CHRISTINE PALMA
“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” –Theodor Adorno
February 15, 2010 at 1:10 pm ·
I spent Friday and Saturday at the BIL 2010 Conference. BIL is 3 years running and happens at same time and is located near the TED Conference. The event is free and open to all. Anyone can give a presentation. Usually there are scientists, futurists, artists, venture capitalists speaking and inspiring the audience. They are able to throw the entire conference for less than the cost of one TED ticket. Tickets to TED run around $6000. This year the venue was the Museum of Latin American Art down in Long Beach.
Their website is at http://2010.bilconference.com/
UPDATE: My radio interview with Todd Huffman and others is now up at:
link
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February 14, 2010 at 8:01 pm ·
INTERVIEW:
My radio interview with Kim Martingdale and others is now up:
link
REVIEW:
My first stop was the live “graffiti” art in the entranceway. Three artists were simultaneously working on three large murals brought to the LA Art Show by the LA Art Machine Gallery curated by Bryson Strauss. World reknown artists El Mac and Retna collaborated on a monochromatic portrait of a Latina done in aerosol with text. Mear One was working on a deconstructed cityscape with LA’s Watts Towers in the background and a figure of a boy in the foreground with butterflies flying from his chest. Coffee was painting a cubist monochromatic piece.
Next I visited what was probably my favorite exhibit at the LA Art Show, a show called “Signs.” Sundaram Tagore Gallery curated a grouping of Islamic artists. The paintings were heavily text-based because depictions of the figure are prohibited in that culture. What you have then is text used as a textural element in most of the pieces, text abstracted to symbols. Text sources could be anything from poetry to holy books. The alphabet and its forms was also emphasized.
I then stopped off at the Uruguay exhibit. This year’s LA Art show debuted their guest country program featuring Uruguay. Uruguay is the second smallest country in South America, but it boasts a healthy democratic government, high economic development with a high GDP per capita and the 47th highest quality of life in the world. It sits nestled between Brazil and Argentina and its art scene is world class. They did not have anyone English speaking at the booth so I was not able to interview them, but the artwork shown consisted of contemporary painting and installation work, with a video exhibit as well.
Sister Cities had an collection of artists work from sister cities of Los Angeles. Pete Sterns of London had a very calming color field piece which he rendered as both a richly pigmented painting and as a computer animation. Nori, an artist from Japan, had two paintings representative of “every city.” His work is heavily influenced by jazz.
The Luce Foundation, a photography incubator, curated the Group LA exhibit. The main video element was a series of slideshows from different artist of their neighborhoods.
Finally, I found myself at the cluster of Korean art galleries. My favorite Korean artist is Yong Deok Lee who is known for his concave sculptures. The images are carved into a flat plane.
(YouTube turned up a few examples which gives an idea of the visual illusion created of 3-dimensionality when the viewer walks around his pieces:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SaG271TqqE)
I was happy to see a new piece, an aerial view of a swimmer underwater.
PHOTOS:
I didn’t have as much time to appreciate the artwork this year, but this is a small sampling:
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October 14, 2009 at 12:12 am ·
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez gave Obama this book as a gift in April 2009. It chronicles five centuries of Latin America’s exploitation by the United States of America.
In the 20th century section of the book, Eduardo Galeano mentions something interesting in passing. Robert McNamara, the World Bank president who was chairman of Ford and then Secretary for Defense, has called the population explosion the greatest obstacle to progress in Latin America; the World Bank, he says, will give priority in its loans to countries that implement birth control plans.
The definition of a Mathusian Crisis from Wikipedia:
Malthusian catastrophe (also called a Malthusian check, crisis, disaster, or nightmare) was originally foreseen to be a forced return to subsistence-level conditions once population growth had outpaced agricultural production. Later formulations consider economic growth limits as well. The term is also commonly used in discussions of oil depletion.
Based on the work of political economist Thomas Malthus (1766–1834), theories of Malthusian catastrophe are very similar to thesubsistence theory of wages. The main difference is that the Malthusian theories predict over several generations or centuries, whereas the subsistence theory of wages predicts over years and decades.
An August 2007 science review in The New York Times raised the claim that the Industrial Revolution had enabled the modern world to break out of the Malthusian Trap,[1] while a front page Wall Street Journal article in March 2008 pointed out various limited resources which may soon limit human population growth because of a widespread belief in the importance of prosperity for every individual and the rising consumption trends of large developing nations such as China and India.[2]
Paul R. Ehrlich in his book “The Population Bomb” predicted worldwide famines. Ehrlich wrote that India “couldn’t possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980.” This was disproved just six years later:
However, the introduction of high-yield grains and improved techniques resulted in India becoming self-sustaining in cereal production by 1974…
From LifeSiteNews.com
ROME, October 13, 2009
The head of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) told a gathering of African bishops in Rome on Monday that the theories of Thomas Malthus, equating increased population with food shortages, are incorrect. In response to a question from the floor at the African Synod, Dr. Jacques Diouf said that “food security” is possible in Africa now without the reduction of population, if there is the political will to achieve it.
…
Infrastructural development, improved living conditions for farmers, irrigation, the increased use of fertilisers, building and maintenance of rural roads, availability of high-yield seed and seed quality control and certification, will bring Africa into the “Green Revolution” that has taken place in Mexico since the 1950s and Asia and India since the 1970s, said Diouf.
…
Diouf’s address painted a picture of hope for Africa, based on her increasing population. Citing demographic trends in his prepared address, he said that in the next 50 years, Africa will have a population of 2 billion “and will represent the largest market in the world.” Africa, he pointed out, has 80 per cent of the world’s deposits of platinum and manganese, 57 per cent of the world’s diamonds, 34 per cent of gold, 23 of bauxite and 18 per cent of uranium. This wealth of natural resources and human resources means that “Africa cannot be ignored in the economic development of the planet,” he said.
If Latin America, like Africa, is rich in natural and human resources that the people of those nations have not been able to tap into for themselves disproportionate to first world “partner” countries and if the Malthusian Catastrophe is a myth that has been disproved, what does this make of the World Bank’s ongoing demands for population control? Is it a racist policy?
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Filed under: Book Reviews
October 8, 2009 at 5:13 pm ·
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Filed under: Christine's Drawings
October 5, 2009 at 7:13 pm ·
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October 5, 2009 at 7:12 pm ·
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October 5, 2009 at 6:42 pm ·
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Filed under: Christine's Drawings
October 5, 2009 at 6:40 pm ·
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Filed under: Christine's Paintings
October 5, 2009 at 6:36 pm ·
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October 5, 2009 at 4:42 pm ·
It’s late afternoon and my first visit to the West Hollywood Book Fair. I park at the Pacific Design Center and walk over. I catch Jordan Elgrably of the Levantine Center in conversation with Reza Aslan and Tamim Ansary on Art, Politics and the Arab Muslim World. The kernel of the hour long talk was that art and music are building bridges to the “Muslim world” that politicians, humanitarian relief, etc have failed to do. There was mention of many bands I didn’t recognize.
Other highlights of the fair include seeing Bob Barker of the Price is Right, the Sprinkles cupcake truck and the Border Grill catering truck.
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