The Gutter Art Critic

Let me begin by using myself as an example.   I was born and raised in the Czech Republic.   My mother remarried when I was 11 and when I turned 12, she and I moved to the United States as a result of this marriage. I’ve lived in the US ever since.   I will spare the reader the nitty gritty details of the actual move, the integration, and so on, mostly to say that my experience and the experience of the thousands of others that emigrated to the US that year alone are on the surface typical. Cut to today and I can with a lot of confidence say that, as a first generation immigrant, having emigrated at the age I did, my experience of the world and of American culture can only be described as incomplete.   The same can be said of my experience of the Czech culture.   What would seem as an upper hand, being bilingual, having roots in both cultures (muliticultural), etc, to me seems, while not a handicap, as a void that can never be filled.   True, Walter Benjamin’s experiences as an exi

(This is a hastily written analysis of the somewhat recent banning and deplatforming of Alex Jones.  Please excuse possible grammatical and spelling errors. Thank you!) Over the past few days I have listened to literally hours upon hours of commentary about the deplatrofming of Alex Jones, from the kneejerk reactions of the alt-right, to the occasionally lucid accounts by the old left all the way to the ridiculous overcompensating reactionaries of the supposed radical left.   As the technosphere was busy puking over itself as a result of the Jones affair, there was very little in terms of real analysis of what transpired.   Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone came closest, but he somewhat conspicuously left out his analysis of the system that allows for the type of action taken by media conglomerates, Ben Shapiro had some interesting points, though he himself fell into the trap of self-preservation as the rest of the vlogo-bloggosphere, ‘if they came for Jones now, tomorrow they may

Navigating Zizek Intro: Slavoj Zizek seems to be everywhere, all over YouTube, presenting papers, and teaching at three different schools at least, while at the same time still managing to publish 2-3 new books per year.   Granted, much of what Zizek puts out is rehashed or recycled ideas and anecdotes from previous books and essays, it is nonetheless mystifying how much this guy’s engaged.   To say that he’s prolific is an understatement.   I’ve already read a lot of Zizek, but I doubt that I’ve read even half of what he’s written so far, and the dude keeps on writing.   So it’s a bit of a catch up game for me.    Now, I understand there’s a lot of criticism out there of Zizek already and there is a question whether my voice will add anything at all to the conversation, already in progress.   If anything, my voice will most likely get drowned out in the sea of critique of Zizek’s ideas, this I understand.   The reason I’m doing this is personal. There are lots of other