“Sokkomb is a new low-cost product designed specifically for all those citizens who are so interested in Do-It-Yourself Justice. Are you full of energy? Have you lots of things to do and too little time to do them? Are you increasingly annoyed by all those criminals, immigrants and petty people who should just be got rid of? Your dynamic, active rhythm demands quick, summary justice and you are the person to do it, but too often you just don’t have the time and your family is increasingly in danger. Then you are the person we thought of when we designed “Sokkomb”, an easily-assembled guillotine for the whole family, the practical solution, quick and clean, perfect for all your security needs. By assembling Sokkomb in the comfort of your own living room, you can relax safe in the knowledge that the punishment will fit the crime. So you can finally be your own boss in your own house. Sokkomb is made from the best solid pine and comes equipped with a sturdy blade in stainless steel. It is light and versatile and is guaranteed effective for up to 100 executions a day.”

via rebel:art » Blog Archive » Sokkomb: Die Ikea-Guillotine.

The Narrows | Contemporary Art and Design Gallery | Melbourne Australia.

Interview by Steve Paulson of the program To The Best of Our Knowledge on Wisconsin Public Radio on the topic of “unbridled capitalism“. Aired on January 2, 2011.

via Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey.

The Transnational Institute….

On 21 September 1976, Transnational Institute discovered the brutal cost of fighting for economic and social justice, when Chilean secret service agents set off a car bomb in Washington DC killing TNI’s director, Orlando Letelier along with Ronni Moffitt, a fundraiser for the Institute for Policy Studies. It has taken more than 30 years of struggle to bring some of those responsible to justice.

I wanted to highlight this section below that implicates the U.S. and in particular the de-classified CIA documents that show Henry Kissinger’s knowledge of the existence of Operation Condor in March 1976, described at the time by the CIA in favourable terms as a “cooperative effort by the intelligence/security services of several South American countries to combat terrorism and subversion.

Network of terror with US duplicity

Letelier and Moffitt were the most famous victims of Operation Condor, a covert program to murder political opponents that was carried out by a network of six South American secret police agencies – from Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. A Chilean government commission later ascertained that Pinochet’s regime had assassinated at least 3,200 persons within Chile, tortured tens of thousands and forced hundreds of thousands into exile.

Furthermore, investigations showed that the US administration both turned a blind eye to these abuses but also condoned them through their active political, diplomatic and economic support to the Pinochet regime. These came to light most clearly in the 1975 US Senate Church Report and other official documents which were declassified during the Clinton administration.

via Transnational Institute | TNI and the Pinochet precedent.

The blog by Brian Holmes (sunsetproject) introduces the term “crisis-management” as a “neoliberal practice”. Another he refers to is the title of the 2006 book by Giorgio Agamben – “State of exception” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

Hito Steyerl, In Defense of the Poor Image / Journal / e-flux.
Two relevant views on the usage and (mis)use of poor quality images in film and later online media.

” In For an Imperfect Cinema, by Juan García Espinosa, (Cuba – late 1960s) he argues for an imperfect cinema because, in his words, “perfect cinema—technically and artistically masterful—is almost always reactionary cinema.”

“But, simultaneously, a paradoxical reversal happens. The circulation of poor images creates a circuit, which fulfills the original ambitions of militant and (some) essayistic and experimental cinema—to create an alternative economy of images, an imperfect cinema existing inside as well as beyond and under commercial media streams.”
http://www.youtube.com/v/4uRNA3SgUG8&rel=0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3

Johann König, Berlin.

johann König gallery berlin

A Gilded Age of Anxiety at Art Basel Miami Beach

Bling on the market. (sorry could’t help myself). Irony heavily lated with market? Feel kind of sick here. A gilded stack of cast coal by Alicia Kwade. Sold for a bomb… I think marketing has totally caught up with the art product.

The artist is Berlin based. Polish born.  Is it the market and the rise of the fairs that is to blame? Or as is suggested the rise of anxiety?

Alicia Kwade — titled "Kohle (7T Rekord)," 2010

“When Even Good News Worsens a Panic”

an interesting one from Silvia Kolbowski