Monday, February 2, 2015

retro-quotes # 393

retro-quotes: a series of germane remarks, by others, plucked from all over the place, and from all over the time # 393

"We all live in two worlds. One is the world of our own experience. The other is created by the millions of flickering images recorded on film and video. It is a strange world where the laws of time, space and mortality do not apply. So many of the images are of people who died long ago. They are the modern ghosts who will never leave us. It is a beautiful world. But it may not be as innocent as it seems. It keeps us in enchanted cocoon - a static world that suits the modern system of power..... 

"The financial technocrats cut up the toxic debt and recombined it with other loans - to make it safe.
Hidden away with other investments as just another set of harmless numbers. But as they did this the connection of the debts to reality was broken.

"But it wasn’t just debt that could be cut up. The computers could also cut up images and sounds. And in a strange way the same thing began to the way we saw reality.

"We became surrounded by fragmented and mixed up images of
The PAST
The PRESENT
The REAL
And the IMAGINARY

"IN THIS TWO-DIMENSIONAL WORLD THE LOGIC OF TIME AND SPACE BEGAN TO DISAPPEAR.

"Anything could be put with anything else.

"It was liberating and enchanting.

"But it also meant that

"THE FAKE COULD BE JUST AS CONVINCING AS THE REAL.

"But the managed world says that everything must stay as it is.

"And the images play around us continually - ghosts from the past who will not let us go. Holding us here in a fake world. Stopping us from moving forward in the future - and building a better and more truthful world."

              -- Adam Curtis, abridged summary of the Adam Curtis vs. Massive Attack event Manchester International Festival, 2013.




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