December 2016

My enemy gave me a museum

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stillronpollard_detail

Detail of a photo by Ron Pollard (from a slideshow of his work).
Pollard's caption for the image, which depicts a billboard flacking Denver's Clyfford Still museum, is "Needlessly Menacing Cultural Advertisement."
Amen to that. Clyfford Still liked to depict himself as a gaunt son of the prairie, standing tall against cultural gnomes, but he lived in NYC for years, networking like every other painter, and then taught in San Francisco, acquiring student disciples for his towering ego.
In the '90s it looked highly unlikely that any city was going to comply with the terms of Still's will, which required that all his work be kept together and installed in a civic museum dedicated solely to him. Denver bit, finally, and is now committed to enhancing his legacy as a trowel-wielding American competitive individualist. Enjoy this work, or die, weakling.

More Pollard.

"Steel Percussion Climax"

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"Steel Percussion Climax" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]

Recorded and arranged in Ardour (Linux version)
Featuring: SammichSID, Elektron Machinedrum & Octatrack

Some beats on the Machinedrum were "found" (i.e., left in ROM by the previous owner). I tweaked them quite a bit, but, hat tip to GYS.
Also, check out the actual house around 2:30. If I didn't get bored and need to change patterns, that would be the whole song.

rhetorical questions re: global ordering

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Discussing "the new OPEC deal to cut oil output – the cartel’s first since 2008," the UK-based newspaper City A.M. writes:

OPEC as a whole agreed to cut 1.2m barrels per day (bpd) from production from the beginning of the new year, with the Saudis themselves bearing the brunt of the cuts with a personal reduction agreed to at just under 500,000 bpd. But as OPEC now accounts for less than half of all energy output in the world, it is a very weakened cartel...

Placing this in a larger world context, City A.M. continues, at high wattage:

This, in its way, is as momentous a shift in global power as the stunning recent Brexit and Donald Trump votes. Whereas Brexit showed Europe to be in absolute decline, while the election of Trump brings to an abrupt end 70 years of the U.S. as the global ordering power, the Saudi’s meek surrender brings to a close the long age of OPEC domination of the world’s energy market. This year truly has seen the death of one world order, along with the uncertain birth of another.

Back up there: "The election of Trump brings to an abrupt end 70 years of the U.S. as the global ordering power." This is a UK writer's perception. Let's assume it has validity. Does this mean the election of Hillary Clinton would have continued the U.S.'s role as a "global ordering power"? Is that term a euphemism for empire? If all the above is true, wouldn't a vote against Hillary be a vote against US imperial aspirations, or a de facto empire? And what is wrong with that? As Holden says in Blade Runner, "they're just questions, Leon."

"Junkies," photo, Ron Pollard

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pollard_junkies

From a slideshow of mostly architecture -- bleak shots of prisons next to golf courses, fracking fields next to suburban homes, threatening and/or condescending billboards advertising shows of cultural figures such as Clyfford Still and Mark Mothersbaugh, and other all-American horrors. Via James Howard Kunstler.
Picked this one as an example because that's what mobile phone users look like -- junkies. Mainlining that Zucker-opioid: "hey, someone liked my status!" "Ooh, look at her baby, isn't it ugly." "Fifteen people responded that they are coming to my show!" Am truly ready for this sociological moment to be over, but no end is in sight.