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.

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Brooklyn’s Dumbo Arts Center is showing Nebojsa Seric-Shoba’s amazing photography project, Battlefields, curated by Josh Altman.

Made between 1999 to 2009, Shoba’s documentations of actual battlefields, call into question the autonomy of place and the disparities that exist between historical events and the geographic locations in which they occur. Apart from the occasional historic marker or didactic memorial plaque, little visual evidence remains to distinguish one site from another, a disconnect that evokes the transient nature of history, the arbitrary lines of the battlefield and the universality of the theatres of war.

Conscripted to fight in defense of his hometown of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, (1992-1995), Shoba served the majority of his military mandate digging trenches amidst the bodies that littered the battlefield. It is from these wartime experiences that the artist developed a profound sense of distrust for a political machine that saw neighbors taking aim at neighbors, firing across seemingly arbitrary lines of demarcation. Eventually this experience led him to the sober realization that the history of the human race can be seen as a history of conflicts, the majority of which are destined to be forgotten, buried beneath the surface of history. 

The artist’s subsequent travels found him photographing numerous battlefields, including those at Waterloo, Gallipoli, Troy, Verdun, Normandy, Istanbul, Gettysburg and Kursk. The majority of these sites now see few visitors, and those that do serve primarily as tourist attractions for the morbidly-inclined, visiting only briefly in an attempt to capture the remnants of a history long since departed.

The exhibition features The Battle of Brooklyn, 1776 (2009), also known as The Battle of Long Island, which was the first major battle of the American Revolutionary War. Tellingly, the current riverside park lying opposite the Dumbo Arts Center building, marks the actual point of retreat of George Washington’s volunteer militia, which resulted in the British burning  nearly a quarter of New York City.

As competing social, cultural, and linguistic incarnations make it nearly impossible to lay claim to any fixed idea of national history or identity, the relationship between history and place has become a struggle for the possession of the past. In reframing our history through the focused lens of these battlefields, the artist asks us to consider them less as fixed landscapes, and more as part of a living history, with the many memories and points of view that such a history evokes.

Read Shoba’s comments in an online roundtable organized by Provisions Library’s Balkans Project.

Image: From upper left to bottom: Battle for Britain, Auschwitz, Verdun, Troy, Sarajevo, Normandy, Mostar, Leningrad, Gettysburg, Gernika, Gallipoli, Borodino

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.

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.]

Nevada Museum of Art
160 West Liberty Street
Reno

Center for Art + Environment
Art and Infrastructure: Patricia Johanson and the Petaluma Wetlands Park

“Art, ecology, landscaping and functional infrastructure meet in Patricia Johanson’s collaborative project – Petaluma Wetlands Park. Using constructed and natural wetlands Johanson created a multi-purpose public landscape providing three miles of recreational use, educational programs and nature study alongside a facility that simultaneously processes human sewage, while also generating crops and creating wildlife habitats.”

Through January 10, 2010

[text and graphic from NMA website. Caption: Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility, Petaluma, CA, April 2008. Image courtesy the City of Petaluma, California." Cross-posted to The Data Stream.]

The COP15 Conference, the  meeting in Copenhagen for countries party to the United Nations Framework Convention (UNFCC) on Climate Change, has begun in earnest. With it, a flood of foreigners has washed ashore in Denmark, among them NGOs, IGOs (Intergovernmental Organizations), the Press, and delegates from UNFCC signatories. Among them, unfortunately, is not your correspondent, Wilson Dizard, the one writing this blog post from Copenhagen. Others are in a similar position, and not just due to the fact that the they basically accredited twice the number of people the conference center can hold.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of interesting things going down around town that concern the arts of social change. Here are the first photos of the acts at the conference.

Alright, this is a picture of a ice flow in Iceland, where I had a rather long lay over. Iceland’s endangered glaciers are a topic of discussion at the Conference, as you might imagine.

The Bella Center. The world will have to wait to see what kind of substance, if any, might manage to emerge from this building a fortnight from now. Look at the cranes in the background, evidence of economic development chugging along. And then there’s a wind turbine, too. To be sure, Denmark is a land of contrasts.

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The reservoir of the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest and most controversial hydropower project, will reach its final height in November at 175 meters. The 660 kilometer-long reservoir displaced 1.3 million people and is wreaking havoc with the environment.

International Rivers has published a new factsheet and will continue to monitor the social and environmental impacts of the Three Gorges Dam, working to ensure the right lessons are drawn for energy and water projects in China and beyond.

Chris Jordan has a disturbing new series of photographs of bird carcasses on Midway Island in the Pacific.

Blane De St. Croix:  “My recent body of work explores the geopolitical landscape through drawing and sculptural installation. I conduct extensive research on each project,–through site visits, photographic documentation, interviews, and satellite imagery. Employing a combination of natural and industrial materials, I am interested in articulating humankind’s desire to take command over the earth, revealing distinct conflicts with ecology, politics and ourselves in large-scale installations that utilize architectural space in a distinct, powerful and imposing manner.”

Black and White Project Space in Brooklyn, has unveiled De St. Croix’s massive new site-specific work, Mountain Strip, a monumental miniaturized landscape revealing the impact of strip mining for coal on  West Virginia’s Kayford Mountain.

Image: Etienne Frossard

Dr. Seuss’s environmentally conscious, ahead of its time picture book, The Lorax is scheduled to be made into a 3-D feature film collaboration from Universal Studios and Illumination Entertainment. And who could think of a better time to be reminded of Seuss’s prolific 1971 character who “spoke for the trees”. 

For anyone who hasn’t read the book (though I can’t imagine that would be many), it “drew condemnation from the logging industry as an ideological, anti-business tract posing as a children’s book. The title character is a blunt-speaking creature who speaks for the Truffula Trees as he warns the industrialist against ravaging the forest; the businessman pays no heed and creates a cycle of pollution and environmental devastation that he comes to regret.” This sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it? Maybe the movie will open some eyes to the fact that the environment doesn’t seem to be getting any better on its own. 

Because the book was such an influential piece of environmental literature, 2008 saw the creation of the Lorax Project, a conservation group dedicated to protecting forests around the world through raising funding, awareness (the project is mentioned on the cover of every newly printed Lorax book) and inspiration to create “generations of passionate individuals worldwide”. Dr. Seuss has left quite a legacy.