Reheated (43)
For newcomers, more items from the archives:
Dissident Academic Feels the Warmth of Social Justice.
Or, “If you expose our student indoctrination policy we will punish you.”
According to numerous students, the course’s instructor demanded that they recognise “white English” as the “oppressors’ language.” Without explanation, the class spent its session before Election Day screening Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. When several students complained to the professor about the course’s politicised content, they were informed that their previous education had left them “brainwashed” on matters relating to race and social justice.
In which I hammer culture into your tiny minds.
Sweat is a performance piece by Peter De Cupere, choreographed by fellow Belgian Jan Fabre, in which five dancers spend fourteen minutes rolling about and jumping up and down – naked, obviously – while attempting to fill their transparent plastic overalls with all manner of body odour. “The intention,” we’re told, “is to catch the sweat from the dancers and to distil it. The concrete of the sweat is sprayed on a wall of the dance lab and protected by a glass box. In the glass is a small hole where visitors can smell the sweat.” Yes, you can smell the sweat. If that’s not a good night out, I don’t know what is.
To show how virtuous they are, and therefore superior, Guardian columnists stick pins into their eyes.
One needn’t be a cartoon Tory to marvel at Decca Aitkenhead’s classic piece, Their Homophobia is Our Fault, in which she insisted that the “precarious, over-exaggerated masculinity” and murderous homophobia of some Jamaican reggae stars are products of the “sodomy of male slaves by their white owners.” And that the “vilification of Jamaican homophobia implies… a failure to accept post-colonial politics.” Thus, sympathetic readers could feel guilty not only for “vilifying” the homicidal sentiments of some Jamaican musicians, but also for the culpability of their own collective ancestors. One wonders how those gripped by this fiendish dilemma could even begin to resolve their twofold feelings of shame.
There’s more, should you want it, in the updated greatest hits.
According to ArtNews, De Cupere is “incorporating scent into the aesthetic experience.”
I don’t think that word means what they think it means.
I don’t think that word means what they think it means.
Well, quite. It’s not at all obvious where the beauty is and none of the people involved seem interested in making something beautiful, or even something that’s agreeably diverting. They seem much more interested in trying to transgress some imagined stuffy audience, what with the references to “sweat, sperm, spittle, nose drops, blood,” etc.
If you squint, it’s a bit like a really incompetent pop video, but without the music and choreography, or editing, or anything to repay attention. As I said at the time, De Cupere has taken naked dancers, fetishism, fart jokes and what I assume is an allusion to cocaine – for some, the basic elements of a good night out – and made something as flat and tedious as a thing can be. Something taxpayer-subsidised art is apparently very good at.
“for some, the basic elements of a good night out”
Ahh! If only I were young again.
So I watched as much of the ‘Sweat’ thing as I could bear then I followed a link there and found Doris Uhlich.
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2011/07/meanwhile-in-the-arts.html
You’ve ruined my lunch hour.
You’ve ruined my lunch hour.
Oh, I dunno. Some people might like to watch a big-boned woman with mad hair throwing talc about and tickling her bum cheeks.
For a small minority of young men in her audience, I suspect Doris Ulrich may well represent their first experience of a real, live, naked woman and that this may inform their tastes for a lifetime. I try not to look.
Point of order: How is Decca Aitkenhead aware of the sexual proclivities of Jamaican plantation owners in the 18th Century? Is there a book? A BBC documentary or something? Or is this something made up on the fly because a deadline was approaching?
Sweat is a performance piece by Peter De Cupere, choreographed by fellow Belgian Jan Fabre, in which five dancers spend fourteen minutes rolling about and jumping up and down – naked, obviously – while attempting to fill their transparent plastic overalls with all manner of body odour.
I think Jackass already did this. IIRC it had the cameraman throwing up.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/07/menstruation-taboo-classroom-periodpositive-femcare
Meanwhile, a guardianista wants teachrs to indoctrinate their pupils with a new, open, unbranded, ecological, inclusive [insert as appropriate]..attitude to periods. Couldn’t learning to read and write take priority?
If that’s not a good night out, I don’t know what is.
This still reminds me of adolescent boys rating each other’s farts. :-/
“When several students complained to the professor about the course’s politicised content, they were informed that their previous education had left them “brainwashed” on matters relating to race and social justice.”
Thus, with a neat flick of the intellectual wrist (in a manner of speaking) the professor has the student by the short and curlies. If the student accepts what they teach he or she is being ‘corrected’ and if they object to the tedious claptrap they are clearly ‘in need of correction.’
Sort of an academic damned if you do and damed if you don’t.
with a neat flick of the intellectual wrist (in a manner of speaking)
There’s an awful lot of wrist action in modern academia.
The money shot is when you’re pilloried for being a pretentious tosser and afterwards declare absolute vindication.
Please spend some of that capitalism on *your favourite vice* David.
Please spend some of that capitalism on *your favourite vice* David.
Bless you, sir. May you never be short of deodorant.