John Menick | Archive for June, 2006

Today, Chris Moukarbel responded to a previous post concerning Paramount’s lawsuit against him.

As he points out, the press only seems to be able to understand his work in the context of commercial filmmaking, and, like Paramount, isn’t interested in knowing that Moukarbel is working in a tradition of contemporary art in which appropriation is a form of criticism. (In case you’re the one person reading a contemporary art blog who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, try looking into Guy Debord, Bruce Conner, Pierre Huyghe, Douglas Gordon, et al.)

Am I the only person who finds this lawsuit wildly arbitrary? (Other than Chris, of course.)

(Related: Also see this previous post on Godard’s screening at the MoMA.)

The search for Mandela’s buried gun.

Michael Winterbottom discusses Road to Guantanamo on WNYC (Leonard Lopate).

Brando insists you don’t remember him (direct link to quicktime file).

Saul Symonds, Light Sleeper’s editor:

This issue of Light Sleeper presents two articles on Pasolini’s Salò to mark the 30th anniversary of what is deservedly one of the 20th century’s most controversial films. The first article is a roundtable between myself, David Ehrenstein, and Noel Vera. The second article, “A Look into the Mythic-Real Mirror of Pier Paolo Pasolini”, was written a few months after this roundtable and picks up on several issues that were forming in my mind by the end of that discussion.

(And here is a third.)

A couple of weeks ago, I was thinking of linking to artist Chris Moukarbel’s video version of Oliver Stone’s WTC. Good thing I didn’t. It seems like Paramount is not only suing the artist, but also cited a blog that linked to the project as evidence in the case. When will it stop? I didn’t think I would bother seeing Stone’s film until I saw Moukarbel’s short, which actually got me interested in doing a side-by-side comparison. I’ll go back to not bothering.

A little background in case you’re scratching your head:

Using an appropriated copy of Oliver Stone’s script for “World Trade Center,” filmmaker Chris Moukarbel took matters into his own hands and went ahead and shot an extract from the script with student actors in his own studio. The first of its kind in an internet rife with trailer mash-ups and footage remixes, the idea of creating an adaptation of a film months prior to release is part of Moukarbel’s current video art installation, and aimed specifically at pre-empting the upcoming Oliver Stone film’s release in August 2006. The installation piece is currently touring European art galleries, and has just recently found its way online.

The first ones to leave [a slowing art] market is not the established collectors but the speculators, and the current market seems to be driven by the latter.

- Anders Petterson on Reuters

It took me a while to notice, but this winter the indefatigable CLUI added an entry to their site on the sale of the natural and manmade Johnston Atoll. (Also note their entry on the Dixie Mall.) Discovered in the early 19th century and converted to a nuclear test site in the ’50s and ’60s, it seems that the military has gotten all of the their mileage out of the concrete slabs and are putting up for sale. The islands are unbelievable in a JG Ballard sort of way, sporting a ruined golf course, airstrips and acres of radioactive concrete. How could anyone turn down the offer? Some choice quotes and photos from CLUI:

In 1962, Johnston was used for a series of nuclear tests as part of Operation Dominic, which included the only U.S. test of an operational ballistic missile with a live warhead. For this test a Polaris missile was launched from a submarine, and traveled 1200 miles through space and the atmosphere, until detonating 11,000 feet above the ocean near Johnston…

…Also that year, the newly constructed rocket launch pad at Johnston was used for a number of extremely high altitude nuclear tests. On June 20, during “Starfish,” the Thor rocket engine cut out a minute after launch, and the missile was intentionally destroyed, at 30,000 feet. Large pieces of the rocket, including some plutonium–contaminated wreckage, rained down on the atoll….

… The test was repeated in July, and the rocket successfully flew to the highest elevation ever for a nuclear detonation (248 miles above the earth). Impressive light displays of the “artificial aurora borealis” lasted for several minutes, and were visible from the military outpost at Kwajalein Atoll, 1,600 miles away. The electromagnetic pulse from the blast knocked out street lighting in Oahu.

Other projects have taken place on the island in the last 50 years, the details of which are only partially known to us. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, Johnston was the site for the government’s first operational anti-satellite program, which involved nuclear rockets ready to launch from Johnston to knock out enemy satellites. Also, beginning in 1964, a series of open-air biological weapon tests was conducted at Johnston Atoll. The American strategic bio-weapon program tests involved a number of ships positioned around the island, upwind from barges loaded with rhesus monkey test subjects that were exposed to agents dispensed from aircraft.

(Via BLDGBLOG.)

I had heard the Hitchcock-Truffaut tapes in streaming RealPlayer format a few years ago when they were posted on the RFI site. Those files are no longer online, but it seem that a blogger has mp3s of the same material (without the French language intros). They are being posted piece by piece, with the eighth installment yesterday.

Courtesy, The Nation.

Gyorgy Ligeti RIP.

“Iron Artist” everywhere.

Plus, every wonder how money laundering works?

The video mentions the protests at the fair, but not all of them.