triggerhappymedia

The hallways of PS 25 in Brooklyn are decorated by the children. One art project is a page ripped from Olu’s Dream surrounded by colorful paper handprints. In them, the kids wrote their wishes with smeary, thick-tipped pencils. Olu’s Dream says “your imagination has no boundaries, you can be what you want to be.”

The eight year old girls want to be doctors or dancers. The boys, teachers or cops. Then, somewhere in the center, in crooked letters that slope down into a crowded pile: “my dream is to have a job.”

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Trigger: NYC Jobless Rate 10.3%

Whole Foods grocery stores are not the organic promised land that they claim to be. Last fall’s Swallow It Whole art show examined why not, and why it matters.

Researching the piece I wrote for the exhibition catalog was an eye-opening experience. Here’s an excerpt from “Whole Foods and the Business of Half-Truths”:

“The Whole Foods shopping experience – the hardwood floors and soft lighting, the sterile seafood and meat cases, the linear presentation of both in and out of season fruits and vegetables, the individually wrapped servings priced by weight - hardly imitates how the food is found in nature. Whole Foods customers will only find evidence of the pasture, grove, and sea in pictures (such as the farming landscapes painted on the walls, and the illustrations of green fields and happy animals on the food labels). Nature is dirty and sometimes unpleasant, but the absence of these less appealing qualities lends to the upmarket feel of the store. The use of pictures to represent the real deal also serves as a great distraction- most products sold in Whole Foods are no closer to their original source than those found in conventional supermarkets.

On a national level, Whole Foods cannot rely on small suppliers to meet large-scale demands; they must utilize a contracted workforce, factory farms, processing plants, and fossil fuels for transport. As a result, the conditions that define an organic, local, or environmentally-friendly product are not entirely clear.

What Whole Foods does provide is a distinctive brand to customers who value their philosophy, but do not necessarily question how they pursue it. For this reason, business continues to flourish. And Whole Foods is, above all, just a business.”

Robert Kenner’s upcoming documentary Food, Inc. takes a deeper look.

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Trigger: Food, Inc.

The world passes through the tourist. The tour consumes us, not vice versa. Always a step ahead or a step behind, the tourist is never there exactly, never sees or hears or smells or touches the country or its inhabitants exactly, always experiences something other, something else— an illusion, an itinerary packaged, sold, administered like doses of a drug, unless, perhaps, we imagine a world in metaphors, making it up, making up ourselves as we travel, dream, tell stories.

–from The Island Martinique by John Edgar Wideman

Above: the product of a late-night brainstorm that turned Category 5 somewhere between my mind and my notebook.

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Trigger: Zouk Love: a documentary film

“A green soldier fears everything. When he is transported to the front, he thinks death is watching him on every side. Every shot is aimed at him. He doesn’t know how to judge the range or direction of fire, so he shoots anywhere, as long as he can shoot a lot without stopping.

He is not hurting the enemy, he is killing his own terror. He is stifling the dread that paralyzes a man and prevents him from thinking. Or rather, the dread doesn’t let him think about what is happening around him, about how to win the battle that his unit is engaged in, because at that moment he has a more important battle to win: he must win the war with his own fear.”

Although this passage was written about the brutal Angolan Civil War (1975-2002), i couldn’t help but think of Iraq. I am perplexed by the way John McCain talks about winning the war, or worse yet Sarah Palin equating withdrawal with waving a “white flag of surrender”. Reaching what ultimate goal would make America the winner? And who will lose?

To me this sounds like children chanting on a playground driven by an egomaniacal need to save face. The Vietnam War ended up in the wrong column- and there alone it shall stay!

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Trigger: Another Day of Life by Ryszard Kapuściński

 

I just got this photography book for my sister, but I’m having trouble letting it go…really beautiful stuff!

“Nazar is an Arabic word meaning ’seeing, insight, reflection.’

Nazar: Photographs from the Arab World offers a multifaceted view of photography from North Africa to Lebanon and Palestine, from Egypt to Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Ranging from passionately documentary to aesthetically innovative, these images by fifty-six Arab and Western photographers- male and female- challenge preconceived views about the region.”

Hala Elkoussy, (Re)construction

Nadia Benchallal, From Shore to Shore

Denis Dailleux, Le Caire

Diana Matar, Veiled Woman in Cairo

Laura Junka, Happy in Gaza

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Trigger: Aperture Foundation’s Nazar: Photographs from the Arab World

From this week’s interview on Real Time with Bill Maher:

Maher: In the book [The God Delusion] you establish a scale of one to seven of atheism- one being someone who is utterly certain there is a God, and seven being someone who is utterly certain there is not. But you yourself say you’re only a six. Can you tell us why?

Dawkins: I think any scientist would be unwise to commit himself to saying there definitely is not anything. I mean, I can’t definitely commit myself to saying there are no fairies. I’m pretty sure there are no fairies, but I think it would be unscientific to do what the extreme religious people do and say “I know there is a God.” I can’t say I know there is no God. I can’t say I know there are no pink unicorns. So I think maybe a 6.9 is reasonable.

I thought Richard Dawkins was a proud atheist? Sounds a touch agnostic to me, but it does make sense.

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Trigger: Real Time with Bill Maher interview clip

Graffiti World: Street Art from Five Continents was a Christmas gift from my little sister. What took me until April 8th to pick it up? It’s heavy (weighs at least five pounds, hardcover, 376 pages)!! I’ve been traveling the past few months, and finally got to settle into it last night.

Over 2000 illustrations. Hard to choose the illest. What struck me was Eltono and Nuria Mora’s paintings of tuning forks and keys in Madrid. I love the simplicity, the contrast of bright colors among the old buildings. They reminded me of Zezão’s swirling patterns in the sewers of São Paulo: beauty against bleakness.

Faith 47 also has an exquisite touch, spraying her wispy designs across Cape Town’s harsh environment.

“It’s taking the stuff that everybody hates and nobody wants to see and making it more in their face. In South Africa, there are millions of people living in makeshift shacks….It’s so hard to see it all the time and not be able to change it. What can I do to save the fucking world? So I paint shacks.”

Graffiti World (HND Books, 2005) is a must-read for its vivid photography and interviews with 180 international street artists.

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Trigger: Graffiti World by Nicholas Ganz

National Novel Writing Month starts today, and so does a unique challenge for all aspiring writers out there: pen a 50,000-word novel between November 1st-30th.

But why? The goal is to provoke those who are “working on a novel” or “writing a book one day”- and, let’s face it, there are lots of us out there- to actually do something about it. So many words on such a short deadline means no time for editing. Thoughts must flow freely- and fast. This will enevitably result in lots of crappy writing. But there’s also the chance that some brilliant ideas will come from it.

Users of the NaNoWriMo site can chart progress, make friends with other participants, and scope out forums for advice or critiquing.

Click below to join..and wish me luck!

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Trigger: NaNoWriMo

Weberson Santiago is a São Paulo-based illustrator whose work has appeared in magazines, comic books, advertisements…

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I love his work, especially the way he sketches women: so beautiful, so emotional, and so strong.

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Trigger: illustrator Weberson Santiago
Site: portfolio and blog

• As of today, total number of Residents in the used-created virtual world, Second Life: 7,877,298

• Total number of authors credited to Second Life: the Official Guide: 6

• From the latest stats, the average number of minutes spent in Second Life per user, per day in the US: 122

• Total number of minutes I’ve spent in Second Life: 120

• Total number of minutes I’ve spent in Second Life that I will never get back: 120

• Total number of Second Life: the Official Guide I’ve purchased: 0

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Trigger: Second Life: the Official Guide as displayed at La Grande Libreria Internazionale Hoepli, Milan, Italy