Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

Eknath Easwaran’s Lucid, Scholarly and Ever-Timely Preface to the Bhagavad Gita

By 1 Comment

The Bhagavad Gita
Translated by Eknath Easwaran
Vintage Books, 122pp., $15.00

Many years ago, when I was still a graduate student, I traveled by train from central India to Simla, then the summer seat of the British government in India. We had not been long out of Delhi when suddenly a chattering of voices disturbed my reverie. I asked the man next to me if something had happened. “Kurukshetra!” he replied. “The next stop is Kurukshetra!”

I could understand the excitement. Kurukshetra, “the field of the Kurus,” is the setting for the climactic battle of the Mahabharata, the vastest epic in any world literature, on which virtually every Hindu child in India is raised. Its characters, removed in time by some three thousand years, are as familiar to us as our relatives. The temper of the story is utterly contemporary; I can imagine it unfolding in the nuclear age as easily as in the dawn of Indian history.

The Mahabharata is literature at its greatest – in fact, it has been called a literature in itself, comparable in its breadth and depth and characterization to the whole of Greek literature or Shakespeare. But what makes it unique is that embedded in this literary masterpiece is one of the finest mystical documents the world has seen: the Bhagavad Gita. [Read more…]

Relic as Horrific Remembrance in the Monument to Joe Louis

By Leave a Comment

by Max King Cap

“My father was a little headstrong, my mother was a little armstrong. The Headstrongs married the Armstrongs, and that’s why darkies were born.” — Rufus T. Firefly, Duck Soup, 1933

He had done it before. One can readily find the photographs of his handiwork; two human torsos, headless, the legs amputated just below the knee. Young and fit but unidentifiable, their fingertips rasped smooth. When first put on display, tens of thousands saw this pair of dismembered bodies and admiringly walked right by them. [Read more…]

Cornel West’s “Democracy Matters in Race Matters”

By 2 Comments

Preface to the 25th Anniversary Edition to Race Matters

Race Matters
by Cornel West
Beacon Press, 110pp., $11.60

Black people in the United States differ from all other modern people owing to the unprecedented levels of unregulated and unrestrained violence directed at them. No other people have been taught systematically to hate themselves — psychic violence — reinforced by the powers of state and civic coercion — physical violence — for the primary purpose of controlling their minds and exploiting their labor for nearly four hundred years. The unique combination of American terrorism — Jim Crow and lynching — as well as American barbarism — slave trade and slave labor — bears witness to the distinctive American assault on black humanity. This vicious ideology and practice of white supremacy has left its indelible mark on all spheres of American life — from the prevailing crimes of Amerindian reservations to the discriminatory realities against Spanish-speaking Latinos to racial stereotypes against Asians. Yet the fundamental litmus test for American democracy — its economy, government, criminal justice system, education, mass media, and culture — remains: how broad and intense are the arbitrary powers used and deployed against black people. In this sense, the problem of the twenty-first century remains the prob­lem of the color line. [Read more…]

A Gathering Of Ruins, And Simmering Consciousness, In Kara Walker’s Fons Americanus

By Leave a Comment

in Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, London
by Zadie Smith

Kara Walker: Hyundai Commission
edited by Clara Kim
Tate Publishing, 144pp., $24.95
New York Review of Books

Two women are bound at the waist, tied to each other. One is a slim, white woman, in antebellum underskirt and corset. A Scarlett O’Hara type. She is having the air squeezed out of her by a larger, bare-breasted black woman, who wears a kerchief around her head. To an American audience, I imagine, this black woman could easily read as “Mammy.” To a viewer from the wider diaspora—to a black Briton, say—she is perhaps less likely to invoke the stereotypical placidity of “Mammy,” hewing closer to the fury of her mythological opposite, the legendary Nanny of the Maroons: escaped slave, leader of peoples. Her hand is held up forcefully, indicating the direction in which she is determined to go, but the rope between her and the white woman is pulled taut: both struggle under its constriction. And in this drama of opposing forces, through this brutal dialectic, aspects of each woman’s anatomy are grotesquely eroticized by her adversary: buttocks for the black woman, breasts for her white counterpart. Which raises the question: Who tied this constricting rope? A third party? And, if the struggle continues, will the white woman eventually be extinguished? Will the black woman be free? That is, if the white woman is on the verge of extinguishment at all. Maybe she’s on the verge of something else entirely: definition. That’s why we cinch waists, isn’t it? To achieve definition? [Read more…]

Corporate Fascism And The Aesthetics of Politics

By Leave a Comment

by Johanna Drucker

Corporate fascism. We know the term. Now we will see the full ugly face of its wrath in the vengeful fury of Trump. Trump, like all opportunistic social phenomena, is an expression of a  trending wave of collective sentiment and will. He is neither sole cause (autonomous agent) nor simple effect (isolated outcome) of a deliberate plan of action on his own part. But the specifics of his own psychopathology optimize his virulent capacity for destructive impact. Watching and listening to the monster speak in the state of His Union address would be sufficient, even without other mountains of evidence, to feel the grotesque distortions of the personality in all of its many disorders. Now his rabid vengeance is unleashed and unrestrained. [Read more…]

The Coronation, The Relinquishing Of Fear And The Way As A Species Forward

By Leave a Comment

The Coronation
by Charles Eisenstein

For years, normality has been stretched nearly to its breaking point, a rope pulled tighter and tighter, waiting for a nip of the black swan’s beak to snap it in two. Now that the rope has snapped, do we tie its ends back together, or shall we undo its dangling braids still further, to see what we might weave from them? [Read more…]

The LA Times And The Question Of Crisis Deliverance

By Leave a Comment

by C von Hassett

The LA Times, once a towering, globally respected newspaper, has become a click-bait web of invasive ads and circus-style barking for subscription servicing that, though intolerable even when things in our city were on the norm, now come across as shark-like and ravenous, a dubious entity profiteering its wares much in the way of the two deplorables who stocked up on some 17,000 bottles of hand sanitizers with full intent of selling off all to the fearful for a handsome profit. They, if you recall, were swiftly booted from Amazon for price-gouging and were universally demonized in numerous news outlets around the world. Is not the sanitized LA Times, in this perfect viral storm, hawking their wares much the same? Are they not hording the gold of crisis-era information and, rather than sharing it without charge — as is their civic duty — they instead frontload every headline, every one-sentence introductory blurb, with either an onslaught of ads or swift delivery to a paid subscription page. No Corona updates without cash in hand for those of us living under its singular mantle, for no longer in this city is there a competing newspaper to call them in check. [Read more…]

Dr. Cornel West Speaks Black Prophetic Fire

By Leave a Comment

An always-welcomed dose of Cornel West, who is the focus of Arturo O’Farrill’s The Cornel West Concerto, a timely recording to be released this week. O’Farrill is onstage tonight with Jacques Lesure and His Soulful Cohorts here in Los Angeles, at Los Balcones, 9pm. Meantime, below is the Professor’s speech that inspired O’Farrill’s composition, which saw its debut at the Apollo Theater with the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra.

Dr. West and his “Black Prophetic Fire” speech, at Town Hall Seattle:

[Read more…]

The Danceable Política of Andy Gill’s Gang of Four

By Leave a Comment

Andy Gill
1956 – 2020
RIP

by Henry Cherry

When Andy Gill died at 64 on Saturday, the sound of revolution was momentarily stalled. Gill was the co-founder of the UK’s Gang of Four, an avant-funk off shoot of that country’s monumentally impactful punk movement of the late 70s.  Across ten albums and a barrage of EPs and singles, Gang of Four is best known for their bouncing ecstatic protestations like “To Hell with Poverty” and “Damaged Goods” and their big break on American radio, “I Love a Man in Uniform.” Gill’s sawing guitar, songwriting and production lay at the heart of the band’s dramatically seductive sound. As such, the power of his death resides in the music Gill is responsible for, and luckily, that music remains. Even as Gill lay in the hospital, suffering from pneumonia, the musician continued to work on new music, editing and annotating mixes for a yet to be released Gang of Four recording. [Read more…]

Art Of The Calculus: Triangulating The Deadly Glowing Crown

By Leave a Comment

A lucid and most luminous accounting of the Wuhan coronavirus and its numerous potentials.
by Dan Werb
Courtesy of The NY Times

Five cases of the mysterious Wuhan coronavirus have been confirmed in the United States, giving rise to concerns about a potential global pandemic. We’ve seen this story before, as health authorities working with threadbare data try to walk the line between epidemic readiness and needless panic. Is this new outbreak poised to become the next AIDS pandemic or a new SARS, which was stopped in its tracks after 774 deaths? To cut through the headlines, we can use a simple concept called the “epidemic triangle.” Employed by epidemiologists since the discipline’s earliest days, it is indispensable in predicting whether localized outbreaks will transform into full-blown epidemics. [Read more…]

A Portrait Of Bolivian Heartbreak

By 1 Comment

By Alci Rengifo

An Associated Press photo by Natasha Pisarenko shows an indigenous Bolivian woman standing amid clouds of tear gas, holding the national flag and at its tip, the Wiphala flag of the nation’s indigenous peoples. Her society is again a victim of history. Its dreams vanished in acrid smoke. The photo’s aesthetic is both human and brimming with intensity. [Read more…]

How the Frenzy Feeds: Affect and Delusion

By Leave a Comment

by Johanna Drucker

The only thing puzzling about the tweet-stream smear-campaign bullying tactics that keep Trump’s popularity going is the inability of mainstream analysts to understand their success. These baffled experts keep bringing reasoned arguments to bear, like people debating the flammability of materials while standing in a house that is burning down. The sheer force of affect seems to escape notice, as if by ignoring the tantrum they might restore order. The frenzy feeds on high volume attention—negative or positive—and generates its own energy fields as a result. The implications of this are profound, and the dynamic systems that support this generative activity are integrated into every aspect of our daily lives through all forms of communication. The orchestrated effect of the spectacle of distraction is of course an essential aspect of the constant unfolding of “events” in news space. But the frenzy has its own momentum—and we are participatory instruments in this phenomenon. Recognizing how this works is crucial. [Read more…]

Joker Resurrectus: Pop Iconography Fills The Nihilist Void

By Leave a Comment

By Alci Rengifo

As these words are written the streets of Santiago, Chile and Beirut, Lebanon are ablaze with the fury of thousands of voices raging against an irrational economic system. It is a world of tremors at the moment, with riots serving as a conduit for the general mood of vast communities. Significant is the fact that we are also living through a moment devoid of political vision or revolutionary alternatives. The old icons have receded in the public consciousness. Who are the thinkers of our time brushing away the old world? The cost of living hurtles upwards and an economically stable life becomes elusive for the young. Who speaks for them? Within the current void the masses instead lose themselves in the comfort of fantasy and caricatures that symbolize their despair. [Read more…]

On Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am

By 1 Comment

By Seren Sensei

Toni Morrison published her first novel, The Bluest Eye, when she was 39 years old. By this time she was a divorced single mother of two sons and a respected teacher with a master’s degree in English from Cornell. She was an established a senior editor at Random House, the only Black woman in that position at the publisher. She’d championed Black authors and emphasized Black literature in the mainstream, including developing and strategically bringing out autobiographies by such Black Power luminaries as Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali.  [Read more…]

The Aesthetic Of Nostalgia In Once Upon A Time … In Hollywood

By Leave a Comment

By Alci Rengifo

Nostalgia has replaced epochs in the modern culture. There is the increasing feeling that while technology certainly races ahead in its advancement, culturally we are obsessively looking to the past. Vinyl is sought after by the kids who are convinced it sounds better than digitally remastered albums on CD or streaming. The look of videotape is being recreated for music videos and even entire film projects. Music scores are reviving the techno sheen of the 1980s. Millennials, having just missed out on the 80s and consuming art while growing up highly influenced by the 70s, are desperate to reach back. With consumer culture now defining the times and creating stagnation in any new art forms or styles, the past takes on a new glow. But few filmmakers can make art out of nostalgia quite like Quentin Tarantino. His new film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, defines nostalgia itself. In its look and sound it feels like a brain working in overdrive to recall a specific moment in its archived history. [Read more…]

Our Future Revisited In Paula Rego’s Untitled: The Abortion Pastels

By Leave a Comment

by Ellen C. Caldwell

During a time in which eight U.S. states have passed bills to limit women’s rights to abortions, Paula Rego’s Untitled: The Abortion Pastels seems timely and relevant. Made between July 1998 and February 1999, this series of ten works features personal and quietly anguished portraits of women who have just undergone or are undergoing, at-home, illegal abortions. Rego, born in Portugal and living in Britain, was motivated to create this series about her home country after a referendum to liberalize existing abortion laws was proposed and defeated in Portugal during the summer of 1998. She saw this as a rallying cry for change and used her art as a response and motivator. [Read more…]

Don’t Call Me A Person of Color: I’m Black

By 6 Comments

by Seren Sensei

A strange thing happens when you say the word “Black” as it pertains to race. People will often curl their lips up, as if you’ve said something distasteful or inappropriate; the color might drain from their faces in an expression akin to dread. The phrase “Black Lives Matter” triggers the knee jerk response of  “All Lives Matter.” The FBI identifies those that fight for Black American rights as a terrorist group under the title of “Black Identity Extremists.” And. increasingly, “Black” is used interchangeably with “Person of Color,” POC, which ostensibly is much less racially charged. This is a strange and disturbing phenomenon, since Black is not synonymous with POC: all Black people are persons of color, but all persons of color are not Black. And non-Black persons of color, or NBPOC, still benefit from and can practice anti-Black racism. [Read more…]

Art At The Crossroads: Artists Addressing The U.S./Mexico Border

By Leave a Comment

by Ellen C. Caldwell

With the threat of closing the U.S./Mexico border looming, people whose lives do not intersect with the border on a regular basis are thinking more about the border than usual. But before this recent wave of attention, artists have been drawn to the border and have been drawing attention to the myriad issues it raises through performances, street art, public art, photography, and augmented reality (AR). [Read more…]