Mired in this shit, it can feel hopeless. Falling back on tired ways of feeling cynical, scared, and at a loss. Beaten down, pushed aside, silenced. These American days are full of division, hate, suspicion, weakness, fear, lies, and what leads to a base level impulse to want to build a wall. A wall to keep out others. A wall to hold tight to our small view of the world. But this, at some point, has to stop. Doesn’t it? How far into the future do we have to look? How far can we see? When do we get there? When is it realized?
Sonic Youth
“People see rock and roll as, as youth culture, and when youth culture becomes monopolised by big business, what are the youth to do? Do you, do you have any idea? I think we should destroy the bogus capitalist process that is destroying youth culture.”
– Thurston Moore, 1991: The Year Punk Broke
Bad at buggin’
I’m not good at hounding people for stuff. If someone isn’t going to get back to me, I’ll just move on to people who are more responsive.
Do we have to replicate?
Do we need to insist on doing something worthy of our time and then doing it again over and over? Maybe we can just push all our being into one explosive release of heart, emotion, and spirit and that is all. That’s it. All we need. Maybe there is no more. It came, it was realized, and then we move one.
MoAH (2013)
THEN:
The Museum of Alternative History offers a selection of the fittest explanations for the nature of the world and universe, and alternate histories contrary to … well … history.
NOW:
The Museum of Alternative History is about a fake, revised, and twisted history. It is a show about opinions supplanting facts, or using selective facts to make a disingenuous argument based on opinions. It’s about forcing personal beliefs onto others.
The Filter Bubble (2011)
THEN:
Trapped in our own little bubble without challenging viewpoints or people who disagree with us is certainly no way to behave in a democracy. Eli Pariser’s TED Talk on the filter bubble lays out the negative effects of Internet personalization based only on the things we like.
NOW:
The negative effects of filter bubbles, both yours and mine, have come to pass in more ways than one. The Internet is in crisis. The echo chamber is keeping us walled off in our own little corners of belief. The algorithms are winning. And the things we like are showing their ugly side.
The Sprinter (2003)
THEN:
A story of living in an age of mass media, data smog, and oversupply of information, yet finding sanctuary from the channels of high gloss with the solemn rituals that lose themselves in the shuffle and are reclaimed for an instance.
NOW:
