What Health Insurance Reform Opponents & Christian Scientists Have in Common

A belief that disease and death either don't really exist or "can't happen to me," coupled with the suspicion that if you are suffering, you probably deserve it.

New from Kalup Linzy

Hilarious, brilliant.

Art Prostitute Re-Launch

Updating a previous post . . . here are images of the prints by M, Margaret Meehan, Brent Ozaeta, Steven Hopwood-Lewis, and Misty Keasler, issued in a limited edition of 200 and available for just $100 for the suite of 5, as a benefit for the relaunch of Art Prostitute in hardcover. The suite is available through The Public Trust or online at the Art Prostitute Store (see the latter link for more details). And watch for the book!

Censorship in Venice

For more, see Jacques Charlier 100 Sexes D'Artistes (French, English, and Italian versions available; click on the image for a larger version); via e-flux:

In a letter dated 18 March 2009, the [an agency of the City] of Venice announced the refusal of the project 100 Sexes d'Artistes by Jacques Charlier (which should have officially represented the French-Speaking Community of Belgium in the present Biennale) because "certain posters could offend the shared sense of public decency."

On 14 April1, we sent you a letter (in Italian) in which we posed the following questions:

• could you tell us where the "shared sense of public decency" begins and ends by indicating which of the 100 posters might be considered offensive?
• is the "shared sense of public decency" so fragile in Venice that it cannot tolerate the presence of a few posters dispersed around the city? And, in addition, are the same criteria applied to advertising, which is more invasive and sexist?
• finally, who decides what constitutes the "shared sense of public decency"?

We have received no reply as yet.



You may be aware that the project censored by the Biennale and by the City of Venice has since been presented in public space in nine European cities (Antwerp, Belgrade, Bergen, Brussels, Linz, Luxembourg, Metz, Namur and Sofia) where it was welcomed with the good humour appropriate to this project . . . .



However, thanks to the unconditional support of the Ministry of Culture and Broadcasting of the French-Speaking Community of Belgium and Wallonie-Bruxelles International, we are going to publish a book relating the incredible story of this double censorship.

* * * * *
. . . we would be very happy to be able to include your answers in this publication . . .

If Cameras Don't Catch Criminals, They're There 'Cuz – Why Again?

Per the BBC:

Great Britain has spent some £500 million [as of today, nearly $820 million] on surveillance cameras, over a million of which are installed in London.

An internal police report has found that last year, only 1 crime was solved by each 1,000 cameras in London. In one month, the system of cameras helped catch just 8 our of 269 suspected robbers.

"David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: 'It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent. . . . [the camera system] leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness.

"'It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security.'"

(Thanks, Ben!)

To be fair, a police spokesman added,"[w]e estimate more than 70% of murder investigations have been solved with the help of [camera system] retrievals . . . ." But one could also ask whether even more might have been accomplished if the same funds had been spent on more detectives or other strategies.

David Foster Wallace

Just heard a great To the Best of Our Knowledge on Dallas's KERA 90.1 FM on David Foster Wallace, including his Kenyon College commencement address here. The rest of the program was just as good; you can hear additional segments here.

Wallace is perhaps best-known for his 700-page Infinite Jest, which Time included in its "All-Time 100 Greatest Novels" (1923–2006) (and which of course refers to Hamlet's description of a beloved fool whose skull is unearthed in Shakepeare's play).

Wallace committed suicide a year ago Sept., leaving behind an unfinished novel, The Pale King, which is currently being edited for publication. D.T. Max writes in The New Yorker,

The novel continues Wallace’s preoccupation with mindfulness. . . . A typed note that Wallace left in his papers laid out the novel’s idea: “Bliss — a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious — lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.”

Guess he found it easier said than done. (I speculate that "Pale King" again refers to Hamlet; search for "pale" at the latter link.)

At the Dallas Museum of Art for 1 More Week: Rist et Al.

The Private Universes exhibition has lots of great work, all worth seeing. One of my favorite pieces, perhaps most fave, was Pipilotti Rist's I Couldn't Agree with You More (1999) (the image right is from Rist's website, but doesn't look quite like the video).

I think this piece deserves analysis, but sorry to say, I can't take that on now. But in case it's of any help, below are my notes:

Close up of, presumably, Pipi, colorful and hot (color throughout this piece is tweaked, but. Bright yellow hair, full make-up including purple lips, bright hipster shirt). ALL footage is in slo-mo, with no audio except music, its tempo matched to the pace of the video, mournful, dreamy and almost spacey but with a steady thread of harmonica.

Pipi moves smoothly through various settings, apparently holding the camera before her but moving it around, sometimes nearer, sometimes not so near, often swooping to get weird angles and different backgrounds or to maintain the pace of visual movement, but almost always trained on her own face. Mostly we see her face and throat and some background, occasionally a bit more of her body. Her eyes mostly remain fixed on the camera but also v. often at a point just above it – just where the second projection lies (higher than shown in this image) – and, rarely, elsewhere. The second projection, superimposed roughly at her "third eye" point (though a bit to the left?), is much smaller, blurry-edged, and consists of footage shot in a forest at night, lit by car headlights, of 4 naked adults, 2 women and 2 men, who appear to observe Pipi even more constantly than she appears to observe them. The nude people (nouveau sauvages?) are stark naked but with modern haircuts, sometimes partially hiding behind shrubbery, sometimes caught out in the middle of the road. They look somewhat startled, curious, or faintly amused; but the emotion is not intense. Pipi's face is if anything even more impassive, but seems intent – very much watching, looking; the two constituencies are definitely looking, and mostly at each other.

The action of the main (face) video starts with Pipi walking down the aisle of a public bus or tram, with other riders visible in the background; then she's in a grocery store, with lots of goods, price tags, and other shoppers behind her. While in the store, but not elsewhere, she's wearing a camera strap – I think we glimpse a camera of some kind hanging from it? – and the strap is a bright blue that flickers in a way I don't notice the other blues or other colors doing – I have to think she colored it or something, to draw attention to it? Perhaps to let us know this primary viewer is in fact the artist (and carrying two cameras)?

Next she seems to be in an apartment; she sinks onto a bed (the camera still trained on her own face), then gets up, then we see a city through windows behind her; there seem to be at least two cityscapes, one of which involves a large construction project.

Throughout, the same forest-with-naked-people scenes are superimposed more or less on her forehead, but because one loop is ca. one minute shorter than the other, the scenes sync up differently from one viewing to the next. The audio is synced with the main video of Pipi's face.

Also worth much more than this mention is the exhibition, Willie Doherty: Requisite Mention, featuring his video, Ghost Story, together with related photographic works.

Today's Big Thing

I considered embedding, but the labelling you get with their embed is not so aesthetic, and it's not so obvious how to strip it out, plus you might want to add this site to your feeds anyway . . . 3 recent posts I liked were Girl Doesn't Realize Bfriend Is on Vacation (longish but worth it), Little Kid Parallel Parks Like a Badass, and Dog vs. Man Dance Battle.