Month: May 2003

Eureka

Shinji Aoyama’s Eureka (2000) is 3 hours 40 minutes long; but subjectively it felt much shorter to me. That’s because the film is so beautiful, so bleak, and so compelling, that I was drawn into its rhythms, its landscapes, and its world. Eureka is about the aftermath of trauma: the pain of working it through, and the dim, distant possibility of some sort of–I don’t want to say redemption–but coming to terms, and reviving some sort of human connection. Yet it seems inadequate, somehow, to say that this is merely what the film is “about”–I will say, rather, that the film is, and embodies, such a process…

Shinji Aoyama’s Eureka (2000) is 3 hours 40 minutes long; but subjectively it felt much shorter to me. That’s because the film is so beautiful, so bleak, and so compelling, that I was drawn into its rhythms, its landscapes, and its world. Eureka is about the aftermath of trauma: the pain of working it through, and the dim, distant possibility of some sort of–I don’t want to say redemption–but coming to terms, and reviving some sort of human connection. Yet it seems inadequate, somehow, to say that this is merely what the film is “about”–I will say, rather, that the film is, and embodies, such a process…
Continue reading “Eureka”

Civil disobedience

Linux users, pissed off at the fact that SCO, a company that claims to hold certain patents on Unix, has started to sue companies that provide Linux distributions for violation of their ownership of “intellectual property,” have started a petition, reading as follows:

To: SCO

I am a Linux user. I feel that SCO’s tactics toward an operating system of my choice are unjust, ill founded and bizarre. I am willing to be sued because I am confident that SCO’s tactics toward Linux will fail. If I have published my email address as part of this petition it is so SCO representatives can email me and begin the process of serving me a court order.

(Petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/scosueme/petition.html; via Techdirt.

It strikes me that a similar strategy would be of use in regards to mp3 filesharing. What would the record companies do, if millions of people signed a petition saying, in effect, “I have made music files available for peer-to-peer sharing; go ahead and sue me”?

Linux users, pissed off at the fact that SCO, a company that claims to hold certain patents on Unix, has started to sue companies that provide Linux distributions for violation of their ownership of “intellectual property,” have started a petition, reading as follows:

To: SCO

I am a Linux user. I feel that SCO’s tactics toward an operating system of my choice are unjust, ill founded and bizarre. I am willing to be sued because I am confident that SCO’s tactics toward Linux will fail. If I have published my email address as part of this petition it is so SCO representatives can email me and begin the process of serving me a court order.

(Petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/scosueme/petition.html; via Techdirt).

It strikes me that a similar strategy would be of use in regards to mp3 filesharing. What would the record companies do, if millions of people signed a petition saying, in effect, “I have made music files available for peer-to-peer sharing; go ahead and sue me”?

Falling Out of Cars

Jeff Noon‘s latest novel, Falling Out of Cars, is one of the best things he’s ever done. It’s a moody, poetic book, set in an almost-contemporary England, where a strange malady has affected nearly everyone’s perception. People are no longer able to separate the signal from the noise. There is a blockage somewhere between transmission and reception. Images and sounds are affected with blur and static; texts and clocks become difficult to read; mirrors are positively dangerous…

Jeff Noon‘s latest novel, Falling Out of Cars, is one of the best things he’s ever done. It’s a moody, poetic book, set in an almost-contemporary England, where a strange malady has affected nearly everyone’s perception. People are no longer able to separate the signal from the noise. There is a blockage somewhere between transmission and reception. Images and sounds are affected with blur and static; texts and clocks become difficult to read; mirrors are positively dangerous…
Continue reading “Falling Out of Cars”

Light

M. John Harrison’s new SF novel Light is a brilliant metaphysical space opera, mixing paranoia and sexual dysfunction in the present with disaffection and alienation in the future, all to a backdrop of quantum strangeness. The novel is dark, brooding, and bitter for the most part–which I loved–although it has an affirmative, almost Nietzschean conclusion. The technologies involved, which include quantum mechanical jumps in space, advanced bioengineering, and various techniques of simulation, are not so much foregrounded as they are taken for granted in the future parts of the novel. The disorientation one feels reading the book has as much to do with this taken-for-grantedness as with anything else. Metamorphosis and discovery are all the more terrifying for being, as it were, domesticated. Harrison is a wonderful writer whom I only recently discovered, thanks to China Mieville.

M. John Harrison’s new SF novel Light is a brilliant metaphysical space opera, mixing paranoia and sexual dysfunction in the present with disaffection and alienation in the future, all to a backdrop of quantum strangeness. Something truly weird happens when existential angst gets mixed up with quantum mechanics. The novel is dark, brooding, and bitter for the most part–which I loved–although it has an affirmative, almost Nietzschean conclusion, which I am not sure I entirely buy. The technologies involved, which include quantum jumps in space, advanced bioengineering, and various techniques of simulation, are not so much foregrounded as they are taken for granted in the future parts of the novel. The disorientation one feels reading the book has as much to do with this taken-for-grantedness as with anything else. Metamorphosis and discovery are all the more terrifying for being, as it were, domesticated. Harrison is a wonderful writer whom I only recently discovered, thanks to China Mieville.

Ljubljana

I just spent three days in Ljubljana, which is one of the most delightful cities in Europe. It’s a small city (population about 300,000), but a beautiful one, with a mixture of Austrian and Mediterranean influences. The weather was gorgeous, and everyone was hanging out in the cafes that run along the river. And Ljubljana is also quite alive and exciting culturally–with innovative artists of various generations, as well as the philosophers of the Zizek school. I wish I could spend a week here every year….

I just spent three days in Ljubljana, which is one of the most delightful cities in Europe. It’s a small city (population about 300,000), but a beautiful one, with a mixture of Austrian and Mediterranean influences. The weather was gorgeous, and everyone was hanging out in the cafes that run along the river. And Ljubljana is also quite alive and exciting culturally–with innovative artists of various generations, as well as the philosophers of the Zizek school. I wish I could spend a week here every year….

Chantal Michel

Here, in Graz, as part of the Masochism conference/festivl, a performance by Chantal Michel. She’s on a thin ledge outside the building, one story up, wearing only a white nightgown. Her hair hangs over her face, which therefore we cannot see. (Can she see us?). She is nearly motionless, at most there are slight movements over her arms. She must be cold, she must be in a position that is hard to keep stable–as I write this she’s been up there for more than an hour. An incredible force of will, then, at the service of expressing an image of total vulnerability. She does nothing, just stands there–waiting for what? Will the police come and take her away? (They were called, but left). Will she come back inside of her own free will? Will she have to be forced and cajoled? She probably wouldn’t die from a one-story fall, but she certainly would be injured–if I didn’t know this was a performance, would I think someone was trying to commit suicide? We, in the street, cannot help relating in some way to her mute otherness, though we cannot actually reach it. She demonstrates for us the falsity of our positions, as people in the world, going about our ordinary business.

Here, in Graz, as part of the Masochism conference/festivl, a performance by Chantal Michel. She’s on a thin ledge outside the building, one story up, wearing only a white nightgown. Her hair hangs over her face, which therefore we cannot see. (Can she see us?). She is nearly motionless, at most there are slight movements over her arms. She must be cold, she must be in a position that is hard to keep stable–as I write this she’s been up there for more than an hour. An incredible force of will, then, at the service of expressing an image of total vulnerability. She does nothing, just stands there–waiting for what? Will the police come and take her away? (They were called, but left). Will she come back inside of her own free will? Will she have to be forced and cajoled? She probably wouldn’t die from a one-story fall, but she certainly would be injured–if I didn’t know this was a performance, would I think someone was trying to commit suicide? We, in the street, cannot help relating in some way to her mute otherness, though we cannot actually reach it. She demonstrates for us the falsity of our positions, as people in the world, going about our ordinary business.

Graz, Austria

So here I am in Graz, Austria, on the main square. It’s a pretty little town; the core has the big squares and winding small streets that one finds in many of the older cities and towns of Europe. It is not exactly a cosmopolitan place, but the people here seem friendly, at least to me. That’s about all I can say, really.

So here I am in Graz, Austria, on the main square. It’s a pretty little town; the core has the big squares and winding small streets that one finds in many of the older cities and towns of Europe. It is not exactly a cosmopolitan place, but the people here seem friendly, at least to me. That’s about all I can say, really.