Saturday, October 25, 2008
The Culmination of Separation
The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From automobiles to television, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to produce also serve it as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that engender "lonely crowds". With ever-increasing concreteness the spectacle recreates its own presuppositions.
The spectacle was born from the world’s loss of the unity, and the immense expansion of the modern spectacle reveals the enormity of this loss. The abstractifying of all individual labor and the general abstractness of what is produced are perfectly reflected in the spectacle, whose manner of being concrete is precisely abstraction. In the spectacle, a part of the world presents itself to the world and is superior to it.
The spectacle is simply the common language of this separation. Spectators are linked solely by their one-way relationship to the very center that keeps them isolated from each other. The spectacle thus reunites the separated, but it reunites them only in their separateness.
The alienation of the spectator, which reinforces the contemplated objects that result from his own unconscious activity, works like this: The more he contemplates, the less he lives; the more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him. The spectator does not feel at home anywhere, because the spectacle is everywhere.
The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord.
Labels: books, economy, films, globalisation, politics
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Commodity as Spectacle
Automation, which is both the most advanced sector of modern industry and the epitome of its practice, obliges the commodity system to resolve the following contradiction: The technological developments that objectively tend to eliminate work must at the same time preserve labor as a commodity, because labor is the only creator of commodities. The only way to prevent automation (or any other less extreme method of increasing labor productivity) from reducing society’s total necessary labor time is to create new jobs. To this end the reserve army of the unemployed is enlisted into the tertiary or "service" sector, reinforcing the troops responsible for distributing and glorifying the latest commodities; and in this it is serving a real need, in the sense that increasingly extensive campaigns are necessary to convince people to buy increasingly unnecessary commodities.
The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord.
Labels: books, economy, films, globalisation, politics
Friday, October 12, 2007
Disaster Capitalism
Are out there opportunities to produce visual outstanding works supporting a right cause for free? Naomi Klein's latest book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism represents such a right cause indeed!
I just begun to read the book, watched a lot of video interviews with Naomi Klein and read through all the pages of the book's official website:
In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s free market policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.
Naomi Klein's latest book is based on hard fact and probably a lot of historical research was needed before the writing process.
The short film aimed to accompany the book was the result of a collaboration between Naomi Klein, the mexican film director Alfonso Cuarón and his son Jonás Cuarón. Despite the film was first conceived as a promotional tool it now stands on its own because of its polical message strenght.
Everybody can pirate it, download it, give it to their friends, do whatever they want to do. It's not a commercial product in that respect.
Alfonso Cuarón.
Labels: books, economy, films, globalisation, politics
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
euro mayday 007
Started at 3.00 p.m. from Porta Ticinese, the seventh Mayday Parade in Milan has just ended.
Precarisation of living and working conditions are the norm for a growing number of youths. The same precarious conditions are nowadays more than ever motive of concerns among the aged population.
No wizardry is going to solve such problem in the short term. On the other hand only through self-engagement and community awareness we were able to draw more attention to the process of precarious employment and overcome what can be seen as a lack of civil rights and equal opportunity.
Labels: employment, globalisation, politics
