I’m going to post the dark side of tricksterism soon, that of corporate tricksterism, when the fine art of creative chaos is turned against unwitting populations. As an intro to this please view the scathing, but hilarious video on the BP Oil Spill below.
This is subversion at its best.. US comedian Stephen Colbert has joined forces with the United Farm Workers Union to poke fun at anti-immigration activists by tackling the issue of immigration reform through the satirical campaign ‘Take Our Jobs’.
‘The union launched a campaign called Take Our Jobs, showcased on the website www.takeourjobs.org, to highlight the reality that illegal immigrants in agriculture are not taking jobs away from U.S. citizens and other legal residents.’
Tom Karst – The Packer.com
Julie Mehretu is an Ethiopian-born artist (from Addis Ababa -coincidental link to a quick post on Freerange on Mulatu Astatke also hailing from Addis Ababa), who advanced her studies in Fine Art in the US and now works and lives in New York (generally).
I am continually drawn to her work, which is not accidentally architectural: she speaks very well on the subject of her work as studies/cosmologies/maps of cities and other tectonic and cultural spaces/structures. I danced with the idea (and still do, often) of using this work in my architectural research, but whether or not I weave this into an academic enquiry, it remains a formative series of works in my worldview of architecture, and the greater ‘expanded field’ of things/worldliness.
(Please click to get the super-size-me size).
I’ve recently acquired a monograph ‘Black City’ which is the first to publish a substantial collection of her work, past and present, and it is simply amazing. I’ve selected a few of my favourites here, but you can view some of her work here, at White Cube who represent her, and here is a video/interview with Mehretu in Berlin, where her latest exhibition ‘Grey Area’ was shown (at the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin) which has now travelled to the Guggenheim New York if you’re there, go see it!
An interpretation that I dallied with for a while, and hope to re-animate in the future, is the notion of syncretism, which refers to an ‘attempt at reconciliation of two opposing or different principles, practices, or parties…’, in my reading and understanding (or at least the part that I enjoy about it) is the idea of an equilibrium which nontheless sustains its aspects of tension. This idea not surprisingly was something that I was reading in architecture schools –my subject of interest– how an academic is responsible for simultaneously critiquing a body of knowledge, whilst disseminating it, or how an architecture student grapples with the hypothetical studio project (with all its fantasy, experimentation, failure, risk etc etc), whilst knowingly attempting to replicate and learn principles of the real world. They are contradictory objectives, but they have to be maintained.
This is clearly not an idea exclusive to architectural education or architecture or architects, which is why I mentioned my deep interest in this work as a framework or doorway into an expanded field of thinking and being. The obvious subject of some works in particular address the City, and it is immediately obvious that these works are grappling with the coded, multi-layered, crumbling, ghosting, dynamic, etc etc, representation of the City. They are both fragmented, but approach wholeness; they surround the void with speeding and violent (or beautiful) mass and lines and points; they are architectural, but never building; they are constructed, of deconstructions; they attempt new meaning by obfuscating prior meaning… and they are huge. The Seven Acts of Mercy (pictured here) is over 6 metres long, and nearly 3m tall.
I think these works probably explain more about me than I have been able to explain them to you about architecture (or the City), but I still wanted to share. I’d love to hear from anyone in NY who could make it along to her show, it’s open til October I think.
Have a watch of this interesting interview with Pro-Whaling representative.
Then read this article in the NZHerald.
Awesome.
The other day I was at a friends place and there was a strange little vice like contraption sitting on the coffee table. We all started hypothesizing about what its purpose might be. Something to do with honey extraction… a drill of some kind, a spool holder for threading wool or something… Until finally someone had the sense to go ask what it was and get a demonstration. It was far more specific and odd than any of us thought.
An apple corer and spiral cutter. Weird. It’s amazing to know that someone designed and mass produced these, maybe a good way to disprove the theory of supply and demand, who would demand this product?!
Check it out
A world map of tourism hot spots. Cleverly made using uploaded photos on Panoramio. One of many excellent graphs, charts and timelines etc on informationisbeautiful.net , including but not restricted too; pop culture time travel timelines, Beatles self reference chart, the Gulf of Mexico Oil spill put in perspective. Be sure to check out the older posts.
Update: check out this for touristyness maps of cities but with different colours for locals and tourists.
A freerange Associate Nathaniel Corum who works at Architecture For Humanity has been involved with the design of the Plastiki boat seen in the diagram below. This is a remarkable project with a boat that is almost entirely designed from recycled plastics. The project aims to educate the world about various environmental issues including the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is the horrifying floating rubbish island twice the size of texas floating in the pacific, and other environmental causes and recycling opportunities. Its also a pretty remarkable example of how resource scarcity can inspire the best of human creativity.
They have set sail on a 17 thousand k journey from San Fran to Sydney, currently 69 days through and well into the Polynesian Islands. Go Well.
Check it out. Care of the NY Times. Check the main Plastiki website here.
Looks like New Zealanders are not the only ones who want to protect our conservation land from proposed mining projects. London zoo conservationists are calling for people to make submissions to the Ministry of Economic Development’s Schedule 4 Stocktake.
They are concerned about the threat that mining would pose to the survival of two native frog species. They call the Archey’s frog and Hochstetter’s frog living fossils:
“Archey’s frog is currently ranked top of ZSL’s EDGE of Existence amphibian list, making it the most evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered amphibian on the planet. Described as a “living fossil”, Archey’s frog is almost indistinguishable from the fossilised remains of frogs that walked amongst the dinosaurs 150 million years ago.
“In the year when reducing biodiversity loss is high on the political agenda, it is inconceivable to think that we’d put the nail in the coffin of some of our rarest and most extraordinary frog species,” say Helen Meredith, EDGE of Existence amphibian conservation projects coordinator at ZSL.”
Mining on conservation land seems to me to be an easy option for the government, they are looking for land to mine and using conservation land is easier than private land. They don’t have to buy it, no pesky landowners to convince or bully off it. They have no issue bullying their own staff however. Department of Conservation staff have been asked not to talk to non-govt organisation Forest & Bird because of recent leaks of information about mining proposals. So much for transparency in the development of policy. I suppose that never really happens does it…?
So if you care about this issue, you have until Thursday 26th of May to make a submission. Let make a fuss!
I try not to use the words in the title of this blog lightly, like genocide and other strong words if they are thrown around loosely they lose the power to represent the truly awful things that humanity periodically does. I live in a nice country called Australia, it is a vast land full of minerals and a vibrant multicultural society. It does however occasionally show a remarkable streak of aggressive nasty politics. The post below from Norightturn tells the story of the Australians government vindictive reaction to the exposure of bad policy.
“Wikileaks is a public interest website devoted to exposing information governments want to keep under wraps. Last year they leaked the Australian government’s secret internet blacklist. The leak was deeply embarrassing for the government, as it exposed just how tawdry their blacklist was; alongside the material it was meant to be banning, it also included
a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.
Its a perfect example of the mission creep and false positives which mean that we cannot trust any government to block the internet. The government’s retaliatory action – blocking Wikileaks – underlined the point. But today, they went one further, cancelling Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s passport.
Assange is an Australian citizen. but he has now been effectively forbidden to travel overseas by his government, apparently because he embarrassed them.
This violates the freedom of movement affirmed in the ICCPR, to which Australia is a party. But the Australian government doesn’t care, and as they have no equivalent of our BORA, that right is unenforceable. Which is another example of why they need strong, enforceable human rights legislation now.”
