#compromise – @nickkahler on Tumblr

Political tribalism didn’t start with public art and won’t be solved by public art. But if we can’t use it to work out a vocabulary of compromise, a language of productive disagreement, then all the controversy will have been a waste. Public art won’t save democracy, but it may at least remind us how easy democracy is to lose.

Cinqué Hicks, "Living Walls and the Perils of Public Space," 2013

#cinque hicks #quote #politics #tribalism #political tribalism #public art #vocabulary #art #language #compromise #agreement #disagreement #democracy #waste #architecture #creative destruction

nickkahler

If the land is the site of life and culture, of community and nation, then “unland” would be its radical negation. a poetic neologism it implicitly retracts the promises contained in its linguistic kin "utopia," the no-place of an imagined, alternative future. Thus far from embodying the imagination of another and better world, unland is the obverse of utopia, a land where even "normal" life with all its contradictions, pains, and promises, happiness and miseries has become unlivable.

Andreas Huyssen, "Doris Salcedo's Memory Sculpture" from Present Pasts, 2003

#present pasts #andreas huyssen #doris salcedo #memory #sculpture #art #unland #community #site #life #promise #utopia #no-place #normal #compromise #pain #happiness #misery

nickkahler

We don't believe in the star system. We want the focus to be on the music. If we have to create an image, it must be an artificial image. That combination hides our physicality and also shows our view of the star system. It is not a compromise. We're trying to separate the private side and the public side. It's just that we're a little bit embarrassed by the whole thing. We don't want to play this star system thing. We don't want to get recognized in the streets. Yes. Everyone has accepted us using masks in photos so far, which makes us happy. Maybe sometimes people are a little bit disappointed but that's the only way we want to do it. We think the music is the most personal thing we can give. The rest is just about people taking themselves seriously, which is all very boring sometimes.

Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk, "Do You Think You Can Hide from Stardom," 1997

#thomas bangalter #daft punk #quote #stardom #fame #celebrity #music #image #artificial #compromise #privacy #public #private #boring #people

nickkahler

Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools — intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it — this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life. On this foundation we may build bread winning, skill of hand and quickness of brain, with never a fear lest the child and man mistake the means of living for the object of life.

W. E. B. Du Bois, "The Talented Tenth" in Opposition to Booker T. Washington's 1895 Atlanta Compromise, 1903

#quote #civil rights #segregation #equality #w.e.b. du bois #booker t. washington #atlanta #georgia #compromise #politics #culture #sociology