Let’s face it – “sustainability” is a ruined word. How many times do we suppose BP used it (and will, O Lord, in the future) explaining its green integrity to the world? The Sea Shepherd Society has a different approach: law enforcement as provided for in the United Nations World Charter for Nature.
The Sea Shepherd Society’s tactics are controversial – tree spiking, sinking whaling vessels (without loss of life; unlike the sinking of GreenPeace’s Rainbow Warrior by the French government that killed photographer Fernando Pereira), sinking drift nets, bombing whalers with custard, directly charging whalers and tuna fishers, putting its boats and crews between whales and industrial harpoons. But its modis operandi is consistent: monkey wrench the illegal destruction of nature.
In most instances of high seas piracy – piracy, that is, in the sense of unrestricted and unaccountable harvesting on the open oceans to the point of extinction – the Sea Shepherd Society is the only agency acting directly against the perpetrators of the wholesale slaughter of marine life. It is considered in some quarters to be a mature response to an economic system that refuses to police itself and to discipline its urges for short term reward and pleasure.
This Saturday July 31, the Riverside Municipal Auditorium in Riverside, California is hosting the See No Evil Art Auction in support of the Sea Shepherd Society’s busy agenda. There is a long list of donating artists, and music by ‘the crystal method’ and DJ Diabetic.
6 pm at the Corner of Mission Inn and Lemon in Riverside,3485 Mission Inn Ave, Riverside, CA 92501-3304.
For those who cannot make it to California for the thrill of rubbing shoulders with the glitterati of radical sustainability, check out the Sea Shepherd’s online store. You can even order the a Sea Shepherd VISA Platinum Rewards Card!! shop till you drop and help enforce the UN World Charter for Nature.
Artist Wu Yuren has been arrested, beaten and is being held in a Beijing jail according to his wife, Canadian Karen Patterson. Patterson decided to make her appeal through the Western media to draw attention to her husband’s plight.
According to the New York Times, despite his being detained, the Chinese government has yet to admit they even have Yuren in their custody.
Last winter Yuren joined other artists in their opposition to urban development in the neighbourhood of Beijing that housed their studios, District 8. The development plan subsequently allowed the seizure of their studios by authorities. Their highly visible protest went past Tiananmen Square, a particularly sensitive region of the city in connection with public demonstrations of dissent.
The Daily Telegraph (one of the UKs largest daily newspapers, owned by real estate billionaires David and Frederick Barclay) reported that the current arrest came about after Yuren – whose studio had been relocated – attended at a local police station to complain about problems with his landlord. After a fractious interaction with the police, he was beaten and detained.
The brutal police response may be linked to the activist histories of Yuren and some of the other artists involved in the original protest against the development plan, many of whom have signed Charter 08, a manifesto demanding a variety of political changes in China including an independent legal system, freedom of association and the elimination of one-party rule. Charter 8 is not so popular with the current administration.
Yuren’s work has been widely appreciated as an element of the most innovative art being produced in China today. In the Imperial Criminal (2001) series, for example, Yuren displays twelve passport-like blue tinted photographs with fluorescent brands stamped on their foreheads to indicate ancient/modern crimes – the brand is exposed when placed under ultra-violet light. In The Sparks Program (10,000 Years Art Exhibition, Oct 2005), seven labourers strike a pile of flint in a dark space for three hours with metal batons, producing a heavy knocking sound with flying sparks – a commentary on the situation of peasant construction workers in Beijing’s real estate boom. And in connection with his resistance to land development, he transformed White Box Museum of Art into a large demolition site. According to ML Art Source (a Beijing-based promotional website for contemporary Chinese art with the self-stated goal of serving as “a platform that will bridge the art to the people and the people to the art”) the controversial nature of Yuren’s installation at the White Box has ensured that there is little information available about it.
It may be that this story is being reported in such high profile mainstream media sites because of his wife Karen Patterson’s Canadian citizenship. For more information and to keep up to date you can follow Karen Patterson’s twitter feed @KPinChina.
Originally posted as “Demise of the Film Council” at Putney Debater
There is something very seriously rotten in the State when the Government can decide to abolish the Film Council to save £15m a year at the same time that the head of BP is said to be about to take a severance package of approaching the same amount. The disparity is all the more striking when you register that while BP is writing off more than £20 billion to pay for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Film Council has been responsible for allocating a mere £160m of Lottery funding to more than 900 films which have entertained over 200 million people and helped to generate over £700 million at the box office worldwide, or almost £5 for every £1 of Lottery money thus invested.
Part of a raft of cost-cutting measures at the DCMS involving the merger, abolition or streamlining of 55 cultural organizations ranging from advisory bodies on libraries and museums to historic wrecks and ships, the move has angered a lot of people: a petition set up as soon as the news came out garnered 1000 signatures within two hours, as well as a couple of Twitter streams. [Latest: 3739 signatures.]
It’s summertime and therefore I’ve been in programming mode. After watching dozens and dozens of docs (and a few fiction), I thought I’d pass along some great summer flicks to cool off with, while ratcheting up the politico-meter at the same time.
GASLAND: Part banjo-anthem, part agit-prop, part road-trip and oh yes, part burning faucets. This well-researched and extremely creative exposé on America’s natural gas extraction industry is most famous for an early clip released on the web by the film’s director, Josh Fox, of water coming out of an American couple’s home so contaminated it bursts into flames when a lighter is ignited near the water. There are scores of disturbing scenes like this in GASLAND, but perhaps the film’s biggest strength is Fox’s willingness to explore creatively. It is clear he is not a seasoned filmmaker (much of the camerawork attests to this observation) yet he has constructed a compelling, entertaining, funny and disturbing feature documentary that neither preaches nor shies away from the alarming problems it reveals. More here and trailer below.
In this RSA Animate, radical social theorist David Harvey asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible, just, and humane? “Any sensible person right now would join an anti-Capitalist organization.” – The poignant words of Harvey on the unsustainable and inequitable nature of capitalism are brought to life by RSA’s very cool animation. Enjoy and have a great weekend.
Pamela Anderson is in Montreal to host a gala event for Just for Laughs and had planned on unveiling her new PETA advert/poster as well. It turns out the city of Montreal thinks the poster is sexist and is prohibiting its going up. You can judge for yourself (above), but it all begs the question on who decides what is appropriate and how they decide what is and isn’t in our public sphere. It seems that when it’s a poster for selling phones, lingerie, shoes, or beer, apparently scantily clad women get the green light. When it’s a poster promoting People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, it’s just dirty and wrong. Thoughts?
Graffiti artist Blu strikes a chord in his home country with a new giant mural in Grottaglie, Italy, famous for its olive trees, ancient ceramic tradition and new, ever-expanding waste dumps. As the artist’s contribution to FAME Fest, a yearly event inviting top urban artists to create street and gallery works, Blu chose to highlight the town’s growing problem with his work É Pronta la Torta (The Cake is Ready).
“Southern Italy is in real deep shit with the trash business. Grottaglie did not need the dump at all and people in town were not given any warning before it was already being built. Guess how come? Now we have trash coming from very far away and the dump seems to get bigger and bigger, there already are three huge lots full of trash and trucks get here daily from Northern Europe to deliver more shit.
This piece comes at the very right moment, considering that there are workers digging another huge hole in the ground near the dump. There are reasons to believe that they are going to create a fourth lot and again, our formidable town councilors are not telling anything to their own people. How morbid is this?” – FAME Fest founder Angelo Milano
Visit this site for additional images and info about Blu’s mural, and check out the award winning film Gomorrah to get a glimpse of the severity and situation surrounding Southern Italy’s toxic dumping problem.
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