monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993.
In World War I, it was the trenches that captured the imagination of poets. In World War II, it was aerial combat. It is a question that Mr. Swift asks repeatedly in “Bomber County.” The U.S. and Britain dropped 1.6 million tons of bombs on Germany, causing civilian casualties of more than one million and … Read more
Jennifer Edwards: “I hate to be a kill-joy, but the vast majority of classical art pieces were designed as product placement ads paid for by monarchs and religious institutions. The Sistine Chapel is an advertisement, just like Shakespearean plays and Swan Lake – all were bought and paid for by the wealthy for a purpose.” … Read more
“Two things fill my mind with ever renewed wonder and awe the more often and deeper I dwell on them,” wrote Immanuel Kant, “the starry skies above me, and the moral law within me.” Where does moral law come from? What lies behind our sense of right and wrong? For millennia, there have been two … Read more
John Gerassi, Talking with Sartre: Conversations and Debates, edited and translated by John Gerassi (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 336 pages, $20.00, paperback. “I want to know, Sartre, how a bourgeois like you—and you, Sartre, no matter how much you hate the bourgeoisie are still a bourgeois through and through—became a revolutionary.” In … Read more
Our pattern-seeking brains and desire to be special help explain our fears of the apocalypse. Once again, the world is about to end. The latest source of doomsday dread comes courtesy of the ancient Mayans, whose calendar runs out in 2012, as interpreted by a cadre of opportunistic authors and blockbuster movie directors. Not long … Read more
As China and India rise in tandem, their relationship will shape world politics. Shame they do not get on better. A hundred years ago it was perhaps already possible to discern the rising powers whose interaction and competition would shape the 20th century. The sun that shone on the British empire had passed midday. Vigorous … Read more