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…)

Wing Young Huie made his mark in the 1990s with his groundbreaking photo documentary of St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood. Several years later, he took on the entirety of Minneapolis’ Lake Street. Now he’s winding up his work on a six-mile stretch of University Avenue. Wing gives 3-Minute Egg a preview and invites the Egg along on a shoot at a small business along University. Wing is opening his studio to the public Saturday to showcase his University Avenue Project photos for a preview sale. The exhibition goes up to the broader public in May along storefronts, the sides of buildings and giant projection screens along University.

Tipitina’s Uptown
501 Napoleon Avenue
New Orleans, LA
ph. 1.504.895-TIPS

February 28 | 1 – 3:30 pm
Sunday Music Workshop Series
Featuring The Johnny Vidacovich Trio

“Resurrecting a program that was popular in the early ’90s, the Tipitina’s Foundation proudly announces the Sunday Music Workshop Series, the brainchild of Stanton Moore and Johnny and Deborah Vidacovich. These free workshops take place every other Sunday fro, when students have the opportunity to play with and learn from the best musicians in the city.

Sunday Music Workshops offer young, aspiring musicians from all walks of life the unique opportunity to play with and learn from some of the area’s most experienced and celebrated musicians. Each workshop offers students a hands-on, improvisational approach to music education. Students should bring their instruments! Each child will have their own chance play with the veteran musicians or solo on the famed Tipitina’s Uptown stage. Usually, workshops close with a jam session mixing students and veteran musicians together for a real Tip’s concert experience! As many of the city’s various music programs have been put on hold since the storm, these workshops are serving a vital need in the rebuilding process: passing on the musical traditions to a younger generation. Featured artists so far have included Stanton Moore, Johnny Vidacovich, Kirk Joseph, and Theresa Anderson. The free on-stage workshops are only for students, but all members of the public are welcome to attend.”

[Text from Tipitina's website. Photo from NolaFunkNYC. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

Avatar has become a pop culture nexus for Palestinian rights activists.  The film portrays the struggle between a heartless interstellar corporation and the Na’vi, lithe and luminescent aliens indigenous to a planet rich in the lucrative mineral “unobtanium.” The Na’vi live atop a rich deposit of this shimmering ore, so the corporation and its thugs want to remove them, by any means necessary. For activists, the film is an apt analogy to Israel’s annexation of Palestinian territory. So what do these idealistic youth do? Dress up like the aliens.

The protestors appeared in Bil’in, a Palestinian town cut in half by the Wall (whatever adjective, security or Apartheid, no one on either side disagrees that the structure is a wall) and Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem which Israeli settlers have laid claim to and from which Israeli authorities have evicted Palestinians.

When I was in Bil’in in April 2009, the buzzword on the banners was “Occupation Flu,” play to the now-almost-forgotten H1N1 craze. Demonstrators gathered every Friday after prayer to confront Israeli soldiers who meet Palestinians’ stones with tear gas and flash-bang bombs. I was there to write a story, here, which explains more about this weekly protest.

A protestor shields his nose and eyes from the effects of tear gas.

The most striking aspect of this re-appropriation of a distinctly American, Avatar meme, is the irony. And right across the barbed-wire fence opposite from Bil’in are Israeli soldiers whose weapons supplied by American taxpayers. So, as Joseph Nye would explain, that’s an example of U.S. “hard power.”. Then, on the other side, the Palestinians to score by appropriating imagery siphoned with sophistication from the mighty currents of American “soft power.”

Are you sick of being bombarded by countless advertisements in your daily life?

Do you want to check your email or look up the definition of epistemology without being lured into a dating site or convinced of some obscure disease that you don’t actually have (and obviously don’t need insufficiently tested prescription drugs for)?

Well fret no more.

Add-Art has saved the day.

Add-Art is a FireFox add-on which not only blocks internet ads, but replaces those ads with thoughtfully curated art exhibitions, commonly with social change themes.

Add-Art is an open source project and is run on a day-to-day basis by Hana Newman and Steve Lambert.

Go to http://add-art.org/ to add it to your FireFox or just to check out the very fitting current exhibit:

Merchandise (you are not what you own):

“The artists in this show appropriate and subvert the language of marketing, using its tools of photography, costuming and set dressing, digital manipulation, and data tagging. By copying these strategies, they create transparency where obfuscation is usually found. By bringing the sublimated messages of consumer culture into question, these artists offer the possibility of a more critical engagement with the image.”

Curated by Anuradha Vikram

Enjoy detournement, not marketing, and make better use of your space, time, and eyes.

Michael Swaine mends clothing for free in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.  In the past, he has collaborated with Futurefarmers, a socially engaged arts collective, and views his work as a way to explore and expand the commons.  The Financial Times included him this week in their First Person column.

Ice House Detroit is a project bringing awareness to a variety of housing issues in Detroit.

Follow their blog or join their Facebook group.

“Worried about Climate Change? Don’t sweat it.” That’s the motto of Survivaball, the world’s first personal survival orb, designed specifically for safeguarding whoever can afford it from the calamities of climate change. Its creators promise it will “ensure human continuity for generations to come.” Here’s a promotional video.

The Survivaball cools, heats and hydrates its occupant with a fluid recycling mechanism. The inflated ball is suited for all weather extremes, from floods to droughts, the kinds of catastrophes a warming world will bring. The Survivaball is an ingenious device indeed, sure to bounce off shelves as soon as it’s ready. Here’s a cross section of the remarkable invention:

Here’s  a safety card describing the Survivaball’s capabilities.

In case it isn’t clear yet, this Survivaball thing is a joke. It’s the work of The Yes Men, a troupe of artists dedicated to “impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else.” A recent spoof website of theirs skewered the Canadian government’s sluggish response to climate change and they punked an entire conference full of Halliburton big-wigs by bringing out Survivaball’s as a real option for confronting climate change. Here’s the result an article on their website details. A picture of one of Halliburton’s suckers actually wearing a Survivaball is below:

It’s both unbelievable and unsurprising that these corporate types didn’t realize that something was up. Nevertheless, Halliburton rarely misses an opportunity to display greed and cowardice. So I guess this prank was a success for everybody.

Gallery Poulsen in Copenhagen hosted an exhibit of Survivaballs during the CoP15. I was lucky enough to wear one, a prototype. It’s basically an air-tight bag with a fan inside that keeps the ball inflated. Here’s what I looked like.

So there you have it, the Survivaball. Were it cheaper and, well, a real thing, its invention might be good news. Unfortunately, this is not the case and the take-home message remains a humorous but bittersweet one. Sadly, the Survivaball only serves to reveal how venal corporate lunkheads can be.

dala
Durban, South Africa
ongoing project: spaza-de-move-on

In the early 60s ‘café-de-move-ons’ could be seen wherever there were substantial numbers of African workers or passers by in need of refreshment. Vendors were frequently arrested in police raids and fined or imprisoned.

Since apartheid, South Africa witnessed the phenomenon of urbanization. Thousands of workers move daily from the township’s into the cities for their livelihood. This has given rise to the re-birth of the trade in refreshments, loose cigarettes, sweets and chips along pedestrian routes. Similarly these vendors too face victimisation by the powers that be.

The spaza-de-move-on is a design response to the need for an efficient, easily transportable solution for these vendors. Its evolution, involved bottom-up collaboration with Moses Gwiba – a street vendor – who Doung has formed a relationship over a number of years of walking in the city of Durban. His hail “when you make something for me?” sparked the inspiration for this South African solution.

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dala is an interdisciplinary creative collective that believes in the transformative role of creativity in building safer and more liveable cities. dala emerged as a response to the growing need for a sustainable space for creative practitioners actively engaging in the production of art / architecture for social change in eThekwini. dala believes that sustainable change can only happen through democratic participation and collaboration. dala therefore facilitates creative initiatives between creative practitioners from a variety of backgrounds (artists, architects, researchers, performers, urban planners, designers), the municipality and most importantly the people and organisations that live and work within and around the city. dala’s initiatives all revolve around re-imagining the use and expression in and of public space.

Founders, Doung Jahangeer, Rike Sitas and Nontobeko Ntombela have been working on similar initiatives individually and collectively for close to ten years. The strength of dala lies in the interdisciplinary skills the founders bring to the organisation – Doung (architect), Rike (social scientist), Nonto (curator). All three are practicing artists and educators who have been involved in a number of local and international projects and exhibitions.

[Text and graphic from dala website. 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.]