the Circular Diagram

Circular diagrams are great because they conceptualize things in a circular motion.

I have been writing a new zine with some friends called Activate! It's a monthly zine printed on a single sheet of tabloid paper, and it focuses local and national politics with an activist twist. We want to keep the ideas short and simple. We also wanted to avoid really long articles that make people shy away from reading it. I think adding more diagrams to explain our point instead of using prose could do this as well.

You Are All Shit

I wanted to repost something a fluxus artist, Nicolas Carras, wrote onto the Fluxus email community. I'm constantly finding extracts, several a day, on this group which amuse and provoke me. Fluxus in general enjoys being this way, and I have been inspired by it. These artists have a life outside the email community, of course, but the email community is largely a place to vent, and express whatever it is that needs expressing. There is something about words too, just words, that fascinate this Fluxus community. One artist, John Bennett, is constantly posting nonsensical mixtures of words that seem to make sense, but I have long since stopped searching for their meaning and now just listen to the hypothesized sounds they would make if you actually said them. At any rate, this one is about shit, so immediately it grabbed my attention. It's called You Are All Shit.

(If you don't understand, don't call me, please, never call me)

You are nothing but shit

You are leaving for shit

All your life is shit

You are nothing but shit

You are eating shit

You are reading shit

You shiting shit

Your child study shit

You are responsable of this shit

You drink shit

Your brain is full of shit

You sleep in shit


All your body is a big shit


You smell like a shit

You think like a shit

But you will think all this is not serious, you! maybe gonna laugh



But I do think what I'm writing actually? I do think it in the abyss of myself


Besst

Nicolas

Sunrise with Coglings

Inspiration: machine dreams.

What the World Is Really About:

Flux.
Change.
Motion.
Uncertainty.
Indeterminacy.
Diffusion.

A Media Splash

Another video I created.

The "splash" is a meaninglessly bit of meaningless information. To constantly repeat that information is supposed to be like "symbolic exchange and death". In symbolic exchange, there is always a link, never an end-point. The chain of signifiers is infinite. These are all Derridean ideas.

The definition is constantly put-off. So the film does not end with "The End", but rather with "And Now This". The death of symbolic exchange comes through the constant symbolic meaninglessness of information presentation. Death in this short fluxus film uses the ambiguity of that phrase to depict a very literal situation.

"The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and the play of signification infinitely." ~ Derrida

A Neo-Fluxus Creation!

I created the fluxus film above. It's called "Desert of the Real", after the term that Baudrillard used to first explain media in the society of spectacles, and all the narration in the video comes from Guy Debord's "Society of the Spectacle". It was partly filmed in Turkey, partly filmed in San Fransisco, and partly filmed in my bedroom. But in fact that doesn't matter much since, as you'll see, media images are simply "detached from every aspect of life" and they "merge into a stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered." The "reality" of the medium in the message--and thus the medium itself--can be subject to unmitigated skepticism.

But just what is fluxus? Can anyone define it? There was a special period of fluxus, during the 60s, in which certain characteristics were upheld. But since then it has taken on a new life of its own. Many believe that fluxus is dead. But there are many fluxus artists still making what they claim to be fluxus art. So I have come up with a list of characteristics below that I think best describe what fluxus means in brainstorming-style descriptiveness.

• Fluxus is an attitude. It is not a movement or a style.

• Fluxus is intermedia. Fluxus creators like to see what happens when different media intersect. They use found & everyday objects, sounds, images, and texts to create new combinations of objects, sounds, images, and texts.

• Fluxus is experimental.

• Fluxus works are simple. The art is small, the texts are short, and the performances are brief.

• Fluxus is fun. Humor has always been an important element in Fluxus.

• Fluxus is about modality and the disunity of art.

• Fluxus is always changing, so it doesn't always have to be this way.

• Fluxus is not an art style.

Death and the Maid Haikus

Dead on arrival
Hours and hours must have gone by
So sick of tofu.

Abhorrent little mess!
Monochromatically she stares
"Now step in, raise the axe"

My crayon box, all reds
Help me draw pictures
Of my dead nanny.

I give very good advice
But I very seldom follow it
What a mess I've maid!

An homage to Basho:
An old tub of blood,
A body jumps in. Look out,
She's right behind you!

No Need for Armor, Just Tea

You and I are great souls.
We come together for a time.
And we shall meet over a cup of tea!
Shall we leave our shell and join with each other?
Shall we put down our shield and armor?
What will become of us if we do?
What horrible fate awaits us if we are defenseless?
Tea is a time for love and tenderness without fear.
It is a time for sharing and learning and growing.
Come now, leave the battle gear behind.
Brave with me and let's have tea!