statues pulled down....

it would be interesting to see about finding the people who worked on this. the soldiers, the everyday people and interviewing them as to the mechanics of how it came about and what it was like to do, etc. this is probably not possible, but who knows..? it would NOT be so as to make fun of them or anything like that.. but rather to gain understanding of how the mechanics of this sorta thing actually works... and what the feelings/etc. of the people on the ground were who were busy making this spectacle, this theater, this production 'real'... like a weird anthropology of behind the scenes of this Reality TV show... in the realm of everyday [media] politics...




same here....




same here...





i am not so interested in how people felt about these statues being torn down (partly as there is already a lot of footage, etc. on this) but on how this kind of thing is orchestrated, organized, etc.

sorta like the inner workings of making contemporary spectacle of this nature.

its sorta the inverse of Triumph of the Will.

In the Neo-Liberal state its not the Marching In and Forward as a Mass, as a Glorified Unity that is glorified,


its rather the breaking down of 'false' idols that are holding the people back from true "creativity", entrepeneurial development, etc. etc.

The idea is of opening the gates to the real freedom, that is what is glorified.... And this 'real freedom' is left vague and mystified... that is crucial...

And also this opening of the gates, this tearing down of the old Tyranny is proposed in the name of a kind of horizontal free space. It has no leaders, no Great Men, no ideology (or so it argues)....

There is no one behind it.. but freedom...

I am reminded here of an essay by a slave in america... one of the slave narratives.... that makes a very interesting argument about freedom... about how it is never one thing... how it is in fact experienced and practiced as something entirely different depending on your 'position' in the power structure at the moment....

anyhow...

*****

just to quickly jot down some ideas we noted today:

• radio play aspect (afs mentioned situation moves into darkness or near dark on stage, becomes about not the obvious physical high energy "aggression" but about really listening and noticing to the smallest of things... going on;  nadia mentioned radio show aspect)
• statue pulling down on stage
• "aggression": is the term 'right' for what we are busy with? -- violence of the state/system is closer
• working in georgia to see/experience actual situation/violence there
• working in america to see/experience how actual situation/violence is just under the surface
• link of stalin and current neo-liberal state (hidden and "official") violence
• chomsky/groyz observation that stalin/soviet system and american/international corporate liberal-humanist societies work(ed) very similarily. both are largely determined by elites exploiting the everyday people. afs had some reservations with this, as he thinks that the bourgoise revolution in the west has chaotic elements which are in a way creative in capitalism and which do not fully remain determined by a stable and consistent elite in the usual sense of the term. 
• chomsky observation that actually post-war period (under rule of american & nato alliance in cold war with soviet hegemony) has been more violent world-wide then ww1 and ww2 combined 
• afs wonders about how exhaustion works in the construction of state power. the overload works to make "political solutions" (which are not really at all) become 'effective'.. a kind of melodrama perhaps...

there is another level i am somewhat concerned with.... because this is true: "precisely because the system is demented, yet works very well at the same time"... in other words, the whole weirdness of the "system" is that it both makes no sense and is in fact crazy, YET it works well all the time. Take the stock market or say the Iraq War. The stock market: it is possible to study it, to learn quite a lot and to make it work in a way for you. Not just for individuals but in fact big big money the world over does just this. Whether it is aggressively managing funds or very conservatively or like Soros utilizing pretty radical theories of how you 'play' the market, nonetheless it is both reasonable to do so and on another level completely nutty. It is high risk all the time. And at a certain level this makes no sense whatsoever. And here is the thing: nonetheless it works. It continues to produce itself and to produce wealth and loss, etc. Same we could say with the Iraq War. There are hardly any americans now who think it was not manipulated and unjustified, itself. A big disaster and tragedy. And that popular feeling about it came to be the case about mid-way, yet it was not stopped or radically reduced then. It had to continue for various reasons...

the point is that wherever we are, we are in the middle... and this middle involves being in this somewhat schizophrenic reality that the 'system' is both completely not-working (and mad) yet works all the time, and not just as insanity, but rather has a kind of 'sense' to it... a melodrama in a way...

so i think its a mistake to aim to be Super Rational ourselves.... rather i think we have to deal with this strange schizophrenic, delirious state per se, as such... even in the mapping that we may get into.. we cannot entirely be outside this... delirium... we are inside it too! no different then anyone else that way! further do shed any light on the situation by aiming to be outside it.... ?  I think we might reveal more by looking into, and in a way being in (performatively) the inside...