Author Archives: grahamlarkin

About grahamlarkin

I’m a historian, curator, communications strategist and information designer, living in Los Angeles since 2020. I have decades of work experience in universities, museums, government and the private sector. In recent years I’ve become a globally-recognized advocate for the design of safer streets and motor vehicles. Whatever the challenge, I’m passionate about combining words, images and data to communicate content that matters.

notes on Shirkers #1

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Last week I caught this 2018 flick called Shirkers on Netflix

I really dug it, and I jumped onto Twitter to indulge in a little fansplaining.

Director Sandi Tan was game enough to acknowledge my portentous musings. Yesterday she proclaimed:

Click for Twitter thread.)

Naturally it’s hard to judge the tone or the sincerity of that laughing invitation to continue sharing.

But hey, she didn’t ignore or block me. That’s good, right?

I replied by coolly saying that I’m good, thanks. Got it off my chest.

The truth, of course, is that I’m not done with Shirkers. Continue reading →

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What’s Not To Like About The Academic Bill of Rights (2005)

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51+EmS1n9ML._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_First published on the website of the California chapter of the American Association of University Professors (CA-AAUP), this essay was taken down as part of a subsequet site overhaul. I still have people asking me where they can find a copy, so it is republished here for posterity. The text is unchanged despite the inevitable misgivings, and links are published in full, regardless of whether or not they still work.

The first of many statements about a very real threat to academic freedom, this essay received a lot of play in the months following its publication, and culminated in my hour-long encounter with Horowitz on the conservative TV program Uncommon Knowledge, which was aired in heavily-redacted form here. My essay has been reprinted, along with the subsequent exchange with David Horowitz as “The Graham Larkin-David Horowitz Debate” in Stephen H. Aby (ed.), The Academic Bill of Rights Debate: A Handbook (Westport, CT: Praeger Press, 2007) pp. 67-90. – GL

Locking up my bike on the way to the office on May 3, 2004, I noticed that events were underway in the large pavilion pitched in front of the Hoover Center, the right-wing think tank overshadowing my office in the Nathan Cummings Art Building at Stanford University. The voice on the microphone was introducing prominent ultra-conservative intellectual David Horowitz. As the representative for private universities on the steering committee of the California Conference of the American Association of University Professors (CA-AAUP), I had recently taken a pressing interest in Mr. Horowitz’s activities. He is, after all, the brains behind the mischievously-named-and-crafted Academic Bill of Rights— Continue reading →

A debate about academic freedom (2005)

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Here’s an account of an academic freedom debate I had with Republican Senator Bill Morrow on March 23, 2005, as published in the April 5, 2005 edition of the Cal State San Marcos Pride.* Morrow had recently proposed Senate Bill 5—a worrisome effort to legislate speech constraints and ‘both sides’ ideological diversity requirements in university classrooms—to the California State Legislature.

A version of the Academic Bill of Rights, the bill did not pass. But it was pretty dicey for a while there, so I was fighting vigorously in my capacity as Vice President for Private Universities and Colleges, California Conference of the American Association of University Professors. Continue reading →

It’s Complicated

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These days when people people ask me what I’ve been up to, the answers can get quite convoluted. So in the absence of a FaceBook account here’s a sampling of some recent projects, and just enough back story to make it seem coherent.

Followers of this site will be familiar with my researches into the Marshall McLuhan fonds, work that some intrepid Berliners have recently revived by marrying a poor quality lecture video to the hundreds of images that were the crux of the original presentation. The result is the Hybrid Lecture Player.

[tweet https://twitter.com/bglarkin/status/592024152179142656 width=’320′ align=’center’]

We’re currently seeking support to go deeper (and go public) with this project. The hope is to make each image into a virtual slide down a documentary rabbit hole, for those who choose to explore. We were met with enthusiastic interest in recent conversations with the McLuhan family, and the Berliners have piqued the interest of universities in Europe and the US. All of this international attention may be enough to win the eventual support of Canadian institutions, including the LAC whose new director says he wants to revive the exhibitions and programming that have been conspicuously absent in recent years. With luck the promised exhibitions will expand beyond war and hockey.

In addition to that archival work I’m getting back into museums, by way of the academy and the internet. I’ve researched, catalogued, taught and curated in museums for much of my career, which took a downturn in summer 2011 when I was one of five curators laid off from the struggling National Gallery of Canada. The abolition of my position as Curator of International (i.e. non-Canadian) Art brought the total to seventy lost positions by the time I was out of the picture. That’s a conservative estimate, since it doesn’t count moribund positions like the curatorship of Modern Art, a role that I subsumed a few years prior to that. I found it rewarding to acquire 20thC works such as a unique Warhol print donated by a couple in Toronto and this crazy thing which I found at auction and paid for with repatriation monies from Heritage Canada.

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I also developed a deep respect for minimalist art while creating a glorious gallery for Judd, Andre and Flavin works that has since been dismantled. Continue reading →

The Internet’s Own Boy

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Two stills from a superb documentary about my pal Aaron Swartz, whose death started me blogging in January 2013. The photo shows Aaron celebrating the victory over the passage of SOPA legislation. Scroll down to watch the entire movie.

Continue reading →

Blueprint for Counter Education Redivivus

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I just received word that Paul Cronin, Rob Giampietro, Adam Michaels and Jeffrey T. Schnapp received a generous Graham Foundation grant for an exhibition analyzing and completing the inimitable Blueprint for Counter Education by Maurice R. Stein and Larry Miller, from which I quoted in this recent post. At the time I was writing a last-minute letter of support for the grant proposal, which I reckon it’s now safe to share with a new image and a few links. The fact that it fits 18 of my 30 subject tags indicates the project’s richness and its closeness to my heart! The Chicago-based Graham Foundation Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts is a wonderful institution that supported my first and last translation effort in the late ’90s.

Maurice R. Stein, Larry Miller & Marshall Henrichs; Blueprint for Counter Education, 1970, New York. Photo: Project Projects.

Maurice R. Stein, Larry Miller & Marshall Henrichs; Blueprint for Counter Education, 1970, New York. Photo: Project Projects.

23 January 2014 Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing in support of the project Blueprint for (a Media Archeology of) Counter Education, as presented to the Graham Foundation’s “Production and Presentation” grant category by Jeffrey Schnapp, Adam Michaels and Rob Giampietro. The proposed project as a natural successor to Schnapp and Michaels’ triumphant The Electric Information Age Book (TEAIB), an experiment intimately linked to the Blueprint project in form and subject matter. The book TEAIB defines the parameters of a short-lived and largely forgotten type of publication, variously described as the kinetic paperback, the inventory book and the experimental paperback. Beginning with The Medium is the Massage—the groundbreaking 1967 book written by Marshall McLuhan, designed by Quentin Fiore and ‘produced’ by Jerome Agel—these revolutionary little books rewrite the rules of style, layout and distribution. They also declare the irrelevance of divisions between highbrow and lowbrow, art and advertising, word and image, and (most crucially) form and content. This complicated mix of moves perfectly embodies McLuhan’s observation that the medium is the message. Continue reading →

And that Yopp . . .

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And he climbed with the lad up the Eiffelberg Tower.

“This,” cried the Mayor, “is your town’s darkest hour!
The time for all Whos who have blood that is red
to come to the aid of their country!” he said.
“We’ve GOT to make noises in greater amounts!
So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!”

Thus he spoke as he climbed. When they got to the top,
The lad cleared his throat and he shouted out, “YOPP!”

And that Yopp . . .

That one last small, extra Yopp put it over!
Finally, at last! From the speck on that clover
Their voices were heard! They rang out clear and clean.
And the elephant smiled. “Do you see what I mean? . . .
They’ve proved they ARE persons, no matter how small.
And their whole world was saved by the Smallest of All!”

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Seizing Canada’s Scientists: A Dissenter’s View

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To the Honourable James Moore, Greg Rickford, Stephen Harper, and Industry Canada:

I see that today is the last day to hand in a response to the Harper Government™‘s quietly-released “consultation paper” on Science, Technology and Innovation. Based on an eponymous Speech from the Throne, the paper is titled “Seizing Canada’s Moment: Moving Forward in Science, Technology and Innovation.” The only other responses I’ve been able to find online are the thorough and thoughtful ones by scientists here and here. The first is from an organization of concerned scientists that “advocates for the transparent use of science and evidence in public policy and government decision-making.” The second is from a scientist/editor who wistfully notes that “I’m not naive enough to believe that anyone at Industry Canada will actually read my note, nor do I think it’ll actually make any kind of a difference, but I thought I should at least make some effort to engage.” As a defender of pure and applied research based on good libraries and an open-access information network, the beleaguered editor has good reason to feel that her government will not heed her.

The Seizing paper in question aggressively declares the Harper Government™’s intention to steer research by our federal government and institutions of higher learning in the direction of short-term “business innovation” at the expense of public interest. As one might expect from the only nation in the world to have renounced the Kyoto Protocol, the message is couched entirely in macho, platitudinous bizspeak: it’s all about seizing, competing and leveraging, or winning an imagined “global race for excellence, talent and prosperity.” In  this my own modest effort to engage, I will question three bogus and dangerous assumptions underlying this latest effort to make all federally-funded workers succumb to the Harper ideology. Continue reading →

remember your life up to this point, then forget it

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Marshall Henrichs, Poster #3 for the “Blueprint for Counter Education”: Modernism as Meditative Environment / Post-modernism as participatory environment …

In honour of main man Phil Ford‘s latest spate of alt-pedagogical ramblings over at Dial M, here are some excerpts from a Norman Birnbaum review in Change, vol. 2, no. 5 (Sep. – Oct., 1970), pp. 69-74. Thanks Jeffrey Schnapp for alerting me to this. -GL

Before us is a Blueprint for Counter Education, described as “curriculum handbook, wall decoration, shooting script,” and prepared by Maurice Stein (age 44, formerly professor of sociology at Brandeis and now dean of humanities at the California Institute of the Arts) and Larry Miller (age 24, one of Stein’s students at Brandeis). Blueprint consists of a box with the following description:

Inside this box are three charts and a book, the tools for creating a new educational environment. This counter-university makes obsolete the traditional university process. Surrounded by charts, the participant will be confronted by ideas and issues that compel him to interact with everything going on around him—from movies, to riots, to political campaigns. There is no textbook, no syllabus, no final exam; and the “Faculty” includes Marcuse, McLuhan, Eldridge Cleaver and Jean-Luc Godard, The Revolution Starts Here. Continue reading →

Reflections on My First Year of Blogging

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My blogging career began exactly a year ago today on a hastily-assembled Tumblr page called Boring from Within. The unexpected catalyst was the tragic death of my friend Aaron Swartz, the great activist to whom I also dedicate the present post.

I ended post #1 by saying that “I feel compelled to grieve with this, my first really public pronouncement [in close to a decade]. I’m not sure what’s next, but under the circumstances being quietly bereft and outraged doesn’t feel like an adequate response.”

As it turned out I mainly used that site for agitprop that I made in an effort to learn Adobe Illustrator. The first and most popular of these quoted Philip K. Dick’s advice for surviving in a surveillance state. Most of the other posts were likewise centred around freedom of speech and consciousness.

After splitting in June between Tumblr and this WordPress site I made a lot of what I called “meta-posts” on both sites—i.e. posts pointing to content on the other site. This strategy of being in two places at once is not unrelated to the PKD quotation imploring us to evade the state by way of various ruses.

Continue reading →

Elsewhere

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Heading into the new year my web activity is all happening elsewhere.

Audiocasts (over at Slow Ottawa)

Audiocast #4: Living Lightly with David Chernushenko.  A talk with Ottawa city councilor David Chernushenko, a tireless local advocate for living lightly and  active transport.

Audiocast #3: Coming Home to Centretown. Graham Larkin chats for an hour with Elspeth McKay, Executive Director of the Operation Come Home youth centre in Ottawa.

Audiocast #2: Walking with Dan Rubinstein. Graham Larkin chats for an hour with award-winning journalist Dan Rubinstein about his Born to Walk project.

 Audiocast #1: The Future Isn’t what it Used to Be.  A six-minute teaser recorded on a bad microphone.

Adventures in Multimodal Design 2.0

And another season of the Adventures in Multimodal Design graduate seminar is underway at the Carleton University architecture school. Continue reading →

Thank You Douglas Rushkoff

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rushkoff_covers
Having learned the hard way that hater-baiting is a loser’s game I’m not going to critique or even name the author who recently made the absurd claim, in a Prominent and Respectable Middlebrow Magazine, that Douglas Rushkoff’s Present Shock (whose title said hater gets wrong) offers no solutions. For the record, I read that book with great care in August/September, and its wise advice played no small part in the germination of my website Slow Ottawa.

Launched a month ago, this is a multimedia platform providing people in my community with the resources to live happier, more financially and ecologically sustainable lives. In the spirit of Rushkoff’s maker manifesto Program or be Programmed, which I also ingested very carefully, I produced (and continue to produce) the entire Slow Ottawa site, serving as web designer, artist, photographer, researcher, journalist and audiocast host. I have no formal training in any of that, aside from general research skills. Continue reading →