About Haiti earthquake relief...

If you are able to donate some money towards relief efforts in Haiti, here is an alphabetized list of organizations and a brief description of the humanitarian work that they do, with specific information about their focus in Haiti. These groups have been vetted by CNN and CharityNavigator.org, an independent nonprofit that evaluates charity groups based on effectiveness and financial stability. Follow this link What will your Haiti relief donation go toward? or read below.

No time to read? You can simply text "Haiti" to 90999 to donate $10 to the International Response Fund. The money will go directly to relief efforts in Haiti. Or call 1-800-Red-Cross.

American Jewish World Service
The agency supports grass-roots, community-based organizations in remote locations whose needs are not always met by larger organizations. To donate to its Haiti relief efforts, go to ajws.org/haitiearthquake/ or mail a check to 45 W. 36th St., 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018. Make checks out to American Jewish World Service, and in the memo section write "Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund." You may also call 1-800-889-7146 or 212-792-2900. The group will use the funds for immediate needs, such as psychological and social support; health services and education on hygiene and disease prevention; mobilizing volunteers in Haiti to help with rescue and aid distribution; and aiding the Haitian Dominican community, who can coordinate with the Dominican government for greater support; in addition to long-term rebuilding plans.

American Red Cross
The American Red Cross' primary focus during the initial response of an emergency is food, shelter and meeting other basic needs. To donate: Go to RedCross.org, hit "donate now" button at top and then choose International Response Fund. You also can text "Haiti" to 90999 to donate $10 to the International Response Fund. The money will go directly to relief efforts in Haiti. Or call 1-800-Red-Cross.

AmeriCares
This nonprofit disaster relief organization delivers medicine, medical supplies and aid to people in crisis around the world. To donate, call 1-800-486-HELP or go to AmeriCares.org. Donations will go toward medicine and medical supplies and for expenses for providing that medical aid.

CARE
This humanitarian organization's focus is fighting global poverty, specifically by empowering women and girls. To donate to the Haiti relief fund, go to Care.org or call 1-800-521-CARE. Money will go toward food, water and sanitation, shelter and emergency health response.

Catholic Relief Services
Catholic Relief Services is an aid agency that works with emergency relief, micro-finance, AIDS/HIV relief, agriculture, water and sanitation, among other projects in countries around the world. To donate, go to crs.org, or call 1-877-HELP-CRS. You also can text RELIEF to 30644. You will receive a text message back with instructions on how to donate. You can send a check to Catholic Relief Services, P.O. Box 17090, Baltimore, MD 21203-7090. Write "Haiti earthquake" in memo area. The money will go toward immediate needs, including water, food, hygiene kits, bedding and basic cooking utensils.

Clinton Bush Haiti Fund
Presidents Clinton and Bush teamed up to spearhead efforts to rebuild Haiti. To make a donation to the Clinton Bush Haiti fund, text "HAITI" to "90999," and $10 will be given automatically to the Red Cross. To donate online, go toclintonbushhaitifund.org. Money will go to basic needs -- such as food, water, shelter, and first-aid supplies -- as well as long-term support.

Concern Worldwide
The aid agency focuses on extreme poverty. It targets the root causes of poverty through programs in education, health, water needs, HIV/AIDS, microfinance and emergency responses. To donate, go to concernusa.org or call 212-557-8000. You can also mail a check or money order to Concern Worldwide U.S. Inc., 104 E. 40th St., Suite 903, New York, NY 10016. Indicate that it is for Haiti, or write "Concern Haiti Appeal" on the memo line. Money will go into a specific Haiti emergency fund, which includes supplying water, food, shelter, medical supplies and lasting reconstruction.

Direct Relief International
Direct Relief provides medical attention to those in need on an ongoing basis and in emergencies. Monetary donations go toward medical aid, supplies and equipment in Haiti. To donate, go to directrelief.org or call 805-964-4767 and 800-676-1638, or go through Google Checkout.

Episcopal Relief & Development
A humanitarian agency that helps communities rebuild after disasters and empowers people by offering lasting solutions that fight poverty and disease worldwide. To donate, go to er-d.org or mail a check to Episcopal Relief & Development, P.O. Box 7058 Merrifield, VA 22116-7058 and write "Haiti" on the memo line. To donate by phone, call 1-800-334-7626, ext. 5129. The agency is working with partners in Port-au-Prince and other affected areas to meet immediate needs such as food, water, shelter and medical care. It is also assessing needs and developing plans for a long-term recovery program.

Food For the Poor
The agency delivers food, medical supplies and other goods to the poor. To donate to its Haiti relief efforts, go to foodforthepoor.org, or call 1-800-487-1158. For those living in South Florida, bring donated items to the Food for the Poor headquarters office at 6401 Lyons Road, Coconut Creek, FL 33073. The charity will accept canned fish, canned meat, canned milk, canned baby formula and bottled water. Monetary donations will go toward purchasing food and supplies as well as shipping costs.

Habitat for Humanity
Habitat for Humanity provides affordable, safe shelter for low-income families and people in need. Money donated for Haiti relief efforts will go toward recovery and rebuilding. To donate, go to habitat.org or call 1-800-Habitat.

International Medical Corps
This emergency response agency focuses on health in emergency situations. Monetary donations go toward purchasing medical supplies, medicine and emergency kits and transporting these supplies. Call 1-800-481-4462 or go to imcworldwide.org.

International Rescue Committee
The agency is a global network of first-responders, humanitarian relief workers, health care providers, educators, community leaders, activists and volunteers. To donate to its Haiti relief efforts, go to theIRC.org, or call 1-877-REFUGEE. You can also mail a check to International Rescue Committee, 122 E. 42nd St., New York, NY 10168. Or text HAITI to 25282 to donate $5 to the IRC. Money will be used for repairing and supplying health clinics, providing clean water and sanitation, and implementing programs for traumatized children and youth; helping manage a database to register orphans and separated children and trace their relatives; and protecting women and girls who may be exposed to sexual violence.

International Relief Teams
The nonprofit organizes volunteer teams to provide medical and non-medical assistance to victims of disasters and poverty. To donate, go to irteams.org, or call 619-284-7979. Checks can be made out to International Relief Teams, 4560 Alvarado Canyon Road, Suite 2G, San Diego, CA 92120-4309. The money will be used for medical supplies, medicine and other relief supplies, and to support volunteers heading to Haiti for relief efforts.

Love a Child
The Christian-based humanitarian relief agency focuses on giving aid to children and their families in Haiti. To donate, go to loveachild.com, or call 1-800-645-4868. You can mail a check to P.O. Box 30744 Tampa, FL 33630-3744. Write "Haiti Earthquake" or "where most needed" on the memo line. Monetary donations will be used for food, clothing, shelter, schools and medical needs, among other services.

Medical Teams International
The Christian global health organization sends volunteer medical teams and supplies to those in the midst of disaster or poverty. Monetary donations will go to supporting the medical teams being sent to Haiti and to the cost of shipping the medical supplies donated by corporations. Donate by going to medicalteams.org and clicking on the "Donate Now" button, call 1-800-959-HEAL (4325), or send a check to Medical Teams International, P.O. Box 10, Portland, OR 97207.

Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders)
The humanitarian organization delivers medical care to people caught in crisis. Donations to its Haiti relief efforts will go toward repairing the obstetrics and trauma hospitals in Haiti that were damaged in the earthquake. They also will go to transporting an additional 70 doctors and medical supplies to the island in an effort to set up makeshift emergency medical response centers. To donate, go to doctorswithoutborders.org, or call 1-888-392-0392.

Mercy Corps
The organization provides humanitarian assistance and economic opportunities in the world's toughest places, specifically those dealing with poverty, conflict and instability. To donate, go to MercyCorps.org. Money will go toward immediate humanitarian needs in Haiti, which may include food, water and temporary shelter.

Operation USA
The international relief agency provides funding for reconstruction and development aid to communities that have experienced disasters, disease and poverty. For its Haiti relief efforts, the agency plans to use donations for health care materials, water purification supplies and food supplements. To donate, go to opusa.org, call 1-800-678-7255, or mail a check to Operation USA, 3617 Hayden Ave., Suite A, Culver City, CA 90232.

Oxfam America
Oxfam America works to fight poverty and injustice by helping people in struggling areas earn a living, teaching them to save money and offering disaster risk-protection programs. Money donated to Oxfam's Haiti Earthquake Recovery Fund will go to water delivery and sanitation projects. To donate, visit OxfamAmerica.org, or call 1-800-77-Oxfam. If you would like to mail a check, send it to P.O. Box 1211, Albert Lea, MN 56007.

Partners In Health
The organization works to bring modern medical care to poor communities around the world. To donate, go to pih.org, or text GIVE to 25383 to donate $10. You can also mail a check to Partners in Health, P.O. Box 845578, Boston, MA 02284-5578; write "Haiti" in memo line. If want to donate supplies, the agency is in need of orthopedic supplies, surgical consumables (sutures, bandages, non-powdered sterile gloves, syringes, etc.) and large unopened boxes of medications. Small quantities, unused personal medications or expired supplies will not be accepted. Please fill out a form on the Web site for supply donations. The agency also needs blankets, tents and satellite phones with minutes. People with private planes willing to fly medical personnel and/or large quantities of supplies are needed. For information, call 617-432-5256.

Project Hope
Project Hope responds to crises with medical supplies and medical volunteers, and it is committed to long-term sustainable health care. To donate, go to projecthope.org, or mail a check to 255 Carter Hall Lane, Millwood, VA 22646. Monetary donations will be used for shipments of medicine and medical supplies and for deployment of volunteer doctors and nurses to Haiti.

Project MediShare
The agency's sole purpose is to improve the health and well-being of Haitian people. To donate, go to ProjectMediShare.org, or you can send a check, cash or in-kind donation (including medicines and medical supplies) to Project MediShare, 8260 NE Second Ave., Miami, FL 33138. Money will go toward medical care in Haiti and to send medical teams there.

Samaritan's Purse
The nondenominational evangelical Christian organization works through local churches and partners on the ground. The aid agency provides spiritual and physical aid to the poor, sick and suffering. To donate, go to Samaritanspurse.org, or call 1-800-528-1980. To give by mail, send donations to Samaritan's Purse, P.O. Box 3000, Boone, NC 28607-3000. Money will go toward temporary shelter, water purification, hygiene kits, blankets, medicine and medical teams.

Save the Children
The independent organization focuses on children in need in the U.S. and globally through programs for health and nutrition, child protection and education. To donate, go to savethechildren.org, or call 1-800-728-3843 or 203-221-4030. Donations will go toward purchasing relief items, such as hygiene kits, family kits (pots, pans, food preparation items) and tarps.

The Salvation Army
The Salvation Army's mission is to provide food, shelter, clothing and spiritual comfort during disasters. To donate money, go to salvationarmyusa.org or call 1-800-SAL-ARMY. Make sure you designate the donation for "Haiti Earthquake." Money will go to the Salvation Army in Haiti, which will determine the country's immediate needs, including water, food, medicine and transportation.

Shelterbox
The nonprofit delivers boxes of supplies to families of up to 10 people. The boxes contain a tent and essential equipment to use while individuals are displaced or homeless. To donate, call 941-907-6036, or go to shelterboxusa.org.

U.S. Fund for UNICEF
The national committee for UNICEF is responsible for the organization's fundraising. UNICEF uses the money for health care, clean water, nutrition, education and emergency relief. To donate, go to Unicefusa.org, or call 1-800-4-UNICEF.

World Concern
The organization lifts people out of poverty, beginning with disaster response and ending when families can live sustainable lives. To donate to its relief effort, go to Worldconcern.org, or call 1-866-530-5433. You can also mail checks to 19303 Fremont Ave. North, Seattle, WA 98133. Please specify that the check is for "Haiti Disaster Response." Money will go toward water supplies, shelter, blankets, distribution of food and long-term needs, such as job training, education, loans and home construction.

World Food Programme
The food assistance agency's main focus is to fight hunger worldwide. The organization is working to bring food to Haiti. To donate, go to wfp.org.

World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is leading the health care group in Haiti, managing both the United Nations and the nonprofit groups who are trying to bring medical care to the devastated country. Its medical distribution center is giving out vaccines, medicines and other supplies that are going to systems like water sanitation, disease surveillance and hospital assessments. To donate, visit the PAHEF Web site, or call 202-974-3727.

World Neighbors
The agency trains and educates communities to solve hunger, poverty and disease. To donate, go to wn.org or call 405-752-9700, or mail a check to World Neighbors, 4127 NW 122nd St., Oklahoma City, OK, 73120; write "Haiti Fund" on the memo line. Monetary donations will be used to support short-term needs (i.e. food, water and supplies) and long-term development programs.

World Water Relief
The agency's main focus is bringing clean water to developing countries. To donate, go to worldwaterrelief.org, mail checks to 8343 Roswell Road, Suite 455 Atlanta, GA 30350-2810, or call 404-242-1601 or 214-500-9417. Money will go directly to water filtration systems that will be installed in Haiti.

Yele Haiti
This organization, founded by Wyclef Jean, creates projects to improve the quality of education, health, environment and community development in Haiti. To donate to to its Haiti relief efforts, go to yele.org, or text YELE to 501501 to donate $5.

For additional resources, go to Impact Your World

Long Arm Farm - our dear friends!

We love these people!

Micaela, Cullen, Thurman, Oota, and Lugh: Long Arm Farm in Wisconsin

Thurman's blog: Permaculture for Kids

Diaper free for you and me

I have been meaning and meaning to figure out how to transition my babe from diapers and towards going diaper-free, and generally, doing what 75% of the world does with their babies (i.e. not using disposables and training them to have an awareness of their bodies, and not sitting in their excrement). But, lots of work, travel, ignorance, fatigue, and stress have slowed down my self-education, confidence, and abilities... But, now I have had some time to do some research and am so excited about all the good info out there about infant potty training. No, this is not some crazy, punitive system where you try to control your babies and give them horrible complexes that would make Freud giddy, but rather a gentle and natural approach to helping them learn how to potty naturally, out of diapers... the same way we support babies developing other skills like eating and walking and talking. It has meant a lot of rearranging, re-education, and mopping up the kitchen floor (but, really, that floor needs to be mopped all the time anyway). Most of all, I am excited to have another way to bond and communicate with my little one and to not have his infancy be more of a burden on the environment (disposables in landfills and cloth eating up water, etc). As an infant, I was potty trained back in Russia at around 4 months old and it worked really well until we started traveling (which threw everyone's cycles
off), so I know it is a real and positive thing that is possible even in cold, urban areas and in small apartments.

It is so fascinating that "elimination communication" (EC), "infant potty training" (IPT) or "diaper-free" is something so rarely mentioned in American baby/parenting books. But, Americans were, in fact, using early infant potty training until fairly recently. Perhaps the move away from EC can be traced back to the sweeping changes that the 1950's brought for women and families (e.g. mothers working outside the home more and much earlier; more use of baby formula instead of breastfeeding; more consumption and material wealth in homes - such as wall to wall carpeting and laundry machines; disposable diapers and plastics; new chemicals for diapers and laundry, etc, along with a whole host of other new technologies) - all of which lead to many shifts in parenting, including a move away from early potty training. At the same time, childhood expert T. Berry Brazelton convinced a nation of parents that early potty training was simply wrong and destructive. Interestingly, he was supported by the diaper company Pampers! While he might have been right to warn parents against forcing children to use the potty and using punitive tactics, he also dismissed the idea that babies can be aware of and control their bodies and its processes. While babies do not have perfect control of their bladder or sphincter (or any other muscle!), they are able to learn causal relationships and can be helped to make the connection and achieve control, though it does take a while. The result of all this has been a long delay in potty training in the US, with many toddlers still in diapers at the age of 3 or 4 - creating mountains of disposables and wipes, frequent diaper rash, contests of will at the potty, and nighttime ordeals.

All of this is strange when you consider that most everywhere else in the world, parents do not have (and cannot afford) diapers and have come up with other tactics to use all these hundreds of years. Millions of mothers across China, India, Africa, Russia can't be all wrong. Of course, as a working mom in an American urban setting, there are modifications and difficulties, but the concept just seems so right to me, so we're going to try. Fingers crossed.

So if you are interested and already diapering - don't worry because, yes, you can start late (though I have read - and it makes sense - that it is easier for all if you start right away). And yes, you can do it part-time (i.e. use diapers for travel or overnight, etc).

Here's some info to start off with... there is plenty more out there...
Diaper Free by Ingrid Bauer
Infant Potty Training by Laurie Boucke (and here is one of her articles at kellymom.com)
Diaper Free Baby
New York Times article
Inhabitots

Art Project, Not An Art Project

A local free-cycle listserv consistently surprises and confuses me. The list of things people want and offer read like demented and mysterious poems, creating a strange contour drawing of our consumption patterns as well as the tedium of daily life, the planned obsolescence of gadgets and the dashed hopes of technological utopias.

The photo above (as well as the rest - to be found here) are one very organized man's collection of things to give away, marked thoughtfully with blunt and comedic post-it notes - an art project for education aliens who are not used to our wasteful material culture of old cords, unwanted fax machines, and retired parts and pieces.

Cornbread with masa harina (instead of corn grits)

Only had masa and wanted cornbread. Found this recipe and it was very delicious.
Here is to provisional cooking, magical substitutions, and the power of corn.

INGREDIENTS

• 1.5 c masa harina

• 1/2 c flour,

• two eggs

• two t of baking powder

• 1 t. salt

• 1 scant T sugar (brown, turbinado, white, honey, whatever)

• 1.5 (approx) c of milk

• 1/2 stick of butter, softened

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Mix dry ingredients.
2. Rub half of butter (2 T) into dry ingr., Put the other half in a cast iron skillet in a 425 oven.
3. Add eggs and enough milk to dry ingr to make a batter (takes more than regular cornmeal bread), around 1.5 c.
4. When butter in skillet is melted, spread out batter and bake until brown around edges and light brown areas on top (about 20 min). Cool out of the pan if you want to keep the bottom crust crisp.

Old post-it note reads thusly:

A reflection on a scattered, excited, and curious mind...

Can Experimental Cultural Centers Replace MFA Programs?: http://www.areachicago.org/p/issues/how-we-learn/can-experimental-cultural-centers-replace-mfa-prog/
The Longest Walk 1978-2008: http://longestwalk.org/
Wings of America (running program for Native American youth)
http://www.brownielocks.com/notes.html#Thank%20You%20How%20To
"anti-civilization" + Derrick Jensen
"citizen advice bureau"
Tiny Human Fossils: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/03/hobbit
VOICES FROM THE GATHERING STORM: The Web of Ecological-Societal Crisis
Passer domesticus, Latin for "House Sparrow"
"The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks." - Tennessee Williams

News from Flux Factory

Flux Factory is moving into its new space and is inviting artists to help design its digs.

From their website:

Calling designers, interior decorators, architects, builders, performers, and artists of all media!

Flux Factory’s first major show at our new building, opening Friday, February 19, will consecrate the space as a social structure, a conceptual place, a workshop for craft and ideas, and a space of art conception, production and consumption. Most importantly, it will inaugurate the space as a complex, ever-evolving, multimedia, radical work of art: an installation to the scale of a full building. It will be an exercise in architecture, interior design, social practice, and general aesthetics covering every room, every surface, and every object of the building and affecting every physical and conceptual space.

Comparable in scope to Georges Perec’s ambitious novel, Life, A User’s Manual, in which he meticulously describes in a second, or ninety nine chapters, every room in a modern Parisian building. Each room, object, or resident contains multiple stories that expand the narration to create a multi-dimensional oeuvre.

This construction will embody multiple paradoxes, possibly our most accomplished work to date, but also one never to be finished. In other words, we’re putting the flux back in the factory. A project tightly curated in places and running wild in others, it will be the manifestation of many aesthetics that shape Flux Factory’s style: junk yard, curiosity cabinet, gentlemen’s club, post industrial, psychedelic. A unique signature best described by Holland Cotter in the New York Times as “a cross between a youth hostel and a space station.”

Artists will intervene throughout the building in the largest collaboration in Flux Factory’s 15 year-long history. We are taking proposals for various artist-made fixtures such as wallpaper, wall paintings, floors, lights, doors, windows, drapes, along with an eclectic collection of furniture, art objects, artifacts, and time-based or conceptual work. Proposals are also being accepted for performances during our opening gala on Feb. 19th.

We are looking for proposals from designs for all types of art, housewares, furniture, and fixtures for all of our spaces, including:

-Kitchen/dinning room/living room
-Library/lounge/winter garden
-Office
-Hallways and stairwells
-Bathrooms
-Roof Deck/Garden

Potential participants will be invited to visit and explore our new digs on Saturday, January 9th and Sunday, January 10th, 2010 from 12 – 6pm [Tentative additional viewing dates are Saturday, January 16th or Sunday, January 17th]. Proposals are due on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 5pm.

Interested parties should submit:

-One paragraph explaining your project. (300 words maximum. Please title your document in this format LAST NAME_FIRST NAME_LETTER.DOC or .RTF)

-Documentation of previous work, maximum 2 pages, or 5 images in JPEG of PDF format. Maximum 72 dpi. (Please title your document in this format: LAST NAME_FIRST NAME_IMAGE#) or 5 minutes of video. Please do send movie files, instead, include a link to your work online.

-Resumé or bio (Maximum 2 pages. Titled LAST NAME_FIRST NAME_BIO.DOC or .RTF)

Please put “Call Home Proposal” as the subject of your email. And for goodness’ sake, put your name and email on everything.

Submissions should be sent to jean@fluxfactory.org. If you have any questions, please send him an email with “Call Home Question” as the subject of your message.

Please do not send original material. Nothing will be mailed back to you (aside from gratitude).

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!!!

Harvest

This photograph was taken on a walk not far from San Qing Mountain (a historic Taoist site in Jiangxi Province, located in southeastern China). I think the tiny blue eggs are Robin eggs; I couldn't help but be drawn to them - so small and precious, lying in a plastic colander, still in the very nest in which they were laid, now forever frozen, never to hatch. The woman selling cucumbers and peppers gave them to me for some reason; my Chinese still rudimentary, I could only repeat, "Thank you, thank you", though what I really felt most was a confused, vacuous sadness rather than gratitude. I ended up traveling with the nest for weeks, packing it carefully in paper inside of a bamboo hat like some strange spoils. Perhaps I had some ridiculous sense that these eggs were precious and alive and were just waiting for the opportune moment and place to hatch. Eventually, one by one, all the eggs got little bruises, but otherwise survived the journey. By the time they arrived in the USA, they were practically hollow - strangely light for the concentrated potential they once housed, now just air surrounded by a thin dry membrane and a beautiful turquoise shell with tiny fissures that could be hidden if the eggs were placed just so.

Forbidden City / Construction

Desicated Purple Potato Friend (#458)

My new favorite song to sing over and over...

16mm film support!

The 16mm Directory is a technical resource directory for supplies and services related to 16mm exhibition. The directory is by no means exhaustive, rather it’s an attempt to collect a large portion of the information available on the internet and catalog it on one site as an information hub.
http://www.16mmdirectory.org/

Saying Goodbye to 2009

Green Christmas Trees?

CHRISTMAS trees are big business: more than 31 million were sold in the United States last year, for $1.3 billion, according to the National Christmas Tree Association

I would love to have my wood-burning stove set up (though I am looking into how environmentally friendly that heating option really is, even when using very efficient stoves) so that I can have a great use for all the Christmas trees that end up on the curb... it is quite disgusting to see these beautiful, noble trees cut and used as decorations and then discarded as trash after a couple of weeks. I am just waiting for the wreckage to pile up as I walk down the New York streets these next few days.

I would love to have a company that goes around and collects all these trees... and reuses them. Better yet, I would love if folks would consider "renting" a sapling for the season - i.e. using a potted tree for a few weeks that would then be planted in the ground. No waste (except some transport... but even that can be greatly reduced if the trees are grown and planted nearby). Is there already someone doing something like this?

Here are some resources to consider next year, if you do decide to buy a cut tree and want to support local farmers and environmentally-friendly growing practices:

How Green Can a Christmas Tree Be? (New York Times, December 4, 2008)

Locally grown, pesticide-free food is gaining sway these days but how many of us give the same kind of thought to the Christmas trees we bring home? If you are looking for a Christmas tree that has been certified as organic or chemical-free, there are several Web sites that can help you.

Local Harvest, a national network of local products, in Santa Cruz, Calif., lists sources for Christmas trees and wreaths, both organic and conventionally grown; localharvest.org, (831) 475-8150.
Toxic Free North Carolina, in Raleigh, N.C., lists sources for sustainably grown trees in the state, and has information about pesticides commonly used on Christmas trees; toxicfreenc.org, (919) 833-5333.
Beyond Pesticides, a nonprofit group in Washington, provides sources for organic and naturally grown trees, as well as up-to-date information on pesticides; beyondpesticides.org, (202) 543-5450.
Green Promise, a group in Pingree Grove, Ill., that distributes information about sustainable products, lists sources for organic trees around the country on its Web site, greenpromise.com.
Agricultural extension offices often keep lists of local growers; consult the Department of Agriculture’s Web site, csrees.usda.gov/Extension.
The Council on the Environment of New York City keeps a list of farmers’ markets, many of which sell Christmas trees; cenyc.org/greenmarket, (212) 788-7476.

Trees as Homes

Whole Tree architecture (more info here).

Stupak on the Stupak Amendment

As the health care plan moves forward, anti-choice legislation is getting into the bill:
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/11/stupak_on_the_stupak_amendment.php

From Pandrew

WHACKED LADIES: Female Victims of Political Assassination

A new art exhibit by our friend and one-time NEIGHBORS collaborator & artist-in-residence, Makeal Flamini. Whacked Ladies is a series of prints and papercuts. It focuses on women who have been assassinated for political and religious reasons.

Opening July 24th 2009 5-9pm

THE BORGWARD COLLECTIVE

823 W. National Ave, Milwaukee, WI

Fake Project

Look at this: www.fakeproject.com

Experimental Communities

An interesting blog: www.experimentalcommunities.net/blog

Beautiful Hand-Embroidery

Just stumbled across this company that works with Indian artisans to hand-embroider beautiful patterns: Lost City Products

Gutai (Note to Self)

"Yet what is interesting in this respect is the novel beauty to be found in works of art and architecture of the past which have changed their appearance due to the damage of time or destruction by disasters in the course of the centuries. This is described as the beauty of decay, but is it not perhaps that beauty which material assumes when it is freed from artificial make-up and reveals its original characteristics? The fact that the ruins receive us warmly and kindly after all, and that they attract us with their cracks and flaking surfaces, could this not really be a sign of the material taking revenge, having recaptured its original life?..."
- excerpt from the Gutai Manifesto (1956)

To Be and To Be Blessed (Northern Missouri)

Thank you and Goodbye, Helen Levitt!

Helen Levitt, one of my favorite photographers and a real inspiration to my art-making, just died. Here is a link to the NY Times article about her life and work.

Helen Levitt, Who Froze New York Street Life on Film, Is Dead at 95
By Margarett Loke
March 30, 2009
Ms. Levitt was a major photographer of the 20th century who caught fleeting moments of surpassing lyricism, mystery and quiet drama on the streets of her native New York.

Duncan and Levertov

Summer reading...

The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov (2003)
Edited by Robert J. Bertholf and Albert Gelpi

This volume presents the complete correspondence between two of the most important and influential American poets of the postwar period. The almost 500 letters range widely over the poetry scene and the issues that made the period so lively and productive. But what gives the exchange its special personal and literary resonance is the sense of spiritual affinity and shared conviction about the power of the visionary imagination. Duncan and Levertov explore these matters in rich detail until, under the stress of dealing with the Vietnam War in poetry, they discover deep-seated differences in the religious and ethical convictions underlying their politics and poetic stance. The issues that drew them together and those that drove them apart create a powerful personal drama with far-reaching historical and cultural significance. The editors have provided a critical Introduction, full notes, a chronology, and a glossary of names.

Experimental Communities

An interesting blog: www.experimentalcommunities.net/blog
This blog is associated with 16Beaver

16Beaver is the address of a space initiated/run by artists to create and maintain an ongoing platform for the presentation, production, and discussion of a variety of artistic/cultural/economic/political projects. It is the point of many departures/arrivals. 16BEAVER is an independent self-sustaining project. The Residents of the space maintain the space by using it as their place of work/work/activities.

White House Farmer

The White House is considering transforming part of the White House Lawns into an organic farm to raise fruits and vegetable to be used not only in White House Meals but to donate to local food pantries. Several farmers across the country have been nominated, including Will Allen of Growing Power . Growing Power conducts workshops and demonstrations in aquaculture, aquaponics, vermiculture, horticulture, small or large-scale composting, soil reclamation, food distribution, beekeeping, and marketing. Will turns compost into energy to heat his green houses in the winter and has been integral in educating inner-city dwellers about the importance of organic farming and energy efficiency.

Here is Michael Pollan's article in the NY Times that inspired the conversation about a White House Farmer and further consideration of US food policy: Farmer in Chief

Learn more about the inspiring farmers who have been nominated to be White House Farmer and cast your vote: whitehousefarmer.com (After Jan 31, names of the top three vote-getters, plus all their information and comments, will be forward to an Obama staffer).

For info on Obama's rural planning: barackobama.come/issues/rural
By the way, Sam Kass, a proponent of local food, will become one of the White House chefs.

The Laundromat Project

An exciting new project from the folks at "Create Change"...

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: 2009 Create Change Public Artist Residency Program
Applications are due by February 20, 2009

The Laundromat Project is a community based arts organization committed to the well-being of communities of color living on low incomes. We understand that creativity is a central component of healthy human beings, vibrant neighborhoods and thriving economies.

Every year our Create Change program invites artists to mount public art projects in laundromats throughout Brooklyn and Harlem as a way of increasing the quality of life in communities of color living on low incomes.

Artists who participate in the Create Change program are able to use their creative practice as a vehicle to build relationships with and among their neighbors. They are charged with placing art-making in the context of everyday living by:
producing a site-specific, socially relevant installation at a laundromat in their neighborhood; engaging neighbors and fellow laundry patrons as participants in their
creative process; increasing their own visibility as an artist and a neighbor

Program participants receive a stipend and a materials budget to complete their Create Change project; professional development and access to a supportive network of colleagues; as well as opportunities to share their work with a broader public.

To learn more about the Create Change program, download an application and get answers to frequently asked questions, please visit:
www.laundromatproject.org/news

Off the Grid in Milwaukee

Here is an exciting project (and blog) that some friends have started in Milwaukee:
http://offthegridmke.wordpress.com
Currently, they are looking at creating urban water treatment systems and training as well as book club focusing on DIY health. There are also lots of interesting links and information about a variety of topics - from aquaculture to composting to wind power.

Garden

Night Work (Shanghai)

China Triptych #14

Part of a series of photographs from Eastern China
(by the Archaeology of the Recent Future Association)

Schools for Peace

(Origami cranes at the Children's Peace Monument in Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima. These paper cranes, symbolizing a desire for peace, are sent in by children from all over the world).

The School for Peace
The School for Peace is an educational institution offering Jewish-Arab encounter programs. They hope to promote better understanding through broad, in-depth examination of the nature of relations between Arabs and Jews. The School for Peace was established at Neve Shalom / Wahat al Salam as part of the village’s effort to bring about a more just and egalitarian relationship between Arabs and Jews.

International School for Peace Studies

School of Peace and Conflict Management

School of Peace (from the Presbyterian Record; September 1, 2006):
"Religious leaders in Asia are hoping a 'School of Peace' will help young activists from different religions spread a message of harmony and tolerance. 'This program has opened my eyes. Earlier, I thought my religion was the best,' said Elizarni Jaffar, a Muslim from Indonesia's Aceh province, at the end of the three month program. 'Now I realize that faith is precious to each one. If we need peace, we have to respect one another,' added Jaffar, who works with an action group in Aceh called Beujroh (Be Better). He was one of 16 Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist youth from conflict zones throughout Asia who took part in the program, in India, that lasted from February to May.

School of Peace
The School of Peace, jointly organized by the Asian Pacific Alliance of YMCAs, Christian Conference of Asia, Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst and Visthar is a three-month course based at Visthar, Bangalore.

Village of Peace Orphanage
In 2005, PAMASOR completed construction of the Village of Peace Orphanage in Kigali, which houses 75 children in mixed-age, independent family units. In addition to building a new primary school for area children, the orphanage raises cattle and rabbits that provide fresh milk and meat, respectively, and produce enough surplus that milk from the cattle and offspring of the rabbits can be sold to raise additional income for the orphanage. Additionally, the organization worked with the Kigali Institute of Technology (KIST) to develop a BioGaz system that uses the waste from the cows to provide gas for cooking. The gas is pumped directly from the storage tanks to the kitchens and presents a steady supply of fuel. The orphanage also maintains small vegetable gardens to supplement the children’s diet.

Peace Matunda Orphanage - Tanzania

Peace Child Orphanage - Pokhara, Nepal

India Peace Charitable Trust Orphanage

Peace Child International
Founded in 1981, PCI is one of the largest networks of youth-led organisations in consultative status with the United Nations. First famous for bringing the first Soviet Youth to the USA on a youth exchange to perform the musical, Peace Child, it has grown to unite 1,500+ affiliate groups and networks in over 180 countries. PCI’s mission is to empower young people to address the most pressing global challenges they are going to have to address in their lifetimes – climate change, peace, human rights, making poverty history and achieving sustainable prosperity for the entire human family.

War Crimes?

This past Friday, a bipartisan Senate report named Secretary Rumsfeld and other top officials directly responsible for sanctioning torture (see the article below). Now, rumors are that Bush will pardon Rumsfeld and others for these abuses. Amnesty International is advocating for a letter-writing campaign to local newspapers protesting any possible pardon of accused war criminals. Click here to learn more about the campaign and how you can easily write a letter that will bring awareness of the issue to your local community.

Report on Detainee Abuse Blames Top Bush Officials
(Washington Post: December 12, 2008)
by Joby Warrick and Karen DeYoung
For the full article, click here. Here are some excerpts:

A bipartisan panel of senators has concluded that former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials bear direct responsibility for the harsh treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and that their decisions led to more serious abuses in Iraq and elsewhere.

In the most comprehensive critique by Congress of the military's interrogation practices, the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report yesterday that accuses Rumsfeld and his deputies of being the authors and chief promoters of harsh interrogation policies that disgraced the nation and undermined U.S. security. The report, released by Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), contends that Pentagon officials later tried to create a false impression that the policies were unrelated to acts of detainee abuse committed by members of the military.

The full report was unanimously approved by the committee late last month and sent to the Pentagon with no dissenting views, Levin said in an interview. Although much of the information has previously been made public, there are references to still-classified memos, including an Aug. 1, 2002, report to the CIA by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, who headed the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, evaluating the legality of specific interrogation techniques such as waterboarding.

Levin acknowledged that most of the senior officials named in the report have left government or soon will. "But I would hope that the new administration, as well as the Defense Department . . . would look for ways, where appropriate, to hold people accountable," he said.

In July 2002, Rumsfeld's senior staff began compiling information about techniques used in military survival schools to simulate conditions that U.S. airmen might face if captured by an enemy that did not follow the Geneva Conventions. Those techniques -- borrowed from a training program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE -- included waterboarding, or simulated drowning, and were loosely based on methods adopted by Chinese communists to coerce propaganda confessions from captured U.S. soldiers during the Korean War.

The SERE program became the template for interrogation methods that were ultimately approved by Rumsfeld himself. In the field, U.S. military interrogators used the techniques with little oversight and frequently abusive results, the panel found.

"It is particularly troubling that senior officials approved the use of interrogation techniques that were originally designed to simulate abusive tactics used by our enemies against our own soldiers," the report said, "and that were modeled, in part, on tactics used by the Communist Chinese to elicit false confessions from U.S. military personnel."

Human rights and constitutional law organizations have urged further action, ranging from an independent commission to prosecutions of those involved in authorizing the interrogations. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has helped defend detainees at Guantanamo, said the committee report is valuable because "it's official, it's bipartisan."

"It's open and explicit, going right to Rumsfeld and having Rice involved," Ratner said. "It breaks new ground in saying that the SERE techniques basically don't work . . . that they're actually designed to elicit false confessions."

Our note:

As the Bush administration scrambles to push through numerous measures before January, the pressure is on Obama to work to restore confidence in the US government and military. In September, Feingold chaired a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Constitution Subcommittee entitled “Restoring the Rule of Law.” The hearing featured testimony and recommendations from about forty historians, law professors and advocacy organizations, including the head of President-elect Obama’s transition team, John Podesta. Feingold provided a copy of the written record of the hearing to the President-elect.

The recommendations include:
Closing the facility at Guantanamo Bay – a step Obama has supported;
Banning torture and establishing a single, government-wide standard of humane detainee treatment;
Conducting a comprehensive review of Office of Legal Counsel opinions and repudiating or revising those that overstate executive authority;
Supporting significant legislative changes to the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act;
Cooperating with congressional oversight, including providing full information to intelligence committees;
Establishing presumptions of openness and disclosure in making decisions on the classification of information and responding to requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

Feingold's open letter to Obama can be found here .

Music as Weapon

A recent leak revealed that music is being used to "soften up" detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo, often bringing them to the point of trying to commit suicide or mental insanity. The news continues to paint an even uglier portrait of the US military and only adds to the mounting cases of war crimes, accusations of torture, and global criticism of the US as a whole. The news also outraged the many musicians whose very music was being used to torture prisoners. It has been reported that music is blasted for several days without stop into the holding cells. And while these reports of torture don't perhaps sound as horrible as those of the recent past (the Abu Ghraib scandal being the most notorious, but perhaps only because it was the most reported and mediated), it seems a sick irony to compare levels of torture. Once again, we are asked to consider what has become "standard operating procedure" (because these are not cases of exceptional "bad apples") and what sort of accountability can exist for a power as unbridled as that of the US military.

"One of the most startling aspects of musical culture in the post-Cold War United States is the systematic use of music as a weapon of war. First coming to mainstream attention in 1989, when US troops blared loud music in an effort to induce Panamanian president Manuel Norriega’s surrender, the use of “acoustic bombardment” has become standard practice on the battlefields of Iraq, and specifically musical bombardment has joined sensory deprivation and sexual humiliation as among the non-lethal means by which prisoners from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo may be coerced to yield their secrets without violating US law."
Read the essay, Music as torture / Music as weapon here: www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans10/cusick_eng.htm

A pretty good account of "Music Torture" in general (Wikipedia): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_torture

Sesame Street breaks Iraqi POWs: Heavy metal music and popular American children's songs are being used by US interrogators to break the will of their captives in Iraq.
Read the article here: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3042907.stm

Musicians don’t want tunes used for torture: Nine Inch Nails, even ‘Sesame Street’ theme used for interrogations
The U.S. has used loud music against those held in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan, and detainees now aren't the only ones complaining: Musicians are banding together to demand the U.S. military stop using their songs as weapons.
Read the article here: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28144557/

And, finally, an interesting article about two soldiers (one of whom is Darby, the Army reservist who turned in the Abu Ghraib photos) who are now living with the burden of their time as prison guards in Iraq.
Read the article here: www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/03/am-i-a-torturer-3.html

The End of Television

From the blog: theendoftelevision.blogspot.com/
(Please click on the link for the whole story).

Cutting through the digital TV static:
Three months from today, the television broadcast system that most Americans watched growing up will sign off forever.
Through a handful of measures since 1996, Congress has ordered most broadcast stations to phase out their use of conventional analog transmission and switch their signals to digital technology by the end of Feb 17, 2009.
For most TV viewers, the digital transition already has taken place, even if they don’t realize it. About 93 percent of broadcast stations – most affiliates of the national networks such as CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS and Fox – are sending their signals digitally today, according to the National Association of Broadcasters.
Cable TV companies have sold digital packages for years, sending programs through digital set-top boxes for subscribers. Other TV service providers, such as satellite companies and Verizon Communications, tout “all-digital” lineups that have severed their customers’ connections to the old format.
Still, in more than 9 million households nationwide ... the old analog TV picture is the only one some people watch, according to statistics released last month by The Nielsen Co.
When they go to turn on their televisions Wednesday morning Feb. 18, their screens will show dead air.
Unless they get ready...

The End of Television is a video program beginning where analog television ends. On February 17th, 2009 the U.S. television broadcast signal will change over from analog to digital. No television will receive a signal without a special converter box.

On February 17th, The End of Television will air through analog broadcast TV on channel 2 in Pittsburgh. When broadcasters turn off their analog transmitters The End of Television turns it's analog transmitter on and broadcasts the program. Using a restricted and nearly obsolete medium (broadcast TV) , The End of Television re-imagines the omnipresent idea of "broadcast yourself." We are accepting all videos submitted before the deadline and there is no submission fee.

For questions contact: ian.f.page@gmail.com

Send videos to:
The End of Television
331 S. Aiken st
Pittsburgh, PA 15232

- Please have the video postmarked by January 25th.
- Work should be submitted on miniDV or VHS.
- Work will not be returned unless a SASE is included.

Animal Portraits: Sea Lion (in progress)

Human Rights Day

2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. December 10 is celebrated as the official "Human Rights Day" to commemorate the UDHR and to advocate for human rights advocacy around the world.
You can go to the U.N.'s website to read/print the full text of the UDHR and to access other educational materials).

With rampant violations of Human Rights in the USA and worldwide, what does this anniversary mean and how can we use this as a moment to strengthen the rights of people everywhere?
How can we advocate for human rights that are matched with human responsibilities?
And how can we champion the rights of the whole Earth and the environment - where the rights of animals, plants, and humans are treated with equal respect and understood as interdependent?

“They kept shopping”

“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” Ms. Cribbs told The Associated Press. “They kept shopping.”

Jdimytai Damour died after being trampled when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-mart store on Friday morning, police and witnesses said. The 34-year-old employee, a temporary maintenance worker, was rushed by the chaotic crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m. Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

Here is the full article from the New York Times (November 29, 2008) by Robert D. McFadden and Angela Macropoulos
Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death: A crush of shoppers tore down the front doors and thronged into a store in suburban New York, killing a temporary employee.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/business/29walmart.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Sample #45 from the "Wondrous Fruits and Vegetables Archive"

"Meet Animal Meat" Conference

Still from "Meat Joy" (1964) by Carolee Schneeman

"Meet Animal Meat" International Conference: May 21-23, 2009
Center for Gender Research at Uppsala University, Sweden
www.genna.gender.uu.se/Animals/Events/Meet_Animal_Meat

Informed by feminist investigations of embodiment and bodiliness, we ask: How do we understand our bodily relationship to other animals? How do we embody animals, and how do animals embody us? How are carnal modes of incorporation, intimacy, and inhabitation kinds of contacts forged between “HumAnimals”? If, as Donna Haraway writes, “animals are everywhere full partners in worlding, in becoming with,” then how do embodied encounters with animal matter necessarily constitute categories of “human” and “animal”? What is the meaning of meat, and the meat of meaning? How do we think and write about human and animal power relations in a way that acknowledges the discursive traffic, the actor-ship, agency, and the life conditions of these differently bounded socio-historical, political populations? How do we attend to the ways that animals and humans co-constitute each other in the flesh? What is the consequence of taking embodiment and corporeality as the starting point of inquiry into questions of relationality? How do we make meat “matter” in cultural/social/political studies of animals, and/or problematize preconceived notions of animals as “food”? How do animal parts and body-matters figure in politico-economic stories, processes, and institutions? We seek proposals for papers, panels, and other public presentations connecting representation, language, embodiment, animals, consumption, power, and culture. We especially welcome interdisciplinary approaches; readings of corporeally inflected HumAnimal fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction; films, videos, and slide presentations of artwork that explore carnal human and animal encounters; and proposals from outside the academy, including submissions from artists, writers, practitioners, and activists.

Keynote Speakers:
Carol J. Adams, author of "The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory" and "The Pornography of Meat".
Judith Halberstam, author of "Skin Shows: Gothic Horror" and The Technology of Monsters" and "In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives".

This conference comes out of a concerted research effort (at Uppsala University and elsewhere) that seeks to examine human-animal relationships in a new light. As the the HumAnimal Group at Uppsala explains:
The study of human-animal relations is a fascinating but still relatively unexplored research area. One of the reasons why the social sciences and humanities in general have been reluctant in dealing with the issue is the classical nature/culture divide. While “society” consists of humans and their interaction in institutions and culture, other animals become excluded and conceptualized as “nature”. The presence of animals can thereby, on the one hand, ”decivilize” human activities and urban places. But on the other hand, we have a strong Western tradition of linking the treatment of other animals with degrees of civilization: the more “humane”, the higher the civilisation. Put together, this points to an interesting potential openness of categories and flexibility in the understanding of humans and other animals. This potential openness creates a space for questioning taken for granted discourses and truths, and this is where the critical potential of animal studies lies. Internationally, human-animal studies is a growing interdisciplinary field with specialized journals, conferences and networks. However, in the Scandinavian context, the existence and activities of a research collaboration such as the Humanimal group has no precedence.
The HumAnimal group currently represent a vast diversity of disciplines and perspectives, from evolutionary biology, through sociology and pedagogy, to arthistory and philosophy. This is not a mere coincident. In line with the overall aims of GenNa, the HumAnimal group finds it an important advantage to cross over the nature/culture divide in science, also in the area of human-animal studies. Thus, interdisciplinarity is a given in the group. We believe that disciplinary and other differences, can become methodological advantages and present us with new insights, but also new questions and problems. The overall aim is to promote better understanding of human-animal relations in society, science and culture by way of exploration and analysis, to explore the critical potentials of such understanding. of human-animal relations in society, science and culture, and to establish human-animal studies as a field of academic inquiry in Sweden.

More about GenNa (Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala University):
Nature/culture and transgressive encounters The Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala University is working to promote sustainable interdisciplinary encounters and networking. The aim of our GenNa-programme is to study empirically and reflect theoretically on the ways in which knowledge about gender and gendered knowledge are produced in the intersection between the natural and cultural sciences. We continuously identify different focus areas for research, collaborate with internationally renowned researchers, and organise transgressive seminars and conferences. By bridging organisational and conceptual divisions, we offer a unique meeting place for researchers and students from different disciplinary backgrounds. We have been awarded the Swedish Research Council’s funding for Centres of Gender Excellence 2007–2011, in order to continue building a centre of international excellence in empirical research, theoretical development and teaching.

2008 World AIDS Day

The 1st of December, World AIDS Day, is the day when individuals and organizations from around the world come together to bring attention to the global AIDS epidemic. 2008 marks the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day. While we have come a long ways since 1988, there is still much more to be done.
For more info, please look at the World AIDS Campaign website.
World AIDS Day 2008 materials are available online here.

According to UNAIDS (the U.N. Report of HIV & AIDS), there are:

• 33 million people living with HIV worldwide
• 30.8 million adults
• 15.5 million women
• 2.0 million children under 15

New HIV cases in 2007:

• 2.7 million total new cases
• 2.3 million adults
• 370,000 children under 15

HIV-related deaths in 2007:

• 2.0 million total deaths

To begin preparing for World AIDS Day 2008, you can do the following:
* Download World AIDS Day materials for 2008.
* Enter your World AIDS Day event on the INTERNATIONAL WORLD AIDS DAY CALENDAR
(For events in the USA, go to "U" section)
* Read more about leadership and why 2008 is the time to LEAD-EMPOWER-DELIVER
* Learn more about events and SMS pledge campaign happening for World AIDS Day in India
* Read about what happened on World AIDS Day in 2007
* Find out about more information about themes and resources for World AIDS Day 2007, 2006 and 2005
* View the campaigners tools available for 2008, 2007 and 2006

New Art at Just Seeds Collective

Justseeds/Visual Resistance Artists' Cooperative is a decentralized community of artists who have banded together to both sell their work online in a central location and to collaborate with and support each other and social movements. Our website is not just a place to shop, but also a destination to find out about current events in radical art and culture. Our blog covers political printmaking, socially engaged street art, and culture related to social movements. We believe in the power of personal expression in concert with collective action to transform society.

Here is some new artwork that you can purchase online.

Roger Peet: "Baiji" ($65)
This is the Yangtze river dolphin, known in China as the Baiji. One of the world's few species of freshwater dolphin, and now one with the snows of yesteryear. The Baiji's habitat was destroyed by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, its prey species were wiped out as a result of overfishing, and it suffered huge losses to boat traffic, pollution, and probably existential malaise. What's so important about this creature? Why should anyone care? These are questions that I pose to myself when making these pieces about extinct animals. These beautiful, graceful creatures were around on this planet for more than ten million years. They lived lives of swift elegance in the muddy Yangtze water, curling and spiralling through the turbidity and chaos of spring floods. They snapped up their meals of fish with their long, toothy beaks clacking like chopsticks. Like many beautiful lost things, they were eliminated not necessarily by human rapaciousness, but by the byproducts of human industrial development and overpopulation. People didn't kill the Baiji off, but they made it impossible for the Baiji to survive. Who is responsible? We all are. This is what we do. Not to beat a dead horse, but the baiji is a victim of humanity. Our essence is this death. We are truly become gods, destroyers of worlds, but we've no need of atomic bombs to do the work; it can be accomplished just as well with simple household tools and a prideful smile. We are the losers, if only because only we can be tortured by the knowledge of what we have done.

Santiago Armengod: "Tus heroes son nuestros enemigos" ($25)

Este grabado es un llamado a informarnos y aprender por nuestros propios medios aquellas historias ya desgastadas por los gobiernos e instituciones. Todas nuestras vidas se nos bombardea visual y psicologicamente con imagenes de supuestos heroes y heroinas de la historia. Esta en nuestras manos decidir si los heroes de las instituciones son tambien nuestros heroes.

This woodcut is a call to educate ourselves by our own means, of all those worn out stories told by the goverment and institutions. We are bombarded our whole lives visually and psychologically with pictures of supposed heroes of history. It lays in our hands the decision to choose if those heroes of the institutions are also our heroes.

Swoon: "Alden" ($400)

This print is adapted from a block print of my grandfather, and all of the money from this one will go to rehabbing the church that is being taken over in Braddock, PA. Transformazium.org is the project website. Silk screened with hand cutting, on dyed paper. Stitched to a sewn paper background.

Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss Turns 100

NPR audio documentary by Frank Browning on All Things Considered, November 23, 2008

Listen Now [6 min 20 sec]

This week in Paris, one of the last icons of 20th century French intellectual life turns 100. Claude Levi-Strauss not only reshaped the nature of how anthropologists do their work, he changed the world's perception of so-called "primitive" tribes in Asia, Africa and America.

International Experimental Media Congress 2010

www.experimentalcongress.org

The International Experimental Media Congress, April 7-10, 2010 in Toronto, will provide a forum for exchange between artists, curators, programmers, gallerists, theorists, activists, writers and lovers of Canadian and international film, video and related time-based media art.

The first Congress since 1989, this gathering will promote ongoing international conversation and provide a platform for creative discussions about the burning issues related to experimental media production, exhibition, dissemination, criticism, pedagogy and reception.

Without the luxury of endless time and space, this thematically-focused event aims to include voices both young and old, from near and far, and across disciplines and practices in order to address the most pressing topics and to further develop the world wide networks of individuals working in this field. To make the process as inclusive and open as possible, major themes of discussion will be identified on the basis of responses to a short online survey at the link to your left.

Timed to coincide with the 23rd Images Festival, the Congress will extend free Festival passes to all registered attendees. The conference will feature morning and afternoon panels with plenty of time for networking and attending contemporary experimental programs at Images and throughout Toronto in the evenings and on the weekend.

Please share this exciting information with your networks.

The Recent Past

"Early Spring Courtship Dance of the Totally Positive" at Citizen Jane Film Festival

Still from "Early Spring Courtship Dance of the Totally Positive" (16mm B/W film with live performance, 10 min) by Allison Halter. The project was made with assistance from The Archaeology of the Recent Future (planning, cinematography, and editing).
This film shows a traditional courtship dance of the Totally Positive of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The footage represents the typical dance, characterized by a series of stylized flight-and-pursuit movements, often seen in the early months of spring. For the Citizen Jane Film Festival, the film was presented with a mock lecture (as well as a dance demonstration) by Siobahn Burgundy, one of Allison Halter's many alter egos. The film played to a very enthusiastic crowd at a packed theater in the Ragtag Cinema (Columbia, MO) as part of a program of performance art and movies with live soundtracks.
Allison is now back in Portland, continuing graduate study and making hundreds of "bricks" out of cloth for her next project!

"CHINA, Portraits" at ICE Film Festival

On October 9-11, 2008, ICE (Iowa City Experimental) Film Festival brought Deborah Stratman and Vanessa Renwick to Iowa City as jurors of its 2008 festival. From a pool of over 200 entries, they selected 50 for screening over three days of events in and around downtown Iowa City. "CHINA, Portraits (Xi'an, Chenglu, Shanghai, Beijing, Jingdezhen)" - a 16mm film by the Archaeology of the Recent Future Association - was included as part of the closing night program.
Full 2008 festival program available at: www.icefilmfest.org
For more info/questions: icefilmfest@gmail.com

Matthew Rethaber's new photo blog

Work from a dear friend and wonderful photographer:
http://keepyoureyespeeledkid.blogspot.com

Ears inside out and other (un)natural phenomena

The Museum of Jurassic Technology presents...
Jacob Kirkegaard has turned his ears inwards: his new work LABYRINTHITIS is an interactive sound piece that consists entirely of sounds generated in the artist’s auditory organs – and will cause audible responses in those of the audience. LABYRINTHITIS relies on a principle employed both in medical science and musical practice: When two frequencies at a certain ratio are played into the ear, additional vibrations in the inner ear will produce a third frequency. This frequency is generated by the ear itself: a so-called “distortion product otoacoustic emission” (DPOAE), also referred to in musicology as “Tartini tone”. By arranging the tones from his ears in a composition and playing them to an audience, the artist evokes further distortion effects in the ears of his listeners. At first, each new tone can only be perceived "intersubjectively": inside the head of each one in the audience. Kirkegaard artificially reproduces this tone and introduces it, "objectively", into his composition. When combined with another distorting frequency, it will create another tone... until, step by step, a pattern of descending tonal structure emerges whose spiral form mirrors the composition of resonant spectra in the human cochlea. Jacob Kirkegaard is an artist with an interest in the scientific and aesthetic aspects of resonance, time and hearing. His performances, audio/visual installations and compositions deal with acoustic spaces and phenomena that usually remain inaccessible to sense perception. With the use of unorthodox recording tools such as accelerometers, hydrophones or home-built electromagnetic receivers, Kirkegaard manages to capture and explore "secret sounds" - distortions, interferences, vibrations, ambiences - from within a variety of environments: volcanic earth, a nuclear power plant, an empty room, a TV tower, crystals, ice... and the human inner ear itself. During the last ten years, he has been presenting exhibitions and touring festivals and conferences throughout the world. He has released five albums. Among his numerous collaborators are JG Thirlwell, Ann Lislegaard, CM von Hausswolff, Philip Jeck and Lydia Lunch.

Summer Projects

There are a good number of projects simmering and stewing, almost completed and ready to be shared. Among them are:

CHINA, Portraits (Shanghai, Beijing, Chenglu, Jingdezhen, Xian)
Shot over the course of a month's travel in eastern China, the film presents a series of portraits – poignant, funny, confusing, bland, and charming – of people in rapidly changing neighborhoods and towns. Not quite a travelogue, and far from an ethnography, this quiet testament to the power of portraiture asks us to consider the pleasures, discomfort, and dangers of looking.

Animal Portraits: Milwaukee (Pierce St Public School / Woodland Pattern, Milwaukee, WI)
A 3-month art class with a small group of 4th and 5th graders results in an exciting series of different animal personas. Masks, costumes, backdrops, song, and dance (all made by the children) come together in a celebratory collective portrait that also reflects our own
magnetic yet mystifying relationship with other creatures.

Our Dreams Are Waiting For Us Around the Corner: Images from a Photo Booth and Thank-You-Letter-Writing Party at NEIGHBORS (May 2008).
The beautiful B/W medium format images from the Photo Booth are finally in our possession and awaiting a venue in which to be shared. We are exploring different printing options and hope to create a book that contains the images as well as critical writing about the project and its context, as well as about the neighborhood and our community.

NEIGHBORS Space/Gallery
There is movement to create an artist residency program at the NEIGHBORS storefront space. Anyone interested in such ventures should send word! citizenandneighbor@gmail.com

The Citizen Jane Film Festival
The new women's film festival - premiering this October in Columbia, Missouri - continues to build momentum, boasting a line up of extraordinary women makers and films.
Please check out the blog: citizenjanefilmfestival.blogspot.com