HYMENOPTERON & The Charlatans of Gravity

2012-01-05T19:35:00.001-06:00

2011-12-25T20:44:00.001-06:00

2011-11-01T18:51:00.001-05:00

2011-10-25T19:13:00.001-05:00

2011-10-04T22:28:00.001-05:00

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation. In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient,[A] feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society. The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production – antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals' social conditions of existence – but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.

— Karl Marx

2011-09-05T23:50:00.001-05:00

2011-07-21T19:56:00.001-05:00

2011-06-05T17:45:00.001-05:00

Symbiotic Lime-Stone Quarry Phantoms

- Yes my marble eyes are still working

Nerves of my pain
Embedded in this street
Where you are strolling

The Surrealist group in Stockholm, with friends, invite to their exhibition

Location: Nationalgalleriet, Skomakargatan 3 in Gamla Stan

Opening: Saturday June 11 at 18 - 21

Opening hours June 12 - 18 15 - 21

***

Paintings, drawings, collective projects, sound, scents, video sculpture and poetry readings near the place of the skull.

Book table in the gallery with publications from the 25-year history of the Surrealist Group.

Sphinx Bokförlag presents the newly republished swedish translation of Surrealismens manifest by André Breton.

http://www.surrealistgruppen.org/LimeStoneQuarryPhantoms.html

2011-05-26T20:38:00.001-05:00

Proteus 2004

2011-05-04T16:49:00.000-05:00

Le cochon danseur - el cerdo bailarín - dancing pig

2011-05-04T16:43:00.000-05:00

La Main Absente

2011-05-04T16:37:00.000-05:00

2011-04-16T16:37:00.001-05:00

For the last 500 years, Western Civilization has been wearing rationalism as a sword to ‘estrange’ the existences it does not understand, which are located in the basements of the world, before destroying them. Because far-off strange things are unsafe, they are wild, they are not like its own, they are neither elegant nor smart, as a matter of fact they are not civilized. Therefore it mobilized campaigns, made demagogies, performed witch-hunts against the strange, and tried to ‘clean’ what is strange.

This civilization was built on a positivist, mechanized, uniformed approach and the harsh prejudice of self-righteousness. But the times are changing, the new millennium has the dynamics not to bear the burden of this dilapidated heritage anymore and to throw it from its back. The campaign started against the Turkish Surrealist Movement, its Destruction 2011 event and finally its spokesperson has turned into an 8-page untrue indictment prepared by a self-appointed public prosecutor, and is now looking for an accomplice to execute it. The lies, slanders, defamation and demagogies contained in said indictment are not unfamiliar to us. What disgusts us is, however, that this ugly call to lynch us attempts to belong to Surrealism we adore. It’s a pity!

We make ourselves clear: an arrogance which tries to excommunicate what it doesn’t like, what it cannot control, what it cannot govern is an imperialist arrogance. We are open to debate all kinds of notions with honest people, not liars and slanderers.

This dilapidated building built on intolerance will be tumble down now, because we are adventurers who hit the road with a new dream for the world. The flowers of riot that grow in Tunisia and Egypt are signs of the rising 5th Sun, just like the Destruction 2011 actions.

Therefore we laugh very loud from here, Turkey of the world, at those who want to destroy the Destruction, because DESTRUCTION IS UNSTOPPABLE!

Because:
Crazy love is unstoppable!
Unlimited dreams are unstoppable!
The power of temptation is unstoppable!
Brave diving into the depths of subconscious is unstoppable!
The expedition to find Gnosis is unstoppable!
The Surrealism boom of the 21st century is unstoppable!

The rage of no demagogy, no lie, no defamation, no slander can destroy the growing new poetry of the new millennium!

We invite all Surrealists, libertarian poets, independent artists, autonomous groups, crazies, lovers and children in the worldwide to the festival we will organize in May.

Přežít svůj život (teorie a praxe)

2011-03-20T15:39:00.000-05:00

Marcel Duchamp speaks about his work

2011-03-20T15:36:00.000-05:00

La Fleur-Animal

2011-03-20T15:31:00.000-05:00

2011-03-12T18:15:00.001-06:00

Roger Water
said:

"In 1980, a song I wrote, Another Brick in the Wall Part 2, was banned by the government of South Africa because it was being used by black South African children to advocate their right to equal education. That apartheid government imposed a cultural blockade, so to speak, on certain songs, including mine.
Twenty-five years later, in 2005, Palestinian children participating in a West Bank festival used the song to protest against Israel's wall around the West Bank. They sang: "We don't need no occupation! We don't need no racist wall!" At the time, I hadn't seen firsthand what they were singing about.
A year later I was contracted to perform in Tel Aviv. Palestinians from a movement advocating an academic and cultural boycott of Israel urged me to reconsider. I had already spoken out against the wall, but I was unsure whether a cultural boycott was the right way to go.
The Palestinian advocates of a boycott asked that I visit the occupied Palestinian territory to see the wall for myself before I made up my mind. I agreed.
Under the protection of the United Nations I visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw that day. The wall is an appalling edifice to behold. It is policed by young Israeli soldiers who treated me, a casual observer from another world, with disdainful aggression.
If it could be like that for me, a foreigner, a visitor, imagine what it must be like for the Palestinians, for the underclass, for the passbook carriers. I knew then that my conscience would not allow me to walk away from that wall, from the fate of the Palestinians I met: people whose lives are crushed daily by Israel's occupation. In solidarity, and somewhat impotently, I wrote on their wall that day: "We don't need no thought control."
Realising at that point that my presence on a Tel Aviv stage would inadvertently legitimise the oppression I had seen, I cancelled my gig at the stadium in Tel Aviv and moved it to Neve Shalom, an agricultural community devoted to growing chick peas and also, admirably, to co-operation between different faiths, where Muslim, Christian and Jew work side by side in harmony.
Against all expectations it was to become the biggest music event in the short history of Israel. Some 60,000 fans battled traffic jams to attend. It was extraordinarily moving for us, and at the end of the gig I was moved to exhort the young people gathered there to demand of their government that they attempt to make peace with their neighbours and respect the civil rights of Palestinians living in Israel.
Sadly, in the intervening years the Israeli government has made no attempt to implement legislation that would grant rights to Israeli Arabs equal to those enjoyed by Israeli Jews, and the wall has grown, inexorably, illegally annexing more and more of the West Bank.
For the people of Gaza, locked in a virtual prison behind the wall of Israel's illegal blockade, it means another set of injustices. It means that children go to sleep hungry, many chronically malnourished. It means that fathers and mothers, unable to work in a decimated economy, have no means to support their families. It means that university students with scholarships to study abroad must watch the opportunity of a lifetime slip away because they are not allowed to travel.
In my view, the abhorrent and draconian control that Israel wields over the besieged Palestinians in Gaza and the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem), coupled with its denial of the rights of refugees to return to their homes in Israel, demands that fair-minded people around the world support the Palestinians in their civil, nonviolent resistance.
Where governments refuse to act people must, with whatever peaceful means are at their disposal. For me this means declaring an intention to stand in solidarity, not only with the people of Palestine but also with the many thousands of Israelis who disagree with their government's policies, by joining the campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel.
My conviction is born in the idea that all people deserve basic human rights. This is not an attack on the people of Israel. This is, however, a plea to my colleagues in the music industry, and also to artists in other disciplines, to join this cultural boycott.
Artists were right to refuse to play in South Africa's Sun City resort until apartheid fell and white people and black people enjoyed equal rights. And we are right to refuse to play in Israel until the day comes – and it surely will come – when the wall of occupation falls and Palestinians live alongside Israelis in the peace, freedom, justice and dignity that they all deserve."

2011-03-06T15:56:00.001-06:00

Nurse With Wound - "The Bottom Feeder"

2011-03-05T12:50:00.000-06:00

Wilhelm Freddie & Jørgen Roos | Spiste Horisonter AKA Eaten Horizons | 1950

2011-02-26T18:06:00.000-06:00

Samla Mammas Manna: Ingenting (Klossa Knapitatet 1974 Sweden RIO avant-p...

2011-02-26T18:05:00.000-06:00

hymenopteron's video

2011-02-26T17:52:00.000-06:00

KSMB - Tidens tempo

2011-02-26T17:21:00.000-06:00

surrealism interview project

2011-02-26T17:20:00.001-06:00

The ultra-fast trap of an aquatic carnivorous plant

2011-02-26T17:20:00.000-06:00

Grand Macabre (The 'panic' drawings of Roland Topor)

2011-02-26T17:19:00.000-06:00

Walt Disney animation by Salvador Dalí

2011-02-26T17:18:00.000-06:00

Rowan Atkinson - Invisible Drum Kit

2011-02-26T17:17:00.000-06:00

"Early Abstractions" (1946-57), Pt. 4

2011-02-26T16:57:00.000-06:00

2011-02-19T21:00:00.001-06:00

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.

A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell thro' all its regions.
A dog starv'd at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.

A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.

A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fight
Does the rising sun affright.

Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.

The wild deer, wand'ring here and there,
Keeps the human soul from care.
The lamb misus'd breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.

The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won't believe.
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright.

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be belov'd by men.
He who the ox to wrath has mov'd
Shall never be by woman lov'd.

The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity.
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.

The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother's grief.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgement draweth nigh.

He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the polar bar.
The beggar's dog and widow's cat,
Feed them and thou wilt grow fat.

The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from slander's tongue.
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of envy's foot.

The poison of the honey bee
Is the artist's jealousy.

The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags.
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.

It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

The babe is more than swaddling bands;
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;

This is caught by females bright,
And return'd to its own delight.
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar,
Are waves that beat on heaven's shore.

The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes revenge in realms of death.
The beggar's rags, fluttering in air,
Does to rags the heavens tear.

The soldier, arm'd with sword and gun,
Palsied strikes the summer's sun.
The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.

One mite wrung from the lab'rer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands;
Or, if protected from on high,
Does that whole nation sell and buy.

He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mock'd in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.

He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.

The questioner, who sits so sly,
Shall never know how to reply.
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out.

The strongest poison ever known
Came from Caesar's laurel crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armour's iron brace.

When gold and gems adorn the plow,
To peaceful arts shall envy bow.
A riddle, or the cricket's cry,
Is to doubt a fit reply.

The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.

If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.

The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding-sheet.

The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

We are led to believe a lie
When we see not thro' the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

2011-02-01T05:09:00.001-06:00

Surrealistgruppens Etthundrafyrtio Fingrar:

http://www.surrealistgruppen.org/poeterna.pdf

2011-01-29T00:00:00.001-06:00

The Solar Anus
By Georges Bataille

It is clear that the world is purely parodic, in other words, that each thing seen is the parody of another, or is the same thing in a deceptive form.

Ever since sentences started to circulate in brains devoted to reflection, an effort at total identification has been made, because with the aid of a copula each sentence ties one thing to another; all things would be visibly connected if one could discover at a single glance and in its totality the tracings of Ariadne's thread leading thought into its own labyrinth.

But the copula of terms is no less irritating than the copulation of bodies. And when I scream I AM THE SUN an integral erection results, because the verb to be is the vehicle of amorous frenzy.

Everyone is aware that life is parodic and that it lacks an interpretation. Thus lead is the parody of gold. Air is the parody of water. The brain is the parody of the equator. Coitus is the parody of crime.

Gold, water, the equator, or crime can each be put forward as the principle of things.

And if the origin of things is not like the ground of the planet that seems to be the base, but like the circular movement that the planet describes around a mobile center, then a car a clock, or a sewing machine could equally be accepted as the generative principle.

The two primary motions are rotation and sexual movement, whose combination is expressed by the locomotive's wheels and pistons.

These two motions are reciprocally transformed, the one into the other.

Thus one notes that the earth, by turning, makes animals and men have coitus, and (because the result is as much the cause as that which provokes it) that animals and men make the earth turn by having coitus.

It is the mechanical combination or transformation of these movements that the alchemists sought as the philosopher's stone.

It is through the use of this magically valued combination that one can determine the present position of men in the midst of the elements.

An abandoned shoe, a rotten tooth, a snub nose, the cook spitting in the soup of his masters are to love what a battle flag is to nationality.

An umbrella, a sexagenarian, a seminarian, the smell of rotten eggs, the hollow eyes of judges are the roots that nourish love.

A dog devouring the stomach of a goose, a drunken vomiting woman, a slobbering accountant, a jar of mustard represent the confusion that serves as the vehicle of love.

A man who finds himself among others is irritated because he does not know why he is not one of the others.

In bed next to a girl he loves, he forgets that he does not know why he is himself instead of the body he touches.

Without knowing it, he suffers from the mental darkness that keeps him from screaming that he himself is the girl who forgets his presence while shuddering in his arms.

Love or infantile rage, or a provincial dowager's vanity, or clerical pornography, or the diamond of a soprano bewilder individuals forgotten in dusty apartments.

They can very well try to find each other; they will never find anything but parodic images, and they will fall asleep as empty as mirrors.

The absent and inert girl hanging dreamless from my arms is no more foreign to me than the door or window through which I can look or pass.

I rediscover indifference (allowing her to leave me) when I fall asleep, through an inability to love what happens.

It is impossible for her to know whom she will discover when I hold her, because she obstinately attains a complete forgetting.

The planetary systems that turn in space like rapid disks, and whose centers also move, describing an infinitely larger circle, only move away continuously from their own position in order to return it, completing their rotation.

Movement is a figure of love, incapable of stopping at a particular being, and rapidly passing from one to another.

But the forgetting that determines it in this way is only a subterfuge of memory.

A man gets up as brusquely as a specter in a coffin and falls in the same way.

He gets up a few hours later and then he falls again, and the same thing happens every day; this great coitus with the celestial atmosphere is regulated by the terrestrial rotation around the sun.

Thus even though terrestrial life moves to the rhythm of this rotation, the image of this movement is not turning earth, but the male shaft penetrating the female and almost entirely emerging, in order to reenter.

Love and life appear to be separate only because everything on earth is broken apart by vibrations of various amplitudes and durations.

However, there are no vibrations that are not conjugated with a continuous circular movement; in the same way, a locomotive rolling on the surface of the earth is the image of continuous metamorphosis.

Beings only die to be born, in the manner of phalluses that leave bodies in order to enter them.

Plants rise in the direction of the sun and then collapse in the direction of the ground.

Trees bristle the ground with a vast quantity of flowered shafts raised up to the sun.

The trees that forcefully soar end up burned by lightning, chopped down, or uprooted. Returned to the ground, they come back up in another form.

But their polymorphous coitus is a function of uniform terrestrial rotation.

The simplest image of organic life united with rotation is the tide. From the movement of the sea, uniform coitus of the earth with the moon, comes the polymorphous and organic coitus of the earth with the sun.

But the first form of solar love is a cloud raised up over the liquid element. The erotic cloud sometimes becomes a storm and falls back to earth in the form of rain, while lightning staves in the layers of the atmosphere.

The rain is soon raised up again in the form of an immobile plant.

Animal life comes entirely from the movement of the seas and, inside bodies, life continues to come from salt water.

The sea, then, has played the role of the female organ that liquefies under the excitation of the penis.

The sea continuously jerks off.

Solid elements, contained and brewed in water animated by erotic movement, shoot out in the form of flying fish.

The erection and the sun scandalize, in the same way as the cadaver and the darkness of cellars.

Vegetation is uniformly directed towards the sun; human beings, on the other hand, even though phalloid like trees, in opposition to other animals, necessarily avert their eyes.

Human eyes tolerate neither sun, coitus, cadavers, nor obscurity, but with different reactions.

When my face is flushed with blood, it becomes red and obscene.

It betrays at the same time, through morbid reflexes, a bloody erection and a demanding thirst for indecency and criminal debauchery.

For that reason I am not afraid to affirm that my face is a scandal and that my passions are expressed only by the JESUVE.

The terrestrial globe is covered with volcanoes, which serve as its anus.

Although this globe eats nothing, it often violently ejects the contents of its entrails.

Those contents shoot out with a racket and fall back, streaming down the sides of the Jesuve, spreading death and terror everywhere.

In fact, the erotic movements of the ground are not fertile like those of the water, but they are far more rapid.

The earth sometimes jerks off in a frenzy, and everything collapses on its surface.

The Jesuve is thus the image of an erotic movement that burglarizes the ideas contained in the mind, giving them the force a scandalous eruption.

This eruptive force accumulates in those who are necessarily situated below.

Communist workers appear to the bourgeois to be as ugly and dirty as hairy sexual organs, or lower parts; sooner or later there will be a scandalous eruption in the course of which the asexual noble heads of the bourgeois will be chopped off.

The erotic revolutionary and volcanic deflagrations antagonize the heavens.

As in the case of violent love, they take place beyond the constraints of fecundity.

In opposition to celestial fertility there are terrestrial disasters, the image of terrestrial love without condition, erection without escape and without rule, scandal, and terror.

Love then screams in my own throat; I am the Jesuve, the filthy parody of the torrid and blinding sun.

I want to have my throat slashed while violating the girl to whom I will have been able to say: you are the night.

The Sun exclusively loves the Night and directs its luminous violence, its ignoble shaft, toward the earth, but finds itself incapable of reaching the gaze or the night, even though the nocturnal terrestrial expanses head continuously toward the indecency of the solar ray.

The solar annulus is the intact anus of her body at eighteen years to which nothing sufficiently blinding can be compared except the sun, even though the anus is night.

2011-01-12T21:48:00.001-06:00

2011-01-12T21:46:00.001-06:00

2010-12-23T21:28:00.001-06:00

2010-12-07T18:03:00.001-06:00

uhmm... staggering beginnings, horror, here I am, the Mind Flesh of the Flesh Mind, acting, reaching out into thin air... let's go!

2010-11-14T00:16:00.001-06:00

2010-10-16T19:18:00.001-05:00

Forty Four Faces of Humanity

2010-10-16T19:15:00.001-05:00

2010-10-16T19:11:00.001-05:00

2010-10-16T19:06:00.001-05:00

2010-10-16T19:02:00.001-05:00

2010-10-16T18:59:00.001-05:00

2010-10-16T18:55:00.001-05:00

2010-09-19T04:58:00.001-05:00

Follow H.A.R.L. On Twitter: @MindFlesh

2010-09-04T18:36:00.001-05:00

2010-08-22T15:54:00.001-05:00

Jean Benoit 1922-2010

2010-08-13T07:05:00.001-05:00

Top US Senator Assassinated As Obama "Weather War" Plunges World Into Chaos

by Sorcha Faal
August 11, 2010

A new report prepared for Prime Minister Putin by Russia's foreign military intelligence directorate (GRU) states that a former top United States Senator, Ted Stevens, was assassinated this week after he attempted to gather evidence "proving" that President Obama has unleashed America's devastating "weather weapons" against the World.

As we had previously reported on in our August 3rd report titled "Russia Burns, China Drowns: US To Blame?" Russian research scientist Dr. Andrey Areshev has joined the ranks of International scientists and experts stating their belief that the extreme weather chaos currently battering our Planet is being caused by the Tesla technology based weapons systems directed from Alaska's High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, otherwise known as HAARP.

Now according to this GRU report, Senator Stevens was approached less than a fortnight ago by his longtime friend and Alaskan bush pilot Theron "Terry" Smith whose son-in-law, Alaskan Air National Guard Major Aaron W. Malone, was killed on July 28th after having his C-17 US Military aircraft "targeted" by a HAARP "Tesla Beam" while in the air over Anchorage, Alaska causing it to crash and explode upon impact killing all aboard. [Note: The Russian translation for "targeted" as used in this report does not assign HARRP blame as it includes an "accidental" verb component.]

Upon Senator Stevens beginning his investigation into HAARP's causing the crash of the Major Malone's C-17, this report continues, he enlisted the aid of two powerful Washington power brokers, oil fortune heir William "Bill" Phillips Sr. and former NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe.

Phillips was a longtime ally and supporter of Senator Stevens and as the heir to the Phillips Petroleum fortune is said in these reports to have in the past used his vast fortune to privately finance US intelligence "activities" to support his countries efforts to gain access to Global oil reserves.

Phillips had long warned Americans that the United States does not have any big oil companies. And it's true: the largest American oil company, Exxon Mobil, is only the 14th largest in the World and is dwarfed by the really big oil companies -- all owned by foreign governments or government- sponsored monopolies -- that dominate the World's oil supply.

With 94% of the World's oil supply locked up by foreign governments, most of which are hostile to the United States, the relatively puny American oil companies do not have access to enough crude oil to significantly affect the market and help bring prices down. Thus, ExxonMobil, a "small" oil company, buys 90% of the crude oil that it refines for the US market from the big players, i.e., mostly-hostile foreign governments.

O'Keefe was the former administrator for the Untied States space agency NASA from 2001-2005, and whose reign included the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster that occurred on February 1, 2003, when upon its reentry into Earth's atmosphere disintegrated over Texas, and which this report says O'Keefe "always" blamed on HAARP because at the exact time of this tragedy it had begun transmitting in what is called "deep sea communication mode".

[Note: During the "Navy Deep-Sea Communication" operational mode, the shortwave radio pulses are all, with military precision, exactly 6.25 seconds long with either exactly 15 or 30 second spaces between pulses. Those long and short binary spaces in between the pulses are actually the coded message. Something like the dits and dahs of very slow Morse code. In this mode, the power is usually at maximum. Unlike the research mode, which mostly runs at night, the US Navy communication mode can be at any time of the day or night, any month of the year. The transmissions may run continuously for about 10 to 30 hours, or from one to several days. Following the 9-11 World Trade Center attack, and just minutes after the President declared the highest Defense Condition Four (DefCon4), HAARP began transmitting at highest power for 18 hours in "deep-sea communication" mode. This is the only way to communicate the DefCon4 condition and updated battle commands to the US nuclear submarines on station miles deep in the ocean.]

The various transmission ranges of HAARP are important to note, this report says, as "immediately prior" to Senator Stevens plane going down Russian satellites orbiting over the Arctic detected a "powerful" 3.39 megahertz signal emanating from HAARP's Copper Valley Area, Gakona, Alaska base and "directed" over the region this tragedy occurred in.

According to US news reports Phillips was killed in this crash [photo 2nd left] and O'Keefe is in hospital in critical condition, and with Senator Stevens being killed also means their investigation into HAARP has died along with them.

To the chaos erupting all over the World as the result of Obama's allowing the use of these catastrophic HAARP "weather weapons" it can only be described as being "biblical" in the apocalyptic destruction it is causing, and which includes:

Ø The greatest heatwave and destructive fires Russia has experienced in over 1,000 years.

Ø The greatest flooding Central Europe has experienced in over 800 years.

Ø Flooding in Pakistan so epic the United Nations has named this megadisaster as being worse than the 2004 tsunami that shattered the Indian Ocean basin.

Ø Flooding so catastrophic in China the death toll is soaring into the thousands.

Ø A heatwave so terrible in Japan it has caused its hospitals to be flooded with over 21,000 heatstroke victims.

Ø A heatwave of unprecedented proportions that has gripped the eastern and southern parts of the United States this summer and shows no signs of abating.

Ø Temperatures so low in the western United States that farmers in California are now reporting their fruits and vegetables are being destroyed.

Ø A catastrophic drought hitting Africa that has put over 10 million people in immediate danger of starvation death.

Ø A catastrophic winter occurring in South America that has killed in Bolivia alone between 3-6 million fish and thousands of cattle in Brazil, and hundreds of people.

To what is linking these Global weather catastrophes we can read as reported by Britain's Channel 4 News science correspondent Tom Clarke who in his video report titled "Turbo-Charged Monsoon Confounds Forecasters" states:

"Normally the jet stream is a giant loop of high speed winds that whip round the upper atmosphere. The jet stream isn't involved in day to day weather - it's too high up - but because it pushes the atmosphere around it's very important in steering large scale weather patterns below. The stream has split in two. One arm has gone north, another south. The patch in the middle is Russia's drought. A circulating pattern of air has been sitting over Russia for far longer than normal, causing the extreme temperatures and wildfires they've had there.

But what's happening over Pakistan is even stranger. The southern arm of the Jet stream has looped down so far it has crossed over the Himalayas into north western Pakistan. Experts at the Met Office tell me this is very unusual.

And the result is that the fast moving jets stream winds high up has helped suck the warm, wet, monsoon air even faster and higher into the atmosphere - and that has caused rains like no-one can remember. It has turbo charged the monsoon if you like. They're not sure that's ever happened before."

To HAARP's ability to affect our Earth's jet streams we can further read from a report prepared in the 1990's by the US Air Force and which, in part, states:

"HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program), being constructed for the Air Force and Navy by an ARCO subsidiary, is such a project. Touted as scientific research, HAARP is a thinly disguised project to "perturb" the ionosphere with extremely powerful beams of energy to see what military uses it can serve. According to the HAARP RFP, these energy beams will be used to "control ionospheric processes in such a way as to greatly enhance the performance of C3 systems (or, to deny accessibility to an adversary)." That sounds like a weapon to this writer. Other such projects go by the code names BIME, RED AIR, CRRES, EXCEDE, CHARGE IV, WISP, ACTIVE, HIPAS, RADC, AIM, etc.. Nuclear bombs exploded in high altitude tests in the late fifties and early sixties by both the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. caused weather and jet stream changes that lasted almost 20 years. Do the HAARP heaters offer the same potential as they "perturb" the ionosphere? The ionosphere is home to many beneficial natural phenomena among them filtering the sun's harmful rays and reflecting radio waves used for communications. Although not totally understood, the ionosphere also directly effects the weather systems and the jet streams."

To the reasons for Obama unleashing of HAARP weapons upon our World we had touched on in our August 3rd report "Russia Burns, China Drowns: US To Blame?" and though not conclusive contains:

Ø The catastrophic flooding in China and apocalyptic heat and fires in Russia put both of these US enemies in the position of having to ask the Americans for food aid as their summer crops are being destroyed on an unprecedented basis.

Ø The epic flooding occurring in Pakistan is effectively destroying that Nations ability to both feed and defend itself and whom Obama has labeled as one of the Americans number one enemies.

Ø The devastating heat occurring in the United States will enable Obama to push through the US Congress a "Global Warming" tax agenda many believe will be the "final nail" needed to destroy the United States as a major World Power.

To the "unintended consequences" of Obama's "weather war" against the World we can now only glimpse as the wholesale destruction of summer crops in the Northern Hemisphere is now warned will cause food riots as inflationary pressures upon what little food is left to feed our Planet can very well push us all into Total Global War.

And finally, though we do not know what the outcome of these momentous events will be, it is in our knowing to warn, that above all else, everyone reading these words should make the storing of food their top priority as this Summer of Woe will surely become a Winter of Discontent.

© August 11, 2010 EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com.

[Ed. Note: Western governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagrees with in believing that it is every human beings right to know the truth. Due to our missions conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their 'agents' against us has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit and which is addressed in the report "Who Is Sorcha Faal?".]

2010-08-08T20:23:00.001-05:00

2010-08-08T14:41:00.001-05:00

2010-07-30T08:24:00.001-05:00

2010-07-18T09:15:00.000-05:00

REPORT ON A CONVERSATION CONDUCTED BY KRZYSZTOF FIJALKOWSKI, MICHAEL RICHARDSON AND IAN WALKER WITH BERTRAND SCHMITT, BRUNO SOLARIK AND JAN ŠVANKMAJER OF THE CZECH-SLOVAK SURREALIST GROUP CONCERNING THE WITHDRAWAL OF JAN ŠVANKMAJER FROM PARTICIPATION IN THE CONFERENCE ‘SURREALISM LAID BARE 6: QUERYING/QUEERING SURREALISM’

The discussion began by noting that during the conference there seemed to be a perception that surrealism had a prejudice against homosexuality and that Švankmajer’s withdrawal from participation in the conference had something to do with this. Švankmajer said that this was nonsense as must surely be apparent to anyone who has seen his films; indeed Krzysztof Fijalkowski mentioned that at the conference he had been told after the film was shown at the conference that Virile Games could be read in the light of Queer Theory. Švankmajer said that people often find whatever they want in his films and recounted that an Israeli once told him that his film Otesanek (Little Otek) was an allegory of the Middle East conflict. Although he thought this ridiculous, he has no objection to people responding to his film in any way they like. However, they should not attribute their subjectively formed views to him.

The discussion then moved on to a more general issue of misrepresentation and especially of the disturbing tendency to make judgements about the past based upon contemporary issues and terms that the actors of the past could not possibly have known about. In surrealist criticism, for instance, Nadja’s madness and Breton’s response to it are often anachronistically treated as though Breton should have been aware of all of the developments in the treatment of the insane that have taken place since that time. This seems to represent a failure of a sense of history. In the same context and returning to the question of homosexuality, the participants all said that they had never discovered any evidence of any surrealist being excluded on the grounds of their homosexuality. Those who have tried to claim that surrealism has been intolerant of homosexuality have frequently distorted facts or taken them out of context and a tendency was especially noted in which the simple fact of not having spoken about a subject provided evidence of repression. The number of homosexuals who have participated within surrealism gives the lie to the idea that surrealists have anything against homosexuality as such.

A concern was raised that the West Dean conference responded to the increasing managerialism at work throughout modern culture. In its themes and how its overall framework had been established, it seemed to have taken up a fashionable discourse in a way that may have had more to do with the requirements and agendas set by funding organisations than by a need to address vital issues in a rigorous way. This was equated with current difficulties faced by the Czech-Slovak Group, since the new governments in Czechia and Slovakia seem to be embarked on a course which, following economic logic, will lead inevitably to the destruction of living culture through the promotion of a false cultural heritage that serves nothing but the needs of tourism.

The question was then raised as to why, given these facts, Švankmajer had accepted the West Dean invitation in the first place? He replied that he had done do, as he always did on such occasions, out of friendship, specifically because he had been asked by Dagmar Motycka Weston, but also out of respect for Dawn Ades and Roger Cardinal, whom he understood were participants and whose work he respected. He was unable to read anything of the conference literature since he does not understand English, but when concerns about its import were raised within the Czech-Slovak and Leeds Surrealist Groups, he had the documents translated into Czech and was appalled by what he considered to be such a falsification of surrealism that he could not accept to be part of it. He felt he had been invited in order to play a kind of puppet role that would give authenticity to a phenomenon he has observed especially among Czech art historians whereby they construct a so-called ‘surrealism’ which responds not to what surrealism itself is or has been but to what they want it to be – they use the word ‘surrealism’, but speak about something else. He had thought that things were better in Britain, but this incident has made him realise that this is a broader problem. He emphasised that he will never collaborate with falsification and has refused many invitations in the past because he felt that those inviting him were doing so for dubious reasons, notably a few years ago he withdrew from speaking at an exhibition in Prague devoted to ‘Imaginative Art’ when it became apparent that it involved serious distortions of surrealism. The problem is that so many people seem to see surrealism only in their own narrow, usually aesthetic, terms, which they detach from the living reality of what surrealism actually is.

It was noted at this point that during the West Dean conference delegates had stated that surrealists have contempt for academics. Bruno Solarik and Bertrand Schmitt both responded that this was patent nonsense, as a glance at Analogon will immediately reveal. From the beginning it has been edited in collaboration with some of the leading Czech and Slovak intellectuals. There are currently six non-surrealists on the editorial board, two of whom (Jirí Brabec and Josef Zumr) have served since the very first issue in 1969, which is longer than any of the surrealists. Each issue of Analogon includes many essays not only by Czech and Slovak intellectuals and historians unconnected with surrealism, but also translations of important texts from around the world on any topic that is of interest to the current concerns of the group. What they object to among some academics, however, is the way in which new categories are so often introduced to say something ‘new’ purely for the sake of it or to advance the career of the researcher and in a way that has no basis in fact. A particular case was cited of the text on Toyen published in the current Papers of Surrealism, which both Solarik and Schmitt had read in the previous few days, and which each considered to be a concoction responding to nothing but the author’s own subjective interpretations. It makes numerous dubious and unsupported statements about Toyen and shows a woeful ignorance not only of surrealism but also of Czech culture. In particular it ignores the fundamental fact that in surrealism art work is not personal expression but an activity of the spirit expressed through exploration of themes of particular concern to the artist. Toyen’s painting was concerned to explore a range of experiences that were of interest to her in a broad sense and her work cannot simply be taken as evidence for her own sexual preferences. This article they considered to be a particularly bad example of an increasingly common trend by which academic research is turned into a commodity. What the surrealists are opposed to is not academic research but bad scholarship, that is academic research which narrows its subject, ignores or distorts moral and existential issues, and is not based upon empirical fact. This leaves the way open for gross ideological and conceptual distortions and encourages intellectual opportunism. Of course, there is nothing wrong with developing new angles and perspectives, but this should emerge from empirical engagement with the material and not be imposed on to it in order to conform with theories that happen to be currently fashionable.

At this point the discussion was brought back to West Dean and another issue which led Švankmajer to withdraw from participation, which concerns an essay written by Roger Cardinal on ‘Surrealism and the Paradigm of the Creative Subject’, originally published in 1993 in Parallel Visions: Modern Artists and Outsider Art (eds Maurice Tuchman and Carol S. Etiel), Los Angeles Count Museum of Art & Princeton University Press. František Dryje (who doesn’t read English), had commissioned a translation of this essay as a lead article for issue 60 of Analogon concerned with ‘outskirts, periphery and margins’, and including a selection on Outsider Art. Upon reading the translation, however, Solarik, Kateřina Piňosová and Bertrand Schmitt were appalled by what they considered its anti-surrealist argument. Solarik at first thought it must be a bad translation and therefore read the original but was astonished to find that it was perfectly correct. He then began writing a critique of the article, which he happened to have finished just as Švankmajer had become aware of the content of the West Dean programme. When he read the translation and Solarik’s response he equated the two issues and, since Roger Cardinal was a participant at West Dean, it was a further factor that made it difficult for him to attend the conference. Švankmajer stated that for him this was an issue of friendship and respect. He admired Cardinal’s work and this was one of the reasons he had initially been happy to accept the invitation. However, he considered this article a kind of betrayal in its approach to surrealism and madness, which he felt capitulated to the worst misunderstandings about surrealism and appeared to have been written with a view to flattering its intended audience rather than presenting a properly considered scholarly argument. What was especially offensive was the contention that Artaud, by actually becoming insane, was the true surrealist, something which not only distorts surrealist ideas but also trivialises the personal tragedy of Artaud’s life. The direction of the argument seemed to merge with the apparent aspirations of the organisers of the West Dean conference to establish a false and ideologically inflected opposition to surrealism as it actually is and has been throughout its history.

The question of Queer Theory was then raised. How was it understood in Czechia? Solarik said that he understood it as having to do with the formal fashion for emancipation, with an emphasis on the rights of sexual minorities. Fijalkowski, Richardson and Walker explained their understanding of it. In response, Schmitt said that it seems to be a variant of gender studies, which has been especially popular in France. The participants wondered if Queer theory was something specific to Anglo-American academic culture which had not been diffused into a broader international context.

This report has been agreed by Krzysztof Fijalkowski, Michael Richardson, Bertrand Schmitt, Bruno Solarik, Jan Švankmajer and Ian Walker as an accurate rendering of their discussion that took place on Friday 2nd July 2010 at Horní Staňkov, Czechia.

Note for English speakers: This report uses ‘Czechia’, the preferred designation for the country, rather than the ‘Czech Republic’ as it is usually called in the English speaking world.

2010-07-17T14:06:00.001-05:00

2010-07-14T17:34:00.001-05:00

Doomsday: How BP Gulf disaster may have triggered a 'world-killing' event

http://www.helium.com/items/1882339-doomsday-how-bp-gulf-disaster-may-have-triggered-a-world-killing-event

2010-07-12T04:52:00.001-05:00

"Objects, these mysterious suits of armour beneath which desire awaits us, nocturnal and laid bare, these snares made of velvet, of bronze, of gossamer that we throw at ourselves with each step we take; hunter and prey int he shadows of forests, at once forest, poacher, and woodcutter, that woodcutter killed at the foot of a tree and covered with his own beard smelling of incense, well-being, and of the that's -not-possible; free at last, alone at last with ourselves and with everyone else, advancing in the darkness with feline eyes, with jackals' teeth, with hair in lyrical, tousled ringlets, beneath a shirt of veins and arteries through which the blood flows for the first time, we're lit up inside ourselves bu the giant spotlights of the very first gesture, saying what must be said, doing what must be done, led among the lianas, butterflies, and bats, like the black and white on a chessboard; no one would dream of forbidding the black squares and the bishop--the ants vanish, the king and queen vanish, the alarm clocks vanish in turn, we reintroduce the walking stick, the bicycle with odd wheels, the timepiece, the airship, keeping the siphon, the telephone receiver, the shower head, the lift, the syringe, the automatic mechanisms that deliver chocolate when numbered buttons are pressed;"

Gherasim Luca
'The Passive Vampire'

2010-07-03T19:37:00.001-05:00

2010-07-02T22:51:00.001-05:00

Né de l’appel du devenir et de l’angoisse de la rétention, le poème, s’élevenat de son puits de boue et d’étoiles, témoignera presque silencieusement, qu’il n’était rien en lui n’existât vrainment ailleurs, dans communitarian exigence rebelle solitaire monde des contradictions.

(from Argument, Oeuvres complètes 247)

Born from the summons of becoming and from the anguish of retention, the poem rising from its well of mud and stars, will bear witness, almost silently, that it contained nothing which did not truly exist elsewhere, in this rebellious and solitary world of contradictions.

(Trans. Mary Ann Caws, Selected Poems 39)

-Rene Char

2010-07-01T18:59:00.001-05:00

Night turned into day on July 9, 1962, when the U.S. government exploded a hydrogen bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb that hit Hiroshima above Earth's atmosphere. This is a sunset you don't ever want to see.

2010-06-30T07:13:00.000-05:00

"I USA kollapsar samhället först"

"Förvänta dig inte att känna dig bekväm på den här workshopen. Det här på riktigt. Det här är om liv och död.
Vinay Gupta och Mike Bennet är specialiserade på att hjälpa företag, organisationer och stater att förbereda sig för krissituationer.
Senaste uppdraget var att bygga nödbostäd er på Haiti. Nu är de på konferensen Uncivilisation i norra Wales och pratar "kollapsonomi" - deras eget begrepp för studier av ekonomiska och sociala system på randen till kollaps.
För de flesta är en samhällelig kollaps något som man njuter av i biofåtöljen, få förbereder sig för en i verkligheten. Men enligt Gupta och Bennet är det inte längre intressant att diskutera om en kollaps kommer att inträffa, utan när, hur och framför allt var. USA är lågoddsaren på den senare frågan. Delar av landet befinner sig redan i något sorts förstadie. I Detroit har en fjärdedel av stadens yta redan övergetts - och återtagits av naturen. Ur husen växer träd. En ny tillväxtbransch utgörs av de gäng som åker runt och plundrar byggnader på koppar och stål. Matbutikerna har slagit igen, vilket gett urban odling ett rejält uppsving. Inte som hipp trend, men som ett sätt att få mat på bordet för de som bor kvar.

Om sådant handlade konferensen Uncivilisation, den första i sitt slag. Bakom den står The Dark Mountain Project - startat av de brittiska journalisterna Paul Kingsnorth och Dougald Hine som en reaktion på vad de kallar en "falsk optimism" i samhället.
I sitt manifest frågar de sig: Om vi i den rika världen slutar låtsas att vårt sätt att leva kan göras "hållbart", var hamnar vi då?
Dark Mountain började som en kulturell rörelse för författare och allehanda kulturarbetare, men har på senare tid svällt till något som är mer politiskt. Uncivilisation är ett försök att skapa ett utrymme för att seriöst diskutera en framtid som till skillnad mot vad många tänker sig inte är en tekniskt uppdaterad version av nutiden. Snarare något som präglas av en nedgång för den industriella civilisationen.

Huvudskälet till denna dystra analys är att vi låst in oss i ett komplext ekonomiskt system som kräver ofantliga mängder billig fossil energi för att
inte braka ihop. Inom bara några år kommer produktionen av olja vara långt mindre än efterfrågan. Konsekvenserna kan var och en själv fantisera kring.
På det ekologiska planet ser det inte bättre ut - trots att världens ledare lovat att "rädda planeten". Tiden har runnit ut. Att ens ha en liten chans att styra undan från skenande klimatförändringar kräver att världens samlade utsläpp inom bara fyra år börjar minska och därefter sjunker lika snabbt som utsläppsnivåerna gjorde i Sovjetunionen efter att landet kollapsade 1990 - med fem procent årligen.
Tidsandan påbjuder ändå ett alltjämt positivt tänkande. Som Anders Turesson, Sveriges chefsförhandlare i klimatfrågor, snyggt uttrycker det: "Jag är professionellt optimistisk".
Häromveckan presenterade Stockholm Environment Institute, SEI, ett nytt projekt inom detta område. Beroende på om världen drabbas av en allvarlig oljekris, av fördjupade klimatförändringar, eller både och samtidigt, identifieras ett par möjliga framtidsscenarier. Från det optimistiska "grönt hopp" via "brun dystopi" till det apokalyptiska "efter floden". Tillfrågade om vad som är mest troligt lutade en majoritet av seminariepubliken åt det senare scenariot. Ändå, kunde SEI konstatera, är det i princip ingen som förbereder sig för något annat än det mest optimistiska scenariot eftersom ingen vill tänka sådana tankar. Devisen "planera för det värsta, hoppas på det bästa" har fått pessimiststämpeln tryckt i pannan.

Vad händer den dagen då världens rika och mäktiga förstår hur en ekologisk kollaps kommer att drabba dem själva och deras barn? Clive Hamilton, en av Australiens mest framstående debattörer, varnar för detta i sin senaste bok, Requiem for a species: "Om de mäktiga inte möts av motstånd, kommer de att tvinga sina lösningar på oss andra. De kommer att skydda sina egna intressen och förvärra den redan ojämlika tillgången till överlevnadsmöjligheter så att de svaga lämnas åt sitt öde. Så har det alltid varit"."

Från Aftonbladet, 30 Juni, 2010

2010-06-17T20:27:00.001-05:00

2010-06-15T23:12:00.001-05:00

2010-06-15T08:13:00.001-05:00

Copy & Paste link below for summary
Of Bilderberg 2010

http://gu.com/p/2hkf5

2010-06-12T11:25:00.001-05:00

Krzysztof Gutfrański talks to Johannes Bergmark, Intertext

Originally published in polish translation as “Z Johannesem Bergmarkiem rozmawia Krzysztof Gutfrański” (slightly abridged by KG), on the online magazine Intertext, 2010.

The interview was conducted vie email. The questions were sent to me in english and I print them here in the form I received them (only correcting some of the most obvious language mistakes). The explanations [marked like this] are clarifications by KG after I asked him to clarifiy some points that were unclear to me in his questions. His introduction was written after the interview was finished.

Introduction (KG)

If in the whole world surrealist groups are existing it seems that the history of the movement has extended without a brake since ninety years. Could we look at surrealism otherwise than as a dead point in the art history stream and if we're able to formulate opinions about history without a critical apparatus and approach? About surrealism as a life attitude, superiority of poetical phenomenons and singing inside the coffins tells Johannes Bergmark.

JB is one of the most interesting musicians on the free improvisation scene, he is also a musical instrument inventor, visual artist, active member of differrent surrealist movements in Sweden, Poland and some other countries.

KG: At first I would like to ask you an absolutely random question, what is surrealism for you?

JB: Surrealism is a moral attitude where the care for the poetic phenomenon is the first and foremost concern, in practice as well as in theory. This leads to other conclusions which can be called political, philosophical, artistic or otherwise, although surrealism fails to be reduced to any one of these categories. As examples, in politics, surrealism always has a revolutionary position because of the resistance to any oppression. In its theoretical works, surrealism uses two systems, which in my opinion are sharpest if kept separate, although they can sometimes be applied to the same phenomenon. One is the method of analogy, the poetic or ludic method, applied to play, creativity, imagination, deliric interpretation etc. The other is the rational critical method or dialectics, applied to all discussions about human life and its place in the world, such as politics and philosophy. But most of all, surrealism is a moral attitude, confronting all repressive systems concerning human life, expression or thinking, such as the example of religion. Surrealism attacks religion above all from a moral standpoint, with the means of humor, ridicule and rational critique as well. The aim is liberation from all fetters, be they physical, mental, political or imaginary (like those called spiritual).

KG: It's interesting, because surrealism in your activity seems deprived of irrational aspects, from that reason I would like to ask why do you use this term, for notion to tradition of art practice / meaning, broadening of your musical experience? [I mean there a reference to your affiliation with critical thinking via the skeptics' movement, critical thinking is something opposite to irrational which uses analogic way of thinking]

JB: To clarify one thing first, I wouldn't say that I do “surrealist works”, I do works from a surrealist attitude. This is a different view of what surrealism is, it's from the inside and not from the standpoint of an art critic. I don't really care if someone calls my works or that of others “surrealist”, a surrealist wouldn't normally do that since only a person could be called surrealist, and the works are surrealist only in the sense that the person doing them are, when they do it with a surrealist attitude (and not for money, for example). We see the poetical potential as something available for everyone regardless of prejudices, but only surrealism has the attitude of generalizing poetry as something central in human existence, with all the consequences that it entails.

Regarding the irrational, surrealism has sometimes attacked “rationalism” in a way that has often been misunderstood. It has never been antirational, irrationalist or absurdist, it has sometimes played with inventing notions like “surrationalism” or “open rationalism”, usually meaning that we live in a determinist universe where imagination itself creates sparks of significance that are sometimes strong and crucial but never extend the world of the human spiritual into any notion of “metaphysics” or supernatural. Thus we reject any notion of existing gods, ghosts or spirits in order to liberate, expand and develop human imagination and human creativity. This can be done with the aid of the rational, but not with rationality alone. It's the chauvinism of the rational, as well as of the irrational, that we criticize. Me or Tippi are not unique in this regard.

Why do I use the term? I still haven't found any more coherent notion covering these ideas that I've mentioned. We always have the problem of confronting the popular notions of surrealism or use of the word, correcting the common misconceptions of it as an “art movement” or anything “strange” at all, and are often forced to take the decision whether or not we should confront that and explain it again and again. This seems to be just as unavoidable as that the confusionist, money-loving, racist and maybe even religious and fascist (except for a glorious period in his youth) Dali has been known as the surrealist above anyone in pop culture.

The last part of your question I guess is about how surrealism relates to my musical activities. Well, there are several aspects to this.

In the beginning of my discovery of surrealism, I of course came across the concept of automatism. In music, I related it (as have others) to free improvisation and I basically began to concentrate on improvisation from that point on. Some time later, I discovered there are also important differences between the concepts, and I would say now that automatism is an aspect of improvisation (as well as of other activities) but not equal to it. Also, there's a small overlap but otherwise no obvious relation between the improvised music community and the surrealist movement. Another important aspect is that of invention. “We don't need followers, we need inventors” is one of the best watchwords that we sometimes repeat. My instrument designing activities are in a realm between dream, crafts and the acoustic sciences.

But maybe the most important thing is that of how I regard being a musician not as a profession but as an extension of desires. Surrealists don't accept (except ironically or for the purpose of surviving) creativity as work in the way many leftist artist would like to have it. We're definitely not “cultural workers”, we are players, dreamers, researchers, revolutionaries.

KG: Of course in this new-old surrealism remaining some other general aspects like ‘chance’ or ‘collective work’ – forming groups.., what is important for you?

JB: To me, the international surrealist movement as a community of groups and individuals is extremely important. It provides an environment of about 90 years of collective experience, play and discussions, ever sharpening the tools and weapons of practice and theory beyond individual limitations. To put ideas into play as well as for confrontation is an interplay between individual and collective which is in constant development.

As for creative methods; any method of expanding imaginative experience and poetic discovery beyond individual habits and preconceptions is welcome and new games and experiments are constantly developed for this purpose, sometimes also scrutinized and criticized in detail to enhance the experience with conclusions. Chance or mathematical systems, chance meetings, elective affinities, deliriums of different kinds are just tools for expanding and training the senses and sensibilities and they have to be seen from the point of poetic value and not as any finished or perfect ways as such.

KG: Don’t you know that the surrealist movement exists or existed in sound art? What is useful in your own musical wanderings?

JB: I have studied and searched anything I could find in the history and present in the movement that has any implication on sound and music, and they are many but scattered, and very different from each other. A consistent study of surrealism and music is lacking but will hopefully be on its way soon, for which I will certainly try to contribute with my part.

For my own work, I find inspiring the tendencies and examples of free improvised music, musical games, invented musical instruments, musical dreams, sound performance, non-music and sound poetry which have been exemplified very well among surrealists, but also concrete music, old and new jazz, electroacoustic music, live electronics, text-sound composition, noise, sound machines, musical comedy, novelty bands, found sound and ambient music mostly outside of the movement (but sometimes with close connections within it).

KG: What about the surrealist group in Szczecin, probably this is the smallest group which has ever existed?

JB: Yes, we are two people, the other is Tippi. I suspect, though, that single individuals, having the right or not, sometimes have declared themselves as a group, probably with the intention, like us, of potentially growing into a proper collective. We were two surrealists in Szczecin 2007, realizing that there has never been any surrealist group declared in poland before, or addressing the polish situation, and we felt the need to do that, in polish as well as in english and swedish. As you know, many polish people have emigrated, also many of those with surrealist inclinations, sometimes finding their ways to groups elsewhere. Otherwise surrealism in poland has been limited to individual tendencies, never trying to organize, and the resistance to anything organized seems to be a general problem in poland.

KG: What about your manifesto?

JB: Yes, it declares our specific attitude as surrealists as well as the specific situation in poland. We are also a bit special in the surrealist movement because of our strong affiliation to the skeptic movement, which is, in short, a movement promoting critical thinking, the scientific method and often (though not dogmatically) with a strong anti-supernaturalist and atheist bias that we like and think is valuable also for the surrealist movement.

KG: Have you had contact with other groups besides Stockholm and Szczecin? Please tell me more about these collaborations?

JB: We've travelled a lot in the usa and met surrealists in Chicago, California, Alabama and St Louis. There are many more. We also met surrealists in Paris. Individually, I also met surrealists in england, australia, spain, portugal, greece, netherlands, denmark and the czech republic. We've also had contacts with surrealists in argentina, italy, brazil, japan and canada via mail.

These meetings are usually friendly encounters with lots of discussions, storytelling, showing works, giving gifts, taking long walks in unusual or random parts of cities or nature, eating, drinking, playing (music or games), and making up projects such as collaborative journals or other works.

KG: You are also participant of another vast movement of Skeptics, can you differentiate it from the traditional meaning of this way of thinking and say something about its fundamentals? [I referred to 'traditional' as a reference to the scepticism movement of antiquity.]

JB: The contemporary Skeptics' movement has little to do with the antique philosophy bearing the same name, and so I find it unnecessary to talk much about the differences, since they are actually two separate entities. As I see it, Skepticism in the sense of the contemporary movement, is most of all about promoting critical thinking. Critical thinking means more than just questioning everything, although this might be its starting-point. It implies learning the most effective methods of questioning, and also when to stop questioning and decide to come to a conclusion. It means learning how easy it is to fall for compelling arguments and to fool yourself when you don't spot logical fallacies, when your senses lie to you and your memory fails. It means training yourself to be able to give up your pet theories and opinions in the face of evidence. It means to ask for specific evidence when someone comes up with wild or attractive ideas. It means distinguishing which ideas that can be proved and tested from beliefs that can never be proved or tested. Those beliefs can never escape the realm of imagination. If they claim to explain the objective outside world, they effectively become lies and propaganda for something that noone can ever know. In this way, you can see that skepticism is very close to the scientific method, which strives to come to probable conclusions made from testable evidence, independent of the beliefs or habits of any individual. In this way, skepticism is good for anyone in almost any situation in life, and it's very much about information and teaching critical thinking skills which will do good for mankind as a whole through increasing collective knowledge and fighting fraud, pseudoscience and paranormal/supernatural/magical confusionism. This is education, although it is often perceived as annoying, intimidating, rude and surprisingly even promoting government power, by those fond of conspiracy theories. Actually, what we do potentially saves peoples' lives and money, protects them from harm when we're able to unveil the false hopes and lies spread by the con artists known as psychics, proponents for alternative (non-evidence-based) medicine etc.

KG: Let's say you’re a surrealist in the wake of cognitive capitalism? Are you politically engaged? [generally, with cognitive capitalism I refer to this explanation http://p2pfoundation.net/cognitive_capitalism, as a higher level, or a post-capitalism stadium and I try to mark the difference or economical context for this attitude, which is still connected to 'thingness', commodity fetishism, etc.]

JB: “Cognitive capitalism” seems to me to be just the same old capitalism with ever more virtual markets, thus even more prone to international crisis than before. It's still the poor who will pay the rich through these inevitable turmoils, and we're as far as before from a change into a society where the “liberation of each one is the requirement for the liberation of all” (Communist Manifesto).

I am not presently politically engaged in any organized way. Many years ago, I was in a Trotskyist group, which has influenced my political and philosophical views very much, but I left because of distrust in the efficacy, though correct in principle, of the “transitional program” which was at the heart of Trotsky's political method. I.e. to say, I still consider myself a revolutionary socialist, and I basically support any resistance to capitalism and its reformist, stalinist and post-stalinist collaborators. Capitalism should be destroyed before it destroys us, it's very well on its way as we have seen with constant war and crises, stealing the riches from the poor, causing famine, corruption and stupidity at every turn.

KG: What is for you ‘life after life’ of surrealism, how we can understand this phrase? [using 'life after life' I refer to some beliefs that surrealism ended with the death of Breton, but there were much more groups, exiles, and dissidents inside surrealism during its so-called golden era; so I dont want to suggest you that there was some good surrealism, and you're only followers and epigones. I want to problematize this question, for that reason I used life after life, to not use the word 'death'.]

JB: I guess you refer to the notion, almost constant during the entire history of the moment, that surrealism is dead (however the date of its death seems to move forward from time to time). But surrealism has been an uninterrupted movement ever since about 90 years, and like all living movements, it has had its ups and downs, including some splits, fights and renegades. This is nothing strange. What should be strange, but is actually quite explainable, is the fashion of declaring things dead and alive. This is for the fashion journalists and opinionators but means nothing to the development of the poetic sense or the development of human intelligence. Surrealism has been “out” or “dead” most of the time and I'm perfectly fine with that. It's actually more difficult with the periods where it's “in”, because it usually is for the wrong reasons.

A discussion about which elements of surrealism that are outdated, what remains essential and what can be added is very important and interesting, and maybe it suffices to say here that one of our (the Stockholm group) contributions to this discussion is to stress the significance of epistemology and methodology. The Szczecin group has, as you can see, contributed with the Skeptical topics to this discussion. This might balance the superficial impression that the surrealists are only interested in art and the irrational. It might also, like before, contribute some important critical viewpoints against the art world as well as the political left, as well as a unified viewpoint on knowledge and the reasons and prospects for living.

KG: You are a sound and visual artist, as well as a piano technician and instrument constructor. I saw documentation of your lovely work, where you’re closed inside a coffin-shape soundboard and sing. Probably you know a lot of funny stories from the work of piano tuner...

JB: Yes, I occasionally call myself an artist, but it's actually out of intellectual laziness and social convenience. In reality, I never feel like an artist or a musician because these artistic activities are just an expression of a wish for another life of expanded poetic communication between people, a surrealist wish or vision if you like, and also an expression of the joy of physically manipulating and playing with objects and materials.

Well, to link the things you mention, surrealism led me (through the meeting with Hal Rammel in Chicago) to start inventing instruments. The interest in musical instrument acoustics led me to educate myself to a piano technician. The work you mention is the attempt to realize a dream of a fellow surrealist (Petra Mandal), and my skills as a piano technician provided some of the knowledge necessary to build the construction of the Singing Coffin with strings on it. Since she's not much into performing, I have used it as a tool myself for a sound performance where the feedback between the voice and the strings provides an interesting noise music in the very high frequency range. I've also used the feedback sounds as a point of departure for making a noise piece called From The Coffin.

Oh yes, the piano technicians guild is full of funny stories, but I don't think this is the place for that. I like my work and I'm very fond of crafts in general.

KG: How do you understand the term ‘formless’?

JB: This is a surprising question. Maybe I could say something about it from the point of view as an improvisor. In free improvisation, at least some kinds of it, form is something that takes shape as you go along, with (at least in principle) no preconcieved decision about it. You can thus never determine the form until after the fact of the finished work (if you can consider it finished at all). Well, this is something very relative, since I've seen that many forms of improvising, especially nowadays, have very clear preconceived aesthetics which they follow rigorously during a concert. This is not necessarily something wrong, but it is a matter of taste, and taste is only one, and maybe not always the most important factor of music-making. Taste is definitely important also for me (otherwise I wouldn't have any desires), but I often prefer the sense of sharing a common adventure, risk-taking and surprise, elements that I suppose lie closer to the surrealist concept of psychic automatism. This attitude is maybe more “formless” as a starting-point, but the end result might well be totally distinct and clear in its form – or very malleable, unclear and shady.

KG: Don’t you know that we’re living in the era of loss of sense of humour?

JB: No, I don't know and I don't really care what this or any other era is supposed to be. I worship humor in many forms, satiric, morbid, black, violent, sarcastic, blunt and direct or intelligent, even when the style is slapstick or the elegance of twisting language. I don't like humor that kick those who are already below. I like to hurt religious feelings, to ridicule stupidity, gullibility, hokus-pokus woo and powerful and upper class people. I also like a kind of “objective” or found humor which is poetical, like the surprising juxtaposition of objects or images in an assemblage or a collage, and which can also be found sometimes in “reality”. You also have to exaggerate and go crazy in order to know where the levels for a sound life go. This is a kind of violence which can be really funny.

Let me say, in conclusion, that these replies are in basic accordance with my colleague Tippi of the Surrealist Group in Szczecin and Stockholm.

2010-06-11T00:24:00.001-05:00

2010-06-07T06:52:00.001-05:00

2010-06-06T14:47:00.001-05:00

2010-05-31T16:39:00.001-05:00

2010-05-30T18:27:00.001-05:00

2010-05-29T13:01:00.001-05:00

YouTube Video

2010-05-29T12:44:00.001-05:00

Every act of harassment revives this truth, spoken in 1842: “The life of the police agent is painful; his position in society is as humiliating and despised as crime itself… Shame and infamy encircle him from all sides, society expels him, isolates him as a pariah, society spits out its disdain for the police agent along with his pay, without remorse, without regrets, without pity… The police badge that he carries in his pocket documents his shame.”

2010-05-27T15:35:00.001-05:00

Sorcha: Toxic Oil Spill Rains Warned Could Destroy North America

Posted By: RumorMail
Date: Monday, 24-May-2010 22:37:07
Newsletter:

A dire report prepared for President Medvedev by Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources is warning today that the British Petroleum (BP) oil and gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico is about to become the worst environmental catastrophe in all of human history threatening the entire eastern half of the North American continent with “total destruction”.

Russian scientists are basing their apocalyptic destruction assessment due to BP’s use of millions of gallons of the chemical dispersal agent known as Corexit 9500 which is being pumped directly into the leak of this wellhead over a mile under the Gulf of Mexico waters and designed, this report says, to keep hidden from the American public the full, and tragic, extent of this leak that is now estimated to be over 2.9 million gallons a day.

The dispersal agent Corexit 9500 is a solvent originally developed by Exxon and now manufactured by the Nalco Holding Company of Naperville, Illinois that is four times more toxic than oil (oil is toxic at 11 ppm (parts per million), Corexit 9500 at only 2.61ppm). In a report written by Anita George-Ares and James R. Clark for Exxon Biomedical Sciences, Inc. titled “Acute Aquatic Toxicity of Three Corexit Products: An Overview” Corexit 9500 was found to be one of the most toxic dispersal agents ever developed. Even worse, according to this report, with higher water temperatures, like those now occurring in the Gulf of Mexico, its toxicity grows.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in discovering BP’s use of this dangerous dispersal agent ordered BP to stop using it, but BP refused stating that their only alternative to Corexit 9500 was an even more dangerous dispersal agent known as Sea Brat 4.

The main differences between Corexit 9500 and Sea Brat 4 lie in how long these dangerous chemicals take to degrade into their constituent organic compounds, which for Corexit 9500 is 28 days. Sea Brat 4, on the other hand, degrades into an organic chemical called Nonylphenol that is toxic to aquatic life and can persist in the environment for years.

A greater danger involving Corexit 9500, and as outlined by Russian scientists in this report, is that with its 2.61ppm toxicity level, and when combined with the heating Gulf of Mexico waters, its molecules will be able to “phase transition” from their present liquid to a gaseous state allowing them to be absorbed into clouds and allowing their release as “toxic rain” upon all of Eastern North America.

Even worse, should a Katrina like tropical hurricane form in the Gulf of Mexico while tens of millions of gallons of Corexit 9500 are sitting on, or near, its surface the resulting “toxic rain” falling upon the North American continent could “theoretically” destroy all microbial life to any depth it reaches resulting in an “unimaginable environmental catastrophe” destroying all life forms from the “bottom of the evolutionary chart to the top”.

Note: For molecules of a liquid to evaporate, they must be located near the surface, be moving in the proper direction, and have sufficient kinetic energy to overcome liquid-phase intermolecular forces. Only a small proportion of the molecules meet these criteria, so the rate of evaporation is limited. Since the kinetic energy of a molecule is proportional to its temperature, evaporation proceeds more quickly at higher temperatures.

As over 50 miles of the US State of Louisiana’s coastline has already been destroyed by this spill, American scientists are warning that the damage may be impossible to repair, and as we can read as reported by the Associated Press News Service:

“The gooey oil washing into the maze of marshes along the Gulf Coast could prove impossible to remove, leaving a toxic stew lethal to fish and wildlife, government officials and independent scientists said. Officials are considering some drastic and risky solutions: They could set the wetlands on fire or flood areas in hopes of floating out the oil. They warn an aggressive cleanup could ruin the marshes and do more harm than good.”

And to understand the full import of this catastrophe it must be remembered that this disaster is occurring in what is described as the “biologically richest waters in America” with the greatest amount of oil and toxic Corexit 9500 set to come ashore in the coming days and weeks to destroy it completely for decades to come.

Reports are also coming from the United States that their government is secretly preparing to evacuate tens-of-millions of their citizens from their Gulf of Mexico States should the most dire of these scientific warnings start to come true.

To the greatest lesson to be learned by these Americans is that their government-oil industry cabal has been just as destructive to them as their government-banking one, both of which have done more to destroy the United States these past couple of years than any foreign enemy could dare dream was possible.

But to their greatest enemy the Americans need look no further than their nearest mirror as they are the ones who allowed these monsters to rule over them in the first place.

2010-05-27T14:18:00.000-05:00

Charles Moore: Sailing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrAShtolieg&sns=em

2010-05-27T10:10:00.001-05:00

Concerning the Puppet master:

"Bernays' vision was of a utopian society in which the dangerous libidinal energies that lurked just below the surface of every individual could be harnessed and channeled by a corporate elite for economic benefit. Through the use of mass production, big business could fulfill constant craving of the inherently irrational and desire driven masses, simultaneously securing the niche of a mass production economy (even in peacetime), as well as sating the dangerous animal urges that threatened to tear society apart if left unquelled."

2010-05-27T10:01:00.001-05:00

"A scientist at the University of Reading has become the first human to be “infected” with a computer virus, as part of research into the potential risks associated with electronic devices implanted into humans."

2010-05-27T09:37:00.001-05:00

2010-05-24T08:31:00.001-05:00

ANOTHER PARADISE LOST!

A Surrealist Program of Demands on the Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster

O octopus, with your silken look! whose soul is inseparable from mine...

-The Songs of Maldoror

We are through with the rational, reasonable, realistic and scientific solutions of faith-based positivism. Instead, we make the following demands and dedicate them to Judi Bari, an Earth First! liberator and lover of old-growth trees who was car-bombed by the forces of law-'n'-order twenty years ago on May 24th. Long live Judi Bari! Solidarity with Marie Mason, Oso Blanco Chubbock, Mumia Abu Jamal, and the Tarnac 9!

1. CLARIFICATION: It needs to be made clear that this is not an "oil spill." This is a manmade disaster. Depending on which official version you chose to believe, millions of gallons of oil have been gushing into the ocean every day since April 22, 2010. A "spill" is what happens when a drinking glass of water tips over; this is and always has been an unstoppable, unpluggable, uncleanable, uncontrollable, unleashed man-made geyser of toxic disaster.

2. PEOPLE'S TRIBUNALS FOR ECOTERRORISTS: An injury to one is an injury to all! We charge every BP America executive and governmental overseer of offshore oil drilling with manslaughter and ecocide. The mansions, yachts, and private jets seized from these executives and bureaucrats will be converted into sandboxes, tree forts, rain gardens, greenhouses, and amusement parks. The accused must face a people's tribunal and stand trial in the Gulf Shore communities that their actions (and inactions) have affected, particularly the families of those eleven workers killed when the BP rig exploded. Bussed in from the cities, the underground, and the countryside, members of Earth Liberation Front and Earth First! should be on hand to witness the proceedings, especially those who are currently serving harsh prison sentences for their work in defense of the natural world. The least that we can hope for as an outcome is that the accused will be tarred with their own petroleum wastes and feathered with the soiled plumage of murdered birds.

3. DISMANTLING OF ALL OIL, COAL, AND NUCLEAR POWER COMPANIES: The obscene perpetuation of environmental devastation and endless wars in the name of energy company profits cannot be tolerated any longer. In the name of brown pelicans, shrimp, frigate birds, marlins, sea bass, laughing gulls, octopi, and piping plovers, we demand an immediate and total cessation of the violent industrialized extraction of oil and coal from the Earth. We also call for the shutting down of all nuclear power facilities whose foul radioactive wastes threaten ecologies everywhere.

4. DISSOLUTION OF ALL MEDIA CORPORATIONS: Our friend in New Orleans, Max Cafard, reports that monstrous tentacles of oil measuring ten miles long and three miles wide continue to grow beneath the waves, yet tellingly the media industry remains focused on the multicolored "sheen" on the sea's surface. News outlets dutifully parrot the oil company's party line of official estimates and explanations. When one BP official said that this disaster was a good opportunity to experiment with pollution containment strategies, no news agency explored the implications of an industry that can trigger a catastrophe and then grope around in the dark for a way out of it. In another interview with a BP spokesman, the CNN reporter concluded the report with the sympathetic assurance that "We're all praying" for the corporation. Clearly, the media serve only the interests of their stockholders and the State in their coverage of this atrocity. Therefore we call for all equipment and broadcast network technology currently used to disseminate these outrageous lies and propaganda ("We're glad that you're on the job, Admiral"; "Don't worry-warm water microbes break down the oil") to be collectivized and re-distributed on street corners in order to encourage more participation and free expression in the report and analysis of such tragedies.

5. EMERGENCY MASS ACTION: We call upon everyone to defend your homes, your loved ones, and the Earth from destruction. We have seen the graffiti in Mobile, Alabama: "When life gives you oil spills, make Molotovs!"

　

The Surrealist Movement in the United States

www.surrealism-usa.org

2010-05-22T17:26:00.001-05:00

"Leo, tigris, pard, panther, antalops, unicornis, lincis, griffin, elephant, castor, ibex, yena, Bonnacon simia, satyrs, stag, caper, caprea, monoceros, ursus, leucrota, cocodryllus, manticora, parandrus, vulpis, yale, lupus, canis, licisci, ovis, vervex, aries, agnus, hrycus, aper, juventus, bos, camels, dromedary, donkey, onager, horses, mulus, mouser, catus, mus, weasel, ericius, urchin, mole, ant..."

The first wonderous listing of creatures in part 1, 'Beasts' of The Book of Beasts
ISBN: 0-486-24609-4

2010-05-20T15:28:00.001-05:00

2010-05-13T18:57:00.000-05:00

2010-05-13T18:40:00.000-05:00

EXPERIENCE OF THE SURREALIST GROUP IN STOCKHOLM

Chronological stepping-stones and strategies

1985-87 The first explicit surrealist group in Sweden comes into existence through the meeting in summer 1985 of then Trotskyist Bruno Jacobs and then industrial musician Mattias Forshage, who bring together parts of their circles (from this first period, Johannes Bergmark, Kajsa Bergh, Carl-Michael Edenborg, Petra Mandal, Hans Christian Werner and Tomas Werner become mainstays) and the result is a dynamic collective eager to question everything, stir up scandal, develop automatist behaviour, poetic revelations, rigorous revolutionary morality and enraptured self-confidence, all in a spirit of furious defiance of consensus in the then still existent social democratic idyll. Approximately weekly meetings and continuous experiments and discussions have been going on ever since. After a series of confrontations and constitutive experiences (including denouncing the only other explicit surrealist activity in Sweden, "Dunganon" in Skåne), the Surrealist Group in Stockholm is officially launched at a waterfall in northwest Sweden, Ristafallet in Jämtland, on Midsummer 1986, and then on an international scale with the International Surrealist Bulletin jointly produced with the surrealist group in Chicago, at the time the most lively pole of surrealist organisation in the world, the support from and collaboration with which is very important in these early years. Games, experiments, investigations, translations and creative works abound, insurrectionary surrealist leaflets are handed out at various occasions; surrealist living, Swedish surrealist prehistory, surrealist musical improvisation, are areas explored in partly groundbreaking ways, and a "Bureau of Surrealist Research" is held open for 24 hours at a friend's second-hand bookshop. A selection of results of all this makes up the first issue of Nakna läppar in spring 1987, when the group is also cracking under the pressure of conflicting ideas about how to organise the continuation after the initial spontaneous momentum has somewhat faded.

1987-89 Conflict results in split. The remaining surrealist group pursues a "double-year" experience on the path of scandal, revelling, vertigo, intoxication and defence of transgression, without too much critical consideration (the new ethos of "non-Oedipal cynicism" propagates the practical attitudes), and is extremely productive (the later issues of Nakna läppar, Kristall, Kvicksand, a daily newspaper for three days, numerous pamphlets, translations and minor collections); it also takes a very active part in the resurrection of the surrealist movement in Europe with the resurfacing Paris and Prague groups. (Aase Berg is a new mainstay, and old Imaginisterna painter Gösta Kriland is active for some time before his death.) The ensemble of pure psychic automatism. Revolution by chance. The splinter group on the other hand, the Agama Expedition, is more eclectic as it combines surrealist games and creativity (and a group exhibition) with anarchist activism, makes a brief plunge into Romanticism, considers situationist theory; and it takes part in another part of the surrealist movement, the "dissident networks" flourishing this decade, thereby eventually merging with the "Dunganon" activity in Skåne, before fading out together.

1990-93 This period is marked by a reduction in size and output of the group, and more long-term investigative projects, as accounted for in the two book-size issues of Mannen på gatan. This might be metaphorically well described as hangover and exhaustion from the previous extravagances, but several aspects of inner dynamics do require more patient in-depth reflection at this time. Studies in alchemy are significant, as is the unwitting paralleling of situationist thought in the new theories about the public sphere and the personality market. Memory is addressed. The orchestra of the great invisibles, the hidden sounds. There is also a deep involvement in international organisation, with the new International Surrealist Bulletin in close collaboration with mainly the Paris group. During this time, the people from the Agama Expedition are typically more involved in anarchist activism than in surrealism, but with a few personal exhibitions, collective games, and the single-issue international bulletin Cormorant Coincidence. Picking up some threads of charting the history of surrealism in Sweden, if there was one.

1993-95 The tide turns as the group starts growing and facing outwards again. A public activity resurfaces with "Quicksilver Wednesdays" and the Kalla handen sheet, several new themes are brought in, while Forshage returns and old surrealist Ilmar Laaban and a few others join in. The second Mannen på gatan is printed. Poetry, new man, Vertigo, game days, meat soirée, new contacts in the weird domains within scholarship, music and politics.

1995-98 Continuing the extrovert thread, the surrealist group seeks out a large number of interesting artists, writers, scholars and activists and launches the journal Stora saltet in 1995 and then also a webpage. Throughout this there is a series of significant arrivals (Sebastian Osorio and Robert Lindroth, Niklas Nenzén and Eva Kristina Olsson, Riyota Kasamatsu and Maja Lundgren, not to mention the briefer ones). This ambitious and intense presence on the local scale also corresponds with a less active part in the international surrealist movement; except for a series of polemics, international communication is flourishing primarily only with the new surrealist group in Leeds (plus a distinct sympathy with the new ultra-radicalism of the Madrid group); surrealist habits, prejudices and self-sufficiency are among the things subjected to the most sadistic criticism. Aspects of materialism are emphasised, in terms of Bataillean base materialism, poetic investigations of matter and poetic realism, and on the other hand with a criticism of symbolism and an emphasis on zen "suchness". But also in a certain company along the way with the literary fashion of rediscovered "language materialism", which is one of the currents of the time approached by the group, along with the poetic current of female incomprehensibility, certain fragments of theory from the poststructuralist field, and parts of contemporary feminism. Some people in the group very actively explore the cultural field, with involvement in the bookfairs, the live poetry scene, the cultural journals, surrealismophilic publishers, even newspapers and cultural parties (Vertigo, Köttkropp; even Res Publica, Ellerströms, Pequod, Ord&Bild, FAN and whatnot). The Stora saltet journal is very well received with its aggressive mixture of brilliant critical thinking, a particular documentary direction, verbal violence, self-effacement and worthlessness with a distinctly Bataillean flavour, and scattered examples of luminous poetry and painting; many people are happy to consume this acrid brew, and so it is cancelled. Let's say that the seeking of allies in the cultural field is constructively concluded negatively; most of those who produce quite interesting works in the cultural field are nevertheless mostly looking for opportunities of exposure and possibly merely social networking, not challenging of the spirit, ambitious collective experiments or mutual moral criticism; furthermore, public exposure proved addictive even for many of the then surrealists.

1998-2000 The large and still growing group (Jonas Enander, Kalle Eklund, John Andersson, Helena Boberg, Kim Fagerstam and others join) now doesn't have the time-consuming focus of producing a journal, and turns to more obscure and ambitious experiments (some accounted for in the book-size anthology Lucifer), to ever-weirder side projects and eventually to open contradictions. Significantly, street presence at night, and presence in young underground culture, and participation in the period's famous riots (Urbs nocturna, Carmen all stars, etc) are mostly carried out by people in the group other than those involved in the explorations of the cultural field, while yet others group members emphasise open-minded investigation of imagination, or anarchist focus on method. The period of extroversion ends with the cancelling of the cultural surrealist position, while the youth-riot position merges with the imaginationalist and anarchist-methodological subtendencies into a new exploration of mobility; meanwhile many long-standing members successively leave (riddance of some of them presenting happy opportunities for new paths).

2000-05 A stint of vagrancy, involving primarily open-ended and desperate experiments, and also seeking to escape all routine, established identity, prestige, brilliance and preconceived forms, but also a return to simple principles, and a desperate reflection and politicisation (including active participation in the larger unorthodox mobilisation apparent at the time). As one member is jailed for supposedly having been a leader of the Göteborg riots of 2001, the group moves a lot of its activities into prison in order not to accept his abduction from the group; dozens of new games are invented in prison. This is the period of the Lösdrivaren fanzine, the Silent Hand experiments in suburbs and ruderal areas, walking through the burnt forest, the first ever explicitly surrealist comic book Diabolik, several public events at Fylkingen (soirées etc), peripheral journals Sjukdom and Berätta en saga sa hon, the Monkey King game establishing collective identities, the moon novel, strange reading groups, consultas in the imagination, the morphology of fear and of psychedelic experience, structural analysis, tunnels and meetings at dawn, etc. New members significantly include Christian Andersson and Emma Lundenmark (and others more briefly). Satellite activities are being formed by members exiled in other parts of the world.

2005- The group abandons a lack of structure that had begun to lead to mere habitual socialisation, and approximately simultaneously turns back to affirmation of surrealism. This involves a return to focus on imagination, dreams and poetry, specifically implemented in investigations of dream geography, synaesthetics, intersubjectivity, entropy and decomposition, the notion of coupure, general methodology, complex systems, sensory de-conditioning, phenomenology of the mind, cosmology and evolutionary biology. It also includes a return to active efforts at international communication, organisation and critical discussion, and a certain public exposure but mostly through new channels. Among these are a significantly renewed internet presence with an updated webpage and several blogs, including the theory project Icecrawler and the ambitious dream geography research program the Cormorant Council. In the cultural connections presence is kept concealed by the use of intermediaries, primarily Styx (publishing house and loose underground art collective), Sphinx publishers, the painter group 4X, etc. In international surrealism, important points are the Hell Choir initiative, the series of annual game festivals issuing from the London SLAG group, with which the Stockholm group enters into particularly close collaboration, and the international anthology Hydrolith. New members are significantly Erik Bohman and Merl Fluin. More satellite activities, occasionally transforming into independent local groups.

2010-05-01T11:59:00.000-05:00

Joel-Peter Witkin: Cupid and Centaur, 1992

2010-05-01T11:50:00.003-05:00

CATASTROPHE

2010-04-28T23:24:00.001-05:00

From Reuters - U.S. Hispanics and Democratic lawmakers furious over Arizona's harsh crackdown on illegal immigrants expect huge weekend rallies across the United States, piling pressure on President Barack Obama to overhaul immigration laws in this election year.
U.S.
Protest organizers said on Wednesday outrage over the Arizona law -- which seeks to drive illegal immigrants out of the state bordering Mexico -- has galvanized Latinos and would translate into a higher turnout for May Day rallies in more than 70 U.S. cities.
"The marches and demonstrations are going to be far more massive than they otherwise would have been," said Juan Jose Gutierrez, a Los Angeles rally organizer who runs an immigration assistance company.
The backlash began on Friday after Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law a measure that requires state and local police to determine a person's immigration status if there is "reasonable suspicion" they are undocumented. Critics say it is unconstitutional and opens the door to racial profiling.
Republican backers of the law say it is needed to curb crime in the desert state, which is a key corridor for drug and migrant smugglers from Mexico.
A Rasmussen Reports poll on Wednesday found that almost two-thirds -- 64 percent -- of voters in the state favored the measure.
The crowds on the streets, from Los Angeles to New York, could be the biggest since 2006, when hundreds of thousands of marchers urged former President George W. Bush to overhaul of federal immigration laws. He tried, but failed in Congress.
"With what's going on in Arizona we see renewed energy for folks to fight for immigration reform," said Marissa Graciosa, of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, an organizer of rallies and vigils on Friday and Saturday.
In Washington, a diverse group of more than two dozen lawmakers -- Hispanics, blacks, Asians, whites -- held a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday to denounce the Arizona law as a violation of civil rights.
"What Arizona has done is that it has galvanized, united, fortified, focused our immigration movement," Democratic Representative Luis Gutierrez declared at the news conference.
MEXICAN TAXI BOYCOTT
The Arizona law has catapulted the immigration issue back to the front and center of U.S. politics in this congressional election year, and ratcheted up pressure on Obama to keep a pledge to Hispanics to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
"It is going to allow us to ultimately say -- when all is said and done -- that this was the clear pivotal moment," said Gutierrez, who is head of the congressional Hispanic caucus' immigration task force.
U.S. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, who faces a tough re-election battle in Nevada where Latinos helped clinch victory for Obama in 2008, said on Wednesday he would work to pass energy legislation before tackling immigration reform, although both are seen as election-year long shots.
Passing an overhaul offering a path to citizenship for many of the 10.8 million illegal immigrants in the United States would consolidate support for Democrats among Hispanics, the country's largest minority, but would run the risk of energizing Republican opposition to Democratic lawmakers in swing states and districts.
Arizona's bold move reverberated well beyond its borders, sparking calls for economic boycotts and celebrity interventions.
Colombian-born pop star Shakira said she will travel to Phoenix on Thursday to help campaign against the new law, and would meet with Mayor Phil Gordon, police and Latino families. She sought a meeting with Governor Brewer but was turned down, her publicist said.
Adding to calls to shun the state, Saint Paul, Minnesota, Mayor Chris Coleman on Wednesday banned publicly funded travel to Arizona. The state law set a "dangerous example to the rest of the country," he said, by creating a culture that made racial profiling acceptable.
The National Conference of State Legislatures said similar state immigration enforcement laws may be proposed in Georgia and Texas in coming months, following a summer recess.
In Mexico, where the government has warned its citizens living in or traveling to Arizona that they could be harassed, taxi drivers organized their own peculiar boycott.
"We don't give service to gringos from Arizona," was the phrase some Mexico City taxi drivers painted in white on their rear windows.
(Additional reporting by Steve Gorman and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, Tom Ferraro and Jeremy Pelofs in Washington and Catherine Bremer in Mexico City; editing by Mary Milliken and Eric Walsh)

2010-04-28T21:09:00.000-05:00

2010-04-28T18:32:00.000-05:00

Asteroid Themis has 'frosted surface'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10090128.stm

2010-04-28T18:25:00.002-05:00

NASA: Evidence of life on Mars
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2951855/Nasa-Evidence-of-life-on-mars.html

2010-04-24T14:12:00.000-05:00

2010-04-24T11:49:00.001-05:00

Star Wars 2010?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1268138/X-37B-unmanned-space-shuttle-launched-tonight.html

2010-04-17T12:05:00.000-05:00

Apple Wants To Own You
Welcome to our velvet prison...
http://www.slate.com/id/2250993/

2010-04-17T11:50:00.000-05:00

2010-04-15T23:45:00.000-05:00

Svakkhato (Pali) The Dharma is not a speculative philosophy, but is the Universal Law found through enlightenment and is preached precisely. Therefore it is Excellent in the beginning (Sīla — Moral principles), Excellent in the middle (Samadhi — Concentration) and Excellent in the end, the only end that could result through fate. (Pańña — Wisdom).

Saditthiko (Pali) The Dharma can be tested by practice and therefore he who follows it will see the result by himself through his own experience.

Akāliko (Pali) The Dharma is able to bestow timeless and immediate results here and now, though no matter which means of travel, for which there is no need to wait until the future or next existence.

Ehipassiko (Pali) The Dharma welcomes all beings to put it to the test and to experience it for themselves.

Opāneyiko (Pali) The Dharma is capable of being entered upon and therefore it is worthy to be followed as a part of one's life.

Paccattam veditabbo viññūhi (Pali) The Dharma may be perfectly realized only by the noble disciples (Pali: Ariyas) who have matured and who have become enlightened in supreme wisdom.

2010-04-15T22:20:00.000-05:00

"Verily, that which is Dharma is truth.
Therefore they say of a man who speaks truth, 'He speaks the Dharma,'
or of a man who speaks the Dharma, 'He speaks the Truth.'
Verily, both these things are the same."
(Brh. Upanishad, 1.4.14)

2010-04-15T22:17:00.000-05:00

In pictures: Volcano erupts in Iceland
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8622055.stm

2010-04-15T22:14:00.000-05:00

Icelandic volcano eruption intensifies
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_iceland_volcano

2010-04-15T22:06:00.000-05:00

Massive fireball reported across Midwestern sky
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/15/midwest.fireball/index.html?section=cnn_latest

2010-04-12T15:00:00.000-05:00

WikiLeaks
http://wikileaks.org/

2010-04-10T11:16:00.002-05:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/7570677/New-species-lives-without-oxygen.html

2010-04-05T15:35:00.003-05:00

"Collateral Murder"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0&feature=player_embedded
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/video-av-massaker-publicerad-pa-natet-1.1072665

2010-04-03T13:19:00.000-05:00

2010-03-31T20:23:00.000-05:00

Nytt FN-organ ska begränsa ditt internetanvändande
http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/nyheter/nytt-fn-organ-ska-begransa-ditt-internetanvandande-1.1070444