Robin D. G. Kelley: What Is Racial Capitalism and Why Does It Matter? (YouTube)
“The purpose of racism is to control the behaviour of white people, not Black people. For Blacks, guns and tanks are sufficient” Otis Madison
Tag: social commentary
868 – William T. Vollmann
The Most Honest Book About Climate Change Yet
“Vollmann’s undertaking is in the vanguard of the coming second wave of climate literature, books written not to diagnose or solve the problem, but to grapple with its moral consequences.”
No Immediate Danger: Volume One of Carbon Ideologies
No Good Alternative: Volume Two of Carbon Ideologies: 2
William_T._Vollmann
William T. Vollmann | Carbon Ideologies
|YouTube
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‘The country blooms – a garden, and a grave’, Oliver Goldsmith ‘The Deserted Village’.
Nick Groom – ‘Let’s discuss over country supper soon’ – Rural Realities and Rustic Representations
“The whole ambition of the picturesque was to rework the natural world into a ‘landscape’ – a word that came to England at the end of the sixteenth century
from the German, via the Dutch. Early English uses of ‘landskip’ are strongly cultural – the word is used to describe paintings,
particularly the backgrounds of paintings, and thereby any view that could conceivably be painted.”
“The picturesque encouraged the critical appreciation of nature as a spectacle. Observers of a scene – the word ‘scene’ itself reveals the implicit theatricality of viewing – became an audience, by turns appreciative or critical.
Hence natural landscapes became part of culture, and were understood, judged, and painted according to artistic conventions and aesthetic theories.
For a growing proportion of the increasingly urban population, initial encounters with natural landscapes would be through the medium of art: representations delivered either by pastoral poetry or in picturesque images.”
‘In grand scenes, even the peasant cannot be admitted, if he be employed in the low occupations of his profession: the spade, the scythe, and the rake are all excluded.’ What was allowed was pastoral idleness: the lazy cowherd resting on his pole . . . the peasant lolling on a rock’, an angler rather than a fisherman, and gypsies, banditti, and the occasional individual soldier in antique armour. The image of the countryside presented therefore looked very much in need of improvement – slack, inefficient, indigent, lawless, and archaic. Moreover, once ‘improved’ the landscape was likely to be as empty of agricultural labour as the picturesque depicted it since nearly all the peasantry would have been forced off the land.
0864 – BioShock 2 (2010 Video game)
timespace coordinates: city of Rapture 1968
BioShock 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Marin and published by 2K Games. A part of the Bioshock series, it is the sequel to the 2007 video game BioShock and was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, the PlayStation 3, and the Xbox 360 on February 9, 2010. Feral Interactive released an OS X version of the game on March 30, 2012. A remastered version of the game was released on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 13, 2016, as part of BioShock: The Collection.
Set in the fictional underwater dystopian city of Rapture, the game’s story takes place eight years after BioShock. Assuming control of Subject Delta, a hulking Big Daddy, players are tasked with fighting through “splicers”, the psychotic human population of the city, using weapons and an array of genetic modifications. The game also introduces a story-driven multiplayer mode called Fall of Rapture, which takes place during Rapture’s 1959 civil war, before the events of the first game.
SONY DSC
(Themes) In contrast to the first BioShock‘s focus on libertarianism and Ayn Rand’s philosophies, BioShock 2 focuses on collectivist ideals. Lamb’s philosophy of altruism is based on that of Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill. “Her motto is ‘Make the world your family’ meaning force your mind into becoming loyal to the world in a way usually reserved for your child, and that’s intellectually daunting,” said Thomas. In comparison to the first game’s questions of free will and destiny, Thomas said that the player character is “almost the ultimate individual” whom Lamb goads to fulfill her goals.
Professor Ryan Lizardi draws parallels between BioShock 2‘s themes of community versus the individual and the issues of McCarthyism and the hippie movement that occurred around the time period of the game’s setting. “As this sequel is an extension of the first game’s storylines and characters, there are direct contrasts between the extreme politics of Andrew Ryan’s objectivism and the extreme religion/politics of Lamb’s collectivism,” he writes. “Bioshock 2 specifically asks players to question all sides of debates when extreme stances are taken, and asks players to weigh their decisions in an alternate and complex history. ” (wiki)
steam // www.bioshock2game.com
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (remastered version) MINIMUM:
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system/ OS: Windows 7 Service Pack 1 64-bit. Platform Update for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1/ Processor: Intel E6750 Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz / AMD Athlon X2 2.7 GHZ / Memory: 4 GB RAM / Graphics: 2GB AMD Radeon HD 7770 / 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 / DirectX: Version 11 / Storage: 25 GB available space / Sound Card: DirectX Compatible Sound Device
0860 – Searching (2018)
timespace coordinates: 2015 – 2017 San Jose, California
Searching is a 2018 American thriller film directed by Aneesh Chaganty and written by Chaganty and Sev Ohanian. Set almost entirely on smartphones and computer screens, the film follows a father (John Cho) trying to find his missing 16-year-old daughter (Michelle La) with the help of a police detective (Debra Messing). It was the first mainstream Hollywood thriller headlined by an Asian-American actor. (wiki)
While the film features computer operating systems, programs and (mostly) websites, they were re-created from scratch and animated on computers. (trivia)
858 – Roger & Me (1989 documentary)
timespace coordinates: 1980’s Flint, Michigan
Roger & Me is a 1989 American film written, produced, directed by and starring Michael Moore. Moore portrays the regional economic impact of General Motors CEO Roger Smith‘s action of closing several auto plants in his hometown of Flint, Michigan, reducing GM’s employees in that area from 80,000 in 1978 to about 50,000 in 1992. As of August 2015, GM employs approximately 7,200 workers in the Flint area, according to The Detroit News, and 5,000 workers according to MSNBC. In 2013, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” (wiki)
Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint (1992)
0856 – Sorstalanság / Fateless (2005)
timespace coordinates: World War II Hungary / Auschwitz / Buchenwald
Fateless (Hungarian: Sorstalanság) is a Hungarian film directed by Lajos Koltai, released in 2005. It is based on the semi-autobiographical novel Fatelessness by the Nobel Prize-winner Imre Kertész, who also wrote the screenplay. It tells the story of a teenage boy who is sent to Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
The film’s music was composed by Ennio Morricone, and one of its songs was sung by Lisa Gerrard. The film is one of the most expensive movies ever produced in Hungary, with a cost of $12 million. (wiki)
TimeSpace Warps 