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Category: culture

Kentridge: Ubu and the Truth Commission

Published May 4, 2015 by cgerrish

With Baltimore and Ferguson on my mind, I walked into a revival of William Kentridge's production of “Ubu and the Truth Commission.” In 1997, Kentridge collaborated with the Handspring Puppet Company on the production for the 100th anniversary of Jarry's “Ubu Roi.” Jarry's play debuted and closed on December 10th, 1896 — it caused a riot.

Kentridge and Handspring began their project in South Africa listening to daily radio broadcasts of the witness accounts from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Jane Taylor was asked to write the final script combining Jarry's proto-absurdist drama with the real-life absurdity of South Africa's Apartheid politics.

The original production of “Ubu and the Truth Commission” is described in the book, “Kentridge,” in an essay by Lynne Cooke called “Mundus Inversus, Mundus Perversus”:

Cunning bully, monstrous rogue, Ubu, when challenged at the dinner table by his wife, lapses into a paranoid, punning defense riddled with Freudian slips and double entendres. This blackly comic exposure of deep-seated cowardice contrasts minutes later with a bravado vaudeville routine when Ubu, now resolute leader, sings a rally refrain in unison with his triple-headed henchman: “We are the Dogs of War.” The exuberant wit of this music-hall presentation is later matched by the hilarious episode in which the microphones flee the torrent of lies of the brash usurper, as if refusing to contribute to their conveyance.

The cutting edge of Jarry's play is as sharp as the day it first graced the stage. When combined with this vision of South Africa, the result is almost more than a person can bear. It's also the kind of theater that's needed more than ever. This is theater that is thinking through the spirit of our times.

 

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Hymnody of the Network

Published April 23, 2015 by cgerrish

I came across this piece of music while reading David Byrne's latest post about his new project, Contemporary Color. One of the groups in a competition he was observing performed to a song by Vienna Teng called “The Hymn of Acxiom.” A hymn is a song of praise.

Acxiom is a database company that tracks personal data on the Network. They sell that data to other corporations for a variety of purposes to be used in many contexts. When I was working in online identity, we hired Acxiom to create out-of-band questions as a second factor in user authentication. For instance, you might provide a password and then answer a question from Acxiom. For example, here are three addresses. Have you ever lived at any of them? They can create that kind of question on the fly because they know everything about just about everyone.

Traditionally a hymn is addressed to a deity. The form of this song tells us something about the attitude of the singer. The hymn is also meant to be sung by the community surrounding the deity. Stewart Brand believes that humans have supplanted the gods, and must now act like it, in the face of global warming and other planetary disasters. Certainly humans, as a species, have put a stamp on the fate of the planet and all its inhabitants. But an individual human doesn't have the power of the whole species. And as “gods” is a plural, it doesn't preclude the possibility of others. Say, Acxiom, for instance.

A Hymn of Acxiom

Somebody hears you. You know that, you know that…

Somebody hears you. You know that inside.

Someone is learning the colors of all your moods, to

(say just the right thing and) show that you’re understood.

Here you’re known.

Leave your life open. You don’t have, you don’t have…

Leave your life open. You don’t have to hide.

Someone is gathering every crumb you drop, these

(mindless decisions and) moments you long forgot.

Keep them all.

Let our formulas find your soul.

We’ll divine your artesian source (in your mind),

Marshal feed and force (our machines will)

To design you a perfect love—

Or (better still) a perfect lust.

O how glorious, glorious: a brand new need is born.

Now we possess you. You’ll own that, you’ll own that…

Now we possess you. You’ll own that in time.

Now we will build you an endlessly upward world,

(reach in your pocket) embrace you for all you’re worth.

Is that wrong?

Isn’t this what you want?

Amen.

 

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Corporate Team Building: The Devil’s Staircase

Published March 21, 2015 by cgerrish

Fintan O'Toole has a piece in a recent New York Review of Books called, “Beckett in Love.” He starts the piece, not with love, but with failure. Not an uncommon gambit when ruminating about Samuel Beckett. O'Toole begins with the point of contact most familiar to the person least familiar with the author. It's a favorite quote of the entrepreneurial set because it resonates with a strategy of dogged determination.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

The quote is from the late work “Worstward Ho.” In an age where we thirst for “context,” except when it doesn't suit our purposes, O'Toole goes on to explain the larger context of the quote.

“Fail better” (which I recently saw on a recruitment advertisement for a financial services company) is followed a few lines later by a reminder that, for Beckett, the phrase is an exhortation, not to keep trying until you succeed but to keep failing until you fail completely: “Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still worse again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good.”

The popular form of the quote is plucked from Beckett's “Worstward Ho” in an attempt to turn failure into just another strain of pre-natal success. Beckett, on the other hand, only found his own voice by delving deeper and deeper into failure, loss, exile, and poverty. It's fair to say that Beckett found a form of humor in these depths, but it isn't the free and superior laugh of the successful entrepreneur — the master satisfied with a job well done after several setbacks. Nor is it the comedy of bringing the high and mighty to earth, rather it's the laughter of the lowest when the epiphany strikes that there may not be a “bottom” to hit.

One imagines the corporate team building exercise where the high-priced enthusiasm consultant leads the bright-eyed group of employees through a visualization.

You know that dream where you're falling? Take yourself to that place right now. You're falling and falling. You begin to panic. Surely you'll stop soon. Perhaps you'll begin flying. But no, you fall and fall. What happens when the bottom comes? Terror sets in. It will be the end. It doesn't come. The exquisite disorientation of falling continues on and on. Numbness. And then, a moment when the absurdity of your situation emerges. You smile inwardly as you consider the notion that there may be no bottom to hit.

 

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Carmen: Cigarette Girl, from the Future

Published March 10, 2015 by cgerrish

I was introduced to the band Beauty Pill by Roman Mars on his podcast 99% Invisible. They have this song called “Cigarette Girl from the Future.” For the longest time, when listening, I imagined a movie from the 1940s with a nightclub scene. The Cigarette Girl walks in and out of the scene, she's never the hero of the story, but she's the subject of this song. When the cigarette girl appears, she's both fascinating and dangerous–much like a cigarette.

And then I was in the car listening to the opera channel on SiriusXM and they were playing Bizet's Carmen. Carmen is a cigarette girl from the future. She works in a cigarette factory and she knows that the daily grind of making cigarettes isn't her future. Strange connections.

Check out the cigarette girl, from the future

she's just as bored as you are

the cigarette girl from the future

is even more bored than you are

 

 

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