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Variant No. 1

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This issue supported by: Scottish Arts Council GCC Culture & Leisure Services Inverleith House, Edinburgh AK Press / RIB Document 6, Glasgow Critical Network Star & Shadow, Newcastle Mute magazine Product magazine Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen MA Activism & Social Change, Uni of Leeds GI - Glasgow International Space Station 65, London DAS, Belfast EIPCP Art & Research journal The Glasgow School of Art
Associated Events:
Everyone's at it! - The Rentier Economy and the Morality of the Cultural Industries A talk by Jeremy Valentine Thurs 17 April 2008, STUC, Glasgow More information here
RIB - Radical Independent Book-fair project, Glasgow www.ribproject.org
Document : International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival Call for submissions www.docfilmfest.org.uk
Beyond Social Inclusion : Towards Cultural Democracy The Cultural Policy Collective pdf print version
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Variant 31 Spring 2008

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Front cover
Hrafnhildur (Rafla) Halldorsdottir

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myspace.com/hrafnhildur_rafle_rafla

Express Yourself!
Anna Dezeuze
...reviews Keri Smith's 'The Guerilla Art Kit' and 'Learning to Love You More' by Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July, publications that "share two crucial characetistics: a focus on small interventions within the fabric of everyday life and an emphasis on selfexpression", with Dezeuze addressing "a problematic cuteness and sentimentality".

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Miraculous Mass-communication: Radioballet by LIGNA
Exercises on Adhocracy participants in a workshop on ‘Collectives, Actions, Re-enactments’, held in Estonia, discuss the Radioballet action - a co-ordinated performative action responding to the privatisation of public space - and consider its impact. Apprehensive of the ethics of collective action after the traumas of Communism, the speakers reveal the limits of expressing solidarity in the absence of material and reciprocal relationships.

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www.publicpreparation.org

Radical Popular?
Stefan Szczelkun
A highly personal review of of Duncan Reekie's book 'Subversion: the definitive history of underground cinema' bringing into question an institutional framework that is "'fundamentally resistant to cultural democracy".

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Faceless: Chasing the Data Shadow
Manu Luksch & Mukul Patel
"With an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in place, [the UK's] inhabitants are the most watched in the world." Insights into the process of making 'Faceless', a sci-fi film utilising Data Protection requests from CCTV systems. Exposing first-hand experiences, the makers detail the many different types of replies they received to their subject access requests made under the Data Protection Act; explaining the general confusion of many data controllers, how so many CCTV systems are not functional and why the process of obtaining images became much more difficult from 2004...

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CSI: The Big Sleazy
Tom Jennings
A truly seminal review of James Lee Burke’s noir thriller 'The Tin Roof Blowdown': "The first major work of popular fiction dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrin, which devastated New Orleans on 29th August 2005, Blowdown demonstrates both the possibilities and problems of attempting to tell the truth through drama – from a writer who does “not trust people who seek authority and control over other people...”

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http://www.tomjennings.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

Back to the Future of the Creative City:
An Archaeological Approach to Amsterdam’s Creative Redevelopment
Merijn Oudenampsen
"The dominance of entrepreneurial approaches to city politics is the feature of a new urban regime, labelled the ‘Entrepreneurial City’. With origins in the reality of neoliberal state withdrawal from urban plight ... the claims of the new creative city as being a ‘great equalizer’ actually appear as the opposite; it is based on functional inequality. Now let’s take a closer look at the city..."

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Reclaiming the Economy
Owen Logan
An intense, critical review of 'Reclaiming the Economy, Alternatives to Market Fundamentalism in Scotland and beyond'. "The market’s abstraction of power, which has the effect of smothering needs with frivolous wants, leaves anyone interested in real transparency or in the co-determination of the economy with the difficult question of where to begin?" Logan's depth of interest helps unpick it, analysing the book's contributors' critical grasp of the state and their alternatives...

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Lenin Reloaded... and engaged in friendly fire?
Benjamin Franks
'Lenin Reloaded: Towards a Politics of Truth' "... is Lenin a sufficient counter to the postmodern malaise regretted by the editors? The eloquent essay by Terry Eagleton suggests that rather than being a counterpoint to postmodernity, Lenin embraces some of its key features..."

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Resisting New Labour’s ‘hard labour’
Work and ‘Wreckers’ in the Welfare Industry
Alex Law & Gerry Mooney
Drawing on the detailed research of their book ‘New Labour/Hard Labour? Restructuring and Resistance Inside the Welfare Industry’, the writers draw "attention to some of the many ways in which welfare workers are being adversely affected by the restructuring of the welfare state and, more importantly, how they are resisting New Labour in new and significant ways."

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Of bread and caviar
Colin Gavaghan
... reviews 'From the Womb to the Tomb: Issues in Medical Ethics' . "It is part of the ethicist’s role to challenge sacred cows and shibboleths, and egalitarianism should receive no exemption from that treatment. Even the most progressive advocate of distributive justice would do well to revisit his/her first principles from time to time, to ask what equality means ... and why it is valuable."

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Artist's Page by Stuart Murray www.stuartmurray.co.uk
supported by www.glasgowinternational.org

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