abril 2020
¡hola, difus@s!
before our performing arts and cinemas closed, i did catch some a bit of dance (good), music (promising), and theater (enjoyable). with the cultural calendar, like all else, on hold, this double issue is, well, a bit different...
yes, the temporary shuttering of our museums and galleries and darkening of our stages and cinemas should give us all a chance to reflect on the importance of art and public space, but we should also be thinking about much larger, more politically urgent issues: the broken state of our health system, the irresponsibility (and incompetence) of our politicians, the inequality of our economy. though i ardently hope that this pandemic will catalyze positive change, recent responses to such moments of rupture, whether local or global, have me, at best, a bit tentative...especially as neoliberalism's sacrificial logic and abject cruelty are being more perversely (and, as such, more honestly) articulated.
this month's suggestions (recategorized by modes of at-home engagement) are admittedly not very escapist. yes, we need hope, but not the cruel optimism parading as hope proffered by influencers and other celebrities-banalities over social media—despite social media's much-hyped current benefits, they morbidly distort our relationship to time, especially other's time, and remain both egregiously predatory business models and anti-democratic political forces. nor do we need the mendacity of hope once peddled by the obamas. we need real hope, hope that manifests itself in decisive action*, hope that confronts, withstands, and ultimately transforms our world.
organizing: having now had a little time to process and adjust, we should all be thinking about how we can promote much-needed change. some ways to start include donating to relief efforts (whether international or local) and agitating for appropriate stimulus / relief (not like 2008) and labor reforms to protect truly essential services and workers. as we emerge our isolation, we should all get involved in local government (at the very least, show up to a meeting or two!) and, above all, find ways to engage in forms of community not built on consumption or funded by advertising. (thanks to curbed for this excellent list!)
watching: some of the best film i saw last month (which is also some of the best i've seen in the last six months) is available for streaming now: sorry we missed you (which is ESSENTIAL viewing right now, along with i, daniel blake), bacurau, and portrait of a lady on fire. i'm delighted never rarely sometimes always is already available because it opened just as the cinemas were closing. to the greatest extent possible, i'm trying to channel my home viewing through my favorite cinemas (anthology, film forum, film at lincoln center, museum of the moving image), thanks in part to kino lorber's marquee platform. and i'm quite curious about means tv (as an alternative streaming model) and marquee tv (for its performing arts content). i'd also like to (re)watch some thematically related films as in-home mini-festivals: on democracy and economy (the edge of democracy, inequality for all, capitalism, hypernormalisation, american factory, and capitalism in the twenty-first century), on education (starving the beast, ivory tower, college, inc., approaching the elephant, 'waiting for superman,' race to nowhere), on philosophy (derrida, the ister, zizek!, wittgenstein), and, sure, on plague (united in anger: a history of act up, how to survive a plague, the forgotten plague, the great plague).**
reading: there's so much great material available on line, but the exponential increase in my screen time has me craving print time. philip mirowski's never let a crisis go to waste: how neoliberalism survived the financial meltdown feels particularly important for understanding how and why the transformative potential of our last major (acute) global crisis was squandered—and how we can avoiding making the same mistakes now. in that vein, michel foucault's "society must be defended," paul virno's the administration of fear, george monbiot's how did we get into this mess? and out of the wreckage, and rutger bregman's utopia for realists and how we can get there are high on my reading list. i'm also quite eager to read mirowski's the knowledge we have lost in information, as well as several critiques of social media: richard seymour's the twittering machine, laurence scott's the four-dimensional human, geert lovink's sad by design: on platform nihilism, and siva vaidhyanthan's anti-social media: how facebook disconnects us and undermines democracy. as for fiction, i want to dig into rafael chirbes' on the edge, followed by cyclonopedia: complicity with anonymous materials (which has been languishing on my bookshelf for far too long) and waiting for the barbarians (because i'd like to re-read it before watching the recent film version).
listening: i still prefer humans to algorithms, so new sounds, kexp, and kcrw electic 24 are my go-to's for streaming music. my taste in podcasts is equally retro (probably because it was formed on an ipod in 2006), so i tend more towards regular programs and feature series / serials (except for bbc 4's "a brief history of mathematics"). currently, my favorite podcast is rne3's "efecto doppler" (apologies to the non-spanish speakers, but this podcast is EVERYTHING i want in an hour of audio programming...). others that i cycle through on a weekly basis include "99% invisible," "the world next week," "the art angle," the art newspaper's podcast, "siglo 21," and the economist's "editor's picks" and "the intelligence," which i try and balance out with current affairs.
abrazos,
p
* while i am sympathetic to much of harari's argument, he does (irresponsibly? disingenuously?) bracket the tendency for "global solidarity" to manifest as "multinational corporatism" in our current socioeconomic order.
abril / april + mayo / may
[en blanco / blank]
