Uffe Elbæk on Social Entrepreneurship

Uffe Elbæk (born 15 June 1954) is a politician of the Danish Social Liberal Party. Elbæk is the founder and former Principal of the KaosPilots International School of New Business Design and Social Innovation, located in Aarhus. The KaosPilots school inspired the creation of several international schools, located in Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands. From 2007 to 2009, Elbæk served as the CEO for the 2009 World Outgames. In July 2010, Elbæk founded the consulting company Change The Game with the focus on leadership training, political campaigning and social innovation concepts. Elbæk served as special advisor for the leadership team at the KaosPilots and as an academic adviser for the HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity in Hong Kong. Elbæk won a seat in the Folketing for the Danish Social Liberal Party in the 2011 Danish parliamentary election. On 3 October 2011 he was appointed Culture Minister of Denmark in Cabinet of Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

KNUTTE WESTER'S FILM "GZIM REWIND" ON SVT AND MODERNA MUSEET // EXHIBITION AT VÄSTERÅS MUSEUM OF ART

 

On Thursday February 23 at 8 pm, Knutte Wester's documentary "Gzim Rewind" will be shown on Swedish public TV, channel 2. I was involved in the pre-production of this film as a consultant for sequences that were to involved machinima film, but became the sketched war scenes.

See a clip from the film and an interview with the artist

Gzim Rewind on SVT:
SVT2 23 feb 2012, 20.00
SVT2 24 feb 2012, 15.50
SVT2 25 feb 2012, 13.15
SVT2 26 feb 2012, 00.05

Additionally, the film will be shown at Moderna museet as part of the documentary film festival Tempo's Balkan program "The Screen of Memory", on March 8 at 3:15 pm. The film had its Swedish premiere at the Gothenburg International Film Festival this year, where it was nominated in the category Best Swedish Documentary.

More about The Screen of Memory

Don't miss Knutte Wester's ongoing exibition at Västerås Museum of Art, until 8 April. The exhibition presents three recent projects.

More about the exhibition

More about Knutte Wester on www.gsa.se

Dialogic Reality II

In a dialectic process describing the interaction and resolution between multiple paradigms or ideologies, one putative solution establishes primacy over the others. The goal of a dialectic process is to merge point and counterpoint (thesis and antithesis) into a compromise or other state of agreement via conflict and tension (synthesis). "Synthesis that evolves from the opposition between thesis and antithesis." (Eisenstein, "The Dramaturgy of Film Form" 23). Examples of dialectic process can be found in Plato's Republic.

In a dialogic process, various approaches coexist and are comparatively existential and relativistic in their interaction. Here, each ideology can hold more salience in particular circumstances. Changes can be made within these ideologies if a strategy does not have the desired effect. An example of the dialogic process can be found in Nozick's, Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

These two distinctions are observed in studies of personal identity, national identity and group identity.

G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) introduced the concept of dialectic process to explain the progression of ideas.

M. M. Bakhtin, a Russian philosopher and Literary Critic has been credited with introducing the Dialogical process in Philosophy.

Reading Marx's Capital Vol I with David Harvey

This is the first in a series of thirteen lectures with Professor David Harvey,  a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), Director of The Center for Place, Culture and Politics, and author of numerous books. He has been teaching Karl Marx's Capital for over 40 years. Read his CV. All of the lectures are online. I am wading though them at the moment. While they are dense, they are very very worthwhile.

Professor Harvey makes an extensive and profound close reading of Capital, enclosing the text is a detailed account of references, arguments, logic and methods  according to a historical analysis. Professor Harvey's reading displays a heavy reliance on New Criticism, which contains little evidence of contemporary examples and adaptations to the post-industrial world of global capitalism and information as a commodity.

The page numbers Professor Harvey refers to are valid for both the Penguin Classics and Vintage Books editions of Capital.



Marx as presented by Mark Steele. A nice context to the Labour Theory of Value. Marx seems like a dreamer, a poet who dealt with the hard realities of State power and the ubiquity of capital.

New Yoshikaze Artist in Residence on HUMlab SL Island

We welcome Pyewacket Kazyanenko as the new artist in residence within the Yoshikaze artists' studio in Second Life, run by Goodwind Seiling aka Sachiko Hayashi and provided by HUMlab. Pyewacket Kazyanenko states in an Outline and Intent for Yoshikaze Residency:

I've spent the last few years working with Stelarc in simple virtual displays and performance. In my virtual work, amongst achievements and satisfying victories , things inevitability go wrong, strange things happen, sculpts appear wrong, scripts and codes don’t work correctly, robots break. Not being much of a coder or a mathematician, my approach to working with code and 3D environments has always had a naive and random quality. In my exploration with the Yoshikaze residency I hope to further my relationship with the 'glitch' in virtual worlds. The genera of digital glitch art has become quite popular but little has been explored in virtual worlds. I will enter the space with an empty pallet, clear mind and simply explore, try and make happen the wrong, the glitch and the obscure, mixed with ongoing adventures and inspirations that happen daily inworld. My research into avatar psychology and the notion of 'artistic role play' will also have some effect on what I will be doing. This brings the digital unconscious into the work with dreams, desires, needs, failures, a sense of humour and a longing for creativity.

We look forward to the coming months. If you would like to keep up to date with what Pye is doing, the Yoshikaze blog is being updated regularly and you can visit Pye in world from 15 February until the 15 May from the slurl to Yoshikaze: http://slurl.com/secondlife/HUMlab/95/215/351

Friday Night Poem

Silent Violence

I smell rain

But it has been snowing for days

The earth frozen beneath our feet,

Trees shrouded in mourning white

Attend the sad funeral of a life

Lost to ice.

Know your pusher,

Rent out a faded corner

Of couch to the friend

You hate the most and then

Bend over backwards to discover

New domains of pain,

Favoured in the quiet backstreet

Leafy suburban panorama of normal,

The white bread variety of hell

Where we take the names of saints

In our race down to the corpse strewn

Shore of a sea that sail has long since

Left.

Smile, while I offer you

A generous finance plan

For your teeth.

-----------------------------------

For Syria

DJ Mutamassik "Take The Hit"

I cannot recommend highly enough DJ Mutamassik. This is track #1 from Mutamassik's 2010 LP, "That Which Death Cannot Destroy" The full album is here. This album cannot be bought or sold. All instruments (Cello, Drums, Mazhar, Keyboard, Turntables) & tracks performed, produced & engineered by Mutamassik at G.G.S.S./Rocca AlMileda Studio. 2010 Special guest vox & asst. engineer: Meroe Amade' Memphis Video: G. LOLI

MUTAMASSIK(meaning Stronghold, Tenacity in arabic) is a producer, dj, artist, pioneer of SA'AIDI HARDCORE & BALADI BREAKBEATS. RELENTLESS RHYTHMS FROM THE PAN-AFRABIC IMMIGRANT SOUND SOURCES. AFROASIATIC MOKKASSAR in addition to transcendental sonic experiments. Darq Matter Qubti Funq Punq Demm Baroque Melanqol Met'al Martial SA'AIDI ARABIFIED SWAMP MUSIC FROM THE RUSTBELT+++ Has performed extensively throughout U.S., Africa, Middle East & Europe. Press includes: The Village Voice, The Wire, Le Monde, African Sun Times, New York Times, Bidoun, The Fader, Newsweek (Arabic edition), American Society for Engineering Education, XLR8R, etc. "This is inhuman, brutal, awesome breakcore." Derek Walmsley - The Wire "Mutamassik's pounding Egyptian hip-hop breaks...are serious, sacred, steadfast marching music for the new international breakbeat generation." Ron Nachmann - URB "Dans un melange d', d'electronique et de hip-hop, Mutamassik s'engage dans la reconstruction des . Arabesque, melopees de minarets se croisent dans un magma de sons urbains, structures par d'impressionants alliages rhythmiques." Veronique Mortaigne - Le Monde "Highly regarded post-techno DJ..." - Mtv News " "Before the sounds of the Middle East became de rigueur sampling materials for hip-hop, Mutamassik was exploring ways of fusing various sounds and styles into a compelling, challenging whole, shards a-flying all the while.”