NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Assassins...

Photo: Zahid Hussein/Reuters. At the funeral of Benazir Bhutto, supporters thronged the route to the white marble mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Baksh. More Photos >

 

via SHOBAK [e-list]; posted by Naeem Mohaiemen, Fri Dec 28 08:47:29 CET 2007:

Assassins, A South Asia Story

Since 1971, Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) has framed much of its political reality in opposition to the idea of Pakistan. Some things I have heard over the years: "We will never allow Bangladesh to become Pakistan", "Why did we bother leaving Pakistan if we are going down the Islamic path as well?", "Thank god we're not with Pakistan", etc.

The scars of the 1971 genocide run deep. Periodically wounds flare up, such as when Islamist groups with ties to death squads in 1971 claim it was "civil war" not "genocide". 

My khalato bon (cousin) has direct memories of 1971 and even refuses to eat dried fruit or nuts if she discovers it was imported from Pakistan. She once said to me "Pakistan, ota ekta desh holo naki?" (Pakistan, is that even a country?). This reminds me of the (urban legend?) of post-WWII Jewish consumers who refused to buy the Volkswagen. There is of course little comfort from our nationalist defenses. Yes we are not Pakistan, but it would not take much to tip
the scale. It is only geography (non-adjacency to Afghanistan, no stake in Kashmir) that rescued us from Indo-Pak nuclear brinkmanship and American-Soviet pawn moves. Tariq Ali once wrote that Pakistan was the "used condom" from the Afghan war that America had fished out of the toilet after 9/11.

With yesterday's assassination of Benazir, again the Pakistan shadow over Bangladesh. Palpable jitters on the Dhaka streets. How long before Bangladesh gets engulfed by similar syndromes?

Meanwhile, two blog entries..

Assassins, A South Asia Story 

Assassination Alley
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Infernal, dark as the grave

(the credits alone are a work of art...)

It may seem strange that I am praising a work of such unremitting savagery. I confess that I'm a little startled myself, but it's been a long time since a movie gave me nightmares. And the unsettling power of "Sweeney Todd" comes above all from its bracing refusal of any sentimental consolation, from Mr. Burton's willingness to push the most dreadful implications of Mr. Sondheim's story to their blackest conclusions.

"Sweeney Todd" is a fable about a world from which the possibility of justice has vanished, replaced on one hand by vain and arbitrary power, on the other by a righteous fury that quickly spirals into madness. There may be a suggestion of hopefulness near the end, but you don't see hope on the screen. What you see is as dark as the grave. What you hear -- some of the finest stage music of the past 40 years -- is equally infernal, except that you might just as well call it heavenly.

[A.O. Scott, for the NYTimes]

The NY State of Things

David Hammons
African-American Flag, 1990
Dyed cotton fabric
Courtesy of Ellipse Foundation -- Contemporary Art Collection

via NYTimes, Art Review | 'New York States of Mind'

Never Mind the Map: Sometimes New York City Is More of an Idea
By KEN JOHNSON
Published: December 21, 2007

Oh, say can you see? With its red and black stripes and black stars on a green field, David Hammons's beautiful "African-American Flag" hangs high over the central exhibition space of "New York States of Mind" at the Queens Museum of Art.

Thus placed, the flag seems more than an elegantly mordant comment on race in America. It reads as the symbol of a separate country, a land where conservative American values are inverted, where liberal tolerance and reckless creative ambition thrive, and where dissent is valued as highly as consent. A country called New York City.

It is this view of New York that the curator Shaheen Merali wanted to frame when he organized this exhibition for the House of World Cultures, in Berlin, where he leads the department of exhibitions, film and new media, and where the show was on view earlier this year.

"The metropolis of New York differentiates itself from the rest of the United States in dialectical opposition," announces Mr. Merali in his opaquely worded but politically obvious introductory wall text.

The show, which includes about 30 artists who live in or have lived in New York, is too small, narrow, uneven and confusing to live up to its grand idea. Focusing on cerebral, tendentious works, it comes off as more didactic and ideological than imaginatively adventurous. What's more, it seems less about New York than about the trendy interests of the international curator set.

Still, this is an interesting, provocative exhibition. If you want to have a lively argument about the true nature of New York art, it’s a good place to start.

[read on...]

Happy Holidaze

Photo via flickr (Courtesy of Haiku Heidi)

See you next year...

Rebranding Skid Row

Top: The Whitehouse Hotel, rooms $9 to $54 a night. Bottom: The Bowery Hotel, rooms $425 to $1,200 a night. Photographs by Michael Edwards (NYMag) 

via murketing (AKA Rob Walker ):

Bowery branding

December 19th, 2007

New York Magazine ran a story recently on the redevelopment of the Bowery — all the new luxe hotels or whatever. They had a writer spend one night in an SRO, and the next night at one of said luxe hotels. At the SRO, he encounters a guy named Paulie, who is sweeping up:

This isn't just redevelopment as usual, Paulie says as he sweeps. That's because the Bowery isn't just any neighborhood. "It is like 42nd Street. Like Harlem. Names that mean something. Those places you don't just rebuild. You’ve got to rebrand them. The Bowery is being rebranded."

I'm amused that even the guy who sweeps up at a Bowery fleabag is comfortable with "rebranding" as a concept.

I was also amused by the story's subhead, which refers to the Bowery as "America’s greatest skid row." I think I missed the issue of Conde Nast Traveller where they ranked all the "skid rows."

Read the NYMAg piece:

Down and Out and ... Up and In on the Bowery
From the Whitehouse Hotel, the street's last SRO, to the door (manned by red-coated doormen) of the Bowery Hotel is only 35 steps for a reporter—but a giant leap into the rebranded, denatured future of America's greatest skid row.
By Mark Jacobson
Published Dec 10, 2007