Test Society

Making Energy Invisible

dementine — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:20:45 +0000

Making energy invisible, once more: see Renault’s new ad titled “L’électricité pour tous est là” (“Electricity for all is here”, more stuff in English here). Alternate title: “Externalizing pollution, courtesy of the electric car”. And now, have a nice day!

Lest We Forget

metatester — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:56:10 +0000

We live in the Age of Enron, Thomas Frank remind$ us.

Components of increasingly frequent scandals as per the Enron template, to wit:

“relentless hostility to regulate”,
“capture of the private sector’s oversight mechanisms”,
“distinctively truculent culture of the trading floor”
“a sort of unconscious journalistic perversity”,
“we will not get it” and “convince ourselves that these terrible things happened to us because markets are not free enough“.

Banking crisis, anyone?

Quick Summer Report

typewritten — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 18:27:30 +0000

Yesterday evening, members of the Test Society saw and heard Laurie Anderson making fun of the invasion of cupcake shops in New York City and of the transformation of ideas into clever arm movements in front of a microphone. She is right.

Worth Reminding

metatester — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 13:57:51 +0000

It’s you vs. the corporations. No, really.

Oops

metatester — Tue, 24 May 2011 10:11:41 +0000

Spanish left-leaning voters punish mightily ruling PSOE government by hitting themselves in the head with a huge hammer. Punishment and ensuing democratic headache is expected to last for at least four years. Most welfare state arrangements are expected to end much sooner.

Spanish revolutionaries can’t make up their minds whether they want the Spanish Senate to disappear, or control tax havens and financial transactions, thereby changing a letter, from “m” to “b”, in the public revenue figure, and the whole bloody global political economy with it.

Spain

typewritten — Fri, 20 May 2011 09:39:03 +0000

Flash report: apparently, there is a revolution in Spain.

The Third Floor

typewritten — Wed, 18 May 2011 07:23:58 +0000

“The Third Floor: Free Speech Zone” is an exhibition curated by Arteco in collaboration with the International University College Student Association in Turin. Recommended.

Well Said, Spin

metatester — Thu, 12 May 2011 20:33:39 +0000

“[...] A lot of people think we were facing our last century as a viable civilization, maybe even as a species. Global warming, overpopulation, the death of the seas, the loss of arable land, the proliferation of disease, the threat of nuclear or biological warfare…”
“We might have destroyed ourselves, but at least it would have been our own fault.”
“Would it, though? Whose fault exactly? Yours? Mine? No, it would have been the result of several billion human beings making relatively innocuous choices: to have kids, drive a car to work, keep their job, solve the short-term problems first: When you reach the point at which even the most trivial acts are punishable by the death of the species, then obviously, obviously, you’re at a critical juncture, a different kind of point of no return.”
Robert Charles Wilson, Spin.

Getting Used

typewritten — Sun, 01 May 2011 11:22:14 +0000

What does it take for France to get used to fascist junk? Claude Guéant, France’s minister of the interior, provides some help whit that question: “French people have the feeling that uncontrolled migratory flows change their environment, they are not xenophobic but they want France to remain France” (“Claude Géant: Les Français veulent que la France reste la France”, Le Monde, 15 March 2011, linked in “A Paris, Le FN défile ‘en l’honneur des travailleurs’”, Le Monde, 1 May 2011). But what about the French people who do not have that feeling at all? Easy: they are not truly French.

Salt

typewritten — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 10:17:20 +0000

Another plug: Clara Montoya (more here) will be displaying an important piece (of salt and wood 49 x 49 x 180 cm) also in Madrid at Galería Marta Cervera (vernissage tomorrow).