M.A. in Human Rights and the Arts (Bard/OSUN)

[Thomas Keenan]

The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College is
accepting applications for Fall 2021 in its new M.A. in Human Rights
and the Arts. The program offers an advanced interdisciplinary
curriculum that takes stock of the growing encounter between human
rights and the arts, as fields of academic knowledge, professional
work, and political practice. We aim to stimulate new ways of thinking
about this intersection, to develop new strategies for research and
engagement, and to incubate new relationships between activists,
scholars, and artists.

We are looking forward to inaugurating the program with our first
class of students in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, in September 2021. There
is a May 1 priority application deadline and a June 15 final deadline.
Ample need-based financial aid is available to cover tuition and other
expenses.

Students will have considerable flexibility in designing their program
in order to meet their academic and professional goals and interests.
In addition to rigorous coursework combining core and elective
courses, students are expected to successfully present a
research-based academic thesis or artistic performance/installation as
their capstone project. The program is designed for full-time students
to complete the degree in two years. Our faculty is composed of a
powerful combination of internationally acclaimed artists, scholars,
and other professionals, anchored in an institution with strong
legacies in human rights and arts education and outreach.

Please visit https://chra.bard.edu/ma/overview/ for complete details
about the curriculum, application process, financial aid, and
frequently asked questions. Prospective applicants are welcome to
reach out with questions to me at keenan[at]bard.edu or hra [at]
bard.edu.

Details about the Open Society University Network (OSUN) are available
here: https://opensocietyuniversitynetwork.org/

- Tom Keenan
#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

Re: A Dead Professor Is Teaching an Art History Class

[Thomas Keenan]

"A dead professor Is teaching a university Art History class" - I'm sure
many students have felt this way even when the professor was standing right
in front of them.

On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 12:43 PM Keith Sanborn  wrote:

> And academics mostly get screwed on books too.
>
> > On Feb 1, 2021, at 12:10 PM, tbyfield  wrote:
> >
> > Sort of like a book.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Ted
> >
> >> On 1 Feb 2021, at 11:42, nettime's post-mortem slave wrote:
> >>
> >> How a Dead Professor Is Teaching a University Art History Class
> > <...>
> > #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
> > #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> > #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> > #  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
> > #  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
> > #  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
> #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
> #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> #  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
> #  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
> #  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

Fellowships in Human Rights and the Arts

[Thomas Keenan]

We are now welcoming applications for two fellowships at the new Open
Society University Network Center for Human RIghts and the Arts, based
at Bard College in New York.

We are searching for two one-year research and teaching fellows. The
positions are open to individuals working in a variety of fields where
human rights and the arts intersect, including artists, curators,
researchers, scholars, writers, filmmakers, advocates and activists.
The Center will award one Fellowship to a practitioner (artistic or
activist/advocate), and one to a researcher or scholar.  We recognize
that these categories are often blurry and encourage applications from
those who cannot in advance specify to which group they belong.

The fellowships cover a period of one year, i.e. two academic
semesters, from July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2022, and are supported
by a full-time salary and health benefits. The positions are based at
Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.  All materials must be received
by Friday, February 26, 2021.

More details are available at:

https://www.bard.edu/employment/descriptions/?id=4170236

https://jobs.chronicle.com/job/310935/osun-human-rights-and-the-arts-fellowships-for-ay-2021-2022-/

- Tom Keenan
#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

Re: Fwd: [thingist] The War Is Coming

[Thomas Keenan]

Always good to include info like author, translator, place of
publication, date, etc:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/translation-tuesdays-by-asymptote-journal/2017/jan/10/translation-tuesday-the-war-is-coming-by-jazra-khaleed

On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 6:01 PM  wrote:
>
> The War is Coming
>
> For Ghayath al-Madhoun and his million Arab poets
>
> 1.
> I decided to leave Syria the day a stray bullet passed in front of my eyes.
> That day I realized my homeland was not my homeland, my blood not my blood, 
> and
> my freedom belonged to a freedom fighter who didn't think to ask my permission
> before he shot me: a lack of courtesy we encounter often in war time.
>
> 2.
> If they are going to kill me, better to kill me in a foreign language.
>
> 3.
> On the road from Damascus to Berlin I met an old soldier from Dara'a who
> couldn't carry his nightmares anymore. I wrapped them and put them in my
> suitcase; at the airport I paid the fine for excess baggage.
>
> 4.
> Whoever is not afraid to cross the border carries the war on his back.
>
> 5.
> Swap your best shirt for a bulletproof vest, your poems for the first chapter
> of the Koran and your house in Athens for a throne atop Mount Aigaleo so you
> can survey from on high the coming war.
>
> 6.
> This war is trite and pedestrian, filled with similes and ornate adjectives,
> its history is written in the font Comic Sans, violence so limitless the war
> doesn't know where to put it, one grave for every thousand corpses, one shadow
> for every thousand survivors, it's an indelicate war, barrels vomiting
> explosives, steel cylinders filled with accessories for washing machines and
> car parts, the death that disseminates is an earthy death, this war is
> rightfully ours because in it we have buried all our loved ones.
>
> 7.
> On the 7th of January 2014, the United Nations stopped counting Syria's dead.
> This decision certified mathematics as the science of quality, not quantity, 
> of
> living labor, not shapes, of time, not space - in other words, mathematics is
> the science that studies the material relations among all countable objects.
>
> 8.
> By the end of 2015, according to Facebook, 311 friends of mine had died since
> the start of the war. I decided to shut down my account: death must have a
> beginning, middle, and end. I can't spend my life in its wake.
>
> 9.
> I, Ahmed, son of Aisha, although nothing more than a humble migrant, wish to
> apologize on behalf of the Syrians to Greek men and women for filling their
> televisions with our deaths as they eat their dinners and wait for their
> favorite shows, I wish to apologize to the municipal authorities for leaving
> our trash on their beaches and polluting their shores with tons of plastic, we
> are uncivilized and we have no environmental awareness, I wish to apologize to
> the hotel owners and tour operators for damaging the island tourist industry, 
> I
> wish to apologize for shattering the stereotype of the miserable migrant with
> our mobile phones and clean clothes, I wish to apologize to the coast guard 
> who
> have the thankless task of sinking our boats, to the police for standing in
> disorderly lines, to the bus drivers who have to wear surgical masks to 
> protect
> themselves from the diseases we carry, I also wish to make a most humble
> apology to Greek society for exceeding the capacity of their detention camps
> and for sleeping in their squares and parks - finally, I wish to apologize to
> the Greek government who had to request additional funds from the European
> Union in order to pay the purveyors who stock the detention camps, as well as
> the bus drivers, the police, the coast guard, the tour operators, the hotel
> owners, the municipal authorities, and the television stations.
>
> 10.
> "Don't worry," said the bullet, "I'll go in and out." I explained to her that 
> I
> couldn't allow it since when she left she was bound to take some of my 
> memories
> - like the face of the girl I loved in the fifth grade, the voice of the imam
> the first time my father took me to pray, the smell of the freshly baked bread
> in my grandmother's house, the fingers of my teacher as she taught me to write
> the word الحرب and Van Basten's final goal in the Euro of '88.
>
> 11.
> It's well known that no organization can buy arms on the black market without
> American authorization. This is one of the reasons I never managed to
> understand the difference between enlightenment and genocide.
>
> 12.
> If you don't want to be canon fodder, if you don't want the war to catch you
> with your pants down, put on that thinking cap, double down the class 
> struggle,
> get organized, triple down the class struggle, fight, fill your pockets with
> rocks, stick to your guns.
> Out with the Left!
> Bring back the Spartacists!
> Out with the NGO's!
> Bring back Garibaldi's brigades!
> Out with the Humanists!
> Bring back the Italian Autonomists!
> The slaughter is about to begin.
>
>
> 

Re: notes on cancel culture

[Thomas Keenan]

A graphic take on this topic:

https://twitter.com/elivalley/status/1286403685795405830/photo/1
https://www.instagram.com/p/CC_7UXrDHaA/

Eli Valley: "'Cancel Culture,' featuring the Portland Secret Police.
All the text in this drawing is taken from two sources whose vision,
strategies, and goals intersect: The Harper's Letter and the
President's speech at Mt. Rushmore."
#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

Re: Ideological Turks

[Thomas Keenan]

The original article is amusingly fuzzy about who or what is doing the
commenting.

http://ozonpress.net/politika/naprednjacka-strogoca-ko-ne-plati-clanarinu-do-ponedeljka-nek-se-spremi-za-smenu/

translation into googlish:

"From the report of a party official in charge of the Internet team (read
party bots), it could be heard that the SNS has 3,456 bots in charge of
lively comments on portals, websites, FB sites ... In a year, bots have
written about 10 million comments on 201,717 published news . Only 24 hours
ahead of the Executive Committee meeting through the SNS system passed
1,147 news that the party bots made over 43,000 comments. Vojvodina is the
leader when the activities of the SNS Internet team, The bots in question,
and the best among the best are the bots from the South Banat District."

On Sun, Dec 9, 2018 at 3:12 PM Morlock Elloi  wrote:

> Recently there was a leak from a fringe decaying country about numbers
> involved in poor man's version of social media manipulation. Having no
> access to control structures of network monopolies like the big guys,
> Serbian honchos had to resort to manual labor:
>
> In the last 12 months, about 3,500 workers were engaged (full time it
> appears) to inject pro-employer messaging, and they did quite well: 10
> million comments. Note that Serbia has population of about 8 million.
>
> See
>
> https://www.serbianmonitor.com/en/sns-sponsored-bots-made-10-million-comments-online/
>
> It works. They ain't being paid for nothing.
>
> Does this mean that there is a proportional number - around 3 million -
> of such workers worldwide? Probably not (I'd guess 1 million.) More
> developed countries (with far more expensive labor) likely pay only the
> elite liars, and do the rest by directly manipulating platforms from the
> inside (algorithm tweaking.) Efficient liar is not something that can be
> easily outsourced, because it's relatively easy to spot a cheap wetback
> from somewhere around the world telling you how bad or good something is.
>
> I think that even in developed countries the ruling classes are
> recognizing the limits of the combination of automata and few elite
> influencers, so there may be a real solution on the horizon for the
> dwindling job market. Instead of deploying the poor as cannon fodder or
> sex service for the rich, they can be employed as direct persuaders.
> There should be no stigma around this profession. The wages will be good
> enough for a decent living, and it even may help re-populating the
> middle classes. Many of your neighbors can be working as persuaders.
>
> This is far more preferable to the situation today, where elite liars
> (euphemisms like 'activists', 'social scientists', 'lecturers',
> 'speakers', 'critics' and such are used instead) work in combination
> with crude algorithms. Everyone knows that these are just liars and just
> machines. Even the workers know it deep down, which causes painful
> cognitive dissonance. It's dehumanizing on many levels. We don't need
> that. The next revolution will involve removing the stigma and making
> this a legitimate and compassionate mass-employment profession. The New
> Deal.
>
> Down with elites!
>
>
>
>
>
>
> #  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
> #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
> #  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
> #  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
> #  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
> #  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
>
#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:

Re: [spectre] the EU's first rogue state

[Thomas Keenan]

"A limited nuclear war" ... limited to whom?

On Aug 13, 2017 5:21 PM, "Morlock Elloi"  wrote:

The most likely way is a limited nuclear war where most of nuclear weapons
facilities are taken out and global population halved, but that's rather
unappealing.
#  distributed via : no commercial use without permission
#is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: