Thursday, January 28, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
This was grand.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
32 minutes of your time.
If you can watch 30 minutes of Jersey Shore, you can watch this. The added bonus is a little brain activity.
Listen up.
Listen up.
The Business of Climate Change Conference 2009 Jeff Rubin, the former Chief Economist of CIBC World Markets and the author of Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller built his reputation as one of Canada’s top economists based on a number of successful predictions including the housing bust of the early 90s and the rise of oil prices. In his recent book, Mr. Rubin predicts $225 per barrel oil by 2012 and with it the end of globalization, a movement towards local sourcing and a need for massive scaling up of energy efficiency.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Up from below!
This is how music videos should be.
Edward Sharpe.
Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros "KISSES OVER BABYLON" from Edward Sharpe on Vimeo.
Edward Sharpe.
Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros "KISSES OVER BABYLON" from Edward Sharpe on Vimeo.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Tino Sehgal
Mr. Sehgal, 31, who lives in Berlin, creates what he calls “staged situations”: interactive experiences that may not even initially declare themselves as works of art...
Part of the point is to free art from the glut of material overproduction. But Mr. Sehgal, unlike many performance artists, is not protesting the art market itself. His work is specifically conceived to function within the art world’s conventions: it is lent and exhibited, bought and sold. It is sold, in fact — now that Mr. Sehgal is becoming a star in Europe — for five-figure sums. The only stipulation is that his pieces cannot involve the transformation of any material, in any way. No written instructions, no bill of sale (purchases are conducted orally, in the presence of a notary), no catalogs and (to the dismay of photo editors in the art press) no pictures...
Mr. Sehgal’s work seems to revel in its own contradictions. It is ephemeral yet fixed; intangible yet expensive, because part of his concept is that his interpreters be fairly paid. It is created with extreme, even obsessive rigor, yet it is subject to change, as the only record exists in the minds of those who see it.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Oh Yoko
Ono was an explorer of conceptual art and performance art. An example of her performance art, is "Cut Piece" (this instance of performance art is also known as a happening), performed in 1964 at the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo. Cut Piece had one destructive verb as its instruction: “Cut.” Ono executed the performance in Tokyo by walking on stage and casually kneeling on the floor in a draped garment. Audience members were requested to come on stage and begin cutting until she was naked. Cut Piece was one of Ono’s many opportunities to outwardly communicate her internal suffering through her art. Ono had originally been exposed to Jean-Paul Sartre’s theories of existentialism in college, and in order to appease her own human suffering, Ono enlisted her viewers to complete her works of art in order to complete her identity as well. Besides a commentary on identity, Cut Piece was a commentary on the need for social unity and love. It was also a piece that touched on issues of gender and sexism as well as the greater, universal affliction of human suffering and loneliness.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Rule:
Unsustainable systems cannot be sustained. The American expansionist paradigm and why we could all use a little mindshift.
(photos courtesy of AdBusters)
In the contemporary United States, we are trapped in a similar delusion. We are told that it is “realistic” to yield to the absurd idea that the systems we live in are the only systems possible or acceptable based on the fact that some people like them and wish them to continue. But what if our current level of first world consumption is exhausting the ecological basis for life? Too bad. The only “realistic” options are those that view this lifestyle as nonnegotiable. What if real democracy is not possible in a nation-state with 300 million people? Too bad. The only “realistic” options are those that view this way of organizing a polity as immutable. What if the hierarchies our lives are based on are producing extreme material deprivation for the oppressed and dull misery among the privileged? Too bad. The only “realistic” options are those that view hierarchy as inevitable.
(photos courtesy of AdBusters)
Labels:
environment
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Something to aspire to.
String gardens. There's nothing more local than your living room.
Most communities grow about 1% of their food locally – imagine if we transformed that to 10%. The pushback from industrialized agriculture means we’re doing something right.
Labels:
environment,
food
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Michael Johansson
One of those things you WISH you'd thought of. Freakin genius.
Here's his portfolio.
"Johansson was born in Trollhättan 1975, took his MA at the Art Academy in Malmö 2005, where he still lives and works. In his playful installations and sculptures Michael Johansson puts the qualities from daily life objects in opposition to their field of application. By repetition, displacement of scale, and new function, he questions the receivers interpretations of the unique."
-- Abducted by Design
Here's his portfolio.
"Johansson was born in Trollhättan 1975, took his MA at the Art Academy in Malmö 2005, where he still lives and works. In his playful installations and sculptures Michael Johansson puts the qualities from daily life objects in opposition to their field of application. By repetition, displacement of scale, and new function, he questions the receivers interpretations of the unique."
-- Abducted by Design
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Jimmie
"Durham was born in Washington, Arkansas and became active in theatre, performance and literature related to the US civil rights movement in the 1960s. His first solo exhibition as a visual artist was in Austin, Texas in 1965. Durham moved to Geneva, Switzerland in 1968. He studied at L'École des Beaux-Arts, Geneva until being drawn back to the US in 1973 through his involvement with the American Indian Movement (AIM). From 1973 until 1980 Durham worked as a political organizer with AIM, becoming a member of the movement’s Central Council. He also served as director of the International Indian Treaty Council and representative to the United Nations. When AIM fragmented at the end of the 1970s Durham, who was then living in New York City, returned his attention to art, creating sculptures that radically challenged conventional representations of North American Indians. He exhibited and published essays frequently and from 1981 to 1983 he was the director of the Foundation for the Community of Artists in New York. In 1983 West End Press published Columbus Day, a book of his poems and in 1988 his poetry was also included in Harper’s Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry."
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