"Voz Alta" (Loud Voice), by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, is a memorial commissioned for the 40th anniversary of the student massacre in Tlatelolco, which took place on October 2nd 1968. In the piece, participants speak freely into a megaphone placed on the "Plaza de las Tres Culturas", right where the massacre took place. As the megaphone amplifies the voice, a 10kW searchlight automatically "beams" the voice as a sequence of flashes: if the voice is silent the light is off and as it gets louder so does the light's brightness. As the searchlight beam hits the top of the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, now Centro Cultural Tlatelolco, it is relayed by three additional searchlights, one pointed to the north, one to the southeast towards Zócalo Square and one to the southwest towards the Monument to the Revolution. Depending on the weather, the searchlights could be seen from a 15Km radius, quietly transmitting the voice of the participants over Mexico City. Anyone around the city could tune into 96.1FM Radio UNAM to listen in live to what the lights were saying.
When no one was participanting the light on the Plaza was off but the three lights on the building played back archival recordings of survivors, interviews with intellectuals and politicians, music from 1968 and radio art pieces commissioned by Radio UNAM. In this way the memory of the event was mixed with live participation.
Thousands of people participated in this project, without censorship or moderation. Participation included statements from survivors, street poetry, shout-outs, ad hoc art performaces, marriage proposals, calls for protest and more.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Voz Alta - 40th anniversary of the student massacre in Tlatelolco
All out against the 2010 Winter Olympic Games
http://no2010.com/ and http://olympicresistance.net/
ALL OUT AGAINST THE 2010 WINTER OLYMPIC GAMES! The 2010 Winter Olympics will take place in Vancouver & Whistler, on unceded Indigenous land, from February 12-28 2010. We call on all anti-capitalist, Indigenous, housing rights, labour, migrant justice, environmental, anti-war, community-loving, anti-poverty, civil libertarian, and anti colonial activists to come together to confront this two-week circus and the oppression it represents. We are organizing towards a global anti-capitalist and anti-colonial convergence against the 2010 Olympic Games. * BASIC SCHEDULE: The basic plan thus far is: - Conference and People's Summit on Wed Feb 10- Thurs Feb 11 - Fri Feb 12: Take Back Our City! Welcome the 2010 Olympic Torch with Free Games, Free Speech, and Free Food! Beginning with a festival at the Vancouver Art Gallery at 3 pm, followed by a parade and protest to BC Place Stadium. Details, including childcare arrangements, at: http://2010welcoming.wordpress.com/
Chuck Palahniuk lecture: Death of protest
This is a clip from the documentary about Chuck Palahniuk, "Postcards from the Future." Chuck Palahniuk is the author of Fight Club. In this clip he talks about an explosion of creativity that we are living in and how protest is irrelevant compared to the power that story has to change the world.
Why the #$%! do we swear? For pain relief
Bad language could be good for you, a new study shows. For the first time, psychologists have found that swearing may serve an important function in relieving pain.
The study, published today in the journal NeuroReport, measured how long college students could keep their hands immersed in cold water. During the chilly exercise, they could repeat an expletive of their choice or chant a neutral word. When swearing, the 67 student volunteers reported less pain and on average endured about 40 seconds longer.
Although cursing is notoriously decried in the public debate, researchers are now beginning to question the idea that the phenomenon is all bad. "Swearing is such a common response to pain that there has to be an underlying reason why we do it," says psychologist Richard Stephens of Keele University in England, who led the study. And indeed, the findings point to one possible benefit: "I would advise people, if they hurt themselves, to swear," he adds.
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image from http://www.spitting-image.net
