Sunday 30 September 2012

“Apart from drugs, art is the biggest unregulated market in the world.”

“Apart from drugs, art is the biggest unregulated market in the world.” Robert Hughes. 


Secondly, the fair was awash in money, and the brazen commodification of art and the consequences of that process are readily apparent. 

For some contemporary artists, success seems to bring with it a conservatism in form, so that whatever “worked” is then reproduced, with slight variations, dozens or even hundreds of times. 


The late critic Robert Hughes said, “Apart from drugs, art is the biggest unregulated market in the world.” The pernicious influence of large quantities of money was readily apparent at Expo Chicago. Even before stepping in the hall, one passed a $135,000 roadster by official sponsor Mercedes Benz. Once inside, the prices of the artwork ranged from the thousands of dollars to $25 million for a Picasso painting surrounded by round-the-clock security.



http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/sep2012/expo-s27.shtml

heroic humanity ?


Made in God's own image. That is western humanity's idea of itself.  Heroic ! God like! The Chosen ones ! 

 There are no limits to that belief in their uniqueness. Their greatness.  But  limits there are.  And the limits are being reached by and in the very  material culture they created and worship.   The Planet is being pushed to its limits - towards  extinction of  everything that gave the planet its very  life. The many, many forms of life that made humanity happen.  

Nature doesn't do monocultures. Not of any kind. That would be far too dangerous to the continuity of life it self.  

Homo sapiens have created a hominid monoculture: 
"From the very beginning of hominid history, the world had typically supported several different kinds of hominid at one time - sometimes several of them on the very same landscape. In striking contrast, once behaviourally modern humans had emerged from Africa the world rapidly became a hominid monoculture. This is surely telling us something very important about ourselves: thoughtlessly or otherwise, we are not only entirely intolerant of competition, but uniquely equipped to express and impose that intolerance. It's something we might do well to bear in mind as we continue energetically persecuting our closest surviving relatives into extinction." (pp. 197-198)
Our hominid monoculture has of late been fond of other monocultures, particularly in the arenas of agriculture and energy. Large chunks of the modern world are dependent on an increasingly narrow range of plants for food and a dwindling source of concentrated energy from fossil fuels. The two revolutions that have created us so-called civilised moderns - the agricultural and the industrial revolutions, which are now intimately linked in our dependence on fossil-fuel based industrial agriculture - are producing some unexpectedly unpleasant and revolutionary consequences. We're running out of the resources on which our mass-consumption "lifestyle" is based, and the production of that lifestyle has unleashed destructive forces we can't contain. 



One good first step might be to stop bragging, to resist the temptation to always telling a story about Homo sapiens that casts us as the hero. 

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/09/201292782738360954.html

living beyond limiting language

Is it time to move beyond identities and practices  dictated by 'traditional' understandings of ART, FINE  ART, ARTIST  etc etc etc. ???  Leave behind and live beyond  the limits of language ?. MOVE !  Time to Digital Sizzle . And more .


The tech-art culture clash has pleased Iwona Blazwick, director of the Whitechapel, who says: "We have been so impressed with the entrepreneurial spirit as well as the sheer speed at which the techies work. Everything is possible! The results demonstrate how the collaborative power of artists with technology experts can make us see our world with fresh eyes."

Saturday 29 September 2012

of cameras. the kumari and the car . nepal

For the locals  the Living Goddess - the Kumari, was, photographically speaking,  rather passe.
The photographic highlight for their cameras and camphones  was provided by the VIPs in the palace balcony.  The President and the Prime Minister, whose Mustang MaX is a political statement of his being a people's PM. The Indian 4 wheel drive  has a Nepali made body  and is considered to be a Nepali car.

                                                      Indra Jatra. Kathmandu

               
                 The Prime Minister's  Mustang MaX . Nepali body  built over an Indian vehicle
                                       is a 13 seater meant for Nepal's tough roads. 

gandhi plus

An interesting little debate will all its expected ramifications . Worth the read.



http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/303/gandhi,_his_grandson,_israel,_and_the_jews/

gandhi and the 99% - occupy +

Gandhi had a very different understanding of politics. For Gandhi, politics was not trying to enlighten the masses per se, but to get them to act on what they already know was wrong.



We should never downgrade the importance of having a firm grasp on the facts. For two reasons as I said, and each is as important as the other. One, you have very competent people out there that are called pundits, and their job is to confuse you, divert you, create illusions, clouds of confusion, and you need to be able to answer them. Otherwise you are made to look the fool. And then the second reason is you want to point people in a direction that has reasonable prospects of success.
There’s a line by Marx, “if appearances corresponded to reality there would be no need for science.”  The whole purpose is we need to intellectually understand something because the surface can be very deceptive. And in order to get to the reality, that’s what study requires. And Marx’s view was that capitalism created this thing called commodity culture and commodity fetishism which completely distorts the appearances as compared to the reality. But as a general principle we do need to study in order to make sense, to guide ourselves.

Assange – I’m sure he was successful beyond his wildest imagination. He really did something tremendous, a real positive thing. There’s nothing more beneficial for human kind than revealing government secrets. You know the first thing the Bolsheviks did when they came to power in Russia, the first act was to publish all the secret treaties that Russia had signed. It exposed the British, it exposed the French. No, this is not really about democracy this WWI, it’s about we want some of those territories that they have, and all the secret deals they cut. And Assange committed the ultimate Bolshevik act, but on a scale that was so much more vast. Although it wasn’t the highest secrets, but still revealing all of these government secrets, that was just tremendous.


.Israel obviously wants to be the big bully on the block and so wants to knock out anyone who is challenging its regional hegemony. Just like the US wants to be the big bully on the block in the middle east and so there is a confluence of interest between the US and Israel in keeping Iran in place. At this point there is a disagreement about whether to use force. Well you never know with the Israelis. If there were an Oscar for best theatrical performance by a country, Israel would win every year. It’s a country based on theater. It’s a lunatic state – completely insane. There is no other country in the world where all they talk about is war. That’s all they talk about. It’s just who should we attack today. Should we incinerate Lebanon?  Should we attack Syria? Should we attack Iran?  Mentally, it’s a completely off the map country.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/28/an-interview-with-norman-finkelstein-2/


     It should never have been on  its military zone  map. Gandhi did not  like the idea  of its creation.

                                                         Gandhi's way .

Several letters have been received by me asking me to declare my views about the Arab-Jew question in Palestine and the persecution of the Jews in Germany. It is not without hesitation that I venture to offer my views on this very difficult question.

My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions. Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution. They have been the untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment by Christians and the treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close. Religious sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification of the inhuman treatment meted out to them. Apart from the friendships, therefore, there is the more common universal reason for my sympathy for the Jews.

But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?

Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.

The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home affords a colorable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews. 

But the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history. The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have gone. And he is doing it with religious zeal. For he is propounding a new religion of exclusive and militant nationalism in the name of which many inhumanity becomes an act of humanity to be rewarded here and hereafter. The crime of an obviously mad but intrepid youth is being visited upon his whole race with unbelievable ferocity. If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war. A discussion of the pros and cons of such a war is therefore outside my horizon or province. 

But if there can be no war against Germany, even for such a crime as is being committed against the Jews, surely there can be no alliance with Germany. How can there be alliance between a nation which claims to stand for justice and democracy and one which is the declared enemy of both? Or is England drifting towards armed dictatorship and all it means?

Germany is showing to the world how efficiently violence can be worked when it is not hampered by any hypocrisy or weakness masquerading as humanitarianism. It is also showing how hideous, terrible and terrifying it looks in its nakedness.

Can the Jews resist this organized and shameless persecution? Is there a way to preserve their self-respect, and not to feel helpless, neglected and forlorn? I submit there is. No person who has faith in a living God need feel helpless or forlorn. Jehovah of the Jews is a God more personal than the God of the Christians, the Musalmans or the Hindus, though, as a matter of fact in essence, He is common to all the one without a second and beyond description. But as the Jews attribute personality to God and believe that He rules every action of theirs, they ought not to feel helpless. If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment . And for doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would have confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France and America were to declare hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the god fearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.

It is hardly necessary for me to point out that it is easier for the Jews than for the Czechs to follow my prescription. And they have in the Indian satyagraha campaign in South Africa an exact parallel. There the Indians occupied precisely the same place that the Jews occupy in Germany. The persecution had also a religious tinge. President Kruger used to say that the white Christians were the chosen of God and Indians were inferior beings created to serve the whites. A fundamental clause in the Transvaal constitution was that there should be no equality between the whites and colored races including Asia tics. There too the Indians were consigned to ghettos described as locations. The other disabilities were almost of the same type as those of the Jews in Germany. The Indians, a mere handful, resorted to satyagraha without any backing from the world outside or the Indian Government. Indeed the British officials tried to dissuade the satyagrahis (soldiers of non-violence) from their contemplated step. World opinion and the Indian Government came to their aid after eight years of fighting. And that too was by way of diplomatic pressure not of a threat of war. 

But the Jews of Germany can offer satyagraha under infinitely better auspices than Indians of South Africa. The Jews are a compact, homogeneous community in Germany. they are far more gifted than the Indians of South Africa. And they have organized world opinion behind them. I am convinced that if someone with courage and vision can arise among them to lead them in nonviolent action, the winter of their despair can in the twinkling of an eye be turned into the summer of hope. And what has today become a degrading man-hunt can be turned in to a calm and determined stand offered by unarmed men and women possessing the strength of suffering given to them by Jehovah. It will be then a truly religious resistance offered against the godless fury of dehumanized man. The German Jews will score a lasting victory over the German gentiles in the sense that they will have converted that latter to an appreciation of human dignity. They will have rendered service to fellow-Germans and proved their title to be the real Germans as against those who are today dragging, however unknowingly, the German name into the mire.

And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it the wrong way. The Palestine of the Biblical conception is not geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart. The same God rules the Arab heart, who rules the Jewish heart. They can offer satyagraha in front of the Arabs and offer themselves to be shot or thrown in to the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them. They will find the world opinion in the their favor in their religious aspiration. There are hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only discard the help of the British bayonet. As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. 

I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds. 

Let the Jews who claim to be the chosen race prove their title by choosing the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on earth. Every country is their home including Palestine, not by aggression but by loving service. A Jewish friend has sent me a book called The Jewish Contribution to Civilization by Cecil Roth. It gives a record of what the Jews have done to enrich the word's Literature, art, music, drama, science, medicine, agriculture, etc. Given the will, the Jews can refuse to be treated as the outcast of the West, to be despised or patronized. He can command the attention and respect of the world by being man, the chosen creation of God, instead of being man who is fast sinking to the brute and forsaken by God. They can add to their many contributions the surpassing contribution of non-violent action.

Mahatama Gandhi




http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/303/gandhi,_his_grandson,_israel,_and_the_jews/

Friday 28 September 2012

buddha from the west - lost in translation

Few people realize that, quite frankly, the Bible discourages people from studying foreign languages. The story of the tower of Babel informs us that there is one humanity (God's one), only that "our languages are confused"


This attitude in the Western hemisphere has not changed, with the effect that we live in a crazy world today. Most American and European scholars believe that the Chinese "speak their languages", only that they "talk" in Chinese. Take the case of "democracy" and "human rights". You may have considered this, but those are European words and do not exist in China at all. Imagine China would return a favor and demand from Europe morewenming and tian ren he yi

The European attitude is reflected in its translations. Most Westerners simply translate every Chinese key concept into convenient biblical or philosophical terminology. As a result, modern nation states, like Germany in the year 2012, are virtually Chinese-free. 

Translation, of course, is an old human habit. That doesn't mean we shouldn't question it. It was our habit to slay our opponents in battle, but we don't do that any more (except in Afghanistan and Iraq). Why do we still destroy foreign key vocabulary?





To put it another way: have you ever wondered why there are now "philosophers" and "saints" all over the world, but that there has never been a single shengren or buddha in the West? Think about it, what is that probability? Whose version of "History" are we taught? The East has been preyed upon and is bleeding out of its socio-cultural originality as we speak. 





                                                
                                                        Buddha  from the West ! Lost in Translation   



"Philosophy" is a Greco-Hellenic concept that is syndicated by the Judeo-Christian tradition. Rujiao, Fojiao, and Daojiao are alljiao, teachings. As to "religion" there is only one, the Western conception: We all live in the year 2012 of the Lord Jesus Christ. The so-called "freedom of religion" has to be understood as: "in this Christian world, you may believe whatever you want". China is already evangelized precisely because all "Chinese religions" follow Judeo-Christian taxonomy. 

China is not alone. India, too, is slowly figuring out there is something odd here. The Sanskrit-Hindu tradition invented tens of thousands of unique non-European concepts that are simply blocked out of History by Western media and academia. As if billions of Chinese and Indians in 3,000 years never invented anything - as if they just stood there waiting to be stripped of their intellectual property. 

memories across millions of years.


                                                STOP LOOKING THROUGH ME 

Hitachi has managed to develop a long-term data storage solution it claims can preserve information for hundreds of millions of years. The technology, announced earlier this week in Tokyo, utilizes a high-precision laser to embed dots of binary code across a tiny piece of quartz glass.


http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/27/3417918/hitachi-quartz-glass-data-preservation

memories are for fading and not for fighting over.

Memories are made to fade. And to be fought over.  



           Photography - the Mirror with a Memory . Memory that vanishes even as you move on.

        And move you should. Retain too many memories for too long and they become dangerous.



Many of the great political crimes of recent history were committed in the name of memory.

But what really interests me ultimately is not to record the past, so much as how people live with the past and get on with it. There’s a kind of fetishization of memory in our culture. Some of it comes from the experience and the memorial culture of the Holocaust—the injunction to remember. And it also comes from the strange collision of Freud and human rights thinking—the belief that anything that is not exposed and addressed and dealt with is festering and going to come back to destroy you. This is obviously not true. Memory is not such a cure-all. On the contrary, many of the great political crimes of recent history were committed in large part in the name of memory. 

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.5/philip_gourevitch_narrative_human_rights_rwanda_syria.php

Thursday 27 September 2012

free speech. again. - where it lead to, for some.


For all Barack Obama’s fine words yesterday, and there were many of them, fine words, it is his administration that boasts on his campaign website of criminalizing more speech that all previous US presidents combined.



And we agree that this is an interdependent world, that all of us have a stake in.
We agree that freedom and self-determination are not merely American or Western values, but universal values.
And we agree with the President when he says that we must speak honestly if we are serious about these ideals.
But fine words languish without commensurate actions.
President Obama spoke out strongly in favour of the freedom of expression.
"Those in power," he said, "have to resist the temptation to crack down on dissent."
There are times for words and there are times for action. The time for words has run out.
It is time for the US to cease its persecution of WikiLeaks, to cease its persecution of our people, and to cease its persecution of our alleged sources.
It is time for President Obama do the right thing, and join the forces of change, not in fine words but in fine deeds.



http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/09/27-1

free speech again - 'civilized man and the savage' !


"Civilized Man  and the Savage " To hear these words, in this day and age is just ugly. Horribly and sickeningly so.   

The choice of words says a lot about  the culture of the self styled civilized world. Its values and its assumptions about the rest of us who are eternal 'savages. Not  'noble' savages but just" jihadists" who can be nothing else, it seems. Freedom fighters opting to challenge oppression?  Forget it.

And its all done in the name of  "Free Speech"!




Prominent Egyptian-American writer and activist Mona Eltahawy has been released from police custody after being arrested in New York on Tuesday for spray painting a subway poster that equates Muslims with "savages".
Eltahawy was charged with criminal mischief after she painted over a poster that read: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man" and "Support Israel. Defeat Jihad."
The anti-Muslim American Freedom Defense Initiative paid for the posters that are in 10 New York subway stations. A US court ruled the statements are "political" and protected by the first amendment's guarantee for free speech.

Balpreet Kaur to Barbie wannabees . Baleh Baleh , Balpreet !


The mind of european_douchebag was SO INCREDIBLY BLOWN by the fact that women have hair on their bodies—and, yes, faces—and that some women are bold, self-assured, and pious enough not to cave to western beauty standards (and gender expectations), there was nothing for him to do but post her photo online and wait for the abuse to flood in.
But then something totally lovely and unexpected happened. The woman in the photo responded

"However, I'm not embarrased or even humiliated by the attention [negative and positve] that this picture is getting because, it's who I am. Yes, I'm a baptized Sikh woman with facial hair. Yes, I realize that my gender is often confused and I look different than most women. "

http://jezebel.com/5946643/reddit-users-attempt-to-shame-sikh-woman-get-righteously-schooled


"That the nuances of the Sikhreligion are still lost on some, that taking pictures of people without their consent is despicable and that little beats a good old-fashioned apology (except, perhaps, not doing wrong in the first place). Oh, and that Balpreet Kaur is a bit of hero, frankly."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/the-womens-blog-with-jane-martinson/2012/sep/26/sikh-online-abuse-facial-hair?INTCMP=SRCH

More than a hero actually. 

what a load of LIDH ! Assange and the US.

Freedom of Expression ? Freedom of the Press??  The Press as the fourth estate - a prime pillar of Democracy???

What a load of LIDH ! - that 's the word down to earth Punjabis use for SHIT.


THE US military has designated Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as enemies of the United States - the same legal category as the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban insurgency.

Declassified US Air Force counter-intelligence documents, released under US freedom-of-information laws, reveal that military personnel who contact WikiLeaks or WikiLeaks supporters may be at risk of being charged with "communicating with the enemy", a military crime that carries a maximum sentence of death.


"It appears that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are the 'enemy'. An enemy is dealt with under the laws of war, which could include killing, capturing, detaining without trial, etc."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/us-calls-assange-enemy-of-state-20120927-26m7s.html#ixzz27eexBG8u


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/us-calls-assange-enemy-of-state-20120927-26m7s.html#ixzz27edgwZCh



watch the video too.


Wednesday 26 September 2012

yantra. tantra. nepal.


breaking " patterns of life" means death by drones.




The report highlights the switch from the former president George W Bush's practice of targeting high-profile al-Qaida personalities to the reliance, under Obama's administration, of analysing patterns of life on the ground to select targets.
"According to US authorities, these strikes target 'groups of men who bear certain signatures, or defining characteristics associated with terrorist activity, but whose identities aren't known'," the report says. "Just what those 'defining characteristics' are has never been made public." People in North Waziristan are now afraid to attend funerals or other gatherings, it suggests.



Reprieve's director, Clive Stafford Smith, said: "An entire region is being terrorised by the constant threat of death from the skies. Their way of life is collapsing: kids are too terrified to go to school, adults are afraid to attend weddings, funerals, business meetings, or anything that involves gathering in groups.
"George Bush wanted to create a global 'war on terror' without borders, but it has taken Obama's drone war to achieve his dream."



http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/25/drone-attacks-pakistan-counterproductive-report



Perhaps most importantly, the report documents the extreme levels of propaganda used by the western press to deceive their citizens into believing pure myths about the drone campaign. As I've argued before, the worst of these myths is the journalistic mimicry of the term "militants" to describe drone victims even when those outlets have no idea who was killed or whether that term is accurate (indeed, the term itself is almost as ill-defined as "terrorist"). This media practice became particularly inexcusable after the New York Times revealed in May that "Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants."
Incredibly, even after that radical redefinition was revealed, and even after the Obama administration got caught red-handed spewing demonstrable falsehoods about the identity of drone victims, US media outlets continued to use the term "militant" to describe drone victims. The new report urges that this practice stop:
drone report





http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/25/study-obama-drone-deaths

Tuesday 25 September 2012

the truth about terrorism


Lesson Two: The US government is not opposed to terrorism; it favors it.

The history of the US list of designated terrorist organizations, and its close cousin list of state sponsors of terrorism, is simple: a country or group goes on the list when they use violence to impede US interests, and they are then taken off the list when they start to use exactly the same violence to advance US interests. The terrorist list is not a list of terrorists; it's a list of states and groups which use their power to defy US dictates rather than adhere to them.

Lesson Three: "Terrorism" remains the most meaningless, and thus the most manipulated, term in political discourse.

The US government did not even pretend that terrorism had anything to do with its decision as to whether MEK should be de-listed. Instead, they used the carrot of de-listing, and the threat of remaining on the list, to pressure MEK leaders to adhere to US demands to abandon their camp in Iraq. But what does adhering to this US demand have to do with terrorism? Nothing. This list has nothing to do with terrorism. It is simply a way the US rewards those who comply with its dictates and punishes those who refuse.

Lesson Five: there is aggression between the US and Iran, but it's generally not from Iran.

Over the last decade, the US has had Iran almost entirely encircled, thanks in part - only in part - to large-scale ground invasions of the nations on its eastern and western borders. Some combination of Israel and the US have launched cyberwarfare at the Iraniansmurdered their civilian scientists, and caused explosions on its soil. The American president and the Israeli government continuously and publicly threaten to use force against them.

natural genius exists. english is not the be all and end all there

 Raghubir Singh may have had a point.  Natural genius does exist. 

 One does not have to be educated in an English teaching school .  English is not the be all and end all there.  .  Here is the counterpoint  to prove a point . 


 “I didn’t go to a film school. Cinematography, like art, cannot be taught. Someone can teach you techniques but unless you have it in you, you cannot shoot,” he says. Over the years, he developed his own technique: “My first priority is to arrive at a balance between light and shade and then work on colours. Cinematography should bring out the natural beauty in actors. Look how gorgeous Ileana is in Barfi!”


He worked as an office boy, car and bike mechanic and did other odd jobs before he became an assistant director and cinematographer. At one point, he even attempted suicide. Not wanting to dwell on that phase of his life, he says, “During those troubled years, I discovered my love for photography. The only photograph I had of my mother was out of focus. I was 13 when I got my first salary. I didn’t have my parents to share the happiness. I remembered my mother’s blurred photograph and purchased a camera so that I could take pictures. Life has taught me a lot,”

http://www.thehindu.com/arts/cinema/dream-catcher/article3931952.ece?homepage=true

cubist nandi. jai shiv.

                             
                           CUBIST NANDI. Nepal. Incomplete or just WOW !  JAI  SHIV !

Sunday 23 September 2012

creep shots. creepshots. the new photography.

The new camera and distribution technologies are creating new perceptions on photography's place in society. New questions for photographers to ask and answer.  The power relationship between the  photographer and the photographed is at the root  of it all.

It is not just women who are at the wrong end of this new world of  "creepshots" . That iconic genre of Photography- Street Photography -  has to look at its basic practices. It's 'take any creep up 'candid' picture you want as long it makes for a Good Picture' tenet  has to take a double take. Photographers have to think again about the power relationship  between them and the invariably less powerfull street people they snap for their  dangerous creep up people 'decisive  moments'.

We have reached a time Cartier  Bresson once talked about -   a time "when you can't photograph in the streets without a lawyer by your side "  In the West , at least. The East  is still open season.
Maybe that is why the  developing third world  continues  to be the favorite hunting ground  for Street Photographers from  everywhere. No body challenges their cameras creepy and demeaning monoclular  gaze.


The content on the creepshot forum isn't pornography, says Ryan, "but it is using people's images in ways they definitely wouldn't want authorised". For group members, she says, it seems to be precisely women's lack of consent – the violation of their privacy and agency – that is appealing.

While we associate this experience specifically with celebrities, we arguably all live in a paparazzi culture now. Cameras are ubiquitous, as is the technology to share and publicise pictures instantly. The throb of surveillance plays out in different ways. On the more benign side are the mild nerves many people feel when an email pops up to tell them they have been tagged in a Facebook photo, an image that could be from any moment in their life – recent or historical – now public, and open for comments.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/sep/22/creepshots-revenge-porn-paparazzi-women



                                     
                                               The way I want to  see and shoot myself. 

maps make the mind.


I have always seen Photography as a mapping - as the most powerful maker of minds and  mindsets .  Mindlessness too. Maps and the idea of mappng, then, have always  interested me. For their politics. 
For their very biased and political projections  . Not just of the world but also projections of  political power. 

Maps are used politically . The political  Mapping has to be uncovered, recovered and reclaimed. Remade to be more than just a political tool. 

 "The idea of the world may be common to all societies, but different societies have very distinct ideas of the world and how it should be represented," he writes. Garfield sees the history of cartography as a way to understand political influence too. "It is always about the proprietorial impulse," he said. "A map says not only 'We know all this', but often 'We own all this' too."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/sep/22/why-maps-shape-our-minds



 Two Maps from my "Collection".


                                     India mapped. As Mother India.  A fiery Hindu  India.



                                   An Other Map - of a Muslim pilgrimage in Hindustan. . 

the age of loneliness.

Biodiversity is to be thought of  as more than just the diversity of life forms on planet Earth. The diversity of thought. Of opinion. Of religion . Of ideas about culture and Art are just as important.  Monotheist ideas about anything are just too dangerous. 

Live and Let Live is an idea  that is hugely important in these times of narrowing fields of thought about everything. 



He regrets that if such indiscriminate annihilation of all biodiversity from the face of the earth happens for anthropogenic reasons, as has been seen now, it is sure to force humanity into an emotional shock and trauma of loneliness and helplessness on this planet. He believes that the current wave of biodiversity loss is sure to lead us into an age that may be appropriately called the “Eremozoic Era, the Age of Loneliness.” Loss of biodiversity is a much greater threat to human survival than even climate change. Both could act, synergistically too, to escalate human extinction faster.



Biodiversity provides all basic needs for our healthy survival — oxygen, food, medicines, fibre, fuel, energy, fertilizers, fodder and waste-disposal, etc. Fast vanishing honeybees, dragonflies, bats, frogs, house sparrows, filter (suspension)-feeder oysters and all keystone species are causing great economic loss as well as posing an imminent threat to human peace and survival. The three-fold biodiversity mission before us is to inventorise the existing biodiversity, conserve it, and, above all, equitably share the sustainable benefits out of it.


http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/beware-the-loss-of-biodiversity/article3927062.ece

freedom of expression .politics of blasphemy.

The Greek gods were rather human in their doings and undoings- like the gods  in India. The idea of a single male god came with the monotheist Religions of  The Book.With them came the idea of Blasphemy.  A concept that the new Hindutva forces of the new Hinduism are adopting by ignoring the reality of hows countless Gods and Goddesses were thought of and treated in this part of the world.

 In Kulu, the Valley of the Gods , Gods are treated like humans. If they make things hard for their worshipers the worshipers make things hard for them. No daily change of clothes or even offerings if things are not going well for the worshipers. In the world's richest temple, Tirupati, Balaji is manacled (with gold manacles) if the daily offerings do not reach a certain level.

The idea of Blasphemy, then is about the reality of the politics of power.


One might suppose that the omnipotent, omniscient, patriarchal God worshipped by practitioners of the Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – would be more thick-skinned.   He is not.  The Almighty may be a perfect Being, but He is not beyond human foibles.  Those who blaspheme Him are the worst of the worst.
According to the Torah, they should be put to death.  According to as astute a thinker as St. Thomas Aquinas, their sin is worse than murder.   Of all the Abrahamic religions, Islam is the most tolerant of blasphemy, or rather it used to be; its foundational texts don’t make a big a deal of it.  Even before the dawn of the modern era, however, it had caught up with the others.
Now that faith has waned for the majority of Christians and Jews, and revived in Muslim lands, Islam has taken the lead.  It was not always so.  Throughout all but the most recent history, the opposite was the case.
Perhaps the fact that Islam’s monotheism is less adulterated than its rivals’, and its God more unambiguously transcendent, explains why.  Or perhaps Muslims were more clearheaded than Christians and Jews.   If “God is great,” He should be great enough not to care what people say about Him.
But if that was what Mohammed thought, his followers no longer do.  Religions, like God, move in mysterious ways, and not always for the better.


Back in the sixties, when political Islam had not yet even been conceived, when Judaism’s God was all but finished outside Alta Kocker circles, and when even Time Magazine deemed the Christian God on His last ropes, nobody would have expected this.
But it is not as odd as may appear.  Blasphemy has always been at least as much about politics as religion.  And we live in a political world.


The need to maintain free expression is paramount.  And it is always well, in general, to expose the Abrahamic religions for the menaces they are.  But when through a sad concatenation of circumstances hostility towards Western blasphemers becomes a means of self-assertion for anti-imperialist insurgents in the Muslim world, it is also necessary, indeed urgent, to come to their defense.  If there was ever a time when remonstrations and efforts at persuasion are called for, it is now.


http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/21/the-politics-of-blasphemy/

Saturday 22 September 2012

art speaks to ask questions

 Between producing visually beautiful  " Art" to sell and designing   the  marketable object there is litlle difference.. There is a big difference , though between the professional Designer and the Artist who questions they why and the how. Difference that needs to be understood in our increasingly  'object' oriented world. Design innovation  and the idea of avant garde are two different things. 
The innovation now needs to occur elsewhere. Outside the design. Into, quite frankly, the world of art.
Mating our left-brained technical wizardry with our right-brained humanizing intuitions is key to innovation, but don’t make the mistake of confusing “design” with “art.” I’d argue that there’s a difference, and it matters. Designers create solutions – the products and services that propel us forward. But artists create questions — the deep probing of purpose and meaning that sometimes takes us backward and sideways to reveal which way “forward” actually is. The questions that artists make are often enigmatic, answering a why with another why. Because of this, understanding art is difficult: I like to say that if you’re having difficulty “getting” art, then it’s doing its job.
Art speaks to us as humans, not as “human capital.” Art shows us that human beings still matter in a world where money talks the loudest, where computers know everything about us, and where robots fabricate our next meal and also our ride there. Artists ask the questions that others are afraid to ask and that money cannot answer.