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Finally edited and uploaded, it's my side project from South Africa: Part one, Part two (on youtube), or here.
Most institutions that want to serve the poor play out a conflict between exclusivity and compassion. Faced with extreme need, an institution can establish rigid in/out boundaries in order to serve a few people well. Or it can take the alternate tack: It can open the gates wide and be overwhelmed, working hard to establish even a baseline standard of service and courting "burn out".
In the context of South Africa's dramatic and ongoing Zimbabwean refugee crisis, the Central Methodist Church has opted for the latter approach. An observer becomes aware of this in the South African media, where accusations of crime, sexual abuse, and "sub-human" living conditions are often made. The same realization can be had in visiting the place, which I had the privilege of doing in March: One is immediately greeted by that instantly recognizable cornucopia of stale stenches that usually accompanies human misery.
Paul Verryn, former Anglican bishop and current caretaker of Johannesburg's downtown parish, has not denied the chaos of the situation he has created by refusing to shut the doors. Rather, he has attempted to do his best to get the problems under control while reframing the discussion to talk about the national government's complete refusal to come up with some sort of plan to deal with the influx of Zimbabwean immigrants.
Beyond dirty bodies, what the place really reeks of is compassion. This dilapidated industrial-style monolith goes very far to embody compassion--black sheep of the family of Holy Spirit fruits, unmentionable in polite conversation--what with her enormous sweaty embrace, effusive, jabbering, unseemly, incapable of making all kinds of distinctions, blind to all the varieties and categories of personal accomplishment and failure claimed by those she draws to herself.
Sure looks bad now, but here's a church that might just stand a chance on the last day.
Showing posts with label Economy and Waste. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economy and Waste. Show all posts
No discount to be found when paying the ultimate price
VALLEY STREAM, NY—Until now, late November's violence and upheaval had been confined to south and southeast Asia. This morning the terror touches down on American soil, as horrific eyewitness accounts begin to trickle in from the idyllically-named Long Island suburb:
"They took the doors off the hinges..."
"He was trampled and killed in front of me."
"They're savages..."
"They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."
"There's nothing we can do. The baby is gone."
"They took the doors off the hinges..."
"He was trampled and killed in front of me."
"They're savages..."
"They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."
"There's nothing we can do. The baby is gone."
The whole world salivating
Adam Wiltzie, musician, on why it took six years for his band to release an album:
"What I learnt was essentially in the past (or I should say around finishing Tired Sounds) I was pretty fatigued, mentally. I wondered why I felt it was so necessary to make a record every year, or to be in the endless cycle of recording, then touring, and then starting over again. I reckon that, in general, musicians can fool themselves into thinking the whole world salivates for more new music, and the result is letting that false sense of reality push them into releasing music that is not really finished, or just to make the release date their label wants them to make so as to beat the Christmas rush, et cetera. So, some people will pre-suppose that six years is a long time to wait to release a new record. But I do not buy into that assumption."
And later, responding to a question about his influences:
"As I may have said, it is painfully uncomfortable for me to talk about my body of work with any sort of reverence..."
Maybe a portion of the world was salivating for a new Stars of the Lid album. But my hope is that Adam Wiltzie is among a perhaps small number of entertainers who are reasonably suspicious of the dysfunctionally co-dependent relationship of fan and celebrity. Such co-dependent cycles can be broken if one of the two parties are willing to call BS.
"What I learnt was essentially in the past (or I should say around finishing Tired Sounds) I was pretty fatigued, mentally. I wondered why I felt it was so necessary to make a record every year, or to be in the endless cycle of recording, then touring, and then starting over again. I reckon that, in general, musicians can fool themselves into thinking the whole world salivates for more new music, and the result is letting that false sense of reality push them into releasing music that is not really finished, or just to make the release date their label wants them to make so as to beat the Christmas rush, et cetera. So, some people will pre-suppose that six years is a long time to wait to release a new record. But I do not buy into that assumption."
And later, responding to a question about his influences:
"As I may have said, it is painfully uncomfortable for me to talk about my body of work with any sort of reverence..."
Maybe a portion of the world was salivating for a new Stars of the Lid album. But my hope is that Adam Wiltzie is among a perhaps small number of entertainers who are reasonably suspicious of the dysfunctionally co-dependent relationship of fan and celebrity. Such co-dependent cycles can be broken if one of the two parties are willing to call BS.
Price tags
In the ideology of capitalism, the value and meaning of all things is understood by the dollar amount that the almighty market confers upon them. We may be queasy about evaluating the price of a human life in terms of money, but there is no doubt that this sort of evaluation can and is being done. It is, after all, the final frontier in a long history of capitalizations (or "privatizations") that include plots of land, song lyrics, certain plant seed cross-breeds, quantities of pollution, the lives of animals, the holy bible, and the one-click online shopping experience. And the color burgundy, as Robb discovered the other day while looking at the packaging of a bag of shredded cheese from the store--burgundy is trademarked as the "trade dress" of food manufacturer Sargento.
Granted that capitalism is a deeply rooted way of understanding the world that you and I most likely share (to one degree or another), it can be revealing to step completely inside of this value system for a moment in order to take a look at our values. Or, in other words, to put a mouth where our money is; a money-mouth that is capable of bluntly telling us what we care about: Tom Engelhardt compares the market value of an American life versus that of our fellow humans who happened to be born on other parts of the earth.
Granted that capitalism is a deeply rooted way of understanding the world that you and I most likely share (to one degree or another), it can be revealing to step completely inside of this value system for a moment in order to take a look at our values. Or, in other words, to put a mouth where our money is; a money-mouth that is capable of bluntly telling us what we care about: Tom Engelhardt compares the market value of an American life versus that of our fellow humans who happened to be born on other parts of the earth.
Whitecaps of white noise
Fitting that Canadian sound explorer Tim Hecker sculpts seven and a half minutes of almost completely undifferentiated fuzz into a track called "The Work of Art in an Age of Cultural Overproduction." Fitting because he realizes that one has to start dealing with the reality of life in a big, viscous glut of cultural junk.
Obviously the social condition of cultural obesity has something to do with the fact that the primary way that I, an individual here in the beating heart of the media empire, am able to come to terms with my own identity is to cross the coveted threshold from media consumer to media producer. To lay down some tracks, to shoot and edit a film, to write a book (my memoirs!), to be interviewed on some documentary, to put some dumb video of myself online.
But in what sense is it socially desirable to add my voice or your voice to the already deafening roar of cultural white noise? There are too many records. Too many films showing in too many theaters. Too much must-see video programming. Too many new releases, too many staff picks, too many best-sellers. Too many logos, too much smart design play, too many fonts, too many slick magazines, and way too many clever advertising concepts. Too many photos taken of ourselves and too many of our friends in interesting places and positions, too many attempts at interesting angles. Too much data accessible on too many PDAs at any time and any place. Too many people eating lunch alone, accompanied only by one of those wireless cell phone earpieces. Too many mp3s. Too many "relevant" churches posting too many sermon podcasts to be played back on too many video iPods. Too many blogs with too many posts. And too many sleek Apple laptops cranking out this blather.
Maybe in some way cultural production can still be valid, but I can't imagine any worthwhile piece of art that doesn't first respond to it's relationship to all of the other cultural, virtual, enticing, bite-size media bits trying to edge it out for a second of our attention. Which is why tediously slow washes of barely harmonic sound that demand at least an hour of listening time is about all the cultural product that I can keep down these days.
And I know that the right thing to do is to not get so easily seduced into the belief that I exist to propagate of my own "unique" perspective on the world via the free market apparatus.
But I do get so easily seduced. And I start to make things. And I start to recommend cultural product like the artists above or the video below as an antidote to an overload of cultural product. Why do I do it, the thing I don't want to do?
Obviously the social condition of cultural obesity has something to do with the fact that the primary way that I, an individual here in the beating heart of the media empire, am able to come to terms with my own identity is to cross the coveted threshold from media consumer to media producer. To lay down some tracks, to shoot and edit a film, to write a book (my memoirs!), to be interviewed on some documentary, to put some dumb video of myself online.
But in what sense is it socially desirable to add my voice or your voice to the already deafening roar of cultural white noise? There are too many records. Too many films showing in too many theaters. Too much must-see video programming. Too many new releases, too many staff picks, too many best-sellers. Too many logos, too much smart design play, too many fonts, too many slick magazines, and way too many clever advertising concepts. Too many photos taken of ourselves and too many of our friends in interesting places and positions, too many attempts at interesting angles. Too much data accessible on too many PDAs at any time and any place. Too many people eating lunch alone, accompanied only by one of those wireless cell phone earpieces. Too many mp3s. Too many "relevant" churches posting too many sermon podcasts to be played back on too many video iPods. Too many blogs with too many posts. And too many sleek Apple laptops cranking out this blather.
Maybe in some way cultural production can still be valid, but I can't imagine any worthwhile piece of art that doesn't first respond to it's relationship to all of the other cultural, virtual, enticing, bite-size media bits trying to edge it out for a second of our attention. Which is why tediously slow washes of barely harmonic sound that demand at least an hour of listening time is about all the cultural product that I can keep down these days.
And I know that the right thing to do is to not get so easily seduced into the belief that I exist to propagate of my own "unique" perspective on the world via the free market apparatus.
But I do get so easily seduced. And I start to make things. And I start to recommend cultural product like the artists above or the video below as an antidote to an overload of cultural product. Why do I do it, the thing I don't want to do?
Off World announcement!
I've been having a lot of mental lapses into absurdity as of late. Last week I was sitting in a car stopped in traffic on I-76, staring out the front window. You could say I was contemplating the skyline. That's when I was struck by the absurdity of billboards. It was the scale that got me first--realizing how enormous a billboard has to be in order to convey a roughly magazine-size readable image at a distance. Consider with me how much physical space has been utilized in order to colonize our fields of vision. It got me thinking about a Gnostic/Platonic mind-body split in which psychological space becomes much more valuable than physical space.
Great architectural constructions have always played on psychological space, but it seems to me that the meaning of that visual space was always a logical extension from the meaning of the actual physical structure: A palace or cathedral was much bigger than it needed to be in order to create in the viewer a sense of grandeur, which is a utilization (a sort of exaggeration) of physical space to make a psychological impression. But what about when a massive structure is erected exclusively to pass on a photograph or written message, completely severed from any physically useful purpose?
The strange dis-proportionality of it all illustrates a general disregard for the physical environment (as in most cities). More broadly, billboards point to a physical existence that is subjugated, discarded, dominated by the world of ideas. Yet another cyclical pattern of careless abuse and fragmented meaning, another competitive relationship enacted between worlds that were meant to be constructively integrated.
Or in the case that my reactions seem more ridiculous than the billboard itself, at the very least we can pause for a moment to think about the great expenditures of creative energy and capital invested into capturing little pieces of our mental space for a few seconds.
Great architectural constructions have always played on psychological space, but it seems to me that the meaning of that visual space was always a logical extension from the meaning of the actual physical structure: A palace or cathedral was much bigger than it needed to be in order to create in the viewer a sense of grandeur, which is a utilization (a sort of exaggeration) of physical space to make a psychological impression. But what about when a massive structure is erected exclusively to pass on a photograph or written message, completely severed from any physically useful purpose?
The strange dis-proportionality of it all illustrates a general disregard for the physical environment (as in most cities). More broadly, billboards point to a physical existence that is subjugated, discarded, dominated by the world of ideas. Yet another cyclical pattern of careless abuse and fragmented meaning, another competitive relationship enacted between worlds that were meant to be constructively integrated.
Or in the case that my reactions seem more ridiculous than the billboard itself, at the very least we can pause for a moment to think about the great expenditures of creative energy and capital invested into capturing little pieces of our mental space for a few seconds.
Buy Nothing Day 2006
The Pogo Avenger and about 30 of his friends showed up to celebrate Buy Nothing Day outside The Gallery mall in Philadelphia. Above, you seem him posing with the T.J. Maxx promotional Santa and Elves that whisked by near the end of our celebration. Here are some more photos and an in-depth report from the event.
In other BND news, see the extraordinary Reverend Billy attempting to dissuade Macy's shoppers from their early morning shopping spree. Or see him conducting services in a parking lot.
In other BND news, see the extraordinary Reverend Billy attempting to dissuade Macy's shoppers from their early morning shopping spree. Or see him conducting services in a parking lot.
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