- Black Nerds, Black Cool, and Afrofuturism | Troy L. Wiggins – Still, Afrofuturism serves as a ideological wrecking ball to the staled and played out construction of whites-only nerd identity, and allows practitioners and followers to douse themselves in blackness, Black Cool, and black nerd stuff while building a healthy dose of pride about their own blackness and nerd identity.
- Social Text Afrofuturism issue, Table of Contents — Summer 2002, 20 (2 71) –
- Artwork from hard work. | Brandon Graham –
- James W. C. Pennington, 1807-1870. The Fugitive Blacksmith; or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington, Pastor of a Presbyterian Church, New York, Formerly a Slave in the State of Maryland, United States –
- Tell us the truth about the battle of Orgreave | David Conn | Comment is free | theguardian.com – The referral was for some of the most serious criminal offences police officers can commit: the alleged assault of miners at Orgreave during the mass picket of 18 June 1984, principally battering them on the head with truncheons and then allegedly perverting the course of justice, committing perjury and misconduct in public office in the failed prosecutions of 94 miners for riot and unlawful assembly.
- 46 Reasons You Should Never Leave Amsterdam – lies, all lies.
Articles with the Tag Amsterdam
Your Happening World (July 4th through July 9th)
- Jack Halberstam’s Flying Circus: on postmodernism and the scapegoating of trans women – The argument turns on the fallacy that trans women are being insufficiently radical, and that our fight for dignity is really just a cynical play for respectability and power. It is a very Foucauldian argument, in that sense. We just need to allow ourselves to be more transgressive (in terms defined hazily by Halberstam), otherwise our personal behaviour is complicit with oppression, and thus wrong. This is how we can make sense of Halberstam’s valedictory prescription to “move on, to confuse the enemy, to become illegible, invisible, anonymous.” His whole point is, ironically, to discipline what he sees as the defective personal behaviour of those he disagrees with.
- Shaking off the northern bias in temperature reconstructions – Road to Paris – ICSU – These northern-biased reconstructions – which are based on studies of tree rings, coral, ice cores, subfossil pollen, boreholes and lake sediments – have played a decisive role in our ability to separate out natural from human-caused global warming. But what about the other half of the planet?
- After a Police Dog Bit His Leg, This Protester Was Jailed Thanks to a Cop’s Testilying | VICE United States – The expensive consequences of New York City’s heavy-handed approach to policing protest have been on display lately. In December, the city finally settled most of the lawsuits stemming from its mass arrest of protesters during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Earlier this month, falsely arrested Occupy Wall Street protesters announced the largest settlement yet between participants and the powers that be, with the city poised to shell out nearly $600,000 in damages. NYC already paid $350,000 last year to settle a suit over its destruction of media equipment and Occupy’s library during the 2011 eviction of Zuccotti Park, $82,500 this past December to settle an Occupier’s suit claiming that police beat him up across the span of three arrests, and $50,000 the month before to settle a suit by people arrested on suspicion that they might later attend a protest.
- The 20 most hipster neighbourhoods in the world | Skyscanner – On the ‘other’ side of the IJ, the big bit of water behind Centraal station that no-one notices because they head in the other direction when they arrive, has been growing in coolness for a few years now. Previously a bit of a wasteland, now the disused warehouses host creative start-ups, festivals, restaurants and, once a month, mega flea market IJ Hallen,
- Octavia Butler Roundtable Index « The Hooded Utilitarian – This is the index for our Octavia Butler Roundtable. Posts are listed in chronological order.
The Amsterdam of Theo van den Boogaard: must see
So today I went to the Theo van den Boogaard exhibition in the Amsterdam city Archives, which was small but brilliant. Theo van den Boogaard is one of Holland’s best cartoonists, having started his career in the sixties, working for various counterculture (so to speak) magazines creating a series of ground and taboo breaking comics. His greatest succes however was with Sjef van Oekel, an incredibly anarchic, chaotic comic strip drawn in what is perhaps the most disciplined art style possible, the Ligne Claire or clear line. Sjef van Oekel, who started out as a character in a Dutch satirical television show, is a middle aged and self absorbed, doesn’t quite think like normal people and his actions usually cause chaos and destruction all around him. What makes it work is the clear, precise ligne claire style Theo van den Boogaard draws his adventures in, set against the background of the immediately recognisable city of Amsterdam. His drawings are chock ful of detail, yet you get them immediately. His drawing style also did well on various advertising posters and artwork he did for companies like the Dutch railways and other public transport providers, as well as the city of Amsterdam.
All of which was on show in the exhibition, which put the focus on the city of Amsterdam as van den Boogaard portrays it. So you had the various adverts showcasing new railway stations and such, but also large extracts of the Sjef van Oekel strips showing how he had used Amsterdam in those. Alongside those there were also other pieces of artwork that don’t feature Amsterdam as much but provide some context for his career. It’s not just the finished artwork on display either: for some of the key drawings the working sketches and various stages and research material is shown as well. It’s great to see all this art shown actual size and up close, seeing all the details less noticable when published in a smaller format.
What struck me about it is not just the meticulous way in which van den Boogaard works, but also how he’s not afraid to warp the city when he needs to. He’s not stuck to his research or the need to keep the city real, but sticks bits and pieces together when he needs to, in the same way Hollywood sometimes uses bits of Vancouver to be New York say, but much more believable. Van den Boogaard has that ability to make you see the city through his eyes, so that when you walk out of the exhibition you see Amsterdam all clear lines and looking exactly as if van den Boogaard had drawn it.
Against this realistic background van den Boogaard puts his larger than life characters, constantly in movement, always slightly exaggerated even when standing still. This is of course a general characteristic of clear line strips, but unlike some van den Boogaard’s characters always look as if they fit the decor. His characters look as if they could walk off the page immediately and not look out of place in the real Amsterdam..
The exhibition is small and can be gotten through in an hour, but its focus on Amsterdam, on how van den Boogart shows the city and uses the city, manipulates and mutates the city for his own needs makes this exhibition work. If you are in Amsterdam sometime before the 14th August, are interested in comics and have had enough of all the highbrow musea, admission is only five euros and it’ll give you much to think about it. Be sure to also pick up the book of the exhibition.
Pay no attention to the software behind the curtain
Bit of a bother with my bike today. A couple of weeks ago I had finally gotten a new bike, after my last one had been stolen more than a year ago. At the hospital S. is unfortunately still in there’s a bike repair place which also sells secondhand ones and when I looked there they had a nice, proper Raleigh bike, one of those that you can’t help but ride sitting up ramrod straight, for less than 200 euro. In very nice condition and looking as if it came straight out of the fifties, I was a bit wary of leaving it out on the streets. Which is why I usually stall it in the underground automated parking at the ferry when I go to work. And this uses some sort of Windows based software to do all the work, which I know because the first time I wanted to use it, it had blue screened. Not a good start, but I had been using it without problems ever since.
Until today. Checked my bike in with no problems; wanted to check it out tonight, no go. The chip and pin machine, with which you pay and which uses your bank card to recognise which bike you’re attempting to collect, was borked. So I called the emergency line, they asked the usual questions, then got me called back by somebody with some clue, he asked for the last four digits of my bank pass, then used that to locate and get my bike. The video above shows the physical side of that process; thanks to the monitor screen normally used to explain the system, I got to see the software side of things. It could’ve been an old skool DOS programme, a light blue background with hideously big buttons, with a list of ticky boxes in red (occupied) or green (free) followed by the bank pass number (only the last four digits shown iirc) the customer had used. The admin checked mine and hit the button “get bike” et viola, there it was.
As a card carrying geek it’s always interesting to get such a look at the software behind the curtain — and because it was a nice hot day, I had no problem waiting a bit longer than normal to get my bike either!
Amsterdam garbage strike is over
But it will take an estimated two weeks before the entire city is clean again. The strike ended yesterday, after the unions and the joint Dutch municipalities reached an agreement in which the unions got much of what they demanded. This year municipal civil servants will get a onetime raise of 1.5 percent on their wages, as well as a 0.5 percent raise on their end of year bonuses this year and in 2011, with the minimum bonus for the lowest pay scales raised from 836 to 1750 euros. As important if not more is the agreement that there will not be forced redundancies in the next two years. The agreement still has to be voted on by the union members, but there’s a good chance that they will accept it and in the meantime the strikers have gone back to work, just in time before the weather gets too hot…
All in all another excellent lesson in how a little bit of pressure can force employers back to the negotiation table…