Raqs Media Collective

This is from a novel, "The Ragged Trousered Phillanthropists" by Robert Tressel. First published in Great Britain by Grant Richards, 1914, and Lawrence & Wishart, 1955. Tressel is his pen name, from the trestle table, part of the basic equipment of house painters and sign writers. It's a novel which is introduced with Tressel's lines: "this work which must be done or I will die in the work house". He submitted it to several publishers, but because it was handwritten, the publishers returned it without reading it. The book wasn't published till three years after his death - he died at 40 of tuberculosis - but hasn't been out of print since.

The novel is about a group of painters and decorators, and their families, in Hastings (Mugsborough), around 1906.

This extract is from page 46.

[thanks to Shveta for finding and sharing it.]

to think about past and future: (reminding of angels and farces)

McLuhan quotation:

"The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look
at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.
Suburbia lives imaginatively in Bonanza-land."

(The Medium is the Massage, 1967)

Them (the police) throw me in ah van and tek me dow ah station, them insult me intelligence when them question me, ah treat me like ah animal ah call me monkey, them want me sign statement which wasn't written by me, but me nuh rob people fi get my money, so hey officer address me properly, cau me nuh born big me nuh drop out ah tree, I am more intelligent than you'll ever be, cos ah street life educate me, ah hard life educate me.

(Lezlee Lyrix, Put Back You Truncheon, 1985)

Osama in New York

While the whole world looks for Osama bin Laden, I found him here in New York, somewhere on Broadway, in the general direction of Soho, tagged as the 'Best of New York'

A friend who studied in the UK told us this:

In a UK medical education you begin with anatomy. 18 year old kids arrive at university, and are assigned a dead body to work on. They work on this body for six months before it is taken away and cremated. These bodies are either those of people who have donated their bodies to science or of people who cannot be identified. The relationship that forms between these young people and "their" body is very intense. The bodies are given names and become a dominant force in the students' lives. During this time the students smell perpetually of the chemicals used to preserve the body. Nearly all medical students have regular emotional breakdowns during this period, triggered especially by things they discover about the life of the person concerned. All personal markings etc are supposed to be removed, but certain signs remain. One body had a tattoo and pink nail polish. One student was traumatised to find shit in the colon of her body, because it signified life.

At the end of the period of study, the body is released for burial or cremation. Students attend these events and often give speeches about what the body has meant to them, especially if the body has been donated to science. Families also attend, if the identity of the body is known, and students ask endless questions about the life of the person concerned. They are usually no less emotional at the cremation than the families.