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Sunday, January 12, 2014

Tinariwen - Recorded in Gothenburg Sweden in juli 2012 (French and Arabic with Swedish Subs)



Tinariwen  (tinariwén "deserts", plural of ténéré "desert") is a band of Tuareg musicians from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali. The band was formed in 1979 in Tamanrasset, Algeria, but returned to Mali after a cease-fire in the 1990s. The group first started to gain a following outside the Sahara region in 2001, with the release of The Radio Tisdas Sessions, and the performances at Festival au Désert in Mali and at the Roskilde festival in Denmark. Their popularity rose internationally with the release of the critically acclaimed Aman Iman in 2007. Tinariwen's biography has variously been described as "the most compelling of any band" (Songlines), "the most rock'n'roll of them all" (The Irish Times), "hard-bitten" (Slate.com), and "dramatic" (The Independent).

Monday, January 06, 2014

Rosi Braidotti: The Posthuman Predicament: Affect, Power and Ethics.



Keynote from the 4th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Emotional Geographies July 1st, 2013 at the University of Groningen.

Professor Braidotti, who holds Italian and Australian citizenship, was born in Italy and grew up in Australia, where she received a First-Class Honours degree from the Australian National University in Canberra in 1977 and was awarded the University Medal in Philosophy and the University Tillyard prize. Braidotti then moved on to do her doctoral work at the Sorbonne, where she received her degree in philosophy in 1981. She has taught at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands since 1988, when she was appointed as the founding professor in women's studies. In 1995 she became the founding Director of the Netherlands research school of Women's Studies, a position she held till 2005. Braidotti is a pioneer in European Women's Studies: she founded the inter-university SOCRATES network NOISE and the Thematic Network for Women's Studies ATHENA, which she directed till 2005. She was a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at Birkbeck College in 2005-6; a Jean Monnet professor at the European University Institute in Florence in 2002-3 and a fellow in the school of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1994. Braidotti is currently Distinguished University Professor at Utrecht University and founding Director of the Centre for the Humanities.

Braidotti’s publications have consistently been placed in continental philosophy, at the intersection with social and political theory, cultural politics, gender, feminist theory and ethnicity studies. The core of her interdisciplinary work consists of four interconnected monographs on the constitution of contemporary subjectivity, with special emphasis on the concept of difference within the history of European philosophy and political theory. Braidotti’s philosophical project investigates how to think difference positively, which means moving beyond the dialectics that both opposes it and thus links it by negation to the notion of sameness. This is evidenced in the philosophical agenda set in her first book Patterns of Dissonance: An Essay on Women in Contemporary French Philosophy , 1991, which gets developed further in the trilogy that follows: Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory , 1994; Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming , 2002; and Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics , 2006.

Throughout her work, Braidotti asserts and demonstrates the importance of combining theoretical concerns with a serious commitment to producing socially and politically relevant scholarship that contributes to making a difference in the world. Braidotti's output also included several edited volumes. Her work has been translated in a total of 19 languages and all the main books in at least three languages other than English.

Influenced by philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze and especially "French feminist" thinker Luce Irigaray, Braidotti has brought postmodern feminism into the Information Age with her considerations of cyberspace, prosthesis, and the materiality of difference. Braidotti also considers how ideas of gender difference can affect our sense of the human/animal and human/machine divides. Braidotti has also pioneered European perspectives in feminist philosophy and practice and has been influential on third-wave as well as post-secular feminisms.

On 3 March 2005, Braidotti was honored with a Royal Knighthood from Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands; in August 2006 she received the University Medal from the University of Lodz in Poland and she was awarded an Honorary Degree in Philosophy from Helsinki University in May 2007. In 2009, she was elected Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Internet: http://www.rosibraidotti.com/

Sunday, January 05, 2014

4ZZZ Radical Radio from Brisbane Australia Documentary


4ZZZ.mp4 from Peter Gray on Vimeo.

4ZZZ (pronounced "Four Triple Zed" or simply "Triple Zed") is an independent community radio station operating in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, at the frequency 102.1 FM. As a community radio station, 4ZZZ is a member of the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA). The station broadcasts to much of South-East Queensland, parts of Northern NSW and web streams from its website.

4ZZZ was established to provide a radical alternative to mainstream news, to promote a sense of engagement and activism in community life and to promote Australian music.[3] The station began transmission on 8 December 1975 as the first FM community broadcaster in Brisbane transmitting in stereo.

The station's first studios were constructed by announcing staff and volunteers, using second hand building materials and furniture. The first transmitter was hand built by the station engineer. Founders included activist, Jim Beatson, journalist Marian Wilkinson, Arts Administrator, John Stanwell and academic Alan Knight. Announcer John Woods launched the station with The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" at Midday 8 December 1975.

On 14 December 1988, 4ZZZ was taken off air and forcibly evicted from its University of Queensland premises by the then UQ Union ALSF and Young Nationals student union executive. While university students rallied to support the station, 4ZZZ moved to alternative premises on Coronation Drive in the suburb of Toowong. In 1992 the station was able to obtain a loan to buy the former headquarters of the Communist Party of Australia. 4ZZZ still broadcasts from these premises on St Paul's Terrace in Fortitude Valley.

HARPO THEATRE / MUSIC EVENT (in Toowoomba, Australia, 1972)



The Super 8 film shows a team arriving from Brisbane to set up for a HARPO performance event at the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education in Toowoomba in July, 1972.

HARPO was formed in Brisbane, Australia, in late 1971 as a counter cultural organization promoting alternative music, theatre, politics and healthy living. It had its roots in several earlier organizations.

Prominent HARPO founding members included Graham Cathcart and Bomber (Robert) Perrier. John Stanwell was an early and also influential member. Other active members included Stuart Matchett, Ken McSwain, and Colin Beasley (among many others).

The name Harpo was originally chosen simply because it was an interesting-sounding name. Then somebody joked H.A.R.P.O. stood for "How About Resisting Powerful Organizations." The acronym stuck, giving the appearance this was the original idea behind the group's name all along.

The first of the famed "Harpo's Nite Out" concert events was held in the University of Queensland refectory building in March, 1972. It featured a combination of political theatre and live music. The theatre performance was by the Laurence Brown Theatrical Troupe (another name HARPO chose because it had a nice ring to it - there was no Laurence Brown). The troupe had evolved from an earlier performance group, Romp Street Theatre.

The headline band was MACKENZIE THEORY from Melbourne. The band was so popular, they became a regular main stay of Harpo's Nite Out events. Mother's Lightworks (Phil Hutson) did the psychedelic light shows, and Peter Gray contributed to the atmosphere with his quadraphonic-sound system (Electronic Excursions), a forerunner to the DJ phenomenon.

A second "Harpo's Nite Out" followed at the same venue on 8 July, 1972, with even bigger crowds in attendance. The supporting act was Brisbane-based band, SHEPHERD, and THE CLITETES also appeared.

This second show was the beginning of a road tour sponsored by the Australian Union of Students (AUS). The tour helped spawn a newly evolving, co-operative, working relationship with Johnny Allen and Graeme Dunstan of Aquarius fame, key figures in AUS at the time.

The day before, 7 July, the tour officially kicked off with a show performed at the Toowong High School. The Toowoomba event, seen in this film, was the third engagement of the tour. Next stop was the campus in Armidale, and finally the tour continued on to campuses in Sydney.

The first two "Harpo's Nite Out/s" coincided with the publishing of a tabloid newspaper called, "HARPO: The Alternate Organ." A pile of these newspapers is seen stacked up in front of the spare tyre (tire) in the back of the HARPO van at 3:51, awaiting distribution during the tour.

Local Brisbane band, SILAS FARM, played before the regular headliners, the Laurence Brown Troupe and MACKENZIE THEORY at later Harpo's Nite Out concerts in 1973.

Harpo's Nite Out drew inspiration from Foco, a legendary, multi-media, cultural event started by radical unionists and students held on Sunday nights in Brisbane's Trades Hall in 1968 and 1969. Harpo's Nite Out, in turn, inspired the 4ZZZ Joint Effort, popular concert events showcasing emerging rock bands, organized by independent radio station 4ZZZ-FM in the mid 1970s as their main fundraising activity.

HARPO worked "organically" in a loose organizational structure with the attitude "we can do anything"......and they did. In June, 1972, HARPO took over the running of Wholefoods Organic Food Co-op in Milton Road, and for a time the running of Mr. Natural's Food Kitchen, a vegetarian restaurant on Schonell Drive near the university. HARPO headquarters were flats in an old house behind the Toowong library where Bomber Perrier and Graham Cathcart lived.

"Laurence Brown" developed the guerrilla street theatre troupe, the Harpo Super heroes with Steel Sheila, Wonder Wombat, Zap Crapper , Laughing K. Kookaburra, et al. One of the Super heroes (Bomber Perrier) managed to convince the iconic American beat poet, Allen Ginsberg, to do a concert of readings in Brisbane before returning to the US after the Adelaide Festival. Ginsberg appeared with visiting Russian poet, Andrei Vosnesensky. The Super heroes crashed their own press conference, and Ginsberg reportedly loved this because it reminded him of the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

HARPO made a two-hour radio program called "The Whole Earth Radio Show" for the ABC, which was produced in the broadcaster's conveniently-located Toowong studios right near HARPO "headquarters".

This film is dedicated to Graham's memory. Also to the spirit of those times as the younger generation emerged from the oppressive conservatism and restricted thinking of post-war Australia.

Wednesday, January 01, 2014

The Lorax (1972)



At the far end of town where the Grickle-grass grows/and the wind smells slow and sour when it blows/and no birds ever sing, excepting old crows/is the street of the lifted Lorax.