First, thank you for your words… it reminds us that creativity might be the only option to de-escalate the insanity, to rise above, to implement our self-defense, and to reclaim the meaningful.

The darkest news came over the indy posts 2day… and it had absolutely nothing and everything to do with the meltdown and the financial crimes… the news of 2 shining sisters of other possible worlds were murdered:

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/09/26/18541460.php

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/09/30/18542023.php

The meditation on the relationships would be unbearably and inescapably deep were there not some combination of rage and sadness and repulsion that cracks open that space to imagine the necessary new art forms to become real again in the face of all the simulated manipulations and actual murderous chaos.

Still processing this, and won’t have time to really complete these thoughts, but to begin:

This 2nd victim, Kirsten Brydum was the luminous organizer of an event called the Really Really Free Market ( a non-financial zone, a pure gift and barter place of interaction), and she was in New Orleans to spread the wealth of arts and praxis that arose in the few remaining groves of collective community in San Francisco, some little patch of free-thinking and still-caring people that had not yet been clearcut or driven out by the rising costs of living and the expansion of corporate cubicles and lifeless terminals.

That she encountered such a brutal and unjust collision in the vacuum left by Katrina and the merciless Neocon agendas, is something that in a holistic analysis appears directly attributable to the Bush/Cheney/Paulson economicon… the entire Republicrat escalation… of winner/loser (and racial) divides that you mention.

Meanwhile in the artworld mirror, Damien Hirst represents the pinnacle of commodified (and consolidated) object arts and its nadir of practical applications, perception value, and popular community empowerment. For us this should be the same 777 numerical sign, Art’s Black Monday, the same moment that sets the stage for the beginning of the new form, ( we call it Praxis Art) which seizes upon both the bigger picture and precise moments to physically and conceptually intervene, to turn the activities of our world left-side up.

Ten, twenty years, sure we can see that longview for all sorts of desires… But demanding tomorrow is liberated from the community shredder … and the shameless fuckers who would come propose to rape and pillage the same victims twice in less than a week… Art must have innumerable acts for disengaging ourselves from this flailing and deadly lunacy right now!

p.s. sorry if this went too far off on its own direction… don’t have the ability to squeeze it back into a container now.