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Future Places is a digital media festival taking place in Porto, Portugal, in October 2008.
It is organised by the University of Porto, the New University of Lisbon and the University of Texas at Austin, and it will include exhibitions, awards, workshops, lectures, music, film and parties.
The festival proposes an exploration of the impact of new technologies in “real life”. How can new technology build local communities, create new identities, new narratives, new forms of public interaction?
Call for entries HERE.

I may enter into detail later on. For the time being, I just want to point out that this is one of the books I´ve dreamed about long enough, and it has finally materialised through the hard work of Isabelle Corbisier. The 30 years of Tuxedomoon, that ever-evasive collective of extremely talented musicians, poets and bohemians, read like the epic they have been.
Do yourself a favour and buy Music For Vagabonds: the Tuxedomoon Chronicles. If you don´t know them, you´ll soon wonder how you managed not to.
Morning sunlight makes everything clearer, and proximity is the mother of knowledge: the tagged car is a hoax, the “tag” is actually part of the ad. Printed, not sprayed. Post-subculture indeed… Could this mean that tagging cars will soon become a mainstream trend, sponsored by Smart? How Smart would that be?… Not subcultural deonthology then, but still, how about the cool factor coming from generic ecological ethics?
The graffiter of the post-subculture is a green activist. In the land of make believe, every spray can is non-toxic, for sure.

A transsexual Bowie of yore trails behind and looks transfixed by such a mindwarp.
Here is a photo taken today. After having spoken last week about how graffiti writers leave private cars alone, proof of a working code of conduct at work, proof that it is more than just random vandalism. Nothing prevents writers from tagging cars in billboard ads, though; on the contrary, these cars have no owners save for the manufacturing company, so a vague deontology smells the Kapital and knee-jerks accordingly.

Tag on car on billboard overlooking car parked in front of bombed wall. The passer-by chooses to pass by and miss the micro-narrative. It´s all vandalism, after all.
By sheer coincidence, a spam comment has just arrived: “cheap auto insurance”. All hail the gods of spam, so wise, so timely!
Yes, we´ve all thought of collecting it into a volume at some point, and yes, it is a plague – but take this one out of the inbox and suddenly it shines like a polished diamond. To quote Carla Bley when referring to The Shaggs, that slow-motion catastrophe of a band: It Brings My Mind To a Complete Halt.
It is quite clear this particular message has gone through some automatic translator. Yet some of its involutions go way beyond both Vi4gra randomness and calculated linguistic ineptitude.
“[...] a única filha do Dr. atrasado e a Sra. Frank Dunga”. This is pure puppet theatre for kids on Portuguese TV circa late-1970s. Enjoy AYOR.
O mais caro,
Senhorita Juliet Dunga
Demolition as spectacle. Aftershocks from the moment we´ve all integrated onto our narrative?
Here is my favourite – both for personal reasons (our hotel room is now pure oxygen) and for the level of sophistication:
Stardust demolition. Las Vegas, 13 March 2007


