Jonathan Gitelson introduced me to his work this evening. He's got kind of an obsessive thing going with urban phenomena: things that happen with your garbage cans, things people stick to your car, the sense of location and the profusion of locations that can be dislocating at times.
Take some time with his website and tell me what you think.
He lives in Chicago, and maybe in many ways his work could have been made in New York or Los Angeles. But there's a use of space that says Midwest to me -- there's more to it than that but I just don't have the time right now to go into it.
I mean, he can't go in close to his car, and he can't frame his photograph tight onto the specific location. He's got to center the car and the location within the frame, and make sure that there's nothing, or practically nothing, in the street around it.
I have a need for emptiness that makes me relax immediately once we drive out past the Ohio border in our trips out West. I need to have many miles between me and the horizon.
Jon seems to need to center his subjects in a way that really emphasizes their locatedness - (is that a word?) It reminds me of looking through microscopes at tiny creatures, the way they were always surrounded by wide empty space. It's like a means of study.
His work resonates with me quite strongly. Maybe partly because I grew up out there, not Chicago but St. Louis. I definitely identify with the specific kind of alienation that suffuses some of this. You almost feel like you're not in on a big joke that everybody else is in on. I like the way he plays with human fallibility.
See for yourself if you haven't yet and get back to me, OK? Thanks -
8/29/2007
Jonathan Gitelson
Note to Self
Stop analyzing and categorizing tour own work. Leave something for others to figure out about it.
Sphere: Related Content
8/26/2007
More Sunday Church --
Listen to The Raja
Think of all the children's media out there, all the cartoons, the ostensibly educational series, all the songs and videos.
A few producers came close.
Some newer ideas seem promising...
But Mr. Rogers is the only one I've ever seen who got it right early and kept it right.
It's Sunday, Folks -- Time to Go To Church
You may already do this, but if you don't, set a little time aside every week to read detailed accounts about what the soldiers in Iraq are dealing with.
If anything is sacred in the world it's these lives placed in constant danger, not necessarily to protect America but because of America.
Don't remember them because your life might be any better for their suffering, or because somehow they're protecting your freedom in this deployment. Neither is likely the case.
Remember them because we must all become better at America The Job so that this profanity isn't allowed to recur.
8/19/2007
Journalist Michael Skube Hates Blogs
The Los Angeles Times' Michael Skube puts up a thoughtful and fairly thorough piece on blogs.
In short he hates them. He sees them as cranky and uninformed, even the best such as Daily Kos and Andrew Sullivan. The disgrace at Walter Reed, true enough, was first mentioned in a blog, but the full scope of that story could not have been undertaken by a blogger or, for that matter, an Op-Ed columnist, whose interest is in expressing an opinion quickly and pungently. Such a story demanded time, thorough fact-checking and verification and, most of all, perseverance. It's not something one does as a hobby.
Skube uses this story to grunt, "Blogs bad. Newspapers good." But if blogs are so terrible and if journalists are so effective, why did it take a blogger to bring the Walter Reed problems to light in the first place?
Regardless, Skube's example above could just as easily be used to illustrate the way that blogs and a free and responsible mainstream media are much more effective and can bring change when working together.
Skube fails to mention that blogs expanded greatly in popularity when the mainstream media stopped doing their job effectively, which to my memory coincides roughly with the 2000 presidential elections, if not earlier.
Why should America trust the MSM when it's owned by large corporations with a variety of other interests besides news? Why should America trust the MSM when time and again we find important issues not being covered, or being buried or mumbled when they should be shouted in the streets?
Why should America trust the MSM for one second when the mega-corporations that produce the news so frequently and willingly blur information with entertainment, to the point that it is often difficult to discern one from the other?
Blogs have weaknesses of all kinds, no doubt. But I'll accept those weaknesses if they are the only challenge to mainstream media, which is often both weak and corrupted.
But I look forward to a day when blogs, at least those covering what would ordinarily be news or news-related issues, will no longer be necessary.
Until then, assurances from MSM agents like Michael Skube to just trust us America can join Bush administration assurances about the War on Terrorism and the Iraq occupation on America's every-growing trash heap of worthless promises.
8/16/2007
The Political Compass
Unlike many quizzes and polls that feel like they were written by high school kids, The Political Compass comes off with some sense of sophistication, for whatever that's worth.
It's put out by Pace News Limited -- can't seem to find a link to a different site I can confidently say is by the same organization, so maybe this is just a site put up by a smart college kid. They're looking for sponsorship, if that's any indication.
I was mildly surprised to find that I rate in the lower left quadrant of the chart -- a left-leaning libertarian. I fall squarely between Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Ghandi, in fact.
8/12/2007
Dust Comes Alive
Blew my mind -- paints a picture of humanity coming down from space and returning to it.
Read.
8/11/2007
Identify the Counterculture
One of the reasons things are as crazy as they are in America, in my humble opinion, is that a cohesive counterculture has failed to materialize to push against the current establishment.
I blame in part the culture itself because among other things it's comprised of elements that urge a My Everything approach to life in the good old USA.
My Music, MySpace, My Yahoo, MyNYTimes, MyAOL, RateMyTeachers, PimpMyRide, My God My God Why Have You Forsaken Me?
Back when short haircuts, discipline and decorum were the order of the day it was easy for a counterculture to arise among the same group that was being ransacked for bodybag-filler in Vietnam -- young people.
All they had to do to be truly counterculture was Turn On -- Tune In -- Drop Out. Just stop going to school when your parents expected you in class. Follow your natural inclination to dress wacky, hang out in public and party.
And all an anti-war protest had to be was a party with signs, the bigger the better.
The problem for us is that the counterculture of the Nineteen-Sixties is the establishment of the Twenty-Oughts. A counterculture needs to arise to rattle this establishment. But what would an authentic counterculture consist of now?
My thoughts, for whatever they're worth:
- Sacrifice of individuality
- Forget loud clown-dressing life-disrupting protests and signs
- In fact forget overt aggression altogether
- Disdain for consumerism in all its forms
- Antidoting corporate and PR messaging
An authentic counterculture demonstration might look like this:
- Many people dressed the same, standing -- walking -- sitting -- lying down all in formation
- No signs, no music, no drums
- Silence most of the time, punctuated effectively by quiet synchronized group recitation as well as scripted dialogs that challenge and inform
- Appearing suddenly as though not planned, staying for odd lengths of time with replacements appearing so that no formation is ever shorted or spotty, and then evaporating just as unexpectedly as they appear
- No disruption whatsoever to traffic, government, enterprise, paper boys, anything -- like an apparition that won't go away the protest glides through daily life
- Assistance to others as need be during protest, but silent except for synchronized speech
Don't Miss Matt Taibbi on Alternet:
"A March To Irrelevance"
Taibbi laments the energy wasted on 60's-style protests, which no longer have impact because that language relates to its own historical era.
People still fail to realize, after all this time, that one era has literally come to an end, right before our eyes. This really is a new age. And there's nothing Aquarian about it.
Peace, love and understanding? It's more like war, fear and cultural retreat.
Taibbi's recommendation for peaceful protests -- something I'd thought of as well -- resembles performance art.
Read.
