on aug 2nd, two tucson AZ police call border patrol on a woman during a traffic stop. border patrol takes her away into detention.
3 days later, the senate approves $600 million in "emergency border security funds" - which includes 1,500 new enforcement agents; $32 million in
unmanned aerial drones, and $15 million for communication equipment
* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.
* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.
i have seen and read a lot of things about SB1070 but the above video keeps haunting me.*
those last bulleted bits are from a washington post
investigative report on "top secret america." took me forevs to track down the article, cause i remembered reading it but blew my brain trying to recount WHERE. i guess like many modern folk i'm constantly absorbing current events through phone (news blogs & FB), so whenever i want to remember where some information came from, it's usually most helpful to try to remember where i was STANDING when i encountered it. this mostly works, but today my problem locating this article was because i read it on an actual physical piece of paper = total short circuit!
i've been thinking a lot about visual art lately. my friend stuart comer was in town from london, who's a curator at the tate modern - so i got the MOTHERLOAD backroom treatment while escorting him on his rounds one day. we hit over a dozen galleries, highlights including: nick relph at overduin & kite, group show at michael benevento, thomas eakins at LACMA, mario testino outside of mark foxx, & witnessing michael kohn give a 5-minute aquistions pitch as we were sailing out the door... amazing.
then last night i saw
alex segade's brilliant new multimedia epic-act video theatre troupe piece entitled "replicant vs separatist" - which played 3 sold out nights at the REDCAT now fest.
i've been generally reflecting on visual art lately as a traditon of creative *freedom* - as in, opening up, asking questions, taking things apart, & taking pleasure in not making straightforward meaning out of stuff. it's like veiled, you know? as opposed to documentary movie-making, which kinda feels like the opposite equally hard process of putting things together and trying illustrate an idea as clearly and effectively as you can.
this continues to be my negoation with
DAMELO TODO, which is a movie that engages some very intense queer/immigration issues particuarly surrounding RACE & CLASS tensions, and therefore is being worked on squarely in the "making sense" zone, but which wants at the same time to be free... i'm not sure exactly what i mean by that, but i guess it has something to do with trying to show something (wildness & the silver platter) accurately without totally killing it. they have an expression called "kill your darlings" - which means cutting out most of the stuff you care about - all the excess that doesn't expidite meaning and move the story along. at every impasse, the operative question is WHY would anyone care about this scene? and with 91+ hours of footage, the answer to 95% of it is, they wouldn't. whoever THEY is, it continues to be a very powerful challenge to my natural way of working... also my friend
ryan trecartin just moved back to town so my social art zone just majorly expanded... as in los feliz mansion rental yea wat !
*thanks to
daniel for sharing SB1070 video
