Thursday, March 22, 2007

stalling for time

This post-a-day thing is worrying me. It's a lot easier to apologise for spastic activity than to face up to the fact that you don't think of something thrilling to say every day (or really, ever).

So today, apologia:

My earlier post about the tentative nature of current music was all over the place. It didn't make a lot of sense to rail against appropriation and critical usage and then harp on the constructed nature of reality.

I guess my real problem is the same reason I wince, just slightly, when talking about Rural Studio: they do fantastic things for needy people, but I still can't quite get it out of my head that the work is partially condescending, finding the sublime in the savage or base. Like that Iron+Wine video where he stands in front of Super-8 footage of truck stops. There's an anthropological bent to it that seems a little too detachedto respect the subject. Once again, I don't want to suggest that RS is carpetbagging. Their work is commendable for the quality of design as well as the attention it draws to the forgotten. But I feel the question still needs to be asked: why experiment on these projects? What exactly is being communicated when using discarded car parts for homes for the irretrievably poor?

Okay, now I feel really guilty. I'm going to go drown some puppies to finish off this post.

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