Detroit is of great interest.
Its a city in extreme decline, ghost town to thousands of magnificent structures and homes now in disrepair and decay. We recently read that unemployment in Detroit has topped 50%. The stresses on the people in Detroit are as bad as it gets in America.
Check this link out and watch the clip embedded on the home page. Its about a large ongoing art project involving an entire urban area. Very cool...
The Heidelberg Project
5 comments:
What the hell else is left but to as they say paint the town? Detroit is ground zero of the real economic policy of this country and it foreshadows whats to come to many other communities in America. Wall st. has gutted out the Industrial core of this land and is now in the process of doing the same to as many of the other services and Industries it can do the same thing to. The jobs are being sent away leaving what? Graffiti, the art of despair.
One thing that struck me about the video was that was in the city of Detroit. So many houses have been torn down that parts of it look more like rural America, a few houses, more land. The art and the intention behind seem to be more connected with helping the people living in this kind of bottomed out economy some kind of vision of potential. I think this is what art can provide - a different vision of the environment and this artist has figured it out, well. Detroit will take a long time to reinvent itself. They are if not at the bottom, then pretty close to bottom. We are in a time of severe change, America is no longer the rock it once was, the rich have abandoned the country in favor of billionaire status and private security forces of their very own. Your ordinary run of the mill millionaire is a nobody these days. Its the days of the all powerful billionaires living in seclusion and extreme riches.
Like France in the pre-revolutionary 1700's. With of course huge differences. The neo-Aristocracy's wealth is world spanning it's resources in every region of the world and even space above us now. Their work force is also world-wide. This is globalization. The only part of the equation they haven't quite yet mastered is the regional politics. Here they have indeed for the time mastered the political system. Since the 70's they realized they ( Corp America) needed to OWN both major parties. We live in a One party state now but a cleverly arranged one. The parties are allowed to appear as tow entites but in fact both are filled with big Corporatist wings and no President gets elected unless he passes the Corporatist tests. There are differences between the Corp. wing of the Dems. and the Corp. wing of the Gopers but they are mostly just cosmetic and more about distribution of the political goodies then on substance. Look at how the Corp. Dems are now governing and u can see very little has changed from the BV$H regime on economic and military issues.
I'm afraid I have to agree, this is the present conclusion that I have as well. We have a two party system I call them the liberal corporatists and the fascist corporatists. Within the Republicans there's no one working for the ordinary person, within the Democrats a tiny handful. Right now somebody like Franken seems somewhat isolated.
The Dem party still has a fairly large Progressive wing which gives us some traction but the fight over health care has shown the Progressive wing up for what its been for 2 decades now toothless. The Corporatists rule with an iron-fist in both parties. In the GOP are the hard right mouth breathers that the Corporatists in that party largely agree with on most issues and are thrown enough bones to keep them thinking they run the show. They don't and the contempt for Palin among the Corp. wing shows where the rift in that party lays. BV$H was secretly held in contempt by the Corporatist wing after they realized he was so inept and so inflexible, nevertheless he was their King and they closed ranks behind him as Gopers do.
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