In the House of the Hangman 1103

With the last issue of Die neue Jugend and Heartfield’s dramatic — but still informal — name change, we can see that the most accurate reflection of the moment came in the compositional-cum-performative force that we today recognize in the broadest sense as montage. Exactly which medium was subjected to this assault seemed unimportant. Language, the written word, visual art, and photography: all these media demanded reinvention. 71 M__u___ __ _ M__u_ ___! __Fr__k'_ __p 30: #5. ___ ____ __r__! R_ R__: ____r_um. R_P R__. __w_ _w_ (Gr_b_ __zz___ R_M). __Fr__k'_ __p 30: #6. __Fr__k'_ __p 30: #7. ___ ______y_ _r_ K_____g M_. __Fr__k'_ __p 30: #8. __Fr__k'_ __p 30: #9. ____ Fu__ _f C_____ W___. _____g_b___. __Fr__k'_ __p 30: #10. __Fr__k'_ __p 30: #11. Fr_m ___ ___k_ _rp Br_c__ Xm__ P_r_y. __Fr__k'_ __p 30: #12. G___M: 20. __z_mb_r Up____. __Fr__k'_ __p 30: #13. _ B______g_y K_w_ _um_ _u___. __Fr__k'_ __p 30: #14. __Fr__k'_ __p 30: #15. __'_ B_g_____g __ ___k _ ___ __k_ R__ _c___m. __Fr__k'_ __p 30: #16. F____y ______. __k__g _r__r_:W___'_ _ q______ W_r_ f_r ___k J_zz______b__ __m_rr_w. __Fr__k'_ __p 30: #17. __Fr__k'_ __p 30: #18. ____ __ C_mp_____y ______. Gr__f ____ __r__k__: Up____ #668. Here, I analyze the surface of the medical-industrial complex and am astonished, as always, by how -- well, I don't want to bore you, Latvians. Yes, Latvians. Who are you, reading this in Latvia? By the end of this week, this blog will have reached -- the 200,000 mark. I’m surrounded by immigrants and the children of immigrants and the children and grandparents of those immigrants. And re: the viola. I learned how to hold it, and how to hold the bow. And how to play a little pseudo-tune, both pizzicato and bowed. It was overwhelming. In fact I forgot to breathe and almost passed out. Literally. In some ways just remembering to breathe is perhaps as much as I’ll ever accomplish. After some googling, we determined this water-falling-from-the-sky thing happens frequently and it’s called “rain.” Huh. We wanted to know more, so we decided to ask some passersby if they knew why rain happens. Henry, 21, vagabond: If I believed in God, I would say it rains because God is crying for mankind. But I do not believe in God, so I’d say it’s raining because moisture has condensed in the atmosphere. How did the moisture get there? Well, it evaporated. From our oceans. How does the evaporation happen? I believe it has something to do with some particular algae or plants of some sort. So the plants make the water evaporate? I believe so. I could be wrong. Doug, “between 40 and 50,” musician: Because it’s a way for the energies to send down the seeds for all good things to grow. What kind of energies? Good energies! Good energies come from the sky and replenish the earth. All the souls are planted into the wheat and the corn, everything you eat. Then after you eat it, your seed is now implanted into you. So when you give birth, that’s where the souls come from. Nick, 21: The filth needs to get washed away. People need a break. A break from what? Fuck, man, I don’t know. You need a day off sometimes. OK, but what do you think the physical causes of rain are? Is it because of the ocean? I don’t know any more, this is too specific. What did Judy look like in this outtake? What we can hear is precisely what we can’t see and aren’t shown. My feeling is that Judy / Dorothy was supposed to cry during this scene, only not like this. Not this much and not this hard. Dorothy is finally going home, after all. She is sad about leaving Oz, but what’s calling her home is supposed to be stronger than the intimate bonds she’s forged on her odyssey. But the line between emotion and real pain — between the emotion you are asked to tread, to supply and to invent; to bring to a scene, and the real pain that shows up and intervenes; causing a breach in the fiction and a break in the breach (all the breaches that are enacted and received in a lifetime) — are devastatingly blurred. It’s too much for Judy, not Dorothy. It was often too much for her. These are Judy’s tears, not Dorothy’s, and they are not the result of the fiction of movies, but of the reality of having lived them and made them. In “Kleptomania” I describe Garland’s voice as “a blue bird hitting the windshield of a car.”

[Note: Sources: Andrés Mario Zervigón, John Heartfield and the Agitated Image: Photography, Persuasion, And The Rise Of Avant-Garde Photomontage, as quoted in Kristi McGuire, “John Heartfield: Agitated Images”, at The Chicago Blog, 3 Oct 012; Jared Wells, “_ __ubb_r_ R__urg__c_, _r_pp__ w___ C__pp__g_ [R_b__gg__g ___ _______ (__ ____ ___ _____ __ _._.) B__g: P___ _____ & _ub______g C__pp__g_, 12.31.09 – 1.1.09]”, at Spratt’s Medium, 4 Mar 012; Bhanu Kapil, “Dreamed”, at Was Jack Kerouac a Punjabi?, 3 Oct 012; JBR, FB comment, 3 Oct 012; “How Does Rain Happen”, at Vice, 3 Oct 012; Masha Tupitsyn, “Ever Since This World Began”, at Berfrois, 3 Oct 012]

Comments

[Sam]

One of my head-slapper moments of the Spring was when I was henplig a friend look for an apartment. This realty co branded sign outside a property had a QR Code, and a call-to-action that said simply Look inside this property right now! QR took you to the exact page of that apartment, complete with details, photos, rental agent all in a snap.You get to see exactly how the place looks right in your car, and the realtor doesn't have to stuff those stupid tubes with crappy quality photocopies any longer.