Another modelling industry lie
Having recently watched the documentary AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL (Darryl Roberts, 2008), a film that explores the shadiest, most morally bankrupt nooks and crannies of the modelling industry, I have to say I wasn’t totally shocked by the image at the left. Still, this photoshopped nightmare of a model whose body is too thin to hold her head up is such a powerful signifier for an industry propped up by lies and profit, it is utterly worth following Boing Boing’s advice, and circulating it widely.
The image first appeared on Xeni one month ago, and Boing Boing picked it up to bring more attention to the absurd levels this industry will go to to convince women that . But instead of cowing to Ralph Lauren’s legal team, Boing Boing and others are citing Fair Use and posting the image for the purpose of criticism and comment. So are we. It’s not often we get to see Ralph Lauren’s dirty laundry in such shiny, glossy, horrid detail.
There is a kind of hubris we share about time. We often forget to remember the future. How we treat the environment is one obvious example – our unclever depletion of fresh water supplies. Or oil. We trade away futures in part because we can’t see them.
Contemporary architecture, according to Nicolas Graspierre and Kobas Laksa, must shoulder some of the blame for this shortsightedness. Our cityscapes are pocked with glistening edifices, a little like arrogant jewels in a crown, so shiny and new they seem like the future itself.
The Afterlife of Buildings by Nicolas Graspierre and Kobas Laksa hungrily 
challenges both architectural arrogance and our reluctance to admit some of the less attractive consequences of our ways. Originally conceived for the 11th International Architectural Exhibition in Venice 2008, this second installation takes six new high-profile buildings in Poland and transforms each into palimpsests of urban use. The images are playful and thought provoking. There is something about how we render urban space over time – how the ways we use it intensify, densify and ultimately transform everything we build into decaying clutter – that humbles even the most ostentatious moments of financial celebration.
The full exhibition can be viewed online.
Atheist bus advert in London. Photo: Reuters.
An idea imported from the UK and sweeping many of the world’s larger cities has come to Canada: adverts on public transit vehicles suggesting there just might not be a god. The advertising campaign has been turned down by some, and in most cases organizers were forced to insert ambiguous words like “might not” or “maybe” in the adverts, lest believers should feel slighted. La Presse reported that the ads would run in Montreal for the month of March, while the Montreal Gazette reported two days ago that Toronto and even Calgary have joined the list of cities willing to reap advertising dollars from a campaign that questions divine creation.
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Screen grab of the Laboratory of Insurrection Imagination site
The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination presents C.R.A.S.H: A postcapitalist A to Z. Take part in a free course combining art, activism and permaculture or get paid to actively imagine a postcapitalist world!
“We are looking into an unprecedented abyss of economic and social turmoil that confounds our previous perceptions of historical risk. Our vertigo is intensified by our ignorance of the depth of the crisis or any sense of how far we might ultimately fall.”(Mike Davis, Historian and social commentator.)
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Israeli Apartheid Week poster at Carleton: no freedom to offend
The administration at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, has deemed the poster at left offensive to some students and an infringement on civility and rights. The poster—while possibly not the best choice to convey a sophisticated and articulate argument for students to engage in Israeli Apartheid Week (a week of activities and events in dozens of universities all over the world, aimed to bring an end to the illegal occupation of Palestine by Israel)—is a pretty accurate representation of the military and political inequity between Israel and Palestine. It also rightfully represents the massive death toll of civilians in Gaza during Israel’s most recent military assault.
The move comes on the heels of a B’nai Brith advert in Canada’s National Post calling for an end to “Hate-Fests” festering on Canadian campuses. It seems there may be an orchestrated global movement to shut down free speech and academic freedom on campuses with active pro-Palestinian communities, and Carleton is topping the shameful list.
Disclosure: The links to the stories above are on a new blog, for which I am a contributor and site administrator.
There’s no single dose vaccine to save the planet — even one that comes in a syringe that gigantic. As the copy on this sculpturesque public service ad suggests, we all need to contribute: “Sadly enough, there‘s no medicine for a sick earth. But each of us can contribute something for our world to feel better.”
From Osocio:
Advertising pillars get a new outfit to resemble medical syringes, that call for small, but efficient contributions to our climate. This ambient was created in the class “ideas and concepts” at the European school of design in Frankfurt Germany. Brief: work out a social issue. Based on the climate saving initiative of Greenpeace, who is the fictional client here.
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