Climate change news:
WHO says climate change killing 150,000 a year , Reuters-India. And this is just the human death toll.
Extreme weather of climate change gives insurers a costly headache, The Guardian, UK. Deaths, schmeaths. This is costing real hard currency!
Inuit threat over global warming, from the BBC. Arctic natives from at least four separate countries threaten human rights suits against nations that don't abide by global climate treaties.
Scientists Criticize U.S. Reluctance To Acknowledge Climate Change, Deutche Welle, Germany. Asia and Africa drown. The U.S. emits one-third of greenhouse gas emissions. Must be the Bush administration calling for more research into climate change.
Bush's Most Disastrous Policy, from Republicons.org. I don't know anything about this site or who puts it up, but it's gratifying to read. Don't I deserve a few minutes of self-satisfaction?
Shafted, Salon, U.S.A. The U.S. Department of the Interior oversees uses (and abuses) of the nation's wildlands, including coal, oil and gas extraction. Bush appointee J. Steven Griles, Interior's deputy secretary, regularly meets with 20 years worth of friends and former employers in the energy industry. Now he's being investigated for ethics violations. Ya think?
Mitsu, Sue and their roommate Amy held their first salon last night in their Bronx loft. A good 20-25 of us traveled through this weekend's blizzard to view short films and artworks, chat and drink green tea.
The program included The Unconscious Art of Graffiti Removal, the short film I saw and loved at the Seattle Art Museum last month. Mits has worked with the filmmaker, Matt McCormick.
Some students from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program turned up at the salon--Mitsu's original email was forwarded to an ITP list--and two showed their work in progress. Fun to see stuff happening right now and people with open horizons.
Planned to process film at my darkroom today, but am vanquished by the weekend's subway service changes. On Friday and Saturday, I spent at least 8 hours in the subway, about 5 of them just trying to get home after 11 p.m. As I live in Brooklyn and the darkroom is in Tribeca, that would mean more time underground today...just can't face it.
Monday I must be in Manhattan for an informational interview (trying to leave behind my role as an unemployment statistic). So will go to darkroom tomorrow, and try not to question my dedication because I'm not there today.
Last night: Alladeen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Click on that link to get a taste of the multi-media performance. Probably the best thing I've seen at BAM this fall, as part of my Next Wave subscription (which, to be fair, was to five performances and not the whole series).
Really using multimedia instead of just sync'ing up live performance up with a video projection, Alladeen digs into global dislocation, primarily by dramatizing the workings of Indian call centers--huge enterprises where young, intelligent, educated, English-speaking Indians are taught American or British accents and idioms, briefed in cultural referants, and given working-hour alter-egos as Rachels, Matts, Joeys and Phoebes.
They enter and exit the western world via fiber optic phone lines, selling and supporting and offering advice, turning their own lives upside down (deep night in Bangalore is day in North America) to keep a good job and realize some of their own dreams. The companies that employ them realize huge savings in salary costs, but also know that most Americans want to think they're talking to a fellow American when they book their flights non-stop London-NewYorkCity.
Alladeen was very good, blending sound, video animation, live performance, projections--sometimes via small computer cameras on the "workstations" as the actors played call center employees on the job. The audience surveilling the workers just as management would, while seeing small personal anguishes and triumphs play out simultanously on the stage.
Images of Aladdin, from Hollywood and Bollywood, joined Asia and EuroAmerica, much like the fiber optic phone lines and the international flights into and out of expat communities in London or New York City or cell phones, or Asian dub and electronica. Aladdin flying on his magic carpet, magically riding out of obscurity and into importance. The genie granting all his wishes.
I wish I had a job. I wish I lived in California/New York/London. I wish I would make another sale. I wish I knew which city I was in. I wish I wasn't worried all the time. I wish I could fly.