After a near-death experience, the photographer Kim Weston re-awakened a dream of being an artist. She went back her to roots, creating “Seen, Unseen”, a subtle document of an African-American family, layered with meditations on culture, photography and the sacred. Read article & watch slideshow
Photographing the Unseen
Posted in Journeys, Roots
Tagged with: African-American Culture, Ancestors, Death, Family, Life, Photography, Spirit
From: Stream
Tagged with: African-American Culture, Ancestors, Death, Family, Life, Photography, Spirit
From: Stream
Building the Dream
There’s many dreamers out there with visions for new ways of living. The instigators of Kalu Yala are having a go at co-creating “the world’s most sustainable modern town” in the Panamanian jungle.
After the Fall
“After the Fall” – Photographs by Hin Chua.
View here >>
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Windows Onto a New Era
The New Era windows factory in Chicago is a worker-owned cooperative. There are thousands of cooperative businesses in America and around the world, but New Era is remarkable in that it emerged, phoenix-like, from exploitative corporate ownership into an effective operation based on equal rights and consensus decision-making.
Astra Taylor chart the story of how the original company’s owners pretended to close down the factory and sack the entire workforce, only to try and take the machines to another, more profitable location. The workers, inspired by Argentinian horizontalidad factory occupations and the Basque Mondragon Co-ops, refused to leave, took over the factory and eventually managed to buy the facilities for a song and set-up New Era.
Read the full article by Astra Taylor >>
Posted in Journeys, Liberation
Tagged with: Co-operatives, Corporations, Economics, Equality, Horizontalism, Occupy
From: Stream
Tagged with: Co-operatives, Corporations, Economics, Equality, Horizontalism, Occupy
From: Stream
Non-Linear Confusion – Political Control circa 2014
Adam Curtis presents his theory of how political and economic elites have gone beyond propaganda into deliberately crafting confusion and informational overload in order to neutralise public understanding and opposition. This summary traces the methods back to a long-time advisor to Russian President Putin, who emerged from avant-garde art to develop informational ‘non-linear warfare’.
The Long Walk from Eden into the World
Reportage journalist Paul Salopek is re-tracing the footsteps of humanity’s ancient ancestors, literally walking from Ethiopia in Africa, into Palestine/Israel and across the globe.
Out of Eden Walk tracks the progress of what is planned as a 7-year walking journey around the world and across the arc of time.
His latest dispatch is a fascinating meditation on the historical and contemporary complexities of the Holy Land and the Levant, cradles of agriculture, monotheism and cities – in fact civilisation as we know it. Read the article >>
Photograph from Samaria-Sebaste by John Stanmeyer. View the gallery >>
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Posted in Journeys, Roots
Tagged with: Ancestors, Archeology, Civilisation, History, Holy Land, Religion
From: Stream
Tagged with: Ancestors, Archeology, Civilisation, History, Holy Land, Religion
From: Stream
Legal Rights for Mother Earth
Depending on who’s asking, the idea of giving legal rights to nature may seem completely outlandish or entirely sensible. Bolivia, which currently has a government with an indigenous majority is in a process of enshrining legal rights for the natural world.
It’s not without paradox, for the economy of the country is reliant on extractive industries such as mining and natural gas production, but it’s nevertheless a milestone in the diverse global movement expressed by some as eradicating ecocide.
The Liberation of Sitting Still
“With a calm mind we gain a broader perspective, a perspective on our environment. We seek not only our own happiness; instead, calmly looking at the circumstances surrounding us, we regard our environment as our companion and we are able to maintain a calm and peaceful state”
In an intense and sometimes crazy world that is seemingly tipping increasingly into chaos, Zen practice offers a pathway to stilling the mind and learning to maintain that mental stillness in the world.
Zen Master Taigen Shodo Harada Roshi offers a clear, simple 20minute introduction to the basics of Zazen sitting meditation. Bringing the mind to order, by connecting it to the simple order of the body and the breath.
[Note for viewers who don’t understand Japanese! – you may need to turn subtitles on: click the little cog on bottom right menu bar to get the option up.]
Distilling Presence from our Present Shock
“We live in a different now than has ever been known. Now is not the now of your grandma’s careful attention to detail and rhythm. Today, the world pours in through our beeping mobile device’s calendar, emails, text messages, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and more. The frantic attempt to respond to all this everything creates what Douglas Rushkoff has dubbed “present shock,” a condition in which we’re assaulted by a present that we ceaselessly grasp to obtain and never quite live in. Not entirely opposed to our technologies, Rushkoff questions how they can better complement our basic rhythms of presence.”
Keenly-contemplated meditation on time, technology and consciousness by Douglass Rushkoff: click play to watch the vid. (just under 8mins)
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The Meaning of Freedom
Angela Davis is a veteran of the U.S. civil rights movement and a rare voice for collective movements for change in contemporary America. The Meaning of Freedom is a speech interrogating the reality of liberty in a society that runs on long-term institutionalised racism and has transformed both militarism and incarceration into profit-industries.
Read an extract here >>
Read a short introduction to her vision here >>
Read a new interview discussing race in America >>
City on the Edge: Kabul
Despite minimal infrastructure, a lack of stable employment and a chaotic economy built on international aid and corruption, Kabul is one of the fastest-growing cities in the world. With a massive conflict-fueled influx of new inhabitants from Afghanistan and beyond, the city’s population of 1.5million inhabitants in 2001 has exploded to 6million now. How can the Afghan capital integrate and hold itself together?
Reportage by Sune Engel Rasmussen >>>
Photograph: S Sabawoon/EPA via @guardiannews
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Does being Green mean not having kids?
“I (we) don’t have children, at least partly for ecological reasons. That decision is something I reflect upon a lot. I know I’ll feel sad about it in the future, yet news about the state of the world often makes me feel powerfully relieved that I’m not contributing in that way to the overall consumptive mess.”
Reflective blog post from @ChrisTT on the ecological context of becoming a parent, and the original essay by @PaulKingsnorth which provoked this tweet
A Response to Cuts, Debts & other unhelpful Politics?
When the political purse-holders gradually eliminate financial support for universal education, a number of responses are possible. Protest is one way to respond. Resignation – either through opting out of education, or through studying but only by accruing massive debts – is another. Creating a new, parallel system is another… Cue the emerging model of Free Art Schools…
Read this report by Daisy Jones and check out an example to see how it can work…
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The Eyes in the Sky
Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations have made it clear that American citizens, not to mention those of all Western democracies, are under blanket surveillance. This report by Thomas Gorton outlines one rather surreal mechanism of this 21st-century Orwellianism: Cessna light planes imitating mobile phone towers in order to intercept conversations and data. Read more >>
The Largest Computer in the World
A company which started as a bookseller now runs a cloud system running over 2 million servers; essentially amounting to the biggest computer in the world.
A man called Jack Clark gives us the mind-bending numbers >>
“We Will Need Writers Who Can Remember Freedom…”
Deeply inspiring and radical speech by an American elder standing up for real and free art in the face of the all-consuming profit motive.
Posted in Liberation
Tagged with: Art, Capitalism, Freedom, Publishing, Resistance, Writing
From: Stream
Tagged with: Art, Capitalism, Freedom, Publishing, Resistance, Writing
From: Stream
The Freedom of the Known
“If you could have a window in your cell, what place from your past would it look out to?”
Prisoners have a unique perspective on the nature – and relativity – of freedom… The photographic project Windows from Prison seeks to offer moments of relative liberation to people incarcerated in the U.S. federal prison system by bringing them a photograph of a view of their choice. Read ->>
Bringing the Trees back to the City…
“This is a kind of biological architecture that refuses to adopt a strictly technological and mechanical approach to environmental sustainability…”
Introduction to the idea of an urban Vertical Forest – >>
and a very snazzy computer-modelled promo video for the project here >>
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Post-Colonial Streets: Carnival in London
The annual Notting Hill Carnival in London has spanned the full spectrum of the post-colonial experience, from multicultural street parties to race riots and back again.
Josy Forsdike takes a photographic review of the early days >>
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The Politics of Long Fences
What is the human experience and consequence of Europe’s growing fortress tendency?
Powerful photographic document by Sergi Cámara on the heavily-militarised zone that is the border between Morocco, Africa and Spain, Europe.
View ->>
