<div> <div>Dude, I understood like every third word of that.  You segued into something about a... shark?  Since it's called "The Impossibility of Death In The Undeads Mind" or whatever, is this decomposing formaldehyde shark allied with the zombie marxists against the informal intellectuals of the north, or the persian prince of proletarian petty producers?  :D </div> <div> </div> <div>You say this fishtank was a joke at the expense of LPNs, electricians and kroger cashiers of the global north?  I don't think it bothered them too much- they never heard of it, along with anything else the left, intellectuals or artistes think of them.  What's neither here nor there is effing new left review turning into a artbabble nonsense journal by of and for the ivoryest of towers.  I'm not the brightest bulb in the barrell, but nlr is way past my capacities these days and the yoshiepedia's reach into contemporary postmodern art pieces for metaphors on why she prefers shantytown holy rollers to ohioan autoworkers for the coming rev is really stretching a bit.  Colorful tho.  </div> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">On 3/18/07, James Heartfield <<a href="mailto:Heartfield@blueyonder.co.uk">Heartfield@blueyonder.co.uk</a> > wrote: > we are not in a time of social revolution On 3/18/07, Jim Straub <<a href="mailto:rustbeltjacobin@gmail.com">rustbeltjacobin@gmail.com</a>> wrote: > This historical period blows. Angel mentioned Julian Stallabrass about a month ago (at <<a href="http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20070219/003637.html">http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20070219/003637.html </a>>), which reminded me of Stallabrass's smart criticism of (the mind-bogglingly stupid art of the most overrated British conceptual art phenomenon) Damien Hirst in New Left Review: "In and Out of Love with Damien Hirst," New Left Review I/216, March-April 1996, <<a href="http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/people/stallabrass_julian/essays/HIRST.pdf">http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/people/stallabrass_julian/essays/HIRST.pdf </a>>. In it he describes several of Hirst's pieces, among which is "a shark displayed in a large tank of formaldehyde, coupled with the title, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living."  What does the artist say about the shark?  Stallabrass quotes him: "not moving forwards . . . just moving."  The stupefying and stupefyingly expensive* shark (against the artist's plan) slowly decomposing in formaldehyde, "not moving forwards . . . just moving," is a fitting symbol -- or rather a joke at the expense -- of the workers and intellectuals of the North, which makes ours the age of neither here nor there. Who has a revolutionary potential in the age of neither here nor there?  Those who dwell in the informal sector, the space of neither here nor there, uprooted from the countryside but excluded from the most urbane cores of great cities, who are neither clearly wage workers nor definitely petty producers. *  <<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/arts/design/01voge.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/arts/design/01voge.html </a>> October 1, 2006 Art Swimming With Famous Dead Sharks By CAROL VOGEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Charles Saatchi, the advertising magnate and collector, had </blockquote></div>