Criptic Critic Conscience and Known for it

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

The face of Panic - Live tonight

                                                                                  Link to radio station

Afganistan Vietnam

One of these Vietnam like photo's the kind that sticks in your mind, the kind I'm surprised to see, certainly stimulated by, and left wondering how much of this can I be sure to trust what i see. Wanting to see this, do I make it up? Of course the true power of this image is that it doesn't matter if it is right or wrong, created or captured, manufactured, seen, it serves a purpose as a symbol for what we want to say and that needs to be told cause we dont have to take it, what ever it is. There's a law out there and I made it, it serves me and I don't take it. You that other do up to me as you would others, love thyself with the coat of many lovers, seal they self in the tower of knowledge and not come down is a ransom full of knowledge, socrates you've already played this through, come down

Bauhaus Hair of the Dog





Hair of The Dog - Bauhaus 
the man who was mortally wounded in war kept on fighting
the man who was cut to the quick by love kept on loving
the man who was mercilessly tortured by thoughts kept on thinking
the man who was crippled with concern kept on caring kept on caring

hair of the dog
hair of the dog
hair of the dog that turned
hair of the dog

the man whose eyes were sore from obscenities kept on looking
the man whose heart bled, killed by compassion kept on feeling
the man whose legs buckled under exertion kept on running
the man whose ears rang with the sound of his own name kept on listening

hair of the dog
hair of the dog
hair of the dog that turned
hair of the dog

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Pure Art : As good as it gets. New Zealand. Shihad - Pacifier

 Sensitive Political Art Rock Band who pull off popular rock rifts with heavy metal super star quality, Gets a big chance to go big in America with the full weight of the industry investing to make a buck. Early Focus groups were unhappy with the groups name, Shihad as it to them meant some kind of declared war by middle eastern people against Americans, so insisted that the name be dropped. Johnny Toogood, more that ready with an acceptable name - labeled the band, pacifier, blind siding the redneks with a title of their beloved missile, while firm socking them one to it, with the rubber babies nipple ALSO connotation. And what the actual lyric refer to explicitly. The single is released. There is a small atomic bomb that goes off in New Zealand, like some one farted, the name was mediafied as an insult to Kiwi staunchness, not standing up to the Austamericans. There fore a substandard product and now tarred with the brush of unpatrioticness, the spark falted the ignite failed to happen and sales in America never happened. America getting wind somehow of this unpatrioticness and insuring this mood would not infect it's host country. (sorry slaves). The subsequent video made for the supposed big cross over hit, was infact the bands most intelligent expression of the true possibilities that lied at the core of their gathering of a bunch of blokes. Most telling is the Duchampian dropping in the huge beautiful choice exhibited by Shihad to become pacifier and choose to recreate scenes from A Clock Work Orange. Clockwork Orange an important cultural mile stone of fine art achievement, from one of the mediums masters, Stanley Kubric is about the conditioning by hypnosis mass media use in response and to perpetuate social stagnation. A very important topic and not one that many directors would be able to articulate let alone know the people who would fund such a critical perspective. There's not that many people awake and still making money. How to catch them just as they wake up. See my new book opening up, on 5th Avenue, This saturday the 5th and 10 am. See you there. Art is rather scary when practices properly, there is risk involved when you dare to leave your self open for interpretation, this on the whole is also not how we predominantly experience communication. The norm is a series of orders, from our brain to our bodies, so too does society function on a set of instructions followed, learnt. Here with the example of shihads Brilliance of being all of the above, do the wheels fall off. For though they did opt for taking the bull by the horns, the only choice if you are to be that good, being from New Zealand, a culture that promotes it's greatest Fire Storm artists as harmless hobbiests, when it came to making the tough decesions, when it came to backing the integrity of the viewer, There was just no way Shihad had a chance, There is no way they could believe that an audience would appreciate the accuracy of the homage, the attention to controversal detail, means devotion to understanding and therefore a willingness to go into battle in the culture wars we now call the information age, and sell one for the ironists out there, those that have read a few books over the years and can tell when a plot is being followed by that curve ball over there, and that popcorn stand over there. New Zealand Art culture as it is managed and promoted, by the academic trainers in our uuhverseties, our public museums, the city art galleries and their flunky suck ups avoiding the task of real public engagement and the garenteed debate that goes along with it, (LAZY FUCKS): let down SHithad and pacifier. Let down the art movement. Destroyed the dreams of one band, of brothers, one dream of balanced paradise with hell. Surly left us in the hell shihad became after.. They still possess the grim genesis of genius, it's a crumb. But it's always enough if there's enough of us to get it. The sliding scale of grandeur, applies to literally everything.Another high tide wave of cultural maturity washing a single piece of treasure upon the ring road, and driven over,




















Lyrics:

You feeling good today
cause I got told that you were
smashed up on your own motorway
but it's O.K
the first upon the scene
a life support machine
but you still collapse as if you were an accidental star

Do you know what the time is
is it messing with your mind kid
are you hurting all the time
and you need a pacifier
come on, lets take a look outside

Don't look so worried you know
there ain't no hurry
cause life's supposed to ebb and flow
now you're all clear to go
and when you're out there
no, they can't catch you
precious star, you are the best at what you are

and do you know what the time is
is it messing with your mind kid
are you hurting all the time
and you need a pacifier
come on, lets take a look outside

come on, lets take a look outside

The Face of Panic - Episode 6




                                           Podcast link

Saturday, August 4, 2012

8$ coat check NY 2010


I was there with White Fungus
and the artist Hye Rym Lee.
I didn't have the money, so she
paid for me
It was early no one was there,
it was like a lounge of someone
who I wouldn't like and they
had all their stuff taken,
and the minimal left was just nothing.

So here I was in this terrible play
in NY, all the way from
Wellington, yet I could find more interesting
places there, and I hate those places, too
Dumb.

Perhaps it was the night before our big event
or the night after, anyway, I remember thinking
how I'm not going to buy a fucking drink in this place
how I was thirsty and that I'd rather be playing
with my two little nieces who I've only just met
for the first time and whose prescence I'll only be able
to enjoy for a short short time.

So I left
 and we played and I have pictures
of holding them over each of my shoulders flying

After our show, or perhaps before, I remember a great mission
we were in Brooklyn this time at the cool of cool
place on the corner, like a little local, but being NY
here everyone is potentially famous. It was like entering your tv
So I'm over dressed cause I've got all my clothing on
wearing layers, taking some off
Carrying an arm load of Gortex, wearing plastic thermals
and some how my camera goes missing out of my jackets top zippered
pocket, and I only realize walking half way to this alienated hardworking artists

guy's house to smoke with him, and I run back through the wet streets 


to the bar, hopelessly, but it's my girl friends brand new camera, i'd borrowed it
I couldn't replace it, and i was a photographer on a world trip.
The bar tender I couldn't read, as if he was a young Mat Damon or something
if he was telling the truth, as he frantically but practiced checked these places where
some how it might be. This must be the most ethically run place in the city if I was
meant to believe how he didn't know where and who had lifted it, that it was probably him
amuses me, Country gets ripped in the city Dustin Holfman, had been my hero,
walking here, I'm walking here.

So we get to his house, and I borrow Marks, of White Fungus's
camera, brilliantly the cheapest digital camera you can buy in this city
3mega pixles possibly, it's a shame you'll never see those pictures
they were good. It was so kind of him to give me his camera for that
period of travel, I don't know how to travel with out scanning the visual events.