11th International Istanbul Biennial and Berthold Brecht

"The 11th International İstanbul Biennial takes its title from the song 'Denn wovon lebt der Mensch?', translated into English as 'What Keeps Mankind Alive?'. The song closes the second act of the play The Threepenny Opera, written in 1928 by Bertolt Brecht, in collaboration with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill. Based on Brecht's assertion that 'a criminal is a bourgeois and a bourgeois is a criminal,' the play set out to revolutionise theatre as both an artistic form and a tool for social and political change. 'What Keeps Mankind Alive' will serve as a script for the exhibition––even a quick look at the lyrics discovers many possible themes, such as the distribution of wealth and poverty, food and hunger, political manipulations, gender oppression, social norms, double morality, religious hypocrisy, personal responsibility and consent to oppression, issues certainly 'relevant', almost predictable.

"It certainly seems that, seen from the dominant contemporary perspective(s), Brecht's Marxism and his belief in utopian potential and open political engagement of art all look a bit dated, historically irrelevant, in dissonance with this time of the crumbling of institutional Left and the rise of neoliberal hegemony. But the real question is, isn't this in fact symptomatic? Isn't the way in which Brecht is now 'forgotten' and 'unfashionable'—after his immense popularity in the 1960s and 70s and a smooth transformation into 'a classic'—precisely the indicator that something has gone wrong with contemporary society, and with the role of art within it?"

No. It isn't an indicator of anything except that Brecht and the Ottoman Empire are gone with the wind.

Ptolemy's Amazon Review of Alex Kuguschev's "Resilient America"

Optimism for America,

May 10, 2009

By	Themistocles G. Michos "Themis" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

I concur fully with the views of Reviewers LaCosse and Coleman. This is an important read for these times of uncertainty, often over-exuberant and wishful thinking optimism and aloof or undiscriminating pessimism. The values of the American nation are superbly and realistically endorsed. The author's knowledge of history and earlier critical writing on American culture is impressive. I came away thinking "I needed that," as any serious reader will. The author does not go deeply into the murkier areas of economic analysis or how the past might or might not be constitutive of the future given the enormous growth in American and world population and the new communications environment. Notwithtanding these minor objections, all in all, five stars for this splendid and timely writing.

Ptolemy's Amazon review of John Searle's "Philosophy in a New Century"

May 10, 2009:

At last, sanity from Berkeley,

May 10, 2009

By	Themistocles G. Michos "Themis" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

The author and I are about the same age. After years of strong immersion in contemporary art and tentative entry into Continental philosophical "thought," to be kind five percent of the latter being, after all, incisive and illuminating, I can turn to John Searle for clarity, reasoned argument, coherency and a feeling that after roiling in the surf there is a floor out there somewhere. I come away from each essay with a warm and secure feeling that I rarely find in "post-modern" philosophical writing, which consists of tired invocation or repetition of the times, long past, when it was hip to be protesting that the common people aren't getting a break or that meaningful communication is impossible. Would all those old, gray-haired confused obfuscators of Marx and Nietzsche and their frazzled ponytails just go away?