Avatar has made more dollars in the last month than there are people in China, but not all of its fans left the theater feeling happy. Psychology Today reports that some experienced depression and even suicidal thoughts after seeing Avatar. Here’s an example of the post-movie melancholia an Avatar fan felt:

“Ever since I went to see ‘Avatar’ I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na’vi made me want to be one of them. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it. I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in ‘Avatar.’

No, it’s not because Avatar has a silly script or condescendingly simplifies the complex historical narratives of native peoples. The reason is that some Avatar fans can’t handle being thrust back into the bleak reality of early 21st century Earth, a dying planet whose quickly decaying beauty can’t match the shimmering, bioluminescent landscapes of Pandora (the planet where Avatar is set). Finding the IMdB discussions full of “trolls and 12 year old deconstructors”  (according to one Avatar enthusiast) the blockbuster film’s fans have created their own online forum communities, one of which includes a thread entitled ‘Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible’ And an antidote is indeed desperately needed.

Another forum member offered a rather comprehensive solution:

“Start living like Neytiri: in touch with nature, the environment, and not being greedy and wasteful. Pass on the burger, for something more healthy for you and less cruel to animals. Spend your time on this forum, or volunteering in your free time, instead of getting high or drinking, twiddling your thumbs, being apathetic and complaining about how bad the world is. Don’t get swept away by the wave of negativity, live your dream. Your life has only two switches, to shine or not to shine. There is no ‘apathy’ setting. If you’re on apathy setting you might as well sign your world away to destruction. When you get discouraged by everyone around you, be courageous like Jake, and jump on the leonopteryx. Be the change you want to see in your world. There are only so many people on this earth, the more of them that are doing positive things, the less of them that are out there doing negative things. It’s unfortunate that we live in a world where, just by pulling a trigger or making a corporate decision, one single greedy human being can wipe out the hard works of love of many people. But this is why we need to stop focusing on money and start focusing on our environment. Because we have the intelligence to kill ourselves, but not the wisdom to stop it. What will our money buy, when everything that is worth having is destroyed? The only way you can fill the emptiness you feel after this movie, is to jump on the leonopteryx.”

Speaking as someone who has seen this movie (in Copenhagen, actually, so the Danish subtitles sort of distorted some of the experience, since parts of the dialogue are in Na’vi, the lilting language of idyllic Pandora’s noble natives) I can tell you that it’s not worth getting this worked up about, just in case that wasn’t clear. It’s a great looking movie but it’s certainly not a great movie. Indeed, Jake Sully, the Na’vi’s human advocate (dressed up as an alien for diplomatic purposes (don’t worry, it’s  a long story)) fulfills the tired troupe of White Savior, like some sort of interstellar Lawrence of Arabia or Kevin Costner’s character in the eponymous Dances with Wolves. Don’t take my word for it though, this is Ezili Danto’s interpretation. Personally, I can’t find a reason to disagree with her. So maybe one way to beat those “Avatar blues” is to remember that, at the end of the day, two important facts a) the millions of dollars James Cameron spent making Avatar (and the subsequent cost of pricey tickets for 3-D showings) all could’ve gone to, I don’t know, cleaning up The Chesapeake Bay or subsidizing wind farm construction. At least something less vain, frivolous, and decadent  than a major motion picture.  And, of course, b) it’s just a movie. A great antidote to movies are books. I suggest Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece Blood Meridian, a novel depicting panoramas surpassing Pandora’s in primordial beauty.

Here’s the view across the famously restored bridge in Mostar, with two religious pinnacles in competition beyond.  The identity politics of religion are acute in Bosnia, where the carrot of European Union membership hinges on the seemingly impossible formation a “functional state” where power is shared between Bosnians, Serbs and Croats.

A little farther north, near Donji Vakuf, we came across this Tatlin-esque Christian shrine under construction across the valley from a newly erected mosque.

More on recent mosque architecture here.

More on Provisions’ Balkans Project here.

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.

One of the works shown this past weekend at the Creative Time Summit was Mary Koszmary (Nightmares), a film by Israeli artist Yael Bartana.  I had missed its debut at the Jewish Museum earlier this year but caught up with this amazing work at the Tirana Biennial last month.  The short film powerfully explores a complicated set of social and political relationships among Jews, Poles, and other Europeans in the age of globalization. Using the structure and sensibility of a World War II propaganda film, Mary Koszmary (Nightmares) addresses contemporary anti-Semitism and xenophobia in Poland, the longing for the Jewish past among liberal Polish intellectuals, the desire among a new generation of Poles to be fully accepted as Europeans, and the Zionist dream of return to Israel.

More here.

Strange Comfort at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, tomorrow through August 8, 2010.

Washington Post review.

Works by Taring Padi at Conference of Birds

Hidden away down a small soi (alley) in a nondescript neighborhood of Bangkok, the three floors of Conference of Birds Gallery specialize in political art. On September 19, “September Quick Fix” opened. This collaboration between artists Varsha Nair and Jérôme Ming offers what the gallery website calls “a common ground for a shift in orientation through a series of spontaneous renovations, incomplete outlines, and joint rethinkings.” Over the weeks leading up to the opening, the artists, Nair working in Bangkok and Ming in Cameroon, offered “quick fixes” that allude to political realities in oblique and fleeting ways.

When I visited on September 10 of this year, Nair was covering a small, red-painted room on the second floor with wide strips of masking tape. It was an abstract piece, but I was reminded of the US Homeland Security recommendation from 2003 asking people to keep duct tape on hand to seal their homes in case of a bioterrorist attack. This certainly wasn’t on Nair’s mind, but she agreed it was the kind of “quick fix,” hasty and carelessly conceived (since it would also seal out oxygen) that she and Ming are subtly addressing. In the process of preparing the show, Nair says she was thinking about the “speedily or hastily contrived solutions, the quick fixes, [that] continue to bury problems under layers and further add to the list of long-standing issues that are difficult to resolve.” This aesthetically challenging work does not address itself directly to specific policies or problems, but rather to general attitudes and processes that manifest themselves in the realm of the personal as well as the political.

Nair and Ming are sometimes perceived as outsiders in the places where they work, and they take a more modest approach to politics than that of another recent exhibition. Recently, Conference of Birds presented “Never Ending Courage,” an exhibition showcasing sketches, paintings, and woodcut posters by Taring Padi, an activist art collective in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Taring Padi (“teeth of the rice”) emerged from the 1998 mass mobilizations that helped oust the longtime dictator Suharto. Its members invented low-cost techniques using readily available materials, like paintings made with ballpoint pens, and prints pressed with body weight. Their distinctive woodcuts—“People-Oriented Art” (Seni Kerakyatan)—are tightly packed with expressive portraits, stylized details, powerful political messages, and insistent demands.

The American owner, Andrews Little, opened Conference of Birds in 2007. The gallery has brought to Bangkok works by an array of international artists well known in art-activist circles, including Paul Chan, Wafaa Bilal, Julia Meltzer and David Thorne. What was an active commercial gallery scene in Bangkok has taken a major hit in the wake of the economic crisis, but Conference of Birds appears to be thriving, even if on a shoestring. In a time of economic decline, being an engaged, noncommercial gallery might have its advantages. “September Quick Fix” runs until October 19. Hours vary; it’s not the easiest place to find open, so it’s best to call ahead.

131/18 Pan Rd., Silom, Bangrak, Bangkok, Thailand 10500
Tel. + 668 49281152

http://www.conferenceofbirds.com/

Post Secret is an audience-driven interactive art project founded in 2003 by Washington, DC resident Frank Warren. The initial idea was simply to have strangers he approached around the city mail him postcards baring a secret. Since then, his simple request has generated four books (the fifth will be released this October), a blog and a touring exhibition that visits colleges and other major community centers around the country.

Last weekend, I was able to attend one of these events – which are typically a mixture of funny, touching, heart-wrenching and inspiring. What I found most interesting about the lecture Warren gave was not necessarily the types of secrets he has received over the years or even how unthinkably large the project has become – but rather how much it has meant to those who have sent in their secrets.

Warren, who has been called “the most trusted stranger in the world,”  recounts how his project has actually helped people who feel profoundly alone in the universe to feel a part of something. Post Secret, it seems, has likely saved the lives of many people who felt they had nowhere to turn. Evidence of this arrives in many different shapes – from an envelope containing a ripped up suicide note to cards that bear secrets about sexual abuse never confided in anyone, it is undoubtable that the project has made a difference in countless lives – not only of the senders, but of those people reading secrets on the blog or in one of the books and finding that, amazingly, someone else out there understands them.

Post Secret is, to me, a classic example of how one person’s idea can grow much larger than himself. Warren tapped into something necessary to many people. To desire to feel heard and understood, even if by a complete stranger, is apparently huge for all people, from here to Afghanistan (where Warren has actually received postcards from).  It is also an example of how art can touch people’s lives in inexplicable ways. In addition to Post Secret events, Warren has  organized Post Secret art shows over the years, which focus more on the visual aspect of the project. For these exhibits, the post cards are suspended between sheets of plexiglas so that viewers not only see the both sides of the cards, but the faces of viewers on the other side.

To search for a Post Secret event near you, visit the Facebook page, and be sure to check the blog weekly, as a new thematic postcard essay is posted every Sunday.

Dismantling the Corporate State and Other Amusements at Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book & Paper Arts is a one-woman exhibition of work by Anne Elizabeth Moore, artist, media activist, editor of the now-defunct Punk Planet, founding editor of the Best American Comics series, and author of Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity. The exhibition includes zines, video, and ephemera that chronicle Moore’s tireless work as a thorn in the side of corporate media and marketing culture and as an advocate of DIY culture.

Emblematic of Moore’s corporate parodies is “Operation: Pocket Full of Wishes,” in which she produced cards parodying shopping guide cards at the American Girl Place store. Her cards, displayed in the exhibition, offered such consumer goods as Domestic Partner Benefits, Free Tampons, Ample Career Opportunities, Safe, Legal Abortion Access, and Equal Pay for Equal Work. The project eventually caused her to be banned from the store.

Instead of a traditional book tour for her Hey Kidz! Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People, Moore went on a Radical Education Roadshow, teaching kids to create their own media with a zine called “How to make this very zine.” The show includes a plethora of examples of small zines made by kids she worked with. In a similar vein, but with more overtly political ramifications, is the collaborative project “New Girl Law,” in which young Cambodian women leaders collaborated with Moore on a revision of the Cambodian “Girl Law,” a restrictive code of behavior that, while no longer officially law, continues forcefully to shape gender norms. Together Moore and the 32 Cambodian women produced a text that was then letter-pressed and hand-bound in Rhode Island and calls for “basic human rights, gender equity, the eradication of corruption, and funding for cultural production…a re-envisioning of a potential future for the country.”

The exhibition also displays documentation from The Unlympics, held in winter 2009 as a series of alternative games and open discussions on Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid that brought attention to the potential cost to taxpayers of the event, the displacement of low-income residents, and issues of incarceration in Illinois. The Unlympics included such sports as Class-Conscious Kickball, Live Action Role Play Family Dinner, and The Solitary Isolation Game. Planning is underway for Summer Unlympics to take place in September 2009.

“Amusement” is key: Moore consistently mixes a sense of fun in with utopian imagining and fierce critique, demonstrating that activism does not have to be dour. While most of her work is thoroughly collaborative, she also spoofs corporate brand identity by making her personal identity a brand. At the exhibition’s closing festivities, on Friday, August 21 at 6:30pm, Anne Elizabeth Moore will present The Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness. In the running this year are Anne Elizabeth Moore and some candidates other than Anne Elizabeth Moore.

The exhibition opened June 19 and runs until August 22, 2009. Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book & Paper Arts is located at 1104 S. Wabash (2nd floor), in Chicago, IL.

Tourists vacationing in Miami have a disturbing addition to their view of the beach: a growing population of convicted sex offenders have been residing under the Julia Tuttle Causeway. With over 60 offenders living in the tiny space, the community is now spilling out into plain view. Forced by law from living anywhere near congregations of children, they were actually encouraged by the city to live under the highway.

Interestingly, for those who follow the court’s offer to live under the bridge, they find a close knit and remarkably civilized community. There is a village of shacks made from driftwood, thatch, and scavenged junk furnished with twin beds, sofas, DVD players, TV’s, and microwaves and each week everyone pays $2 to fuel the camp’s generator. There’s even an enforced 10pm curfew. In addition, many members care for each other and respect each other’s personal space, especially after a woman joined their ranks.

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The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women, currently at Cheim & Reid in NYC is a group exhibition of many prominent female artists depicting women in hopes to reclaim the traditional domination of the “male gaze”. The idea of the “male gaze” is simple, and one women experience on a daily basis –  how a woman is perceived by others and even sometimes by herself is based on men’s desire for her physical characteristics. This exhibition does the opposite of that – it allows women, in this case female artists, the opportunity to present their womanhood as they see it. As Contemporary Art Daily states, it “attempts to debunk the notion of the male gaze by providing a group of works in which the artist and subject do not relate as “voyeur” and “object,” but as woman and woman.” 

Including works from a variety of different media, this exhibition is sure to create some dialogue about where we are right now in terms of women’s rights. Sure, we’ve come a long way, but why are women still allowing themselves to be told their worth by a man? I think many women, especially young women, are guilty of doing this subconsciously without even realizing how much emphasis they put on the approval of men to feel good about themselves. Society and this kind of consumer culture based on living up to a certain standard certainly play a chief role in making this an acceptable way to view oneself. 

For a full gallery of the works displayed, visit Time Out New York or Contemporary Art Daily.