subtruth

For a while anyway:

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Let’s celebrate Christianity’s most famous hijacking with an improbable rendition of Little Drummer Boy by Cold Meat Industry‘s hippie on duty Coph Nia:

This made my meat all warm.

In many ways, today was a Russian day in the Queendom of Subtruth – or rather a Soviet one. Most impressive among all this (pseudo-)commie stuff was this poster:

According to your favorite picture book, this is the Common Evil Counterrevolutionary Saboteur trying to grab your tovaritch girlfriend’s generous tits do counterrevolutionary things — but lo! Here falls the Государственное Политическое Управление‘s lightning, frying his brainz into political neutering with an orthodox vengeance and just in time. Which would have been fine, if the GPU really did that instead of sending scores of intelligent, devoted-to-the-idea people into work camps.

From the Holy Ghost to Soviet allegories, propaganda has a habit of striking from the sky, abusing some deep rooted Newtonian trauma about things falling on our heads (think of Astérix’s only fear!). Still, what would be today’s equivalent? Julian Assange struck by a particle cannon? That other VHS Santa who’s been dead for years hellfired? Sorry, but – once again – the Past is sexier.

Take me back to what I don’t know!

By the way: Beria killed Stalin, for fun. And yes, I’m using HTTPS for most of my linking because I am a post-net-neutrality paranoid. But it is good for you, my ducklings!

edit: more punishment thank to airborne taser.

While not exactly a machine/material fetishist, I’m loving this story from wired.com about the DC-3 turning 75.

Doesn’t it look like a friendly bumblebee? There was one based at the airfield of my native city and I used to marvel at it as a kid (and even later). From the comments to Wired’s story:

You may not be flying really fast, but I’d take one of these through any kind of bad weather. It’s the airplane equivalent of a tank.

The 20th century’s most likeable plane.

edit: to file under both “my fact of the day” and “stuff we were not taught about at school” : the Yugoslav Air Force shot down several C-47 (the military version of the DC-3) at the end of World War II, in a blatant provocation against both the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. Tito, you punk!

This is too awesome/witty/to the point/etc. not to be reposted. TIME & co. could learn from those guys.

TIME‘s decision to choose an overrated, overexposed, uninspiring thief as Person Of The Year is telling of the state of traditional media. We may be all doomed and guilty about it, but didn’t we deserve better? Also, if you shun the Internet’s sexy villain and obvious contender, try at least to be a bit creative – or less occidental-centric: with the exception (?) of Vladimir Putin, this has not been the case since 1993.

We are living the dusk of Old Media. It could have adapted but it is willingly pulling its own plug instead. It will dissapear in its own irrelevance/self-reference, arrogant and probably unregretted.

Or is it not too late?

edit: see the comments at the bottom of this page for some tough love from the Interwebnetz.

The daring Berliner KW Institute for Contemporary Art presents the enigmatic Meir Eshel aka Absalon until 20 February 2011. The most impressive floor is the first one, where Absalon’s most accomplished works stand: his 6 Cellules (Prototypes) are like living spaces squeezed to the very minimal spatial requirements – none exceeds 8 square meters. Claustrophiles, rejoice! But don’t think this is meant to help you live a happy isolation: Absalon, otherwise not much of a talker, saw them as intrinsically urban and as a way of “living the social”. He originally planned to install them in six big cities and actually live in them. Their economy of space forces you to adapt to an economy of movement. What would this mean for your mind and thus for your relation to the others (= the city)? Is reducing to the core a way to reach social purity?

On the other hand, with all this crampedness and extreme functional reduction, it is hard not to think of the bunkers of his native Israel or of an experience in hardcore Bauhaus gone wrong. Is it a cynical critic of the hostage-taking of architecture that is dictating to us all the dichotomy of in/out, as the spatial branch of authoritarian social conventions? Or, more broadly, an offensive against the spatial dimension altogether? I would be inclined to favour the latter, as I also see it in the video Bataille, featuring the artist in a desperate fight against invisible enemies in an invisible perimeter – or against the perimeter as enemy. Absalon, an exemplary soldier who quitted his military instruction one year before its official end to build a hut by the sea and read Nietzsche certainly had some demons to tame and seemed to have found his way, literally a constructive revolt. He died with 28 and unaccomplished but thought-provoking works. Space has won this battle.

There is not much biographical information about Absalon online, as far as I can quickly search. The usual Wikipedia articles are but mere listing of his works. This page from the Centre Pompidou has some bits and pieces, but it is obviously in the sexy language. No, not Hebrew, the other one.