(Image from this video)

Art Dubai and the Sharjah Biennial.

"Artspace showed another insta-response to revolution: a painting called Bye Bye Hosni, by the Moroccan artist Zakaria Ramhani, of a protester with a huge Facebook-like button on his back, tearing down a poster of Mubarak. It's an uncomplicated statement of solidarity, but in the context of the art fair feels opportunistic and overly media-friendly – a too-perfect metonym of the revolution."

(The image above is from a video advertising the ChillOut Festival Dubai)

From Virginia Woolf to Silvio Berlusconi, via Gaddafi - the roots of bunga bunga.

(bottom image seen on the streets of Tripoli)

Technoccult points to the rise of farmpunk, as chronicled by the NYT:

"Mr. Jones, 30, and his wife, Alicia, 27, are among an emerging group of people in their 20s and 30s who have chosen farming as a career. Many shun industrial, mechanized farming and list punk rock, Karl Marx and the food journalist Michael Pollan as their influences. The Joneses say they and their peers are succeeding because of Oregon’s farmer-foodie culture, which demands grass-fed and pasture-raised meats...

They have been lauded — and even consulted — by older farmers nearby for figuring out how to grow beans in a valley dominated by grass seed farmers.

But finding mentors has been difficult. There is a knowledge gap that has been referred to as “the lost generation” — people their parents’ age may farm but do not know how to grow food. The grandparent generation is no longer around to teach them."

Early last Tuesday morning, I'm sitting in one of the lounges at Heathrow leafing through the newspapers, and they are full of pictures of the devastation wrought by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and there is one in particular of a young woman sitting dazed and confused among the rubble and debris, and there's a cognitive dissonance tragically at play because somehow she should be walking through a neon cityscape on her way to work or on a date.

At Lisbon airport, I grab some euros from an ATM and step outside. The sky is blue as white clouds stream past. A sense of spring in the air. Inside the cab the driver and I chat in a pastiche of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. He complains about the traffic and the crisis. On the radio, voices discuss the crisis. The billboards are for banks, left-wing parties, and mobile carriers. One of the latter has a large Love & Peace sign covering an entire building. In the old part of town, two policemen go by on Segways across cobbled stones.

As I wait for my meeting to start, the Portuguese guy I'm with tells me how 300,000 people gathered on the streets to protest after having self-organized on Facebook. "Just like in Egypt, but without the violence" he says. "There's this generation of highly educated young people that are lucky if they find work in a mall or a McDonalds." Like in Italy, I reply. And Spain and Greece, someone else says.

Back in the airport, I can't get on the wi-fi. Iberian newspapers tell me that Saudi troops have entered Bahrain and that shares in Burberry have fallen. Black clouds are coming in from the Ocean as we board the plane. "Look! the moon!" a little boy shouts pointing to the sky.

"Rebirth of heroical behavioral ideals of an artist-intellectual, in a manner of Russian libertarian decemberism. Creation of image of artist as romantic hero, who prevail over the evil. Creation of lively romantic models in today`s soulless commercial conceptual art."

The toxic seeds of John Galliano's fall.

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