[spectre] Variant, issue 21

Fri Nov 5 14:17:35 CET 2004

From: www.variant.org.uk <variant at ndirect.co.uk>

Variant, issue 21 Winter 2004
http://www.variant.org.uk

...the free, independent, arts magazine. In-depth coverage
in the context of broader social, political & cultural issues.

* Variant  21 Winter 2004 complete issue
   text   http://www.variant.org.uk/21texts/issue21.html
   pdf   http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue21/Variant21.pdf

* Front cover: Paul Bommer [ http://www.paulbommer.com ]
   pdf   http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue21/cover21.pdf

* Editorial
   A cultural complaint
Variant has been asked to account for itself by the Office of the Scottish Charities Register, following a complaint about the alleged 'political' nature of the magazine. Variant offers the following statement of our position:
   text   http://www.variant.org.uk/21texts/editorial.html
   pdf   http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue21/edtorial21.pdf

* An Open Account of Variant
   David Bellingham
Artist's page
Bellingham offers up a reading of Variant's income and expenditure, from the minutiae of rolls of parcel tape to the often overlooked necessity of housing benefit.
   pdf   http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue21/account.pdf

* Mr Hebbly Goes to Town
   Metaphrog
A pan-seasonal tale of psychological battering, the relentless high street toil of Christmas present.
   text   http://www.variant.org.uk/21texts/metaphrog.html
   pdf   http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue21/meta.pdf

* Extracting the Michael
   Tom Jennings [ http://www.tomjennings.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk ]
This discussion of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 refuses simple distinctions between serious document and entertainment in assessing how the film can be seen as a wind-up.  "Is Moore taking the piss, pissing in the wind, or just full of piss and wind?"
   text   http://www.variant.org.uk/21texts/moore911.html
   pdf   http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue21/moore911.pdf

* Notes on Human Rights Watch
   Macdonald Stainsby
Starting from a candid interpretation of its web offerings, Stainsby unveils HRW as an arrant apologist for imperialism in a long awaited discrediting of the human rights organisation's alleged ideological autonomy.  "The ideology of HRW ... is like the pane of glass you don't see, but which really determines the appearance of what you are looking at."
   text   http://www.variant.org.uk/21texts/HRW.html
   pdf   http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue21/HRW.pdf

* The Case of Argentina: Recuperated Factories and the Multitude
   Derek Merrill
The poster child of neo-liberalism, during the 1990s Argentina equated the peso to the dollar, privatized public resources while cutting social services; businesses profited mightily.  In December 2001, the economy imploded.  Merrill poses "...possible strategies of refusal and of production through the models Argentina has offered us to think about capitalism, social organization, and the recuperation of space."
   text   http://www.variant.org.uk/21texts/Argentina.html
   pdf   http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue21/argentina.pdf

* Next on the Left or 'What good is a map if you know the way?'
   Tim Stott
A testing of Bourriaud's (co-director and curator, Palais de Tokyo, Paris and author of 'Relational Aesthetics') claims that topocritical art aims to "encourage a 'democracy of viewpoints', a polyculture of the imagination [in opposition to] the monoculture of information", through a brief excursion into the histrory of Western European cartographic practice.
   text   http://www.variant.org.uk/21texts/nextleft.html
   pdf   http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue21/nextleft.pdf

* On the Night Shift
   From Lynndie England to Copper Green
   Mike Small
"...the US has exempted itself from international war crimes, and acts as a rogue state with Blair and cohorts...  What we have seen is the descent into barbarism... We need to learn real lessons from what happened in Iraq, about the collapse of legal structure, the impotence of parliament, the moral bankruptcy of the Labour government and the inadequacies of the anti-war movement..."
   text   http://www.variant.org.uk/21texts/nightshift.html
   pdf   http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue21/nightshift.pdf

* "A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk
    Along the briny beach"
   Govanhill Baths Trust
An update of the developments in the forced closure of Govanhill Baths by Glasgow City Council against the express desires and needs of the community.  Another under-reported episode in the ongoing neoliberal attack on public facilities and public space in the name of 'regeneration'.
   text   http://www.variant.org.uk/21texts/baths.html
   pdf   http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue21/baths.pdf

* Bad News from Israel
   An expose of dishonest media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict
   Jean Shaoul
A review of Glasgow University Media Group's new book, a study which set out to empirically research the main TV news coverage in Britain of the Israel-Palestine conflict and in so doing exposed the dishonest role the media plays in distorting the conflict and misinforming the public.
   text   http://www.variant.org.uk/21texts/badnews.html
   pdf   http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue21/badnews.pdf

* 'Blair's Wars'
   Phil England
England acknowledges Kampfner's book "exposes the central folly at the heart of No. 10", but goes much further in questioning and exposing, war-by-bloody-war, Kampfner's factual, analytical and contextual omissions in Blair and his advisers taking the UK to war five times in six years.  "It's odd there's barely a mention of the 'O' word in Kampfner's book."
   text   http://www.variant.org.uk/21texts/blairswars.html
   pdf   http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue21/blairswars.pdf

* Supplement: Document 2
   International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival
http://www.variant.org.uk/Doc2.html

-----------------------------
ADVERTISING 2005

Variant, 22, Winter / Spring 2005 distributed from:
Wednesday 12th January

The copy deadline:
Monday 20th December

For details of advertising in the magazine please see:
http://www.variant.org.uk/ads.html
Download overview of advertising info as pdf at:
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/adpdfs/AdRate+Tech.pdf

To advertise call Paula Larkin
Advertising & Marketing on: +44 (0)141 333 9522
or email: variant at ndirect.co.uk

ISSUE 22, Winter / Spring 2005
Advertising Copy Date:
Monday 20th December
Publication Date:
Wednesday 12th January
Covers:
January to April

ISSUE 23, Summer 2005
Advertising Copy Date:
Friday 22nd April
Publication Date:
Wednesday 11th May
Covers:
May to August

ISSUE 24, Autumn / Winter 2005
Advertising Copy Date:
Friday 26th August
Publication Date:
Wednesday 14th September
Covers:
September to December

-----------------------------
EVENT

'This is Serbia Calling'

Wednesday 1st December
7pm onwards, free, CCA upstairs bar
350 Sauchiehall St., Glasgow, G2 3JD
(bar open throughout)

Radio B92 was the former Yugoslavia's premier underground radio station under the rule of Slobodan Milosovic and during the wars in the Balkans.  Treated as traitors and subversives, they were repeatedly forced off the airwaves by the government, but managed to keep broadcasting until Milosevic was overthrown.
Does the advent of digital radio and the internet signal an end to state censorship of the media...?
Can a radio station be an effective model of resistance to repression...?

*Film screening
'See You in the Next War' (with intermission)
Doug Aubrey, Glasgow-based film maker, will screen his two-part documentary of Radio B92's struggle.
*Discussion
To discuss B92's impact and legacy are: Matthew Collin, author of 'This is Serbia Calling'; Doug Aubrey, Glasgow-based filmmaker of 'See You in the Next War'; Gordan Paunovic of B92; Derek Holzer of YOUR MACHINES (tbc).
*Book Launch
Launch of the 2nd edition of Matthew Collin's book 'This is Serbia Calling: Rock 'n' Roll Radio and Belgrade's Underground Resistance'
*DJ
Live DJ set from Belgrade's best-known, B92's Gordan Paunovic

http://www.b92.net
http://www.autonomi.tv
http://www.serpentstail.com
http://www.yourmachines.org

-----------------------------
* A fully accessible archive of back issues is freely
available at the Variant web site:
http://www.variant.org.uk

* Newsprint Magazine Subscription details can be found
at:
http://www.variant.org.uk/subs.html

Variant
1/2, 189b Maryhill Road
Glasgow, G20 7XJ
Scotland, UK
t/f: +44(0)141 3339522
variant at ndirect.co.uk
http://www.variant.org.uk

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