kagablog

By Ron Rosenbaum
July 6, 2003

Why dude , now? It’s not just that Ashton Kutcher, the demigod of Dude ever since Dude, Where’s My Car? , has become a Demi-god of another sort. It’s not just the rise of Keanu Reeves (who revived “dude” in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure ) as Neo-Dude. There’s more to it, dude.
Back in 1964, Susan Sontag wrote an eye-opening essay in Partisan Review called “Notes on ‘Camp.’” Partisan Review , alas, is gone, but camp is here to stay, and perhaps the time has come to begin to assemble some notes on a similarly recondite phenomenon: Let’s call it “Notes on ‘Dude.’” Because recent evidence suggests that Dude, too-Dude in its most expansive, capital-D sense-is here to stay as well. In some ways, the impetus for studying Dude culture is dual: I feel I’ve grown up (or down) with “dude,” having first heard it from the single surfer dude in my high school and then the single surfer dude in my class at Yale (he dropped out freshman year to party with the waves). But there’s also a similar motive to that which prompted Ms. Sontag to investigate the resonances of camp. She opened her “Notes on ‘Camp’” essay with these two sentences: “Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility-unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with it -that goes by the cult name of ‘Camp.’” (My italics.) Similarly, Dude has been named, but has Dude-as sensibility-been adequately described? If camp is “a variant of sophistication,” Dude might be called a variant of unsophistication . And yet also “hardly identical with it.” In fact, it can be, when used ironically as it often is here in New York City, a sophisticated take on unsophistication. Why Dude now? Well, for one thing, what Ms. Sontag documented (or perhaps created) was a cultural moment when camp-which she described as an underground, mainly gay subcultural sensibility-crossed over into the mainstream. And I’d argue that the moment has come when, like it or not, we have to acknowledge that Dude-in what you might call its ecstatic Jeff Spicoli sense-has crossed over. Crossed over in two ways: First, it has made the transition from transitory subcultural slang term to mainstream cultural-or at least linguistic-phenomenon of a sort. And what’s more-and this is what prompted this essay-like camp, Dude has “crossed over” in a gendered way as well. And so perhaps, it might be appropriate to begin these tentative notes with: 1) THE SEXUAL TRANSMIGRATION OF DUDE I think this is one chief indication that Dude is here to stay: the fact that it now can refer to both men and women. It’s true that there still may be some salons and dinner parties-mainly in certain clueless precincts of academia-where “dude” will still not be uttered at all. And it’s more likely you’ll hear “dude” uttered downtown, or on the L train, than in the back of Town Cars and Navigators. But outside of those sad figures who cloister themselves off from the pleasures of pop culture, “dude” is not just a part of the language-Dude is a whole discourse. And what’s more, Dude-ism, once mainly male, is now being used self-referentially by women as well. I’m not sure exactly when it happened. I may have been aware of it in a subliminal way, but I know the precise moment the conscious realization that “dude” had transcended gender came to me. It was in the second week of May; I was in a car somewhere off a freeway exit in Chicago with two journalism students who had picked me up at O’Hare to take me to a guest-lecture gig at Medill Journalism School. We seemed to be lost and, as I recall, the woman in the back seat said to the woman at the wheel, “Dude, I think we’re going the wrong way.” Dude! Sweet! (as they say in Dude, Where’s My Car? ) These were smart, well-educated, self-aware women in their 20’s, and they thought nothing of calling each other “dude.” They said it was a fairly common usage. Well, maybe with a little of the in-built irony that “dude” has for all who have used it post–Jeff Spicoli. Little did I know that I was witnessing a phenomenon that was, in fact, a hot topic among lexicographers and linguists, according to my friend Jesse Sheidlower, the astute North American editor of the Oxford English Dictionary : the sexual transmigration of “dude.” Where once “dude” had applied mainly-only-to men, “there’s a lot of discussion now,” Jesse said, among his colleagues in the word-study business, over this issue: whether “dude” (in a descriptive rather than prescriptive sense) could now generally be said to apply to both men and women. (The way “babe” has crossed over from the other direction, you might say.) The online edition of the American Heritage Dictionary , for instance, has already made the leap and recognized the duality of “dude” when it comes to gender, defining it (in 3.b., “dudes”) as “Persons of either sex.” Oxford was still studying the matter, Jesse said, although he checked the O.E.D. ’s on-line data base and found a citation for “dude” applied to a woman as early as the mid-70’s. And one in the mid-80’s, in Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero , in which a young woman tells her mother, “No way, dude.” These were relatively isolated instances, but it seemed like it was just a matter of time before the O.E.D. would give “dude” its due as a dual-gender appellation. (Or as Aerosmith might say, “Dude [sometimes] looks like a lady.”) The triumph of Dude is more than about a single word. It’s about an entire sensibility, a worldview. To understand it one needs … 2) A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON DUDE: Featuring the original ‘aesthetic craze.’ Everybody thinks “dude ranch” came first and was somehow the origin. But whence came the dude in “dude ranch”? Before the dude-ranch dude there was dude as dandy, the dude as an urban aesthete; it was the urbanity of dude that made the dude-ranch dude dude-ish. The print version of the unabridged O.E.D. curiously calls “dude” originally “a factitious slang term.” “Factitious slang”? I think what they’re suggesting is something like what happened when the guys who made Swingers tried to make “money” a slang term for “cool.” God, was that a disaster. Totally embarrassing, dude. Why did “dude” succeed while “money” died a well-deserved death? It may have something to do with its origins. “Dude” may have been made up “factitiously” (I’d like to know the dude who did it), but according to the O.E.D. , it first came into vogue in New York about 1883, in connection with what the O.E.D. calls “the ‘aesthetic craze’ of the day.” “Aesthetic craze”: Don’t you love it, dude? This is important to remember in considering the way “dude” has evolved, the way it’s come to be used a century after its origin, the aesthetic dimension of the word. Yes, it can be used simply to refer to a person or class of persons-the way I first heard it in my suburb in reference to “surfer dudes.” But more interesting is the way its origins in an “aesthetic craze” can be linked to the way “dude” (or rather ” Duuuude! “) had become a one-word expression of awe and wonder. A simple awestruck Duuuude! as a way of expressing aesthetic approbation of, a crazed mutual aesthetic appreciation of, something someone says, or some phenomenon someone points out. An acknowledgment of shock and awe-or, in some cases, schlock and awe. A friend of mine pointed out that what “dude” users (and abusers) have in common is transport . Originally, a dude was a dandy on horseback; contemporary dudes use other means of transport-skateboards, surfboards, snowboards and the like. There’s an interesting convergence here with Ms. Sontag’s exegesis of the origins of camp, one that also goes back to the aesthete and the dandy. “Camp sees everything in quotation marks,” she wrote. “As the dandy is the 19th century’s surrogate for the aristocrat in matters of culture, so Camp is the modern dandyism. Camp is the answer to the problem: how to be a dandy in the age of mass culture …. The old-style dandy hated vulgarity, the new-style dandy … appreciates vulgarity.” Dude, you might say-Dude with a capital D-is another answer to the question of how to be an aesthete in an age of mass culture, because Dude is a way of bringing a conscious unsophistication-an ironical unsophistication, an unsophistication in quotation marks, a sophisticated unsophistication-to an appreciation of popular culture. At least that’s the way I heard it in the exchange between the Medill J-school women; that’s the way I use it; that’s the way I hear it here in New York-where, for instance, the single most prolific utterer of “dude” I know works at The New York Review of Books . Of course, there still exists a kind of pure “dude,” a non-ironic use of the word. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) One could almost say that there has been, in the history of “dude” from its “factitious” origins in 1883, a dialectic of Dude, a dialectic of sophistication and unsophistication. Which really calls for … 3) A BRIEF HISTORY OF DUDE, PART ONE: THE MYSTERY OF THE TRANSITION The real mystery of Dude history is the Mystery of the Transition. How did the mildly mocking “dude” of “dude ranch,” a direct descendant of the 1883 urban dandy, become the “dude” of surfer talk-a respectful form of direct address, as in “Party on, dude.” A woman I know offered this theory of how “dude” migrated from dude-ranch mockery to the surfer term of mutual respect: “Dude” was originally a mockery of “gentlemanliness,” you might say, or gentility, and surfers later rescued the gentlemanliness from the mockery. When transformed, or inverted in subcultural slang-in this case, California surfer talk-the original irony was itself ironized, and, in the way a double negative can make a positive, it became thereby a mostly sincere, slightly arch term of gentlemanly respect , not mockery. What made the transformation possible was the presence of that gentlemanly dandyism in both usages. Surfer dudes decided to own it, own their elaborate subcultural aesthetic dandyism, the way some ethnic groups believe they can own words that were originally derisive slurs. In a way, to address someone as “dude” became a sign of ironic respect for that person’s ironic sensibility. 4) A BRIEF HISTORY OF DUDE, PART TWO: THE DISAPPEARANCE AND RE-EMERGENCE OF DUDE O.K., so “dude” made the transition sometime in the 60’s to a term of respect-but for a while it just stayed there, sort of dormant, a regional subcultural term, kept alive in certain rock lyrics (”All the Young Dudes”). For a while, it looked like “dude” might die out or become antiquated like “groovy” (as opposed to “cool,” which still survives in various ironic flavors). But then “dude” began to re-emerge in the late 70’s, less as a term of address-”Hey, dude!”-but as, once again, an aspect of an “aesthetic craze,” so to speak. Which brings us to what you might call the “whoa, dude” connection-and then the internalization of “whoa” by “dude.” I seem to recall being alerted to this transition in 1980 or ‘81 by a story that appeared in New West Magazine , by the gifted writer Charlie Haas. As I recall, it was one of the first to document the Grateful Dead cult. But what stayed on my mind was Mr. Haas’ hilarious but prescient opening riff on what he called “the whoa dudes”: guys who used “Whoa, dude!” to begin-and end-just about every conversational response, much the same way that Valley Girls were starting to use “like” and “totally” as all-purpose conversational punctuation. (And by the way, a whole other essay could be devoted to the way Valley-speak has, in many ways, survived and gone national-as the unexpected triumph of Legally Blonde like SO TOTALLY attests.) In any case, what the “whoa, dude” phenomenon documented was the way “dude” had made another crucial transition. It was the moment when saying “dude” was no longer just a way of addressing a person; it began to be an all-encompassing acknowledgment of mutual wonder, in that elongated form-” Duuuude! “-where the awestruck “whoa” is encompassed within the elongated “Duuuude!” so that it becomes a mutual communion with the wonder of it all, so to speak. Still, the real transition-the moment when dude went “worldwide” (to use a contemporary term), the moment when Dude “blew up” (to use a persistent 80’s phrase)-was the release of one film, Fast Times at Ridgemont High , and the introduction of one now-nearly-mythic character …. 5) THE DEMIGODS OF DUDE, PART ONE: JEFF SPICOLI I’m a big fan of Sean Penn’s serious work, from the underrated At Close Range to his direction of The Crossing Guard -but really, Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High is likely to become his one immortal American character, almost like Huck Finn or Chaplin’s Little Tramp. What made Jeff Spicoli great? Well, he was the pitch-perfect synergistic fusion of the four wellsprings of late-70’s Dude culture: surfer, stoner, suburban Valley-speak and biker-rocker dude. (Remember Spicoli’s dream, which concludes with his planning to “wing on over to London and jam with the Stones”?) But more than that, it was the amazing, oblivious good nature that Mr. Penn, as Spicoli, radiated. The Joy of Dude. 6) DEMIGODS OF DUDE, PART TWO: KEANU REEVES IN BILL AND TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE I’d almost forgotten that Bill and Ted came before Wayne and Garth and Wayne’s World . And that “Wayne’s World”-both the Saturday Night Live sketch concept and the films that followed-was a pure cop from Bill and Ted . And that it was Keanu Reeves who immortalized the phrase “Party on, dude,” not Mike Myers. These are important facts. And although Bill and Ted doesn’t really hold up the way Fast Times does, it was Bill and Ted that introduced the aesthetic category known as “Excellent!” into the Dude lexicon, even before Bart Simpson and Mr. Burns made “dude” and “excellent” partners in crime. 7) DEMIGODS OF DUDE, PART THREE: LEBOWSKI vs. SLACKER I have to admit, I really, really disliked The Big Lebowski when I first saw it. But it grew on me. Not to the cult status it’s attained for some: Did you know the Second Annual Big Lebowski Festival is about to take place somewhere in Kentucky on July 19 (see www.lebowskifest.com)? Note to editor: Dude, here’s your peg! My problem with Lebowski at first was that Jeff Bridges gives slacker slovenliness a bad name-while the earlier Slacker gives it a good name. (See my column on that genuinely great Dude film, Observer, Aug. 13, 2001) Slacker , of course, is more explicitly philosophical and aesthetic than Lebowski , but lately I’ve come to think there is something likable about the Coen brothers’ film, almost despite the Dude element. What was irritating to me was the Jeff Bridges character calling himself “the Dude.” It was such a non-Dude thing to do. (Almost as irritating as the commodification of Dude by the so-called Dell Dude. I don’t blame the Dell Dude for taking the gig, but he was almost too good at it-to the extent that, for a little while, it began to feel a little tacky to use “dude.”) But to return to Lebowski : The real Dude in the picture is Lebowski’s buddy, Walter Sobchak (played by John Goodman) who’s the best thing in the movie-along with the two of them using the word “roll” for bowl (transport again). Indeed, the whole bowling/ spiritual aspect of the film is highlighted by Sobchak’s refusal to “roll on shabbos .” DEMIGODS OF DUDE, PART FOUR: ASHTON KUTCHER I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but the title Dude, Where’s My Car? can be traced to a line in The Big Lebowski , when Sobchak asks Lebowski: “Where’s your car, Dude?” And even though most of Dude, Where’s My Car? makes even Bill and Ted seem like a subdued, autumnal work of the subtle Japanese master of cinema, Yasujiro Ozu, Dude has become a cult film, and the title of the movie alone is worth the price of admission. And coming in the year 2000, it clearly signaled that Dude would span the turn of the century. The totally awesome title of the sequel alone- Seriously, Dude, Where’s My Car? (planned for release in 2004)-should insure that Dude lasts well into the new millennium. But, of course, there’s more to Dude, Where’s My Car? than the title and the theme of lost transport . (Well, a little more.) There’s that great, now sort-of-famous exchange between Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott when they read the tattoos on each other’s backs. It’s not quite “Who’s on first?”, but it’s not a bad update. See, they’ve just discovered that they’ve gotten tattoos on their backs, which they have no memory of getting. Because the tattoos are on their backs, they each have to read the others’ ink. And they discover that Kutcher’s tattoo reads “Dude,” and Scott’s reads “Sweet.” And since “Sweet” has come to be a synonym for the awestruck “Duuuude,” trouble ensues: “Dude, what does my tattoo say?” asks Scott. “‘Sweet,’” says Kutcher. “What about mine?” “‘Dude,’” says Scott. “What does mine say?” “‘Sweet,’” says Kutcher. “What about mine?” “‘Dude’!” says an increasingly annoyed Scott. “What about mine?” “‘Sweet’!” And so it goes, until they’re at each other’s throats. It probably doesn’t make any sense to those who haven’t seen it, but you sort of give in to it when you do. (Our “big-cheese editor,” as the Eight-Day Week likes to call him, boasts that he has it memorized). If this seems slightly less serious than the intellectual fare my readers are used to, let me offer … 9) THE DUDE, WHERE’S MY CAR? LITERARY GAME This was something I devised during a dinner with my friends Virginia and David, although they came up with the best answer. The idea is to see how many great works of literature you can fit into the Dude, Where’s My Car? framework. For instance, Moby-Dick - Dude, Where’s My Whale? The Iliad - Dude, Where’s My Trojans? The Catcher in the Rye - Dude, Where’s My Innocence? A Tale of Two Cities - Dude, Where’s My Head? The Red and the Black - Dude, Where’s My Color Sense? The best was one that David and Virginia seemed to come up with simultaneously: The Sun Also Rises - Dude, Where’s My Dick? I’ll conclude this installment of “Notes on ‘Dude’” with some dude etiquette: 10) SOME DUDE DO’S AND DON’T'S -Never use “dude” more than twice in a single sentence. -Headline plays on Dude, Where’s My Car? have pretty much reached their limit. I recently saw a headline: “Dude, Where’s My Terrorism?” -So have plays on “Dude, You’re Gettin’ a Dell.” -Enough with the commercialization: A sample Web search revealed, among many others, the Weather Dude, the Pizza Dude, the Balloon Dude and the Cookie Dude. There was also “Dude Dressing: Major Zesty Garlic Peppercorn Ranch Salad Dressing that makes you say whoa dude!!!’” I even saw a Web site for “The Creator Dude.” It wasn’t God.

this article first appeared in the new york observer

Siren Leirvåg (Oslo)

This paper is based on some ideas that I would like to present to you in this suggestive way, for a possible discussion on the theatrical language of Werner Schwab. They are merely preliminary thoughts that may be elaborated in other contexts. I realize that the situation in Norway is not unique when it comes to performance traditions and acting conventions. It serves, however, as the context for the comments on staging the Schwabian universe.

The Austrian artist and playwright Werner Schwab has been introduced twice in Norwegian theatre: first in Oslo in 1996 with Volksvernichtung oder meine Leber ist sinnlos(1) (translated: People Annihilation or my Liver is Pointless) and last in Bergen in March 2001 with Die Präsidentinnen.(2) In the next pages I will point to some problems attached to the translation of the Schwabian universe to Norwegian theatre.

The first problem is related to the Schwabian style of writing, which is often looked upon as particularly provocative, with its grotesque imagery, its distorted linguistic tone and its bizarre plots. We find the reference to this way of using the language in the Austrian Baroque Folk-Plays or comedies. They played on the grotesque and linguistically ambiguous. Schwab’s own experience of growing up in the Austrian province of Graz, in a basement of most meager conditions, must also have played a significant role in his writing, as well as the act of creating the myth Werner Schwab.

When the Torshov theatre in Oslo staged Volksvernichtung oder meine Leber ist sinnlos it was translated by Öyvind Berg, the author and member of the Bergen theatre company, Baktruppen.(3) His linguistic universe is not particularly bourgeois either. The particular atmosphere in the text is above all created by the Schwabian language, where the linguistic awareness is always loudly present. In a psychological and realistic performance style, which is the most common style in acting in Norwegian theatre, this particular language does not ring through, so to speak. Instead the miserable conditions are explained. They are put in a realistic and humanistic perspective: Why do we not communicate the truth? Why do we suffer in each other’s company? There is a subtext here that in some ways undermines the grotesque and distorted atmosphere. I don’t think it’s merely a question of the director’s choice, it’s more about a bourgeois theatre tradition and hermeneutic situation.

I particularly get the notion of displacement from Volksvernichtung oder meine Leber ist sinnlos - Eine Radikalkomödie. With the subtitle: Mir selber zugewidmet, dem Autor, dem grossräumigen Lügner.(4) (Dedicated to myself, the author, the comprising liar.)
We are in a block of flats in Graz, where Frau Wurm and her son, Herrmann, live in the basement. There are two flats above, one inhabited by the Kovacic family, and on top is the terror-cabinet: “Das Speisezimmer der Frau Grollfeuer, alles düster, alt und kostbar. Überall stehen angebrochene Schnapsflaschen und Gläser herum”.
The thirty or so year old Herrmann, sees himself as an artist. His mother disagrees.

Herrmann:
Eine schändliche Sau bist du, die mich vor der ganzen Welt davondenken will. Aber einmal wird ein Tag auftauchen, der sich gezwungen sehen wird, in eine Kenntnis hereinzunehmen, dass der Maler Herrmann Wurm in Graz sein Licht erblickt hat und dass er das gleich auf der ganzen Weltoberfläche abgebildet hat. Graz…wird man sagen…und wurm…wird man sagen…und Erfinder der persönlichen Lichtstrahlen…wird man sagen…und Kleinstadt: Grosskunst…wird man sagen…und ganz einfach Grazkunst…wird man vor sich voraussagen. Weil eiene richtige Grazkunst, die ist keine Mausescheisse, die von einem Hund gefressen wird, der dann von einem Lastkraftwagen zusammengeführt werden muss. Und die Grazkunst, die ist aber auch schon überhaupt keine angefressene Leber, die aus einer alkoholisierten Leiche herausgefallen ist…beim Leichenwashen. Und schon gar nicht ist die Grazkunst für nichts zu gebrauchen…
Niemand kann mir Graz aus dem Leben herausnehmen.

Frau Wurm:
Aber was ist das dann denn für eine Sorte von einer Kunst, die Grazkunst?

Herrmann:
Also die Grazkunst…diese Kunstsorte, das ist, wenn die künstlerischen Menschen ihre Gefühle in der gefühlvollen Stadt…zusammenreissen…also wenn eine Kunstsorte sich einen einmaligen Anfang herausnimmt aus den gefühlvollen Grazmenschen. Das ist so, wie wenn der Herr Hausherr sagt, dass er ein Farbbild hereinbrauchen will für das Kinderzimmer von den Kindern von Graz. […](5)

How does one translate or even present this concept in Norwegian theatre, even on the fringe stage of the National Theatre? Another question is of course: Why?

The program is perhaps more interesting than the performance. The Dramaturg describes the whole house as the medieval stage turned upside down with hell on top.(6) Frau Grollfeuer’s project is to absorb the whole of humanity in her unique self. She despises people for not satisfying her ideals, thus no man, no love, no meaning. In the middle there is plenty of meaning in the form of compromise. The bourgeois, social democratic, IKEA home of the Kovacic’. Below is the limping figure of Christ and his mother, Frau almost-virgin-Wurm. She exists by her self-suppressing piety. He finds a meaningful existence in the landscape of Art.

My second thought is related to a potentially philosophical concept in Schwab’s writing.
If we think for a moment Nietzsche as a source of importance to Schwab’s life philosophy, it looks as Werner Schwab was taken up with what we may call the displaced existence, i.e. what we in our rationalized society look upon as ooze or mud, or stools, to use one of the central metaphors of Die Präsidentinnen. The secluded or displaced existence is for Nietzsche first and foremost, the suffering. In Die Geburt der Tragödie it is the classical tragedy and the ambiguous life preserving view that represent the object of his interest with regards to the way the suffering plays a part of the manifestation of life. I think that in some way the ambiguity of the Schwabian linguistic universe is exactly the suffering and the life display, not as counterparts, but as a double play. In this universe we find the recognition of the inevitable suffering. His unfolding of life is (through) the language; the morbid humour, the grotesque imagery. His suffering is life - to my mind an Artaud-like concept.

A crucial question remains: how can we learn to endure the suffering?
Nietzsche suggests the Greek gaiety or humour that involves the tragic notion: a life on the surface with the deepest insight in the cruelty of existence. This is the kind of humour that we find in Werner Schwab’s writing. It may even be what makes him one of the most interesting of European playwrights of the 1990s, with great relevance into the 21st century. Besides, Werner Schwab staged his own life, he created the myth about himself. This idea certainly echoes the cultural passwords of the 1990s, “staging of the self as life”. His early death only reinforces the faction.

My third and last point is conclusive and two-folded:
We tend to have a more subtextual and psychological (in other words a bourgeois) approach to current issues than this pulp comedy suggests. Thus, the jolly suffering cannot possibly be received as productive in a Norwegian context but merely as a surrealistic critique of the bourgeois society.

this article first appeared here

Merce Cunningham, who died on July 26 aged 90, was a colossus of 20th-century choreography; his career in dance, which lasted more than 60 years, began when, as a Seattle-based dance student in 1939, he was invited by Martha Graham to join her company in New York.

Although he was himself a great dancer, he would become better known as one of modern dance’s leading innovators. He wrought its transformation when he left Graham’s troupe to form his own company in collaboration with his partner and lover, the avant-garde composer John Cage.

With Cage, Cunningham arrived at a philosophy that informed his work for the rest of his life. He decided that dance need not be tied to music or story: pure movement was enough. Working with many composers (most notably Cage) and designers such as the artists Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, the only constraint he tended to offer was the length of the piece.

His dancers would learn the intricate series of steps in silence, and only at the first performance would dance, music and set meet (or collide) for the first time. He was impatient with the quest to discover meaning in art; asked what one dance was about, he answered: “It’s about 40 minutes.”

Cunningham’s approach would make him one of the greatest names in dance, but for many years he was derided. Fairly early in the life of his company, a New York reviewer wrote: “Last night Merce Cunningham presented a programme of his choreography, and if someone doesn’t stop him, he’s going to do it again tonight.”

Opinion remains divided on some of his works, and particularly on some of the musical accompaniment, which even Cunningham’s greatest fans sometimes found unhelpful. Some of his creations, particularly from the 1960s, sound sublimely pretentious when described.

In How to Pass, Kick, Fall and Run (1965), now regarded as a classic, the dance was accompanied by stories, written by John Cage, and recited (originally) by Cage and the writer David Vaughn. Sometimes the readers would speak at the same time, sometimes both were silent. “The effect was a bit like watching a playground full of children, with these two crones in the corner talking about things that were completely irrelevant,” said Cunningham.

Mercier Philip Cunningham was born on April 16 1919 at Centralia, Washington, the son of Clifford Cunningham, a lawyer of Irish descent, and Mayme Joach, a schoolteacher. His birthplace was a lumber and coal-mining town – infertile ground for an exquisite talent. But neither of his parents discouraged his interest in dance, and at the age of 12 he was sent to a local academy run by a former vaudeville performer called Mrs Barrett.

After school, Cunningham enrolled in the Cornish School for Performing and Visual Arts in Seattle. It was during his second year that he met John Cage, who played piano there. Cage, who was then married, started a percussion programme that Cunningham attended. When Cunningham had mastered one piece, Cage told him: “‘You were playing everything absolutely perfectly. Now just go a little further and make a few mistakes.’ I thought, that is a marvellous idea.”

In 1939, at the end of his second year, Cunningham attended a summer school run by the Bennington School of the Dance. He made an immediate impression on one of the tutors, Martha Graham, and he travelled to New York to join her company in the late summer. He was given a lead role in Every Soul is a Circus, which played on Broadway. Later he would dance the role of the original Preacher in Appalachian Spring.

Cunningham had already begun to devise dances, and Cage’s move to New York spurred him to break from the Graham company (”I wanted Dada, not Mama,” the dancer said). In 1944 Cage wrote the music for his and Cunningham’s first solo programme.

It was during rehearsals that they first decided that dance should be wrenched away from music. At that point they were still using a common structure for their separate choreography and compositions; later they abandoned this and made the music and dance entirely independent. By the early 1950s, Cunningham was experimenting with “chance operations”. With Suite by Chance (1952), the elements of the pieces were decided by tossing coins.

The company spent its first decade touring the United States in a Volkswagen camper van, sometimes driving 1,000 miles to stage a single performance in front of just a handful of people. The reception was not always rapturous: in Paris in 1964, when the company was beginning to tour Europe, audiences threw tomatoes and eggs, and Cunningham later recalled that people would leave in the middle of the performance to go out to buy more. With lofty certainty, he regarded such insults as a badge of honour.

But on arrival in London the Merce Cunningham Company was hailed as a sensation. The initial run at Sadler’s Wells was attended by Frederick Ashton (who told Cunningham: “You are a poet, and I like poetic ballets”), Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, and it was followed by three equally successful weeks at the Phoenix.

Cunningham was astounded: the longest run he had ever had in New York was two nights. The delight of reviewers in London was reported in the American press, and his reputation was being made. He consolidated it with such highlights as Rainforest (1968), with a set designed by Andy Warhol that consisted of giant helium-filled silver pillows.

Winterbranch was a piece based on the theme of falling, with a buzz saw soundtrack by La Monte Young; Crises had the dancers bound by giant elastic bands. And although such inventiveness might sound gimmicky, many of his works were of extraordinary delicacy, subtlety and detail.

Tirelessly innovative, in the 1970s and 1980s Cunningham worked with the video artist Charles Atlas to incorporate video technique into pieces such as Channel/Inserts (1981). He won a Laurence Olivier Award in 1985 for Best New Dance Production (Pictures), and in 1989 the French government appointed him a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur.

Cunningham remained endlessly inventive and inquisitive. Crippled by arthritis for the last 25 years of his life, he found a new way of working out movements and of demonstrating to his dancers what he wanted them to do with their bodies. He used a computerised choreography program called LifeForms, with which he could animate virtual-reality dancers by moving a cursor. He was also captivatingly, or maddeningly, elusive. “Dancing is the art of the present tense,” he once said. “I don’t think this is an intellectual matter. Like many things, it falls to pieces, ceases to exist, when subjected to intellectual scrutiny.”

Cunningham’s detractors have sometimes said that his dances are too emotionless, too detached. Even his admirers have sometimes felt that while the dance was superb, the music could be surplus to requirements, an interference. But even the discordant moments pleased him: “I think the separation of elements, of having dance, music and design created independently, when they do come together they can produce something which no one could predict. They can make something happen that hasn’t happened before.”

He continued to dance with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company into the early 1990s and was latterly its artistic director.

Merce Cunningham remained close to John Cage until the composer’s death in 1992.

first Published July 27 2009 by telegraph.co.uk

Wasteland was an American anthology-style horror comic book published by DC Comics in 1987-1989 and intended for adult readers. The series lasted 18 issues.Each issue (with the exception of the book-length final issue) consisted of three unrelated stories written by John Ostrander or Del Close (or both, in collaboration) and a team of four artists (at any given time), one of whom would illustrate the three stories in each issue, the fourth supplying that month’s cover (which had no direct connection to the interior contents). Members of the rotating crew of artists included Don Simpson, David Lloyd, William Messner-Loebs and Timothy Truman. One special issue included only the artwork of Joe Orlando.

For the most part, the series avoided the sort of gory shock associated with the twist ending horror comics typified byTales from the Crypt and The Twilight Zone television series in favor of more unpredictable and ambivalent stories. The themes of alienation and psychological dread often occurred, mixed with grotesque black humor, absurdism and social and political commentary in the form of satire.

The stories did not take place in the DC Universe and no established DC characters appeared within its stories. The only exceptions came in a story entitled “Crossover” in which a few DC characters (and another of Ostrander’s creations, GrimJack) appeared in a metafictional context and in the series’ final issue, in which the entire run of the series (including “Crossover”) was “rewound” to the beginning of the very first story.

Rather, the stories tended to take place in the real world. One story portrayed the death of H. P. Lovecraft. Another pastiched the autobiographical comics series American Splendor by Harvey Pekar, with Don Simpson imitating the drawing style of Robert Crumb. This story portrayed a thinly-guised version of Pekar in one of his acrimonious appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in which Pekar had denounced General Electric. Typically, Wasteland both included political content in the story (GE, by that time, also indirectly owned DC Comics as well) and also turned it into a fable about self-loathing and anxiety.

Almost every issue of Wasteland portrayed, in exaggerated fashion, vignettes taken from the colorful life of Wasteland co-writer Del Close. In one of these stories, Close is voluntarily hypnotized by L. Ron Hubbard and is present when Hubbard comes up with the notion of turning Hubbard’s Dianetics into the “religion” of Scientology. Close also openly discussed in his stories such other controversial topics as his own drug use and his involvement with witchcraft as a religion.

Wasteland was noted for the lively debates that took place within its letter columns. (wikipedia)

Also included as characters were Robert Anton Wilson, Timothy Leary and G. Gordon Liddy and Philp K. Dick.

hey aryan,

i just received a call from The Greatest. he said he heard about the zakes mda - stephen grey’s skirmish, and he called an immediate press conference. According to reliable sources, this is what he said to the journalists:

steve’s tactics was hit-and-run
he got a black eye in one

his words were slimy like glue
his face was swollen in two

gray thought him smarter than z
he threw the towel in three!

muhammad ali, “The First Heavy Weight Champion of Rap”

6th National Oral History Conference
Cape Town 13-16 October 2009
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Conference theme
Over the past few years, the Oral History Association of South Africa and National Archives and Record Services of South Africa (Department of Arts
and Culture) have convened a number of conferences, which provided a platform for discussions and debates regarding the role and position of oral history in South Africa. Previously conferences have explored a number of themes ranging from “Culture, Memory and Trauma” and “Truth, Legitimacy and Representation: Oral History and Alternative Voices” to “Hidden Voices, Untold Stories and Veiled Memories”.

This year we would like to carve out a space to critically reflect on the process of collecting voices and politics associated with this endeavour since 1994.
There are various aspects of ‘collecting voice/s’; visual, aural, textual – with the attendant dilemmas and complexities. It is hoped that this conference will offer an opportunity to tease out these dilemmas and complexities through constructive discussions and debates.

Some general questions the conference seeks to consider include:
• Archiving – accessibility, dissemination, product development (how not to colonise voices…)

• Language – the role and use of language and translation in the process of transcription

• ‘Testimony fever’ - what happens when you freeze the living voice?

• What is at stake in the drive to collect stories before people pass on?

• How has post-1994 legislation impacted on how oral history work is done? Has oral history become too popularised? Are oral histories and voices being
colonised by institutions in the quest for uncovering hidden histories?

• Teaching oral history – the place of oral history in schools

• The relationship between orality and literacy

• Oral history and social cohesion as a tool for nation-building? Are life histories representative?

• Oral history and human rights / social justice? Interviewing after atrocity. The relationship between testimony and data or evidence

• Are there spaces for different approaches to oral history?

You will note that the issue of ethics has not been formulated as a separate topic because ethical issues are part of all aspects of oral history work so to separate ethics out as distinct would create a superficial divide. Also note that these possible discussion topics are mostly framed as questions. This too is deliberate and it is hoped that this spirit of questioning will set the tone for a conference of learning and sharing from and with one another.

Format of contributions
We welcome a range of contributions – including academic papers, case studies, field notes, praise poems, posters, film clips. Contributions must be based on
original work and have a clear focus on oral history.

If you are interested in making a contribution, please send us a short proposal including:

1. an abstract or description of your contribution (100-300 words)
2. a short biography of yourself and/or your organisation (50-100 words)
3. your contact information (name and surname, affiliation, postal address, email address, phone and fax numbers)

The duration of presentation will not exceed twenty (20) minutes and this will be followed by ten (10) minutes for discussion

Deadline for proposals/abstracts is 12 July 2009

The conference organizing committee will confirm acceptance or rejection of your proposal by 20 July 2009. Complete contributions will need to be submitted by 21 August so as to allow for the compilation of the conference readers.

Send proposal to:
Natalie Jaynes – njaynes@ijr.org.za, or
Nkhumbudzeni Tshirado - Ntshirado@pgwc.gov.za

Prophet Bonginkosi Ngwato is in jail in Mozambique. He is one of four men arrested on charges of terrorism and sabotage. His mother knew something was wrong, when she started having bad dreams, long before she knew about his troubles. Two days before I got the news that Prophet was arrested in Mozambique, for throwing ‘rainmaking objects’ into the Cahora Basa Dam, I received a phone call from her. I could feel that familiar sighing that mother’s do when they want you to feel their words. “Where is my son? I cannot sleep at night, I keep having bad dreams about him.” She told me, expecting me to lift the weight of her worry by saying that he was with me, or something like that. She knew that he had gone on a trip to Zambezi with some people but she did not understand what he was going to do there. I assured her that Bonginkosi would be fine. He was traveling with a good man, Dr George Richl on a mission to save the African environment by making the rains fall. “What kind of rains?” she asked me. I fumbled with my thoughts, because even now I cannot explain that PROPHET left with a well-intentioned man who uses crystals to radiate positive energy. I could not explain orgon energy. I am sure PROPHET struggled to explain Orgon energy to her before he left. I just kept telling her that it was about making rain. “But how do they do this?” she pressed me, obviously expecting me to know more about this movement called ORGONISE AFRICA. “Don’t worry. I said, George Richl, is a good guy. I met him, he travelled with me and PROPHET to go and see the great Credo Mutwa. Hey, and Credo Mutwa also knew the guy.”Something in her sighs told me was not convinced. “My dreams are troubling me, please find my son.” she said before the phone went dead, just as was still explaining that she too has the gift of prophecy.

keep reading here

aryan

here in mexico we are in the grips of an iron clad INFLUENCIA coming from the government and the mass media putting many into panic mode and wearing face masks in the street
nobody can see…15 deaths in one month in a country of 120million does not an epidemic make…
whats happening is more like a chapter in naomi kleins book the shock doctrine…

saludos
st

Bush Cheney/ Nuremburg

The new, proposed graffiti by-law criminalizes all forms of public art and violates our personal right to freedom of expression on private property. It makes no distinction between vandalism and public art that is done with the permission of the owner of the property.

The by-law will soon be presented for public discussion and these are the two main issues that we feel need to be addressed:

1. The definition of ‘graffiti’ under the by-law is too broad. It classifies ‘graffiti’ as any inscription, word, figure, letter, sign, symbol, sketch, picture or drawing. There should be a clear differentiation between ‘graffiti vandalism’ [e.g. gang tags, scratchings] and public art that is done with permission from the owner [murals, colourful characters and positive, inspiring messages].

2. The by- law removes the legal right of the private property owner to paint anything other than a house number on his/her wall. We strongly believe that the private property owner should maintain the right to determine what to paint on to his/her property without permission from the City.

If you agree with these two amendments to the Graffiti By-law, please sign this petition.

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/art4all/

It’s cast as a veritable war zone but aren’t there other dimensions to this city, asks Mary Corrigall

THOSE who never leave Joburg are those who can’t. Cast as a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, riddled by crime, corruption and moral decay, why would anyone want to inhabit this treacherous locale? Or such are the popular perceptions of this illustrious African conurbation.

Durban is pegged as a tropical surfer’s paradise and Cape Town summons images of a hippy existence. But Joburg, well, Joburg’s a veritable war zone: a fast-paced and dangerous metropolis that crushes the weak and the vulnerable. On days when the blood of the innocent or defenceless is carelessly spilled, its bad reputation seems justified. But cities are by their nature multilayered and complex entities with intricate personalities that defy superficial labels.

Certainly, Joburg has many dimensions, yet its dangerous persona has come to dominate how it is perceived, and not just by outsiders; even its most steadfast denizens hold this one-dimensional picture of Joburg to be true. In fact, it is with a certain sense of pride that many a Joburger boasts of the city’s less desirable attributes, publishing to the world that this is the most hazardous city on the globe.

It’s not just that they want the world to learn of their tribulations but to reflect on their stamina and/or determination to survive at any cost. The result, however, is that Joburg has become a mythologised locale, and for outsiders it has become emblematic of the quintessential corrupt, failed African city.

“You could tell your mother you were going on a package holiday to Kabul, with a stopover in Haiti and Detroit, and she wouldn’t bat an eyelid. But tell her you’re going to Joburg and she’ll be absolutely convinced that you’ll come home with no wallet, no watch and no head,” TV personality and journalist Jeremy Clarkson wrote recently in the British Sunday Times.

Surprisingly, Clarkson wasn’t put off coming to Joburg and after a brief sojourn he reported that it wasn’t half as dangerous as he expected. The Joburg that Clarkson saw to-and-fro from his swanky hotel room wasn’t quite the same slice of Joburg that most locals encounter. So predictably Clarkson’s article caused a furore as it passed through e-mail inboxes around the city.

Clarkson’s glib and light-hearted article underplayed some of the harsh realities that Joburgers regularly encounter, but revealed a curious fact: it seems that Joburgers are determined to preserve a one-dimensional view of their city. Stephen Hobbs is a committed Joburger in the sense that he not only believes that the city is ascending but has chosen to play an active role in guaranteeing that his conviction is realised.

As an artist and partner in Trinity Session, a company that manages art projects around Joburg, he has been in the ideal position to engage with and challenge negative views about the city. He suggests that pessimistic perceptions of Joburg have been predominantly propagated by the white middle-class – particularly those who have sought refuge in supposedly greener pastures. “They have a tendency to over-exaggerate conditions in South Africa and in Joburg to justify their leaving, that their leaving the country is predicated on fact,” he says.

Ivor Chipkin, a chief research specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council, who has made a comprehensive study of the literature on Joburg, believes that many white middle-class people are nostalgic about the Joburg they knew in the ’60s and ’70s, and their negative outlook on the city is centred on the reality that their old stomping ground in Hillbrow has changed dramatically.

“White middle-class people talk about Hillbrow of the past when it had a vibrant club scene and those people felt like they could participate in the real life of the city. “Now they don’t feel that they can do that and there is this deep sense of real loss. They have lost the places they grew up in. This bohemian multi-cultural space has been turned into a horrifying, violent place.”

Proof of such attitudes can be found on YouTube, where a number of videos document the demise of Hillbrow, inferring that it signalled that Joburg, too, was in a state of decline.One such video is called The Life and Death of Joburg. Footage of buildings in Hillbrow in a state of disrepair is shown, as are images of rubbish-strewn streets. A plethora of messages from visitors articulates disillusionment and fear.

“I lived in a block of flats in Charlton Terrace across from the Ponte and Ellis Park. I used to walk to the Doors night club. I used to walk to Rockey St. Now I am scared to drive,” reads one such message.

The degeneration of the inner city is clearly not incidental to the idea of Joburg as a dangerous destination. The inner city represents the heart and soul of a city; it embodies a city’s personality and it is where its success is measured. Once the inner city is seen to disintegrate, it gives root to the idea that the city’s core character has been corrupted.

The numerous books and academic papers that have been written about Joburg over the last decade give credence to this idea. Chipkin’s study of the literature on Joburg in 2005 showed that discourses are centred on the degeneration of the inner city, which is said to have begun around the late ’80s when there was an influx of black South Africans looking to escape the violent upheavals in the townships. Chipkin found, however, that the collapse of the inner city wasn’t simply about the changing racial profile of its inhabitants but that other types of demands, such as more parking facilities and modern buildings, spurred an exodus from the city, eventually contributing to its decline.

“The inner city certainly has experienced a long period of decline and crime has been part of the story, especially in specific areas like the Park Station precinct,” confirms Lael Bethlehem, chief executive of the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA), the company charged with managing regeneration programmes in the city.

“There was a sense that the city had undergone a social and psychological decay. The lower income population replaced the upper middle classes, bringing different values to the city, and this has accelerated perceptions that the city is full of crime and people live in fear of their lives,” observes Hobbs. Physically altering the city is one way of shifting attitudes about Joburg. A plethora of regeneration programmes aimed at uplifting the inner city have been in full swing for some time, giving rise to talk that the city is on the ascent.

“The last three or four years have seen sustained improvements including a better security climate. We are beginning to take back the streets and formerly slummed buildings through sustained investment by both the private and public sectors,” says Bethlehem.

“Large-scale regeneration pro-cesses, like the one we are experiencing in the inner city, create the opportunity to rewrite the story of the place.”

Though the JDA’s efforts have produced startling results, with parts of the inner city being fully revitalised and parading a clean and modern façade, the myth about Joburg as a dangerous place persists.

Hobbs suggests that it is only through physical encounters with the inner city that Joburgers’ attitudes will change. “It’s a psychological perception that can only be altered by confronting reality.”

Physically altering the city’s exteriors is only part of the solution; it doesn’t tackle the social problems that fuel crime, homelessness and public disruption.
“You can upgrade the urban environment to enhance the user’s experience of the city but for some users this doesn’t address his needs; why should a user give a damn about a better bus shelter or nicer urban furniture when his immediate needs aren’t being addressed,” asks Hobbs.

Joburg has always had a dodgy reputation, says Nechama Brodie, author of The Joburg Book. “A hundred or 120 years ago Joburg was exactly the same. When you read old newspaper reports you find stories about someone who got murdered while out on walk through the veld on a Sunday.”

Harsh conditions on the mines and dire living in a makeshift city in a dry, hot climate not only tested the character of its first inhabitants but instilled an advanced appetite for booze and loose women. A couple of years into Joburg’s inception there were as many as 400 bars, according to Brodie. This all contributed to Joburg being labelled as a place of ill-repute and danger, she suggests.

Despite these negative connotations, Joburg has also been associated with wealth and affluence; a destination that delivers riches to those with determination and a penchant for risk. It is this aspect of the city that has attracted people from all over the country and the continent.

“People just keep coming and keep coming here. It is a city of self-made people who have made something out of nothing,” says Brodie.

In a city that is continuously trying to cope with a growing influx of people it is only natural that there is friction and malice, infers Brodie. It is just such realities that have fed the myth of Joburg as being a precarious place to live.

Adrian Loveland, a filmmaker whose pop-documentary on Joburg, Unhinged: Surviving Joburg will be released in cinemas soon, suggests it is no myth that Joburg is a harsh place to live. But he doesn’t see it as being any more or less harsh than other major cities in the country. It seems apparent that the country’s woes have come to rest squarely on Joburg’s shoulders. “What goes on in Joburg happens everywhere in the country. The murder rate is higher in Cape Town. I think Joburg highlights the state of the rest of the country,” says Loveland.

Locally produced films such as Tsotsi (2005) and more recently, Jerusalema (2008), which are both set in Joburg and feature the city’s grittier side, perpetuate stereotypical notions of this city as being a hub of crime and destruction. Both films also promote the idea that this dysfunctional city produces damaged people.
The promo for Loveland’s movie advances the idea that Joburg has been “misunderstood” and that the film aims to clear up misconceptions.

Loveland is personally invested in the film’s objective, not just because he is a Joburger but because he is trying to get a handle on his love-hate connection to Joburg. He decided to make the movie after a friend was killed during a hijack and his mother was hijacked. These traumatic incidents compelled Loveland to reconsider Joburg and come to terms with all its facets.

“The movie was born from chaos; I felt all over the place. I was up about Joburg one day and down about it the next, wanting to leave. With the movie I wanted to pose the question: is Joburg like Sodom and Gomorrah or is it a city that can enjoy a place on the global stage?”

Johannesburg City Council is certainly hoping the latter will prove accurate as it has been actively involved in attempting to create a new perception: that of a world-class city.

“According to this plan, by 2030 international corporates will have been enticed out of the cushy New York, London or Tokyo offices into safe, middle-income, wide-bandwith Johannesburg. Our economy will lie firmly in a globally competitive service sector and the city’s poor will have migrated to ‘lower costs centres’ to where the manufacturing sector will have relocated,” observes Lindsay Bremner in Johannesburg: One City, Colliding Worlds (2004).

Chipkin sees merit in casting Joburg as a capitalist metropolis. “By looking at the way people dress, the music they listen to, the places where they eat and go out, the way that they display themselves, it is possible to understand how Johannesburg, and with it Africa, is like the rest of the world.”

However, Chipkin suggests that emphasising its commercial potential over the social and economic structures that sustain it underplays the manner in which poverty, class and race continue to have an impact on the character of the city and the experiences of its inhabitants.

Bethlehem says: “To me the notion of ‘world-class’ means that we aspire to be on par with any great city. But we are not trying to create something bland or generic. We need to rebuild Johannesburg as a premier African city, rooted in South African life and reflecting the energy and vibrancy of this incredible place.”
Hobbs adds: “When we think of 2010, Gautrain and the Bus Rapid Transit system being set up now, we can start to understand that there is a degree of validity to the ambition that by 2030 Joburg will be a world-class city. All of it is hyperbole so one has to keep oneself in check, but it’s a changing urban environment and I think that instead of holding on to old myths we should be engaging with life here and be part of solving the problem.”

A number of South Africans are actively trying to shatter stereotypical notions about Joburg. In a video titled The death of Johannesburg, a local YouTube user tries to dispel the myth that Joburg is in decline by comparing footage shot on the same corner of an inner city street in 2006 and 2008.

The 2008 incarnation of this average street shows great improvement; the shop on the corner has been given a facelift. Other footage shows pedestrians walking through public spaces in the inner city. Text appears on the screen asking: “Do they look terrified?” The video concludes with the slogan: “the death of the death of Johannesburg” – in other words, it’s time to extinguish the idea that Joburg is a city in decline.

But it’s not just on YouTube that one finds calls to reappraise the city. Blogs such as “the Real Joburg (realjohannesburg.blogspot.com) have been established to “relay the truth to the general public”. Such phrases create the impression that it is ignorance that feeds the idea of Joburg as a “failed city”.

In 2007 Hobbs and his artistic collaborator, Marcus Neustetter, charged into Hillbrow on foot with a number of Joburgers in tow. It was the culmination of an art project designed to integrate themselves with this part of the city and engage with the politics of space.

Hobbs discovered that “you can actually cross over into deep dark and dangerous Hillbrow and meet and learn about each other and actually enjoy a meaningful exchange with someone.

If you don’t do that kind of stuff then not only are you keeping the myths alive but you are cutting yourself off from the greatest potential that this city has to offer.”

Sunday 15 March 2009 – 6:15pm & 8:30pm – R25

@ The Labia Theatre, Lifestyle On Kloof Centre, Kloof Street, Gardens, Cape Town

ZEITGEIST: ADDENDUM

Follow-up to the highly talked-about, award winning documentary

ZEITGEIST: THE MOVIE

‘Zeitgeist, The Movie’ and ‘Zeitgeist: Addendum’ were created to communicate highly important social understandings which most humans are generally not aware of.

The first film focuses on suppressed historical & modern information about currently dominant social institutions, while also exploring what could be in store for humanity if the power structures at large continue their patterns of self-interest, corruption, and consolidation.

The second film, Zeitgeist: Addendum, attempts to locate the root causes of this pervasive social corruption, while offering a solution. This solution is not based on politics, morality, laws, or any other “establishment” notions of human affairs, but rather on a modern, non-superstitious based understanding of what we are and how we align with nature, to which we are a part. The work advocates a new social system which is updated to present day knowledge, highly influenced by the life long work of Jacque Fresco and The Venus Project.

Z-DAY is a global event with participants around the world raising awareness by screening the Zeitgeist movies.

Booking essential: 021 424 5927

RSVP at the Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=68424974424

Join the Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8485859117

For more info and updates on forthcoming screenings of both ZEITGEIST: THE MOVIE and ZEITGEIST: ADDENDUM, check out: www.flamedrop.com/cinemania

Official Zeitgeist website: www.zeitgeistmovie.com

Migrate is an evolving and creatively rich publication targeted primarily at creatives in all areas of brand communication. It provides content that is engaging and informative, creatively inspiring and sometimes funny.

Migrate is issued twice a year and 5,000 copies are printed per issue. The target audience is creative staff in agencies, design studios and all brand communication companies.

Issue 09 will come out in May 2009. Please contact our offices for advertising rates and contributor information.

ADVERTISING INFORMATION
Advertising contact: Katherine McEwan, katherine@theloerieawards.co.za, 011 326 0304

EDITORIAL CONTACTS
Please send all enquiries to:
Editor: Andrew Human, andrew@theloerieawards.co.za, 011 326 0304
Creative Director (Submissions): Roanna Williams, williams01@telkomsa.net

DEADLINES
Advertising & Editorial content: 20 March 2009

Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements exemplifying Bruce Mau’s beliefs, strategies and motivations.

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ____________________. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late.Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk.You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”

28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’

31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

http://www.brucemaudesign.com/manifesto.html