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Variant 31 Spring
2008
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Front cover
Hrafnhildur (Rafla) Halldorsdottir
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Express Yourself!
Anna Dezeuze
...reviews Keri Smith's 'The Guerilla Art Kit' and 'Learning to Love
You More' by Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July, publications that "share
two crucial characetistics: a focus on small interventions within the
fabric of everyday life and an emphasis on selfexpression", with
Dezeuze addressing "a problematic cuteness and sentimentality".
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Miraculous Mass-communication: Radioballet by
LIGNA
Exercises on Adhocracy participants in a workshop on ‘Collectives,
Actions, Re-enactments’, held in Estonia, discuss the Radioballet action
- a co-ordinated performative action responding to the privatisation
of public space - and consider its impact. Apprehensive of the ethics
of collective action after the traumas of Communism, the speakers reveal
the limits of expressing solidarity in the absence of material and reciprocal
relationships.
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www.publicpreparation.org
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Radical Popular?
Stefan Szczelkun
A highly personal review of of Duncan Reekie's book 'Subversion: the
definitive history of underground cinema' bringing into question an institutional
framework that is "'fundamentally resistant to cultural democracy".
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Faceless: Chasing
the Data Shadow
Manu Luksch & Mukul Patel
"With an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in place, [the UK's] inhabitants
are the most watched in the world." Insights into the process of making
'Faceless', a sci-fi film utilising Data Protection requests from CCTV systems.
Exposing first-hand experiences, the makers detail the many different types of
replies they received to their subject access requests made under the Data Protection
Act; explaining the general confusion of many data controllers, how so many CCTV
systems are not functional and why the process of obtaining images became much
more difficult from 2004...
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CSI: The Big Sleazy
Tom Jennings
A truly seminal review of James Lee Burke’s noir thriller 'The
Tin Roof Blowdown': "The first major work of popular fiction dealing
with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrin, which devastated New Orleans
on 29th August 2005, Blowdown demonstrates both the possibilities
and problems of attempting to tell the truth through drama – from
a writer who does “not trust people who seek authority and control
over other people...”
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http://www.tomjennings.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
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Back to the Future of the Creative City:
An Archaeological Approach to Amsterdam’s Creative Redevelopment
Merijn Oudenampsen
"The dominance of entrepreneurial approaches to city politics is the feature
of a new urban regime, labelled the ‘Entrepreneurial City’. With
origins in the reality of neoliberal state withdrawal from urban plight ... the
claims of the new creative city as being a ‘great equalizer’ actually
appear as the opposite; it is based on functional inequality. Now let’s
take a closer look at the city..."
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Reclaiming the
Economy
Owen Logan
An intense, critical review of 'Reclaiming the Economy, Alternatives
to Market Fundamentalism in Scotland and beyond'. "The market’s
abstraction of power, which has the effect of smothering needs with frivolous
wants, leaves anyone interested in real transparency or in the co-determination
of the economy with the difficult question of where to begin?" Logan's
depth of interest helps unpick it, analysing the book's contributors'
critical grasp of the state and their alternatives...
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Lenin Reloaded...
and engaged in friendly fire?
Benjamin Franks
'Lenin Reloaded: Towards a Politics of Truth' "... is Lenin a sufficient
counter to the postmodern malaise regretted by the editors? The eloquent
essay by Terry Eagleton suggests that rather than being a counterpoint
to postmodernity, Lenin embraces some of its key features..."
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Resisting New Labour’s ‘hard
labour’
Work and ‘Wreckers’ in the Welfare Industry
Alex Law & Gerry Mooney
Drawing on the detailed research of their book ‘New Labour/Hard
Labour? Restructuring and Resistance Inside the Welfare Industry’,
the writers draw "attention to some of the many ways in which welfare
workers are being adversely affected by the restructuring of the welfare
state and, more importantly, how they are resisting New Labour in new
and significant ways."
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Of bread and caviar
Colin Gavaghan
... reviews 'From the Womb to the Tomb: Issues in Medical Ethics' . "It
is part of the ethicist’s role to challenge sacred cows and shibboleths,
and egalitarianism should receive no exemption from that treatment. Even
the most progressive advocate of distributive justice would do well to
revisit his/her first principles from time to time, to ask what equality
means ... and why it is valuable."
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Artist's Page by Stuart Murray www.stuartmurray.co.uk
supported by www.glasgowinternational.org
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