Finally Marina's Presence in a Game!!!

Closed for over a year now, Marina Abramovic's retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art and the amount of coverage, articles and commentary documenting it seem like a distant past.

At the time I remember being struck by the general uniformity of critical response which matched her audiences attitude: either utmost seriousness or profound awe (and a striking lack of humor). The constraints of the institution - the intense security (transgressors could be banned from the MoMA for life), the difficult acoustics, the bright neons - were probably the principle causes for this monotone outcome, but overall the artist's serious form of self-making in the show - with Abramovic replicating herself through her performance and reperformances - was like turning everyone that participated into her (too grim? too dramatic?) outlook.

Pippin Barr recently came up with "The Artist is Present" game, which embodies quite well the qualms mentioned above as well as the weird steps involved in the Marina art experience (although I feel like the art experience in general to a certain extent too).

How the Financial Crisis is Rooted in Our Belief that Technology Offers a Freeing, Objective and Stable Utopia

This is a great BBC documentary on the philosophy behind the evolution of technology. It touches upon the rise, with Ayn Rand's 1950s writing, of an ideology encouraging self-interest, individual freedom and a decrease in State power that would bring about the happiest and most stable collective. Progressively technology was seen as a mean to achieve this. Through technology we all would have equal power and together create the most stable system.

The trusted objective object (technology) was seen as potentially erasing the risk, the unstablity and the helplessness of the human condition.

This leads into Sillicon Valley's new information technology, Clinton's new economy, the beginning of White House's lethargy, the Asian miracle, short term benefits, Goldman Sachs, the property bubble, nepotism, the attack on the World Trade Center, coorperate fraud and the incredible Alan Greenspan...

I watched Inside Job this weekend and this is wonderfully complimentary.