50 Ways To Leave Your Love,
Or, let's find a completely new art criticism
Brian Holmes

For most of the twentieth century, art was judged with respect to the previously existing state of the medium. What mattered was the kind of rupture it made, the unexpected formal or semiotic elements that it brought into play, the way it displaced the conventions of the genre or the tradition. The prize at the end of the evaluative process was a different sense of what art could be, a new realm of possibility for the aesthetic. Let's take it as axiomatic that all that has changed, definitively.

The backdrop against which art stands out now is a particular state of society. What an installation, a performance, a concept or a mediated representation can do with its formal, affective and semiotic means is to mark out a possible or effective shift with respect to the laws, the customs, the measures, the mores, the technical and organizational devices that define how we must behave and how we can relate to each other at a given time and in a given place. What you look for in art is a different way to live, a fresh chance at coexistence. Anything less is just the seduction of novelty - the hedonism of insignificance.

If that's the case (if the axiom really holds), then a number of fascinating questions arise - for the artist, of course, but also for the critic. Where the critic is concerned, one good question is this: How do you address yourself to artists or publics or potential peers across the dividing lines that separate entire societies? How do you evaluate what counts as a positive or at least a promising change in the existing balance of a foreign culture?

I'm sure you immediately see how difficult this is. Already in the past, it was hard enough to say that a particular aesthetic tradition and a particular state of the medium defined the leading edge, the point at which a rupture became interesting. Yet still there were times when all the painters seemed to flock to Rome, then later to Paris, then later to New York City; and so through the sheer aggregation of techniques and styles, the fiction of a leading edge could be maintained, at least by some. But in the face of a simultaneous splintering and decline of what used to be called "the West," and a correlative rise of some of "the Rest," who could seriously say that certain local, national or regional laws, customs, measures, mores and technical or organizational devices are really the most interesting ones to transgress or even break into pieces, in hopes of a better way of being? Or to be even cruder about it, and closer to the actual state of things: Who can seriously claim that the Euro-American forms of society are the benchmark against which change must be measured - even if those societies are still the most opulent and most developed and most heavily armed with all the nastiest of technological weapons?

Against Social Exclusion and Neoliberalism at Japanese G8 Summit

ACTION AGAINST SOCIAL EXCLUSION AND CALL FOR FAIR LABOR
JOIN US IN THE MOVEMENT AGAINST G8

The G8 Summit will be held at Toyako in Hokkaido from July 7-9. We
believe that this is an arbitrary meeting of the governments which lead
neoliberalism. The world's eight most powerful economies have imposed
neoliberalism onto other nations, while dominating the global financial
market with the World Trade Organization and the Free Trade Agreement.
The developing nations are forced to accept the free trade in exchange
of ODA. Privatizations, labor market flexibility, and deregulations are
introduced not only in the developing nations but also in the
industrialized counterparts. Inequality and poverty are accelerating.
Social welfare is reduced. Socially disadvantaged people are excluded
and their fundamental rights are violated. Also in Japan, working poor
are also victims of neoliberalism since the early 2000s under the Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi's government.

The 2008 G8 on Hokkaido, a Strategic Assessment
Emergency Exit Collective

Bristol, Mayday, 2008

zero

The authors of this document are a collection of activists, scholars, and writers currently based in the United States and Western Europe who have gotten to know and work with each other in the movement against capitalist globalization. We’re writing this at the request of some members of No! G8 Action Japan, who asked us for a broad strategic analysis of the state of struggle as we see it, and particularly, of the role of the G8, what it represents, the dangers and opportunities that may lie hidden in the moment. It is in no sense programmatic. Mainly, it is an attempt to develop tools that we hope will be helpful for organizers, or for anyone engaged in the struggle against global capital.

The Monster Bares Its Fangs: On the Pogroms in South Africa
Andile Mngxitama

"From the Acteal Massacre to the Merida Initiative"
Rafael Landerreche

Translation and footnotes by Kristin Bricker
La Jornada, November 10, 2007

Las Abejas from Chenalhó is an organization that professes non-violent principles. Time and time again they've declared that they don't want revenge for the Acrtal massacre, but that they won't give up their demand for justice so that incidents like that don't happen again.

It couldn't be a better time to review some tragic lessons from the Acteal case, since an agreement with the United States government known officially as the Merida Initiative is being cooked up right now.

"The New Security Culture"
Boris Beauregard

It’s a New Security Culture!
A message from Boris Beauregard celebrating the World Security Days:
"Never before in the history of the world, there has been such a need to
respond effectively to critical events. In today’s complex world where the
solutions to your security concerns are no longer straightforward, it is
more difficult than ever to successfully protect interests against diverse
and intricate dangers."

http://www.global-security-alliance.com/gsa/world-security-days/en

Below his keynote speech...

"Precarious Labor: A Feminist Viewpoint"
Silvia Federici

by Michael Neocosmos, 5 June 2008
http://www.hydrarchy.net

The results of the Panchayat Elections have been declared in West Bengal. Going beyond the wildest imaginations of both the ruling Party and the opposition, rural Bengal has given its verdict against the CPIM. In its 31 years of uninterrupted rule, the Left Front has never taken such a hit. The fact that it was unexpected makes the crisis even more critical.

Pogroms in South Africa
Sunday, 25 May 2008