Liz Eggleston’s impeccably and indefatigably curated collection of sixties and seventies images–the glorious, the tacky and the gloriously tacky–mainly from her own scans of British and French magazines, is an unspeakably great treasure. Her focus is on the British Boutique movement, but she confesses to being inspired by “the weirder, even seedier, aspects of popular culture.” This is the kind of amateur (in the French sense) labor of love that the pre-listicle era Internet promised, but really didn’t deliver….
A plainclothes policeman runs to attack a foreign journalist as others beat a protester during a demonstration in Cairo. (Photo: Reuters via the New York Post)
Indian filmmaker Parvez Sharma’s post on Mondoweiss makes the point well:
[T]his “revolution” is not about social networking and its success. The majority of the 80 million people of Egypt live in abject poverty. They do not even have cell-phones let alone smartphones like the iPhone or the Droid. They go to kiosks to make calls. A pretty substantial number of them have NEVER used the internet and do not have email accounts: the complicated mechanisms of self-promotion and information gathering and sharing on social networks is not a part of their lives—they have never had the money or the resources to get access to this other world which often lives in the relatively more affluent neighborhoods like Zamalek or Garden City or Mohandaseen—all within some walking distance of where the dissent started in Tahrir Square.
The majority of the protesters in Cairo, in Suez, in Alexandria, in Luxor, in Mahla, in Manoura and all over this ancient land which is the very heart of what it means to be Arab—are not “twittering” or “facebooking” or “emailing” or even watching the landmark live coverage that Al-Jazeera is providing. They are out on the streets—and yes, without phone access—risking their lives and giving vent to three decades and perhaps more, of anger.
Note: At the moment that link seems not to be working. Mondoweiss is down. I actually linked from this cached page.
My friend Fouad was able to get on the landline again. His body and soul are still bruised and yet he has never been more hopeful. His severe anger at Hosni Mubarak’s speech full of lies and his ambivalence about the appointment of Omar Soliman, the head of intelligence as the new vice president.
It a fragmented conversation on a still functioning landline. And as bullets do rain all around him, here are his bullet points. The thoughts and experiences of an ordinary citizen, not a reporter.
Mohandaseen is burning—we are surrounded by looters, and the army is just watching
They are looting houses and we have no idea who these looters are
My parents asked army tank guys and they said we cannot intervene!
Everyone here is saying that Mubarak is being spiteful-he wants looters so that he can say: “Look, I gave you calm for 30 years.
OK now you want to get rid of me? Well see the chaos my going can bring. Enjoy the unrest and the looting. Only I could have protected all of you!”
I was driving and 3 men with knives attacked me near Sudan street—I had to sort of run them over
Big rumor that Mubarak is releasing prisoners and arming them so that they can infiltrate neighbourhoods and loot them
Maadi, Street number nine-huge vandalism happening—There is looting everywhere in Rihab city, in Mohandasin, in Shubra. In Heliopolis there are plainsclothes police
My parents are organizing all the baobabs in our street and making blockades to stop the looters
There are Balkageyah (thugs) everywhere—all rich neighborhoods are being attacked
I think he is fucked up yaani–He didnt resign—his speech instigated the violence—now looters and the poor think that when you know there is no hope you might as well get as much as you can as long as the chaos lasts–people were hopeful that he would go
Maybe in other governates — people are more organized and closer to each other as community members … so they will organize better, perhaps — In Cairo it is difficult to control the chaos and disorder—there are 19 million people in this city who often don’t talk to each other and are so separated by class and money — I am wondering how they can organize together?
The people in Cairo are fighting two things–they are fighting police forces but also now fighting looters
People prayed the Salat ul Genaza, the funeral prayer after the evening prayers in Tahrir—we carried a body through the crush of thousands—I was crying, so many of us were crying
Zadie Smith has major problems with Mark Zuckerberg’s world. Fair enough. Hear her out. Her ruminations on The Social Network in the New York Review of Books are quite good, and provocative (and I might add I’m looking forward to her new books column for Harper’s).
With Facebook, Zuckerberg seems to be trying to create something like a Noosphere, an Internet with one mind, a uniform environment in which it genuinely doesn’t matter who you are, as long as you make “choices” (which means, finally, purchases). If the aim is to be liked by more and more people, whatever is unusual about a person gets flattened out.
… Finally, it’s the idea of Facebook that disappoints. If it were a genuinely interesting interface, built for these genuinely different 2.0 kids to live in, well, that would be something. It’s not that. It’s the wild west of the Internet tamed to fit the suburban fantasies of a suburban soul….
Shouldn’t we struggle against Facebook? Everything in it is reduced to the size of its founder. Blue, because it turns out Zuckerberg is red-green color-blind. “Blue is the richest color for me—I can see all of blue.” Poking, because that’s what shy boys do to girls they are scared to talk to. Preoccupied with personal trivia, because Mark Zuckerberg thinks the exchange of personal trivia is what “friendship” is. A Mark Zuckerberg Production indeed! We were going to live online. It was going to be extraordinary. Yet what kind of living is this?
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
The Mad Farmer’s advice:
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
