Cities & Oceans of If

2008-03-18T13:06:00.000-07:00

59 Degrees
Blue Skies
Perfumed Air

Test Post

2008-02-14T12:01:00.000-08:00

Feb 14th test post

What About the Hard Sciences and Art?

2008-01-30T07:50:00.000-08:00

I found the following post from Community Arts puzzling. Besides the black & white approach, it seems to presume that only the social sciences are relevant to public art. This seems dramatically old-fashioned & limited to me, esp as it relates to ecological public art. It also seems to be along the lines of what has been discussed in other venues, to the effect that artists have become the new (cheaper & more glamorous) social workers, too many of whom are under-paid women. read on & judge for yourself:

U.K. Arts Administrators Place Community Interests First?
"Increasingly, there are two intellectual platforms for art in public," says Jeremy Hunt, guest editor of the fall/winter issue of Public Art Review, "art in the service of political engineering and social values, and... art centered mainly on artistic concepts and aesthetic ideals." Hunt, editor of the U.K.'s Art and Architecture Journal, produced an issue on public art in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. He roots the schism in "funding, power and control": Arts Council England, the government funding body with an annual budget of £411m, "has dictated that publicly funded arts should make a measurable contribution to its sustainable-communities agenda. Art is expected to improve education in impoverished schools, raise health standards, reduce crime...[etc.]. ...[I]t is little wonder that arts administrators place community interest first." Alas, it's only available in print.

Posting Problems

2008-01-14T15:34:00.000-08:00

I resent how often blogger.com makes it difficult for me to post. I just wrote a post that wouldn't publish and the nearest help is in India. This does not help international relationships and communications.

The post was about the Hard Sciences and why it si so difficult for funding agencies to accept the importance of their role in makign ecological art. Too many are hung up on the very dated idea of the social sciences as the only way in to community.

I will try again later.

What About the Hard Sciences and Art?

2008-01-14T15:24:00.000-08:00

I found the following post from Community Arts puzzling. Besides the black & white approach, it seems to presume that only the social sciences are relevant to public art. This seems dramatically old-fashioned & limited to me, esp as it relates to ecological public art. It also seems to be along the lines of what has been discussed in other venues, to the effect that artists have become the new (cheaper & more glamorous) social workers, too many of whom are under-paid women. read on & judge for yourself:

U.K. Arts Administrators Place Community Interests First?

"Increasingly, there are two intellectual platforms for art in public," says Jeremy Hunt, guest editor of the fall/winter issue of Public Art Review, "art in the service of political engineering and social values, and... art centered mainly on artistic concepts and aesthetic ideals." Hunt, editor of the U.K.'s Art and Architecture Journal, produced an issue on public art in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. He roots the schism in "funding, power and control": Arts Council England, the government funding body with an annual budget of £411m, "has dictated that publicly funded arts should make a measurable contribution to its sustainable-communities agenda. Art is expected to improve education in impoverished schools, raise health standards, reduce crime...[etc.]. ...[I]t is little wonder that arts administrators place community interest first." Alas, it's only available in print.

Bhutto's Questions for Global warming

2007-12-28T07:23:00.000-08:00

It has been snowy and beautiful here and I’ve had lots of time to think. I have been thinking about the issues raised by Bhutto’s assassination in terms of planning for sustainability.

She was killed because some people thought she would threaten their territorial plans. That is an animal behavioral response when habitat is at stake, as it is with global warming affecting huge swathes of the world now.

The work I've done over the past two years with the Virtual Concerts, has clarified connections between global patterns of geopolitical tensions, global warming and animal-behavioral territorial drives. I have opinions but no clear agenda to design strategies to address the questions I’m pondering. I’d love to hear from anyone who has also been alarmed, as I am about the implications for a clear analysis of global sustainability.

Allan Kaprow's Ice

2007-11-19T15:39:00.000-08:00

Zach Rockwell's class at the Cooper Union recreated Allan Kaprow's ice sculpture, "Fluids," in downtown Manhattan, in back of the school, last week. he invited em tow rite about it on his blog. I did.

Watching Fluids melt brought up memories of the many conversations in and out of class and for years afterwards, that I had with Allan over thirty-five years. Those conversations had ranged from psychology to politics to formalism to the works of others. If Allan had been alive, I might have asked him what it was like to make Fluids on a cold November day on New York City concrete as compared to a hot summer day in Pasadena?

We might have compared what people wore on each occasion and what it means to handle ice half naked in the sun vs bundled in warm layers of swathing. We might have discussed at length, the difference between the smell of perspiration from sweating workers in 1967 vs the smells of New York City in the age of global warming. And we might have talked of the pollution swathed in frozen water.

The day of the 2007 Fluids event, Coryl Crane Kaprow and I discussed the pristine water in Swizerland that was specially made for that version of the Fluids event. We thought Allan would have preferred the funkier NYC version. If I’d met the Fluids-workers, I might have asked the class what they thought about the irony of ice melting on the streets when ice is melting at the poles into floods around the world? To myself, I pondered the trickle of water surrounding Fluids compared to the floods that will take coastlines everywhere in just a few years. I kept waiting for a dog to pee on the ice but then it was surrounded by yellow tape and that was the end of my fantasy of yellow translucence.

If I’d eavesdropped on the students talking during or after the making, I might have made comparisons with our discussions three decades past, many of which remain vivid in my mind still. Perhaps it was fairest to both that I didn’t. Still, I would have liked to have had a glimpse of what was experienced this time around, as a student myself of their Fluids.

I wondered what kind of gloves you all wore for the work and what was the take-away? My mood that day was wistful for innocence and Allan. We were all so committed to immediacy and impermanence then. It was a double-edged sword. I’m glad it was all documented, both times: ice at the end of the Hippie era vs ice in the beginning of the Age of Global Warming.

Coryl and I took endless photos of the details of the ice as it transformed, melting and refreezing while we discussed Allan's conflicts and solutions over recreating work he never meant to repeat and how he resolved that by expecting it to be a new invention- if he was clever about his instructions. I considered how Allan taught me to build a performative structure that has that resilience to what is uncontrollable. The next day Coryl & I were still talking about the Zen of relinquishment, the discipline of choices.

That Saturday afternoon, as twilight fell, we headed down to Queens for "18 Happenings." As the ice disappeared from my line of sight, we decided to stop at Starbucks. I gratefully held hot tea to my hands and we descended into the earth below Manhattan to take the subway. My take away is a memory from my father, shortly before he died, quoting from Latin, "tempus mutandis..." Time changes everything, including Fluids.

The West, the country, the future

2007-10-28T08:36:00.000-07:00

Last week in the New York Times Magazine section, there was an article by Jon Gertner: The Perfect Drought. Halfway thru the article, which referenced how the combination of subsidence fueled by over-population, profligacy and global warming were resulting in imminent water shortages out west in this country, someone was quoted as saying that this could not be called a drought anymore than one referred to weather in the Sahara as a drought. In other words, things have already irrevocably changed.

Friday, as part of a symposium at Rutgers ("The F Word Symposium"), I was speaking to people about how I deal with the emotional impact of the current barrage of information about global warming disaster. I had just shown the dvd that was produced for the Venice Beinnale and the Weather Report show in Boulder about comparing several global sites in the era of global warming. An image I had generated was discussed on the the dvd with Dr. Jim White, my collaboator. I had just referred to how we (the USA) are going to be a very little (and isolated) country in the path of arctic melt and desertification. In the discussion period at Rutgers, I said I was fine as long as I was "in" the work of addressing the problem. When I step back, I resort to a variety of personal solutions, from 12-step programs to taking a nap.

This morning, I woke with the uncomfortable thought that if terrorists target American port cities, as Los Angeles & New York City, as they have no doubt already figured out, granted the diplomatic unpopularity fostered by this administration, we will not only be small and isolated and in some places water starved and stressed with massive migrations (as will the rest of the world) but also may not have access to the kind of cheap food we have enjoyed in the USA for generations.

If, as many scientists are now coming out and saying, we have perhaps 3 years to make drastic changes, then as far as acting on any of those changes, on a policy level, we will likely squander half that tiny window of opportunity as long as this administration is in place.

So then I think about business models. Because not everyone is as stupid as the White House. In business, it seems the cleverest people take the longest to make their plans and position themselves for action. Osama Bin Laden is a smart business man.

So I am going to take a cue from that and plan on planning. I have been doing a lot of writing off my blog lately, some of which will be in a couple books that will come out early 2008. In those writings, besides repeating over and over that there is a positive model to be seen in how terrorists planned 9/11: to use minimal means for maximum effect. I have also been writing about the potential effect of viral virtuality. It is not something I know how to do, but perhaps Gore does. He mobilized 1 billion people for a concert to draw attention to Global Warming. these are models to consider. Margaret Mead famously admonished us never to underestimate the power of a few determined people. Terrorists took that to heart. Others can. With the help of the internet and a little planning, it may just save our skins to remember those models. I know I will remember and be thinking about what to do next for maximum impact with minimal means.

Meanwhile, I think I'll take a short nap.

Following up the Work

2007-09-24T16:29:00.000-07:00

I always imagined that one big blast of insight & vision would transform the world I know. I know better now. Before and after, there are endless phone calls, notes and paperwork to fill out. Offers come in to participate in events and appear at important places with important people, without much recompense and I have to thread my way diplomatically and prudently thru the priorities of what I believe in.

Meanwhile chunks of ice fall into the warming oceans, more polar bears die and penguins may be extinct in the wild soon. And here, back home I need to be sure my bills are still paid on time, my car gets fixed, my animals are happy and I have a chance to recuperate from exhaustion to have another day of work completed, one day at a time.

I have been keeping this blog, albeit intermittently, for almost two years and have gone from feeling like only a few of us are shreiking alarms in the wilderness of global warming, to knowing that millions are now concerned and confused. But the news keeps getting grimmer and more urgent every day.

Today, nation's leaders met at the UN in NYC. Bush was "too busy" to attend. Ahem, no comment. Except to say that any child born in the free world uses 25 times the resources of any child born in the third world.

Bush believes in "voluntary compliance" to address global warming. That only works when perpetrators actually feel the pain they inflict on others. As Bush dickers over the fine print on medically insuring children in this country, the same day he was "too busy" to show up to discuss global warming with his peers, I wonder, does he feel ANY pain, for anything or anyone? And if that indifference is his model for voluntary compliance, then the very words are meaningless. Half the work of following up global warming is in the heart and the spirit.

Backing off from the Tipping Point?

2007-09-23T11:53:00.000-07:00

Today, in the Arts & Leisure section of the NY Times, on page 35, Claire Dederer wrote an article about the new show my work is in: "Looking for Inspiration in the Melting Ice." The show is at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (bmoca.org), and is terrific: 51 artists and a fabulous catalog.

For almost five months, I did little except work on preparing my collaborative project for this show: "Trigger Points/ Tipping Points," which was also shown at the Venice Beinnale. The work was with Dr. Jim White, for "Weather Report," curated by Lucy Lippard for the BMoCA and opened Sept 14.

I took the train there and back, did two "Virtual Concerts" the week I was there aboutt he show and now am reflecting on what was accomplished besides the work, which I'm proud of. Dr. White and I created a project comparing a series of conflict zones in river deltas: Darfur, Bangladesh and New Orleans, to understand the relationship to global warming. We posed various questions to eachother and studied research and mapping to analyze data.

There is one lingering question now, are there actions we might take, now that we are in the rock bottom baseline point that will tip us into disaster with in the next five years, to forestall utter calamity of hundreds of millions more people and species than are already devastated?

AK7's , Population Control & Global warming

2007-06-19T17:37:00.000-07:00

communityarts.org just had a little blurb about the Virtual Concerts and today's guest, Gary Machlis. http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/index.php . It gave me an opportunity to check out what they are up to. I subscribed and encourage others to also because it is so informative about liberal issue events.

Machlis has been working collaboratively on “Human Ecosystem” modeling and the ecology of war. One of his points was that besides the zero pop. Growth issue and consumption, there is the problem of food distribution and the obstacles of constraining ideologies. He spoke to the idea of cascading effects in predictive modeling- ie., minimize labor to get clean water = free time to educate women & allow them to open small businesses = cultural change (challenge to ideology?); engaging with/ educating military systems re: distribution of AK7’s to African children, etc. Interesting & provocative stuff…

International Options

2007-06-09T05:33:00.001-07:00

For the past Spring, I have been experiencing a prolonged emergence of fragrances, as the unseasonably cool & wet weather has left me drunk every morning before breakfast. every morning, my acupuncture- revived elderly dying dog & I take early walks, inhaling with every step to the tune of the birds. Eden today.

But all is not well in Eden, I am always aware of the fragility of this corner of the universe. Energy and human conflict preoccupy me.

In conversations with Dr Jim White of Instaar & Univ CO recently, the issue of serious trade-offs has come up repeatedly. There are NO simple solutions to the energy-global warming crisis. Any of the "solutions" to global warming-carbon emissions so far, have profoundly disturbing "side-effects," inc ocean carbon sequestration, for example.

The brick wall we keep coming up against is population increase= unsustainable energy demands. Every "solution" comes in conflict with finite resources and some vulnerable population-species-resource suffers unconscionably.

These conversations will be part of "Weather Report" for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulder, CO as well as at the Joseph Beuys Event Sept 6 @ the Venice Bienale.

In energy & human terms, I am interested in the gray areas of mixing up solutions. On my island, we are considering wind energy and the state of Maine is exploring tidal power. As most of you know, I try not to fly and now conduct much of my collaborative work virtually. In that vein of gray areas, I’m interested in the implications of the work of the artists cited below:

From Stockholm, Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Leif Elggren at the Venice Bienale:

“in 1992 they decided to declare themselves kings of their own country, one made up completely of the borders between other countries: the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea; the blue line between Lebanon and Israel; the porous line between Mexico and the United States.”

“In many cases their vast, far-flung territories can be measured only in conceptual terms, just as thousands of infinitesimal, invisible lines exist only on maps and in international law. Wherever borders are disputed, the lands of Elgaland-Vargaland can be measured in actual miles: its land, in other words, is no man’s land, the places that don’t quite belong to anyone.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/09/arts/design/09bien.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Conversely, I am appalled at the recent proposal from the UK, for academic institutions to blackball Israeli academics. I have been equally dismayed by the global silence in response. In these times, we need infinitely MORE dialog, not less.

From a colleague there:

“At the moment things here in Britain are spinning out of control … All of this is obviously very worrying for me, but also for everyone else studying here because the boycott attempt that the UCU (University & College Union) is currently running against Israeli institutions and academics seriously threatens academic freedom in this country. As you can probably imagine, the consequences of such a boycott will seriously affect my studies and those of many other people here. I hope that you will support my quest to oppose this boycott and to signal that there is opposition to this crazy idea of discriminating against academics merely because of their nationality. I know that there are many political opinions amongst you, but this is not a political question, but rather one of freedom of expression.

I would be very thankful if you would sign the following petition and forward it to all your friends, so that this initiative can become successful in achieving its aim of stopping the boycott: http://www.petitiononline.com/stopucu/petition.html “

Busy busy

2007-05-18T15:37:00.000-07:00

For several weeks, it has been difficult to find time to write here because I have been so busy completing work for conferences, shows and books. A good thing to keep me off the streets of despair, as, when I read the article in the May/June 2007 Mother Jones magazine by Julia Whitty on species loss.

Whitty writes about the impact of species diversity loss as a consequence of global warming. She writes of cataclysmic disruptions to the ecosystems we depend upon and the complexity of inter-dependent relationships between species.

The one many of us are watching now, is the mysterious loss of pollinating honeybees. All those busy bees are disappearing. But do you know that microcospic bacteria and archaea, consume methane gases that will otherwise accelerate global warming even more than we are seeing today? And that we are endangering them with the detritus of scientific explorations? Read the article. I will not spoil the anticipation of mysteries revealed.

The problem is we go unconscious. Or we begin ignorant. And yet we plow forward with our agendas. Whether that is making babies or harvesting the rapidly dwindling bounty of this fragile planet.

It is all happening so fast and our capacities to deter disaster are so cumbersome. Whitty's article is titled, "By the end of the century half of all species will be gone. Who will survive?"

Rather than drive myself mad with worry and grief and frustration, I keep myself busy, busy busy, cat on my lap right now, elderly dog on my couch downstairs, waiting to be walked, irons in the fire.

Collapsing Time

2007-05-02T19:13:00.000-07:00

I have been tracking the reports on climate change for the past weeks with increasing concern. yes, I knew it was all worse than Al Gore said, but every day there seems to be a new announcement over how much worse it all is. It all seems to boil down to evolutionary time collapsing upon itself and taking us with it... all thanks to our own short-sightedness.

In the face of that, I have been heartened by the proliferation of shows by artists working on this issue with scientists. I am pleased to say I am several of those artists. One show is opening Saturday in Seville, Spain, "Bios4." Another is opening Sunday at Art Sites in Riverhead, on Long Island,NY. I am working on two others, one for Licherode, Germany and another for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulder, CO. Last month I was ina show for ESA, in Lueneberg, Germany, that Sacha Kagan will speak about on the Virtual Concert next Tuesday. I will write more about all these events shortly.

I often find it difficult to manage the time to address all these fronts at once. Sometimes, my own time seems to be collapsing. But I feel privileged to be in a position to express some feelings and ideas with my colleagues.

As many are saying now, we are in a war with Global Warming. The real war, of course, is with ourselves. We have met the enemy, and it is us. As I work on preparing the work and completing paperwork for these venues, my most important struggle is simply sustaining a measure of personal serenity and balance. In the face of the dire news I look at daily, it is what helps me stay focused and productive.

Global Thought Tsunamis? Antonio Cerveira Pinto on Change and Fear

2007-04-18T06:11:00.000-07:00

I was struck Tuesday, in the "Virtual Concert," by some of Pinto's comments and Vision for museums in our age of global environmental crisises. He has curated the show opening May 5, "Bios4" for the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, in Seville, Spain. As a Portunguese artist-curator, who has been mainly working thru Spanish museums, he perceives museums globally, as places where communities can go in our coming age of "long-emergency," to get collaborative help to survive our times. He sees artists as having a "duty" to provide that help.

This is the most positive & provocative conceptualization & articulation of the new role for institutions I've heard. But he also cautioned that institutions are under-going a period of fear, in the face of the implications for change, much as ordinary people are facing in the face of global warming. At a time when experts are talking about the potential impacts of immigrations of possibly billions of peoples in response to desertifications, his ideas fascinated me in terms of envisioning & modeling a "bloodless" global immigration. Apparently he has hit a nerve, as since yesterday, there have already been 30 downloads, the most I've noticed in less than 24 hours.

Next week, Lucy McCarthy of the Vinalhaven Land Trust, will speak of the role of conserving relatively small areas in significant environmental change. Yesterday, there was a major NY Times article about Pulao, a small fishing village in the Philippines whose marine reserves have become an international model of hope for the fisheries.

Does this all mean there is hope that the great global tsunami of competitive greed, mindless consumption and isolationist lassitude has turned? Today, I am optimistic.

Virtual Thinking

2007-04-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

Last night I attended one of the virtual telecasts of candidates from moveon.org. I had mixed feelings. First of all, the winner-take-all in my estimation was Gov. Bill Richardson, whose plans to get out of Iraq were grounded in an international vision for cultural inclusiveness and environmentally intelligent energy strategies. He was lucid, specific, modest and clear. Everyone else was vapid, posing and unoriginal at best. Halfway thru, I said outloud that, "he is going to get my money" and he did, this morning. Will he have a chance against the political machines? I don't know. It will be a test of sanity over familiarity I fear.

The good part was the chance to listen without the charisma factor. The bad part was not seeing a more complete webcam display and limited options for follow up input. The question to me, is how will the internet change the plausability factor? If it is no longer just about telegenics or delusions of having beer with a candidate, but humans still being the limted creatures we are, what common denominator will prevail as criteria for judgement?

At the gathering, I referred to the introduction of cahiers to the French peasants before the revolution. The French peasants were taught to read, write and fill in notebooks: cahiers, with thier political thoughts. Then they discussed those thoughts. Et voila, la revolution! Of course, that also trasnlated into the guilloutine. In our own times, the blog-olution has translated into permission to savage our neighbors with excoriating and often totally unmonitored textual assaults. Ann Coulter & Don Imus are the living embodiments. We rest uneasy, however, with these icons of negativity. Witness, Imus losing advertisers. But he still makes $10 000 000. a year and Coulter still sells books. How weary are we of the easy way out?

We will find out soon enuf. I believe it was Theodore Roscak who said that, " for every complex problem, there is a simple solution... and it is the wrong one. "

I have begun saying to people that I am beginning to question whether the very paradigm of framing conflict situations as problems that we can find solutions to, may be outdated. Outdated by what my new friend Dr Jim White of the Instaar Institute in Boulder calls, the (present) "oscillating base line (of global warming)."

Moveon wanted us to vote last night for whether we would keep the pressure on candidates to stay liberal. I am leery of this question because it presumes we are right and "they" are wrong (whomever doesn't agree with us).

What I want, is more attention to the ideas I heard from Richardson last night. It is not unrelated to me, that with constant application of acupuncture, my formerly dying dog continues to steadily improve and become more active. What I mean, is I'm less interested in how we can add another dimension of bullying to the world than how much pressure we can apply towards implementing workable strategies to achieve global health & healing.

Devastated

2007-04-06T06:20:00.000-07:00

The new UN Report is out on climate change. I am overcome.

I have just read the new UN Climate Report. It is available at npr.org. It is devastating. And as many of you know, some countries, as China & Saudi Arabia, insisted on watered-down language for the effects on poor regions of the world. As I write, I am listening to some of the further specifics that aren't in the report.

It has been inescapable to me, for some time, to see the relationship between population increase, energy use that relies on tolerating carbon emissions & resource extraction. 100's of millions or even billions of people may die as a consequence.

Beyond the direct effects and consequences, the interdependent effects that are so devastating to me from this report, are the combination of weather pattern changes that will reduce arable land & precipitation into watersheds, sea level rise due to loss of ice that will endanger coastal regions with high populations and the loss of species that will have secondary ecosystem effects. We will see all this unfold in our lifetimes. By 2030, 70% of the water from the Ganges will be reduced and far more polluted, affecting 100's of millions of people in that region alone.

The continued & cumulative effects will persist and "evolve" for centuries, even if we all immediately adopt the most draconian means of adaptation. This has been generally known for some time but the cumulative psychological effects of the details is what has devastated me.

Until now, I've been able to maintain a fairly positive attitude about the opportunities for our species to meet this challenge. But today I am less optimistic. It is less about my general grief for what we have engendered than the incessant images of wasting polar bear cubs, dying of starvation because their parents have drowned, swimming endless out into seas bereft of seals, that leave me feeling so devastated.

It is staggering to me, to accept all this and my part as a human being, in these circumstances.

The Electronics and Dynamics of Change

2007-04-04T18:11:00.000-07:00

Acupuncture presumes that we are electronic entities. On my dog, it has had miraculous results. She is walking unaided.

Last weekend, for the ESA conference on Sustainability http://www.new-arts-frontiers.eu in Lueneberg, Germany, I used an electronic collage of Unyte, webcam, pen tablet and audio signal to present from my island, on the topic of my theories about how we can heal degraded landscapes.

The healing I see in my dog gives me joy & hope. She seems very happy and pain free. But she will never be a puppy again. Still, I am grateful for these changes I see.

The presentation for ESA was astonishing because I did it from my little fishing island thirteen miles out to sea. The night before, I sang in a local concert. The presentation was the very next morning at 7:AM. I was tired and there were audio and recording glitches. It was still amazing.

Acupuncture and virtuality, both mystically connected to invisible (electronic) powers to effect change. Astonishing and hopeful.

The Fragrance of Hope

2007-04-04T08:15:00.001-07:00

I wrote the following post a month ago but have had trouble posting since blogger.com improved themselves.

The fragrance of Spring is the smell of hope. I took my dog out for a walk two days ago. She has recovered from her near-death experience, thanks to acupuncture, and with the assistance of a sling and my support, is walking. On this occasion, she didn't have any goal for our walk except to inhale deeply and stand in the breeze letting all the perfumes of Spring pass her by. That was her goal on the same day I had Dr. Michele Dionne on the Virtual Concert.

Michele was talking about salt marshes and global warming. Altho they are the lungs of the earth's waters and being squeezed out by development on the one hand and rising sea levels on the other, she is optimistic that hurricanes will solve it all. Hurricanes will wipe away the coastal infrastructures and the grasses will return. Just wait.

It is like hoe the fires in Yellowstone gave rise to Disturbance Theory. That is, sometimes the slate needs to be wiped clean to all new growth. Of course, the caveat, is what or whom) gets destroyed in that process.So, ever since, as I inhale Spring along with my dog, I contemplate hope in the form of endless hurricanes. I suppose that is the significance of Shiva, the destroyer in Hindu thinking. Hard way to solve these problems

HBR, Groundfishing and the Art World

2007-03-06T10:46:00.000-08:00

Over a week ago, I came across a reference to the noncompete clause, from an essay in the Harvard Business Review.(HBR). What interested me about this contractual issue was the idea that because copyright infringement issues often hinge on the question of “proximity” to ideas, in business, it is common to ask people to respect a period of moratorium before pursueing patents that could be construed to be inspired by the work of others. The article’s slant was toward protecting “profit,” but I was interested in the dynamic questions of ownership, abundance vs scarcity and allowing time to settle the dust between attribution and new work inspired by the ideas of others.

Indigenous peoples have managed this question by expressly telling anyone who has “proximity,” that they may not use any resource, species or concept with written permission. And for some, even that is unacceptable. Philosophically, the attitude seems to be that any non-indigenous culture is so driven by competition, that they cannot operate on a base of generosity and respect for resources.

Setting aside the legal or other issues here, what fascinated in the HBR, me was the question of how do you recognize & respect boundaries in creative/productive work of any kind? This is related to law of the commons questions, which always fascinate me for the relevance to natural resources. If you presume, as I do, that individual creativity is a resource akin to any other natural resource, does it require a measure of management and what might that look like in our contemporary culture?

While considering how I might best express the complexity if that idea, it came to my attention that there was about to be a major hearing on groundfishing and lobstering here. I see a clear relationship and thought it might be of interest to others.

This morning I did a virtual concert on an issue pending before the Maine legislature, of ground-fisherman dragging for lobsters and then selling them in Mass., apparently the only place that still permits the ecologically devastating practice of dragnetting (weighting a gill net down on the ocean floor and then pulling up everything & anything that happens along). The bill would allow fishermen who dragnet to sell lobster bycatch in Portland, Me., which they already do in Mass. Altho it is unlikely to pass, partly because it threatens decades of conservation work in the Gulf of Maine and could wipe out the well-managed, self-regulated lobster industry here, it is significant that it came up.

The relationship to the art world, is that when you have any scarce resource, eventually some people will want to push the limits of the commons for competitive advantage. The trouble I see, is that as population pressure on resources increases, whether scant star slots in the art world or fish sales or numbers of whatever, it is instructive to follow how various industries are negotiating to protect common resources.

The relevance to ecological art is simply the statement I made to start, re: proximity & consciousness vs what is called the economics of abundance. As ecological art creeps into the mainstream, It is a question worth considering.

Contemporary Dog

2007-02-23T19:06:00.000-08:00

For the past two months my attention has been focused on my dog, when I'm not working. Two weeks ago, she was too weak to lift her head herself. But she has rallied, taken a few short walks on her own and now I want to get her a wheelchair. But the Vet fears potential spinal trauma. In the old days, an old dog got put down when they become disabled. Today, our animals are our extended families. So we are going to consult with her neurologist about the wheelchair rather than put her down. She has never been in pain. She is in good spirits and has figured out how to communicate various needs when she requires help in the form of food, more water, calls of nature or simply to be turned on her bed. She is alert and responsive to personalities of all species around her. Like my mother at 96, before her death, the spirit and mind are strong but the body is not as co-operative as one might ideally wish for. I didn't put my mother down and I'm not going to put my dog down either. But she's a big dog and I'm a small woman. I am anxious to make her comfortable without exhausting myself. So this is negotiating life with "nature" in situ.

Elizabeth Kolbert on Suicide & Andrea Polli on Sound

2007-02-05T19:16:00.000-08:00

Today, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in The New Yorker, that not to effect the drastic changes necessary ahead to deal with global warming, would be suicidal.

So the big question will be, how to deal like with those reclacitrants, as our president Bush, who are determined to keep thier head in sands for the sake of short term profit? This has always been the question.

Lowering emission standards by 2050 by 80%, as Barbara Boxer has recommended, is not going to be enuf.

I foresee that artists will take the lead. For that reason, I am always pleased to look forward to another Virtual Concert. Tomorrow at 10: AM, my honored guest will be Andrea Polli, an artist based in NYC, who works with other artists, sound and scientists to address these issues.

Calculating Carbon Emissions

2007-02-03T15:41:00.000-08:00

My trusty friend, Paul Challacombe, sent me the following link to figure out exactly how much carbon debting I'm creating for the planet these days:

http://tinyurl.com/2y6prj

In this 2005 NRDC article by Jeff Greenwald, a number of travel options are considered with the final conclusion being that being alive on the planet is a state of carbon debting. By 2050, the effect of contrails will represent 17 per cent of global warming. For the time being, we can only try to pay that down by planting trees.

By going to the American Forests website, I was able to figure my estimated lifetime debt to the planet, about $5 000. so far. I made my first installment paydown of $83. to plant 83 trees. $83. conservatively represents about one year of my carbon life right now. I cost the planet 83 trees worth of carbon emissions last year. Sobering. It will take me about a year to clear the rest of my debt.

Context

2007-01-29T20:05:00.000-08:00

The January 30 "Virtual Concert" at talkshoe.com tomorrow will be with Shai Zakai, Israeli ecological artist. One of the projects we will talk about is Concrete Creek, a favorite of mine. She works no matter whether there is war or not, with Palestinians and Israelis. She works even as the region heats up from global warming and when she travels to present her work, she meets anti-Israeli sentiment with grace and inclusiveness. She is a model to learn from. The relevance to the genre of ecological art in general, is how complex context can be when making a simple thing of beauty, out of the degradation we make of our environment.

Tom McCormack and Shai Zakai

2007-01-23T08:22:00.000-08:00

Today I was honored on the Virtual Concerts, at talkshoe.com, to host Tom McCormack, Native American storyteller, who spoke to the confluence between cultural divides, willingness to implement solutions to global warming and art practice. At the root, is the power of story to teach and influence.

Next week, also on the Virtual Concerts, if technology blesses us, ecological artist Shai Zakai, who works with Palestinians and Israelis, even in war times, will speak of her practice.

Both these artists inspire me that willingness to change, can be built upon. There is indeed hope.