Isn’t Brum great? It looks like the world record for co ordinated Bhangra dancing was set this afternoon here in Birmingham! An event organised by the Hindu Council of Birmingham to celebrate Diwali, the Festival of Lights.

I am reliably told that more people danced in unison than ever has been done in India.

Images for sale are here

I went along to this rather strange but interesting event last night. As I know David  Miles, one of the main artists behind the piece, from BIAD I had heard his lectures and watched him working on this piece over quite a period. Obviously Revelation is of some importance to him; not just as a work of poetic and historic importance, but he may even, and from the show it seems more than may, take this strange piece of arcane scripture seriously.

The show was in St Martins a place well suited for a presentation such as this, giving atmosphere to the piece. The sound and visual quality of the presentation was technically wonderful. The main narration by Joss Ackland being the stand out feature, Certainly some thought has gone into the whole thing.

Unfortunately, for me at least, a new and unfamiliar translation of Revelation was used, giving rise to some strange and apparent out of place contributions from God, condemning “Drug Dealers” at one point to the Lake of Fire. I rather expected paedophiles and other such modern witches to get a mention.

The risible nature of Revelation itself should not put you off the fact that historically it is an important work. A real return to the God of the old testament, a bully, a thug and a creature completely void of anything approaching morality. Given the choice I would take the lake of fire any day over worshipping this horror!

David’s images are incredibly well done. Painstaking built up from “real” photographic images to create something half way between pre renaissance religious horror and the works of Indian classic art. God himself is pure light and every phrase in Revelation is interpreted with an exactness and no attempt at irony or subversion. David may have been having some of the same conversations with angels as others influenced by Revelation did in their Brixton back gardens!

For the believer in the Jesus of the CoE and the modern almost agnostic church this is an antidote. A real full on fire and brimstone vision of the true horrors at the heart of the Christian religion. A vision of a universe that is as depressing as anything I can imagine.

For the committed atheist and aesthete it is lacking some what in the poetry of the early translation but still worth a look.

It’s on to the end of the week and then goes on tour. I expect it to do really well in the southern states of the USA.

These

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

and the grand daddy of all crap image sites

are even giving away the images

We can bail out bankers and help out idiots with their “buy to let” get rich quick schemes; but brave men such as this are treated with disrespect by our lords and masters in the Labour government.

Whilst the tories who started the decline of this country with the dead years of Thatcherite nonsense now employ them to man their conference.

Pro-Imaging | { Current Diary | Rights, Competition, Proimag
The hundreds of photographic contest organised every year have always seemed a con to me. Entrants giving over all sorts of rights to images in exchange for the unlikely event of being mates with a judge and winning a prize!
I have often in the past taken up the issue with colleges who teach photographry and encourage students to enter these competitions with no thought for the consequences. However this bit of information shows how you can profit from competitions. Don’t enter them, run them. £180,000 profit, for a £20,000 investment..maybe these people should be running banks!

Freedom of Information - UK National Portrait Gallery

Photographic Portrait Prize 2007

Pro-Imaging
submitted a request  under the UK Freedom of Information Act to
obtain from the United Kingdom National Portrait Gallery specific
information about their Photographic Portrait Prize Competition 2007.
The Director of the National Portrait Gallery, Sandy Nairne,
subsequently provided the following information -

6072 Number of photographs entered

£92,206 Income from competition entrants fees

£79,561 Income from exhibition visitor fees (£1 each)

£33,811 Income from catalogue sale; 3651 catalogues sold

£6,438 Income from postcard and badge fees

£212,016 Total Income

£20,500 Total Prize Money Distribute

Hopefully this will mean that my postings may be read in China, but perhaps it means that I will be blocked! This would be a great compliment!

The “Wassup” plug in records all the hits and spider visits to the site. There were 27 spider vistits in 1 hour last night from Baidu.

Am I being paranoid, anybody know?

Lets hope so
here are some of the sites already blocked to journalsits in China despite the assurance given to win the games (and with the co operation of google)
FalunData
Falun Gong wiki
The Falun Gong site (they are mad but since when has being mad stopped a religion espousing its views?)

The Free Tibet Campaign

Dalai Lama website
Please do your best to spread the links and also to place the details on other servers that are not blocked if you know how.
Lets fuck up the Chinese fascist state by every method we have.

Morning Coffee, originally uploaded by troutmask.

25th July, 2008

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