boredom is always counter-revolutionary

so, i have mostly been researching and writing the paper i introduced in the last post. i’ve probably aimed to cover a little too much ground and have become reductive in my historical reasoning: the great exhibition and victorian events have become characterised as introducing the age of the commodity and consumerism (cf walter benjamin); the post-war daily mail ideal home exhibitions have come to represent the reproduction of safe, quietly aspirational middle-class values and the associated commodity-fetishism; and the involvement of alison and peter smithson may have interrupted the established aesthetic, but failed to change the fundamental principles of how future domestic life could be conceptualised. the house of the future, then, serves to widen the scope of which areas of domestic life are subject to spectacular, commodified relations, producing a meta-commodity of the home. if anyone would like to read the finished thing, i could post that up at a later date. but first, i need to visit this!

in other news, i’m looking forwad to seeing this if it plays anywhere near me. i hope it will be more than some sort of spoof. i really enjoyed both gummo and julien donkey-boy and its a shame that harmony korine gets so weighed down by all the hipster associations. theres a lot more to his films than, say, larry clark, on whom i gave up long ago. if nothing else, i’m sure this’ll be worth it just to see werner herzog in action again.

if anybody could tell me where i could watch this, I would be hugely thankful (my application for funding a dphil entitled “‘a lot to answer for’: british situationism since 1972″ went in last week).

also, check out my (potential) supervisor’s new journal, world picture. i am not ashamed to say that i am still impressed by swear-words in academic papers.

so that’s all. i’m sorry this has been kind of indulgent. i’ll come up with some fresh, biting cultural critique soon!

ps- check out this freecycle haul, someone had really given up the ghost (or should i say spectre?):