Tag Archives: John Berger

Top Twenty Semi-Context Free Concepts Purloined from John Berger

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  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

  1. 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.
  2. In the war the dark is on nobody’s side; in love the dark confirms that we are together.
  3. Spray. Paint. The. Walls.
  4. Illuminated moments arrive by way of tenderness and love.
  5. Political resistance often begins in a meanwhile.
  6. The consumer is essentially somebody who feels, or is made to feel, lost, unless he or she is consuming.
  7. 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?
  8. Where do birds go when it rains?
  9. The wind got up in the night and took our plans away (Chinese proverb).
  10. There is a very direct relationship today between the minutes of meetings and minutes of agony.
  11. Happiness is what pierces grief.
  12. Spay/Neuter
  13. 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 

 

  1. 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. 

 

Image 

Permit Yourself to Imagine

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Permit yourself to imagine.

Once accomplished, travel is unrestricted, borders nonexistent, walls breached.

How? Slingshot.  Molotov. Spray paint. Lines of code. Guitar. Microphone.

Crisis or socially activist art offers the possibility of a crucial narrative, which is not new but suppressed.

We’ve been locked into a singular system, which serves official culture.

We are flummoxed by thinking alternatively. Any alternative.

Art must penetrate this numbness. Subvert the official narrative, cut through the advertising and propaganda. Negate marketing. Opening the between space.

Temptations are everywhere. In fact, you’ve likely accepted most without reading the service agreement. We relinquish control for convenience and security: freedom in exchange for a superficial sense of belonging.

But there is this: “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.” – John Berger

As a writer, art critic and political activist, John Berger offers a point of reference in the relational dynamic that artists have to the world around them. More importantly, Berger is representative of the type of progressive writer whose work is driven by a desire to confront the status quo. Refusing to participate in prescribed ideals of marketplace and authority, the artist/writer/revolutionary creates new methods of engagement.

Situational art is confrontational, “the immoral subversion of the existing order.” It informs the discourse with immediacy. Artists are in a unique position to engage directly with the established value system, call it into question and mobilize against it.

If a distinction between commercial and activist art no longer exists than the medium(s) an artist uses no longer need to be relegated to a single surface or conversation. The subversion happens while viewing.

The Molotov cocktail is the canvas. The canvas is our body, the inner city, barrio. ‘Hood.

Courage of the imagining mind.

 

The proceeding manifesto was a response to a series of art pieces produced by Enrique Lugo, AKA Chikle–a long time friend and collaborator–to be included as a text for his group show at the San Diego Repertory Theater. This is simultaneously a reaction of a reaction to both the art presented there and to the musical A Hammer, A Bell, and a Song to Sing, now playing at the Rep inspired by the life and work of Pete Seeger. The show will be up January 10–29, 2012 on the Lyceum Stage.

Reclamation Times Square Fotochop

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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