- At the Edinburgh Fringe with @TheMonsterOEG! We'll be filming his antics throughout the Festival. Join the party @ Venue 13! #EdFringe #
- August 2009 Newsletter http://bit.ly/VfXgJ #
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Monthly Archives: August 2009
August 2009 Newsletter
The August 2009 Newsletter is now out. You can check it out here:
https://www.sustainablepractice.org/newsletter/09Aug/
Guerilla gardening, meet the advertising downturn
Interesting use found for the downturn in consumerism. Via Eyeteeth who writes:
Toronto residents Eric Cheung and Sean Martindale have devised a way to cut advertising posterboards to make cone-shaped, in situ flowerpots. Martindale tells Torontoist that the duo is “activating public space,†introducing nature “to the urban environment in ways that might encourage others to do the same, or to at least consider such possibilities.†To that end, they’ve made the design of their templates available under Creative Commons license.
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Vestas: what is the protest about?
This morning I was handed a flier by a nice man standing outside Brighton station: “Vestas Workers fight to defend their jobs and the environment.†Featured on it, that photo of the two workers clenching fists above the banner that reads, “Forced to occupy to save our jobs.†An old blogging colleague of mine Justin aka Chicken Yoghurt was at the Isle of Wight yesterday and took the photo above.
Three points to make:
One. This is a pivotal protest that’s not going to go away in a hurry. It’s about the gap in what the government say they’re going to do – Ed Miliband’s fine white paper and the 2008 Climate Bill – and the absence of any real infrastructure to achieve those carbon goals. It’s about how the most substantial part of Gordon Brown’s “green recovery†plan has been the looking-glass scheme to scrap cars before they need to be scrapped. Vestas is closing because of “lack of demandâ€. It is absurd that, at this late stage, there is lack of demand. To blame that lack of demand on Conservative councils turning down planning applications for wind turbines as Ed Miliband does in his response to LabourList’s Alex Smith is the “dog ate my homework excuse†– a silly attempt to turn this into a divisive party political issue.
Two. This protest has to watch out it doesn’t unfold to a dangerous script. The lockout has quickly turned it into a workers versus employers dispute, in the mould of Grunwick and Wapping. Not only do those disputes traditionally end very badly, but this script kind of misses the point. However poorly the employers may have acted towards the workers, and their contradictory statements that they’re closing for “lack of demand†and that the factory makes “the wrong type of blade†for Britain indicates a certain slipperiness, they too are victims of the government’s failure to support demand for renewables. This should be about how the goverment needs to pull its finger out.
Three. Last year’s meeting between the National Union of Miners and Climate Camp protestors showed how far adrift most eco-protestors were from workplace politics and how little they understood the more old-school union levers of power. This is a chance to learn how to build bridges instead of burning them.
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Touring exhibition opportunity
Shai Zakai, Forest Tunes | The Library
Exhibition & Catalogue
Shai Zakai, eco-artist, photographer, founder and director of the Israeli Forum for Ecological Art
Touring Exhibition opportunity in UK
The tour is coordinated in partnership with the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW). Parts of the exhibition have shown in Israel, Korea, United States, and Japan. See http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/17614/ for information regarding its latest US showing.
It will be shown at CCANW from 10 October – 22 November 09 and Shai will be lecturing in Falmouth, Plymouth and Totnes. It is supported by BI ARTS, the British-Israeli Arts training scheme.
From end of November 2009, the project is available as a temporary or permanent installation in the UK. It will be adapted for each venue by the artist and/or co-designer, Eran Spitzer. Shai is also available for lectures and public workshops.
Artist’s statement and exhibition description (abstract)
After a thirteen year journey to record some of the imprint of humankind on the environment with leaves, stories, and photographs, the project is drawing to a close. It has created 170 up-cycled boxes, containing organic material from nineteen countries.
The project is a visual, yet restrained, warning. It is a place to contemplate on human nature, while using most of our senses – touch, smell, sight, and sound – simultaneously. The multi-media installation is an observatory and a collection of mostly damaged nature, highlighting the daily effects of global warming set in motion by human beings, i.e., the loss of biodiversity, deforestation, human indifference.
In the exhibition, visitors are invited to leaf through boxes from Japan; Australia; Cyprus; Kirgizstan; India; Israel among others; to read the texts inside each box; and to ponder on the species that we are destroying unthinkingly. If this irresponsible behavior toward our environment continues, it will be possible to visit the leaf library and be reminded how nature used to look.
About the artist
Shai Zakai, a photographer and ecological artist, is author of the book Faces and Facet (Portrait of a Woman) and the project Concrete Creek 1999-2002 – in which reclamation of a stream functions as an artistic creation. She is the director/ founder of the Israeli Forum for Ecological Art, and holds an MA in Art and Environmental Policy. She has shown in more than sixty exhibitions in museums and galleries in Israel and throughout the world. Her works are to be found in both private and museum collections. She has represented Israel in art and environment exhibitions and symposia in Africa, Japan, Italy, China, Korea and the United States. She is a guest lecturer and curator as well as a consultant for ecological public projects, and organizations for the development of creative environmental leadership.
All enquiries about the exhibition:
Clive Adams, Director
CCANW
Haldon Forest Park
Exeter EX6 7XR
01392 832277
adams@ccanw.co.uk
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Bat-Yam Biennale: Urban Action 2010
Call for Participation
The Bat-Yam Biennale is pleased to announce the open call for participationÂ
in Urban Action 2010.
The Bat-Yam Biennale functions as a laboratory through which attitudes inÂ
and towards urban space are examined. Urban Action 2010 continues the urbanÂ
action begun in the first biennale , in which Hosting was the theme.
The 2010 Bat-Yam Biennale invites urban interventions that examine theÂ
city’s “flexible” nature. We invite anyone involved or interested inÂ
urbanism to propose interventions in the city of Bat-Yam.
We are looking for innovative proposals that will lead to the developmentÂ
and improvement of urban life.
For more details, go to:Â www.opencall2010.biennale-batyam.org
Please send all submissions to:Â applications.batyam@gmail.com
Deadline for submissions: August 30th, 2009
Bat-Yam international biennale of landscape urbansim
Curators: Sigal Barnir and Yael Moria
Asst Curators: Yael Caron and Adi Gura
www.biennale-batyam
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The greenest theatre in Montreal? Check out Repercussion Theatres Shakespeare in the Park – Green Life
The Repercussion Theatre company has been offering productions that are inherently green in Montreals parks for 20 years now. Since its shows, always the works of William Shakespeare, are presented outdoors in 15 different city parks they dont relay on climate control and heavy lighting like traditional indoor productions do. The company provides composting and recycling facilities if they dont already exist at their sites. Now Repercussion Theatre is using “Enviro100” recycled paper for its publications. The paper is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as forest friendly, is chlorine-free and manufactured using biogas energy.
via The greenest theatre in Montreal? Check out Repercussion Theatres Shakespeare in the Park – Green Life.
“Civil resistanceâ€, science and ethics
We are in for a season of civil disobedience. The Save Vestas campaign has gone national.Kingsnorth rumbles on, as does the Heathrow protest – which is likely to be the focus of the next Climate Camp at the end of August. Next month also sees Wales‘ and Scotland’s first Climate Camps. As COP15 focusses minds, there are even plans to disrupt the Copenhagen meeting.
A generation of jobless students will now swell numbers. But should those less used to participating in civil action also be getting stuck in?
In a recent newsletter [PDF 147KB], climate scientist/activist James Hansen concludes with a short section titled “Civil Resistance: Is the Sundance Kid a Criminal?â€, suggesting the urgent need for what Gandhi called “civil resistance†rather than “civil disobedienceâ€, especially directed towards companies who are guilty of passing the bill for carbon clean up to future generations. Even though his choice of gun-slinging Western hero rather shows which era he’s coming from, I guess he’s qualified to talk, because James Hansen himself was arrested alongside Daryl Hannah last month for his part in the West Virginia coal mining protests.
The excellent climate science blogger Jo Abbess has just raised his arrest in a post which argues that such action by scientists is vital because, as George Marshall of the New Scientisthas been saying, the public as a whole are not changing their behaviour in the way that those scientists know they should be .
This argument implies that scientists, as the people who really understand the bottom line, are now ethically bound to start to do more than produce data. They must join with scientists like Hansen. But if scientists remain hesitant to get start linking arms and chaining themselves to fences, Hansen’s own reputation as a leading climate scientist is an example of why. The man warned Congress back in 1988 about the perils of global warming has been under assault ever since he turned activist. Despite his role as a leading scientist and head of the NASA Gordon Institute for Space Studies, his name has been dragged through the mud by global warming sceptics. His arrest last month prompted the New York Times headline “Does NASA’s James Hansen Still Matter?â€
What are the responsibilities of those who know to act? And what are the consequences if they do?
“Well done ThWART†photo by darrangange
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