By Lisa Aslanian, August 30th, 2011 
“Rap music is the CNN of the ghetto.” – Chuck D
Rap began — Chuck D nailed it — as news from the streets. Rap riffed ghetto life, syncopated in hard rhymes and dense metaphor the raw reality of the ghetto. In Ronald Reagan’s America, blacks in the ghettos from Harlem to Bed Stuy to South Central formed what George Bataille called the heterogeneous element of society — or the unassimable byproduct of a culture, born of that culture, upon which the culture rests. In plain English, rap was the art of the dispossessed, and as the art of the dispossessed, it tells us the truth of the trickle-down economic era from the mouths of those who were held far beneath the place where the trickle dried up.
Rap began as a linguistic pissing contest — and it has been always more than news. It is also poetry, entertainment and resistance. As news, it is largely unwelcome. As poetry, it is mad rich and ripping angry. As entertainment, the joke is always right-on the money, and as resistance, it is unbeatable because, instead of setting the ghetto on fire, it creates from the ashes — the shit and the garbage — the nothing, going nowhere despair of the reviled and the forgotten.
Much has been made of rap then and rap now. Rap, the argument goes, has been mainstreamed, even atomized. In this process, it has lost its political edge and anger. At the same time, critics ask rappers to grow up, to mature, to stop singing about bitches and hoes. Unsurprisingly, these tendencies contradict each other — and instead of choosing between the two lines of thinking, we note that the paradoxical attitude is a way of still not knowing quite what to do with rap.
Consider two themes that still dominate rap — swagger (and all that comes with it) and brutality. Rap still deals in race and racism, and, I believe, its critical reception is . . .
Read more: Rap as News or Art?
By Daniel Goode, August 30th, 2011 
In our daily lives, music, from the most popular to the most esoteric, reflects, rocks, imagines, stimulates, sooths, swings, provokes, calms, informs, seduces and instigates, and much else. It is knitted into a broad range of common activities, as it is also developed in refined practices. Its social significance and political meaning are rich and varied. Starting today, we will consider music as it informs critical reflection. First, Daniel Goode on the status of new music, then, Lisa Aslanian on the politics of rap, and then more tomorrow and in future weeks. -Jeff
The Stone is a cramped, windowless, airless, former storefront on a Lower Eastside corner in New York without public transit nearby, secured for the new music community, by composer/entrepreneur, John Zorn. A piano (not always in top order), a polite young man to take your ten dollars, some unidentified jazz greats and others in 60 black and white photos on one wall, a john through the stage area, a committed audience of friends and associates of the artists, and recently: notice of some concerts by the New Yorker, The New York Times, and, I’ve been told, The Village Voice. The composer or performer does their own publicity with no mailing list from the Stone—though its website has the full schedule. The composer/performer takes the entire gate, which at ten dollars a pop multiplied by the randomness of attendance scarcely helps the composer/performer hire associate musicians, pay cartage, transportation or any of the usual New York costs for what one needs to put on a show.
Ah, remember those romantic former industrial spaces called lofts with their various but always capacious acoustics and interesting visual aspects? Remember how you could set up the seating from floor, cushion, or chair in interesting ways that made the space lively and part of the performance itself? Remember that some lofts were already galleries with an infrastructure suitable for concert use? And a mailing list of significant lovers of the arts? Or just lovers! Remember that one of these spaces was called “The . . .
Read more: We’ve Been Demoted: Reflections of a New Musician
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 27th, 2011 
 As a rule, we do not post on weekends. But because of the rapidly approaching hurricane and the likelihood of a power outage, I offer today these thoughts inspired by Michael Corey’s last Deliberately Considered post, celebrating the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the Washington Mall, and by Cornel West’s op.ed. piece criticizing the Memorial and Barack Obama in yesterday’s New York Times. -Jeff
I am not a big fan of Cornel West. I liked and learned from his book The American Evasion of Philosophy, but most of his other books and articles involve, in my judgment, little more then posturing and preaching to the converted (I in the main am one of them). He does not take seriously the challenges political life presents. As he shouts slogans, cheers and denounces, I am not sure that he persuades. His and Travis Smiley’s ongoing criticism of President Obama seem to me to be first personal, then political, more the work of celebrity critics than critical intellectuals. That said, I think West’s op.ed. piece has a point, though not as it is directed against Obama and against the importance of symbolism.
“The age of Obama has fallen tragically short of fulfilling King’s prophetic legacy…
As the talk show host Tavis Smiley and I have said in our national tour against poverty, the recent budget deal is only the latest phase of a 30-year, top-down, one-sided war against the poor and working people in the name of a morally bankrupt policy of deregulating markets, lowering taxes and cutting spending for those already socially neglected and economically abandoned. Our two main political parties, each beholden to big money, offer merely alternative versions of oligarchic rule.”
This is unserious. The two parties are very different, and Obama has clearly been trying to address the needs of the socially and economically abandoned in his battle against the Republicans and so called moderate Democrats in Congress: on healthcare policy, financial regulation and jobs. A debt default would not only have hurt Wall Street and Main Street businesses. It would have profoundly affected the poor and working people for whom . . .
Read more: In Review: Cornel West, Barack Obama and the King Memorial
By Michael Corey, August 26th, 2011 
On Monday, August 22nd, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D. C. was opened for visitors. The official dedication of the memorial was scheduled to take place on Sunday, August 28th (indefinitely posted by Hurricane Irene), the 48th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom before over 200,000 people. The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation notes that this is the first memorial on the National Mall “to honor a man of hope, a man of peace, and a man of color.” The memorial, according to the project’s mission statement, honors Dr. King for “his national and international contributions to world peace through non-violent social change.” A virtual tour of the memorial is available on the Foundation’s website.
The 120 million dollar memorial is located on the Tidal Basin adjacent to the FDR Memorial, and its line of sight connects it with the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials. The project was launched in 1996 when President Clinton signed a resolution to build a memorial in honor of Dr. King. Groundbreaking for the project took place on November 13, 2006. The origins of the idea for memorial is traceable to January, 1984, when George Sealy met with four fellow Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity brothers to develop a proposal for building a national King memorial. As with most projects of this type, it origins were small and informal. It then had to proceed through numerous associational and institutional gates as public and private support for the project was developed. The bureaucratic and procedural steps involved were formidable; and the long process had many controversial elements, including its design, the selection of Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin, the use of Chinese granite, and the $800,000 of licensing fees charged to the Foundation by the King family for the use of Dr. King’s words and image in fundraising materials. McKissack & McKissack/Turner/Gilford/ Tompkins are the design-build team. All the principals are American, and many have strong connections with businesses owned . . .
Read more: Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial: “I Have a Dream”
By Benoit Challand, August 24th, 2011 
A third irremovable Arab president has fallen. Muammar Qaddafi’s final fate, like that of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh currently in Saudi, recovering from an attempted assassination, is still unknown. But one thing is pretty sure: like Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Husni Mubarak, Colonel Qaddafi is the third political victim of the Arab spring. Quite a deed, if one remembers the proliferation of de facto monarchical republics in the Arab Middle East in the very recent past.
While there is much to rejoice in this news, many questions arise concerning the political and military developments of these last months in Libya. In this post, I will focus on the media coverage in and around Tripoli. Next week, I will analyse the emerging Libyan leadership.
It is striking to see how the most recent military developments in Tripoli are mostly portrayed as a “rebel-driven campaign.” To be sure, we are told of how NATO allies coordinate aerial attacks in their support for this the apparently final offensive, but very little is said about the active role that Qatar, France and England have taken in arming, equipping and training the Libyan rebel forces (not to mention intelligence gathering and strategic planning). It is, in fact, probably as much a victory of the Transitional National Council (TNC) as it is of the countries which have thrown in their lots in the hope of securing a substantial share of the (oily) pie and to obtain a prominent role as future regional leaders. Yet, very little has been said about the active role of the U.S. in the unfolding events. “Leading from behind,” Obama’s unique strategy, is perhaps more of a media performance than a military reality. The U.S. has been very much involved.
One can find evidence that the USA is not waiting, arms crossed, to see what will happen in the Cyrenaica and Tripolitana. An article in yesterday’s New York Times reveals pro-active American involvement in planning the future of a post-Qaddafi Libya:
With . . .
Read more: Who Won the Libyan war?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 23rd, 2011 
In recent posts, Vince Carducci examining the urban environment in terms of psychogeography, derive and detournment, and the gift and potlatch, explored the art of Detroit, the city at the epicenter of Fordism and ground zero of post – Fordist devastation. While I think his inquiry is illuminating, showing art playing an important role in democratic society, I am skeptical about his political utopianism, as he stands on the shoulders of Marx and the Situationists and Ken Wark’s account of them. I don’t think that the full power of the artwork is captured as a critique of capitalism or that the full political significance of the work is in its message. We disagree, once again, on art as propaganda and how art becomes politically significant.
Artwork, and the world it creates when appreciated, is, in my judgment, more important than context. The art, its independent domain, is where the action is, which is then related to a variety of different contexts. To be sure, Carducci shows how this works. Detroit artists don’t only speak to each other, creating work that communicates for themselves and their immediate audience. They speak to the de-industrializing world, providing insights, suggesting an alternative way of living. But this can work in many different ways, not necessarily tied to political programs of the left or the right or the center.
Take an example drawn from two past posts: Ivo Andric novelistic depiction of The Bridge on the Drina inspired Elzbieta Matynia to reflect on the way that bridge, connecting Serbia and Bosnia, provided a space for interaction between people from elsewhere, at the kapia, the public square on the bridge, enabling civility. Her account, in turn, inspired me to reflect upon the bridges I observe on my daily run through the public park that was the Rockefeller estate, and provided me with critical perspective for thinking about the devastation . . .
Read more: In Review: Democracy and Art for Art Sake (Without Elitism)
By Vince Carducci, August 19th, 2011 
This post continues the analysis begun in Part I of this series, relating art in Detroit to concepts of the Situationist International. Part I provides an introduction and discussion of the concept of psychogeography. Part II discusses the concepts of derive and detournment. The final part, part III, looks at the gift and potlatch.
A fourth Situationist concept that can be discerned in the art of the commons in Detroit is that of the gift. Working off the research on gift economies of early social scientists such as Franz Boas and Marcel Mauss, and as subsequently interpreted by the renegade Surrealist Georges Bataille, the Situationists envisioned “a new type of human relationship.” This would entail neither the cold calculations of bourgeois exchange nor the asymmetrical obligations of aristocratic bequest, but would instead be based on the egalitarian reciprocity of gifts freely given and received. (See chapter 8, “Exchange and Gift,” in The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem for an outline of the Situationist conception of the gift.)
The gift is central to the practice of art in the face of the money economy argues Lewis Hyde in his now famous book of the same name. The gift economy informs many aspects of relational aesthetics, for example in the work of Rikrit Taravanija, who creates installations that are the setting for sharing meals and other types of social interaction. Detroit Soup similarly features monthly sharing of meals as a collaborative situation for building an aesthetic community. Dinners are prepared by volunteers who share their current projects and thoughts with attendees who contribute $5 toward the evening. Others then present ideas which are voted upon. The selected proposals are given the entire proceeds to fund execution. Additional events along the model of Detroit Soup are now proliferating around the city.
Below: Vanessa Miller and Amy Kaherl discussing Detroit Soup at University of Michigan.
The final concept proceeds directly from the gift and that is the notion of potlatch. . . .
Read more: Beneath the Pavement, the Beach! — Detroit from a Situationist Perspective, Part III
By Vince Carducci, August 18th, 2011 
This post continues the analysis begun in Part I of this series, relating art in Detroit to concepts of the Situationist International. Part I provides an introduction and discussion of the concept of psychogeography. Part II discusses the concepts of derive and detournment. The final part, part III, looks at the gift and potlatch.
A second Situationist concept relevant to a discussion of the art of the commons in Detroit is derive, typically rendered in English as “drift,” the practice of meandering, unpredictable explorations of an environment in which its psychogeographic characteristics are exposed. The artist Scott Hocking has been exploring the nether regions of the erstwhile Motor City for more than a decade. In addition to sculptural installations that respond to the physical environment, the artist has recorded his perambulations in a series of documentary photographs organized under topics such as “bad” grafitti, abandoned boats and other vehicles, and present-day locations that were once sites of ancient burial mounds. As Debord notes in “Theory of Derive,” derive isn’t an entirely aimless pursuit, but one driven by an awareness of psychogeographical effects. One of Hocking’s more noteworthy derives is Detroit Love (2007-present).
The project is a miscellany of picturesque images of scenes around the city, moments in place and time that reveal the artist’s emotional connection with the environs. The images are often tinged with irony, capturing residues of the collective memory slipping away. Others show the persistence of the life force amidst the ruins. Among the former are Grand Army of the Republic, a head-on view of a Romanesque structure, built in 1899 originally for the Civil War veterans of the Union Army. Shortly before the last vet  died in the early 1940s, the City of Detroit took over management of the building, using it as a social services and community center until closing it permanently in . . .
Read more: Beneath the Pavement, the Beach! — Detroit from a Situationist Perspective, Part II
By Vince Carducci, August 17th, 2011 
In reading and reviewing McKenzie Wark’s The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International, I couldn’t help but think about the practice of art in the city of Detroit. Wark’s title refers to the Situationist idea of deconstructing the process by which nature has come to be overwritten by culture particularly in the urban environment. This in part entails the recognition that:
“The conceit of private property is that it is something fixed, eternal. Once it comes into existence it remains, passed in an unbroken chain of ownership from one title-holder to the next. Yet in the course of time whole cities really do disappear. We live among the ruins. We later cities know that cities are mortal.” (29, emphasis added)
In the case of Detroit “the course of time” has progressed rather quickly, basically with the onset of post-Fordism in the early 1970s, though some commentaries rightly see the seeds as having been planted in the suburbanization of the region that began soon after the Second World War. This reversal of the conceit of private property provides the basis for what I have called the art of the commons, art that is neither public nor private but that exists in a space in between. And many of the practices that comprise this work have something in common with what Wark tells us about the Situationists. In this post, I will reflect on the Situationist understanding of psychogeography as it appears in Detroit art work. Part II will similarly examine derive and detounement and part III will analyze the gift and potlatch.
In the “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography,” the Situationist theorist Guy Debord writes that psychogeography concerns the study of “specific effects of the geographical environment, whether consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviors of individuals.” One of the more well-recognized mappings of the ghost world of Detroit is the one undertaken by Tyree Guyton on the city’s East Side in the form of the Heidelberg . . .
Read more: Beneath the Pavement, the Beach! — Detroit Art from a Situationist Perspective, Part I
By Michael Weinman, August 16th, 2011 
 In a recent post, Jeff frames the troubling inflexibility in contemporary American politics in terms of our fallibility as political actors, and the need to recognize it, concluding: “Compromise between two fallible competing opinions is a virtue. Compromise of a perceived truth is a vice.” This leads me back to the thought left open at the close of my last post. There, in the context of my skepticism about the deployment of the trope of “growing pains” in political affairs, I called into question the “epistemic certainty” that such a narrative entails. Fairly often, we hear that such certainty is impossible: this position can be called one form of “political fallibilism.” In this first sense, “political fallibilism” means something like the conscious cultivation of not being too certain about things political, about one’s views of what is, but also about what must be done. That is, one knows that no matter how right one is, one is at least a little bit wrong. And one knows that, however much one knows about what is happening, there is even more that one does not know, and probably still more that one doesn’t know what one does not know.
We can call this first form of political fallibilism, as our sitting President has, self-conscious humility. Jeff has highlighted what is good and worthy in this practice, especially when compared with strident ideological inflexibility. This argument has also been forcefully put forward in a long-standing controversy about the existence and nature of an “Obama Doctrine.” Some commentators approve of this policy, and others don’t; all agree that the Administration is trying, anyway, to strike a balance between “realism” and “idealism,” between Kissingerian realpolitik and George W. Bush’s “Freedom Agenda.” In other words, the Administration’s policy in Iraq, Afghanistan, and more recently (and more tortuously) in Libya, is all about recognizing political fallibilism, even if not always put expressly in those terms. More recently, over the past weeks, with the circus over the debt ceiling . . .
Read more: Two Forms of (Political) Fallibilism
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