Bart Hendrikx

You just watched a clip from a 2016 BBC Iplayer (@bbciplayer ) released documentary called #HyperNormalisation (2016) by Adam Curtis for readers of VICE (@vice ) In this doc. English documentary filmmaker #AdamCurtis (@bbc ) explains how, at a time of confusing and inexplicable world events, politicians and the people they represent have retreated in to a damaging over-simplified version of what is happening. The aim of the film —HyperNormalisation—is to bring that new power into focus, and show its true dimensions. What links all these systems is an overriding aim is to keep the world stable. To avoid all change. The giant computer constantly compares events happening around the world to events in the past. If it sees a dangerous pattern, it immediately adjusts its trillions of dollars to keep things stable. That is real power. The algorithms on social media constantly look at the patterns of what you like and then feed you more of that—so you enter into an echo chamber that constantly feeds you back to you. So again nothing changes—and you learn nothing new that would contradict how you feel. That too is real power. What results is a system which cocoons us and makes us feel safe. And that means we have become terrified of all change. But that fear of change is in the interest of a system that wants to hold everything stable. And stops us from ever challenging it. But it is impossible to keep things frozen forever. The world is dynamic. Things happen that you can never predict just by reading the past. This is why more and more we are being hit by events. Because we have bought into the dream that the world can be held stable and safe. If you pull back and look at the everyday life all around you, you can see the cracks appearing through the shiny surface of the cocoon we are living in. So much of the modern world is beginning to feel odd, unreal, and sometimes fake. I think these are the dynamic forces outside beginning to pierce through as the system begins to fail. It will fail – because a system of power that has no vision of the future can never last. It cannot deal with change. We have to begin to look outside. Because there is more out there…

Pulitzer-prize winning Journalist, Author and Activist Chris Hedges, discusses modern day consumerism, totalitarian corporate power and living in a culture dominated by pervasive illusion. #americanpsychosis #chrishedges #amandazackem

Slavoj Žižek on John Carpenter’s “They Live,” 1988. The Pervert's Guide to Ideology is a 2012 British documentary film directed by Sophie Fiennes and written and presented by Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalytic theorist #SlavojŽižek . It is a sequel to Fiennes's 2006 documentary The Pervert's Guide to Cinema. #theylive #SlavojŽižek

The greatest representation of social media: Life of Brian (1979) by @montypythonofficial #MontyPython group: #JohnCleese , #TerryGilliam , #GrahamChapman , #EricIdle , #MichaelPalin and #TerryJones who played 40 characters in the film. #LifeofBrian is one of the most controversial comedies ever made. It was banned in countries like Ireland and Norway, and blasted by evangelical Christians who claimed that it had been “produced in Hell.” And yet, in the 21st century, it’s become a spring holiday staple. That line "I'm not" was completely improvised. He got a pay rise to speaking role. Stream it now on @netflix .

James Baldwin - "Love has never been a popular movement and no one’s ever wanted really to be free. The world is held together, really it is, held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people." Meeting the Man: #JamesBaldwininParis . Directed by #TerenceDixon , United Kingdom, France, 1970. A documentary portrait of James Baldwin, one of the towering figures of 20th-century American literature, Black culture and political thought, filmed in Paris. The iconic writer is captured in several symbolic locations in the city, where he was living at the time, including the Place de la Bastille.

Sábados.

#AyrtonSenna and religious experience, 1988 #MonacoGrandPrix : The mystical aura which surrounds Senna's achievements in the sport, and raise them above the achievements of Michael Schumacher in the minds of many, can be attributed in large part to what Senna believed he experienced that day at Monaco, and the vivid manner in which he was able to communicate those experiences. Whilst Senna's beliefs were in a sense delusional, those delusional beliefs may well have been directly responsible for permitting him to access levels of performance denied to other drivers. In particular, by looking at #brain scans conducted on religious devotees engaged in meditation, one can #hypothesise that the part of Senna's parietal lobe responsible for the conscious sense of self was shutting down. Broadly speaking, the left-hemisphere side of this region deals with the individual's sense of their own body image, while its right-hemisphere equivalent handles its context — the space and time inhabited by the self. Maybe, the researchers thought, as the meditators developed the feeling of oneness, they gradually cut these areas off from the usual touch and position signals that help create the body image. "When you look at people in meditation, they really do turn off their sensations to the outside world. Sights and sounds don't disturb them any more. That may be why the parietal lobe gets no input," says [Andrew] Newberg [a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia]. Deprived of their usual grist, these regions no longer function normally, and the person feels the boundary between self and other begin to dissolve. And as the spatial and temporal context also disappears, the person feels a sense of infinite space and eternity. F1 1988 Mônaco senna volta mágica.. Youtube by #CabeçadeGasolina Recommend the book, #IntheZone : #HowChampionsThinkandWinBig , April 20, 2017 by #ClydeBrolin

Ayrton Senna and religious experience, 1988 Monaco Grand Prix: "Suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was kind of driving by instinct, only I was in a different dimension. I was way over the limit, but still I was able to find even more. It frightened me because I realised I was well beyond my conscious understanding." #AyrtonSenna In practice for the #1988MonacoGrandPrix , Ayrton Senna was driven to a previously inaccessible level of performance by his desire not just to beat, but to destroy team-mate #AlainProst . Two seconds a lap quicker than Prost at one stage, Senna subsequently recalled attaining a mental state in which his subconscious mind had gained control, and in which he sensed the opportunity to go even faster, but feeling vulnerable, he decided to step back. There is a common suggestion that Senna believed he had a religious experience that day. One can hypothesise that as Senna concentrated with laser-like intensity on the rhythm of driving through the unwinding tunnel of barriers at Monte Carlo, he induced himself into a trance-like brain-state, and that what scared him was the feeling of an imminent loss of self-identity, the same feeling commonly induced by many #shamanistic #religious rituals. In particular, by looking at #brain scans conducted on religious devotees engaged in meditation, one can #hypothesise that the part of Senna's parietal lobe responsible for the conscious sense of self was shutting down. When you look at people in meditation, they really do turn off their sensations to the outside world. Sights and sounds don't disturb them any more. That may be why the parietal lobe gets no input," says [Andrew] Newberg [a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia]. Deprived of their usual grist, these regions no longer function normally, and the person feels the boundary between self and other begin to dissolve. And as the spatial and temporal context also disappears, the person feels a sense of infinite space and eternity. Recommend the book, #IntheZone : #HowChampionsThinkAndWinBig , April 20, 2017 by #ClydeBrolin

1992: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media Funny, provocative and surprisingly accessible, #MANUFACTURINGCONSENT explores the political life and ideas of #NoamChomsky , world-renowned #linguist , #intellectual and #politicalactivist . In a dynamic collage of new and original footage, biography, archival gems, imaginative graphics and outrageous illustrations, the film highlights Chomsky’s probing analysis of #massmedia . A mammoth two-part project, MANUFACTURING CONSENT is nonetheless light on its feet, favoring a style that encourages viewers to question its own workings, as Chomsky himself encourages his listeners to extricate themselves from the “web of deceit” by undertaking a course of “intellectual self-defense.” Appearing in the film are major journalists and critics, including #BillMoyers , #WilliamFBuckleyJr ., #TomWolfe , #PeterJennings , #JeffGreenfield , philosopher #MichelFoucault , White House reporter #SarahMcClendon , #NewYorkTimes editorial writer #KarlEMeyer and revisionist author #RobertFaurisson .

“The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know.” ― #NoamChomsky Now more than ever, we cannot take news media at face value – we need tools to read media critically, strategies to discern how information works. This is what inspired @ajlisteningpost ’s project: #MediaTheorised . As #RolandBarthes would have put it: these are writers who have taught us how to ‘read against the grain’. Working with #journalists , artists and #politicalactivists from #Africa , #LatinAmerica , #Asia , the #UnitedStates and #Europe , #TheListeningPost has created five videos supplemented by essays to introduce you to these #mediatheorists and to help you apply some of their critical tools in your everyday encounters with the #media . I start by sharing the video of #NoamChomsky , an American linguist and political activist. For decades, Noam Chomsky has been the agent provocateur when it comes to critiquing the US #mainstreammedia . He co-authored ‘#ManufacturingConsent’ , a seminal work on mainstream journalism and its role in the mechanics of power. According to American linguist and political activist, Noam Chomsky, media operate through 5 filters: ownership, advertising, the media elite, flak, and the common enemy. Narrated by #AmyGoodman (@democracynow ): she is the founder #DemocracyNow !, a US news broadcast which has provided viewers with an alternative kind of journalism, available on the internet and 1,400 radio and television stations worldwide.

#TheStoryofFilm is a fifteen-hour #documentaryseries about the #historyofworldcinema which is thorough, informative, knowledgeable, and just about everything you could want from a fifteen-hour documentary series about the history of #worldcinema . If you're interested in film studies or in learning about the backstory of a medium we all know and love then this is a great resource which supplies a solid chunk of film school knowledge. There's just one important thing to keep in mind: its "story of film" is a revisionist account of the past which is far from objective. Writer/director #MarkCousins has a very distinct #ideological #perspective , and he wants to change the way people see #filmhistory . His project is to de-center male-dominated #Hollywood #filmmaking . He constantly tries to show how important developments were occurring outside of America, and how they occasionally relied on female filmmakers. As far as I'm concerned, this is a wonderful, admirable project. Hollywood could certainly use a reality check on its ego every now and then. Cousins offers a lot of unqualified praise and grandiose statements of him claiming that certain #movies are "the most [adjective] film ever made," or that Hollywood films are like a romantic bauble, pretty but insubstantial. I'm also not sure his project totally works, because he seems to want to criticize the #superficiality of the over-adornment of Hollywood #filmmaking against the realism of unadorned world #cinema while simultaneously praising adornment outside of Hollywood when he sees fit. Personally, I believe Hollywood could certainly use some de-centering, but I also believe in the power of adornment in film (i.e. the power of style as substance) and that innovation can come from #popculture just as easily as from "real art". Stream now via #AmazonPrime US @amazonprime or via #Letterboxd @letterboxd

The Man Finding Stardust on Earth - Until recently, experts thought it was impossible to collect cosmic dust in places inhabited by humans (2017) A Norwegian jazz musician and citizen scientist, #JonLarsen has figured out how to do something the experts thought was impossible—find specks of cosmic dust, called #micrometeorites , amid the #detritus of human habitation. #Scientists look for these particles, which rain down constantly on #Earth , in #Antarctica and other pristine locations, but Larsen thought there should be a way to collect them in more populated places. Some micrometeorites are #real stardust—flecks from #explodedstars . Others are likely created when #asteroids collide and #comets vaporize. Larsen learned to identify the unique features that take shape as the specks #plummet through Earth’s #atmosphere , first #melting and then #solidifying . The three examples shown here—from Larsen’s 2027 book #InSearchofStardust—exhibit swirling ridges, golden spots of iron-nickel #metal and #sulfide , and crystal #pyramids of minerals, which formed during the journey. Larsen was able to find micrometeorites by washing the sludge that had accumulated in open roof gutters, sifting it, and then using a magnet to extract particles from the remaining grit. After approaching many scientists, he finally persuaded #MatthewGenge , a #planetary #scientist at Imperial College London, to examine 48 particles he had collected. Genge analyzed their composition and confirmed that Larsen had indeed managed to find extraterrestrial dust amid earthly debris. “Jon was the one staring down the microscope,” says Genge, “going through hundreds of thousands of particles to find just one micrometeorite.” Order In Search of Stardust: Amazing Micrometeorites and Their Terrestrial Imposters Hardcover Book – August 1, 2017 via Amazon. In Search of Stardust is the first comprehensive popular science book about micrometeorites. It's also a photo documentary comprising more than 1,500 previously unpublished images: the first atlas of micrometeorites, hundreds of which are depicted here in high-resolution color #microscopicphotography and in scanning electron #microscope imagery.