Robert Hughes - Visions of Space (2003)
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
First aired BBC4, 2003; ABC, 2004 In 'Visions of Space', Robert Hughes tackles the work and lives of three remarkable 20th-century architects: Albert Speer, Mies van der Rohe, and Antonio Gaudi - whose work did so much to shape the modern world. Hughes looks at how each one used space in different ways to express our response, respectively, to the power of religion (Gaudi), the power of the State (Speer), and the power of the corporation (Mies van der Rohe).
Albert Speer: Size Matters
In 1979 Robert Hughes met and interviewed Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, for his landmark series, Shock of the New. Speer died shortly afterwards. Twenty-three years later Hughes discovered the long lost tape of that unique conversation and was inspired to travel back to Germany to examine the legacy of a man who was, for a brief period, the most powerful architect in the world.
Mies van der Rohe: Less is More
This episode features the German architect, Mies van der Rohe, who moved to America and discovered the face of the modern corporate city. In this highly personal account, Hughes follows in Mies' footsteps looking at how an architect who began his career making kitschy, Hansel and Gretel style houses with pointy roofs, little windows and squat floorplans transformed himself into the master of international modernism - the architect of light and space. Mies is the father of the contemporary vogue for loft living - what he was building in the 1920s still looks futuristic now. Similarly, his New York masterpiece the Seagrams Building provided the blueprint for the modern office building - without Mies no major city on Earth would look as it does. But despite his undeniable impact there is something in Mies' work that Hughes finds shockingly neglectful of real human needs. This master builder could spend days working out how to turn a corner with a skilfully placed beam and totally ignore the legitimate wishes and desires of those who used his buildings.
Antoni Gaudi: God's Architect
Robert Hughes returns to Spain to explore the legacy of Antoni Gaudi, the last great cathedral builder of the 20th century.
Gaudi was an intensely Catholic celibate who, despite his austere life, created some of the most sensuous buildings ever known. On his journey through Gaudi's life and work, Hughes (an ex-Catholic himself) explains how a man as religious and conservative as Gaudi could become such an innovative 20th-century giant.
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at 2:56 PM
Peter Sutherland - Pedal (2001)
Monday, June 4, 2007
In Pedal, Sutherland documents bike messengers competing in the 2005 Cycle Messenger World Championships in New York City. Going straight to the center of this urban subculture, Sutherland serves up compelling portraits of the competitors from dozens of countries, in motion and at ease, checking out each other’s bags, lingering over modifications to bikes and bodies. Between events like sprints, distance racing, and skid contests, Sutherland shows us the riders’ elegant physicality, complex individuality, and unique community that crosses boundaries of race, gender, age, and class. And he doesn’t shy away from the blood and bruises that come part and parcel with the messenger’s life. Sutherland delves deep into the world of the messengers—a world usually seen from the outside—and returns with a dynamic document that evokes the unbridled anarchy and energy of its inhabitants.
Download pedal at demonoid or karagarga!
ps. i will post a karagarga sign up link in the very near future.
pps. I'm currently getting my hand's on various new object's, fx. a movie about Park Fiction from Hamburg.
at 10:31 PM
Piratbyrån's speech at Reboot 9.0
at 12:47 PM
Interview with Sub Comandante Marcos (1997)
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Comunique On Independent Media
January 31, 1997
A message from Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos to “Free Media” Teach-In, New York City:
We’re in the mountains of Southeast Mexico in the Lacandon Jungle of Chiapas, and we want to use this medium, with the help of the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico, to send a greeting to the “Free Media” Conference that is taking place in New York, where there are brothers and sisters of the independent communications media from the United States and Canada.
At the Intercontinental Encuentro for Humanity and against Neoliberalism we said: A global decomposition is taking place –we call it the Fourth World War - through neoliberalism, the global economic process to eliminate that multitude of people who are not useful to Power, the groups called “minorities” in the mathematics of power, but who happen to be the majority population in the world. We find ourselves in a world system of globalization willing to sacrifice millions of human beigns.
The giant communication media –the great monsters of the television industry, the communication satellites, magazines and newspapers– seem determined to present a virtual world, created in the image of what the globalization process requires.
In this sense, the world of contemporay news is a world that exists for the VIP’s -the very important people, the major movie stars and big politicians. Their everyday lives are what is important: if they get married, if they divorce, if they eat, what clothes they wear and what clothes they take off. But common people only figure in the news for a moment– when they kill someone, or when they die. For the communication giants and the neoliberal powers, the others, the excluded, only exist when they are dead, or when they are in jail or court. This can’t go on. Sooner or later this virtual world clashes with the real world. And that is actually happening: this clash results in rebellion and war throughout the entire world, or what is left of the world to even have war.
We have a choice. We can have a cynical attitude in the face of the media and say nothing can be done about the dollar power that creates itself in images, words, digital communication, and computer systems that invade not just with an invasion of power but with a way of seeing that world, of how they think the world should look. We could say, Well, “that is the way it is,” and do nothing. Or we can simply assume incredulity. We can say that any communication by the media monopolies is a total lie. We can ignore it and go about our lives.
But there is a third option that is neither conformity, nor skepticism, nor distrust. It’s the opption to construct a different way: to show the world what is really happening, to have a critical worldview, to become interested in the truth of what happens to the people who inhabit every corner of this world.
The work of independent media is to tell the history of social struggle in the world. Here in Norrth America –The United States, Canada, and Mexico- independent media has, on ocassion, been able to open spaces even within the mass media monopolies, to force them to acknowledge news of social movements.
The problem is not only to know what is occurring in the world, but to understand it and derive lessons from it, just as if we were studying, not of the past but of what is happening at any given moment in whateever part of the world. This is the way to learn who we are, what is what we want, who we can be, and what we can do or not do.
By not having to answer to the monster media monopolies, the independent media has a life’s work, a political project, and a purpose: to let the truth be known. This is increasingly more important in the globalization process. Truth becomes a knot of resistance against the lie. Our only possibility is to save the truth, to maintain it, and distribute it, little by little, in the same way that the books were saved in Fahrenheit 451; a group of people dedicated themselves to memorize books, to save them from being destroyed, so that the ideas would not be lost.
In the same way, independent media tries to save history –today’s history- tries to save it and tries to share it so it will not disappear. Moreover, it tries to distribute it to other places, so that this history is not limited to one country, to one region, to one city or social group. It is neccesary not only for independent voices to exchange information and to broaden the channels, but to resist the monopolies’ spreading lies. The truth that we build in our groups, our cities, our regions, our countries, will reach full potential if we join with other truths and realize that what is occurring in other parts of the world also is part of human history.
In August 1996 we called for the creation of a network of independent media, a network of information. We mean a network to resist the power of the lie that sells us this war that we call World War IV. We need this network not only as a tool for our social movements but for our lives: this is a project for life, for a humanity that has a right to critical and truthful information.
We greet all of you, recognizing the work you have done so that the struggle of indigenous people is known, and the other struggles are known, so that the great events of this world are seen in a critical form. We hope your meeting is a success and that it results in concrete plans for this network, these exchanges, this mutual support that should exist between cultural workers and independent media makers. We hope that one day we can personally attend your meeting, or perhaps that one day you can have your conference in our territory, so we can listen to your words and you can hear ours in person. For now, well, we take advantage of the help of the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico to use this video to send a greeting.
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at 5:45 PM
Ben Wright - Slavoj Zizek: The Reality of the Virtual (2004)
Friday, May 18, 2007
Slavoj Zizek is one of the most distinguished and politically engaged thinkers of our time. In this tour de force filmed lecture, he lucidly and compellingly reflects on belief - which takes him from Father Christmas to democracy - and on the various forms that belief takes, drawing on Lacanian categories of thought. In a radical dismissal of today's so called post-political era, he mobilizes the paradox of universal truth urging us to dare to enact the impossible. It is a characteristic virtuoso performance, moving promiscuously from subject to subject but keeping the larger argument in view.
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at 9:56 AM
Adam Curtis - The Mayfair Set (1999)
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Four Stories About the Rise of Business and the Decline of Political Power The Mayfair Set tells the fascinating story of four men who all belonged to a notorious 1960s gambling club called the Clermont and who would ultimately shape the climate of the Thatcher years. Through the interwoven lives of Colonel David Stirling, Jim Slater, Tiny Rowland and James Goldsmith, Adam Curtis BAFTA winning series explores one of the most fundamental changes we have lived through in the past 30 years the rise to power of the financial markets and the decline of politics.
Part 1: Who Pays Wins
The opening episode, Who Dares Wins, focuses on Colonel David Stirling, the man who in 1941 invented the SAS. After the Second World War, Stirling created a private mercenary army and, determined to harness the growing power of Arab oil money, began Britains arms trade to the Middle East. His aim was to keep Britain great. But what he didnt realise, was that this money would eventually take control of him and his beloved country.
Part 2: Entrepreneur Spelt S.P.I.V.
In the 1950s, Britain was dominated by a political and financial establishment that looked down on the stock market. But a suburban accountant called Jim Slater saw things differently. He realised that if he harnessed the sleeping powers of the shareholders, he would gain immense power.
Part 3: Destroy the Technostructure
This episode recounts the story of how James Goldsmith became one of the richest men in the world by taking over some of the biggest corporations in America.
Part 4: Twilight of the Dogs
By the 80s, the day of the buccaneering tycoons was over. Tiny Rowland, James Goldsmith and Mohammed Al Fayed were the only ones who were not finished.
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at 10:49 AM
Adam Curtis - The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear (2004)
This documentary argues that during the 20th Century politicians lost the power to inspire the masses, and that the optimistic visions and ideologies they had offered were perceived to have failed. The film asserts that politicians consequently sought a new role that would restore their power and authority. Curtis, who also narrates the series, declares in the film's introduction that instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us: from nightmares. To illustrate this Curtis compares the rise of the American neoconservatives and radical Islamists, believing that both are closely connected; that some popular beliefs about these groups are inaccurate; and that both movements have benefited from exaggerating the scale of the terrorist threat.
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at 10:44 AM
Adam Curtis - Pandora's Box (1992)
For 15 years, Adam Curtis has concentrated on a cultural history behind the politics of the 20th century and beyond. In 1992, he made Pandora's Box, six "fables" on the consequences (often dangerous) of political and technocratic rationality, especially when used to crush common sense and a clear reporting of the facts. Nothing concerns Curtis more than the way public relations and spin doctoring have become ways of masking the true nature of modern history - and nothing is so vital to the new forms of modern bureaucratic totalitarianism, the dulcet "order" that has come to fill the ground left by fascism and communism. In other words, the "enlightened" problem solving favored in the most advanced countries, but employed to obfuscate democratic impulses.
01 The Engineer's Plot. The revolutionaries who toppled the Tsar in 1917 thought science held the key to their new world. In fact, it ended up creating a bewildering world for millions of Soviet people. In this light-hearted investigation, one industrial planner tells how she decided the people wanted platform shoes, only to discover that they had gone out of fashion by the time that the factory to manufacture them had been built.
02 To The Brink of Eternity. Focusing on the men of the Cold War on whom 'Dr Strangelove' was based. These were people who believed that the world could be controlled by the scientific manipulation of fear - mathematical geniuses employed by the American Rand Corporation. In the end, their visions were the stuff of science fiction fantasy.
03 The League of Gentlemen. Thirty years ago, a group of economists managed to convince British politicians that they had foolproof technical means to make Britain great again. Pandora's Box tells the saga of how their experiments have led the country deeper into economic decline, and asks - is their game finally up?
04 Goodbye Mrs Ant. A modern fable about science and society, focusing on our attitude to nature. Should we let scientists be the prime movers of social or political change when, for instance, DDT made post-war heroes of American scientists only to be put on trial by other scientists in 1968? What kind of in-fighting goes on between rival camps before one scientific truth emerges, and when it does emerge, just how true is it?
05 Black Power. A look at how former Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah set Africa ablaze with his vision of a new industrial and scientific age. At the heart of his dream was to be the huge Volta dam, generating enough power to transform West Africa into an advanced utopia. But as his grand experiment took shape, it brought with it dangerous forces Nkrumah couldn't control, and he slowly watched his metropolis of science sink into corruption and debt.
06 A is For Atom. An insight into the rise and fall of nuclear power. In the 1950s scientists and politicians thought they could create a different world with a limitless source of nuclear energy. But things began to go wrong. Scientists in America and the Soviet Union were duped into building dozens of potentially dangerous plants. Then came the disasters of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl which changed views on the safeness of this invisible fuel.
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at 10:38 AM
demonoid and more Adam Curtis
Friday, May 11, 2007
I wrote earlier that i could invite you, if you wanted to be a user at demonoid.com. But since i only have 1-2 invite's a month, you have to try on your own, i think demonoid is open for users every friday.
Later tomorrow, two or three work's by Adam Curtis will be redirected to this site from karagarga.
If you have any suggestions on what i should post on the site, please write me a mail at arttorrentsATgmailDOTcom.
All the best,
arttorrents
at 4:57 PM
Rosa Maria Frang - I Am the Slogan
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
at 12:03 PM
