dearest psycho-Active organisms, This is sort of our first nearly official, and very irregular, XL terrestrial Arts + Praxis Newsletter of 2008 and we have an urgent request of yur xtra-Large brain matter, see below. ((A.)) News : Send us your film recommendations !! ((B.)) The Tour Dates : XLt in Berlin : Saturday 12.4, Vienna in May, […]

A quick roundup of things, news, events on our radar , coming up in the various arts+praxis ports from Berlin to LA to SF to … We’ll come back to fill in more details + links when possible: DQ University solidarity (NOW!) SF Bay Area The Right To The City – Soziale Kampfe in Der Neoliberalen Stadt […]

[ Mark Twain + Nikola Tesla : a high voltage frequency is being passed through the body to bring the lamp to incandescence. Spring of 1894 ] March 19th marked 5 years of war waged upon Iraq, and today we received a bulletin from Nikola Tesla, well the Murdyspace Nikola Tesla, reminding us that March 25th […]

As we enter the 5 year anniversary (19.3.03) of “the fictitious war” as it was once called by Michael Moore, this war which corporate media obscures by parroting success tales told by criminals, it’s a good time to revisit Thomas M. Disch’s analysis of the sci-fi world we now live. His book ” The Dreams […]

Today in San Francisco is Prison Awareness Day. As a collaborative effort with Intersection for the Arts programming 2008 The Prison Project, PLAIN HUMAN invites Bay Area families, friends and advocates of human rights, to wear orange on March 11, 2008. “By collectively wearing this color in a public space,we are subverting the silence. PLAIN HUMAN will […]

Rather frequently we have found some startling angles on Laughing Squid (that high-speed and tentacled portal of San Francisco viewed arts and tech and culture) that just don’t add up to a culture jammers‘ code. Code ? What Code? If in fact there is or even should be one… it may or may not […]

In the News and On The Road: Kultur Shock, The Coup, Balkan Beat Box (blocked at the border), Filastine, Genetic Drugs, Dub Gabriel, Balkantronika, etc. __ __ . __ __ __ __ . __ __ __ __ . __ Just before the 2006 summer, Indybay’s Fault Lines interviewed Seattle-based Kultur Shock just prior to the the […]

This image adequately captures the essence of the tool used by the typical Hollywood Psychomedia Players to lodge projectiles of blood-simple cynicism and cool emptiness into its cattle brain victims. Stay tune for the XL Terrestrial analysis of Joel and Ethan Cohen’s latest “No Country For Old Men”. Have the so-called masters of “cinematic craft” […]

One of Berlin’s canal-side venue gems, the GlasHaus at Arena hosted Watcha Clan (now signed with Piranha) and Nomad Sound System on a powerhouse diaspora double bill Saturday nite, and with dj Pepe Vargas from Terra Beats keeping it bouncing for a last, mostly balkan, round. W-Clan is a high-energy Marseille-based band with a “multi-Port” sound mixing flavors of Barcelona, Casablanca, Oran and Algiers… along with some novel electronica/drum and bass/dub elements that take it sailing over the edge, at points almost rave/psy-trance -like but much more deeply rooted.

http://xlterrestrials.org/plog/index.php/uncategorized/transmigration-of-cinema-tour-20-in-production/xltmdc2/ [ You can read the above text here ] The Transmigration Of Cinema 2.0 is in production! That means we are re-assembling the project ( TOC 2006-2007 tours) for another XL terrestrial round, because recent assessments show that the arts+tech and mediated culture wave have a looooooong way to grasp the critical stage of our sit-com planet, wherein No documentaries, No feature films, No tv series, No new media installations, No digital art, No website will serve as an evacuation plan, much less a lifeboat, for the Virtual Titanic Anatomies of Militarized Supermarket Life, or Anti-life , as the case may be.

“Why Democracy?” is a very intricate question, especially when asked through the wide lense of global films. And when one considers the Gore Vidal line that true democracies have only ever existed for about 5 minutes, the possible perspectives in works of 5- 15- x minutes are bound to only scratch the surface of a very deep and complex itch. Nevertheless this last day shorts program of the Berlinale (Talent Campus) under the curatorial helm of South African Don Edkins and STEPS International succeeded in bringing together some very impressive political filmmakers.

Coming soon : an investigation of Dusan Makavejev’s remarkable feats of a fully sexualized post-68 cinema. In the meantime, two of his groundbreaking films are now available at Criterion.

[ from the XL terrestrials' forthcoming de-manifesto: The Revolution Will Not Be Virtualized! ] In Bela Tarr’s 2000 film Werckmeister Harmonies, an unlikely circus caravan comes to town with a mysterious cargo. The carny types push and bark their hidden prize and the town lines up to get a glimpse of the unknown. Rumors and […]

[ Images from Haus der Kulturen der Welt , Transmediale 2008 : project: Amazon Noir ] Coming soon, the Xlt reports

A multitude of art groups converge at Transmediale to render the final scene of Kurosawa’s version of Macbeth, Spider Web Castle ( aka Throne of Blood 1957). A 12 minute scene expanded to a 12 hour sonic collage, orchestrated by Shu Lea Cheang and Moving Forest. Mikro.FM is one of the groups you can join in […]