2009 In Review : meta-mind & sub-ed awards

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And the envelope, please...

bLOGOS/HA HA Favorite Headline of 2009 is from The Age (Melbourne), Thursday 9 July :

bLOGOS/HA HA Favorite Caption of 2009 is from the same article :

bLOGOS/HA HA Favorite footnote of 2009 :

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Along the Blogian Way

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Along the Blogian Way we pause to regard another milestone projection-space : Season's Greetings to all and Best Wishes for the New Year. See you then.

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2009 Copenhagen Accord = 1938 Munich Agreement

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As a result of the previous post, we have just received this Dark Night of Christmas card from some northern hemisphere IUH heapsters attending the 2009 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at Copenhagen.

Sent a week ago, their comments then were very pessimistic about the likely outcome of the conference.

They were right. The conference has now concluded (given up, surrendered, collapsed, exhausted its vision, expired of will) "with a view to" nothing!

TISM :
This Is Serious Mum
CLIMATISM :
This is our Munich Pact on Climate Change

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Interdependent Union of Heapsters - new logo announced

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Interdependent Union of Heapsters have commissioned a new logo, said to reference diamond, Necker Cube, honeycomb and The Love Matrix.

This is it below, along with an old bL favorite of the form.

Classic heap-field!

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en light ening

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After yesterday's gift

Ninety percent of our looking at a thing is mental projection.

- HHDL

what fun today to recognise this offering.

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by Trans Love Railways to Melbourne

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Awoke with a headache, the gift-side of which provided clear recall of a splendid dream. The final scene took place at a railway station where, having remembered I could fly, and begun to do so, looked back to see others, higher, already doing the same.

Arrived at the Ballan railway station a few hours later. From the ten directions we came. For the Ballarat train to Melbourne, to the 20th anniversary celebration of the Dalai Lama being awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

At Ballan station, this sign.

Happiness is not a state to arrive at,
But a manner of travelling.
- Margaret Lee Runbeck

I cannot and will not cut my conscience
to fit this year's fashions
- Lillian Hellman
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MONDAY 7th DEC 2009
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ALL PROCEEDS OF HOT & COLD
DRINKS DONATED TO
CANCER COUNCIL
$900.00 SO FAR...

What rare V/Line vehicle of enlightened means is this?

And with stops along the way at Sunshine and Deer Park?
(It was at Deer Park, Sarnath, India, that Buddha, after his enlightenment, gave his first teaching : The Four Noble Truths. Can't travel through Deer Park, Victoria, without recalling that.)

Fly Trans Love Railways? Ancient memories arise of Eric Burdon & The Animals' San Franciscan Nights (1967), still somewhere here in a bL heap. It begins with an announcement :

This following program is dedicated to the city and people of San Francisco (and Melbourne), who may not know it but they are beautiful and so is their city. This is a very personal song, so if the viewer cannot understand it, particularly those of you who are European residents, save up all your brand and fly Trans Love Airways to San Francisco, U.S.A. (or to Melbourne, Australia), then maybe you'll understand the song, it will be worth it, if not for the sake of this song but for the sake of your own peace of mind.

for the sake of your own peace of mind. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been touring and teaching in Australia and New Zealand for the past two weeks. He has been a regular visitor to Melbourne over many years. Yesterday morning there was a gathering (Peace Through Justice) to celebrate his 20th anniversary of receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace. In the afternoon, at the Melbourne Convention Centre, he spoke to the topic World Peace - Who is responsible?

'Last talk before exhaustion', he chuckled at the start.

Later, in a Q&A session, he briefly addressed this again : 'because body, speech and mind are dedicated to all beings, therefore no mental tiredness, even in these busy times'.

As he has done before, the Dalai Lama told us of his favorite prayer, from “A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life” by Shantideva.

For as long as space remains,
For as long as sentient beings remain,
Until then may I too remain
To dispel the miseries of the world.

May his life be long
and may his aspiration be quickly fulfilled.

before The Shilo Project

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bLOGOS/HA HA enjoyed the variety of vertical + horizontal arrays at the Potter Museum installation of The Shilo Project. Some of these were shown in yesterday's post.

The well tempered timber panels of that display, however, are in sober contrast to the Mondrian meets Shadow Box vibrancy of the mid-60s sophisticates we feature today.

They swing and sway to Mel Torme, Buddy Greco, Billy Williams and Jackie Paris. To Pearl Baily, Eydie Gorme, Teddi King and Teresa Brewer.

But little do they know...

In a few short years, on a hot August night, their lives will change forever!

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ShiLOGOS/HA HA : regarding The Shilo Project

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All roads lead to everywhere

travel agent's magnet on bLOGOS/HA HA beer fridge

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First Principles :

The sleeve of The Beatles' so called white album (1968) is not blank, it's white, and embossed with the title : THE BEATLES. White image, white text.

There's a detailed presentation about THE BEATLES. album sleeve at beatlesagain.com The album's working title was A Doll's House and a colourful sleeve was prepared to illustrate this idea. Perhaps this is why Peter Atkins has embossed his Shilo album sleeve THE BEATLES.

Ditto :

The Neil Diamond Shilo sleeve (1970) is not blank.

Whence cometh this imaginary lack view? In French, white and blank both are un blanc. Perhaps that's it? Ceci n'est pas un blanc.

Does the conceptual origin of the blank Australia project(ion) perhaps still locally sustain this abject view : blankness?

Terra Nullius; the empty interior; Picnic At Hanging Rock

Climbers Disappear On Mount Blank

From white to blank to black and back : the Slave Guitars of the Art Cult (1981) break-through album Only Blank Minds.

Just as THE BEATLES. (1968) became known as The White Album so also with Only Blank Minds. The black-on-black of its Black Square (in Slave Guitar) spinning across the black square of the sleeve has it now often referred to as this band's black album. Sometimes it is known as the blank album since, after-Cage, there were no tracks listed, no spiral scratched, no identifiable Music given. Anti-Music historians like to write it as the bla_k album, to indicate it's multivalent and/but ultimately unfixed character.

At the opening of The Shilo Project exhibition

Chris McAuliffe read an extract from the new edition of Vincent Van Gogh's letters, from an 1884 letter to his brother Theo.

You don't know how paralysing it is, that stare from a blank canvas that says to the painter, you can't do anything. The canvas has an idiotic stare, and mesmerises some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves.

Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares - and who has broken the spell of 'you can't'.

Vincent wrote most of these letters in Dutch; one third in French; just ten in English. We note this in relation to the earlier comments about white/blank blanc/blanc con-fusion and more generally in puzzling about that curious Western spectre the terrorising void, the imaginary malevolent physical psychological exhaustively empty space ] where no-one can hear you scream [ as you struggle to bridge the one dot (I) to an other (I/not I)

Full Stop .

blank :

early 13c., from O.Fr. blanc "white, shining," from Frankish *blank "white, gleaming," of W.Gmc. origin (cf. O.E. blanca "white horse"), from P.Gmc. *blangkaz, from PIE *bhleg- "to shine" (see bleach). Originally "colorless," meaning "having empty spaces" evolved c.1400. Sense of "void of expression" (a blank look) is from 1553. The noun in the sense of "empty space" (in a document, etc.) is from c.1570.

- Online Etymology Dictionary

not blank :

The Diamond View

interconnected, interdependent ...

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A day in Melbourne yesterday to catch up on some exhibitions. Stephen Bram (downstairs) and Stieg Persson (upstairs) a great pairing at Anna Schwartz Gallery. Fellow former student of RMIT Media Arts, Sam Smith's grand Synthetics at Arc One Gallery. John Warwicker's FLOATING WORLD: UKIYO-E at The Narrows. The West Space Fun_raiser (7 of the 8 bLotters had already sold) then off to The Shilo Project big she-bang at the Ian Potter Museum.

Between West Space and the Potter, in the last light of day, one street photo. Traditional.

This morning, in an image heap from E of the O, this classic set-up: home territory of LOGOS/HA HA. Thoughts of Las Meninas and the interpretive diagrams of scholars. Starting with

YOU ARE HERE

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West Space Fun_raiser

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The annual West Space Fun_raiser exhibition opens tonight (Benefactors Preview) then continues until 12 December.

Our bLOGOS/HA HA artist-in-residence has contributed to this
an edition of eight Mirror of the World blottings.

1. From the bL blotter heap, select and stamp FIAPCE onto nine 1920s/30s two colour Locust Street "ENVY" prints

RICH GIRL DOG CAR poor boy dog wheels
POKE TONGUE thumb nose ...
PASS WEST pass east .

LOOK AT look at.

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2. stamp the knowing Title once more upon the edgeless Mirror of the World
3. blot this onto verso of the envious regard
4. edition (A/P and 8/8), sign(P.T.) and date (-2009-)
5. price ($100 ea) with thanks to Anna Schwartz Gallery

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West Space
Level 1, 15 - 19 Anthony Street, Melbourne, Vic, 3000, Australia
Exhibition hours: Wed-Fri 12-6pm, Sat 12-5pm
61 3 9328 8712
email : info@westspace.org.au This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
web : http://www.westspace.org.au/

Songs of Soap ~ now with Pedestaline™

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We recently showed images of three new book covers, including that of Art and Text - Nadine Monem, editor.

Those with the requisite visual literacy recognise this as a reference to and reworking of Andy Warhol's 1964 reworking of Brillo soap pad packaging. Brillo > Art and Text - with a new New!

Here is a NEW IMPROVED version, from the late 70s.

The same again as someone looks at a Brillo heap

NEW IMPROVED
now with Pedestaline™

Here's the young artist (1964) who poses with his double product.

And here a younger (1880s) artist who poses with his New York soap product ( "1776" ) of art and text.

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The Message

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Over the last month or so the Australian Federal Opposition,
aka The Coalition (of the Liberal Party and the National Party minority), under the influence of their substantial component of Climate Change Deniers & Sceptics, have been tearing themselves apart. This is how senior political commentator Michelle Grattan described the situation in yesterday's THE AGE (Melbourne):

Liberals floundering in chaos

The Liberal Party is a madhouse. Malcolm Turnbull amazed even the Turnbull sceptics by his wild performance yesterday.

Turnbull unleashed appeared to many Liberals Turnbull unhinged, as he vented his considerable capacity for wrath against Senate leader Nick Minchin, now cast as the devil by his leader but quite popular in party ranks.

Turnbull would have better stayed in bed, rather than appear with Laurie Oakes. His support went further backwards.

The party is now set on installing Joe Hockey whether he likes it or not.

The formula is that once there is a spill motion, a ''challenge'' - which Hockey says he won't make - is not really a ''challenge''. Hockey seems ready to don this fig leaf, to everyone's relief.

The chaos appears headed to a fix that involves Hockey for leader, Peter Dutton for deputy, Tony Abbott for shadow treasurer...

( full article here )

All commentators warned that today's leadership spill result was unpredictable. Which is indeed how it turned out, with all best bets arse about and Tony Abbott elected leader. Here's how another senior political AGE journalist, Tony Wright, described Abbott several days ago :

Ascetic warrior ready for battle

Tony Abbott, long known as the Mad Monk, transmogrified into a vision of the Grim Reaper as he swung through Malcolm Turnbull's office yesterday afternoon.

Those who have met him on a rugby field or a boxing ring know there is much of the ascetic warrior in the Abbott.

Malcolm Turnbull is a physically solid fellow, too, and no wilting flower. He would prove it within hours with a fighting performance of a news conference, declaring himself still the leader of the Liberal Party and vowing that his party would deliver on its emissions trading deal with the Rudd Government, whomever may try to deny him.

But he was outnumbered when the Grim Reaper strode into his bunker mid-afternoon. Abbott was accompanied by another of the austere in the utterly fractured Liberal congregation: Senator Nick Minchin, Liberal leader in the Senate and veteran of a hundred factional stoushes and Liberal crises.

They were on a mission. They were about to try to nail their leader to a cross they were convinced he had built for himself.

Abbott learned a bit about missions during his time in the seminary as a young man, and he was a champion debater, but he can use his fists when his blood is up.

( full article here )

"The argument on climate change is absolute crap. However the politics of this are tough for us. Eighty per cent of people believe climate change is a real and present danger."

Tony Abbott, Sept 2009

quoted in Pyrenees Advocate, October 2009

Unrelated, also this morning the bL History of the Message archive received three hundred-year-old readymademessage telegraph postcards. Here's one of them.

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