artШПИОНКА

the iron curtain as art /or/ a double agent stalking & mocking the cultural intelligensia of New York and Russia
June 15

i need a little interpretation pleeease

katherinemarie:

i had a dream that we were driving a car with all flat tires

then we were on a cruiseliner around alaska

then i bought an iphone!!!! (it was sad to wake up and know that wasn’t true)

what does it all mean?

Weird.  I don’t even know katherinemarie and I don’t actually remember why I’m following her, so this is weird and stalker-y .  But I woke up this morning and wrote the following, which is kind of crazily aligned with her dream description: 

newt gingrich was on the o’reilly factor on fox news last night.  he made a power play, pubically advising john mccain to encourage obama to leave the campaign trail, return to the senate, and pass legislation that would allow new oil drilling sites in America.  it was framed as a national security issue: unless we reduce our dependence on foreign oil, America would continue to be entrenched in a fight for territory and control in the middle east.  And, in a way, he was right.  Russia was back on the international stage, busily gutting the vast Siberian landscape, and sucking oil profits straight into Moscow pockets.  and here we were in New york, pretending that it wasn’t our own fellow citizens who were sacrificing their environment to support our oil-driven lifestyle (or, as it were, Alaskan pipelines simultaneously ruining the environment & supporting college education), or, what Kurt Vonnegut, bless his soul, had called one hundred years of thermodynamic whoopee on the part of our society.  will obama compromise on this issue?  it seems likely.
but more so, there seems to be a mismatch between the promise of technology and what it had delivered.  since the industrial revolution, people have been led to believe that technology would allow us to lead increasingly easy lives: not just ‘sustainable,’ but actually getting easier every year.  electricity seemed to make this possible.  but, as demand goes up, and fossil fuels become an increasingly scarce commodity, the average citizen was disappointed by the calls of environmentalists to reduce their carbon footprint.  i NEED my airconditioner on as i sit writing this.  my cousin NEEDS to take a two week vacation with her husband and young child in their very large automobile.  if we are being asked to sacrifice, why has technology not provided me with viable alternatives? 
this was the year that the ‘green’ movement swept new york city with a chic new airbrushed tan.  “i’m not a plastic bag” was a weapon of fashion; elle magazine published its “first ever green issue!!”; a young manhattan couple attempted to survive with zero carbon footprint (though they accepted gifts, used their heat, and still went to work) and got a nytimes spread and a book deal out of it; the city seems to be waking up to the idea that there is some imperative to change for the green, but that it will have to be very sexy for the American consumer to buy it (we have iphones, for crissake!!! how could you ask us to give up our iphones and compost our egg shells??)…  
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Clintonism IS an ISM

thank you, David Sirota.  Can’t wait to read the new book <a href=”http://www.davidsirota.com/uprising/”>”The Uprising”</a>.  Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.
June 11
Japan: URL's Are Totally Out

danciti:

“Within minutes of riding on the first trains in Japan, I notice a significant change in advertising, from train to television. The trend? No more printed URL’s. The replacement? Search boxes, with recommended search terms!”

“It makes sense, right? All the good domain names are gone. Getting people to a specific page in a big site is difficult (who’s going to write down anything after the first slash?). And, most tellingly, I see increasingly more users already inadvertently put complete domain names like “gmail” and “netflix” into the Search box of their browsers out of habit — and it doesn’t even register that Google pops up and they have to click to get to their destination.”
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“ Great cities attract ambitious people. You can sense it when you walk around one. In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you could do more; you should try harder. The surprising thing is how different these messages can be. New York tells you, above all: you should make more money.


-Paul Graham in “Cities and Ambition” (via danciti)

First of all- great quote; oh, how I have bemoaned the inherent pressure to earn, earn, earn in this city… not to mention the insanity of attempting to earn for your art, which is where danciti ultimately carries this quote.

Which brings me to my second point: Friday night, come check out The Raw and The Cooked, Tatyana Tenenbaum’s monthly improv and performance night at The Tank (239 Church, any train to Canal).  Madame Kraushaar and I will debuting a new performance piece, that speaks to creativity as commodity production.  Rad.

AND, the latest news from Russia: CEC is hosting a  group of contemporary dance choreographers this July.  They’ll be in NYC after two weeks at the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC (that’s right, ArtSpy is heading to ADF— NC, here I come!!), with a performance at the Baryshinkov Art Center on July 10th.   Stay tuned for more about what happens when Russians dance like Americans.
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“

It still amazes me that someone who has

-United States Senator

-Illinois State Senator

-University of Chicago Law Professor, and

-Editor of the Harvard Law Review

on his resume still has it called “slim” as though he just finished up a stint temping in a mail room of an accounting firm in Topeka.

And at 46, he’s called “young.” He’ll take office older than both Jack Kennedy and Bill Clinton.

 <a href=”http://letters.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/06/11/keillor/permalink/05280742161c4a0abfec7fd397a49498.html”>A comment that gets right to the undercuts in Garrison Keillor’s psuedo-endorsement of Obama</a>
May 31

i want a pet polar bear!

i say, pet polar bears + minnesota= awesome 

katherinemarie:

several years ago my good friend chris polley and i were taking the city bus from the univ of mn campus to our house. it was cold and maybe snowy (maybe it was just rain?) any way due to public transportation problems we were stranded many blocks from our house.

on the cold and snowy (or maybe it was just wet) walk home we discussed how much cooler it would be if we had pet bears (this is why i think it was snowy, polar bears … ) that could come and pick us up from the bus stop. we also thought they’d be fun to have around for many reasons.

last night during lost (for those of you who watched it the old fashioned way, live and full and commercials) there was a commercial for some polar bear foundation that was built on the premise that many people would like to have polar bears as pets.

chris and i are so ahead of the game on this one.

(i wanted to link a video of it but couldn’t find one)

May 29
“ But what would be the purpose of a blog for our organization?

Says my colleague today when I try to explain for the umpteenth time that an edited blog of solicited writing would make CEC ArtsLink’s website more dynamic and interesting.  I even employed the example of the Words Without Borders blog.  

“Who would read it?”  

[It would be an excellent forum for us to incorporate the voices of our program participants and the people that we work with through our network of artists, without getting bogged down in the details of producing a print publication.”] 

And, most charmingly,

“Who would be blogmaster?  I don’t think we have money in our budget to hire a blogmaster.  Maybe we should ask our web programmer.” 

Believe it or not, there’s a real, live blogger standing right in front of you.

May 23
Let's be good amerikans and use demographic terms to pretend that heterogenous group are actually united voting blocks

Again, must we make elections a polarizing process?
Somehow I don’t think that’s the message of Obama’s campaign…
May 22
wheeeee!!!!

wheeeee!!!!

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Nescafe - любимый кофе миллионов россиян... THE FAVORITE COFFEE OF MILLIONS OF RUSSIANS

alexuss:



Морозным зимним утром кофе NESCAFE® CLASSIC разбудит Вас и зарядит оптимизмом на целый день!

 ”On a frozen winter morning NesCafe Classic will rouse you from your bed and bestow a sense of optimism for your entire day!”

I’m sorry, I know it’s not longer winter in the northern hemisphere, but I just had to comment: “NesCafe” really is synonymous with the word “coffee” in Russia (and probably anywhere else as yet unconquered by Starbucks beside, oh, Italy).  It’s pretty funny when you’ve got jet lag in Irkutsk, and the only place that serves espresso in town is a ritzy bistro that has a dress code.  It’s pretty funny, also, in terms of elucidating the nature of addiction, when you find yourself back in the US 8 months later, smitten with a NesCafe jar on the supermarket shelf.  Let me tell you, that jar lasted forever, quaint though it was.  Turns out freeze-dried coffee is great for milkshakes.  Yeah… in the end I left it in the cupboard when I moved out of my old apartment.  

 But, GOD SAVE THE NESCAFE BRAND, disgusting to cosmopolitan Americans as it may be!!