john m donich

I would like to plug my upcoming exhibition, optic nerve, at the school of visual arts gallery at 209 East 23 Street
NY, NY 10010. if you are near nyc the reception is october 27 at 6:00. i hope to see you there.

• press release
• school of visual arts page

high school of enterprise

i have not been around much lately because i recently started teaching again, and i have been quite busy developing new curriculum. i hope to be more on top of my blog as i get settled in.

it is incredible that obama’a campaign was based on change coming to washington because my assessment of his work is decidedly unimaginative and status-quo. new york times published on its front page an article detailing states rush to adopt national educational standards. and although i don’t reject out of hand national standards, the obama administration is simply continuing  the bush agenda of applying the hyper-capitalist business model to the public education system. it is seems as if obama is doing this because he simply lacks the knowledge to make a change in educational policy, or what is more likely is mr hope and change truly believes in the same failed policies of his most recent predecessor (it wouldn’t be the first time).

the philosophy in short is that schools and their employees will be punished for lack of student performance and rewarded for student success. success will be defined by the all knowing federal government issued standards and tests. thus mr hope and change is saying that all we have to do is get tough with teachers and presto our public school system is thriving. poverty, racism, sexism, and classism don’t have anything to do with student performance? how about student apathy? family involvement? is it simply that we don’t have strict enough punishment for out teachers? this is an obvious political copout by the obama and bush administrations alike. it is simply an adoption of politically marketable to drop phases like “accountability in our schools” then bring actual change and hope to the communities that need it most.

what is truly unfortunate about obama’s “race to the top” campaign is seeing the state governments scramble for a small piece of the 3.4 billion dollars that will be awarded if they follow all the rules being set by the federal government. it is almost like watching pidgins scramble for bread crumbs. often states largest budget outlay is education and in this time of financial stress mr hope and change is shifting our education system to the far right just like his bush before him.

in the end obama’s legacy will show this glaring and obvious hypocrisy. the money the feds are putting up to “fix” our public education system is only a tiny fraction of the money we just spent on keeping our financial services industry solvent. yet the money that we are offering to the states for education is contingent on a number of stipulations that push the public system toward running our schools like a business (we see how well that is working in the health care industry). the money that went to the financial services industry has little of no strings, and on top of that we seem to be trusting the bankers and layers (not to mention the right-wing philosophy) to get us out of the financial mess that they themselves caused. the real irony is we also seem to be relying on the same group of union busting bankers and lawyers to fix our education system.

it seems as if our government under obama isn’t changing a thing when it comes to education. in fact i don’t see any change at all he just seems to be accelerating the mediocrity that pervades our youth.

marketing and advertising has become more and more effective as companies use more sophisticated methods of confounding the brain. most of these methods are actually indefensible if you are not paying critical attention to the methods.

i am calling out to all social scientists that study the brain to come up with a system of combating marketing and advertising techniques. the system should not include a rejection of media but rather a way to interpret marketing techniques so that indiviuals are certain that there decisions are a result of their wants and desires and not a result of highly effective marketing. the outcome of this academic program should have a clear and concise curricular series directed at middle school, high school and lower division collegiate students as that presents practical means to navigating the evolving marketing strategies.

this academic program will most likely delve into a number of problems that are tangential to the above stated goal and can also reflect on the state of our society. namely the question of weather people in the united states want to be manipulated by corporate marketing or would they rather make decision free of corporate interest?

on july 1 paul krugmen wrote an editorial that dealt with g-20 economic decisions. he initialed the piece with the following statement:

When I was young and naïve, I believed that important people took positions based on careful consideration of the options. Now I know better. Much of what Serious People believe rests on prejudices, not analysis. And these prejudices are subject to fads and fashions.

i was also informed of a line from the recent twilight film eclipse that ran as follows:

…now is the time to make mistakes…like majoring in philosophy, because there is no way of turning that into a career..

although krugman is really espousing  a professional opinion, and the twilight quote is the product of a screenplay adapted from a very uncomplicated, sexist, and unliterary book, these two quotes reveal the rise of something very troubling about our current society; the unstated belief that the best marketed idea is the best idea.

there was a time when ethics and was considered an integral part of ones colligate education. now i think most college graduates don’t even now what ethics really is. einstein was deeply troubled by the philosophical short comings of quantum physics, today one of the most popular scientific theories, string theory, is unapologetically predicated on bad scientific philosophy in that no experiment can be done to test its validity of falsity.

george w bush is reelected and barrack obama is elected in national campaigns not on the soundness of their ideas but rather their ability to create an effective marketing hora. bush was steadfast and decisive and obama brought us hope and change. both of these are completely empty marketing/branding ideas that tell us nothing about who or what the person can do as a leader.

we are also judging the worth individuals by the length of their career. even worse we judge the worth of our ideas based on their career efficacy. this is especially true in the art world, but it is true throughout our society and over the past 20 or so years our society has seemingly created an intellectual aristocracy that does not allow young talent the opportunity and flexibility to put fresh ideas into our companies and schools until they have “paid their dues”. thus our actions are essentially  judged by their ability to advance our career. only when we have reach a certain plateau in our career are we given the intellectual freedom to take chances and advance progressive ideas. unfortunately by the time someone reaches this point in their life they are almost by definition anti-progressive and bureaucratized.

we no longer celebrate the thinker. we celebrate marketability, and our new philosophical grounding has become careerism.

i recently subscribed to the wonderful publication adbusters and one of the back issues i received was the sep/oct 2008. the cover story written by david haddow is an account of why the hipster is the dead end of western civilization. as a resident of a brooklyn hipster neighborhood i strongly identify with this article and think that its words ring as true today as they did 2 years ago. haddow  implies that the current youth movement is essentially rooted in a fashion rather than ideas. the current youth movement has essentially failed to coalesce around coherent ideas that can be used by the society to move forward. haddow actually goes on to rip hipsters by determining that they are a product of a simple consumerist search for the newest fashion statement. on top of this even those who obviously retain the qualities of a hipster do not identify themselves within the group thereby making the group even less relevant because no one will even stand up for what the groups ideology.

my entire life i have been looking for a social movement that will move this country forward. unfortunately i am left with the hipster.

read the article

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a mark of strength is an ability to move decisively and effectively on pressing issues. our country is confronted with a number of pressing issues, and it seems as if we only act when we have no other choice. it seems that our country has lost its ability to act swiftly on anything. wether it is disasters like katrina and the bp oil spill, or obviously needed legislative reform like health care and economic regulation, or even something as straight forward as the rebuilding the world trade center site we are painfully slow to act and essentially ineffective in our actions.

the reasons for this near ineptitude seems to be attributed to our desire to make political and popularity gains rather than actually addressing the issues head on. our government officials are more concerned with pinning failures on their opponents then actually solving the problem. artists are more concerned with their career than the poignancy of their work. journalists are more concerned with their future access then publishing a hard hitting story on a high level official.

our government, and our society in general, seems to be losing its edge on innovation and trading it for an edge on marketability and perceived individual longevity.