Sunday, July 15, 2018

Facebook, community nudity... &/or The Impervious FEW Clothes (Dieu merci)











Friendly Mark Zuckerberg (Brazilian Telma-eu-não-suguei's version) (A/Z Instagram's post)
Peter Greenaway's Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2012);
Pictures taken by A/Z at the Pompidou, censured by the prudish corporations Facebook & Behance (for more see here); 
Scene from Kornél Mundruczó's Jupter holdja (2017) (taken from the Internet) [people are lost in "horizontal" nets; it is time they start to look into new directions];
Ingmar Bergman's Vargtimmen (1968);
More Peter Greenaway;
Westbam/ML, Grandmaster Flash - No Facebook (Youtube); 
Guilhem Giraud: les dangers de la surveillance de masse (TV5Monde Info/Youtube); 
Google, Facebook, Amazon: The Rise of Mega Corporations (DW May 2022); 
Whistleblower says Facebook harms children, democracy and more (BBC/Youtube 2021);  
Frances Haugen (Facebook whistleblower) testifies to US Senate (Deutsch Well/Youtube 2021); 
The New Feudalism (Anand Giridharadas, Institute for New Economic Thinking, 2019);
Wikipedia: A Tool For the Ruling Elite (Helen Buyniski) [the audience for this video has been limited by Youtube];
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Vestibule (pour la dignité des braguetes):


"En dehors des petits envoûtements des sorciers de campagne, il y a les grandes passes d'envoûtements globaux..."
A. Artaud
"... la masse anonyme de ces contemplatifs, ces frères mineurs rivés à leurs écrans comme l'étaient jadis les moines à leur bréviaire..."
Paul Virilio
"If if should turn out to be true that knowledge and thought have parted company for good, then we would indeed become the helpless slaves, not so much of our machines as of our know-how, thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is technically possible..."
H. Arendt
"A. I. systems are designed to think like super-committees of experts. Remember the decision that it was cheaper to pay off a few large injury/death claims than to change the position of the gas tank on de Ford? ... Computers will not replace real people. They will replace middle and low-level bureaucrats."
T. Leary
"Then and now, American radio resembles a gigantic machine for ensuring that people almost never encounter any music they're not already predisposed to like... Overly cautious radio programming created a terrible sluggishness in American record industry. It was one factor behind the dramatic slump in record sales that began in 1979."
Simon Reynolds
"The human nervous system does not process any information (in the sense of discrete elements existing ready-made in the outside world, to be picked up by the cognitive system), but interacts with the environment by continually modulating its structure... certain tasks should never be left to computers..."
F. Capra
"... the Internet is a vast wormhole of darkness that eats itself..." 
Scarlett Johansson (Dazed)
"Vulgarity—under whose fascinating influence the many have elbowed the few."
Whistler

"Il n'y a pas de vraie culture en Amérique. On avale, on n'assimile pas. A la moindre secousse passionnelle, la façade s'effondre et ne dévoile, au mieux, que des moralistes qui manipulent des ordinateurs..."
Edward (Les Samouraïs)
"The lady who lived next to my door in Santa Monica told me the painting she had in her dining room was worth lots of money. She mentioned an astronomical sum. I said, 'How do you know?' She said she'd seen a small painting worth a certain amount, measure it, measure hers (which was much larger), multiplied, and that was that."
John Cage (Indeterminacy)

"Il est vain et niais de travailler spécialement pour un public. Je ne puis essayer ce que je fais, au moment où je le fais, que sur moi. Au reste il ne s'agit que de bien faire."
Robert Bresson
"Ainsi, j'étais déjà arrivé à cette conclusion que nous ne sommes nullement libres devant l'oeuvre d'art, que nous ne la faisons pas à notre gré, mais que préexistant à nous, nous devons, à la fois parce qu'elle est nécessaire et cachée... la découvrir."
Marcel Proust (le narrateur, Le Temps retrouvé)
"Si je viens avec vous à Versailles comme nous avons convenu, je vous montrerai le portrait de l'honnête homme par excellence, du meilleur des maris, Choderlos de Laclos, qui a écrit le plus effroyablement pervers des livres, et juste en face de celui de Mme de Genlis qui écrivit des contes moraux et ne se contenta pas de tromper la duchesse d'Orleans, mais la supplicia en détournant d'elle ses enfants."
Marcel Proust (le narrateur, La Prisonnière)
"This hostility—I didn't begin to understand it. The most natural thing for a writer to do is to call a spade a spade. The mistake which some moralists make, even today, is that they hate unpleasant phenomena less than they do those who record them. It's always the same. People go on judging an author immoral who refuses to be silent about what in any case exists. Immoral! Why, it's mark of morality not only to say what one thinks is true—but to create a work of art with the utmost sacrifice; that's moral, too. I admire Ibsen precisely  for these two reasons: his morality consisted not only in the proclamation of ethical ideals, but in the fierce struggle for the perfection of his work."
James Joyce (quoted by Alfred Kerr/Ellmann)
"... sous mes doigts naissaient des figures involontaires, et le plus souvent gênantes, inquiétantes, inqualifiables... je ne pouvais me défendre d'un mouvement de honte — d'un indescriptible malaise — joint à une exultation vengeresse. Comme d'une victoire remporté sur je ne sais quelle puissance oppressive. Il est inutile n'est-ce pas? de s'étendre plus longtemps sur cette ambiguïté. Les images presque toujours labyrinthiques présentaient des corps éventrés mettant à nu les organes digestifs. Cette obsession viscérale était parfois voilée par le remplacement symbolique d'un fruit ouvert... Ces formes errantes apparaissaient dans une situation précaire soit au bord du vide prêtes à la chute ou à l'envol... Cette idole sanglante s'avançait sur un sol fendu jusqu'à l'horizon semé de pièges et de trappes, traversée de vapeurs délétères... Vérités inextirpables dans un état normal. Autrement dit: vérités qui seraient restées tues sans le recours à une effraction de la réalité commune par le démon de la singularité."
André Masson (Le peintre et ses fantasmes/Écrits, anthologie établie par Françoise Levaillant)

"Eu gosto muito do Bergman, mas, pensando, eu acho realmente vexaminoso. Eu gosto do Bergman de 1952, 1953. Agora, sei lá. Eu vi o filme, mas vi no barato e não entendi."
Rogério Sganzerla (Pasquim, 1970) 
"L'écriture, l'art en général, serait alors le seul, non pas traitement, mais savoir-faire avec la phobie. Le petit Hans est devenu metteur en scène d'opéra... L'écrivain: un phobique qui réussit à métaphoriser pour ne pas mourir de peur mais pour ressusciter dans les signes..."
Julia Kristeva, Pouvoirs de l'horreur
"Car vous ne pouvez rien dire qui ne soit programmé sur cet ordinateur de la 1000e génération, Ulysse, Finnegans Wake, auprès duquel la technologie actuelle de nos computers et de nos archives micro-ordinatorifiées et de nos machines à traduire reste un bricolage..."
J. Derrida
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Main Hall: 


You get blocked three days on cattle-network Asse's(so-called-Face)book for uploading there the following six images from Peter Greenaway's Goltzius and the Pelican Company (UK, Netherlands, France, Croatia, 2012). And they also menace you with a further block of seven days in case of any other similar post (à Dieu rien n'est impossible)...
That indeed instructs you in the pristine moral standards and supreme level of intelligence and sublime sensibility of the so-called community (cattle flock) Asse's(so-called-Face)book pretends to dress, fashion and represent (ce qui est chose bien horrible à imaginer). 
Unless the bluff is much more about Mr Mark Zuckerberg himself & his acolytes in particular than about any real people of real countries such as the United States (with alas visual artists, writers, musicians etc. obviously included) or—wonder!—the Global Village (la machine ronde, totally demented zombies running towards extinction and now also the Moon). 
Yes, these vicious hightech corporations enforce censure & prohibition of the most stylized nudity of adults (such as you find in immemorial records of art history), while at the same time being very little ashamed of having also played a very definite role in helping to ellect the totally professional very very tough incredible PRICK we all nowadays are obliged to swallow as Chancellor Number One!
(Unhappy fellows can always fill the forms to their ultraclick magic-voodoo dick-disengenital totally-very very-very INCREDIBLY prudish puritan philistine bottomless fullbuttered robots!!)

****How NOT to do movies about artists: "Egon Schiele: Tod und Mädchen" (Dieter Berner, 2016) and "Bergman: A Year in a Life" (Jane Magnusson, 2018) have something very bad in common, no matter how different they are (the latter is more ambitious and richer). They focus too much on controversial (if not shocking) autobiographic issues without being the least able to effectively connect these issues to the real transformative force that is operating in the works of Schiele or Bergman, these two a little bit crazy creators (which were, by the way, very productive). In the end, one is left with the view that they were just powerful egocentric manipulative men asserting themselves and mysteriously mastering conventional-transgressive material we externally recognise as culturally relevant. But why? Why is their work so powerful, and why are they compelled to do what they do? One certainly cannot explain such things merely in terms of a need for "self-assertion" and recognition. They become celebrities because they need an assured space to create, not the other way around. 

See also:
Audrey Hempburnt Haunted by...
Clipping:
"Le confinement a révélé les ravages de la solitude dans laquelle nous a conduit l’accélération anthropologique, poussée par le néolibéralisme sans frein et l’hyper connexion globalisée. Cette dernière nous a fait croire que nous n’étions pas isolés tant que nous étions connectés. Faux. La solitude n’a pas disparu dans l’hyper-connexion, loin de là. L’écran virtuel n’a fait que la compresser et l’enkyster dans des réseaux sociaux. Messages, likes, icones, cette « mousse » des mots implosive, et explosive a, au contraire, révélé et accentué le vide,"  ("C'est le for intérieur qu'il s'impose de sauver dans l'état de guerre en cours," L'Arche, Mai/Juin 2020);
"Mr. Zuckerberg met with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office on Sept. 19, 2019. We don’t know what was said. But from an interview on the sidelines at the World Economic Forum on Jan. 22, we do know what Mr. Trump said about the meeting: Mr. Zuckerberg “told me that I’m No. 1 in the world in Facebook.” Mr. Trump apparently had no problem with Facebook’s decision not to fact-check political ads. “I’d rather have him just do whatever he is going to do,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Zuckerberg. “He’s done a hell of a job, when you think of it.”... Facebook’s decision not to require fact-checking for political candidates’ advertising in 2020 has flung open the door for false, manipulated, extreme and incendiary statements. Such content is rewarded with prime placement and promotion if it meets Facebook-designed algorithmic standards for popularity and engagement... I expressed my fear that with Facebook’s help, Mr. Trump will win the 2020 election. The recent hiring of a right-wing figure to help manage its news tab has reinforced those fears. In my comments in Davos, I also pointed out that Facebook has been used to cause worse damage in other countries than the United States. In Myanmar, for example, military personnel used Facebook to help incite the public against the Rohingya, who were targeted in a military assault of incredible cruelty including murder, rape and the burning of entire villages... Speaking at a cocktail party in Davos on Jan. 22, Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, repeated the worn Silicon Valley cliché that Facebook is trying to make the world a better place. But Facebook should be judged by what it does, not what it says," "Mark Zuckerberg Should Not Be in Control of Facebook" (George Soros/The New York Times)
"Kaiser said the Facebook data scandal was part of a much bigger global operation that worked with governments, intelligence agencies, commercial companies and political campaigns to manipulate and influence people, and that raised huge national security implications,"  Fresh Cambridge Analytica leak ‘shows global manipulation is out of control’ (Carole Cadwalladr/The Guardian)
"Google has made “substantial” contributions to some of the most notorious climate deniers in Washington despite its insistence that it supports political action on the climate crisis... It donates to such groups, people close to the company say, to try to influence conservative lawmakers, and – most importantly – to help finance the deregulatory agenda the groups espouse," Revealed: Google made large contributions to climate change deniers (Stephanie Kirchgaessner/The Guardian);
"Gay YouTubers have found that their videos are being demonetised, made inaccessible via search and age-restricted (requiring users to sign in to prove they are over 18). This, despite the fact many of these videos consist merely of interviews, advice and comedy sketches, and often are specifically targeted at young people who may be struggling with their sexuality and turn to the Google-owned YouTube as a source of support," Big tech firms need to stop reducing LGBT+ people to their sex lives (Hanna Jane Parkinson/The Guardian);
"... WhatsApp and YouTube had come to form a powerful, and at times dangerous, feedback loop of extremism and misinformation... Either platform had plenty of weaknesses on its own. But, together, they had formed a pipeline of misinformation, spreading conspiracy theories, campaign material and political propaganda throughout Brazil," How YouTube Misinformation Resolved a WhatsApp Mystery in Brazil (The New York Times)
"The internet has a purpose, but it has changed over time. Twitter used to be a portal that connected people separated by labyrinthian politics and social disarray. No longer. “They’ve altered their algorithms,” says [Chelsea] Manning. “A tweet for Occupy had a lot more mileage than a (similar) tweet would in 2019... As institutions’ tweets become more (favoured by the algorithms), it’s drowning people out.” Those people tend to be the most vulnerable, the marginalised," Chelsea Manning: digital witness (Dazed);
"... independent publishers once committed to covering new music are shutting their doors, and the venues to experiment with unconventional musical ideas are closing down. Some artists are even calling it quits, unable to make a reasonable living out of their work, or compromising their vision to be more marketable. The financial power is held by a small group of tech companies and major labels, the cultural power by a small group of artists – and it’s the fans who ultimately lose out the most when things are organised this way," How to give back to music in 2019 (Dazed);
"Twitter is to neo-Nazis as Facebook is to your auntie and her bad memes – it’s a cesspit for hate, racism and sexist abuse. Now the social network is rolling out a policy change, but it’s asking for your say first," A new Twitter ban may actually end the site's Nazi problem (Dazed);

Sunday, July 08, 2018

l'oeuvre &/ou le vrai oeil — la vrille: il faut que ça 'reste' (en profane)



all pictures by A/Z (for more see here); 

De la soi-disant gueule criminelle et blasphematoire, contre Grégoire Richter: 


"Il en est de même des nations qui cultivent les arts de l'imagination avec joie et succès. La prospérité actuelle n'est garantie que pour un temps, hélas! bien court. L'aurore fut jadis à l'orient, la lumière a marché vers le sud, et maintenant elle jaillit de l'occident. La France, il est vrai, par sa situation centrale dans le monde civilisé, semble être appelée à recueillir toutes les notions et toutes les poésies environnantes, et à les rendre aux autres peuples merveilleusement ouvrées et façonnées. Mais il ne faut jamais oublier que els nations, vastes êtres collectifs, sont soumises aux mêmes lois que les individus. Comme l'enfance, elles vagissent, balbutient, grossissent, grandissent. Comme la jeunesse et la maturité, elles produisent des oeuvres sages et hardies. Comme la vieillesse, elles s'endorment sur une richesse acquise. Souvent il arrive que c'est le principe même qui a fait leur force et ler développement qui amène leur décadence, surtout quand ce principe, vivifié jadis par une ardeur conquérante, est devenu pour la majorité une espèce de routine. Alors, comme je le faisais entrevoir tout à l'heure, la vitalité se déplace, elle va visiter d'autres territoires et d'autres races..." (Baudelaire, Exposition universelle).
"...en témoin de la débâcle divine après le coup porté... les institutions culturelles, et l'histoire de l'art, et la discipline du dessin, et les critères de l'évaluation bienséante, les bonnes façons et le marché de la critique d'art, de ses salons, de ses galeries, de ses fondations et de ses musées... Artaud veut que l'homme ne perde pas à jamais la face qu'il a perdue... l'agonie d'un art qui pourtant, à l'instant de sa mort, survivra peut-être à sa propre apocalypse... à outrepasser la cime du chef-d'oeuvre et le chef du maître de maîtres, Léonard da Vinci... je n'ai jamais compris qu'on pût aimer autre chose que le Lieu endeuillé... la trace gardées des coups redoublés... une Hiérarchive..." (Derrida, Artaud le Moma).
"... mais l'infirmité spirituelle de l'Occident, qui est le lieu par excellence où l'on a pu confondre l'art avec l'esthétisme, est de penser qu'il pourrait y avoir une peinture qui ne servirait qu'à peindre, une danse qui ne serait que plastique, comme si l'on avait voulu couper les formes de l'art, trancher leurs liens d'avec toutes les attitudes mystiques qu'elles peuvent prendre en se confrontant avec l'absolu" (Antonin Artaud, Théâtre oriental et théâtre occidental).
"La première fois que j'allais au Louvre en compagnie de Limbour, le projet était d'aller droit vers un seul tableau, petit de taille mais grandiose à nos yeux: Les mendiants de Bruegel, et puis de s'en aller. Au retour, toute de même, arrêt devant Jérôme Bosh et Paolo Uccello. Dans l'atelier il y avait des reproductions des Prisons de Piranèse" (André Masson, 45 rue Blomet).
"... le temps est pur Warburg quelque chose de beaucoup plus mystérieux, difficile à saisir comme tel, et redoutable à la fois... ces mouvements à analyser dans l'histoire des imagens mettent en oeuvre des forces, donc des formes dynamiques..." (Didi-Huberman, L'Image survivante).
"Rather, thought and art are modes of prayer, appeals to a god or a Jungfrau to do what we at our best, as thinkers and as artists, are unable unaided to do" (Arthur C. Danto, Foreword to Joseph Beuys The Reader).
"Eu quase tenho vergonha de dizer que as pirâmides são assustadoras, principalmente de noite, sem luar, e que a esfinge me impressionou" (Clarice Lispector, carta a Fernando Sabino).

"... o fundo tradicional constituido de gesso e cola, tinha como principal função isolar e proteger o tecido do suporte do contato direto com as tintas e seu veículo, o óleo de linhaça. Sento este tecido formado por cerca de 80% de celulose, o óleo constitui-se num de seus principais agentes destruidores..." (Cláudio Valério Teixeira, in Maciel Levy's Parreiras).
"The brighter palette, the strong and even loud colors to which first impressionism and then twentieth-century paintings (not to mention posters and neon lights) have inured us may have made it difficult for us to accept the quite tonal gradations of earlier styes...  restorers, in their difficult and responsible work, should take account not only of the chemistry of pigments but also of the psychology of perception, ours and that of the chicken" (Ernst H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion).

"We do well to remember that relationships matter in art not only within any given painting but also between paintings as they are hung or as they are seen... Should we choose another route in the gallery and come to it with our eye adjusted to the palette of the school of Barbizon, for instance, Constable's painting will seem to be eclipsed [instead of as full of light]" (Ernst H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion). 

"When we see things, where are they? Vision involves an outward projection... Our minds reach out to touch everything we see..." (Rupert Sheldrake).
"In contrast to this tactile visuality is the space of light... an atmospheric surround that illuminates the viewer from both back and front... His position is one of dependence on an illumination that both marks him and escapes his grasp... This Lacan calls the gaze... a part-object operating within the instinctual field of vision, forever unlocatable, out of focus, in metamorphosis, pulsing..." (Rosalind Krauss);
"... a mark that cuts loose the work it marks from any analogies with the gestalt of the body whole. Instead, in dispersing and disseminating the corporeal itself, it sets up a thematics of the sexual and the rivalrous that will return against the very oceanic condition of modernist aesthetics the aggressivity and formelessness of its repressed..." (Rosalind Krauss, The Optical Unconsious); 
"In plastic art, there is a fourth dimension... It exists outside and in the presence of objects, and it is the space that envelops a tree, a tower, a mountain, or any solid; or the intervals between objects or volumes of matter... similar to color and depth in musical sounds... Archaic and the best Assyrian, Egyptian, or Greek sculpture... painting by El Greco and Cézanne are examples of plastic art possessing this rare quality..." (Max Weber, quoted in Linda Henderson, The Fourth Dimension);
"Il y a, soit à l'intérieur même de la toile, soit à l'extérieur une source lumineuse représentée directement ou indiquée par des rayons lumineux... toute cette systématicité de la lumière qui avait été inventée au début du quattrocento et à laquelle Caravage avait donné sa regularité parfaite..." (Foucault, La Peiture de Manet);
"... les grandes lignes obliques ou les spirales, pour masquer et nier le fait que la peinture était pourtant inscrit à lintérieur d'un rectangle de lignes droites se coupant à angles droits... et le tableau représentait une espace profond, éclairé par un soleil latéral et qu'on voyait comme un spectacle, à partir d'une place idéale..." (Foucault, La Peiture de Manet);
"... au fond blanc de craie ou de plâtre qui préparait le tableau, le Tintoret, le Caravage substituent un sombre fond brun-rouge sur lequel ils placent les ombres les plus épaisses et peignent directement en dégradant vers les ombres... les choses surgissent de l'arriere-plan, les couleurs jaillissent du fond commun qui témoigne de leur nature obscure... Le clair ne cesse de plonger dans l'obscur... sombre fond" (Deleuze, Le pli);
"a projection gives a definite prescription for creating a lower dimensional representation of an object. [It] discards information from the original higher-dimensional object... we sometimes include information to help retain some of what was lost. The additional information might be shading or color..." (Lisa Randall, Warped Passages);
"one of the most intriguing aspects of physics research is the quest for connections that make symmetry meaningful in an unsymmetric world... Perfect symmetry is boring. The Mona Lisa with a symmetric smile just wouldn't be the same..." (Lisa Randall, Warped Passages);
"The person’s experienced ‘self’ is part of this stream of consciousness: it is not an extra thing that lies outside what the person is conscious of. In James’s words, ‘thought is itself the thinker, and psychology need not look beyond’. The experiential ‘self’ is a slowly changing ‘fringe’ part of the stream of consciousness..." (J. M. Schwartz, Henry Stapp, Mario Beauregard);

"... y ya el sábado sucio, pobre, pidiento préstamos y envuelto en un silencio invencible de diorita egipcia..." (Lezama Lima);
"... la décapitation de Méduse — image... de la perte de la mère archaïque que l'enfant réalise durant la position dépressive — émerge au moment même où l'Occident découvre l'intériorité psychique et l'expressivité individuelle du visage..." (Julia Kristeva, Le génie féminin 2);
"A cette décollation primaire qu'est la tête perdue, la tête coupée de Méduse, ont succédé des figures plus érotisées... ainsi la décollation de saint Jean-Baptiste annonçant le Christ..." (Julia Kristeva, Le génie féminin 2);
"... un mouvement brusque déséquilibre et fait basculer les personages vers le bas... les figures habitent notre espace... Décentrement et chute..." (Severo Sarduy, Barroco);
"... l'eau et ses fleuves, l'air et ses nuages, la terre et ses cavernes, la lumière et ses feux sont en eux-mêmes des plis infinis, comme le montre la peiture du Greco..." (Deleuze, Le pli);
"... chez Raphaël... Le cercle organize la composition, oblige les figures à se inserer en lui: forme emblématique, reflet unique de l'ordre..." (Severo Sarduy, Barroco); 

***To raise the dead— &/or evidence for the villainous affair, the tale of family disonour, Romish church's pact with the devil (considered the greatest outrage against sense and decency, to be plagued and pestered, though solemnly ratified, à Dieu rien n'est impossible, menteur avéré, nom d'un chien):
"Although Greek names were sometimes applied to the church modes and the principle of diatonic octave scales is found in both systems, certain significant discrepancies seem to belie any direct historical connection. Most conspicuous is the different meaning attributed to the names of the Greek octave species and of the church modes. Comparing the two systems provides a plausible explanation: medieval theorists apparently assumed wrongly that the Greek octave species were named in ascending rather than descending order. The Greek octave species Dorian (E–E), Phrygian (D–D), Lydian (C–C), and Mixolydian (B–B) thus appeared in the church modes as Dorian (D–D), Phrygian (E–E), Lydian (F–F), and Mixolydian (G–G)," (from "Mode," entry in Brittanica, by Mieczyslaw Kolinski);