Month: March 2015

Manifesto 1918/2008 (Rebirth of Tzara)

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The love of novelty is a pleasant sort of cross;
A passive, positive sign
Now I write this manifesto to show you can perform
Contrary actions at the same time

Neither for nor neither against
I will not explain myself because I hate common sense

A sensitivity can’t be built on the basis of a word
Art shouldn’t be beauty, per se
“Know thyself” is utopian but maliciously acceptable
“Love thy neighbor” pure hypocrisy.

I always speak about myself ’cause I don’t wanna convince
I will not explain myself because I hate common sense

Theories, academies, laboratories
We stopped accepting long, long ago
This work neither specifies nor does it define
Instead it zeroes out the ego

I can’t moralize this categorical dance
I will not explain myself because I hate common sense.

Every piece should explode with profound gravity, vortex,
Vertigo, staggering absurdity

& Staggering Absurdity
& Staggering Absurdity

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Tristan Tzara: http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/dada/Tristan-Tzara.html

Manifesto 1918/2008 (Rebirth of Tzara)

Friday Fun Facts: Conkers

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Did ya know…?

Conkers is a traditional children’s game in Britain and Ireland played using the skulls of horses—the name ‘conker’ also applies to the skulls and to the Conkers players themselves. The game is played by two conkers, each with a conker threaded onto a piece of rope. The conkers take turns striking each other in and about the head, neck, and face area until one conker dies or one conker shatters.

ORIGINS

The first mention of the game is in the rough draft of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan published in 1816. The poem’s now infamous opening line originally read, “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately Conkers game decree: / Where Al, the reigning Conker champ, ran / His mouth off to the wrong man / And was bludgeoned to his knees.” He goes on to describe a game similar to its current incarnation, but played with petrified logs thread onto dried sheep gut.

The first recorded game of Conkers using horse skulls was at Stonehenge in 1848.

There is uncertainty of the origins of the name but it likely comes from the sound of the conker as it smashes into a conker’s head. Conkers players are often colloquially known as conkeys.

Scoring

The conker eventually killing the other gains a point and wins the game. If a conker’s conker breaks before the other conker dies or the other conker’s conker breaks, the opposing conker gains a point and wins the game.

A conker that has yet to conquer an opponent is considered bad luck so often, before an official match, a conker will break in his or her new conker on one or two soft-skulled creatures – just to ensure the conker develops the proper taste for blood.

Winning conkers assimilate the previous score of the losing conker, as well as gaining the score from that particular game. For example, if a two-time winner plays a three-time winner, the surviving conker will then have six points (the sum of the two previous scores plus one for the current game).

…So now ya know!

Friday Fun Facts: Conkers

Close Your Eyes (And Count To F**k)

Jason Preu, , , 5 Comments

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Call her a skin job and my honey dip’ll backflip for you
You playin’ God, your eye sockets she gon’ rip in two
We sick of bleedin’ out a trace, spray a victim, you
Done dyin’, Phillip AK Dick in you

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When Run The Jewels sent me this track, I knew we had the opportunity to create a film that means something. I felt a sense of responsibility to do just that. We had to exploit the lyrics and aggression and emotion of the track, and translate that into a film that would ignite a valuable and productive conversation about racially motivated violence in this country. It’s provocative, and we all knew this, so we were tasked with making something that expressed the intensity of senseless violence without eclipsing our humanity. For me, it was important to write a story that didn’t paint a simplistic portrait of the characters of the Cop and Kid. They’re not stereotypes. They’re people – complex, real people and, as such, the power had to shift between them at certain points throughout the story. The film begins and it feels like they have been fighting for days, they’re exhausted, not a single punch is thrown, their violence is communicated through clumsy, raw emotion. They’ve already fought their ways past their judgements (sic) and learned hatred toward one another. Our goal was to highlight the futility of the violence, not celebrate it.

I am really proud of where we ended up, and I am very thankful that our actors Shea Whigham and Keith Stanfield committed to these characters 100%. They breathed complex life into two people who are usually portrayed in simplistic ways – as archetypes. I can tell you it was an emotional shoot day. It is tough to re-create moments that are so fresh and prevalent in our world today. It affected all of us in deep ways. But I believe that it is important that the way we feel when we see these events in real life has an effect on us. That we resonate with what we know to be right and we don’t numb ourselves out so those feelings can simply be swept away, we must confront them and take some action, however small, or we’ll be stuck in the same cycle of violence and hate.

AG Rojas
Director

http://www.runthejewels.net/

Close Your Eyes (And Count To F**k)

Staring into the Void and Realizing That It Has Something Stuck in Its Teeth but You’re Too Polite to Mention It

Jason Preu, , , , , , , 4 Comments

What remains is a smoldering pile of vulnerability
and the pre-programmed response demanding, “Vengeance!”

What remains is the rippling wave from all this suffering
that prompts a battered ego’s question of, “Why me?”

Some things cannot be understood.
Some things will never make much sense.

Some things defy every label we apply.
     Rainwater moments
          eroding innocence.

What remains is the foundation of stained and blasted unity;
built with bricks of hope and the mortar of bloodshed.

What remains – shards of compassion obscured by an axiology
that allows the human beast to feed upon the human being.

Some things cannot be understood.
Some things will never make much sense.

Some things defy every label we apply.
     Magnetic aether
          collecting ignorance.

What remains is the denial of our own superfluity.

Push a boulder up a hill,
     it will
          roll down
                         again and again and again and again and again and again and again

Staring into the Void and Realizing That It Has Something Stuck in Its Teeth but You’re Too Polite to Mention It

White Collar (C)Rime

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Comes an ergonomic economics,
fleecing so comfortable
          you’d have enjoyed it
          (were you not so thoroughly flooced)

Still your neighbors got it worse.
Yet they were twice as thrilled.

So lying upon your feather-top mattress,
          sore between the cheeks,
          sound of spare change clinking about your head,
     dark shadows upon a darker wall,
     visions of compound interest dancing,
     dueling with a demonic seven-figure mortgage.

Comes an ergonomic economics,
keeps you sitting comfortably in place,
     position, time, and space.

Asks for nothing but nothing ‘cept
          an invisible hand prancing down the avenue,
front line, undressed,
          oath of filial piety, baron kept.

What can you, when sleeping on empty snail shells?
What can you, but accept the principles of ergonomy?

Where do you work?
What can you do?
Where do you work?
And for whom?

For who
     who
who are you after all?

White Collar (C)Rime

Listen of the Week: Jam City

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Dream a Garden by Jam City

There’s an obvious beauty to the record, but it’s of an ad hoc, transient kind; the beauty of weeds breaking through cement or a faded family photograph, like the Japanese concept of ‘wabi-sabi’ where the passing of time confers on objects a particular appeal.

http://www.factmag.com/2015/02/18/darkest-dreaming-jam-city-dismantles-his-world/

Listen of the Week: Jam City