Archive for May, 2008

When I moved to the Princes’ islands three years ago the town on Buyukada was filled with vegetable shops that sold natural vegetables for low prices. It was awesome, one was able to eat organic, natural food for an affordable price.

Now, three years later, its hardly possible to find non-hormoned, non-manipulated food on the island. Welcome to the new reality: a global monopoly on food. A demonic plan unlike any other, with a simple premise: if you can’t control the production of food then you simply require all food to be treated with your chemicals. Codex alimentarius, ladies and gentlemen, the biggest power grab that has ever occurred on this planet.

Meanwhile girls aged 7 years old are starting to menstruate here in turkey because their bodies get confused by these large infusions of corporate hormones.

Codex Alimentarius, which comes into global effect in 2009, requires all food to be radiated and treated with antibiotics. That includes so called ‘organic food’ because they wouldn’t want anyone to catch a disease from eating natural plants, would they?

People seem unaware what sort of world lies ahead of us. If the oil prices double again half of the world population will not be able to afford simple food. And that can happen in a years time. What can we do, besides make each other aware of these dire problems?

No one seems to question why in 10 years time all food in our supermarkets and grocery stores has simply be replaced by mutated food. The grand tricksters of course have something up their sleeve: the codex is ‘just a voluntary set of guidelines and non-mandatory’. Let’s pause for a moment to realize how truly absurd that statement actually is. Here we have global organization that makes guidelines for trading the markets telling us these guidelines are mandatory – why, then, are there guidelines in the first place? Why do we need global trade guidelines that tell us we better radiate and poison our own food with chemicals?

The catch is of course that any country that does not comply will sooner or later be pushed out of business.And as farmers serve both local and international markets they have no choice: antibiotics and radiation on all food since separating is too expensive and no one seems to have brains enough to complain anyway.

What a pathetic place we are creating. I better find a place with a garden to grow my own food unless I want too see my daughter turn into an obese, over-hormoned entity.

Another international design clock from the hand of M.H.Benders:

The Writersblock Clock. Every writer should own one.





Unique entirely factory-made wallclock with a unique concept: The Writersblock Clock is designed to help you through those hard hours of uninspirational toilings and personal debauchery. For the special price of 24.99 dollar (about 15 euro) you can be the owner of a product that is bound to become a collectors item even if the world comes to an end soon.

Order this clock now!

Now also available: The Stalins Eye clock that partly utilizes the famous Loewak design:





This surreal clock is the situationist must-have, a stern reminder of the mutability of time and human interaction. The centre of the clock has a miniature stalin holding a newspaper, as the header of this site has. Price 24.99$ (15 euro)

Order now

Also for sale now: the unique design clock by M.H.Benders nicknamed ‘De Vriezen Clock’:





For the incredible price of 24 dollars (about 15 euro) you can be one of the few owners of this unique clock that proves dutch composer and poet Samuel Vriezen is always right. Especially recommended for poetry cafe’s, libraries, etc. Buy now before it runs out of stock

Click here to order

Dutch poet Huub Beurkens writes on his weblog that he wasn’t happy at all with the fact that Komrij put some of his poems in one of his canonizing anthologies. The absurd thing about these anthologies, which are thick volumes of dutch poetry Komrij composes after his taste, is that the poets that appear in it are never asked for their permission. In 1979 this lead to a court case when two poets (Kouwenaar and Schierbeek) wanted their works removed from the anthology and claimed it was illegal to copy their works without permission. The Dutch judge, however, ruled otherwise in a rather absurd judgment: he said the anthology was a ‘scholastic work’ (as in meant for schools) and as such it had the right to ‘quote maximum 100 lines of every work’ for free. An absurd judgment because such a work could never be sold commercially. It’s fine if the anthology would be really limited in distribution to schools but these anthologies are sold commercially in every bookstore!

Komrij replies to Beurskens remarks that he wants to be removed from the anthology with the remark ‘Apparently Beurskens wrote some works he’s not too satisfied about personally’. That’s a pretty weird thing to say, as if there wouldn’t be weak and strong poems in anyones corpus. Beurskens complained that Komrij selected weak poems out of his corpus, and this is something I’ve heard privately from other poets as well (‘why the hell did he select THAT work?’) – so there we go: no permission asked and a weak selection, that’s the price one pays nowadays for being canonized.

‘Wat de zee opwerpt’ is a project by Belgian poet Xavier Roelens and designer Gabrielle Marks. It’s a fascinating flash animation integrating poetry, design and sound in a challenging, interactive design. It’s one of the better examples of digital, interactive poetry I have seen lately. Voices by Eva Cox, Xavier Roelens, Norbert de Beule and Herlinda Vekemans:


Wat de zee opwerpt

Nina Braun is an artist that lives and works in Hamburg, Germany. Her textile and wool based works are contemporary compositions that integrate the digital world into textile in a unique and challenging way. She currently has an exhibition at the HeliumCowboy gallery in Hamburg, one of the more interesting contemporary galleries in that town.



Nina Braun: In the countryside (2008. 94 x 84 x 12 cm; wool, fabric, wadding, rubber foam, doll-eyes, wire, paperboard, wood)

Nina’s work is a very dynamic mix of craftmanship and contemporary visuals. I love how she integrates and mutates modern digital influences into neoabsurdist, design-related works that live a life on their own. She has a unique style and manages to create works that not only look contemporary and exciting, but also relate to things like design and science. These are works that sort of mutate their environment, a subject that recently has my major interest.

Visit the site of HeliumCowboys – Visit Nina Brauns site

Tumulus :wool, pellets, wadding, doll-eyes, ca 180 x 40 x 70 cm, 140 pieces, 2008



Sumogirls Gruppenfoto: acrylic color on canvas, 50 x 70 cm, 2004