Michael Braungart and William McDonough‘s radical re-examination of ecologism argues that we have to abandon the Industrial Revolution model of growth and begin to mimic nature instead. The RSA’s Jamie Young takes a look.
Monthly Archives: December 2008
Book Review: Hot Flat and Crowded
Thomas Friedman‘s new book is a manifesto for a green revolution. But does his idea of a technological revolution depend on us having a cultural revolution first?
Francesca Galeazzi: Artist behaving badly
In an interview with RSA Arts and Ecology Francesca Galeazzi justifies releasing a cylinder of CO2 in one of the most beautifully unspoilt places on earth, and discusses the shocked reactions of some of her shipmates.
RSA Arts and Ecology Centre
The new RSA Arts and Ecology Centre is about connecting people and ideas to develop a set of shared ideas about how art can invigorate debate about climate change.
News Dec 11 | David Lan
This month the new family show Amazonia based partly on the life of rainforest campaigner Chico Mendes received negative comments for its “preachiness”. William Shaw talks to Young Vic artistic director David Lan about creating the show, and what the last few days have meant to him. Did the critics get it wrong? How hard is it to create “virtuous” art?
Directions to your Theater
How do I get to your theater using transit?
Internet driving directions have been available for over a decade now. MapQuest is a bit old school and Yahoo Maps picked it up a bit, but it seems Google Maps are everywhere now. They are in our browsers, in stand alone programs, embedded on everyone’s website and a feature on our phones. If you don’t have an iphone or android you might have a GPS instead or you might have all of these. In the car dominated roads of Los Angeles you might even be so old school as to have a Thomas Guide in the pocket behind your passenger seat.
So, if I can Google any address and get step by step directions with an estimation of transit time from any other location, print it out, text it to myself or email it my smart phone (if I didn’t look it up there to begin with) and plug it into my GPS to have a robot speak turn by turn directions to me and show me live traffic conditions, WHY do so many theaters give me such detailed directions on their website?
These detailed directions from the north, south, east or west are general and don’t take into account alternatives if traffic is bad or a road is under construction. They aren’t necessary. Maybe, if you have parking (who has ample parking?) you want me to know how to get into it, but I don’t need directions from Pasadena to your parking lot or to know that the neighborhood behind your theater is permitted for one block south of Melrose. You just need to tell me where to park if I drive.
What would be useful? Transit directions. There are over a dozen transit agencies in the area: Metro, Culver City Bus, the Big Blue Bus, Burbank Bus, Foothills Transit, Santa Clarita Transit, etc. and they operate local buses, rapid buses, commuter buses, subway, light rail and heavy rail. It’s confusing to try and get around on the buses. But with traffic, the fluid cost of gasoline, and the expense of parking, wouldn’t it be great to know how to get to your theater without a car? And how to get back home.
I’m not asking for you to give me full details, but maybe a list of the buses that come within a quarter mile or even a half a mile of your theater. Unless you’re tucked in the hills or back in a nieghborhood I can only imagine that there are buses passing by regularly and that you may be lucky enough to be close to a metro rail stop! I know for a fact the theaters on Santa Monica, that is to say Theater Row, get radio interference from the buses passing by.
Google does now offer walking and transit directions. Metro, the largest such agency in LA, is not on Google Transit yet (Burbank is though), but they are in talks to be up soon(ish?). That might solve a portion of this issue. And if you can find a bus that goes nearby you can get the walking instructions. Hopefully, with the passing of Measure R, we will see even more convenient and extensive transit options.
But, until we all know the bus system, the subway gets to Santa Monica and we can get bus by bus instructions for transit on Google or our tom tom, why not make it easy for me to get there? Maybe I’ll have to get there a little earlier and stay a little later to catch my desired bus. Maybe I’ll have a couple drinks from concessions cause I don’t have to worry about driving and I don’t have to pay for parking or the valet for the restaurant down the street. And maybe I’ll even stick around the area for a while and help with the local feeling by eating nearby in a walkable restaurant or kill some time in a local shop. Best of all I’ll arrive without any road rage and be more open and excited about the show.
The Nuclear Forum 28.11.08
In partnership with The Arts Catalyst and SCAN, Arts & Ecology held a forum at the RSA on Friday 28 November 2008 (10am to 6pm) exploring the impact of nuclear power in art and culture. Nuclear power is re-emerging as a a major modern issue, both in terms of generation of energy, and as part of defence strategies.
The new Banksy?
I’m drawn to any news item that lurks in that Venn diagram space between art and activism, but I’m totally baffled as to why John Vidal of The Guardian is calling the mystery person who broke in an dshut down the Kingsnorth Power station yesterday – apparently cutting Britain’s CO2 emissions by 2% for four hours – “the new Banksy”. Does that make anyone with a pair of wire cutters an artist? This would, of course, open the door to the Michael Stone defence becoming widespread. Michael Stone is, as you will recall, the convicted paramilitary murderer who was arrested trying to burst into Stormont armed with a gun and pipe bombs to murder Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, but justified his act by claiming it was “performance art”. And, as several performance artists from Northern Ireland pointed out last year, such designation would not be a Good Thing.
Photo: CEOs from RSPB, WI, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Friends of the Earth, WWF,
Tearfund, Greenpeace and Ashok from the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition
get together at Kingsnorth to protest the building of a new coal power
station, Oct 6 2008. Thanks to Stop Climate Chaos Coaltion for the picture.
More…
With reference to the post below and the brickbats thrown at the Young Vic, here’s a month-old blog post from Robert Butler The Ashden Directory who have years of experience looking at the shortage of engagement of performing arts in environmental issues:
Six Reasons Why Theatres Don’t Touch Climate Change.
Number seven might now be a fear of publicly falling on their arses. Which is, of course, the worst reason of all not to do something.
On disasters…
Cornford & Cross’s current installation at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, The Lion and the Unicorn, created from 15 tons of locally-sourced coal as an exploration of topic of fuel, climate change and economic stability. Photo by Paul Ward. Until Jan 31 2009.
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In this month’s Wired magazine, columnist Scott Brown takes a hilarious dig at Hollywood’s new obsession with environmental disaster movies.
Actually, no, it’s not that hilarious at all. It’s more just a dig, really, at the forthcoming slew of eco-conscious movies you’ll be seeing next year. There’s The Thaw (deadly parasite unleashed by melting icecaps), 2012 (eco-doom)Â and Strays (nuclear meltdown). Then there are the statuatory remakes. The Day The Earth Stood Still (this time around Klaatu has come to tell us off for wrecking the planet) and Creature From The Black Lagoon, in which the seas wreak vengence on us.Â
“The dopiness of so-called ecotainment – environmentally virtuous entertainment – rises in direct proportion to its message mongering,” says Scott. “Oh the hilarity!” he chuckles.
This default critical line on “ecotainment” (the neologism itself is a stinker, face it,) is interesting. The standard reaction is that the genre is a joke. Hilarity! My aching sides. Etc.
It’s entirely possible that these films will be stinkers. Hollywood blockbusters generally are. Probably unintentially funny at times too. But while right-wing Americans believe that Hollywood is trying to foist a liberal agenda on the world, these films are mammoth investments by hard-nosed producers, so it’s interesting that the disaster-movie juggernaut believes that it can profit successfully from exploiting what is presumably a growing public anxiety in this way.
But there is also an assumption on Scott Brown’s part that the very idea of making a film that contains an environmental message is funny.Â
Maybe it is.
Yesterday I posted an interview with David Lan on the main RSA Arts & Ecology site. David is a man with a reputation as one of the most remarkably creative and successful people in London theatre. As Artistic Director of the Young Vic his productions have been universally lauded.
Until last weekend. The reviews for Amazonia have been, and it’s no fun to admit this, pretty wretched. Lyn Gardner – a consistent champion of new work – was scathing. But her review echoed Scott Brown’s default position. “The preachiness makes you long to rush out and lop down a tree,” she says.
In the interview, Lan is still trying to comprehend what triggered such a hostile reaction. He’s one of the theatre’s most experienced figures – a virtuoso of different forms, and he didn’t see it coming, he says. Now he’s wondering, did they contextualise the play well enough? Did they create enough of those subtle cues that control the audience’s expectations? Or is it just very, very, very hard to make art that says meaningful things about the great invisible beast that is the environment? Now that a critical mass of work about ecology is starting to arrive, mabye it’s time to start soul-searching about whether it’s good enough yet.
You wonder too, whether the default critical sneer that greets any work that declares good intentions too loudly is also part of it. And whether that needs rethinking too. But that’s a delicate, possibly dangerous path to go down…