Living in London, the Guardian’s Aisha Mirza is, naturally, unhappy:

I understand there is a psychic toll of living in a place where you have to fight, for space, time, money. But what these Why I am Leaving London articles are missing is that, while the psychic burden of living in the city with the highest living costs in the developed world is very real,

Wait for it. 

for a brown person, the cost of living surrounded only by white people is worse.

“Please, no more white people writing smug articles about leaving London,” writes our Guardianista, smugly, before claiming that “the world will validate your beautiful white children,” wherever they are, “forever.”

She continues,

I feel the comfort of London peel away whenever my train pulls out of King’s Cross and the threat of overt racism is increased… Outside London, I am put immediately into a position of defence. This is something my white counterpart will never understand.

Because, obviously, outside of the capital, folks ain’t never seen a woman whose skin is slightly brown. Behold ye, then, a mysterious, alien creature unknown to Northern brutes:  

This just in: 

On August 21, the world’s first official, naked public performance art festival will occur in the streets of Biel, Switzerland, featuring projects from 18 international artists. 

Local artist Thomas Zollinger has organised a two-day display of self-imagined transgression, during which he and his fellow artists will “increase beyond gallery walls the presence of the naked body as an artistic medium,” and will “explore the possibilities of the naked body in the urban space.” But sadly, not in the way that people with particular tastes might actually want to pay for. Instead, “nakedness is employed as a sculptural element in dialogue with the architectural environment, ground structures and pedestrian traffic.”

Be still my girlish heart.

Given the lack of pornographic appeal, and with it a lack of public interest, it’s perhaps unsurprising that some funding issues have arisen:

Although Biel’s culture office and other institutions helped fund over half the festival’s cost, the organisers are seeking donations online to cover artists’ lodgings, security measures, and other expenses. Incentives to contribute include options to participate in a nude performance of one’s choosing: for 111.55 CHF (~$127 USD), one may partake in “Naked Audience,” which involves stripping and sitting on a chair on a sidewalk while watching pedestrians; 280 CHF (~$290 USD) earns one an invitation to a “Naked Lunch” during which a series of “creative activities” will unfold.

Oh don’t pretend you’re not tempted.

Mr Zollinger’s earlier forays into Incredibly Daring Nude Performance Art™ can be beheld at length here. Where, for instance, you’ll find a seven-minute piece titled Naked UFO, also staged in Biel, in which members of the public cope quite well with the Incredibly Daring Nude Performance Art™ – a composure that rather deflates the ostentatious claims of transgression and taboo, and the alleged “challenge and confrontation of the naked body.” A handful of people wait around looking slightly puzzled, possibly hoping that something interesting will happen, eventually. Two children look amused before wandering off to be amused by something else. And for the most part passers-by pass on by, their minds somehow unshattered by the Incredibly Daring Nudeness™ of it all.  

Hey, Franklin found it. 

Tim Blair brings terrifying news from the world of Australian taxpayer-funded art: 

Readers may recall the brutal warning handed down last month by journalist and tax-funded art enthusiast Ben Eltham. “The arts are a powerful latent force in Australia’s political landscape,” Eltham wrote following Arts Minister George Brandis’s rearrangement of arts funding. “George Brandis and his colleagues would be wise to reflect on this, and whether they can win a war of symbols against some of the most creative and energetic people in our society.”

We Brits have of course endured the full brunt of such a clash. The references to Derrida were particularly distressing.

There are, however, signs of low morale among the art world’s would-be storm troopers:

“Maybe the best option really is to get out of the country,” Hobart-based sculptural artist Theia Connell told Vice magazine last week. That’s Connell’s response to news that previous Arts Start grants for emerging artists have been cut. “The likelihood is that I’ll find myself in a day job,” complained Sydney’s Luke Devine.

Ah, yes. Plan B. 

The Shining, the board game. // Big runaway balloon. // “I love my job.” // British Movietone newsreel archive. // Bond is coming. // Precarious camping. // Round-the-clock roundabout cam. Eternal vigilance. // “No artificial reverb added.” // TIE fighter music box. // Underwhelming special effects. From Shark Attack 3 to Killer Meatballs and Birdemic. // Author photo of note. (h/t, dicentra) // Pluto’s size. // Cactus chair. // Movie quote search engine. // Theatre auditoriums seen from the stage. // His sandcastles are neater than yours. // The Lost World (1925). // “All cute. All the time.” // Attention, ladies. Roadkill fur. // Fight the signs of ageing. // Old gold. // Tactical diaper bag and other dad gear. // And finally, defiantly, “What are you gonna do, put it on YouTube?” 

The left should revisit the good old days of the feminist collective.

So says the Guardian’s Julie Bindel.

Our fearless scribe is pining for the days of “anti-hierarchical collective working” in the twilight of the Seventies. When, coincidentally, she was young. “In many ways collective working was successful,” says she, though the basis for this claim is somewhat sketchy, beyond a further claim that “eminent professionals” and “working class women” bathed in mutual respect and “recognised we could learn from each other.” Ms Bindel’s attempt to persuade us of the virtues of feminist collectives is, however, derailed by sharing her memories of actually being in one:

I recall a collective meeting about setting up a weekly telephone support service for lesbians. It was decided that each collective member would volunteer to take turns manning the phones at their own home, until we could raise the money to rent a space. One of the members did not have a telephone in her house, but insisted she was being discriminated against and “oppressed” by being left out of the rota.

Some difficulties involved scheduling conflicts:

Whenever the media wanted a quote from a feminist organisation, the collectives always missed out in favour of those with a hierarchical structure. All decisions had to be made by consensus, so if the journalist’s deadline was the next day, it was no use explaining that our next meeting was a week on Thursday.

The list of problems does in fact take up quite a lot of the article:

Sitting in endless meetings, unable to reach agreements, and taking days to produce one leaflet because someone objected to the word seminal.

Perhaps sensing that her sales pitch is faltering somewhat, Ms Bindel stresses the immense radicalism of it all:

There was a total resistance to the cult of the individual… until the Thatcher government declared war on society.

What, you didn’t know?