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POINT OF VIEW
Fortunately this article D.I.Y Culture, by Michael Kimmelman, New York Times, caught my attention this morning amongst hundreds of impressions that I had already been exposed to before 7am. The cool image is courtesy of Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times.
I was lucky this article caught my attention when it did otherwise it would have disappeared into a bunch of haphazard morning activities (ordering coffee, texting, recalling ethereal thoughts as I woke up, checking email, reading news, checking voicemail, rescheduling meetings, organising a date for the weekend, deciding what to get my niece for her 2nd birthday, following up on a conversation about a deal I need to close this week) before actually looking at my official ‘to do list’ for the day.
Kimmelman is on point with his story and I like it (a lot). His story demonstrates clear insight and understanding into what culture truly is and highlights the “…forces of globalism that were expected to erode local cultures are helping to preserve them.”
FAVOURITE QUOTES (from the article)
“A generation or more ago, aside from what people did in their home or from what’s roughly called folk or outsider art, culture was generally thought of as something handed down from on high, which the public received.”
“..to restore civilization in West Germany by supporting a kind of ecosystem of small publishers and small bookstores to which, in certain small towns, trucks that delivered books to the bookstores overnight also delivered drugs to the drugstores: drugs for the body, books for the mind, a metaphor of recovery.”
“The myth of an avant-garde serves the same market forces avant-gardism pretends to overthrow..”, and “Art doesn’t actually overthrow anything except itself..”
“..culture identifies crucial ruptures, rifts, gaps and shifts in society”, and “..it helps reveal who we are to ourselves, often in ways we didn’t realize in places we didn’t necessarily think to look.”
“..Gazans, like that Swedish Ikea designer, made their own culture from the bricolage of global choices.”
“Hollywood and Broadway, the major museums and art fairs and biennials and galleries, buildings designed by celebrity architects and the music business are all the traditional focus of big media, and they tell us a lot about ourselves. They constitute our cultural firmament [sky]..” and indicates that “Most culture is dark matter.” not the stars (as ‘big media’ would suggest).
The image is courtesy of Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times.
THE TEST
When I read this article I thought it would be fun to see how long it would take to publish something from the moment I experienced it (while simultaneously waking up and preparing for a day of work). Basically, I read it on my iPhone (via Twitter feed) at around 6:30am and then published with a point of view by 9am (via Posterous).
THE HAND SHAKE
The “hand shake” mention in the heading relates to the wide variety of hand shakes that occur and how they differ from place to place. The hand shake is often the first formal exchange when two people meet (for the first time or each time) and it is interesting how formal exchanges like the hand shake are now shared with a ‘tweet and greet’.
Posted via email from MITESH SOLANKI
Mitesh Solanki 