The $1000 grand prize will be awarded to Jack Dylan at an exposition of submitted works on Monday, June 1 at Montreal’s Eastern Bloc Gallery, 7240 Clark St. The event begins at 8pm and admission is by donation (suggested $3).

The exhibition will include a multi-media show of all submitted works, 23 short-listed entries, five honorable mentions, and the Art Threat editor’s choice. Prints of some of the entries will sold through silent auction as a fundraiser for Art Threat.

Stephen Harper’s relationship with the arts in Canada has been a match made in controversy. When he announced the axing of the National Portrait Gallery in Ottawa, it prompted the editors at Art Threat to launch a national portrait contest. “Framing Harper” was a call-out to artists and activists across Canada to create a portrait of Stephen Harper that would capture the PM’s “appreciation” of arts and culture in Canada.

After reviewing the submissions, our esteemed jury (former Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, comedian Mary Walsh, visual artist George Littlechild, filmmaker Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze), and multi-media artist David Jhave Johnston) has chosen Dylan as the winner.

There will be drinks, music, and of course our favourite – political art!

So join us Monday, June 1 at 8pm at Eastern Block Gallery, 7240 Clark St., 1.514.284.2106

Contemporary architecture, according to Nicolas Graspierre and Kobas Laksa, must shoulder some of the blame for this shortsightedness. Our cityscapes are pocked with glistening edifices, a little like arrogant jewels in a crown, so shiny and new they seem like the future itself.

The Afterlife of Buildings by Nicolas Graspierre and Kobas Laksa hungrily challenges both architectural arrogance and our reluctance to admit some of the less attractive consequences of our ways.  Originally conceived for the 11th International Architectural Exhibition in Venice 2008, this second installation takes six new high-profile buildings in Poland and transforms each into palimpsests of urban use.  The images are playful and thought provoking.  There is something about how we render urban space over time - how the ways we use it intensify, densify and ultimately transform everything we build into decaying clutter - that humbles even the most ostentatious moments of  financial celebration.

The full exhibition can be viewed online.

BC for Sale from Twyla Roscovich on Vimeo.

British Columbians woke up with a terrible hang-over today. After eight years of a provincial government lead by anti-environmentalist, profiteer and sexist Premier Gordon Campbell, his Liberal party was given a third four-year mandate. Propaganda, ignorance, laziness and apathy (helped along by a distracting Stanley Cup play-off stretch) defeated an important election reform referendum question that would not have allowed such an democratic atrocity as this one from happening again. The proportional representation system being proposed would prevent future ridiculous “victories” that the Liberals have just won this time: 23% of British Columbians voted in a government with 60% of the Legislative seats.

It is no secret that Campbell and his money-hungry Liberals hate the homeless (homelessness has risen 400% under his leadership) and the poor (child poverty is at record levels in the province) but environmental concerns barely registered in the very right wing CanWest media cartel in the province. Yet Campbell has been moving toward privatizing water, selling it to America under NAFTA, refuses to protect wild salmon and other wild life, is pushing forward off-shore drilling, and more. These concerns were eloquently represented in the above video by Twyla Roscovich of Calling from the Coast, which went viral perhaps too late to swing the 48% who voted to caring enough about the environment to vote Campbell out of office. Four years from now, we need 100,000 media interventions like this to go viral.

The Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage has called hearings into the “crisis” in Canadian broadcasting.  I was invited to testify - as witness to transformations threatening to dismantle local television throughout rural and not-so-rural Canada – and on behalf of a group I work with, Campaign for Democratic Media.  Commercial broadcasters were screwing up, and some of us were given the chance to let the government know that there were other ways to save local television than by giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the major networks.  I put on a tie and trotted off to Ottawa to have a say.

Getting into Parliament, as you might expect, at least without an election, is a little more complicated than walking in the front door: x-rays, metal detectors, security guards and those guys in suits who stand around scanning crowds talking into their sleeves.

Thankfully, the line for people with name tags was short, one of the perks of being a very temporary insider.  I made my way to Centre Block Room 237-C, the Hearing room, a large high-ceilinged chamber with stone walls covered in faded murals. Dominating the room was a square arrangement of tables for the MPs and witnesses participating in the hearing.

When I arrived, only the Committee clerk was dashing about, slightly stooped, with his two rather elderly-looking helpers, collecting and distributing papers, placing name cards, directing people this way and that.  One senses that whatever we have left of our sovereign democracy - at least in its executive guise -  rests, not on the backs of politicians, but on the more humble shoulders of these tireless facilitators.  As I waited, the room began to fill with boisterous energy, laughter and collegiality, the click of leather shoes and well coiffed hair: the MPs had begun to arrive.

I spoke second — and below, you can find the complete text of my presentation. The witnesses presented, and then the Committee members asked questions. The conversation that followed, alas, was destined for the rubbish heap.

Maybe that’s unfair, but it was destined to be a day for politics.  One witness explained afterwards that there was bad blood in the air from the start.  That morning, a story had leaked that the Conservative government was cutting $56 million from CBC Radio across the network.  The all party Committee members were spoiling for a fight. The conversation about ideas that I had hoped for was being usurped by kind of politico-performance jib-jab.

The Conservatives were particularly  anxious  about a suggestion by one of the  witnesses that they ‘have it in’ for the CBC.   They don’t, according to the Conservative members at the table.  One Conservative MP held up a report from 2000 detailing funding cuts that the Liberals had made: “Did you believe when these cuts were made that the Liberals had it in for the CBC?”  He was shouting.  The mood was nasty.

Yet another Conservative rep wanted to state clearly and emphatically that no one in her party had cheered the end of the CBC.  “Ever,” she said.  The Liberals and NPDers around the table guffawed and taunted back that heckles and clapping had frequently accompanied talk in the House of Commons of the CBC’s demise and “everyone at this table knows it”.   It was raucus, and at times both bad tempered and amusing, but local television was still in trouble, and these hearings didn’t seem any closer to finding a solution.

One of the stronger presentations came from Peter Murdoch, representing the Communications, Energy, Pulp and Paper Union.  Murdock had a long list of complaints: that it was difficult for Canadians to assess the crisis because network financials were kept secret.  He argued that it was not an economic crisis, but one brought on by excessive corporate debt and shareholder demands.  He described local affiliate stations whose cameras were operated remotely, suggesting that if there was a fire at a certain studio in Halifax, emergency programming decisions would be made in Edmonton.  “Many local affiliates use their production studios for storage,”  he said.  The crux of his presentation was that the CRTC is failing Canadians because it does not enforce existing rules.  Broadcasters have always failed to fulfill their local program obligations.  The CRTC refuses to enforce its own license terms and broadcasting decisions.

The Canadian Media Guild asked, as apparently they have on several occasions before, for a seven year commitment of funding for the CBC - not even an increase in funding (although it’s certain they wouldn’t oppose one), just  seven years of stable funding that the CBC can rely on to build into the future.

Alas, at least from my perspective, and with a few exceptions (a genuine question or two did make it to the table), most of the substance of the presentations was ignored. Perhaps my most cynical moment came after the hearings.  A prominent long-serving MP said to me (in response to my query) that in no uncertain terms there was NO expectation of the hearings having any influence on government decisions.  A little depressing.  And when I asked how we as witnesses could best use that venue given so little prospect for meaningful impact, I was told that our comments will help them write the report, and that they will be on record ostensibly forever.  So that, the MP said encouragingly, perhaps in 12 years someone could come and find out what was said by Canadians now about these issues.

Really?  Twelve years?  Maybe its time to pour a drink.

Than again, it’s hard to say.  Maybe this was overstatement, a wee bit of pessimistic bombast.  It is, after all, a public process, and the public IS invited to speak, and our words are heard and memorandums read.  Maybe - just maybe - someone will hear something and a new idea will spark, a different thought will form, an altered way of seeing old problems will emerge - something to help guide the Canadian broadcasting system towards long-term strategies for ensuring that communities have access to the kinds of local stories and information they need to make sense of their own experiences and of the world around them.

Anyways, here are the words I left behind.  May they find their way (without too much posturing) into thoughtful minds (presented May 11, 2009 to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on behalf of Campaign for Democratic Media):

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to these hearings.  I am here on behalf of the Campaign for Democratic Media, a national, non-profit and non-partisan media advocacy group.  We are a network of individual Canadians, civil society organizations, consumer organizations, labour groups, media advocacy groups, academics, grassroots media activists and others interested in helping to create a diverse, accountable and quality Canadian media system. These hearings have been constituted in response to a perceived crisis in Canadian broadcasting, a “perfect storm” some have called it, of new media challenges to traditional business models and economic contraction of historic proportions.  The Canadian television sector is undergoing what many commentators suggest will be permanent and structural transformation.

One of the things we would like the Committee to think about today is the possibility that what we are experiencing as a “crisis” in local broadcasting reflects in fact some of the inherent tensions between the cultural industries and democratic accountability.  What I mean is that the critical importance of local programming in Canada is in all likelihood better understood in terms of what makes cultures democratic than it is in terms of sorting out the conflicts between local versus regional and national advertising markets.   When we talk about broadcasting in Canada, we are talking about part of the connective tissue the holds us together culturally, politically and economically.  It is finding solutions that do not sacrifice one for the other of these equally important aspects of Canadian society that we believe should be at the heart of these proceedings.

To begin, we would like to challenge certain assumptions about what is happening in Canadian broadcasting.  There are broad economic factors at work as well as changes in consumption patterns in connection with new media technologies that have helped to precipitate the current “crisis”.   But there are also structural factors that go to the core of the current crisis that are at risk of being overlooked, problems which we think point towards creative and long-term solutions.

For instance, local markets may not be failing so much as they are being ignored.  The network affiliates threatened with closure who broadcast in these small markets have increasingly been forced to serve national network needs — networks whose accumulated corporate debts and revenue strategies make small market sustainability impossible without doing away with much of  local programming.  Small markets can be and in fact are profitable; the problem is that they are not profitable enough to service these non -local needs.  CanWest Global, for instance, is struggling to make decisions about local broadcasting while trying to service almost $4 billion of corporate debt incurred through strategies of expansion and acquisition.  To put it bluntly, the citizens of many smaller communities are facing drastic losses of local programming (1) because of corporate decisions that have absolutely nothing to do with their community; and (2) because there are so few alternatives in our broadcasting system.  We have one of the least diverse broadcast systems in the world and highest concentrations of media ownership. Canadians lack meaningful local broadcasting choices, and their ability to be informed about their own communities is being held hostage by corporate debt and corporate demands for rates of return that are unachievable.

Part of the problem is that local affiliated stations function within national networks primarily as a means for national advertisers to access local eyeballs.  Revenue streams depend on national advertising markets, not local markets.  Advertising rates in local settings reflect national markets for national advertisers, and as such they end up prohibitively high and in fact exclude local businesses from the market.  We are suggesting that the current model of affiliated local broadcasters is failing Canadians not only in terms of local programming, but in terms of local advertising opportunities.   These markets may not be big enough to achieve network goals for debt servicing and particular rates of return, but they are big enough to sustain alternative models for the production of local television.  The large, affiliated centralized model for delivering local programming doesn’t work, and arguably it never has: as long as there have been license renewal hearings, there have been desperate cries to reduce local programming obligations.  We need to rethink the ways in which local programs can be produced and delivered in local settings.

Perhaps the most important point we want to make today is that there is a largely unrecognized and emergent element at work in the Canadian broadcasting system that we believe offers the most realistic long-term solution to the crisis in local programming.

The Broadcast Act in section 3 identifies three elements that make up the Canadian broadcasting system: public, private and community. The community sector is rarely addressed, and yet it is here that we find new media programming strategies and hybrid models of organization that point the way forward to longterm sustainable local programming solutions.  These hybrid models of organization, what are sometimes called mandate-driven media or civil society media, combine market responsiveness with professional journalistic practices and a strong ethical mandate to fulfill democratic roles such as ensuring that public and private institutions remain accountable to the public, and that the public has access to accurate,  reliable, diverse and independent  sources of news and information about the communities where they live.

These are not, to be clear, volunteer media organizations.  They are media who work on multiple bottom-lines: ethical and economic.  Because they are mandate driven, small profit margins don’t equal failure, but rather an opportunity.

These hybrid models of media combine entrepreneurial ingenuity with NGO commitment to public objectives and resourcefulness.  In the United Kingdom, they operate under the name Community Interest Companies or CICs.  CICs are for-profit companies whose rates of return are capped and whose purposes for incorporation include community service.  In addition, and importantly, the assets of the company are “locked” and cannot be sold except to another CIC .  There are thousands of CICs incorporated in the UK carrying out a range of services - affordable housing, the arts, education and training, pre-schools, home support services, recycling, and media groups (Bridge and Corriveau 2009).

A similar approach has been taken in the US with the creation of the low-profit limited liability company (L3C).  L3Cs guarantee the public nature of their work and limit dividends to investors through operating agreements. To quote Richard Bridge and Stacey Corriveau, from a recent report, the primary goal of L3Cs and CICs  is to introduce market solutions to community needs by providing “access [to] the vast pools of market driven wealth to make socially responsible investments.”  Local broadcasting is an excellent opportunity for socially responsible investment, a way for the tension between democratic and industrial needs that has so far stifled local programming to be addressed.

It is critically important to understand that we are talking about professional media organizations with journalists who are legally accountable, strive to achieve standards of accuracy, fairness, diversity, and reliability.  These organizations create revenues through hybrid models - advertising, direct audience donation, grants.  They may be for-profit or not-for-profit, but their reasons for incorporation are tied the communities they serve.

In Canada, one example of a hybrid solution is the community broadcast license.  These are television stations locally owned either for-profit or not-for-profit who exist to service local audience, information and advertising needs.  These community broadcasters  are not owned by cable companies, although their signals must be carried on local cable systems. These are independently owned and operated television stations who exist specifically to provide local programming within their broadcast footprints. There are currently 10 in Canada  - CIMC-TV, or Telile Community Television in Cape Breton, CHCT-TV, or St. Andrews Community Television in New Brunswick; CHET-TV in Chetwynd, British Columbia; CHMG-TV in the city of Quebec, to name a few.  The Local Programming Improvement Fund should be made available for use by these organizations, and to assist new mandate-driven community broadcasters to fill the vacuum in local programming.  Toward this end, in addition to LPIF funds being made available for community broadcast programming, a portion of the Local Programming Improvement Fund should be allocated to one-time grants that assist in the start-up of new community media outlets.

There are also possibilities for hybrid new media strategies - online contributions by mandate-driven media production groups who focus on local programs for local audiences.  As many commentators have noted, more and more Canadians source programming through the internet.  Resources should be made available through tools like the Local Programming Improvement Fund to support locally-oriented media production groups who distribute primarily online.  These are in fact the ways that our broadcasting system is growing and where entrepreneurial innovation is leading the way in transforming structural changes into opportunities.  These groups can provide locally driven creative solutions to local program deficiencies.

A key role that the federal government can play in response to these opportunities is to initiate legislative reform that would allow the incorporation of limited liability for-profit corporations (as has been done in Vermont and is being considered in Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon and Wyoming, as well as at the federal level).

Another legislative change that could assist local broadcasters concerns carriage.  Currently, community broadcast signals must be carried on local cable systems, but they should also be mandatory for satellite broadcasters.  In addition, community broadcasters should receive fees-for-carriage in exchange for local programming commitments.

We also recommend that the Local Programming Improvement Fund be increased in size through matching federal government funds.  This would make more resources available to address the crisis in local programming, and it gives Canadians through our representative system more say in how these resources are spent. The Local Programming Improvement Fund should and must be publicly accountable.

The Local Programming Improvement Fund should also be made expressly accessible not only to the affiliated networks, but to community broadcasters, independent program producers, and online local media groups.  This is an opportunity for Canadians to expand capacity and diversity within the Canadian broadcasting system for the production and distribution of local programs.  The model of broadcasting dominated by a few networks with strings of affiliated stations has failed Canadians.  New models with greater local accountability and diversity should be encouraged.

Further, we recommend that management of the Local Programming Improvement Fund be as diverse as the Canadian broadcast system, including representation from the public, private and community elements including representation from independent producers and community broadcasters.  Control of the fund must reflect the broadcast systems diversity, especially representation from the sectors where the most innovation can be found.

Similarly, the newly created Canadian Media Fund should  also be widely rather than narrowly representative.  Control of this fund must be shared among ALL elements of the broadcast system - public, private, and community. The funds must be made available to independent documentary and dramatic producers, to online media production groups, and to local community broadcasters.

We recommend (as we did during the CRTC’s New Media Broadcasting hearings) that the federal government create an Internet Broadcast Fund to support the production of Canadian content.  This fund could be used to help support new media responses to local programming deficiencies.  The Fund represents a small levy on the revenues of telecom companies. This would provide yet additional resources for Canadian producers.

We further recommend that the federal government conduct an audit of community channel funds.  Community television in Canada last year received $115 million dollars, almost double the size of the proposed Local Programming Improvement Fund.   This money is required by regulation to be spent on the production and distribution of local reflection television.    However, communities across Canada have been complaining that cable companies misuse these resources by restricting or disallowing community access and using community channels for corporate promotion and attracting advertising revenues.  If the federal government is proposing to “fix” the crisis in local programming with a $60 million dollar fund, we must ask: what has been happening with the $115 million that cable companies collect from Canadians?  The Standing Committee on Culture and Heritage in the Lincoln Report expressed “dismay” that they were unable to get this information from the cable companies.  The federal government should request forensic auditing of how these monies (amounting to over $1 billion since 1997)  have been spent.  One way to help make community channels more responsive to the needs of local communities would be to take their administration out of the hands of cable companies and encourage true community ownership and administration.

On the matter of funding for broadcasters in general …On the one had, we would encourage making local programming a priority for the public broadcaster. Rather than creating a pool of funds for the private broadcasters, who even with access to these funds can’t guarantee their ability to service smaller markets, the federal government could and should make monies available to the CBC and make local coverage a priority.   Let the public broadcaster help fill a gap that is apparently impossible for the commercial sector to fill.    It is important to remember that Canadians currently spend between $28 and $33 annually for public broadcasting, well below the $80 average among Western nations (Nordicity 2006).

We recommend that the CBC be funded on a substantially increased fee structure - something closer to the average - and be mandated to address local programming deficiencies.

On the other hand, we oppose the creation of a special “bailout” fund for commercial broadcasters for the reasons indicated.  The monies are better spent nurturing strategies for local programming that better reflect the kinds of local accountability and economic scales that can lead to long-term sustainability.

In concluding, we would like to offer an example from recent history of how the existing model of network affiliates is failing Canadians.

In Hamilton, CanWest Global’s local affiliate is CHCH-TV.  When CanWest Global announced that it wanted to sell the station or even close it down, the Hamilton community rallied to save its only local broadcast station.  They brought together the requisite technical expertise, capital investment, and support from local representatives from all levels of government.  The only thing left was for CanWest to sell the license - just as CTV did recently when it sold three E channels to Shaw Cable.

But CanWest didn’t sell the license to the community group.   They have in fact gone back to the CRTC to request significant reductions in local programming requirements for all of its stations, including CHCH.  It suggests that Hamilton’s communities have cynically been used as bargaining chips, holding their local programming hostage in exchange for significant reductions in local programming commitments.   Whether or not this is the case, the network is using the crisis to  reduce its local programming obligations, while a local initiative with a local focus, and local ownership, and a viable business plan and sufficient capitalization, is being frozen out.  That’s the problem.  Communities have a very different interest in local broadcasting than national networks and international media groups. We need to find a way to help locally-owned  initiatives who are aimed at creating and maintaining independent broadcasting and programming.  We believe that our recommendations herein are steps in this direction.

In summary, our recommendations are that:

The federal government change relevant laws to allow the incorporation of limited liability for-profit companies.

The size of the Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF) be increased through matching federal government funds.

The LPIF be accessible to broadcasters operating with a community and/or low-power broadcast license, independent program producers, and online media producers who focus on local programming.

That representatives from all elements of the broadcast system including independent producers, community broadcasters and new media producers be allowed to participate in the management of the LPIF and the Canadian Media Fund.

That funding for the CBC be increased to reflect average spending on public broadcasting internationally and be mandated to respond to local programming deficiencies.

That the federal government create an Internet Broadcast Fund through a levy on the revenues of  telecom companies (including ISPs and mobile communications companies) in order to support the production of Canadian content.

That the federal government conduct an audit of community channel funds.

Sources Referenced

Bridge, Richard and Corriveau, Stacey. 2009.  “legislative innovations and social enterprise: Structural lessons for Canada”.  retrieved May 5, 2009 from http://socialinnovation.ca/blog/legislative-innovations-social-enterprise.

Nordicity Group Ltd.  2006. “Analysis of government support for public broadcasting and other culture in Canada.” Prepared for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation / La Societe Radio-Canada.  Retrieved on May 5, 2009 from www.nordicity.com/reports.

Indeed.

In its 10 years, Centre A has hosted the work of more than 300 artists from across Canada and around the world.

Tonight, Centre A is hosting an art auction.  The work to be auctioned can be previewed online.

Happy Birthday, Centre A!

Image: Sharmila Samant’s Contamination, Part I, Against the Grain, 2008

The Age of Stupid: Daredevil Distributors

OK, The Age of Stupid is a pretty fantastic film. I even said so here on this site some time ago. I also lamented how annoying it was that they weren’t letting any grassroots screenings happen in Canada before their UK launch (screenings where rights for the film would be paid for). They’ve since found a Canadian distributor, and the film will undoubtedly pop up here and there in Canada over the summer. But since I tried to program the film for Cinema Politica and was turned down, I’ve somehow ended up on an email list that every three days tells me how incredibly absolutely unbelievable and fantastic all the people (and especially the filmmakers) are behind the film. It was funny and quirky at first, but the very frequent feather fluffing wore thin quickly. Oh well, I thought, they’re pumped up and they’re trying to pump up their base - that’s pretty standard fare for the indy doc scene.

But now they’ve launched a site, called indiescreenings.net where you can screen indy films, wait, where you can screen an indy film (The Age of Stupid of course), and help change the world through cinema. This is all fine and dandy as well, but what the self-aggrandizing has hit steroid level, and now these cheeky Brits are claiming to have INVENTED DIY distribution! Excuse me? Um, have they looked around? Have they seen what’s been going on in Canada, America, Columbia, Brazil, India, Indonesia…should I go on?

Promote your film, fine. Fluff your filmy feathers, OK. Set up a dandy system for DIY distribution and exhibition, excellent. But c’mon guys, claiming to have invented this stuff, is just taking it too far. I’m not making this up - from one of their how-to downloads:

Three days before your screening date, a high-quality screening DVD will arrive on your mat…. and a whole new era of film distribution begins. No, really, that’s not a complete exaggeration: nobody has attempted this before. When you order the DVD on the website, you’ll confirm that you agree to the conditions: the DVD must be returned a few days after the screening, by registered post and obviously if you lose it you’ll have to pay a fine. (The DVD isn’t on general release until much later in the year – you’re paying for the right to show it before it’s in the shops or on TV).

It’s a new era, a new revolution, and um, you have to RETURN the 50 cent plastic disc with the movie on it, right after you copy it on to your computer? This is taking an existing movement in DIY distribution and throwing some restrictive protective measures in, which is, so 2002!

Why do we need to claim we’re always starting something new, when it’s already out there? Why do progressive politicos get so fragmented? Maybe it’s because they always want to stake their own claim, but in the interim it’s a big old raspberry to everyone else already sweating away in the revolution. But hey, this is a rant, and in the end, it’s a good site for a good film. Lots of resources, and yes, you can even rig up your own screening of The Age of Stupid. But let’s cut the rhetoric, it’s hurting my feelings.

“Documenting Engagement: A Community Arts Media Institute” is a DVD of short videos created by nine Canadian community arts practitioners brought together from across Canada to explore new media as a means to document the aesthetics of engagement in community art. Artists include puppeteer Cathy Stubington, visual artist Pat Beaton, dancer Karen Jamieson, theater director Ruth Howard, among others.

The three-week internship took place in 2004, but the DVD is little known and rarely referenced.  It is an excellent introduction to community arts practice in Canada and to some of the artists who have helped to establish this under-recognized and yet vibrant sector of Canadian art.

The DVD is available from Pacific Cinemateque.

Props to Linda Frye Burnham at the Community Arts Network for the story.  Check out her article for more details about the videos and links to youtube postings.

Heidemarie Schwermer goes penniless in "Living without Money"

The new documentary by director Line Halvorsen, Living without Money (LWM), couldn’t have come at a better time. It won’t be released until Feburary 2010 but one assumes we won’t be out of this current global economic mess we are in now. And if I can be sure of one thing, it’s that radically alternative visions and philosophies of the planet’s economic system will still be shut out of the public discussion when LWM is relesaed. Turn on the news or pick up a paper and it’s the same: we need to get back on track, we need to stimulate the economy, get people shopping again, get manufacturing moving at break neck speed, etc, etc. With this myopic worldview of economics has come massive bail-outs for the corporate crust at the top of humanity’s cake. And as was said by Mary Walsh on This Hour has 22 Minutes some years earlier, “everyone knows the upper crust is really a bunch of crumbs held together with dough.”

Considering there has been little to no discussion in the mainstream media on the topic of alternative ways of constructing an economy (and you’d think this would be a rich moment for such alternative, radical and incendiary ideas to be given space), it is a delight to learn of a documentary that charts one woman’s 13 year odyssey of living without money. In the trailer, which you can watch on the film’s site, Sixty-seven year-old Heidemarie Schwermer is shown surviving withoug money by trading work for food, work for lodging, and work for even her own funeral. What is starkly apparent in this short introduction to the film, is that Schwermer is confronted by total hostility from so many people. It seems that challenging the very foundation of the organization of human society—in Germany, and the “world system”—that is, capitalism, is not met with open arms and open minds.

The film looks like it will be fascinating, and so I sent filmmaker Halvorsen a few questions to pique our interests while we wait for the release.

[Art Threat] How did you find out about Heidemarie Schwermer?

[Line Halvorsen] One day the producer, Paolo Pallavidino, showed  an article about Heidemarie from an Italian newspaper to me. It was written after the release of her book in Italian. We found her story intriguing, and after a while we decided to try to find her. We met in Munich the first time and she made a great impression on us. We stayed in touch by mail and telephone for about a year. Then one day we asked if she would be interested in participating in a documentary film, and she agreed.

How long has the film taken to make? What is the film about?

The film is not finished yet, We started in December 2008 and plan to have it ready by February 2010. ”Living Without Money” is about Heidemarie Schwermer (67), a German woman who has chosen to live without money and who has done so for the past 13 years. Instead of using money she exchanges favors and helps people. In the film we follow Heidemarie in her day-to-day life, experience how she goes about to find work, food and a place to stay. In addition to the day-to-day challenges she meets from living without money, the film will also go deeper into explaining Heidemarie’s life philosophy and why she has chosen to live this way. The film will reflect around themes of materialism and over-consumption - how money influences our way of thinking, living and acting – and the consequences this has on our life, health and the environment.

Living without Money poster

Assuming the film has cost money to make, have you ever felt this tension between making a film with a budget about someone who doesn’t use money?

Being around Heidemarie makes you feel very aware of how you spend your money. And she doesn’t like for us to pay for her. Heidemarie herself might not understand why we are so concerned about the fund raising issue for the film. For her the whole process of professional filmmaking is a new experience, and she is always looking for ways we can save money during the production. For example she is always helping out with suggestions for free housing and food through her vast network of contacts. From potential financiers and others we often hear the joke ” can’t you just make the film without money?”.  In one way, it could have been interesting to try to make a film on this issue totally based on exchanging favors, but I think it would have taken us years to make the film that way.

How do you feel your film could contribute to a global discussion about capitalism, especially given the current economic situation?

The current economic crisis has changed everyday life for many. An economic recession combined with rising unemployment, will force many to change their lifestyle and their consuming habits. Through the film “Living Without Money” and the meeting with Heidemarie Schwermer and her philosophy, we will look at the value of social networks and solidarity between people. The film will reflect about our attitudes to materialism and over-consumption and open up a discussion about how money affects our way to think, live and act - and the consequences this has on our lives, health and environment. The film is not seeking to demonize our consumer society, but rather wants to provoke the viewers to reflect upon their own lives and attitudes.

Why do you feel there is so much resistance to Schwermer’s philosophy and life-practice from other people she meets?

I think for many it is a self-defense mechanism. She is doing something extreme, and it challenges our lifestyle and way of thinking. Of course her way of living is not sustainable as such - everyone could not live exactly like her, but that is not her idea either. If we were to create a different society, it would mean that we would have to give up a lot of the habits we have today, and many don’t like that idea. She would like to see a warmer society with different values, where a person’s worth is not judged after how much money he/she has. A society where people look after and take care of each other. I think that many who are unhappy with their own jobs and lives are provoked by her way of living, traveling, not working and enjoying life.

Have you ever tried to live without money? Would you?

No, but for years I have been an independent documentary filmmaker with a low income.  I am not a very materialistic person, and having an interesting and fulfilling job and life means more to me than earning and spending money. I don’t think I would like to live completely without money, but I find the idea to exchange favors and help each other a very good one. I have learned a lot from Heidemarie, and have become even more aware of my own role as a consumer.

How can North Americans see this film when it is ready?

We are currently looking for tv-stations and distributors who could be interested in the film.

Theatre Activist and Revolutionary Augusto Boal

May 2nd, 2009, saw the passing of a visionary theatre artist, activist and educator. Augusto Boal, Brazilian theatre director and founder of the “Theatre of the Oppressed” (TO), has left a rich legacy of theatrical innovation and social activism in the inspired hearts and minds of theatre practitioners across the world.

Boal created the Theatre of the Oppressed techniques in the early 1960s as a way to establish a dialogue between audience, director and actors that encouraged political activism aimed at transforming oppressive realities. Seen as a threat to the dictatorship that ruled Brazil between 1964 and 1985, Boal was arrested and tortured before being exiled to Argentina. He then went on to further develop his practice in Argentina, Peru, and Europe, before returning to Brazil after the fall of the military regime.

Augusto Boal’s impact on the field of community-based art is incalculable. TO methodology is taught around the world, in universities as in community-based settings, including Theatre of the Oppressed Institutes on every continent. Boal’s ideas on theatre and empowerment changed the tools available to an entire generation of theatre artists, rejuvenating discourse around the impact of theatre in a given community. He himself worked tirelessly and to the end in teaching and enabling artists and communities worldwide, and his legacy will be felt in the thousands that now carry on his work. His passing marks the next phase of the Theatre of the Oppressed, in the physical absence of the Joker himself.

As this past March 27 saw Augusto Boal as the author of the 2009 World Theatre Day message, I share his words here with you again and reflect upon his legacy:

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“All human societies are “spectacular*” in their daily life and produce “spectacles” at special moments. They are “spectacular” as a form of social organization and produce “spectacles” like the one you have come to see.

Even if one is unaware of it, human relationships are structured in a theatrical way. The use of space, body language, choice of words and voice modulation, the confrontation of ideas and passions, everything that we demonstrate on the stage, we live in our lives. We are theatre!

Weddings and funerals are “spectacles”, but so, also, are daily rituals so familiar that we are not conscious of this. Occasions of pomp and circumstance, but also the morning coffee, the exchanged good-mornings, timid love and storms of passion, a senate session or a diplomatic meeting - all is theatre.

One of the main functions of our art is to make people sensitive to the “spectacles” of daily life in which the actors are their own spectators, performances in which the stage and the stalls coincide. We are all artists. By doing theatre, we learn to see what is obvious but what we usually can’t see because we are only used to looking at it. What is familiar to us becomes unseen: doing theatre throws light on the stage of daily life.

Last September, we were surprised by a theatrical revelation: we, who thought that we were living in a safe world, despite wars, genocide, slaughter and torture which certainly exist, but far from us in remote and wild places. We, who were living in security with our money invested in some respectable bank or in some honest trader’s hands in the stock exchange were told that this money did not exist, that it was virtual, a fictitious invention by some economists who were not fictitious at all and neither reliable nor respectable. Everything was just bad theatre, a dark plot in which a few people won a lot and many people lost all. Some politicians from rich countries held secret meetings in which they found some magic solutions. And we, the victims of their decisions, have remained spectators in the last row of the balcony.

Twenty years ago, I staged Racine’s Phèdre in Rio de Janeiro. The stage setting was poor: cow skins on the ground, bamboos around. Before each presentation, I used to say to my actors: “The fiction we created day by day is over. When you cross those bamboos, none of you will have the right to lie. Theatre is the Hidden Truth”.

When we look beyond appearances, we see oppressors and oppressed people, in all societies, ethnic groups, genders, social classes and casts; we see an unfair and cruel world. We have to create another world because we know it is possible. But it is up to us to build this other world with our hands and by acting on the stage and in our own life.

Participate in the “spectacle” which is about to begin and once you are back home, with your friends act your own plays and look at what you were never able to see: that which is obvious. Theatre is not just an event; it is a way of life!

We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it. ”

- Augusto Boal

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The Arcive was created by WFMU, one of the longest running freeform radio stations in the US (freeform being where the on-air DJs have creative control over the music they play). Located in Jersey City, New Jersey, WFMU is a non-profit listener-supported broadcaster (90.1 fm) with a long history of supporting independent artists and providing a fecund alternative to commercial radio’s cultural wasteland.

The range of music that airs on WFMU is remarkable: psychedelia, experimental, obscure 50s-60s blues, unpopular jazz, R&B, soul, reggae, garage rock, hot-rod music, 78’s, 8-tracks, twee, indie pop, schlock-a-billy, hip-hop, electronica, hand-cranked wax cylinders, punk rock, exotica, downtown art music, radio improvisation, cooking instructions, Old Noise, classic radio airchecks, found sound, off-kilter kids’ music … the list is only partial.

They also have a little spoken word - comedy, call-in shows, anti-fascist lectures, interviews with obscure radio personalities, interviews with notable science-world luminaries, spoken word mish-mashes. In 2001, they teamed up with Amy Goodman and Democracy Now to challenge a hostile takeover at WBAI that resulted in Democracy Now being temporarily “banished” from WBAI and the Pacifica Radio Network.

The Free Music Archive was created from a grant from the New York State Music Fund and opened its streaming doors on April 10, 2009. The music housed in the archive is curated by WFMU in collaboration with curatorial partners – KEXP, dublab, KBOO, halas.am, among others. One of the curatorial streams is called: phoning it in, where listeners are encouraged to call their favourite artists and record them performing on the telephone.

Downloads are free, but listeners can “tip” artists they like with a quick click.

Hats off to the folks at WFMU for such a great cultural resource – keeping it in the cultural commons.