Golden Lox

Black Incantation
The thrill of expansion
In shrinking seen
In augmentation

Ingesting rich blood
I fear no corruption
But awake at night
With terror castration

into the body less changeless
Octane precious
French wish list

In pulses I claim this
Fills my heart fluid faceless

On fulcrumed kindness
breaking baseless
Am I servant among you?
Am I Chiefest?
Am I famous?

All aux
All faux
All pocked and pox
Ill wed and bred with golden lox

I cried
denied
And crewed the cocks
The moorning loose
down at the docks

Was it drowned
When found
or bon voyage
abattoir
Or bright ménage

Make room to spark
And flood the ark
With butcherslop
and menopause

The skins for cloaks
The pricks for pokes
The flesh and bones for camouflage

More resolute in chemicals
Than all God's great bovine mirage

-Apesblood

Carlos Tevez

I found this brief interview very poignant. Carlos Tevez is a raw and honest football player. He always plays wide-open; pure will, spirit and determination. The reality is that it's the people who don't hold anything back that get worn out and run down first. What does it say in Blade Runner? "Those stars that burn the brightest burn the fastest: and you have burned so very brightly!"

This is starting to sound a little melodramatic so i'll just let it go, but with what i've seen from Tevez over the past several years, it sort of broke my heart to read this. The reward of integrity is generally exhaustion and frustration. But still, you gotta go there.

Tevez reveals retirement plans

There's more water on the moon than anyone thought

wrap your minds around this....(from Rueters)

Both art and politics feel a pretty thin farce compared to this stuff.

"Most scientists now believe the moon was formed when a Mars-sized object hit the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, knocking off material that compacted to form the moon."

Adios Amigos

They’re Chicanos and Artists. But Is Their Art Chicano?

just read the first three, and then the last, paragraphs; the author makes an important point about the lag-time between cultural and bureaucratic realities (i.e. between real-life and legislation)

so i haven't been posting much of late, but i have a good reason; i've been writing for an art blog in Atlanta- BURNAWAY.ORG

i may start dropping in links here to things i'm publishing over there, except that (in a perfect world) "art and politics" means most of the content on Apesblood has something to do with both of those categories and my art writing is strictly art. oh well.

meantime, here's something from that very intersection, where visual arts and politics collide:

When Fear Turns Graphic

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN(from the NYT)

long time, no post

We've heard so much about the Military-Industrial Complex, with all the talk of health care reform isn't anybody worried about a Healthcare-Industrial Complex? 

(maybe my mistake is assuming that there would be enough private industry left in Healthcare for the gov. to be in cahoots with. once you own everything it's not really a complex anymore, is it?) 

is anybody talking about this?

and here's some art:  (art-sky river take my mind) 

Baker Overstreet

I don't mean to sound melodramatic, 

but I really find this mentality to be frightening.

When a person makes the decision to become an artist, they know the risks.

Those statistics simply reinforce the absurdity of the entire undertaking.

Swinging Chicken Ritual Divides Orthodox Jews

another interesting romp through the intersection of violence and spirituality

all that beauty, all that blood.

Rashid Rana,  Red Carpet 1

(digital collage; thousands of tiny photographs taken in a Pakistani slaughterhouse.)

Rashid Rana,  Red Carpet 1 (detail)

UF wins fall invitational

Leapin' Lizards! Just wide of the ol' onion bag!

Somewhere in Las Vegas, Dave Hickey is laughing.

More on the NEA's orwellian antics, 

(easy does it boys.....)

The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion?

by Patrick Courrielche

NEA calls in a few favors....

Paul threw this link up in the comments to ape-meister's  tirade against the ironies of liberalism. it seemed like a very pertinent sort of "case in point"   

The Art of Corruption

Ten Ironies of Liberalism

1.The “celebration of diversity” and simultaneous destruction of it by empowering the world’s greatest homogenizing force, the federal government,(not seeing that the consolidation of political power also means the consolidation of economic and social power) and being an incredibly homogenous group.

2.The verbal promotion of peace while simultaneously supporting the world’s greatest purveyor of violence and war and creator of the atomic bomb, the federal government.

3.The condemnation of Xenophobia while supporting policies that make people xenophobic, e.g. maintaining a welfare state with open borders.

4.The condemnation of Racism while simultaneously showing support for policies such as affirmative action, that imply racial inferiority on the part of its recipients.

5.Environmentalism that ignores the notion of “the tragedy of the commons”, ignores the positive effects of privatization, ignores industries role in providing environmentally friendly technology , and entrusting land to the federal government, an institution with the longest running environmentally abysmal track record.

6.Reading 1984, thinking it’s a good book and then being completely unable to see its real world political implications.

7.Fighting for reproductive rights and supporting socialized medicine.

8.Pretending to be humanists. Supporting policies that make a good show of helping the poor but often reinforce poverty and preclude economic development, such as most federal foreign aid to Africa.

9.A belief in the separation of church and state but a willingness to legislate all sorts of moralistic policies in the name of vague and undefinable notions of fairness and equality.

10.Supporting community building events, grassroots politics, and DIY and empowering a federal government by supporting the enactment of far reaching one size fits all legislation.

-Apes Blood

Klaus Nomi

Klaus Nomi

So I was in a lecture the other day and the woman speaking was showing slides from the "avant-garde" in the world of print-making and she pulls up a slide of some prints that had images of black hawk helicopters and tanks in them and says:  

"Obviously this person is making some very political artwork....." 

Were they? what makes a work of art political? a lot of people are making work that's politicized, but does that make it political? 

I'm not convinced that appropriating or regurgitating the most rudimentary kinds of political symbolism and/or rhetoric really constitutes a political work, or a political act.

My mind went back to a Holland Cotter article I had read a few months prior: 

(speaking about the NY Art scene in the 70's....)

"The best art was subversive, but in very un-’60s, nonideological ways. When, at midnight, you heard Klaus Nomi, with his bee-stung black lips and robot hair, channeling Maria Callas at the Mudd Club, you knew you were in the presence of a genius deviant whose very life was a political act."

("The Boom Is Over. Long Live the Art!",  NYT)

Obama Backs Extending Patriot Act Spy Provisions

everything changed, and nothing changed;

welcome to the future......

"The Obama administration has told Congress it supports renewing three provisions of the Patriot Act due to expire at year’s end, measures making it easier for the government to spy within the United States."

read it at wired.com

Abstract Politics

Reduced Visability

i'm not sure, to be completely honest, that this show (at least the works available for viewing online) accomplishes its objective, but it's an important idea, and it goes back to some of the neo-platonic ideals about form which i can't help but hope are true. As for the show, showing that a work of art had political origins, or that it's imagery or material is derived from a politically loaded source does not prove that it's a political work of art; i.e. a form which carries innate political content.  

Mark Lombardi

This isn't Shepard Fairey's neo-fascist fantasy art-world, this is the real intersection of art and politics. And watch just how fast the FBI gets involved....... 

This is old news but it's a story worth going back to.

The 'Conspiracy' Art of Mark Lombardi

Doug Aitkin (not the piece they bought, but you get the idea.)

Dallas Cowboys Show Their Artsy Side (saw this on Ed Winkleman's blog)

impossible to know, but this seems like a good, objective overview of some of the big Health Care Reform concerns/questions: (from NYT)

A Primer on the Details of Health Care Reform

Banks Violette

"Hate Them" (that's the name of the piece)

I know there's been too much politics recently but check this out, this cat's for real:

John Monds for Governor

this guy is running the reserve?.....this video gave me a sort of sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

(thank you to our friends at mises.org)

Homefield Humiliation: Mexico defeats the U.S. 5-0 at Giant's stadium in Gold Cup Final

Nothing to say about this one but, ouch! It was as embarrassing as the score line would indicate.

5 freedoms you'd lose in health care reform

read the comments, the rhetoric is heavy handed on both sides but this lady called it:  

"It seems that we either adopt a single payer plan and become Canada or there's going to be little children dying of leukemia in the streets."

--editorial content!--

I don't imagine that a transition to socialized medicine means the catastrophic demise of health care in the united states, or that on an individual basis people's lives would be significantly less pleasant than they are now, but that something, some kind of vitality, would be lost. something like the difference between a world cup qualifier and an international friendly. But -following that analogy-  you do get the feeling that at some point, somewhere down the line, they'll be looking to cancel the world cup all-together. 

For Public, Obama Didn’t Fill in Health Blanks (from NYT)

 I'll take your votes, but please keep your concerns to yourself.

sometimes..... it's okay to be beautiful

jacob hashimoto at mary boone

watch this video and you can a clearer idea about how these things are put together

Old world romance at new world speeds

Dragon-Demon swallows the sun The caption above the picture just sounds cool with that image, it's only slightly relevant, but check out the article.

a voice in the wilderness

dan holdsworth
(ok, so now i'm stealing from daily serving. we're even.) 

was blind but now.....someone paid for me to get my eyes fixed!

nothing fun, but a lot of really good back and forth on the health care issue, kinda helped me wrap my head around some of the different positions/arguements:

Should the Rich Pay for the Uninsured?

or listen to MOBY DICK!

Librivox is awesome, Melville is a genius 

Blood Ritual

Writings by Apes Blood

While your hands are busy and your ears are free, listen to F.E.E!

F.E.E offers a podcast on itunes. There are a lot of good episodes that address our current financial predicament, and monetary and fiscal policy in general. Check it out there are tons of topics, and most that I have listened to are solid. I just finished one on the dangers of government funding of the sciences called, "Hayek, Polanyi, and the economics of science" You can listen to most content directly from the website if not from itunes.

Marquee Moon came up on Pandora the other day and i got this crazy kind of feeling, not like dancing, but like my legs were being twisted out from under me.  

The U.S. Steers Left on Honduras

my weekend in Brazil (the movie)

you know that scene in Brazil when they're in the restaurant and the bomb goes off and they just throw up a screen and everybody keeps eating.......?

Twin Suicide Attacks Rock Jakarta Hotels

easy weekend readin'

Minimalism as Immanent Trancendence
John Law and the Invention of Modern Finance (Mises)
Why Obamacare Can't Work: The Calculation Argument(Mises, some shaky points, but a good, quick read)

"Where’s all the rightwing street art?"

here's a little something to mill over. is it a call to arms? Bastiat might say it's a very telling and natural symptom of the fundamental philosophical differences between the left and the right.
what's the mentality of your average "street artist"?

Allison Schulnik

four months after we broke the story, Daily Serving think they can still get in on the action.....pathetic!
(i'll refer you to the tuesday, march 10 2009 post below)


but i tell you what, go Allison, go!
(and in case you missed it the first time, watch the video)

'democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner'

i'm poor and this pisses me off......
House Democrats Provide Income Surtax Details
you'll like where they say it's ok because it will only affect a small percentage of american households. not enough of a voting block to worry about eh boys? as long as it's less than the percentage point spread between us and our closest competitor last election cycle.

apesblood, you should try to date this lady.....
and read this interesting article about her....... and the realities of pakistani politics......and how obama is making it all worse! (gotta love that)

An interview with Fatima Bhutto (from Guernica)

New soccer cleats for Apesblood

I just bought a pair of Nike Mercurial Vapor V's and a pair of Adidas Adipures. The Vapors are a gaudy space age boot that employ a synthetic upper that covers the lacing and a carbon fiber out sole with non-traditional stud configuration. They weigh in at around 8 oz. The Adipures are assertively traditional in black and white with a kangaroo leather upper and a weight of around 9 oz.Having trained with both cleats a couple of times, the synthetic material of the Vapors has proven to be better for dribbling and ball handling on the ground, while kangaroo leather is better for out of air trapping, juggling and initial control. Both cleats are fairly comparable so far as shooting goes. Before buying both cleats I was setting myself up to make a tough decision between tradition and innovation. I am reminded of an anthropology course I took in which we looked at the conservatism of the old and the liberalism of the young as being adaptive. The thinking is, experimentation is good but can lead to death and social ruin while sticking to a tried and true method ensures survival insofar as there are no drastic environmental changes. The two behaviors balance one another out, so the reasoning goes. We have thesis and antithesis(liberalism and conservatism) and even synthesis in the act of appreciating the two sides as adaptive, but what if these two sides are really essentialy one or are out of balance, is there some sort of political ideology that allows for a healthy balance of both adaptive behaviors? It just so happens that there is, and it is called libertarianism, which subscribes to a traditional rule of law while allowing for the individual freedom needed for social change and experimentation, but this is all beside the point. I got the Adidas shoes cheap as they are out of fashion, and paid a premium for the Nikes because they are almost brand new. As sad as it is to admit I have a suspicion that the synthetic material will prove to be better for game play this season. Then again a waterproof and synthetic coated Kangaroo leather boot would likely be the best thing to ever happen.

here's a real devil for you....

one of my most exquisite high art experiences was stepping through the Sandbacks up at Dia Beacon.......whew!
this pic from a recent show at david zwirner

a quick read, nicely translated into layman's terms...

"We who are advocates of sound, free-market money need to get our story straight. Are we predicting hyperinflation or massive deflation?"(from von mises)

Just to keep Ape's blood competitive with other major publication:

Michael Jackson

Friday, July 03, 2009
1:29 PM

I heard of tickets for a Kings funeral
Mutely and Publicly effaced
Democratically ethereal
Coronated with a populous composite crown
Each piece given by a repetitive hand
Paternal hands on the shoulders push to kneel on the ground
Cheered in three minute applications
Patterned( Fathered) by patrons
How apt that the king of pop would imbue the skin of the life of the entertained
With some indefinable color bled from a body that moved over it's bones
drawn in flux by the rhythm and voice of a collective superficiated primality
An apotheosis of self
vivisected in views and reassembled in cheers conjured by a dance,
a rite of bodily gyrations and summoning,
calling the borrowed parts of the man back into union
for those moments of Worshipful conduition,
dissolving at the end of each night and keeping him in mortal flux

Mises Madness!

since you pulled out the quote and got this ball rolling, here are some von Mises links....
www.mises.org
"When Stimulus Does Not Stimulate" (no revolutionary ideas, just really easy to understand, just in case you foolish enough not to major in economics!)
The Bailout Reader (tons of great reading material!)

these guys are really on it!

Intelligence Without Design
"By bridging aspects of intelligent design with evolution in a new approach they call “possibilism,” authors Diana Alstad and Joel Kramer probably haven’t solved the American culture wars. But they might have."  

Nothing new, but....

"Nothing is more calculated to make a demagogue popular than a constantly reiterated demand for heavy taxes on the rich. Capital levies and high income taxes on the larger incomes are extraordinarily popular with the masses, who do not have to pay them."

-Ludwig Von Mises

Young Idols With Cleavers

butchers making a comeback. I thought this was pretty cool.  read it

(basically this blog is turning into "New York Times, Chase Edition")

Mapping a Bird’s-Eye View of Foreclosure Misery  (fromNYT)


a little more politics than art, but here's why it works:

mapping the Panorama was not about taking sides. “I don’t see how it gives a political view, mapping the facts,” she said. “I don’t think you can argue with this. That’s why it’s so powerful.” (full article)

Matt King

"Mr. Obama has sometimes sent mixed signals about his attitude toward free trade."

anybody want to unwrap this one?.....

"Mr. Obama has sometimes sent mixed signals about his attitude toward free trade. In the Democratic presidential primary, he was fiercely critical of several free trade agreements with China, Caribbean countries and Mexico for failing to include strict enough environmental standards. He argued that the United States should threaten to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement to renegotiate protections for the environment as well as workers’ rights.

But as president, Mr. Obama has not made a priority of renegotiating Nafta or other trade agreements. And he has always indicated that though he favors adjusting some rules, he supports the principle of free trade.

In the interview, Mr. Obama had few words of comfort for those who may have taken a political risk by voting for the House climate change bill, and no threats for the 44 House Democrats who defied their leadership to oppose it.

“I think those 44 Democrats are sensitive to the immediate political climate of uncertainty around this issue,” Mr. Obama said. “They’ve got to run every two years, and I completely understand that.”

Many of the Democrats who voted against the legislation represent districts that rely heavily on coal for electricity and manufacturing for jobs."  (the whole article)

ask not for whom the bell tolls.....

USA 2   Spain 0

this link will live on forever as a testament to the greatest moment in US soccer history!

gov' wants to regulate blogs

the article isn't going to blow you away, it's just an important reminder that they're coming. 

06/22/09

"Your eyes will be open knowing good from evil
And ye will be as the gods"

The man -dog in the blue suit and the brown living wig
Shakes the new form of a head in the front row
He is young while old in glasses
figuring out his layered hands layered body and layered mind
He raises his paw-hand and blinks
Opening and closing on his questions and answers
He is sloughing his claws against a standard on which his dog body broke and felt inadequacy
A shame for his teetering underbelly
When was the first time you discovered you were an animal?
Humanity and godhood being political assertions
He still wants to fill the holes in some intimate exhibitionist way
Having willed an evolution and stood to say
There is retribution for familial departure from the apes
Like children strayed from a jealous black tree thronged, canined and palmed, dynasty
Mamalian vanity
Colostrum vanity
A diseased imposition from the forest
An old kings decree, hatched from the mind and living in the blood
And transmuted by filling the evolutionary gaps
In various and sundry ways
Forcing new apes in shame to choke their evolution in rubber masks

-APESBLOOD

THIS JUST IN

Apesblood to attend PorcFest 2009(Porcupine freedom festival)-Lancaster NH, to help subvert the mounting centralization of the former republic, with members of the free-state project of New Hampshire. Stay tuned.

something strange brewing in the Confederations Cup...

USA routes Egypt,  3-0

Brasil dismantles Italy,  3-0

so put this on your calendar:

USA vs Spain,  6/24/09  2:30

Platonic Voyage

It was a long three days, but we got it done.....

platonicvoyage.com

On the Beauty of Violence

An interview with Katherine Dunn

Somewhere Ken Lay is smiling: Report likely shows Obama healthcare takeover unaffordable. Congress to simply change the report.

call me sentimental, but there was something wonderful about this....

                                   

no traffic on broadway

I'm not going to try to unwrap the bigger issues involved with this one, i'm just citing it as one more example that what we're dealing with here is basically a one party system:

"President Obama’s proposal for a new legal system in which terrorism suspects could be held in “prolonged detention” inside the United States without trial...."

the real ape's blood:

Francis Bacon at the Met

and look inside the slideshow for the link to the article, you should read that too. mind you, it's not pretty. 

Just saw our democracies treasure city
saw all the plunder, monuments and homages for free
there is an eternal flame lit for the Kennedy's in Arlington cemetery
and remote in the back a museum for Robert E. Lee
All things to which one is given supervised access to, obscuring the living Oligarchy
...Childishly executed but true

good little article:

 "For the first time, neither sales nor property nor income taxes are the largest source of money for state and local governments. The federal government is."

hear about this? 

Micheal Savage barred from entering Britain.... 

you know he's loving this!

The Myth of Wilderness

"The removal of aboriginal human beings from their homeland to create a commodified wilderness is a deliberate charade."

Yee Haw!

Budget Gap Is Revised to Surpass $1.8 Trillion

Q: but where are you gonna get the money to pay all that back?

A: well...we'll just take it: 

To fill the revenue gap, the Treasury outlined several new ideas for raising nearly $60 billion over 10 years, mainly from tightening rules for inheritance taxes but also from changes in taxing some types of life insurance and other products.

Q: and when the rich people don't have any more money?

A: oh, bah! those rich people got plenty of money!

so 100 days ago we were facing one of the worst recessions (maybe it even a depression!) in our country's history. Now, 100 days later, (with unemployment at 8.9%) we can't understand why everyone's not hiring back?  

The Jobless Rate, Slow to Improve, Tests Obama

Guido van der Werve

walking in front of an icebreaker: sublime.

(here's a clip)

"force large gains"

House Democrats Reach an Accord to Subsidize Vehicle Trade-Ins

anybody need a new car? 

interesting little quote. 

"Contemporary mass-culture is historically necessary not merely as a result of the encompassment of life in its totality by monster enterprises, but as a consequence of what seems most utterly opposed to the standardization of consciousness predominat today, aesthetic subjectivism. True, the more artists have journeyed into the interior, the more they have learned to forgo the infantile fun of imitating external reality. But at the same time, by dint of reflecting on the psyche, they have found out more and more how to control themselves. The progress in technique that brought them ever greater freedom and independence of anything heterogeneous, has resulted in a kind of reification, technification of the inward as such. The more masterfully the artist expresses himself, the less he has to 'be' what he expresses, and the more what he expresses, indeed the content of subjectivity itself, becomes a mere function of the production process…"
Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia Part Three, 1946 - 1947

here's a fun one...

"The ability to enlarge executive power is a function of crisis,"
said Ross K. Baker , a Rutgers University political scientist.
He'll help lead a national conference next month on Obama's
first 100 days, a traditional measure for new presidents since
Franklin D. Roosevelt's ambitious new administration in 1933.
Obama has benefitted from "a double lift-off," Baker said,
"not only the normal honeymoon but, in addition, the fact
that the American people and Congress are looking to him
to get them out of a crisis."

nothing new, just a reminder that it's all part of the plan

The promise of freedom was never that all would have something, but that some, through luck, effort, and ability might have what is really worth having.

Aiding is Abetting

this is refreshing, maybe we can learn abroad what we appear to have forgotten at home.

linkamus

It makes me ask the question; which version of the white male respected the African more, the one who met him on the field as a warrior, or the one who sends him buckets of oats and barrels of milk?

sad story: lost my brother

I hope you're ready for a sad one, because i lost my brother. he used to go by "ape's blood" but now he no longer heads the call.
even when it's as sweet as this;

"AAAAAPPP-P-Pppp-eeeeeee'-ss-ss-ss-ss-suh-B-B-B-luh-oo-d!" ....



no reply.

did you see this?! absolutely beautiful.

ATL Teaparty

the rhetoric was a little heavy-handed, but it was a good showing for an important cause. (15,000+, dirty south!)

oh radness!

a man was born with it.....

Chase! If you are ever in need of political insight check out this stunning new blog: andywillryananddanielloveliberty.blogspot.com

ugh.....who pinched that one?               : ) 

here, hang on i'll find something sweet to look at........

here you go:  watch this

the song is kinda corny, but i flippin love it.

but not as much as i love my brooder!

If you think your writing is turdy, well then how about something awesome like this:

We have heard and seen much

But it is a tasteless fruit

To remain in the garden

With bliss's and horrors we cannot touch

No secret unconquered beauty

In all things equality

The sphinx is beheaded

Enter the city

Into the temple and holly of holly's

She waits behind a torn veil

The face of justice without her scale

Lying jeweled with beads of sweat and ritual ash

listen, i'm not gonna post just any old turd i happen to role into, this is for gems baby, gems!

What is the point of this thing if you never use it?

Physics is in sticks and automatics
spooky action
Cat's inside a box
spaces in the stairs and in the attics
a startleing indifference to the locks

-----------------------------------
Hesitant than back upon the blocks
we've just the thing for Kings and Beauracratics
to seperate the mushroom caps from stocks
and scarcley had upset the royal locks

-Chase Westfall


-Do you remember how it goes?

The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.
- Alexis de Tocqueville

Black blood of the earth
You mean oil........
I mean black blood of the earth

let the blood flow!