The Freedom Charter Blues: Aryan Kaganof is accompanied by Zim Ngqawana playing tenor sax. Listen:
- This first appeared at UnlikelyStories.org
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The Freedom Charter Blues: Aryan Kaganof is accompanied by Zim Ngqawana playing tenor sax. Listen:
This is just a short note to encourage you to have a look at a documentary I have just edited called WELCOME NELSON which will be broadcast by etv on wednesday 10 february at 8pm.
This documentary takes a different angle on the 20th anniversary celebrations of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.
The release is analysed in terms of Guy Debord’s theory of the spectacle and views the event as an entirely staged media coup for the Machiavellian F.W. De Klerk.
Instead of the customary portrayal of Dr. Mandela as a liberating Messiah he is shown to have been taken completely by surprise by his release, pleading with De Klerk to allow him to stay inside for longer, and tragically identifying with his white warders in what must be one of the most acute cases of Stockholm Syndrome in history.
The never-before screened behind the scenes footage of the press conference and first speech provides a fascinating glimpse into how the news media shape and manipulate our memories of the future.
The documentary is shot, produced and directed by CRAIG MATTHEW
sound design and original music score DANIEL EPPEL
sound recordist WARRICK SONY
theme song SIMONE WHITE
editor ARYAN KAGANOF
2010, 23 minutes
first broadcast wednesday 10 february 8pm on etv
more information on Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle is here.
guy debord on writing and speaking
Those who wish to write quickly a piece about nothing that no one will read through even once, whether in a newspaper or a book, confidently extol the style of the spoken language, because they find it much easier, more modern and direct. They themselves do not know how to speak. Neither do their readers, the language actually spoken under modern conditions of life having been socially reduced to a mere representation of itself, as endorsed by the media, and comprising some six or eight constantly repeated turns of phrase and fewer than two hundred terms, most of them neoligisms, with a turnover of a third of them every six months. All this favours a certain hasty solidarity. In contrast, I for my part am going to write without affectation or fatigue, as the most natural and easiest thing in the world, in the language I have learned and, in most circumstances, spoken. It’s not up to me to change it.
panegyric 1
a new nabokov
This November, Vladimir Nabokov will have a new novel out. It’s quite an achievement, you might have thought, for someone who died 32 years ago. But then Nabokov died and reinvented himself many times, and one could be forgiven for wondering if he just staged his death in 1977, and slipped off into another identity, like Elvis in the popular imagination; or like Sebastian Knight, John Shade, or any of the other escape artists who populate Nabokov’s own novels. And perhaps The Original of Laura, the novel that he left unfinished, when his heart supposedly gave out, is not really unfinished at all, but a non finito, that is, an art work that feigns incompletion. And so, perhaps to justify its aesthetic, Nabokov had to pretend to die. After all, …Laura is subtitled ‘Dying is Fun’, and tells the story of an ageing novelist, Philip Wild, who is trying to erase himself, using the rubber at the end of his pencil, starting from his toes and working upwards. To call …Laura, as Penguin are doing, A novel in fragments may be to do more than state the dull fact that it is unfinished.
fernando pessoa – this is extraordinary!
the art of effective dreaming for metaphysical minds
the best way to start dreaming is through books. novels are especially helpful for the beginner. the first step is to learn to give in completely to your reading, to live totally with the characters of a novel. you’ll know you’re making progress when your own family and its troubles seem insipid and loathsome by comparison. it’s best to avoid reading literary novels, which tend to divert our attention to the formal structure.
i’m not ashamed to admit that this is how i started. strangely enough, detective novels are what i instinctively read. i was never able to read romantic novels in any sustained way, but this is for personal reasons, i being romantically disinclined even in my dreams. let each man cultivate his particular inclination. let us never forget that to dream is to explore ourselves. sensual souls, for their reading matter, should choose the opposite of what i read.
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i know no pleasure like that of books, and i read very little. books are introductions to dreams, and no introductions are necessary for one who freely and naturally enters into conversation with them. i’ve never been able to lose myself in a book; as i’m reading, the commentary of my intellect or imagination has always hindered the narrative flow. after a few minutes it’s i who am writing, and what i write is nowhere to be found.
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fernando pessoa
the book of disquiet
(more…)
An image is a powerful thing. From the moment we are born, we are visual creatures and, since the beginning of time, mankind has reflected upon what he has seen around him. This gave birth to that most human form of conscious externalization: artistic expression. The ancient cave dwellers faithfully rendered their visual experiences onto the walls of their homes to be discovered by modern explorers thousands of years later. These dreamlike etchings lost none of their resonance because we too can understand the innate desire to recreate the experience of the everyday. And, as mankind developed an ever more complex consciousness, he developed ever more complex methods in which to pursue artistic activity. Those of us alive today can bear witness to incredible technological innovation in cinematography, cinema being the 20th century response to artistic expression. Cinema has become a powerful tool for addressing the myriad of issues that we face in our nascent century.
The first full length feature film shot on a mobile phone camera, SMS Sugarman, is now online and can be watched in its entirety for free.
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CITIZEN KOHEN is a filmmaker who, traveling internationally to film festivals as an honoured, if badly behaved, guest, slips into the roles of assassin, seducer and philosopher. The progress of Kohen’s travels is interrupted by film reviews and analyses written by fictitious critics. These analyses primarily involve a film called femme de siecle, which Citizen Kohen made as an homage to the great Spanish director Jesus Franco. The novel ends with a vast filmography of Citizen Kohen. The novel creates a myth of cinema along the lines of Stephen Laws’ Demoniac, Tim Lucas’ Throat Sprockets and Theodor Roszak’s Flicker.’
San Francisco
Big Mike is waiting for Citizen Kohen at the airport. He really is huge, picks up both items of luggage effortlessly, throws them into the boot of the Lincoln Continental. They cruise into the city at a leisurely pace, up Third Street past Mission and finally left into Mason where Mike stops on the corner of Eddy. The enormous man looks long and hard at Citizen Kohen.
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For a new video.
The Soweto riots of 1976, remixed / Los motines y disturbios de Soweto en 1976, remixados / Les émeutes de Soweto de 1976 remixées
My good friend Moose and I were walking through the Emmarentia Dam park grounds discussing phenomenology and bagels when this tall so-called black man pulled a gun on us and demanded stuff.
Phenomenology I have never understood, despite many attempts at reading Husserl and even Heidegger whose use of language makes Adorno seem like a telegram typist. But I digress…
The thing is that Moose and I had seen this tall so-called black man earlier in our perambulation, he was with a much shorter so-called, but that one was wearing a security guard uniform and hence we felt disinclined to be worried about the possibility of getting mugged.
Now here I feel predisposed to mention the words “mugged” and “perambulation”. These are both good words in very different ways and I like the fact that they are nestled comfortably in the previous paragraph. I also like the way that “nestled” itself is nestled in this paragraph. The truth is that writing about a nasty event is a lot less nasty than the event itself. I should imagine that reading about the event has a similarly diminished quality. And this of course is the problem.
Because I honestly don’t have the words nor the talent to describe to you how awful it felt to walk slap bang into the barrel of that 9mm. It felt like a big turdypoo had just pushed its way out of my bum as I was about to deliver a perfect pickup line to the most beautiful barely legal 18 year old girl you ever laid your eyes on. It felt that bad.
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Kagablog: Great Art Daily