In Los Angeles on any given Friday, you could venture over to Farmlab’s Salon, tuck in a full-on organic lunch and listen to an amazing line-up of art/ecology innovators and activists. Last week I heard Wes Jackson of the Land Institute describe his 50-year plan to restore the depleated soils of America’s heartland.  Next Friday historian Robert Bichard presents over 100 images exploring the first movie studios in L.A. starting 100 years ago.

Farmlab, formerly Not a Corn Field, is the invention of artist/urbanist/philanthropist Lauren Bon.  It began as a multi-year project to restore a 35-acre industrial brownfield near downtown through the cultivation of corn- not only corn, but a social sculpture and nexus for community action and education.

Recently Bon has been working with a veteran’s hospital to create the Strawberry Flag project.

More images:

Lunch line

Wes Anderson on soil erosion

Perennial wheat vs. Monsanto wheat

Gallery

apexart

Sinudom Silk Screen Factory
35/21 Moo 1, Sakaegnam Road
Samaedam, Bang Khun Thian
Thailand

Franchise Two: “free size” **
Curated by Logan Bay

Participating artists: Alvaro Ilizarbe, Jen Stark, Juan Angel Chavez, and P7

“In a mass produced world of global goods, the act of creation is often lost or forgotten. Hidden machinery cranks and sweats out elements of our everyday life, yet we rarely glimpse the environment where ideas are physically forged. To produce the exhibition free size artists Alvaro Ilizarbe, Jen Stark, Juan Angel Chavez, and P7 will work directly in the Sinudom Silk Screen factory along side employees creating works of art. By bringing these contemporary artists into a global manufacturing hub the realms of production and creation will exist in a simultaneous space, transforming this modest factory into an active generator of creative capital. The Sinudom Silk Screen factory is located on the edge of Samut Sakhon a province that houses many factories. Over the past few decades Thailand has worked to become a producer of exportable goods and inexpensive items for domestic use. While the manufacturing machinery is abundant, many of the products are designed elsewhere. free size will encourage viewers to see that industrial spaces can also be incubators for creative thought and social evolution.

** For Franchise Two we excluded submissions for exhibitions to take place in large cities like New York, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, to focus on locations with less than 500,000 people — places such as Moshupa or Priboj, Baton Rouge or Lübeck, Cadiz or Az-Zawiyah, Heidelberg or Zinder. In response we received 243 exhibition proposals from 63 countries, and jurors submitted over 5,000 votes to identify a winner.”

Opening reception: March 13, 2-6 pm

[Text and graphic from apexart. Cross-posted to The Data Stream.]

Brooklyn’s Dumbo Arts Center is showing Nebojsa Seric-Shoba’s amazing photography project, Battlefields, curated by Josh Altman.

Made between 1999 to 2009, Shoba’s documentations of actual battlefields, call into question the autonomy of place and the disparities that exist between historical events and the geographic locations in which they occur. Apart from the occasional historic marker or didactic memorial plaque, little visual evidence remains to distinguish one site from another, a disconnect that evokes the transient nature of history, the arbitrary lines of the battlefield and the universality of the theatres of war.

Conscripted to fight in defense of his hometown of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, (1992-1995), Shoba served the majority of his military mandate digging trenches amidst the bodies that littered the battlefield. It is from these wartime experiences that the artist developed a profound sense of distrust for a political machine that saw neighbors taking aim at neighbors, firing across seemingly arbitrary lines of demarcation. Eventually this experience led him to the sober realization that the history of the human race can be seen as a history of conflicts, the majority of which are destined to be forgotten, buried beneath the surface of history. 

The artist’s subsequent travels found him photographing numerous battlefields, including those at Waterloo, Gallipoli, Troy, Verdun, Normandy, Istanbul, Gettysburg and Kursk. The majority of these sites now see few visitors, and those that do serve primarily as tourist attractions for the morbidly-inclined, visiting only briefly in an attempt to capture the remnants of a history long since departed.

The exhibition features The Battle of Brooklyn, 1776 (2009), also known as The Battle of Long Island, which was the first major battle of the American Revolutionary War. Tellingly, the current riverside park lying opposite the Dumbo Arts Center building, marks the actual point of retreat of George Washington’s volunteer militia, which resulted in the British burning  nearly a quarter of New York City.

As competing social, cultural, and linguistic incarnations make it nearly impossible to lay claim to any fixed idea of national history or identity, the relationship between history and place has become a struggle for the possession of the past. In reframing our history through the focused lens of these battlefields, the artist asks us to consider them less as fixed landscapes, and more as part of a living history, with the many memories and points of view that such a history evokes.

Read Shoba’s comments in an online roundtable organized by Provisions Library’s Balkans Project.

Image: From upper left to bottom: Battle for Britain, Auschwitz, Verdun, Troy, Sarajevo, Normandy, Mostar, Leningrad, Gettysburg, Gernika, Gallipoli, Borodino

Wing Young Huie made his mark in the 1990s with his groundbreaking photo documentary of St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood. Several years later, he took on the entirety of Minneapolis’ Lake Street. Now he’s winding up his work on a six-mile stretch of University Avenue. Wing gives 3-Minute Egg a preview and invites the Egg along on a shoot at a small business along University. Wing is opening his studio to the public Saturday to showcase his University Avenue Project photos for a preview sale. The exhibition goes up to the broader public in May along storefronts, the sides of buildings and giant projection screens along University.

Last fall our comrades at Groundswell called for submissions for their new print-based publication and we were lucky enough to get the first issue hand-delivered by Dave Morgan, editor, when he passed through Provisions last week.

The handy tome introduces Crisis Folklore, a view of the world today from an imaginary future.  It includes contributions from Gavin Grindon (the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination), Susan Sakash (RadKidCare), John Hulsey and collaborators (City Life/Vida Urbana), Karl Fitzgerald (Real Estate 4 Ransom), the Team Colors Collective, and Chris Kennedy (basekamp/The Institute for Applied Aesthetics).

You can get a copy from these great bookstores:

• Red Emma’s (Baltimore, MD)
• Bluestockings (NYC, NY)
• Lucy Parsons Center (Boston, MA)
• or contact Groundswell directly

Photograph by Bas Princen, 2009.

Photograph by me, 2006.

Unfortunately, Garbage City has had to overcome two major obstacles in the past few years. The Egyptian government attempted to privatize the waste management system with multinational waste management corporations - trading the practically free services of the Zabaleen for a $50 million a year trash collection plan (with a 20% recycling rate).  Fortunately for the Zabaleen, the foreign companies’ trucks aren’t able to navigate the city’s narrow streets the way donkey carts can, so the Zabaleen continued to collect much of Cairo’s trash.  In 2009, Egypt ordered the mandatory slaughter of all pigs in a misguided response to the H1N1 outbreak.  Pigs have played an important role in Garbage City, eating food waste and being sold for meat to Coptic (Egyptian Christian) communities (under Islamic law, pork is forbidden).  Since all the pigs were killed, the Zabaleen stopped collecting organic waste because it serves no purpose for them.  “They killed the pigs, let them clean the city.  Everything used to go to the pigs, now there are no pigs, so it goes to the administration.” said Moussa Rateb, a Garbage City resident, in this New York Times article.

I generally support the Zabaleen and Garbage City and see the situation as a marginalized community which has found a creative way to contribute to society and make a living.  Are they intentionally “green” and working for the sake of the environment?  Not necessarily.  Is this an idyllic recycling community?  Definitely not.  There’s issues of  education, health, sustainability, modernization and the young age of many Zabaleen.

Photograph by me, 2006.

It came to my attention recently that a documentary came out in 2009 called Garbage Dreams by Mai Iskander, followowing three teenage boys “born into the trash trade.”  It’s received a lot of international press and will be broadcast nationally on Independent Lens in April.  Here’s a clip:

February 28 | 1 – 3:30 pm
Sunday Music Workshop Series
Featuring The Johnny Vidacovich Trio

“Resurrecting a program that was popular in the early ’90s, the Tipitina’s Foundation proudly announces the Sunday Music Workshop Series, the brainchild of Stanton Moore and Johnny and Deborah Vidacovich. These free workshops take place every other Sunday fro, when students have the opportunity to play with and learn from the best musicians in the city.

Sunday Music Workshops offer young, aspiring musicians from all walks of life the unique opportunity to play with and learn from some of the area’s most experienced and celebrated musicians. Each workshop offers students a hands-on, improvisational approach to music education. Students should bring their instruments! Each child will have their own chance play with the veteran musicians or solo on the famed Tipitina’s Uptown stage. Usually, workshops close with a jam session mixing students and veteran musicians together for a real Tip’s concert experience! As many of the city’s various music programs have been put on hold since the storm, these workshops are serving a vital need in the rebuilding process: passing on the musical traditions to a younger generation. Featured artists so far have included Stanton Moore, Johnny Vidacovich, Kirk Joseph, and Theresa Anderson. The free on-stage workshops are only for students, but all members of the public are welcome to attend.”

[Text from Tipitina's website. Photo from NolaFunkNYC. Cross-posted to Signal Fire.]

A Video Serenade:
Selected works by artists from Norway, Serbia, Russia, and the UK

Recent works selected by ArtVideoExchange (AVE) and Format Network.

A VIDEO SERENADE presents a wide range of contemporary video, from the performative to the personal to the fictive and the documentary. The program aims to reflect the unique mix of themes and approaches to video as exemplified by the artists supported by these two groups.

AVE – Serbia
Program selection by Bojana Romi?

Big Bang / Bojana Romi? / 2009 / 2:30 min.
Never Gonna Give You Up / Goran Micevski / 2006 / 4:00 min.
Exhaustion of Europe / Jovan ?eki? / 2005 / 8:07 min.
Clay Pigeon / Milos Tomi?, 2005 / 6:41 min.
Atomic Watch / Nenad Kosti? / 2006 / 1:13 min.
FPS (First Person Shooters or Frames Per Second) / Wim Janssen / 2006 / 3:08 min.

Format Network, UK
Song Archive / Yvonne Buchheim / 2009 / 5:00 min.
Weightless / Matt White / 2008 / 7:55 min.
A Hard Place / Ronnie Close / 2009 / 4:54 min.
Curtain / Peter Bobby / 2009 / 4.52 min. (extract, HD Video)

AVE–Russia
Program selection by Vika Ilyushkina, CYLAND Media Lab

Son of King / Julia Zastava / 2008 / 4:29 min.
Little Black / Nikolay Kurbatsky / 2008 / 1:51 min.
I want to live through your death / Olga Jitlina / 2009 / 5:44 min.
Storage / Anton Hlabov / 2009 / 2:20 min.
Expulsion from the Paradise / Andrey Ustinov / 2003 / 2:01 min.
Vertigo / Kirill Shuvalov / 2003 / 1:43 min.
Never ending / Masha Sha / 2005 / 2:12 min.
Mom / Yuri Vasiliev / 2002 / 0:55 min.
Feedback / Maksim Svishev / 2009 / 5:42 min.
Purification / Veronica Rudyeva-Ryazantseva / 2008 / 4:30 min.

AVE – Norway
Program selection by Mona Bentzen

Amerika / Ane Lan / 2003 / 3:15 min.
Che Guevara’s Rolex / Birgitte Sigmundstad / 2009 / 4:40 min.
Par Hasard / BULL.MILETIC / 2009 / 5:15 min.
Opacity / Farhad Kalantary / 2005 / 5:30 min.
Erase / Margarida Paiva / 2009 / 3:30 min.
Felix Culpa, A Handmade Massacre / Martin Skauen / 2007 / 5:06 min.
RUR / Mona Bentzen / 2010 / 2:16 min.

A VIDEO SERENADE is organized by Madeline Djerejian, AVE-USA, in cooperation with ArtVideoExchange and Format Network, with support from the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), CYLAND Media Art Laboratory (St. Petersburg, Russia), and the St. Petersburg branch of the National Center of Contemporary, Art (NCCA).

AVE is an international exchange program and initiative between artists and curators that promotes the production and circulation of video programming worldwide. Format Network is an artists’ group based in Bristol, UK that focuses on staging activities of exchange and engagement, including screenings and exhibitions, lectures by invited artists, critics and theorists, and open-mic performance evenings.

[Text and graphic from EFA website. Cross-posted to The Data Stream.]

The script for filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi’s No One Knows about Persian Cats was rejected by the Iranian Ministry for Islamic Culture and Guidance for three years before Ghobadi took a risk: making an unlicensed film.  Shot in just 17 days with a digital S12K camera (all 35mm equipment is owned by the state), Cats is a faux-documentary following two young indie rock musicians (real life band Take It Easy Hospital) around Tehran, fusing humor with the reality of life as an underground musician in Iran.

Here’s a clip from the film, Take It Easy Hospital playing “Human Jungle”:

Although I have yet to see No One Knows about Persian Cats (US release set for April 16!), I find Ghobadi’s statement against censorship and cultural repression (of both music and film) particularly interesting when examined contextually.  The film was co-written by Hossein Abkenar and Ghobadi’s fiancée, Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi.  Saberi was arrested in Iran in January, 2009 and held for months on charges of espionage, initially facing an eight year prison sentence.  During her imprisonment, Ghobadi published a letter regarding Saberi’s situation which you can read here.

She was released just as Cats was about to premiere in Cannes, where the film received the Un Certain Regard prize, a grant to aid distribution in France for an innovative and daring work.  Upon returning to Iran from Cannes, Ghobadi was arrested and held for seven days, accused of “severe criticism” of the Iranian Government during the film festival.  Ghobadi was even offered between $1-2 million in exchange for all the material and rights to the film.  He refused, and was ordered to leave the country.

For more on the film’s plot, I suggest this New Internationalist article.  The Village Voice interviewed Ghobadi eight days after his release from prison, four days after Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election.  In the interview Ghobadi says, “The youth have seen how they can hurt the government. This three or four days has shown them that they can rush out to the streets and say what they want and take it all in their own hands. And if the government is not going to listen to them, it is going to be a bloody future. The government cannot control the people any longer..and this was the last big lie. The people were ready to erupt.”

And in case you were what the film title means, it refers to an Iranian law that bans cats and dogs from being outdoors.