Cultural Kaleidoscope: Community, Consumption, Activism and more

• Remember our post about creating a culture of sustainability in a culture of consumption? Well, GalaDarling posted about her meeting with rapper Will.i.am and his new project in collaboration with Coca-Cola called Ekocycle that is looking to make recycling cooler, not in concept but in the actual design of the products created from recycled materials. Other major companies, like Levi, are creating new products that are better designed and more fashionable so that people are more likely to actually purchase them, merging ethical consumption with style.While large corporations are often guilty of some of the worst environmental offenses, this is at least one step in the right direction via establishments that already have the money and influence to potentially make real, large changes. We’re interested to see how this unfolds.
• The same week, Al Jazeera reports on the new rare earth metals refinery that just began operating in Malaysia and the subsequent protests that bring attention to the havoc it could  cause on the environment and their way of life. An important piece to consider given that these materials are present in most of the technological products we use regularly.
• But the wonderful site, The Story of Stuff reminds us with its new season that our purchasing power, while important, is hardly sufficient in making substantial changes. Their newest episode, The Story of Change, reminds us of our responsibilities as citizens, not just consumers, and asks us to remember that sometimes we need to just put down our credit cards and take more serious action.
• Guernica has an interesting and relevant interview with Richard Prelinger on his new project Open Field which he hopes can grow into a collections of commons that seeks to address how artists can affect real, long-term, social change–a venture he feels most well-intentioned artists have thus far failed at and he hopes to help readdress by creating intentional micro-communities that keep the macro-possibilities in focus:

Open Field could certainly evolve into a bona fide commons, or at least as much of a commons as can exist within current society, but an authentic commons is not a temporary affair. Building a place where tools, ideas, and projects are shared and money wields no power is a profoundly urgent and exciting experiment, but its success would require that we redefine what we do as artists. We’d have to move beyond a demonstrative mindset and into a productive mode, and to build a more permanent presence geared to supplying goods and services, tangible and intangible, that society doesn’t currently provide. We might have to chip away at the “visiting artist” paradigm as well, because residency, longevity, and accountability are greater enablers of community. Finally, it might make sense to try to redefine privilege as an outgrowth of participation in the community, rather than individual reputation, and find new ways to distribute agency, control, and attribution.

 

I’m not arguing for an end to art or for self-effacement on the part of artists. Rather, I imagine the commons as a space where art practice can find new meaning as it addresses deeply intractable and unsolved dilemmas. Not a single year’s crop, but a field with many harvests.

The role of art is that it can be that which generates empathy. And, remember, for me, my art is woven and integrally bound to story and to dramatization, so that it lives in the space. So we bring people physically together and we physically tell them a story and we share the space for a time; those things are like woven into it. So ideals like community, sharing, being together—they’re inextricable. [...] And so I actually think that art is in a position right now to be a very provocative force because the language . . . the language of what we’re talking about when we talk about public policy and about the shape of the world, the spread of corporatism and whether labor even matters—all of these things, I feel, are disconnected because they are not wired in to empathy anymore, to care.

Though the response to this image was clearly negative, Illamasqua dug their heels in and refused to remove this advertisement.  How can they now deny intent to harm, when they have clearly been told that what they have done is without doubt racist and hurtful but refuse to remove the image?

Despite the controversy over the advertisement, what is absolutely assured, is that this will happen again.  No matter how many times Black people protest and say that Blackface is racist and hurtful, the fashion industry will continue to do this because like every other industry, they have found profit in catering to and supporting Whiteness.  As long as there is money to be made, no one cares who’s being hurt.

• n+1 has a great, timely response piece up on their site (and in their new print edition) on how many traditional magazines like the Atlantic and Harper’s are churning out article after article aimed at modern women’s “problems” in an attempt to derail them from having a life they actually want:

The problems these women describe are different, but their outlook is the same: traditional gender relations are by and large bound to endure, and genuinely progressive social change is a lost cause. Gently, like a good friend, the Atlantic tells women they can stop pretending to be feminists now.

• If this makes you upset and you need some inspiration, UpWorthy has a video of two high schools girls who gave a TED talk after challenging a major magazine and who proudly use the term “girl power” UNIRONICALLY.
• And if you’re looking for new women-friendly media and supportive of ground-up projects like this site itself, consider supporting In Transit Magazine’s fundraiser to kickstart their new publication for women in their 20s by women in their twenties:

This magazine is absolutely necessary. Why? Ask yourself – Where can twenty-something women look to find a constant source of inspiration? Where can they look to find stories of other successful young women following their dreams and defying expectations? If you can think of more than one source that appeals to twenty-something women who are multifaceted, then feel no need to donate.

 

Seeing both films sheds light on the process of art created as collaboration, when the mix of marketplace concerns and artistic visions converge and collide. It took four years for Smoketo emerge, and only a few short months for Blue in the Face. The end result reminds us that the act of creating work is always both a manifestation of the individual artistic vision and the way the work acquires a life of its own in the process. Making art, making a film, is still an act of creation that reminds us of the power of mystery, for the outcome is ultimately unpredictable.

• Noah Charney has an article up about the publishing industry in Slovenia on the Tottenville Review and lists some books published there that are available in English.
• Watch this video about the 2012 Future Generation Art Prize winner Rayyane Tibet whose work focuses on the historical and social contexts of objects in Lebanon and creates, ”a poetic tension between the fragile building blocks and the stability and strength of the material. The multiplication of this toy set means an abstraction of the personal memory. On the one hand it suggests building an eternal ruin, on the other the ossification of child-like imagination”
• And check out the Guardian’s article on artist Bryan Saunders whose portraits on different drugs has received a lot of attention as of late but who has other long term projects he wishes would get more attenion:

And throughout all this were the art projects. The drug pictures are just one of many. It makes him rueful that nobody cares much about the others. Nobody wants to know about, say, the 28 days during which he blocked up his ears and attached a copper funnel to his mouth “in an attempt to hear the world through the inside of my mouth”. Nobody wants to know about the thousands of discarded photographs he’s spent years retrieving from bins around Johnson City. He points to a portrait of a sweet little girl. “Her family threw all her possessions out because she went to jail,” he says.

• Finally, if you’re on pinterest, follow our Culture Grinder Community board and send us a note to CultureGrinder@gmail.com if you’d like to be added as a pinner!

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Written by Nicole Casamento

Nicole Casamento is a New York City-based writer who is currently pursuing her master’s degree in English Literature at Brooklyn College. She is the editor of Culture Grinder which she founded in 2012.

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