Time Out of Joint:

WTFHFCTB? (or what i've been doing the past two weeks)

Wow, back from a crazy 10 days of holiday.

Where the hell has Far Country Tell been?:

I've been crawling through old overgrown German bunkers . . .

Visiting the D-Day beaches . . .

spent half an hour talking with a very cool and generous rock star (who was on our flight from Paris to Edinburgh. cameras not allowed on the plane, sorry.) . . .

saw this guy . . .

at this guy's concert . . . (p.s. his stage show is as insane as the website)

who opened for these guys! (creep!! live!!)

now i'm laid out with a cold.

regular posts to follow.

Poetry Bus Tour 2006

Far Country Tell is going on the road . . . (*sigh* well, sort of)

Gulf Coast Daybook, a film by Reno Lauro and Poet Dale Smith, will be traveling with The Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour across America for 50 days in 2006.

Be sure to check out dates when the Bus Tour will be in your neck of the woods.

some notable dates include:

Minneapolis (Walker Arts Center) 9/14

NYC (DIA Arts Foundation) 9/30

Philly (FUEL Collective Art Gallery) 10/2

DC (The Big Hunt) 10/4

Austin (The Big Red Sun) 10/12

LA (Cal Arts) 10/19 and (Museum of Natural History) 10/20

SF (The Make Out Room) 10/22

the aesthetics of Total War Pt. 2

"The reason I'm painting this way is becasue I want to be a machine" --Andy Warhol

In an age of Total War what becomes of the language of aesthetics? In the age of the machine we become the servants of the machine . . . our servitude is reflected with great pride in our plastic arts. this is what Virilio calls, Art Terrorism.

In the age of the machine representation is not enough: "The art of painting at the time was already busy trying to outdo mere REPRESENTATION by offering the very presence of the event, as instantaneous photography would do, followed by the PHOTO-FINISH and teh first cenematographic newsreeels of the Lumiere brothers and, ultimately, the LIVE COVERAGE offered by CNN." (21)

Drawing on Bonhoeffer, Virilio critiques this fetishism of immediacy (the cheap whore of forced materialization!!) as ultimately an attack on personhood. Our serventhood of the machine is reflected in the plastic arts whose Mengeleian (un)creators continue the scientific arts which were begun in the research labs of Auschwitz-Birkenau . . . Upon Pope Benedict Ratzinger's visit he lamented that the Nazi hope was to kill the God of Abraham, Isaac and David . . . if Nietzsche was right, Virilio laments, and God is dead then the coming victim is not the creator but the created!

"Avant-garde artists, like many political agitators, propagandists and demagogues, have long understood what TERRORISM would soon popularize: if you want a place in 'revolutionary history' there is nothing easier than provoking a riot, an assault on propriety, in the guise of art . . . the art of the twentieth century became 'monstative' in the sense that it is contemporary with the shattering effect of mass societies, subject as they are to the conditioning of opinion and MASS MEDIA propaganda - and this, with the same mounting extremism evident in terrorism or total war." (17-19)

The problem of the simulacra . . . the problem of representation is a question that must be addressed (theologically?) at the dawn of the 21st century. In an age of the machine what can the church offer as a response when it is a servant of the machine? when art -as an extention of 20th century mutilation- is the main commodity of a people then what becomes of the people? when the tools of Total War (the virtual) becomes the language of social interaction what is left, save the hyperreal?

what will we do?

the aesthetics of Total War Pt. 1

Israel's war against the Hezbollah (Army) is turning out to be a fascinating foil to the U.S. war in Iraq/Afghanistan . . .

Classic Liberal (read with great reverence and sincerity) appeals to 'peace', 'humanity', 'justice' simply break down in harsh reality of, what Paul Virilio calls, Total War. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has managed to make every 'civilian' target a legitimate military target by embedding their military machine in the fabric of everyday life. Hospitals (built by Iran?) double as military caches, Iranian rockets are fired (190 Katyushas today!) using neighborhoods as shelter (Qana), and Propaganda machines (TV and Radio stations) are nestled 'safely' in downtown neighborhoods.

Who is the victim of a blockade? How can attacking an ambulance be criticized when it's being used as a modified military personnel carrier? There is no one left to demonize / plea to / sanction because everyone and everything is an instrument of war! The "Geneva Convention" we so dearly appeal to in our disgust and disdain of innocent blood is a fantasy, a dream . . .

The idea of Total War goes back to Von Clausewitz but the failure that was the 20th century realized the concept in full. The firebombing of Dresden and London (although the first article of the Nuremburg Trials dictated that no Ally could be tried for war crimes) but an end to that dream quickly. Ah, to become the monster in order to destroy the monster!!! Now, information technology allows for its perfection in the 21st century. Propaganda about 'war on the homefront' makes the homefront the front lines. Train stations explode, business towers topple and buses shredded all because a people mobilized are a people militarized . . . targets.

This is truly the age of anti-christ when the gates of hell, opened by war, swallow playgrounds and fruit stands. War is terrorism. In the age of the machine we are the ones who are being transformed as servants of the machine and cannon fodder in an age of Total War.

what will we do?