Although I live in the NE, lots of interesting things have happened in the NW, SW, SE of the DC.
Acronyms haven't been common for me in the past. Now I live in a place where everyone comes from everywhere and MIK (more in the kitchen), and ITB (in the barn) no longer are used but rather PTFO, LMFAO, FML, JB....etc. IGO, UN, UNDP and the list goes on. I feel left out because I was not given a dictionary for these 'short-speak' terms.
Above is a picture of (L-R) JB friend, me, Ambassador to Costa Rica(former president's daughter), and my Ukrainian/Chicagoan roommate. This adventure to the Costa Rican Embassy was for their Independence Day Parade Celebration. (Technically I was in Costa Rica for a couple of hours.)
My connection was through soccer of course. Having been recruited to the Kick Tease team by a guy in a law program at Georgetown University with a majority of international lawyers in it. One of the lawyers was Costa Rican and invited us to this event.
Food, dancing, meeting people, learning about a culture, I have never been to, completely excited my roommate and me to the point where we needed to check out other embassy events. However it seemed that the non-'third-world', non-'south', tended to be more expensive than we were willing to pay. And our research still needs to extend to the Senegalese, Sierra Leonean, Argentine, and other embassies.
Weekend adventures have proved promising. Karaoke in Alexandria, Festival on H Street in the NE, exploring, and meeting new people all falls into what I wanted to discover about a big city.
Paper or Plastic? Consuming or producing? Post-modern or Altermodern?
Today with global capitalism each sector of the world has been introduced into a digital world at the same time, rather than going through an agricultural, industrial, and then technological process that has lead to this digital new media era. Now the 20 yr old generation has grown up with a sense of the same technology and ability of that new media.
In the next few generations students around the world will hopefully be experiencing the same amount of access to the new technologies. Due to this spread of materialism and products and the consumption of these products, our world has interconnected itself through the trading of those products - creating (of course) a circle.
However, capitalism has seemed to have taken a hit from "dematerialization" the new technology seems to enforce. Without a product to sell there is no consumption of that product unless of course one has changed the essence of that product to what was materialistic to a new conceptual and 'altermodern' product, but the question is can these still be sold? or is everything up for grabs? Ideas, beliefs, time, ..or knowledge. The amount of information on the net void is infinite, the amount of credible information of the net is questionable. But Nicolas Bourriaud explains in the ending pages of his book The Radicant, that locations seem to take a huge toll in validity or legitimacy of art and knowledge. As a 'semionaut' in order to lead your audience down a path of progressiveness concepts and ideas you need art to embody the signs and visual, or audio, representations that will direct the world to understand what will be. The signs do not necessarily have an end, and obviously the journey is the art or the answer, rather than the destination, but Bourriaud is trying to express that these projects are merely "dots upon a moving line" where our contribution is shared with everyone in the world simultaneously and access is infinite, therefore making it never-ending.
"The quality of an artist's work depends on the richness of his or her relations with the world and these are determined by the economic structure that more or less powerfully shapes them -- even if, fortunately every artist theoretically has the means to evade or escape that structure."
A good artist is a "net citizen" for the media void which serves us and is there for us to spit anything into it. Although, the responsibility a net citizen has is to guide those within to sincere intellectual place of knowledge or interest. But there will always be citizens who are irresponsible.
This is NOT the Altermodern stage yet because everyone does NOT have equal access to technological void of knowledge in which everyone must be apart of to have an altermodern society, but are we close?
Sometimes people choose not to be apart of that society does this make impossible to be the altermodern society?No as long as the option is there, people NOT choosing it cannot prevent from societal changes to occur. One can chose to be ignorant and sometimes some people cannot handle the truth, so it is a practical precaution to choose not to participate as a 'net citizen' in this void where knowledge can be infinite (at least for the human's finite brain).
Do Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga fall under the same spotlight as Klaus Nomi. New wave music is a hard thing to uphold alone, so does one create another personality in order to manage, and is this necessarily the best way to manage the fame?
Do you even sell yourself then or is it just your character? Is this what celebrities tell themselves?
In the heat of the era, Klaus Nomi found himself in search for the spotlight, attention, that is positive attention. Sometimes such fragile characters cannot be celebrities, or else they end up putting up a wall, or in Klaus's case, a mask and a costume. Drama to the 'poppest' degree. Upholding this new wave music along with others can be detrimental to your health, because it becomes more than just exploring a new medium, but commericalizing that medium and in a way 'selling yourself' to that medium.
Musicians who try and change their sound sometimes, in fact most times, end up with negative and very critical reviews. A musician become strapped in that medium, and the public interest or opinion controls their creative growth and restricts these musicians from diverting from what the public likes. In the Nomi documentary his performances seems painfully repetitive, not just for the audience, but for him.
The public's restricitons on artistic creativity are painful but necessary to have the ability to do any art at all. Money becomes the root of noticable art.
Klaus Nomi's story dug deep into the profession of being a celebrity and the effect it has on human beings minds. His origins were more interesting and made his story even sadder when one discovers that his profession was founded on such a pure and classic medium; opera.
"You can completely reinvent yourself" (quote at the end of Nomi documentary)
Before one is a celebrity, one creates an identity for this celebrity, that they plan to become, that is recognizable, consistant, and hides all human aspects of the one who plays that celebrity.
Klaus began to 'detach himself'. I think Klaus became lost in his costume identity and all human aspects had almost been forgotten, except when he visited his aunt (or his past), and when he was acknowledging his disease.
Although I live in the NE, lots of interesting things have happened in the NW, SW, SE of the DC.
Food, dancing, meeting people, learning about a culture, I have never been to, completely excited my roommate and me to the point where we needed to check out other embassy events. However it seemed that the non-'third-world', non-'south', tended to be more expensive than we were willing to pay. And our research still needs to extend to the Senegalese, Sierra Leonean, Argentine, and other embassies.
