Guernica

What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who, if he is a painter, has only eyes, if he's a musician has only ears, if he's a poet has a lyre in each chamber of his heart, or even if he's a boxer, just muscles? On the contrary, he is at the same time a political being, constantly alert to the heart-rending stirring or unpleasant events of the world, taking his own complexion from them. How would it be possible to dissociate yourself from other men; by virtue of what ivory nonchalance should you distance yourself from the life which they so abundantly bring before you? No, painting is not made to decorate apartments. It is an instrument for offensive and defensive war against the enemy.

Pablo Picasso, Les Lettres Francaises, March 1945

General, your tank is a powerful vehicle

General, your tank
is a powerful vehicle
it smashes down forests
& crushes a hundred men.
but it has one defect:
it needs a driver.

General, your bomber is powerful
it flies faster than a storm
& carries more than an elephant.
but it has one defect:
it needs a mechanic.

General, man is very useful.
He can fly & he can kill.
but he has one defect:
He can think.

Bertolt Brecht (February 10, 1898 – August 14, 1956) was a Marxist dramatist, stage director and poet.

Post via erasmuspc

I have been here

The following photographs are the work of Iranian artist Tooraj Khamenehzadeh, from his series, I have been here.

Art of the First World War

Otto Dix, Selbstbildnis als Soldat (Self-Portrait as a Soldier), 1914, ink and watercolour on paper, on both sides, 68 x 53.5 cm, Municipal Gallery, Stuttgart.

The aim of this exhibition is not to review the facts of the war, but to show how they were portrayed by artists on either side of the front line, and indicating the difficulties involved. Amongst the millions of conscripts there were painters of every nationality and every school of painting. Those who were born around the year 1880 belonged to the generation that was called up immediately on the outbreak of war. The war held no secrets for men such as these – they were the ones who did the fighting. Boccioni, Macke, Marc, La Fresnaye and Gaudier-Brzeska died during, or as a consequence of, the war. Only the citizens of neutral countries (for example the Spanish nationals Picasso and Gris) were not called up. Many enlisted out of patriotism or because they could not bear to be away from the action. Until now, with very few exceptions, artists and writers had witnessed wars without actually becoming involved. In 1914, for the first time, they all had to take part: Germans, Britons, Italians, Austro-Hungarians and Frenchmen. Léger became a stretcher-bearer, Kokoschka a cavalryman, Beckmann a medic, Derain an artilleryman, Camoin a camoufleur, Dix a machine-gunner. Many of them drew and painted what they saw and lived through. From the sketchbooks of pencil drawings done at the front to the canvases painted on returning home, theirs is an intense and accurate testimony.

And yet, many of these works have been little researched, if not altogether forgotten. Because they recalled painful memories they were not much looked at once the war was over. Even the men who painted them - with the crucial exception of Otto Dix - had grown away from their work, and made no attempt to exhibit them. For example, Beckmann and Léger were no sooner demobbed than they set to work painting very different subjects, such as contemporary life and the city. Others went even further in making a fresh start. Among those who were called up were Braque and Derain, who left Avignon station together on August 2nd 1914 to join their regiments, accompanied by Picasso. Braque took part in the fighting during that autumn and winter. He was seriously wounded on May 11th 1915, was trepanned and, after a long convalescence, returned to his workshop a year later. He left not a single drawing or canvas alluding to what he had been through and no representation of the war is present in his work. Derain was attached to an artillery unit and served in the Champagne region, at Verdun, on the Somme, and on the Chemin des Dames until 1917. He was not demobilised until after the armistice. Of this five year period there remains no trace, apart from the title of one painting, the Cabaret on the Front seen by André Breton in Derain's studio in 1921, but which disappeared and was probably destroyed. Kirchner, Schmidt-Rottluff and Kokoschka also refrained from painting what they had seen and experienced...

Nevertheless, new art works did appear, and in larger numbers than might be expected. They expressed violence, fear, exaltation, suffering, pity and disgust. They appealed to the persistence of the human conscience at a time when it was being enslaved and ignored by war. Some of the older ones, those most set in their old ways, tried to do this with the tools of pictorial realism handed down from the previous century. They observed biplanes, artillery guns and soldiers in close detail, and equally methodically reproduced what they saw. Illusion and illustration were their main resources. However, their themes, being all about movement, speed and the instant, were bound to suffer from being fixed as if suspended in a still picture. These works still have their documentary value however, which today is heightened by their picturesqueness from another age.

Younger painters trained during the last twenty-five years of the nineteenth century, the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, attempted combinations which nowadays we find surprising, such as bright, sharp colours and macabre subjects, or cut-out shapes and white light. Whether they were painting the ruins of a bombed-out church, a mountain artillery post or two bodies lying forgotten in a trench, Vallotton in Argonne, Horovitz in the Alps and Orpen on the Somme introduced purple shadows, sinuous lines and Japanese-inspired flat tints - as if it were still possible, a quarter of a century on, faithfully to apply the lessons of Gauguin and the Nabis...

The artists belonging to the European avant-garde movements - the German Expressionists, French Cubists, Italian Futurists and British Vorticists - rejected once and for all the rules which had previously governed the painting of battle scenes. They worked to overcome the difficulties involved in devising new themes and methods suited to the monstrous new reality. Those methods were largely those of Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism and Abstract Art. In May 1915, Léger was in Argonne from where he wrote to a friend: "All the same, it is a funny kind of war (...) This war is the perfect orchestration of every means of killing, both old and new. It is intelligent to its fingertips, which actually makes it damned annoying as there are no more surprises. We are controlled on either side by very talented people. It's as linear and as arid as a geometry problem. Such a large number of shells in such a short time over such a surface area, so many men per metre and in order at the specified time, it is all triggered off mechanically. It is pure abstraction, much purer even than Cubist Painting "itself". I can't deny my allegiance to this method (...)" (6). In devastated Verdun, he discovered "completely unexpected subjects to gladden (his) Cubist soul" (7). Drawings and watercolours are the satisfactory result of these new contacts. Léger portrays dehumanised automata serving the machines that crushed them. He brings out the collapsed shapes of his ruins and the broken lines of a shot-down plane.

Dix, Nevinson, Severini, Wyndham Lewis, Nash and Grosz also came to understand that modern warfare needed to be painted in a modern way. The time for heroic realism and patriotic allegory was up. To interpret the explosions of shells, the all-powerful artillery and total war demanded transcripts and not imitations. In order to convey a feeling of its inhuman violence, rather than represent the particular details of the battle, lines had to be broken, and colours had to burst out.

From the website The Art of the First World War

Harold Jaffe, in Rain Taxi

Author Harold Jaffe just posted an interview he did with Larry Fondation for Rain Taxi, which is being published Summer 2008. In it he defines 'docufiction,' discusses his newest docufictions, and offers observations about contemporary society. An excerpt:

Official culture's facility to deceive is infinitely more advanced than in the Sixties. Successful revolutionary models are either not represented or brazenly misrepresented. And Americans are trained to rely on official representations far more than on their unmediated experiences.

Among other lies, we are told that the worldwide student revolt in '68 was a failure, that revolution as such has lost its purchase, when in truth revolution and the ethical dissent which leads to revolution are ongoing, perennial.

Pornography... and Censorship

Editor Harold Jaffe just posted a 1992 interview he did about Fiction International's Pornography & Censorship issue. The interview, conducted by Janice Wynborne of KPBS Radio, highlighted the difficulty of conducting an "adult" conversation about what consitutes pornography in our society.

The issue is still for sale - and, in fact, is now 50% off. See http://www.fictioninternational.com for more details.

Harold Jaffe's "Revolutionary Brain"

Here's another docufiction from Harold Jaffe's latest collection, Orfeo, called "Revolutionary Brain":


It has emerged that the brains of three leading members of the violent revolutionary group, the Red Army Faction (RAF), including its co-founder, Andreas Baader, have disappeared after being preserved for scientific research.

*

The grisly revelation comes just days after the twin daughters of Ulrike Meinhof, the other RAF founder, finally won permission to have her brain returned for burial.

*

Meinhof's brain was extracted after her alleged suicide in jail in 1976, but for years its whereabouts remained a mystery.

*

Last month it was revealed that the brain had been secretly preserved in a scientific laboratory in Frankfurt.

*

The RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, began a campaign of political killings and kidnappings of senior business leaders in the 1970s aimed at overthrowing the German state which they called "Nazi capitalism."

*

Meinhof allegedly hanged herself in her cell in Stuttgart's Stammheim Prison on May 9, 1976; her comrades Baader, Ensslin and Raspe were found dead in their cells in Stammheim Prison on "Death Night," October 18, 1977.

*

The official report states that Baader and Raspe shot themselves to death and Ensslin hanged herself.

*

The Red Army Faction cell block had been touted as the most secure prison block in the world; the press was filled with accounts of lawyers interrogated and searched for an hour or more before being admitted to visit their clients.

*

When it was announced that Baader and Raspe shot themselves with guns smuggled into their cells, it was cynically assumed that the authorities assassinated them, as well as Ensslin and very possibly Meinhof the year before.

*

Their dead bodies were promptly autopsied and their brains extracted and donated to "Science."

*

Gottschalk König, CEO of the Neurological Research Institute of Heidelberg University where initial tests were done, admitted that he could not account for the whereabouts of the brains.

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They might have been moved to make way for other organs and finally burned, he said, but he would not rule out theft.

*

Now Ulrike Meinhof's brain has suddenly reappeared, in the possession of a medical pathologist who insisted on anonymity.

*

The anonymous pathologist said that Meinhof's brain surgery in 1962 in which a benign lesion was removed very likely contributed to her becoming one of Europe's most feared urban guerrillas.

*

Her slide into "terror" would then be explained by her brain illness.

*

Moreover, the anonymous pathologist claimed that clinical tests on Ulrike Meinhof's brain soon after her death cast doubt on her fitness to stand trial.

*

Meinhof was considered the intellectual head of the Red Army Faction, a left-wing revolutionary group that spread fear across West Germany in the 1970s and into the 1980s, after her death.

*

The anonymous pathologist confirmed that he carried out the research on Meinhof's brain over the last ten years primarily in a laboratory in Frankfurt.

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He told a news conference on Tuesday that he gained possession of the brain in 1997 after applying for permission to examine it.

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Previously it was held by a Stuttgart neurologist named Muehl who had conducted the autopsy after her suicide.

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The anonymous pathologist said that although there may have been other factors, the brain surgery in 1962 could have led to behavioral changes that turned Meinhof from a talented and ambitious journalist to co-founder of the revolutionary Red Army Faction.

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The RAF carried out a campaign of killings and bombings against leading industrial figures beginning in the 1970s.

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Many of those figures had been influential Nazis in the Third Reich.

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The anonymous pathologist’s involvement came to light last week, when Meinhof's twin daughters, in a law suit, insisted that her mother's brain was removed without the family's permission.

*

Meinhof's twin daughters have also filed a criminal complaint against the anonymous pathologist, accusing him of disturbing the peace of the dead.

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They are seeking to have the brain buried with their mother's remains in Berlin.

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But the latest revelations indicate the medical authorities also had a morbid fascination with the revolutionary killers.

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An unauthorized plaster death mask of Andreas Baader had evidently been made by one of the anonymous pathologist's medical team who had mixed his own semen with the plaster.

*

The anonymous pathologist claims not to know who was responsible.

*

German authorities were said to be conducting DNA tests to uncover which of
the anonymous pathologist's medical team's semen was involved in Baader's death mask.

*

Andreas Baader was a telegenic Brando-type bad boy who had turned to political terrorism for the methamphetamine-like rush it gave.

*

The news of the plaster and semen death mask of Andreas Baader comes amid official concerns that a series of recent videos about the violent 1970s have portrayed the terrorist killers as pop icons.

*

Celebrations of revolutionary violence unsettle German authorities who are always on the lookout for a resurgence of Nazism.

*

Prosecutors are now examining documents from the time of Meinhof's death to establish how her brain came to be preserved for 30 years and whether any offence was committed.

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After the Revolution

MLF With Bad Nosejob Gets Huge Cum Facial 3 Blow Job WMVs
Teen Slut Swallowing Globs Of Hot Nut Butter 4 Latina MPEGs
Blonde & Jap Swap Ass Cum 3 Anal And Ass MPEGs
Vintage Sex Vids & Big Hairy Bushes 3 Amateur MPEGs
Pee Lovin Chick Asks For Mo' 4 Piss WMVs
Mex Babe Spreads Pink & Gets Meatstick 3 Hardcore MPEGs
Kinky Shaved Chubber Whips Her Whip 6 Big Tits WMVs
Thick Latina Pissed Then Boned 3 Hardcore MPEGs
MILF In Pantyhose Gets Phat Ass Stuffed 4 Mature Ladies WMVs
Big Mamma Wraps Her Boobs Round A Stiffy 6 BBW WMVs
Shaven Head Babe Takes Cock for the Rock 4 Hardcore MPEGs
Cougar Stalks Son's Pal & Fucks Him With Strapon 5 MPEGs
Hardcore Electrical Lesbo Bondage 6 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
Dominatrix Drills Fem Slaves Snatch 6 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
Bound, Gagged & Helpless 6 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
2 Young Cunts A'Cookin In The Kitchen 6 Fetish/Bizarre WMVs
Texas Twins Dip Their Honeypots in a Bubble Bath 2 WMVs
Babe Tossing Her Man's Salad 3 Fetish/Bizarre MPEGs
Samantha Slurps Every Last Drop Of Goo 4 Porn Stars MPEGs
Tiny Titted Megan Takes Two Big Dicks In Pooper 3 Latina MPEGs
Bianca Pornstar BJ, Piss & Browneye 3 Porn Stars WMVs
Lesbo Amateurs Squirm In Threesome 4 Lesbian MPEGs
Fisting Hard A Shaved Wet Puss 4 Fetish/Bizarre WMVs
Slutty Granny Does Herself With Baseball Bat 4 WMVs
Twelve Dudes Jizz On Blondes Face 3 Cum Shots MPEGs
Cheating Wives Do It For $$ 4 Amateur WMVs
Monster Black Cock Gives Pearl Necklace 3 Inter-Racial MPEGs
Mature Brit Bitch Milks Black Cock 4 Inter-Racial MPEGs
Lesbo Threesome Chain Pussy Licking 4 Lesbian WMVs
College Babes Fucking Sex Machines 3 Young Ladies WMVs
Two Muscle Bears Eating Each Other's Ass 5 Gay MPEGs
Horny Tranny Pleasures Two Studs 4 Trans WMVs
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Naive Blonde Giving Backseat Blowjob 4 Cum Shots MPEGs
Ebony Plump Rumps Getting Humped By Horsedick 8 MPEGs
Phat Slut Tugs On Cock Till She Gets Her Face Painted 3 MPEGs
Stranger Licks Granny's Snatch In Graveyard 4 Hardcore MPEGs
Phat MLF Boned Hard On Bar Stool 6 Mature Ladies MPEGs
Cutie Daphaney Gets A Long Hard Bonin 4 hardcore WMVs
Tiny Asian Girls Smoke Huge Cigars 4 Inter-Racial WMVs
Kinky Lesbo Powerplay 6 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
Uh-Oh A Dominatrix Wearing Glasses 6 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
Chick In Chains Gets Her Snatch Stretched 6 Fetish WMVs
3 Young Babes Play With Mud 4 Young Ladies MPEGs
Tranny Porks Her Eager Boyfriend 6 Trans WMVs
Brunette & Redhead Trade Anal Creampie 5 Anal And Ass MPEGs
Wifey With Huge Melons Facialized 3 Big Tits WMVs
Skinny Goth Does Gloryhole In Raunchy Loo 2 Blow Jobs WMVs
Kristina Flashing 32ddds In Convenience Store 4 Big Tits WMVs
Asian Beaver Balling Big Dick 9 Asian WMVs
Anime Hardcore Action 6 Anime MPEGs
Milf And Young Hottie Share A Big Cock 3 Hardcore MPEGs
Hot Pigtail Pisses Boyfriend 3 Hardcore MPEGs
White Boys Work Over Busty Nubian 3 Inter-Racial MPEGs
Nice Nanny Gets Rammed In The Browneye 5 Hardcore WMVs
Wrinkly Phat Granny Drilled On Barstool 3 Mature Ladies MPEGs
Mesh Covered Ebony Gangbanged By Rednecks 3 Black MPEGs
Tiny Little Ripe Rump Slathered In Cream 3 Young Ladies MPEGs
Indian Chick Gobbles Three Dudes Creamy Curry 4 Asian WMVs
Twink & Bear In Raunchy Suck N Fuck 6 Gay WMVs
Busty Pregnant Babe Gets Her Milk Pumped 4 Fetish WMVs
Sperm Spitting Bukkake Fetish Panic 4 Asian WMVs
Euro MMF Cumshot Extravaganza 3 Group WMVs
Hot Brunette Gets Nasty Rimjob 3 Anal And Ass MPEGs
Blonde Pigtail Chick Getting Monster Facial 4 Young Ladies WMVs
Mature Street Skank Plays Suck And Tell 3 Hardcore WMVs
Slave Slut Gets It In Bdsm Dungeon 6 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
Chubby Using Toes To Diddle Hard Cock To Cum 4 BBW WMVs
Asian Squatting & Peeing 4 Fetish/Bizarre WMVs
Dutch & German Milk Enemas 5 Fetish/Bizarre WMVs
Naughty Girl Spanked & Pissed 4 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
Big Breasted Jane In Titty Torments 6 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
Wrestler Gets Cameltoe Puss Licked 6 Lesbian WMVs
High School Hotshot Bones Bubble Booty Cheerleader 5 WMVs
Petite Lisa Loves Black Ghetto Cock 3 Inter-Racial WMVs
Preggo Babe Squirting Hot Milk From Nips 4 Amateur WMVs
Poon Hounds Jacking Clits And Puss Squirting 4 Lesbian MPEGs
Peeing Amateur Filmed By Voyeur Cam 4 Voyeur MPEGs
Crazy voyeur Creaming On Sleeping Girl Boobs 5 Voyeur MPEGs
Hentai Girl Getting Pussy Hammered 4 Anime MPEGs
Natasha 3 Porn Stars MPEGs
Cute Redhead Jerks Sperm From A Cock 4 Cum Shots MPEGs
Zitty Bitch Rides The Sybian 4 Amateur MPEGs
Exploited Chick Forced To Swallow Monster Dong 3 Cum Shots MPEGs
Hairy Bus Driver Gets Good Student Pussy 3 Young Ladies MPEGs
Goth Babe Gets Ass Slammed And Gaped 4 Anal And Ass MPEGs
Naughty Blonde Licks Black Guys Ass 4 Inter-Racial MPEGs
Ass Worship Facesitting 3 Fetish/Bizarre WMVs
Lady Sonia Ass-Smothering 5 Bondage/BDSM WMVs
Sweet Tiny Pornstar Monalisa Doggiestyle 4 Young Ladies MPEGs
Creamy Nurse In Homemade Hardcore 4 Amateur MPEGs
Petite Chicks Swapping Cum 4 Blow Jobs And Cum Shots MPEGs
Young Cutie Gets Double Dicked 7 Anal And Ass WMVs
Milf Double Penetrated In A Threesome 4 Mature Ladies MPEGs
Blonde Cougar In Hardcore Threesome 3 Mature Ladies MPEGs
Cumaholic Babe Doing Deepthroat 5 Fetish/Bizarre MPEGs
3 Jap Chicks Assboned & Creamed 4 Group MPEGs
Housewife Taking A Huge Schlong In Butt 6 Inter-Racial WMVs
First Gay Experience 4 Gay WMVs
Lola Sucks A Priests Holy Rod 3 Porn Stars MPEGs WMVs
Guy Eating Carrot Out Of Her Ass 4 Asian WMVs
Petite Blonde Chewing Mandingo Nuts 4 Inter-Racial MPEGs

Video Writing

Writers, take note -- here's some kick-ass art:



Watch him make his point in 2:20. Notice the quick-cuts which simulate a too-slow-internet-connection effect. Observe his hip-hop presentation -- poetic, with a beat.

Observe, too, how the 2:20 is a complete story, as it is divided into scenes by: 1) a change in camera angle; and 2) Jay Smooth's change in body angle (turning to presumably work on his computer).

All the result of good and thoughtful writing. Genius!

See more at illdoctrine.com.

Herbert Marcuse Documentary

This documentary examines the turbulent life in California of political philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), author of One-Dimensional Man, Reason and Revolution and Eros and Civilization, among other books, professor of philosophy at the University of California San Diego, and a visionary and influential force for the student movement worldwide during the Sixties and Seventies. Blending archival footage, interviews, re- created scenes and voice-over narration, the video profiles not only the life of Marcuse but also the history of student protest and social activism. The video features interviews with Marcuse's student Angela Davis, former UCSD Chancellor William McGill, colleagues Fredric Jameson and Reinhard Lettau, and rare footage of Marcuse and former California Governor Ronald Reagan. Directed by Paul Alexander Juutilainen.

Makes "Reefer Madness" Look Intelligent

Take a look at the government's latest attempt to scare children away from cannabis: http://www.abovetheinfluence.com/stoners/.

The site does convince one that marijuana decreases intelligence -- in drug haters.

Please, send every American to this site. After all, it was paid for entirely by your tax dollars. Remember that the next time you vote for someone like Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens or California Rep. Randall "Top Gun" Cunningham, who treat our government as their personal cash cow and set up fake "wars" so their friends can also enrich themelves at our expense, this is what you are getting for the money.