Top Twenty Semi-Context Free Concepts Purloined from John Berger

 

1. Political resistance often begins in a meanwhile.
2. The consumer is essentially somebody who feels, or is made to feel, lost, unless he or she is consuming.”
3. Once, long ago, a future existed.
4. HOW MUCH LONGER GLOBAL POWER IN D NUMB HAND OF DOSE WHO KNOW NUTHIN?
5. The Eternal is meow.
6. AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSORS

The most beautiful sea

hasn’t been crossed yet.

The most beautiful child

hasn’t grown up yet.

Our most beautiful days

We haven’t seen yet.

And the most beautiful words I wanted to tell you

I haven’t said yet. – Hikmet

7. One was born into this life to share the time that repeatedly exists between moments: the time of Becoming, before Being risks to confront one yet again with undefeated despair.
8. In the war the dark is on nobody’s side; in love the dark confirms that we are together.
9. Spray. Paint. The. Walls.
10. Illuminated moments arrive by way of tenderness and love.
11. Political resistance often begins in a meanwhile.
12. The consumer is essentially somebody who feels, or is made to feel, lost, unless he or she is consuming.
13. Are we approaching disconnections which amount to what can be called madness when found in the minds of those who believe they can rule the planet?
14. Where do birds go when it rains?
15. The wind got up in the night and took our plans away (Chinese proverb).
16. There is a very direct relationship today between the minutes of meetings and minutes of agony.
17. Happiness is what pierces grief.
18. Spay/Neuter
19. The memory of the dead existing in timelessness may be thought of as a form of imagination concerning the possible, the imagination is close to (resides in) God; but I do not know how.

i.)             God is an astronaut

ii.)            God is an anachronism

iii.)           God is a frozen goat’s milk yogurt honey lavender popsicle 

 

20. Purchase a large 20’ x 10’ strip of painting canvas from local hardware store. Add one of the above quotes using can of Krylon. Display barely legible banner from freeway overpass. Try not to die while hanging banner.

a.)  Feel more alive

b.)  Feel less dead

c.)  Feel between breaths

 

 *1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 19 from John Berger’s Hold Everything Dear. 

 

 

Reclamation Times Square Fotochop

photoshop docuripped online pic

Image manipulation. Part of an ongoing aesthetic intervention project called The Reclamation. Text repurposed for overlay. Source of text: Fugazi “Reclamation” from Steady Diet of Nothing

Consumption Junction: We Are All Beautiful Pigs!

Are you buying what they’re selling?

Unilever, a multi-national corporation with dual parent companies, Unilever NV and Unilever PLC, has been bringing a range of products to consumers worldwide since the 1930’s. Their most recognizable products include a bevy of foods and products such as Country Crock, Bertolli, Wish-bone, Pond’s and Vaseline. They’ve also got their meat hooks in the personal products industry. Sunsilk (hey, ‘whack a blond’ on their website, or a ‘whack a brunette’ pending your disposition) is one of those but the most interesting example of complete and total corporate contradiction comes in the form of their products, Axe and Dove.

Dove has been on the warpath against the ‘beauty industry’ for the past few years. Heralding ‘regular’ women with their clever commercials about how being beautiful isn’t about weighing 110 lbs with fake breasts and collagen lips. NO! They took it to the masses and let the parishioners of YouTube worship at the altar of righteous indignation with their commersh ‘Evolution.’ Soccer Mom’s and armchair feminists rejoiced at the company’s boldness. Recently they released the second piece to ‘Evolution’ called ‘Onslaught.’ It’s a commercial that could be told from the POV of a female Tyler Durden in a bizarro world film adaptation of Fight Club.  It even looks like some Fincher acolyte was trying to harness that quick cut method. The makers of the commercial forgot some important images to include—a boot heel digging into the neck of a consumer sucking at a multi-national tit(s), zombie’s goose-stepping through the beauty aisle’s devouring entrails pushing products blindly into a razor lined cart, and a smiling and suited Group Chief Executive (Patrick Cescau) of Unilever bathing in a pool of blood and stem cells drinking champagne.

Okay so that’s the kind of extreme commercial I’d make. I doubt Unilever’s GCE even drinks champagne; he’s probably a scotch guy for all I know. So what raises my ire about Unilever? They make Dove AND Axe! WTF? It’s like watching one of those Shell or BP spots that talk about alternative energy sources.  When someone like Unilever represents itself through a campaign like Dove’s ‘Onslaught’, while making commercials for Axe that are (though humorously idiotic) blatantly misogynistic the best thing anyone can do is take those commercials and mash them up in defiance then repost it on YouTube.

You are buying what their selling!

We are all pigs, tied to a stick…