"Cultural experts are puzzled. None of them can explain why the trend has caught on. It’s just one of those things. They do, however, give the impression that if you don’t learn all about the new trend as quickly as possible, you’ll be in the minority."
"Digital cameras let us do away with whatever we decide is not quite right, and so delete the mishaps that not too often but once in a blue moon creep onto film and that we appreciate only later as accidental masterpieces. In fact, the new technology may be not more convenient but less than Polaroid instant film cameras were, considering the printers and wires and other electronic gadgets now required, but at this one thing, the act of destruction, a source of unthinking popularity in our era of forgetfulness and extreme makeovers, digital performs all too well. Polaroids, reflecting our imperfectability, reminded us by contrast of our humanity."Read the full article The Polaroid: Imperfect, Yet Magical.
"Here’s the thing about Pottersville that struck me when I was 15: It looks like much more fun than stultifying Bedford Falls — the women are hot, the music swings, and the fun times go on all night. If anything, Pottersville captures just the type of excitement George had long been seeking."
"Questioning, who cares? I mean, if all people do is question stuff, nothing changes. There’s a lot of work, or activism, or whatever, that points out what’s wrong. Everyone knows that shit’s fucked up. How much more artwork do we need to tell us that Bush is a bad president? Everyone knows; the guy has, like, the lowest approval rating of all time, but there are still people making work that says that. So, what’s the next step? That’s what I want to do. I try to do that. I’m not always successful, but that’s what I want to do . . . It’s not a new idea, it’s not even really my idea. It’s how people use mass communication to create change."
"The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush has become the talk of Iraq, hailed by marchers as a national hero but blasted by the government as a barbarian."
"One is an entrepreneurial 16-year-old who takes time off from his schoolwork to create urban stencil designs of cultural icons such as Mickey Mouse and Clint Eastwood, which he sells for £65 on the internet. The other is the Turner prize-winning father of Britart whose diamond-encrusted skull and pickled sharks have brought him a £200m fortune.The irony of all of this is that Hirst is bolstering up the art work of Cartrain by causing such a stink. He has drawn more attention to this matter, than would have been if he had just left it be.
Ordinarily, the two figures at opposite ends of the art spectrum should never have cause to meet. But Cartain, the moniker for the teenage artist, has earned the ire of Damien Hirst for incorporating photographic images of his platinum cast of a human skull, For the Love of God, into his graffiti prints. The two artists have become locked in an unlikely art clash that has led Hirst to demand recompense from the teenager for selling £200 worth of images of his skull without permission, says Private Eye magazine.
He [Cartain] was surprised to learn Hirst had not only seen the work but also contacted the Design and Artists Copyright Society (Dacs), who apparently informed the young artist he had infringed Hirst's copyright. The older man has reportedly demanded that Cartrain not only remove the works from sale but "deliver up" originals, along with any profit made on those sold, or face legal action."
"In seeking to protect our children from bullying and aggression, we risk depriving them of a most remarkable form of social exchange. In teasing, we learn to use our voices, bodies and faces, and to read those of others — the raw materials of emotional intelligence and the moral imagination. We learn the wisdom of laughing at ourselves, and not taking the self too seriously. We learn boundaries between danger and safety, right and wrong, friend and foe, male and female, what is serious and what is not. We transform the many conflicts of social living into entertaining dramas. No kidding."
"All my "Contradictions" ongoing project has the same motivation/meaning. Technologies and the marketing behind them usually push the almost religious aspect of their evolution, as also said by Leander Kaheny in his "Cult of Mac" book, and the users are pushed to live in an intense way the abstraction from reality, living technologies only as an idea and sometimes without even knowing their real functions. And this aspect works for the social-networks too. The idealization connected with these experiences provokes a small-but-important detach of the perception of reality and what i want to do by writing the names of anything connected with the 2.0 life we are living in the slums of the third world is to point out the gap between the reality we still live in and the ephemeral world of technologies. It's a kind of reminder, for people like me which I'm an Apple user and also have social-network accounts that the real world is deeply far from the idealization we have of it, not only in the third world and even if technologies and globalization are good things. I hope it's clear and sorry for my Italian-English. ;)"Do take a look at Filippo's website.
