In Los Angeles on any given Friday, you could venture over to Farmlab’s Salon, tuck in a full-on organic lunch and listen to an amazing line-up of art/ecology innovators and activists. Last week I heard Wes Jackson of the Land Institute describe his 50-year plan to restore the depleated soils of America’s heartland.  Next Friday historian Robert Bichard presents over 100 images exploring the first movie studios in L.A. starting 100 years ago.

Farmlab, formerly Not a Corn Field, is the invention of artist/urbanist/philanthropist Lauren Bon.  It began as a multi-year project to restore a 35-acre industrial brownfield near downtown through the cultivation of corn- not only corn, but a social sculpture and nexus for community action and education.

Recently Bon has been working with a veteran’s hospital to create the Strawberry Flag project.

More images: (more…)

March 13 – April 17, 2010

apexart

Sinudom Silk Screen Factory
35/21 Moo 1, Sakaegnam Road
Samaedam, Bang Khun Thian
Thailand

Franchise Two: “free size” **
Curated by Logan Bay

Participating artists: Alvaro Ilizarbe, Jen Stark, Juan Angel Chavez, and P7

“In a mass produced world of global goods, the act of creation is often lost or forgotten. Hidden machinery cranks and sweats out elements of our everyday life, yet we rarely glimpse the environment where ideas are physically forged. To produce the exhibition free size artists Alvaro Ilizarbe, Jen Stark, Juan Angel Chavez, and P7 will work directly in the Sinudom Silk Screen factory along side employees creating works of art. By bringing these contemporary artists into a global manufacturing hub the realms of production and creation will exist in a simultaneous space, transforming this modest factory into an active generator of creative capital. The Sinudom Silk Screen factory is located on the edge of Samut Sakhon a province that houses many factories. Over the past few decades Thailand has worked to become a producer of exportable goods and inexpensive items for domestic use. While the manufacturing machinery is abundant, many of the products are designed elsewhere. free size will encourage viewers to see that industrial spaces can also be incubators for creative thought and social evolution.

** For Franchise Two we excluded submissions for exhibitions to take place in large cities like New York, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, to focus on locations with less than 500,000 people — places such as Moshupa or Priboj, Baton Rouge or Lübeck, Cadiz or Az-Zawiyah, Heidelberg or Zinder. In response we received 243 exhibition proposals from 63 countries, and jurors submitted over 5,000 votes to identify a winner.”

Opening reception: March 13, 2-6 pm

[Text and graphic from apexart. Cross-posted to The Data Stream.]

One of the most fascinating places I’ve been thus far is Manshiyat Nasser (Garbage City), a suburb of Cairo. Garbage City is home to more than 20,000 people (60,000 by some sources?), the Zabaleen (Arabic for “Garbage Collectors”). Daily, they gather about one-third of Cairo’s trash using carts and donkeys and bring it back to Manshiyat Nasser where the trash is systematically sorted and somewhere between 80-90% (!!!!!!) of it is recycled into raw materials or manufactured goods before being resold or reused worldwide.  Despite the piles, stench and animals, Garbage City is very organized and one of the world’s most innovative and efficient waste disposal models. There are many areas of specialization, from sorting plastics to making paper and beautiful quilts.

Photograph by Bas Princen, 2009.

Photograph by me, 2006.

Unfortunately, Garbage City has had to overcome two major obstacles in the past few years. The Egyptian government attempted to privatize the waste management system with multinational waste management corporations - trading the practically free services of the Zabaleen for a $50 million a year trash collection plan (with a 20% recycling rate).  Fortunately for the Zabaleen, the foreign companies’ trucks aren’t able to navigate the city’s narrow streets the way donkey carts can, so the Zabaleen continued to collect much of Cairo’s trash.  In 2009, Egypt ordered the mandatory slaughter of all pigs in a misguided response to the H1N1 outbreak.  Pigs have played an important role in Garbage City, eating food waste and being sold for meat to Coptic (Egyptian Christian) communities (under Islamic law, pork is forbidden).  Since all the pigs were killed, the Zabaleen stopped collecting organic waste because it serves no purpose for them.  “They killed the pigs, let them clean the city.  Everything used to go to the pigs, now there are no pigs, so it goes to the administration.” said Moussa Rateb, a Garbage City resident, in this New York Times article.

I generally support the Zabaleen and Garbage City and see the situation as a marginalized community which has found a creative way to contribute to society and make a living.  Are they intentionally “green” and working for the sake of the environment?  Not necessarily.  Is this an idyllic recycling community?  Definitely not.  There’s issues of  education, health, sustainability, modernization and the young age of many Zabaleen.

Photograph by me, 2006.

It came to my attention recently that a documentary came out in 2009 called Garbage Dreams by Mai Iskander, followowing three teenage boys “born into the trash trade.”  It’s received a lot of international press and will be broadcast nationally on Independent Lens in April.  Here’s a clip:

Nevada Museum of Art
160 West Liberty Street
Reno

Center for Art + Environment

Lucy Raven: China Town

“Begun while working as an artist-in-residence at the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Lucy Raven’s video “China Town” traces copper mining and production from an open pit mine in East Ely, Nevada to the Yangtze River in China, where the semi-processed ore is sent to be smelted, refined, and spun into wire and used to electrify the nation. The video consists of an animated sequence created from more than 7,000 photographs, along with ambient sound that Raven recorded along her journey across the globe. China Town offers a stunning view of the relationship between the industrial landscapes of two countries, whose economies are intimately linked due to China’s increased demand for resources and electricity.”

Through May 9

Matt Coolidge, Center for Land Use Interpretation Director, will be part of CCAI’s March 2010 Nevada Neighbors project, and will give a public talk on Wednesday, March 31 at 7 pm at the Carson City Library.

[Text from Museum website. Graphic from Mass MoCA web site. Click on image to enlarge.]

By the end of 2010, Google’s operations in China (www.google.cn) may be over and done. A presence in China’s carefully state controlled fiefdom in cyberspace since 2006, Google has reacted to a mid-December breach of its security, which, according to Google,  the Chinese government orchestrated.  Google and 20 other companies (including Yahoo) suffered the indignation of similar hacking incursions.

The attack targeted the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, though Google assures the hacking attempt was unsuccessful. As a result of this ungracious behavior on the part of their host, Google will stop its self-imposed policy of censoring searches as per Chinese law. In a letter from Google’s legal office, the internet firm stated that it is “no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.” As of press time, Google has granted its employees in China an extended holiday furlough.

The internet has always been cumbersome set of golden chains for China, essential for its economic expansion but also a powerful forum for political dissent and expression. While has been disappointing to see Google entertain Beijing’s requirements for censorship since 2006, it will be pleasing to see Google follow through on its indignant exit. By demonstrating that China can’t bully forms of foreign direct investment that require a degree of privacy and intellectual freedom to operate, Google’s departure from Chinese cyberspace may make other American and European firms less reluctant to show the same boldness in negotiations with the government. Unfortunately, China will probably respond by creating its own tamed search engines like www.baidu.com, which beats Google’s share of the Chinese market by a wide margin. So there’s a long road ahead for any truly unrestricted internet in China, and the cat and mouse game between government and dissident will continue. To distort Deng Xiaoping’s quote concerning free market reforms and economic development (”it doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice”), no matter how determined the cat, it can’t catch all the world’s mice.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Copenhagen Spoof Shames Canada; Climate Debt No Joke
African, Danish and Canadian youth join the Yes Men to demand climate justice and skewer Canadian climate policy

COPENHAGEN, Denmark – “Canada is ‘red-faced’!” (Globe and Mail) “Copenhagen spoof shames Canada!” (Guardian) “Hoax slices through Canadian spin on warming!” (The Toronto Star) “A childish prank!” (Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada)

What at first looked like the flip-flop of the century has been revealed as a sophisticated ruse by a coalition of African, North American, and European activists. The purpose: to highlight the most powerful nations’ obstruction of meaningful progress in Copenhagen, to push for just climate debt reparations, and to call out Canada in particular for its terrible climate policy.

The elaborate intercontinental operation was spearheaded by a group of concerned Canadian citizens, the “Climate Debt Agents” from ActionAid, and The Yes Men. It involved the creation of a best-case scenario in which Canadian government representatives unleashed a bold new initiative to curb emissions and spearhead a “Climate Debt Mechanism” for the developing world.

The ruse started at 2:00 PM Monday, when journalists around the world were surprised to receive a press release from “Environment Canada” (enviro-canada.com, a copy of ec.gc.ca) that claimed Canada was reversing its position on climate change.

In the release, Canada’s Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, waxed lyrical. “Canada is taking the long view on the world economy,” said Prentice. “Nobody benefits from a world in peril. Contributing to the development of other nations and taking full responsibilities for our emissions is simple Canadian good sense.”

Thirty minutes later, the same “Environment Canada” sent out another press release, congratulating itself on Uganda’s excited response to the earlier fake announcement. A video featuring an impassioned response by “Margaret Matembe,” supposedly a COP15 delegate from Uganda, was embedded in a fake COP15 website. “Canada, until now you have blocked climate negotiations and refused to reduce emissions,” said “Matembe.” “Of course, you do sit on the world’s second-largest oil reserve. But for us it isn’t a mere economic issue – it’s about drought, famine, and disease.”

(The video was shot in a replica of the Bella Center’s briefing room, at Frederiksholms Kanal 4, in the center of Copenhagen. Matembe was actually Kodili Chandia, a “Climate Debt Agent” from ActionAid, a collective of activists that push for rich countries to help those most affected by climate change for adaptation and mitigation projects. The “Climate Debt Agents,” with their signature bright red suits, have been a ubiquitous presence in Copenhagen during the climate summit.)

Then it was time for Canada to react. One hour later, another “Environment Canada” (this one at ec-gc.ca) released a bombastic response to the original release. This one quot ed Jim Prentice, Canada’s Minister for the Environment, decrying the original announcement: “It is the height of cruelty, hypocrisy, and immorality to infuse with false hopes the spirit of people who are already, and will additionally, bear the brunt of climate change’s terrible human effects. Canada deplores this moral misfire.”

Because almost none of the resulting news coverage even mentioned Uganda or “Matembe’s” response, a fourth release was sent from the second website (ec-gc.ca).

Meanwhile, in the real world

The real Canadian government’s reactions were almost as strange as the fake ones in the release. Dimitri Soudas, a spokesperson for the Canadian Prime Minister, emailed reporters and blamed Steven Guilbeault, cofounder of Quebec-based Equiterre. “More time should be dedicated to playing a constructive role instead of childish pranks,” said Soudas in a first email, while misspelling Guilbeault’s name.

Guilbeault demanded an apology. “A better way to use his time would probably be to advise the Canadian government to change its deeply flawed position on climate,” said Guilbeault.

Soudas and Guilbeault were seen exchanging angry words in the hallway outside of Canada’s 3:30pm press conference, which did not start until 4:30pm, and at which the Canadians refused to answer any questions about the flurry of false releases.

More raised voices were heard when Stephen Chu, the US Secretary of Energy, refused to pose for a photo with his Canadian counterpart, Jim Prentice. After Steve Kelly, Prentice’s chief of staff, begged for 10 minutes, the US guy finally asked why a photo was so important. Kelly replied that “we were carpetbagged this morning by [environmental non-governmental organizations] with a false press release. I gotta change the story.”

Why Blame Canada?

The only country in the world to have abandoned the Kyoto Protocol’s emissions and climate debt targets, Canada also has the most energy-intensive, destructive and polluting oil reserves in the world. The Alberta tar sands, according to The Economist, are in fact the world’s biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions.

“By not agreeing to emissions reductions, Canada is holding a loaded gun to our heads, and seems ready to pull the trigger on millions of us around the globe, ” said Margaret Matembe aka Kodili Chandia of the “Climate Debt Agents.” “They leave us no choice but to see them as criminal.”

At last year’s climate summit in Poznan, Poland, over 400 civil society organizations voted Canada worst of all nations in blocking progress towards a binding climate treaty. Will Canada take the dubious prize again this year in Copenhagen?

“The Canadian government is not listening to its citizens,” says Sarah Ramsey, a resident of Alberta who has seen the destruction of the tar sands firsthand. Ramsey traveled to Copenhagen to give voice to a generation of young Canadians. “We are discouraged and demoralized by our government’s position on climate change. We decided to lend our government a hand, and show them what good leadership looks like.”

In solidarity with the delegates from the G77 Bloc of nations, today’s intervention was also meant to highlight an issue at the heart of the ongoing talks—the issue of climate justice, and the climate debt that the developed world owes the developing world. Seventy-five percent of the historical emissions that created the climate crisis came from 20% of the world’s population in developed countries, according to the UN, yet up to 80% of the impacts of the climate crisis are experienced in the developing world, according to the World Bank.

“I meant every word I said,” says Kodili Chandia, a spokesperson for the Climate Debt Agents, who spoke out as a member of the Ugandan delegation. “This debate isn’t just about facts and figures and abstract concepts of fairness—the drought we are seeing right now in East Africa is directly threatening the lives of millions of people, including farmers in my own family. We have not created this problem but we are living with the consequences. That’s why I still say: It’s time for rich countries to pay their climate debt.”

- 30 –

More dream announcements coming soon! Come make your own or stay tuned at good-cop15.org.

[Text from Yes Men press release, reprinted in its entirety. Screen grab from YouTube video. Caption: "Angry Canadian delegate at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen responds to the fake announcement that Canada would reduce emissions by 80 percent and pay the climate debt of developing nations. He doesn't think its funny! Watch him spit teeth!" Cross-posted to The Data Stream.]

As if the WTO Ministerial weren’t worrisome enough, here’s another troubling development in Switzerland, where voters have passed a referendum to ban the building of mosques on Swiss soil. Here’s Nate Silver’s take, a Reuters story on the run up to the referendum and an LA Times story covering the outcome.

In America, it’s easy to take tolerance of Muslim immigrants for granted, even if it’s mostly just  indifference.  And while there are indeed viciously xenophobic elements in American society, our problems apparently pale in comparison to Europe’s deep-seated fear of the ‘other.’  Just several years after 9-11, a majority of Americans elected a man with a Muslim grandfather whose middle name, Hussein, with the surname of the man the United States spent a trillion dollars to execute. The notion that a European nation might elect a leader with ties as close to Islam as Obama’s just sounds plain absurd.

Indeed, relative to the United States, European countries are rather retrograde in their rejection of immigrant cultures.  The United States is much bigger than Switzerland, and many other European countries as well, so there’s more room here to avoid stepping on each others’ toes or, in some places, even encountering anybody different at all.  More than that, Europe’s relationship with the Arab Muslims across the Mediterranean region in many way mimics America’s exploiting cheap labor from Mexico. But immigration law in Germany refuses citizenship to Turks born in Germany, even those whose parents and grandparents were born there.  Fourth generation Mexican immigrants to the US wouldn’t face that type of state-sponsored prejudice.

But the Europeans and Muslim immigrants have a much steeper linguistic and religious chasm to cross. Also, there have been tensions between Europeans and their Muslim neighbors for, well, more than a millennium. Unfortunately, events don’t appear to be making much progress toward reconciliation.

The Tortoise v. The Scare. A screen shot from a 2007 film depicting the protests, "Battle in Seattle."

An editorial in The Nation eloquently considers the recent history of direct action and resistance to the decisions the WTO makes at its meetings.

The funny thing about supranational organizations is that they talk about global governance but make no provisions for democratic input. Of course, this should be no surprise. Rights are rarely just donated out of good will. Unless they filter from sovereign hands by more pacific osmotic mechanisms of social change, rights have to be seized to be secured. And while protests might do more to raise awareness than shape policy, the conversation continues to evolve between the conductors and passengers on the run away train called Globalization.

Elinor Ostrom recently won the economics Nobel.  Here she explains her thinking about governance of the commons.

Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.