Counterforces has been effectively moribund in recent years as I shifted my focus to the concerns expressed on joculum.livejournal.com, but LJ is becoming so spam-ridden that everyone is jumping to Dreamwidth or some other blog device (those of us whose thoughts don't fit into the Facebook format most of the time).

I am thinking of starting a new blog to summarize my conclusions after seven years of joculum, and letting my art commentaries migrate back to Counterforces whether they fit the global context or not.

Just FYI, for the eight folks and one friend (as Blogger somehow delineates them) who follow this one. I would say you are all my friends.

the Third International Antakya Biennial will not take place

Or so I would assume. Antakya is taken up with more immediate matters, these two years after the Second International Antakya Biennial. The city is preoccupied with the Syrian refugee crisis, and the days when one could take a taxi to Aleppo for US$40 are long gone.

Perhaps the world's artists should stage a Virtual Antakya Biennial online, devoted to the demands of the moment in a city that has no time right now to host the international artworld's migratory curators and collectors.

Antakya, where the disciples were first called Christians; where today there are no fewer than five separate Christian Patriarchs of Antioch, thanks to the appropriately Byzantine division of churches and depositions of bishops and emperors fifteen centuries ago. The Patriarchs have not made it into the English-language headlines lately.