International Urbanism


Difference makes being - Levi Bryant 

The notion of breath has a sense of logocentrism to it, of the sacred especially when you think of the pneuma in Plato's Crito.

A lot of us thank Joyce's Ulysses for the secular epiphany. The sacred especially in modernity ends up in the logical yet extreme conclusion of sacrifice. That's not only kenosis of the self but the sacrifice of others as the surrealist with Bataille considered seriously staging. 

International Urbanism - as distinct to John Kinsella's International Regionalism is far more pedestrian. The discourse of "glocalisation" as coined by Latour was conceived in era of economic globalisation prior to GFC and the ensuing policies, political theology and economic cipher of austerity from neocon religious influenced leaders. 

In a most secular way do I thank Pope Francis for currently being somewhat moderate and progressive Pope relatively in a context of media delineations and pontiffs on the right. Pontiffs I say because even though Political Correctness is portrayed as orthodoxy this doesn't ultimately wash as a falsity whereas neoconservative economics is increasingly questionable as no recovery was based on austerity. To my mind, voting Right is desiring one's own cuts to universal medicine, the loss of your job at Holden, the loss of welfare, the loss of a barrier reef. The neocon in Australia say, is correctly framed as leading with the mindset of being in opposition, and of no society/no science. I can't stand apologists for the right because the critiques I bring are no conspiracy but everyday talk. 

The Right have constructed a straw bugbear that doesn't exist and may well should they go back to reading and publishing as the left, though fractured, is in leadership mode whilst in opposition you could say - that is not a long bow to pull at all!

So to urbanism and internationalism. The streets, the music, the beat, pop culture, Beyonce and Badiou, Kool Keith and surrealism, Wycliffe Jean and polysemy, to hip hop, the basic progressivism of Gil Scott Heron to black panther re-emergence in gangsta. The questioning of black capital to black politics, Mos Def from the streets and influenced by something like a Chomskian world view yet unschooled in debate. So rather unfair that Christopher Hitchens debated a rapper. It's a mismatch. 

The difference fundamental in my work is the influence from hip hop. It's smooth rush, virtuosic killing jazz chop, it's rhythm. Not necessarily it's ideology, lifestyle, speculations, scientism or psychology, cognition as only about streets. Pop a cap, jailbird! There's urbanism and the cybersurface. It's the background of some of us, increasingly so. The breath of Persian poet Ali Abdolrezaei, and the street slur of the chicano, contemporary hip hop with quoting the 80s sound for the pop music historian....dirty ass latinos of Cypress Hill sound as well, drugged, recouped, coyote, flow...rhythm!

dance....it's another difference as opposed to shoegazing. then the degrees of dance, individual dance, couple dance, collective dance....it's ok to have your grandmother at a dance party but not in the Anglosphere!

the pneuma in the Crito is stellar and cold, fresh! Breath. The cold...'Alice Solomon, at 3 am, it cross the coldest lake...' thanks to at least hip hop can the cold be felt in temperature, to drugged or urban hypothermia.



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