Historical Materialism 2012, Day 3
May. 13th, 2012 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyMY GOD YOU GUYS I AM SO TIRED. Totally worth it. But I feel like I'm going to sleep for a year and do nothing but watch TV and read cheesy fantasy novels for a bit.
Today's panels:
The Circuits of Labour and Capital. Translation: Migrant labour, and I chose this one both out of interest and because I knew three out of the five people involved. Alas, two didn't show (including the one who's in 2 Revolución). The other two were really good, though.
Marxist Aesthetics and Utopia. This was the perfect note to end on. Relevant to my interests in a big way, and we got into a debate about Tatlin's Monument to the Third International that ended up going way overtime and summarizing many of the themes in the conference as a whole. I Googled the presenter, Travis English, and I think he might also be the guy who does all of those cool minimalism posters that you see all over the intertubes. Not sure. Anyway, the discussion induced pangs in me because when I was thinking about grad school, I was thinking about working on Russian Constructivism stuff, which is at the intersection of art, design, and radical politics. Also, I love Monument to the Third International. It's brilliant on every level, encompassing both the power of the theory of dialectical materialism and the fragility of the revolutionary moment. And as someone pointed out in the discussion, as much as it was a failure in the sense that it was never built, given the history of the Russian revolution, it might have been more of a failure if it had been built. As an ethereal work that exists in the imagination instead of in reality, it's a more powerful symbol of revolutionary potential than if it existed as an actual physical object.
I shouldn't be so surprised to find out that people have Photoshopped the hell out of what it would have looked like if built.
SPEAKING OF SCULPTURE! Bad sculpture, this time. I failed utterly for the third day in a row to capture the glory that is the dick sculptures. However, I realized I could just Google it, and so here they are:
Fontana d'Italia by Enzo Cucchi.
Notice that the water is jetting out in the photo. In reality, it drizzles down the shaft and looks more like this. Ah, York. How much I do not miss you at all.
Anyway, all in all the conference was even better than my already inflated expectations, and I'm so glad I went. I think this is the longest I've been consistently in a good mood since Maggie's diagnosis.
Today's panels:
The Circuits of Labour and Capital. Translation: Migrant labour, and I chose this one both out of interest and because I knew three out of the five people involved. Alas, two didn't show (including the one who's in 2 Revolución). The other two were really good, though.
Marxist Aesthetics and Utopia. This was the perfect note to end on. Relevant to my interests in a big way, and we got into a debate about Tatlin's Monument to the Third International that ended up going way overtime and summarizing many of the themes in the conference as a whole. I Googled the presenter, Travis English, and I think he might also be the guy who does all of those cool minimalism posters that you see all over the intertubes. Not sure. Anyway, the discussion induced pangs in me because when I was thinking about grad school, I was thinking about working on Russian Constructivism stuff, which is at the intersection of art, design, and radical politics. Also, I love Monument to the Third International. It's brilliant on every level, encompassing both the power of the theory of dialectical materialism and the fragility of the revolutionary moment. And as someone pointed out in the discussion, as much as it was a failure in the sense that it was never built, given the history of the Russian revolution, it might have been more of a failure if it had been built. As an ethereal work that exists in the imagination instead of in reality, it's a more powerful symbol of revolutionary potential than if it existed as an actual physical object.
I shouldn't be so surprised to find out that people have Photoshopped the hell out of what it would have looked like if built.
SPEAKING OF SCULPTURE! Bad sculpture, this time. I failed utterly for the third day in a row to capture the glory that is the dick sculptures. However, I realized I could just Google it, and so here they are:
Fontana d'Italia by Enzo Cucchi.
Notice that the water is jetting out in the photo. In reality, it drizzles down the shaft and looks more like this. Ah, York. How much I do not miss you at all.
Anyway, all in all the conference was even better than my already inflated expectations, and I'm so glad I went. I think this is the longest I've been consistently in a good mood since Maggie's diagnosis.
