Hjartao Hamast

The image of icelandic kitsch six minutes in is the turn in this video: all the slow motion photography of landscape is problematized by this interlude: which is the “real” experience of Iceland? How is it problematic to sell your nation– to literally use it up– for the sake of its “realness”?

What does it mean to consume iceland as a cultural construct– natural, eerie beauty–when Iceland itself is literally being consumed by rising sea levels, a sinking economy, and its literalization– Alcoa’s mining and abuse on the island? Will a “woman” “know better”, “do better”? Could she? Death, according to Blanchot, held no terrors for him because he had already faced it as a child— is the “death” of a planet different or nation different?

Völuspá

This is the moment of propecy– the foretelling of failure and rebirth. The Volva (coincidence: so close to the latin “volver” “to turn”)–

Volva: Odin, you’re going down. I know you gave your eye for knowledge, but now….I want to talk to you about the first man and woman.  Every doom has an origin. And I take the long view of things….

Odin: ::blinks the good eye::

Volva: ::shifts uncomfortably near the fire:: I’ll take that as a yes.  You want to hear about your upcoming demise

Odin: …If you don’t mind.

Volva: I can tell you about dwarves, too. A whole catalogue!

Odin: If you must…There is the matter about the blameless god who will be slaughtered…..

Volva:: Yes. He will. And it will be because the Gods hate him. And you, you will do nothing. And you, you will die–attacked by a wolf while your comrades are fighting.

Odin: And…

Volva: .::gasps::

Odin:: :blinks:

Volva: And the world will burn up. It will end. Except it won’t–earth will rise again from the sea. And the two last survivors will start over again.

::blinks, gasps: Oh my god….it’s a DRAGON..it’s coming..for….::drops in a dead faint::

Odin: ::looks around::

In the original text, the narrative ends with the Volva seeing a dragon approaching— even after the end of the Gods, there’s an end of the world. Even after the end of the structuring mythic narrative  and the foretelling of another world, in which the God is superfluous– such is the virtue and plenty—that will also face– at the very least— disaster. The failure of these myths is acknowledged from the outset– which is for me part of their power– the system is never total, there is no need attempt to think, however frustratedly, beyond the outside of the text and the system (like in Hegel, for example): the outside is already there, threatening the errupt into the chaos that the myth barely contains. The narrative breaks, resists closure–the speaker (Volva) is seized by her vision and can no longer speak. There is some speculation that the Ragnarok satisfied the need to make sense of the frequent volcanic eruptions in Iceland.

Wagner used the idea of Ragnarok in Gotterdammerung. One wonders how we will cope with this end of a world– the end of the Masters of the Universe (Tom Wolfe).

Experience, Economy

Iceland Tourism Board’s charming production with epic music and repeated, bizarre claims about “purity” and “radiant energy” as affective experiences available through Iceland.

Blogging the revolution that won’t be televised?

The Icelandic Government has Collapsed… and then what? – A Letter from Icelandic Anarchists

Riot Police doused in Skyr-- the very Icelandic dairy product Colbert denounced!

Quotes:

“The Icelandic Government has collapsed and some people talk about a revolution. In a way it is true. Ordinary people overthrew this neoliberal government by writing articles, holding speeches, noise demonstrations, bonfires, car horns, direct action, civil disobedience and minor sabotage. A nation that before had hardly put up any resistance to abuse of power for a long time, finally stood up and said: “No thanks! No more shit!”

And yet…

“These ideas [that one of the parties or a coalition of parties more liberal than the recent neo-cons in power can do good]  have one thing in common, they are all based on the idea that reforms inside the current system are steps in the right directions, steps towards a more just society. They do not demand radical changes – revolution. Therefore it is strange to see people standing on Austurvöllur (the square in front of the parliament) shouting slogans like “Long live the revolution!” – no revolution has taken place apart from the fact that the government has collapsed.”

Gil Scott Heron’s words come back to me as I think about the possibility of revolution in the experience economy– what would an electrate revolution look like, anyways?  That Gil Scott Heron’s words are no longer literally true makes me as sad as realizing that about a third of my music collection is electronic–not even a pretense of a human artist in the sense it’s usually meant.

more about “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised-…“, posted with vodpod

Colbert on Iceland or, Has anyone got change for a paradigm?

Stephen Colbert: On the disaster in Iceland

Highlights, because I can’t get the video to embed properly:

“Yes, they may have free health-care, a 99.9% literacy rate, and more clean, renewable energy per capita than any country in the World, but [dramatic pause] they also eat skyr.” 

Although overlooked in the economic armageddon of late, one of the more interesting facets, for me, of the meltdown has been the ways in which gender and sexuality have, somehow worked their way to the fore. 

A probability map for electrons in a Hydrogen atom

As the “Stephen Harper” quip in the clip may indicate, there is something about socialism that is read, satirically or otherwise, as effeminate: to fail to perform or enact free-market capitalist policies is to “be” a real “man” (or woman, if we’re buying into Butler’s arguments that discrete genders are intelligible when one presumes a heteronormative matrix). I wonder what it will mean to be “gay” or “straight” or “Icelandic” or “American” when so much of our time online problematizes notions of time, place, and “self”/”being”/”interiority”: just look the jurisdictional morass opened up by trying by taxing online activities- or only gambling:

“… categories equal metaphysics: what is real, and hence what constitutes problems and solutions, are relative to the apparatus. Or, as Thomas Kuhn said about paradigm shifts, a new paradigm does not solve problems of the old paradigm, it just makes those problems irrelevant” (Ulmer, Electronimc Monuments, 99).

If identity politics are  vexed by this new apparatus  (online, no body knows you’re a robot, a tomato, or a node in the worlds largest fungus), then why is gender/sexuality asserting itself again and again in American representations of this country’s meltdown? Why does this help us mythologize this disaster in a way that’s useful to us? And what kind of “use” are we looking to derive from it?

Wonkette : Iceland, The Country, Basically Gives Up

Wonkette : Iceland, The Country, Basically Gives Up

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World Economies are not as well marked as the Cliffs of Moher