Rise Industries

I have been looking for this album for years.. and there it is. All digitized and ready to download. Sweet. This stuff showed up on many skate videos of the late 80s, early 90s.

Things are going to be in transition here for the week – I have uploaded most of the new, bright orange/yellow Rise Site, but Michele’s pages will remain on the old style until we get it all updated to the new. And I am sure there will be some bugs here and there for a bit. If you see a problem out there, drop me a line at jquinn -at- rise-ind.com and I will fix it.

FFCC00 Rules!

On Slate today, an explainer about why you don’t find alot of video art on youtube and similar sites turns into a pretty good explanation about what video art is.

I always love engrish.com, but this one is fantastic. Would make a great T-shirt.

Beware the ides of March…

“Regardless, shortly after the assassination the senators left the building talking excitedly amongst themselves, and Brutus cried out to his beloved city: “People of Rome, we are once again free!”. A wax statue of Caesar was erected in the forum displaying the 23 stab wounds. A crowd who had amassed there started a fire, which badly damaged the forum and neighboring buildings. In the ensuing chaos Mark Antony, Octavian (later Augustus Caesar), and others fought a series of five civil wars, which would end in the formation of the Roman Empire.”

Dear Artists and Art Workers,

Inspired by the recent visit of artist Martha Rosler, and the New York group’s activities, we urge you to help form a Los Angeles branch of Artists Against the War. Please see their website at www.aawnyc.org

We would love for you all to be a part of it. As the first event of Artists Against the War LA, we want to have a strong presence in the important Anti-war Rally scheduled for this Saturday, March 17. Please bring posters and banners that say “LA Artists Against the War”. The MTA is right by the rally site (beginning and ending) so getting there should be easy. We can’t wait to see you there! Please forward this email to others.

Sincerely,
(Please add your name to the top of this list. This is a cooperative group effort.)
Michele Jaquis
Andrea Bowers
Doug Wichert
Nancy Buchanan
Sam Durant

Mass Anti-War Protest in Los Angeles
Saturday, March 17th 2007 Noon
Los Angeles, CA USA

On March 17, the 4th anniversary of the start of the criminal invasion of Iraq, tens of thousands of people from around Southern California will come to Los Angeles for a mass demonstration to demand: U.S. Out of Iraq Now! The LA march will be coordinated with a march on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

Location:
Gather at Corner of Hollywood & Vine, Los Angeles CA 90028 (Red Line Metro Stop) at 12:00 NOON
March to Hollywood & Highland for the Rally

Sponsored By:
The March 17 LA Coalition includes, ANSWER, Alliance for Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines, Free Palestine Alliance, GABRIELA Network, Latino Movement USA, National Lawyers Guild, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Office of the Americas, Coalition for World Peace, National Council of Arab Americans, LA-US Labor Against the War, American Friends Service Committee, Frente Amplio Progresista-Los Angeles, Comite Pro-Democracia en Mexico, Topanga Peace Alliance, Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, KmB Pro-People Youth, Korean Americans for Peace, Youth and Student ANSWER, Coalition to End Israeli Apartheid-SoCal, Global Women’s Strike, Muslim Student Association-West, Students for Justice in Palestine-UCLA. Endorsers include Cindy Sheehan, Howard Zinn, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, United Teachers Los Angeles, Academy Award-winner Paul Haggis and many more.

Also, related to my earlier post about the evolution of religion: artist Damien Hirst’s take on part of the matter.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

Jean Baudrillard died.. one of the great theorists I actually enjoy reading. If you have some time today, read a bit from “Simulacra and Simulation”. Its (most of it at least) on Google Book Search, well, a simulation of the book anyway. Well, read it then you tell me.

There is a fantastic article in the New York Times on the evolution of religion, detailing the work of Scott Atran and others who have been trying to figure out just why humans hold counter-intuitive ideas such as believing our consciousness continues after death – or that a mind or spirit disembodied from physical form exists and created everything. Its a long read, but a great argument and lead-in to the research. Here is a chunk from the middle:

“Whether or not it is adaptive, belief in the afterlife gains power in two ways: from the intensity with which people wish it to be true and from the confirmation it seems to get from the real world. This brings us back to folkpsychology. We try to make sense of other people partly by imagining what it is like to be them, an adaptive trait that allowed our ancestors to outwit potential enemies. But when we think about being dead, we run into a cognitive wall. How can we possibly think about not thinking? “Try to fill your consciousness with the representation of no-consciousness, and you will see the impossibility of it,” the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno wrote in “Tragic Sense of Life.” “The effort to comprehend it causes the most tormenting dizziness. We cannot conceive of ourselves as not existing.”

Much easier, then, to imagine that the thinking somehow continues.”

We got invited up to the Getty Center to see Tim Hawkinson’s show open up.. here is a write up about it in the New York Times. I am excited to see it, and bet the Getty has awfully nice wine and cheese.