Disaster(ous) Logo(s)

Rejects?

I-mage

Inauthentic Hybridity – is that all we can hope for?

“In a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum.”

– Marjorie Perloff, Radical Artifice

And with this inspiring remark in mind, I try to motivate myself to carry on designing…

Taradise

Notorious US party girl Tara Reid fits into the type of star that Richard Dyer classifies as “appearing to be meaningful but [is] in fact empty of meaning. Thus [this] star is well-known for her/his well-knownness, and not for any specific quality.”

How did the Greek riots impact the Greek economy? For the time being, we can only assess the impact of the disaster on a short-term basis. A fuller impact will be more calculable once the peak season for tourism arrives. Have security concerns abated in Greece and in those visiting Greece, or have they displaced the meaning of Greece within the experience economy?

Perhaps they should consider inviting Tara Reid (and Paris Hilton) back to Greece, as that seemed to do the trick. Even if it means that Reid will get more exposure than the actual travel destination.

Case in point: how the major part of the blogsphere covered Taradise’s visit to Cyprus:

Last night Tara traveled to the Baths of Aphrodite, where she imparted her first bit of true knowledge on viewers.

You see, Hugh Hefner modeled his Playboy mansion grotto after the baths of Aphrodite according to Mz. Reid, and she would know about these things.

We were then treated to the following scenes:

·   Tara searching her brain for the term “Guinea pig” as she riffs about her love for Greek Mythology.

·   Tara figuring out that “eternal beauty” is not located on the corner of Nip and Tuck in LA, but instead achieved only when one swims three laps around an ancient rock off the coast of Cyprus.

The rest of the show was Tara being Tara. Drinking, eating, and clubbing in Ayia Napa.

Man she is a monster when she gets in the zone.

Marina = Speech&Wordless, but not imageless:

An Obligatory Post

Blanchot Vs. Barthes: (Non)Dialectic battle, Round 1 Warmup

Bathes sees myth as a specific kind of speech. “…Myth is a system of communication, that is a message. This allows one to perceive that myth cannot possibly be an object, a concept, or an idea; it is a mode of signification, a form”.  For Barth, myth’s function is “to empty reality: it is, literally, a ceaseless flowing out, a haemorrhage, or perhaps an evaporation, in short a perceptible absence.” (Barthes, Mythologies, 1973)

It is unfortunate (for Barthes) that even his choice of words (e.g. “literally”, “reality”, “perceptible”)  points to the inherent contradictions in his argument.

On the other hand, Blanchot directs our attention away from signs and signifiers by introducing the concept of the mythical or hyperbolic cancer. On the surface, cancer signifies symbolizes “the refusal to respond.” But more than this, “it destroys the very idea of a program, blurring the exchange and the message: it wrecks the possibility of reducing everything to the equivalent of signs.” According to Blanchot, this kind of cancer is “one of the rare ways to dislocate the system, to disarticulate… the universal programming and signifying power.” (The Writing of the Disaster, 1980)

But, the experience economy attempts to make the cancer relevant by manipulating its mythical nature. The cancer may not signify within the system, but it is made to exist through the system by cancer’s very attempt to dislocate it. The system validates the cancer, out of fear that the cancer will dislocate it … or out of denial that this cancer has already dislocated it.

>> Jump to Walls for the Match, and take this with you:

Media Reports: Arsonists torched two cars outside a Greek consulate in southwestern France yesterday, scrawling slogans in support of the youth riots gripping Athens, according to an account by the Associated Press. Police found graffiti on a wall opposite the consulate, and on a nearby garage door, reading “Support for the fires in Greece,” “Insurrection Everywhere” and “The Coming Insurrection.”

// Anti // Pro //

English trailer for Die Welle (The Wave, Dennis Gansel, 2008)

The latest re-imagining of this particular disaster experiment. Previous to this there was a TV version and a book.

An example of recycling, appropriating and re-imagining a disaster. An example of turning a disaster experiment into a myth by tapping into the mythologies of the  “real” disaster that never(?) came.  An example of situating the myth within the global experience economy through the film’s promotion and distribution. Film as commodity; film as a mediated experience of another mediated experience.

[The experiment: The Third Wave]

(A California high school, 1967: An experiment conducted by history teacher Ron Jones with his students. The experiment involved recreating the conditions in Nazi Germany and was meant to function as a demonstrative learning experience. ) Pedagogy gone awry. Isn’t this the biggest outcome pedagogy can hope for?

Youtube video: Greek youth against neonazism (posted May 2008)

Anarchy NOW

Anarchists, like the disaster, are situated outside the experience economy. Like some aspects of the disaster, anarchists place themselves inside the experience economy only to destroy it.  The fact that anarchists remain powerless against (and within) the experience economy makes them more determined to find their power outside of it. However, they usually end up becoming part of the experience economy by their very opposition towards it.

Anarchists = otherness. Their/ Our obsession with others.

Example & Application: the Greek Riots

The defacement of public property in large Greek cities such as Athens and Thessaloniki has impacted tourism, a contributing aspect to the experience economy >>> The anarchists have been integrated into the experience economy model through the commodification of their acts: for instance, millions of photographs of the riots and of public property damages have been circulating around the world.  The riots and their aftermath turned the world’s attention to Greece and Europe in general. The apocalyptic overtones attached to the disaster by various global media outlets have placed Greece at the center of it all, only to ultimately decentralize it.

Profit/ credit= e.g. international exposure, profile, capital  ## #

Debit= e.g. impact on: tourism, government, education labor…

Corporate media tend to ignore anarchists, or try to minimize their impact.  The fact that corporate media outlets have been forced to detail the anarchist involvement in these and other struggles in Greece attests to the significance of anarchist activity. Leftists attempt to portray the events in Greece as a general uprising of  “the people,” and this is not inaccurate, since countless “normal” people have participated. However, from the vantage point of anarchist supporters and those intimidated by anarchists, it is the anarchists that have instigated the riots and have remained the most influential force within the “movement”.

From one perspective, the anarchists – and “anarchy” in its abstract form – function as a political scapegoat. A scapegoat that is used to let the government almost entirely off the hook. A scapegoat that does not point to what is wrong with the System, but serves the purpose [to some] of placing blame outside the system and displacing the flaws outside the system.

If only it were so simple.

Democracy is dead. Long live democracy.