turns into a pig, with a dreamy dash of Sade for good measure, mixed in to a dystopian framework. As she transmogrifies, the sexual and political perversions that make up the backdrop are never clearly stated - the horror residing in what is left unsaid. Or said with few razor-sharp words.

And a beautiful last line: "when I crane my neck towards the moon, it's to show, once again, a human face".

2002-05-01T13:08:00.000Z

I do not hear them call. marixxx and eva maria stand beautiful, waiting outside in the street.

2002-05-01T11:35:00.000Z

May Day 2002. The International Workers' Day. Strange concept really, strange celebration. Makes me think of tanks rolling through Moscow on parade, on black and white television, as a child. My grandfather telling me how he had never spent a day unemployed.

An email from a friend earlier today tells me how he was Fed-exed his notice of redundancy. Another casualty of an old economy having drunken sex with new technologies. Unprotected.

From indymedia UK I learn that the cyclists of critical mass are out across the city. From my window on the borders of east london, the sun is streaming through clearer than any media.