Rider Haggard’s fin-de-siècle novel She is an adventure novel, an early Indiana Jones, of the colonial age. She is short for She who must be obeyed, a white queen whose name is Ayesha and the protagonist of the novel. In the novel, a Cambridge professor travels to the heart of darkness (yes, Conrad is here too) that is SHE.
response (0) tagged: patriarchy :: abomination :: fantasm :: the mother filed under: the Other :: cultural diversity and otherness
Looking at the UNESCO/WSIS Declaration of Principles for the internet, it becomes clear that the declaration rejects the bifurcation of, on the one, the information society as part of globalization on corporate terms and the subsequent increase in the digital divide and, on the other, knowledge societies that rely on affordable, free and open-source software and diversity in formats that enable global accessability regardless of the underlying technology.
response (0) tagged: filed under: the Other :: cultural diversity and otherness
How do we read objects? Does the reading of objects differ from the reading of texts? My contention here is that objects do not only tell stories but that they are always already part of a process of semiosis that undergoes changes depending on the object’s function and contextual environment. A totem pole is a good example of how living, dynamic culture undergoes such a process of semiosis when it is displayed within the Museum as institution. A totem pole in its native environment is not an everlasting monument but an enactment of the eternal return of the seasons. True, it is a phallic symbol but it is not a static object like a church tower or a minaret as it is erected in order to slowly sink into mother earth and thus to return to where it once came from. As such, it is part of a sexual economy based on the dialectics between the male and the female principle, between the phallus and the earth. The pole in its natural environment performs in other words creation as it metaphorically stages the sexual act of (be)coming.
response (0) tagged: intertextuality :: reading filed under: cultural diversity and otherness :: on reading
In the UNESCO Declaration of Cultural Diversity it is stated that “cultural diversity is the common heritage of humankind.” As cultural diversity is not a static but a continuously changing process, we need to preserve records both for the future and for diversity to thrive in intercultural dialogue. The future evolves from history and without profound understanding of the past, there is no understanding of the now.
response (0) tagged: identity :: the other filed under: the Other :: cultural diversity and otherness
My 2007 documentary blog on my woes on the social web is now available for download in pdf. Check it out!
freewheelin.nu is a site where e-lit, installations, digital art, blogs and other texts are linked in a hyperdimensional space of underpasses, highways, rivers, bridges, tunnels that intersect in the art project Plastic Spaces whenever possible.
And there is more. Image music text and technology intertwined in digital art and textual [dis]pleasures - in the erratic vibrancy, evanescence and intangibility of the text/work - that interfaces with the erotic body [electrified].