*-Pablo Picasso
Born To Buy
"Marketing is fundamentally altering the experience of childhood. Corporations have infiltrated the core activities and institutions of youth, with virtually no resistance from government or parents. Advertising is widespread in schools. Electronic media are replacing conventional play. We have become a nation that places a lower priority on teaching its children how to thrive socially, intellectually, and morally than it does on training them to consume. Kids can recognize logos by eighteen months and before reaching their second birthday, they're asking for products by brand name. By three and a half years old, experts say children start to believe that brands communicate their personal qualities. Upon arrival at the schoolhouse steps, the typical first grader can evoke hundreds of brands, and he or she has already accumulated an unprecedented amount of possessions.
As kids age, they turn to teen culture, which is is saturated by the media with gratutious sexuality, based on unrealistic body images, constraining gender stereotypes, and, all too frequently, the degradation of women.
The dominant teen culture is also rife with materialism and preaches that if you're not rich, you're a loser. Adolescents are subjected to unremitting pressure to conform to the market's definition of cool. And now these values have migrated down to younger children. Eight and nine year olds watch reality shows and other prime-time fare ostensibly aimed at teens and adults. Marketers are deliberately investing children's culture with themes and sensibilities that have worked with teens - a widespread practice known as "tweening".
These developments have not been beneficial. Research has shown that involvement in consumer culture causes dysfunction in the forms of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and psychosomatic complaints.
American youth has emerged as the most brand-oriented, consumer-involved, and materialistic generation in history."
- excerpted from Born To Buy by Juliet Schor
"The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant... *
*... is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments."-Mad Magazine
Shop Till You Drop
"An important new issue is emerging in the arena of sustainable development that rivals environmental concerns in importance. It is consumption — or rather, mis- and over-consumption. This is a less tractable problem than environmental degradation in that politicians see efforts to contain consumption as a superb way to lose votes. It is at the heart of the sustainability debate, as it covers the depletion of natural capital, such as key non-renewable resources, and the capacity to absorb pollution."-Norman Myers (from Confronting Consumerism, MIT Press)
INFO:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=8734&ttype=2
http://web.utk.edu/~arouthe/mli/Confronting%20Consumption.pdf
"A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy."*
*-Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881), Speech in the House of Commons, Mar. 3, 1845
Give It A Go
I envy not in any moodsThe captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:
I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;
Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson
("In Memoriam", 1849)
Altered States
CYBERNETIC INDIANS • X-RATED CLOWNS • JUSTIN BIEBER • ERUPTING VESSELS • PLUSHIES • JENNA JAMESON • DEATH-DEFYING FEATS • PRISON TRADE • SUPERHEROES • ECSTATIC STATES • UNDERWATER DRUMMING • REVENGE THERAPY • PENTECOSTAL SNAKE HANDLERS • & MORE…SHORT FILMS by: Colby Bird • Darrin Martin & Torston Zenas Burns • Wayne Coe • Michael Economy • Peter Eide • Tony Feyer • Michael Greenblatt • Rose Kallal • Lewis Klahr • Kristian Kozul • Steve LaFreniere • Rachel Mason • Ashleigh Nankivell • Peter Rand • Slava Mogutin & Brian Kenny • programmed by Billy Miller
Sunday, December 19, 8:00pm
@ Artists' Television Access
992 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 824-3890
INFO:
http://www.artslant.com/sf/articles/show/20411
http://www.atasite.org/2010/12/“altered-statehood”-2/
(above:"The History of Magic" -Rose Kallal)
State of the Art
trained elephant paints a pretty picture
INFO:
(writer/editor/curator Bob Nickas' take on the art game):
http://www.viceland.com/int/v17n11/htdocs/bob-nickas-601.php
"Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil."*
Above: A rare Qing Dynasty vase found in a dusty suburban attic that recently sold at an auction house for $85.9 million dollars.INFO:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/13/world/europe/13vase.html?_r=3
*-J. Paul Getty
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."*
*-Philip K. Dick (above: sculpture by Donald Judd)
C2C
Cradle to Cradle is essentially a play on the "Cradle to Grave" phrase, implying that the C2C model is sustainable and considerate of life in general.Technical nutrients are basically inorganic or synthetic materials manufactured by humans—such as plastics and metals--that can be used many times over without any loss in quality, staying in a continuous cycle.
Biological nutrients and materials are organic materials that can decompose into the natural environment, soil, water, etc. without affecting it in a negative way, providing food for bacteria and microbiological life.
Materials are usually referred to as the building blocks of other materials, such as the dyes used in colouring fibers or rubbers used in the sole of a shoe.
Downcycling is a term used to describe what is conventionally known as recycling, which is seen as "downcycling" materials into lesser products, a plastic computer housing becomes a plastic cup, which then becomes a park bench, eventually becoming waste.
Waste = Food is a basic concept of organic waste materials becoming food for bugs, insects and other small forms of life who can feed on it, decompose it and return it to the natural environment which we then indirectly use for food ourselves.
INFO:
http://www.designboom.com/eng/funclub/cradle.html
http://www.mbdc.com/detail.aspx?linkid=2&sublink=8
"Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th."*
*-Julie AndrewsNote: The above graphic is a sample from a series of postcards produced by The Mormons in the 1950s(!): http://tinypineapple.com/tag/be-honest-with-yourself
Individual
"The first and greatest source of economy, the richest mine of wealth ever worked by man, is the division and exchange of labor.The products of machinery are now sold for what they will bring, and therefore its advantages go exclusively into the pockets of its owners.
Money represents robbery, banking, gambling, swindling, counterfeiting etc., as much as much as it represents property; it has a value that varies with every individual that uses it, and changes as often as it is used.
Every attempt at amendment only produces new disappointments, and increases the necessity for other amendments and additions without end, all to end in disappointment and the greater insecurity of everyone engaged in or trusting to them.
The security of person and property requires exemption from the fear of encroachments from any quarter.
The forming of societies or any other artificial combinations IS the first, greatest, and most fatal mistake ever committed by legislators and by reformers.
To be harmonious and successful we must begin anew; we must disconnect, disunite ourselves from all institutions or rise above them.
If every one was the law unto himself, all would be perfect anarchy and confusion."
-Josiah Warren, New Harmony, Indiana, U.S., 1846
INFO:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Warren
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