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Friday dawned just as many days do in London, chill and damp.
Still, I am in London where it is warmer than New York, and by the time I make my way from the Sloane Square tube stop to Piccadilly and make my way to the Royal Automobile Club (venue for the Second Academy of Chocolate conference) the sun is shining and I am very much looking forward to the day even though I was too rushed to have coffee before leaving my hotel
The first thing you'll notice when walking into the RAC is that it's not like walking into a AAA office in the States! There is history here and the building shows this history in a very British way. Not only that, but we were informed the previous night that proper attire (jacket and tie, no sneakers) would be required in order to gain entry. I wavered at the last minute about bringing a tie and ended up not bringing one. In the end, however, it turned out to be a non-issue and I was admitted without being questioned about my attire.
There is no equivalent to the Academy of Chocolate in the US. The AoC is a small non-profit organization founded with the mission of promoting fine chocolate. And it has a patron, Michel Roux, OBE.
The conference was well attended - I estimate that there were over 100 people in the room, including a large number of students. Attendance was international, drawing people from Europe, the US, Caribbean, and Central and South America. What excited me most was the company I was in. Tony Lass and Robin Dand were on the panel starting the day off, the speaker roster did not diminish in quality as the day went on, and there were notable attendees who were not speakers. The group at my table included Duffy Sheardown (of Duffy's Chocolate) and Chantal Coady, founder of Rococo.
Issues Facing the Industry
The first session was on the topic of issues facing the industry, and featured Robin Dand and Tony Lass (representing the International Cocoa Initiative), with Freek van der Knaap of Barry Callebaut. The session set a framework for the rest of the day.
As the author of The International Cocoa Trade, Robin talked about the divide between the producer (who for the most part does not consume chocolate) and the consumer (who does not produce chocolate), as well as the market mechanisms underlying pricing, in particularly the difference between the formal market (which encompasses most of the bulk cocoa and is the basis of the commodity price) and informal market (which encompasses all direct trade, is private, and for which the participants, prices, and volumes are not known). I have a copy of the first edition of Dand's book, and I found his presentation to provide some insight into areas that I still had an incomplete understanding of, particularly how and where prices get set.
Tony Lass then followed by presenting an official Powerpoint produced by ICI on the subject of child labor and forced labor in West Africa, which he prefaced in a way that suggested that he did not agree with all of what was contained in the presentation. It was a very diplomatic presentation which included one of the best and most nuanced discussions of what constitutes child labor and what does not that I have heard. There is a tendency to focus on the most sensationalist aspects of child labor in cocoa, ignoring the fact that the problem is not solely found in the cocoa and chocolate industries. While any form of forced and dangerous labor is a bad thing, the underlying causes are not as simplistic as many would make them out to be, and the solutions are even more complex ... and not limited to cocoa and chocolate. The industry has a hand in perpetuating the problem by not addressing it in a meaningful way, but they can only be a partner in the solution, not the sole cause or cure.
Frank van der Kneep then followed with a presentation on key market drivers and trends, including some news about Barry Callebaut's efforts in creating high-flavanol chocolate and getting EFSA (European Food Safety Agency) approval to make a health benefit claim for same. Certainly, the health benefits of cacao and chocolate are key drivers and trends for chocolate makers and consumers, but I don't know that it's an issue of the same import as child labor.
Cocoa, Cocoa Genetics, and Cocoa Growing
The second panel was on the topics of cocoa genetics and cocoa growing, and featured Craig Sams (founder of Green and Black's), Frank Homann (founder of Xoco), and Santiago Peralta (founder of Pacari). Craig did not speak about cocoa genetics directly, but about the history of Green and Black's, about some of the chemical composition of cocoa, and about compounds called vallinoids, which are found in chocolate and play a role in our perception of chocolate (and other) flavors. Frank Homann talked about Xoco's work in identifying, propagating, and processing interesting strains of "heirloom" beans. The main points of the talk were that science has not identified the genes or gene complexes associated with flavor, and that even minor variations in cacao phenotypes (the visual characteristics of a pod, for example) can signal huge differences in chemical makeup which would lead to very different post-harvest processing requirements. The corollary is that when a fermentation pile includes a broad mix of pod phenotypes, sub-optimal fermentation for the majority of means will occur. Santiago Peralta talked about Pacari's work in Ecuador, most specifically about their experiences with biodynamic farming, which has resulted in dramatic increases in production and yield as well as improvements in the flavor of the beans being grown. There was also group discussion about the influences of the environmental aspects of terroir on taste, with surprising disagreement among the panel about the contribution of terroir to taste.
After a break to fortify ourselves with coffee, tea, and hot chocolate, the next panel tackled the issue of traceability in the supply chain. Panelists were Tony Lass, Bertil Akesson (Akesson's), and Mott Green (Grenada Chocolate Company). Tony's presentation covered the complexities of the modern supply chain for large multinational companies, as well as revealing some absurdities that exist that are not well known. For example, in Ghana, the cocoa board has a system in place for identifying the specific origin (down to the farm) of beans that includes sealing sacks under the watch of an examiner and uniquely identifying each sack, a process that buyers pay for. However, at the port, the bags are opened and commingled in containers of multiple tons thereby losing their traceability to the farm. Mott Green operates what might be the shortest supply chain in the world, operating a chocolate company in-country where the growers contribute beans to the cooperative, are paid for the beans, and receive a share in the profits of the sale of the chocolate made from those beans. GCC's 2012 Fair Transport experience shortened the supply chain to the consumer by delivering finished chocolate, by sailboat, directly to GCC's distributor in London, and every bar on that boat was identified with a sticker so that consumers can immediately identify those products. Bertil straddles the middle ground, as a plantation owner (in the lower Sambirano valley in Madagascar) who sells beans to many fine chocolate makers as well as having chocolate made for his own brand by Pralus. For fine chocolate makers, a purchase through Akesson means they have a short, traceable, supply chain because of the lack of intermediaries who might adulterate the supply.
Sensory Session and Tasting
The panel on tasting was moderated by Sarah Jane Evans (one of the very small number of people who hold the Master of Wine certification) and including Damian Allsop, William Curley, and Claire Clarke. A plate of four different chocolates was set at each table - all made with beans from Madagascar. The format was for everyone in the room to taste one of the chocolates, with the panelists providing their impressions followed by feedback from the room. The four chocolates cames from Cluizel, Valrhona (Manjari), Felchlin, and Amedei. Not surprisingly, all were complete different and some did not have the "typical" profile of Madagascan beans. (Bertil expanded on the genetics/terroir discussion from the earlier panel saying that there were major differences in taste - from the same rough genotypes - between beans grown in the upper Sambirano Valley and beans grown in the lower Sambirano Valley, in his experience, which accounts for part of the difference in taste -- beans from the lower Sambirano Valley exhibit more of the bright citrus/tropical fruit acidity typically associated with Madagascan beans.) For me, Damian Allsop's description of the Manjari was most evocative, speaking to his deep familiarity with the chocolate. For other chocolates that he was not as familiar with, the length and detail in the description paled in comparison. It's quite interesting the role memory plays in our perception - and articulation - of a chocolate (or indeed any other food or beverage).
The end of this panel signaled time for lunch, also a time to mingle and network.
Growing Pains: Scaling Up
The first panel after lunch was composed of a quintet of confectioners, Amelia Rope, Claire Burnet, Paul A Young, Claire Gallagher, and Angus Thirwell, on the topic of growing pains and scaling up. This panel ended up talking more about the core elements of brand identity of each company and how they contribute to the kinds of decisions that need to get made as growth occurs and less about specifics of scaling. All of the panelists agreed that money, space, and staffing issues are key to managing growth successfully, and that the particulars of location and other factors will influence the problems that crop up as well as the solutions to those problems.
The Future of The Chocolate Market
The topic for the final panel of the day was the future of the chocolate market. Moderated by Chantal Coady, the panel consisted of Chloe Doutre-Roussel, Yolande Stanley (an educator at Westminster Kingsway college), and myself. Chantal started off by providing a framework for thinking about the future. Chloe's topic was Brasil, and she covered the recent history of Brasil (it's change from being a major producer in the 1980s to just beginning to recover now, 30 years later) as well painting a picture of the current cacao culture in Brasil, which might be one of the most dynamic in the world. There is a great deal of work on the farm level (much of it done by people who are losing money on the cocoa and are being supported by other business interests), as well as in the design and manufacturing of small-scale machinery, and a can-do attitude towards improving production. While not at former levels, Brasil is now one of the top five producers in the world, and determined to grow. Yolande Stanley talked about education, and more specifically the program at Westminster Kingsway, working to train the next generation of chocolatiers and pastry chefs. In addition to having a formal program working in chocolate (and not just working with chocolate as a part of pastry, which is more common), they are also installing a bean-to-bar chocolate lab and will be teaching the processes involved to interested students as a foundation for their more conventional course of study in chocolate. This is a move I think other programs should follow, as knowledge of ingredients is key to using them. Working only with finished chocolate actually does pastry and baking students a disservice and does not treat the ingredient with the same level of interest as, say, flour, eggs, or many dairy ingredients.
I was in the enviable position of being the last speaker of the day, with the topic, "The future of chocolate on a global scale" (no small topic). I worried about this topic a lot in the week running up to the conference, and made a series of sets of talking points with which to deliver my talk. When I realized I was going last, I stuffed my notes in my bag and concentrated on what the rest of the presenters had to say, determined to create a closing narrative that tied together key points made throughout the day by the other speakers, followed by a call to action to the participants.
Robin Dand started out the day by talking about the two worlds of producers and consumers. I extended that analogy to other gourmet foods; that the divide between the two worlds was a result, in part, of the physical distance separating them. In most other gourmet foods, the finished product is made within a few miles of where the major ingredient is grown, whereas most fine chocolate is made thousands of miles away from where the cacao is grown. By extension, the concept of terroir must be extended to include post-harvest processing techniques unique to each producing region.
The second point I made was to talk about the fundamental conflict of interest that public corporations have. Their primary purpose is to maximize shareholder return. One way to do that is to make sure that raw materials prices are as low as possible. Thus the chocolate and cocoa industry is not truly interested in helping farmers as that would increase the cost of raw materials. They use NGOs cynically to show that they are addressing the problem (i.e., making consumers pay to "fix" the problem they created and perpetuate) while at the same time engaging in practices that ensure that no substantive changes occur.
The third point I made is that the pricing dynamics of chocolate are different from other gourmet foods, in part because chocolate does not improve with age, there is no collector market for chocolate, and that chocolate is too cheap, on average, to support "serious" education and criticism by people who can earn a good living solely by educating people about chocolate and rating and reviewing chocolate like wine, beer, and other gourmet foods.
After making these observations, I issued a series of calls to action to the group, challenging us to actually do something when we left the room and not let the energy dissipate. In other words, how was the information shared during the course of the day going to be used to effect change in the cocoa and chocolate markets.
The first call to action was to work on expanding the PDO (protected designation of origin) system (aka, AOC, DOC) to cacao. Every cocoa producing country should develop a working system of naming to identify growing areas and protecting the use of those names. At the moment, there are only a small handful of protected names, the most famous of which is Chuao.
The second call to action was the creation of a formal training program in chocolate connoisseurship and education, perhaps not as extensive as a Master of Wine, but leading to an internationally-recognized certificate. This should be accompanied by a standard chocolate judging protocol for competitions. In order to support the certification process I pointed out that it was not useful unless it also conferred an economic benefit (that is, people could make money by earning one). I used the metaphor of the $100 bar of chocolate to try to get this across. One of the reasons why there are Masters of Wine is that there are $5000 bottles of wine. If all there was was jug Chablis and $3 bottles there would be no economic need for sommeliers. However, because there are very expensive wines, there is the need for people to understand and educate people about them. Chocolate won't be able to support a generation of professional "chocolate sommeliers" until there are very expensive chocolates that are not novelties.
Finally, I suggested that there is a need to adopt a working definition of sustainability. What does "sustainable cocoa" actually mean? Over the past year I have been trying to articulate one and presented my thinking to the group, a definition with three pillars:
Environmental sustainability means that the trees, and their supporting and dependent ecosystems will be around in 100 years.
Economic sustainability means that there will be people who see cocoa farming as a viable way to make a living and support their families in 100 years.
Social sustainability means that the communities in which the farmers live will be around, viable, and dynamic 100 years from now.
Underlying the above three points - and this is a point that was made in the movie Nothing Like Chocolate about Mott Green and the Grenada Chocolate Company is there has be a sense of fairness, equity, and balance in the system. The farmer, the chocolate maker, and the chocolate consumer must all feel that they are being treated fairly and that one partner in the chain is not taking unfair advantage of them. If there is inequity in the system, it cannot be truly sustainable.
Direct Cocoa
Afterwards, a small group of us went to a nearby pub for a drink before attending an event announcing the launch of a new initiative, Direct Cacao, which seeks to create an alternative to existing fairtrade systems for cocoa and chocolate. It's not exactly clear to me, yet, how this is going to be achieved - and it's something I have been working on for over a year now under the name CocoaAssure. I hope to get a chance to talk at length with Direct Cocoa co-founder Martin Christy of seventypercent.com while we are together in Amsterdam next week. Right now he's busy with Chocolate Unwrapped over the weekend.
Chocolate Unwrapped
I am going to Chocolate Unwrapped tomorrow (Saturday) and Sunday - and will be giving a presentation (tasting) on Sunday. The next blog (which will include pictures) will be after I get back from Chocolate Unwrapped. I may not finish it in London but will on the train to Amsterdam, in which case it will get posted Monday evening.
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Thanks for your posts Clay, most interesting
© 2014 Created by Clay Gordon.


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Meet the LACBC Staff
Jennifer Klausner
Executive Director
Jennifer Klausner has served as Executive Director of LACBC since summer 2007. Prior to joining LACBC, her career focused on consumer products marketing and branding, in product development/licensing roles with Hello Kitty and Barbie, at Nakajima and Mattel, respectively.
Jennifer grew up in Los Angeles, holds degrees from both UCLA and USC, and has commuted by bike throughout her post graduate career. She has a diverse bike advocacy experience, is an avid and still occasionally competitive mountain biker, USAC certified Coach and a League of American Bicyclists LCI.
Eric Bruins
Planning & Policy Director
Eric Bruins joined LACBC as Planning and Policy Director in July 2012. Eric grew up in a leafy suburb of Silicon Valley with his bike as his ticket to freedom. For his 16th birthday, he got a "real" road bike and never looked back. While studying policy and planning at USC, Eric raced for the USC Cycling Team and steadily moved up through the ranks to become a Category 3 road racer. Prior to LACBC, Eric was a Project Manager at the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, where he handled acquisitions, capital projects, and countywide planning. Eric has also interned for Congresswoman Anna G. Eshoo (CA-14) and the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy in Washington, DC, where he worked on federal transportation policy. On the weekends, you're likely to find him out riding in the Santa Monica Mountains in either a USC or Big Orange jersey.
JJ Hoffman
Events & Business Affairs Director
JJ Hoffman has been biking in L.A. to work and play since 1990. She started working with the LACBC as a volunteer in 2003, then, with Lupe Vela created Bicycle Sundae, Spooky Ride, Nacimiento tour and other fun rides. In 2005 she was distracted by something shiny and before she knew what was happening, she was the Volunteer Coordinator for that year's Annual Los Angeles River Ride. Then, in 2006 she took over the job as Director. The job has been the most challenging and rewarding experience of her life. She has been gratified to see the River change for the better, and more and more cyclists enjoying the path daily. But JJ feels the best part is seeing LACBC grow after every successful River Ride. She says, "If you haven't done the ride or sponsored it or volunteered for it, you are missing out! Join us this summer!"
Carol Feucht
Membership & Communications Director
Carol Feucht is your membership and communications guru, helping you with all of your membership needs and keeping you informed about bike news and events via the Interweb and beyond. It was while she was an Urban Studies & Planning student at UC San Diego that Carol first became involved with bicycle advocacy and began bicycling for the first time since her elementary school days when she rocked a pink banana bike. She made her first appearance at the LACBC offices as a volunteer in Spring of 2009 and has been here ever since. One of her favorite activities is to bike to her local library and return with a basket full of books to read. Books and bikes, reading and riding, words and wheels--these are all winning combinations.
Colin Bogart
Programs Director
Before joining our staff, Colin Bogart was a volunteer for the LACBC from 2000 to 2008. In his volunteer days, he recruited other volunteers, helped organize rides, and served on the Board of Directors from 2003-2007. He holds at Bachelor's Degree from Loyola Marymount University and is a certified League Cycling Instructor (#2240). As the PLACE Grant Coordinator, Colin worked closely with a team of Glendale City Staff members to create the Glendale Safe & Healthy Streets Plan, making Glendale a better place to walk or ride a bike. His work with Glendale City Staff and community members is ongoing. As Programs Director he is working to expand and formalize our programs and materials.
Kelly Martin
Development Director
Kelly Marie Martin joined LACBC in August 2012 as Development Manager. She has worked with LACBC on projects like La Bici Digna, Bici Libre and the River Ride through the Bicycle Kitchen as a longtime volunteer (Cook) and first-ever paid employee. There, in the role of Operations Facilitator, she did all kinds of tasks on behalf of the Cooks, including grant-writing, fundraising and events. Before switching gears to nonprofit work she spent almost ten years as a freelance visual researcher and graphic designer.
Kelly has been a commuting cyclist all her life. Growing up her family was car-free until her father got his driver's license when she was 16. It wasn't until re-locating to Southern California for graduate school (she holds an MFA in Studio Art) that she purchased her first car. But she did not feel truly at home here or find her people until she got back on a bike. By night Kelly turns into an old time zombie, playing guitar in the trio, Triple Chicken Foot.
Alek Bartrosouf
Policy & Campaigns Manager
Alek Bartrosouf is a native of Glendale, California, and has been bicycling as an adult since 2010. After selling his car as a lifestyle choice he began using a bicycle for all sorts of errands, meeting with friends, and traveling. If he is not working on making the streets of Los Angeles a safer place for all users, you will find him on the streets of Glendale advocating for sustainable solutions to today's urban issues. He helped start four community gardens and is continually working to green his city, namely by founding the Coalition for a Green Glendale. Alek has experience in campaigns, community organizing, and neighborhood empowerment. He also has an interest in water politics, the revitalization of abandoned/vacant lots, and urban green space. Alek holds a Master's degree in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Hyeran Lee
Policy & Outreach Coordinator
Hyeran is a Policy & Outreach Coordinator and works with our volunteers on campaigns and events. Prior to joining the LACBC staff, she had been an LACBC Policy & Planning intern and also served as the Advocacy Chair for the Bike Coalition at UCLA, a local chapter of LACBC. Hyeran earned a Master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning from UCLA in 2014, with a specialization in active transportation planning and policy. She is interested in presenting data and information better by using graphics and visual communication tools. Hyeran was born in Gwangju, South Korea, and has previously lived in Osaka, Japan, where her love affair with two wheels began. She has never driven a car and has no plan to do so.
Bryan Moller
Policy & Outreach Coordinator
Bryan Moller grew up skateboarding and bicycling in the LA region. He studied Geography at California State University, Long Beach, where he first became interested in the use of active transportation because of CSULB's heavy emphasis on the use of bicycling and public transportation. His other hobbies include anything and everything environmental (from policy to restoration), reading great books, hanging out with the cutest dog ever (Luna), and being frustrated with his fantasy basketball team.
Lac Vuong
Bike Valet Coordinator
Lac joined the LACBC staff in April 2014.

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For over 60 years, scientists have been deliberately exposing plants and seeds to radiation in order to mix up their genetic material and speed up mutations. The results are unpredictable and only the mutated plants that show useful or otherwise desirable attributes (stronger, tastier, bigger, more resistant to disease, etc.) are reproduced, creating a mutant variety from the original one.
The technology is called radiation breeding. It emerged in the early 1950s, as part of Atoms for Peace, a program to develop "peaceful" uses of fission energy after WWII. So-called Gamma gardens were planted in laboratories in the US, parts of the former USSR, India, Japan and even in GMO-phobic Europe. A number of plant varieties were commercialized and some of their offspring can now be found in your local supermarket.
The Center for Genomic Gastronomy, an art think tank that investigates food controversies and prototypes 'alternative culinary futures', was concerned by the lack of research on radiation-bred edible plants and their possible impact on our health and on the environment. CGG founders Zack Denfeld & Cat Kramer worked with Heather Julius to create a barbecue sauce that contains some of the most common radiation-bred ingredients: Rio Red Grapefruit, Milns Golden Promise Barley, Todd's Mitcham Peppermint, Calrose 76 Rice and Soy.
The peppermint is a mutation of Mentha piperita, it is able to resist a particularly nasty fungal disease and can be found in chewing-gum, candies and toothpaste. The modified barley is used to make beer and whiskey. As for the grapefruit, it was developed to produce the deepest red. Hundreds of mutation-bred varieties of soy and rice have been registered in the International Atomic Energy Agency database. Now the name of the sauce is a reference to Cobalt-60, the radioactive source gamma gardens are submitted to.
Cobalt 60 Sauce is part of the exhibition Matter Of Life: Growing new Bio Art and Design at MU in Eindhoven. A big sauce dispenser is at the disposal of visitor who'd like to taste the recipe. It's very dark, very yummy and a bit sweet.
Matter of Life | Growing Bio Art & Design exhibition at MU, Strijp S, in Eindhoven. The show remains open until 22nd February 2015.
One of the thing that surprised me when i moved from Belgium to Italy all those years ago is that i suddenly found myself in a culture where the weather wasn't part of the conversation. The sky never changed much. Every day was mostly sunny and fairly dry. This is less the case nowadays. I'm living in London where the Summer has been boiling hot. Meanwhile, Northern Italy has been showered by torrential rains. The weather has decidedly taken a turn for the weirder.
Newspapers publish alarming and disconcerting articles about climate change and 'extreme' meteorological phenomena on a daily basis. It seems that no matter how much we cycle to work and recycle our trash, this is too little too late (becoming a vegetarian would have a bigger impact anyway.) Climate change is a phenomenon so complex and grim that most people feel powerless and inadequate even taking about it..
The exhibition Strange Weather: Forecasts from the Future at the Science Gallery in Dublin gives a more human dimension to the issue. The show features 26 artworks that, each in their own way, act as springboards for new discussions and debates about the eccentricities of the weather.
The show goes from the very absurd (the Halliburton survivaball) to the very dark and dramatic. But the adjective that pervades the show is 'fun'. While visiting the exhibition, i've been drinking cloud, watched a 1959 film that speculates on how weather control departments would use satellites and met with little child mannequins in Hazmat suits in the most unexpected places.
Strange Weather is one of those rare shows that's never dull, never obscure, never preaching. A quick video walk-through of the exhibition will prove my point:
Given my enthusiasm for the exhibition, there's a lot i'd like to blog: all the ideas, all the works i've discovered. Being notoriously lazy, i'm going to bide my time and slowly publish stories about Strange Weather. Here's a first batch of artworks which explore clouds in the most poetical and critical ways:
Karolina Sobecka climbed to the Sally Gap in the Dublin Mountains to harvest clouds, decant them into little tubes and invited gallery visitors to consume them.
The artist built her own Cloud Collector, a device that is sent into the atmosphere attached to a weather balloon. Clouds condense on its mesh wings and flow into a sample container. These cloud samples are analysed for microorganisms and ingested by experimental volunteers. By combining the cloud microbiome with their own, the volunteers become part cloud and keep a cloud journal reporting their transformation.
Thinking Like a Cloud owes a lot to Aldo Leopold's land ethics motto 'thinking like a mountain'. It describes an ability to appreciate the deeps interconnectedness of all the elements in the ecosystems. By ingesting clouds, clouds become part of you and you become part of the atmosphere yourself.
I was strangely moved by Studio PSK's proposal for the ash dispersal of your loved ones. I don't care whether it is speculative or art or whatever, i want this project to be real.
I Wish to Be Rain suggests that after their death, people could literally become part of the weather by having their ashes used for cloud seeding, the dispersing substances into the air to trigger rain.
Following a funeral and cremation of a body, the crematorium will give the bereaved an aluminium vessel that contains their loved ones remains and a dormant aerostat. When the family are ready, the encapsulated ashes are sent skywards tethered to a weather balloon, to be dispersed in the macroscopic structure of a cloud. The capsule becomes increasingly pressurised. At the point it reaches the troposphere, the highest point at which clouds form, the capsule bursts, dispersing the ashes into the clouds below. When dispersed into the clouds, the remains get enveloped into a macroscopic structure far beyond the most grandiose human experience. But this is short lived, again they enter the domain of the miniature, falling back to earth as raindrops, before eventually finding their way back into the sea.
One thing i noted when i spoke to people who live or used to live in Dublin is that they all have something to say about the fluctuating prices of the houses in the city. Matt Kenyon's Cloud therefore feeds into two concerns: real estate and weather. The artist turned the last 10 year of housing market into a stream of small house-shaped clouds that fly to the ceiling of the gallery, stick there for a while, lose stamina (and metaphorically value) and then fall down to the floor.
The viewers witness common house-ownership dreams disappear as fast as they materializes -- just as many saw the false promises of their homes disappear as they were quickly foreclosed upon during this period.
Strange Weather: Forecasts from the future was curated by artists Zack Denfeld, Cat Kramer and meteorologist Gerald Fleming. The show is open at the Science Gallery in Dublin until 5 October 2014.
Yet another work i discovered in Riga when i visited Fields - patterns of social, scientific, and technological transformations, an exciting exhibition featuring artworks that challenge existing viewpoints, deconstructs social issues, and proposes positive visions for the future.
POLSPRUNG, by Erich Berger, explores the psychology and politics of disaster. The installation focuses on geomagnetic reversal, a change in Earth's magnetic field that makes poles switch ends with the magnetic north pole becoming south, and vice versa. Scientists believe that the reversal is cyclically and some have even calculated that the moment is long overdue.
Starting from (im)possible disasters during a polar reversal, an attempt is made to generally ask how we deal with threat scenarios and states of emergency. We are hereby especially interested in the role of mass media in the production of a permanent state of emergency, as well as the social function and the possible exploitation of disasters for personal, economic and political purposes.
The POLSPRUNG installation features a series of instruments that measure the earth's magnetic field to detect a possible polar reversal, register the gamma radiation caused by the solar wind and compare the data with the speculative disastrous gamma radiation data during a polar reversal. A small reading space also provides information about polar reversal research and disaster speculation, a magnetite laboratory and a notebook in which visitors can write down their thoughts about disasters.
Interview with the artist:
Hi Erich! I've been looking online to understand the meaning of Polsprung and the more i googled, the more lost i felt: it is geomagnetic reversal and not pole shift, right?
In Polsprung I refer to the geomagnetic reversal, when magnetic north and south are reversing their position and earth its geomagnetic polarity. The German word for the geomagnetic reversal is POLSPRUNG and I use it because of "SPRUNG" - which means "jump" as substantive. A "jump" implies some form of time, something very short in our time experience. But a geomagnetic reversal has a duration of about 10.000 years - nothing we humans would consider a jump, it is only a jump considering geological time. I liked the idea of the jump which makes us think about different time scales.
The other thing about frantically googling Polsprung is that it does look scary. Maybe worse than anything we might read about climate change (sorry for the link to that awful publication) Yet, it doesn't get that much coverage in newspapers. How do you explain that? Is it because we cannot yet feel the effects of the Polsprung?
True, from time to time we hear about a possible catastrophic scenario related to the polar reversal, but maybe it is not so popular amongst journalists, as the concept is not so easy to sell. And there are less "esoteric" scenarios around. This was also the reason I picked it, because it is rarely used in talking about catastrophes.
Could you tell us about the setting of the installation. It's very techy, with instruments that look scientific. Yet, the work explores 'the role of mass media in the production of a permanent state of emergency, as well as the social function and the possible exploitation of disasters for personal, economic and political purposes.' So what is the role of the instruments if the works explore the psychological and political dimensions of a catastrophe?
A constant flow of states of emergency produced through media was the starting point for me to work on POLSPRUNG. In the last years I saw myself constantly bombarded with possible catastrophes, the swine flue, the bird flue, climate change, global warming, peak oil, an asteroid hitting, super solar storms, you name it. Some of these scenarios are just briefly in the media, some stay for some weeks and month others are permanently with us.
It is a really interesting phenomena when you observe it for a while. Most of these scenarios never play out, or were totally disproportionate or are predicted for a future we are not part of. What they have in common is that they create states of emergency which create fear, keep us occupied and make us worry about our current life, our loved ones and our future. States of emergency are also perfect for enforcing measures which we could call unpopular, so I am also interested in the politics of these states.
So I thought to create a test environment, a laboratory, a vehicle to explore such a case. I was looking for a possible scenario which would not be possibly created by human impact like climate change or random (act of god?) catastrophes like an asteroid collision. My interest in geology lead me to the geomagnetic reversal. If we look at the reversal statistics of the last 5 million years then the next reversal is long overdue - so I found my perfect state of emergency. Now, the speculations of possible catastrophes related to a polar reversal range from nothing to a complete mass extinction event. One quite probably effect could be an increase in gamma radiation on the ground leading to a higher rate of mutation in biological organisms but also to unwanted interaction with the electronic hardware. The electromagnetic spectrum was always of high interest to me in my artistic work and so I settled for the gamma radiation increase as possible catastrophe. With this as basic setting the installations manifests itself in 3 parts:
* Disastrous test arrangement # 1: Polar Reversal Detector
* Disastrous test arrangement # 2: Muon Telescope
These two arrangements are self build but functioning instruments which permanently detect the fluctuations of the earth magnetic field (magnetometer) and the related gamma radiation (muon detector). With enough patience and time at hand (a couple of hundreds to thousand years) one can observe the reversal process and gamma ray increase - I call that radical witnessing.
Though the instruments are built quite simple and open they still remain black boxes for the visitor and make it difficult to completely understand the whole process. The detection really happens but people also need to believe in it and need to make them believe to actually be able to create the state of emergency.
* Disastrous test arrangement # 3: Reading and Feedback
The third arrangement is central, as here fears and personal catastrophes of visitors and witnesses are collected. A black book on a writing table invites people to write down their stories and thoughts. The book collects the stories of the different exhibition venues. I haven't seen the result from Riga yet, but in Hamburg, where POLSPRUNG was exhibited for the first time, people made intense use of it. At the same table you find literature to read regarding the polar reversal, the dynamic environment our earth represents when you look at it from a deep time perspective but also philosophy and ecology of geology and disaster sensationalism. For the more playful mind there is also a box where you can investigate and play with magnetic minerals.
"POLSPRUNG is the first installation in a cycle of the works that deal with the psychology and politics of disaster." Do you already know what the upcoming installations will be like?
I am currently working on the second work called INHERITANCE together with Finnish/Danish jewellery artist Mari Keto.
I already mentioned my interest in geology which specifically focuses on techno minerals, like uranium and thorium ores or rare earth elements, their origin, occurrences, mining, technologies and politics, etc. In one of my field trips quite close to my home I discovered native copper in the bedrock.
I knew this was exceptional and informed the geological research centre. To make a long story short, my sample also caught the attention of the researchers working for the Finnish nuclear waste industry. They saw the sample as physical evidence that copper is resistant enough as canister material for nuclear waste in Finnish bedrock. This was a rather
Finland currently builds the first permanent nuclear waster storage facility called Onkalo. There is a quite interesting film by Danish film maker Michael Madsen which I can recommend, called INTO ETERNITY which explores the facility and the people working around it. Also last year I participated in the excellent nuclear field lab Case Pyhäjoki organised by Mari Keski-Korsu which engaged with Finnish nuclear politics from an art and activism viewpoint. Anyway, nuclear processes are vast in time but also in their spacial and economical dimensions, and as such really difficult to grasp. I was thinking of ways how to make them more comprehensive and now we are working on sets of family jewellery which are rendered unwearable through their radionuclide content for quite a long time.
Family jewellery is perfect to inverse the logic of nuclear waste. Family jewellery is a vehicle for family identity and wealth into the future. With nuclear waste we in-debt the future. We have now researched the legal conditions we are working in and planned 3 different jewellery sets which will be presented as installations. Details are too early to
Another off-spin of this workings is the Curie's Children [glow boys, radon daughters] workshop which I developed together with Martin Howse.
Thanks Erich!
This is the last weekend to discover the Fields exhibition, produced by RIXC and curated by Raitis Smits, Rasa Smite and Armin Medosch. The show remains open at Arsenals Exhibition Hall of the Latvian National Arts Museum (LNAM) in Riga until August 3, 2014.
Other posts about the Fields exhibition: Sketches for an Earth Computer, Ghostradio, the device that produces real random numbers, On the interplay between a snail and an algorithm and FIELDS, positive visions for the future.
The weather, that once innocent topic of conversation, now comes the bearer of fears and dark scenarios. Hurricanes, typhoons, flooding and heatwaves are more violent and frequent than ever and climate change has transformed our good old weather into 'extreme' weather.
An exhibition that just opened at the Science Gallery in Dublin brings together artists who investigate how this Strange Weather is intersecting with our daily life and culture.
One of the rooms in the gallery hosts a Tornado Diverter, a device built by artists Bigert & Bergström to intercept and stop a tornado. The sculptural machine radiates 100,000 negative volts and has the power to repel the positive charge of the tornado that causes twisters to touch down.
The artists first read about such machine in a Wired magazine interview with Russian weather-modification scientist Vladimir Pudov. Bigert & Bergström met Pudov in 2007. He had then retired from his position at the the Institute for Experimental Meteorology and no longer had the means to develop his invention. The artists decided to step in, improve the scientist's drawings of the machine and "build it for him.'
In May 2011, the artists mounted the Tornado Diverter machine on a custom built trailer and, accompanied by Canadian meteorologist and storm chaser Mark Robinson, they traveled to the Midwest in the US to hunt down a tornado and place The Tornado Stopper in front of the approaching twister.
The Science Gallery is also screening The Weather War, a film in which the duo documents the increasingly hostile weather patterns and man's attempts to control them. I couldn't watch it until the end alas (i needed to take the bus to the airport) but 20 minutes of it were enough to convince me that the film is simply brilliant.
The documentary takes us on a historical and geographical journey into climate-management. The artists look at how the science of meteorology has advanced in line with military goals throughout history. They also interview people who build concrete shelters that can protect up to 50 (squeezed) people from violent tornadoes, Chinese scientists from the Beijing Weather Modification Office who fired rockets into the sky to seed clouds and make sure that it wouldn't rain over the 2008 Olympic opening ceremony, etc.
What makes the work so fascinating is that it gives a vision of how scientists are now attempting to control the weather. Should we put our trust into their hands? Or should such experiments be undertaken by governments? Are we sure they can also control the socio-political consequences of their experiments in climate control? Are we even entitled to modify the weather? And in the background of these questions lies the issue of global climate change:
How do we behave to meet those challenges? Do we adapt? Or do we wage war against increasingly aggressive weather phenomena? Bangladesh is building protective walls against coming floods. China shoots rockets into threatening clouds. And in Italy, anti-hail cannons are fired to protect the year's wine harvest.
Check out The Weather War , part of the exhibition Strange Weather. The show remains open at the Science Gallery in Dublin until 5 October 2014.
The date of the Scottish Independence Referendum is near. On 18 September 2014, people will be able to say whether or not they want Scotland to be an independent country.
A New Scottish Enlightenment, Mohammed J. Ali's Design Interactions graduation project, goes back to 1979 (the year of the Scottish devolution referendum which invited citizens to vote in support for a devolved deliberative assembly) to imagine what could have happened if the Scottish Independence Referendum had actually taken place 35 years ago and people had voted in favour of it.
Ali's counterfactual speculation proposes that the positive outcome for the referendum leads to the creation of the New Scottish Government. Scotland is a place known for its inventiveness and the independence invigorates the nation's creative spirit. A key policy of the government is to help citizen achieve personal energy independence, paving the way for a future liberated from the reliance of fossil fuels. The measure sees the prototyping of DIY energy generating machines, the re-purposing of abandoned coal mines, and even the discovery of the first self-sustaining fusion reaction. Furthermore, the success of the energy policy leads to the creation of alternative economic paradigms where different forms of exchange and economy are created based on distribution and sharing of energy.
The work A New Scottish Enlightenment describe the outcomes of some of the key pieces of legislation either on an individual, community or global level.
A few questions to Mohammed J. Ali:
Hi Mohammed! The events you chart make our own present look extremely backwards. Why is your project located in counterfactual speculation rather than directly in an unspecified future?
One of the reasons I wanted to examine a counterfactual Scotland, was because on 18th September this year, there is a referendum for independence. There was a similar referendum in 1979 for a devolved government. Then, despite a Yes result of almost 52%, Scotland didn't eventually become independent. An addition to the Scotland Act 1978 stipulated that 40% of the entire voting public had to vote in favour. If that had actually happened, Scotland could have become an independent country. It's a bit more complicated, with a bit more politics than this but it all adds a layer of reality which would have been lost if I'd positioned it in another time/place.
In a twist to the real events, I propose Scotland actually becomes independent in 1979. We can then begin to imagine what might have happened given what we know has happened since then. An alternative Scotland is a way of perhaps holding a mirror to what could potentially happen after September 18th this year. The world might suddenly start to become a very different place.
I also wanted to look at what might happen to a modern, developed country which becomes independent, a unique event in modern times. The legislative, social and economic models of its former political partner/leader are replaced by those more sympathetic to the ideals of the new state. Scotland has historically been socialist, certainly left leaning; the map often turning red (the colour of the Labour Party) during general elections.
Perhaps one of the reasons why our current reality might look backwards in comparison to that in the counterfactual is because I imagined a country emboldened by independence and willing to try more extraordinary measures to bring individual independence to its people. I wanted to take advantage of the boom in research into alternative energy technologies which was happening during the seventies and early eighties resulting from an over-dependence on oil, coal and gas reserves mainly held by a minority of overseas nations.
The reality is that in the eighties, global research funding into renewable energy technologies was cut, as a result of the steady drop in the price of oil and its increased availability. I wanted to conceive a progressive nation where there was a realisation that energy was always a key component in humanity's evolution and that the current sources of energy were simply a staging post in the progress towards the next (hopefully better) one.
The Acts of Parliament of the New Scottish Government were simply tools to enable this to happen - think of Jimmy Carters National Energy Act 1978 and the later Energy Policy Acts in the US. The Legislative Acts in the speculation "A New Scottish Enlightenment" have some basis in the real world, from where they could be drafted into the speculation.
Important technological events such as the introduction of Napster in the late 90s meant that I could draw on peer-to-peer file sharing as a means of creating an analogue in New Scotland where surplus energy could be transmitted across a conjoined energy and information network.
The key was the creation of a country with the potential to be a blank canvas onto which I could paint a picture describing potential futures. In this respect Scotland was the perfect example. We don't know its future, but we can examine its past and describe the potentials of what might have been.
Energy is a highly lucrative business. Why would a state (and the corporations that are closely linked to any government) have any interest in leaving it into the hands of the people?
The UK energy production and distribution sector were centrally controlled until the privatisation of the electricity and gas markets from the mid-80s. Historical precedents suggest that this new state could also have created a nationalised oil infrastructure similar to Iran's in 1951, which happened despite fierce British opposition, or Iraq's in 1972 to name but two. However, New Scotland continues to receive revenue in the form of taxation from oil production which it accumulates into a Sovereign Wealth Fund. This is used to ultimately make the people of New Scotland independent, in energy terms, through the creation of their personal energy infrastructures.
In your scenario, the New Scottish Government's first act is to create a sovereign wealth fund with the proceeds of North Sea Oil. What is this fund exactly?
Sovereign Wealth Funds are often the accumulated capital received from the tax receipts of oil production. They are usually invested in a portfolio of real or financial assets to enable them to grow. New Scotland as a result of independence would inherit the oil reserves within its national coastal boundary. It follows a Norwegian model by creating a fund to enable future projects or to be used in times of need.
The New Scottish Government decides to begin investment in energy infrastructures from 1985, which coincides with the period in which actual receipts from oil revenues were at their greatest.
Could you explain the various 'inventions' you were showing at the RCA exhibition?
The first 'invention' is the creation of a home workshop inventor. Its basis is the Salter Duck developed in the 70s and early 80s by the scientist, Stephen Salter, at Edinburgh University. It takes the form of an energy harvesting wave machine. The picture shows the inventor in his workshop, working on the device. He received funding through the Public Energy Act 1985 from the Sovereign Wealth Fund. This Act was a means of creating the start of a personal energy infrastructure for the people of New Scotland. In our contemporary real world we see this more and more: the installation of solar panels, geothermal heat pumps and windmills. The Act was also a way for creative invention to take place following the repeal of energy intellectual property rights the year before.
By the year 2000, the New Scottish Government wants to halt conventional nuclear energy production. It also launches the "Third Millennium Prize". This is analogous to the Longitude Prize of the Eighteenth Century, where the government of the day tried to resolve one of the crucial impediments to progress of the time, the ability to travel across the oceans safely and directly. I also had in mind John F Kennedy's address at Rice University in Houston, Texas where he spoke passionately to the American people about the need to succeed in sending the first men to the moon. These were projects of national importance or pride.
In New Scotland, there is decreasing dependence on nuclear energy following the implementation of other energy creation/transformation methods. However, much of the rest of the world still needs access to substantial, sustainable and uninterrupted energy sources.
The 'fusion reactor' is the culmination of research started in 2000, when New Scotland becomes the global hub for fusion research. This is backed by the Sovereign Wealth Fund, of course, enabling the research to flourish. Ultimately, as is often the case, a serendipitous scientific discovery creates a breakthrough illustrated by the fusion reactor pictured. In this instance research is encouraged by a hothouse environment not unlike Silicon Valley, but where intellectual property is no longer a barrier.
Government funded mega projects are not new. We've had many countries collaborate on a number of different fusion projects, and the European Space Agency, the ISS, CERN, NASA are all centrally funded by combined or single governments.
In 1992, people realized that they could use the existing mine works, abandoned in the 60s, to generate geothermal heat in order to heat the town and provide the resources required to create new industry. How would that work? How can an abandoned mine provide energy?
I wanted to look at different scales, from the personal (Public Energy Act 1985), to the global (Third Millennium Prize 2000). The Community Energy Act 1992 made possible the implementation of intermediate sized, community wide energy infrastructures. What could happen if communities with a shared past, interest or skills were encouraged to work together?
Lochgelly is a former mining town in Fife, in Eastern Scotland. When coal mining stopped in the 60s, the town and its citizens were largely forgotten. Overlooked and existing infrastructures were important. How could we repurpose what we had already created? I wanted to explore the use of geothermal heat within the old infrastructure of the coal mines.
Geothermal heat pumps work on the same principle as our refrigerators, but in reverse. They take advantage of the constant temperature of the earth from 6m to over 100m below the surface. Cold water is pumped down and returned to the surface to have the geothermal heat extracted. Geothermal power can is an excellent source of hot water, which could in turn open the town to the possibilities of different types of industry. Food processing or the hotel trade for example both require huge amounts of hot water which the mines could produce in abundance. The possibility for extracting energy from other infrastructures also exists. True geothermal energy could be extracted from abandoned oil wells which regularly bore several kilometres through the earth. Perhaps disused fishing fleets could be retrofitted with wave energy devices allowing them to become floating electricity generators.
This element was also examining the relationship we have to energy in another way. We are so used to having electricity come to us from distant power stations, why not create infrastructures where people go to the sources of energy. It then opens a new set of questions: are cities abandoned and the countryside re-inhabited? Collaborations with architects and vehicle designers come to mind.
I was very surprised by the Energy Intellectual Property Rights Act 1985 which would remove intellectual property rights for energy technologies. This is obviously very seducing but i don't see many signs nowadays of intellectual property rights being lifted. Why would it have been different in 1985?
You're quite right. This is a surprising step for a fledgling country. I didn't want to make this project a whole series of spectacular implausible revolutionary actions. That would have made the counterfactual story lose any element of believability, but this is bold move with perhaps just enough basis in fact to push the scenario forward.
The formation of free and open software pioneer, Richard Stallman's real life GNU Project in 1983 is a development that bleeds into the timeline of the New Scottish Government. They realise that independence from corporate control can encourage the development of technologies much faster than when they're chained to copyrights and patents. Open collaboration is the key.
The background was the concept of a shared human destiny found within alternative publications such as The Whole Earth Catalog or Mother Earth News. Stores such as Real Foods in Broughton Street in Edinburgh, were established in the mid-70s and promoted open, environmentally sustainable living which go hand-in-hand with the beliefs of organisations like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.
Many believe that ideas are the property of humanity and they belong in the public realm, Sir John Sulston versus Craig Venter on DNA sequencing and exploitation, for example. Even Plato and Aristotle held differing views on the nature of property and ownership. A government whose major concern is the development of sustainable energy and energy independence would be more likely to also see the benefit of a greater distribution of knowledge. The New Scottish Government realise the importance of this wider, generational thinking and pushed through the implementation of this Act.
I had planned to have the Energy Intellectual Property Rights Act occur much later in the timeline, to reflect a wider public debate, but as it's so critical to the development and ethos of sharing, it had to happen as soon as possible after the creation of New Scotland.
Today, intellectual property rights are contingent on the creation of profit and the promotion of capitalism. This means keys technologies can be tied up for years making further developments take even longer.
Are you planning to push the project any further?
The next step is to take the project to V2 Test_Lab in Rotterdam. It has also been picked as a finalist in the RCA Sustain Awards during London Design Festival 2014, which coincides with Scotland's' Independence Referendum on September 18th.
I'd like to expand on the economic concerns, the creation of sharing economies within an energy and information peer-to-peer distribution structure and the energy currencies it creates. What happens to conventional economics when rather than trying to store the energy you've created, which is difficult at the best of times, you give it away? A different system of values start to play out. Economy changes from our obsession with the accumulation of resources, to one where we share. How do corporations function after 2021 when the Watt starts becoming an established global currency?
The expansion of the timeline is important too, but without making it didactic; there needs to be room for interpretation and discussion. I'd like to leave the prospects of Torness nuclear power station or the different relationship between a wealthy New Scotland and perhaps a weaker less influential England, up to the imagination of other peoples. Would the remains of the Union start adopting the measures pioneered north of the border? All sorts of other questions remain to be explored. How is the new nation affected by migration or by new or old alliances?
Much of this work allies with Frederic Jameson's paraphrasing of Slavoj Zizek, "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism". This project is really about provoking thinking, about how we can foster alternative political systems which have a truly long term, globally inclusive philosophy. How do we create less damaging economic environments which fit better within our ecosystem, and how to give more exposure to one of the fundamental relationships that makes us human: energy, economics and politics?
Thanks Mohammed!
I see far more exhibitions than i can blog (i could but i'm fairly lazy, you see.) So this morning, i went through all the photos i took in London galleries and museum in June and threw them hastily in this almost laconic post in case you're in town and bored. Being bored in London seems to be my latest obsession but that's another story.
Here we go...
The ever fabulous Science Museum has a small show about the work of scientist and inventor James Lovelock. I spotted this apparatus to test if a detector would work on Mars. Lovelock built it in his home lab in the 1960s while working on NASA's Viking Mission to Mars. It is made with an ordinary kitchen jar and lid. The detector was sealed inside the jar and air was removed via the valve on the left to replicate Martian atmospheric pressure.
Check out the Exponential Horn while you're in the building.
Speaking of wild inventions. I caught the very last day of the Paul Granjon exhibition at Watermans. It was called Is Technology Eating My Brain? and it was very very funny. It's not every day that i laugh my face off all alone in an art gallery. The show was the result of the artist's residency in the art center. He had a couple of works in the gallery (including a magnificently visitor-unfriendly Biting Machine), the rest were works made by participants of Granjon's Wrekshop. They included a slicing photo booth and a geranium survival kit.
I spent far too long watching the videos of Granjon's fancy inventions and performances:
I watched this one three times:
And I now need this book: Hand-Made Machines [Includes DVD]
The show's already closed alas! but here's a few images. And a video.
The Victoria and Albert museum was showing the short listed artists and the winner of the Prix Pictet. The theme was Consumption in all its disastrous relationship to environmental sustainability.
Abraham Oghobase photographed hand scribbled texts advertising the various informal services offered by people living in Lagos, a city of over ten million inhabitants and the commercial capital of Nigeria.
In Lebensmittel, Michael Schmidt portrayed the mechanized, industrialized food system of contemporary Western culture. From pigs standing skin to skin in a factory farm to piles of discarded food. Seeing the images one next to the other up on the wall was both shaming and mesmerizing. No wonder the series won the prize.
The exhibition closed a couple of weeks ago.
Suzanne Treister was investigating the rise of mass intelligence and data collection long before it became fashionable to do so.
Talking in the context of her Post-Surveillance Art series, she said that: "What has altered for me post Snowden, is not an awareness and negotiation of a changed condition, but the knowledge that now almost everybody else knows something which was clear as day if you did a bit of research, and it's great to no longer be called a conspiracy theorist."
I have no time for design products, except when they come with a Soviet aura. The GRAD: Gallery for Russian Arts and Design is showing all kinds of plastic toys, a dial-less Telephone, red velvet flags, retro futuristic vacuum cleaners, etc.
Work and Play Behind the Iron Curtain is at the GRAD: Gallery for Russian Arts and Design until 24 August.
I also visited The Human Factor: The Figure in Contemporary Sculpture during the press view. I can't say that was the show of my life. AT ALL! But there were a couple of works i was glad to see again....
and discover:
The Human Factor: The Figure in Contemporary Sculpture is at the Hayward until 7 September.
Gun Architects's rainforest-inspired pavilion at Bedford Square for the 2014 London Festival of Architecture.
Photojournalist Nick Danziger visited North Korea in 2013. He recorded the everyday life in the DPRK and was given rare access to cities outside Pyongyang. The story behind each photo is probably more interesting than the photos themselves. The subjects are doing very ordinary things (getting their hair done at the hairdresser, sunbathing by the sea with their kids, etc.) only it does look like the photos were taken in the past.
According to the British Council the exhibition is "the first cultural engagement of its kind" between the UK and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The Guardian adds that it opened in London with no advance publicity, for fear that the dire relations between North Korea and the west might sink the first cultural project of its kind.
Above the Line: People and Places in the DPRK (North Korea) is open at the British Council HQ in London until 25 July.
I spotted this one in the street.


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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) -- An attack on a Knoxville Police Dept. officer turned into a homicide investigation after his fellow officers found a dead body inside of a tent, alongside four sleeping individuals, according to KPD spokesperson Darrell DeBusk.
Four people face unrelated charges or are being held for questioning in connection with the man's death. The victim's body was taken to the Forensic Center where an autopsy is scheduled to determine the cause of death and his identity. Once, police know who he is and have notified a next-of-kin they say they will release his name.
According to DeBusk, an officer originally responded to a disturbance call in the 800 block of Richards St. around 8:15 p.m. There, he found a very intoxicated Charles Mathew Rose, who reported tried to force the officer onto the ground. Following a brief struggle, the officer managed to detain him.
During their investigation, officers discovered the homeless camp where they found four people sleeping in a tent. Once they got out of the tent, officers noticed the man's body in the corner covered up in blankets.
Rose was charged with Resisting Stop, Halt, Frisk, Arrest as well as Public Intoxication. He is being held on $1,250 bond. Three of the people in the tent Hope Carol Warvi, Joshua Cool, and Brandon Roberts each face charges of Assault (on a homeless male) and Theft.
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Saturday 10 November 2012
Arsenal squandered a 2-0 lead for the second time in five days and missed an injury-time penalty as Fulham claimed a 3-3 draw at the Emirates.
The Gunners, who were held by Schalke in Gelsenkirchen in the Champions League on Tuesday night after opening up a two-goal cushion, went ahead through Olivier Giroud's header from a Theo Walcott corner and doubled their advantage when Lukas Podolski swept home Mikel Arteta's centre.
But Fulham pulled one back after 29 minutes as Dimitar Berbatov nodded in Bryan Ruiz's corner and they equalised when Berbatov's cross from the right was headed in by substitute Alex Kacaniklic.
Fulham took the lead for the first time when Arteta dragged down Ruiz in the area and Berbatov stroked home a 67th-minute spot-kick. But the visitors' joy was shortlived as Giroud, having placed his first effort against a post, reacted well to head in Walcott's subsequent cross.
Arsenal could have won it in the 94th-minute when referee Phil Dowd adjudged Sascha Riether had handled Andrey Arshavin's cross but Mark Schwarzer kept out Arteta's low spot-kick.
Everton stay in fourth spot after coming from behind to beat Sunderland 2-1 at Goodison Park. The visitors made the breakthrough when Adam Johnson netted shortly before the break. But, after Everton pressure, Marouane Fellaini drove past Simon Mignolet after 76 minutes and, two minutes later, the Belgian flicked on for Nikica Jelavic to fire home.
West Bromwich Albion won 2-1 at Wigan Athletic thanks to a James Morrison header and a Gary Caldwell own goal. Morrison headed home Chris Brunt's cross after 31 minutes and when Caldwell put through his own goal it looked good for Steve Clarke's men. Arouna Kone pulled one back on the stroke of half-time but Wigan could not find a leveller.
A defensive mistake prevented Southampton from beating Swansea City. The hosts went ahead through Morgan Schneiderlin's 64th-minute header but were pegged back nine minutes later as Maya Yoshida was dispossessed by Nathan Dyer and the winger ran through to score.
Stoke City moved up to 12th after a hard-fought 1-0 win at home to winless Queens Park Rangers. Charlie Adam got the only goal - his first for the club - at the start of the second half, firing in left-footed after the visitors had failed to clear Robert Huth's long free-kick into the box. The defeat, their seventh of the season, means Mark Hughes' men stay bottom.
Reading, who have scored eight times in their last two home games without winning either, could not find a way past Norwich City as their search for a first Barclays Premier League victory of the season goes on.
You can follow how all the matches progressed on premierleague.com's Matchday Live.
Arsenal 3-3 Fulham | #ARSFUL | Matchday Live >>
Everton 2-1 Sunderland | #EVESUN | Matchday Live >>
Reading 0-0 Norwich City | #RDGNOR | Matchday Live >>
Southampton 1-1 Swansea | #SOUSWA | Matchday Live >>
Stoke City 1-0 QPR | #STKQPR | Matchday Live >>
Wigan Athletic 1-2 West Brom | #WIGWBA | Matchday live >>


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Lindsey Vonn, Mia Hamm, Lisa Leslie Named Glamour's Women of the Year
A Healthy Bite: Lindsey Vonn
— Olympian Lindsey Vonn on the power of female athleticism. Along with former professional athletes Mia Hamm and Lisa Leslie, Lindsey was named one of Glamour's Women of the Year.
"For women today, there are no limits. We play hard, get down and dirty, and kick butt. And we're going to set new and higher standards for the female athletes of the future."


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Roy, the character at the heart of James McLure's 1959 Pink Thunderbird, is a Viet Nam veteran with more than a touch of rebellion in his heart. He loves his Lone Star beer, his home state of Texas, and his wife, even though he sometimes disappears for days for a no-questions-asked assignation. As played by Matt Koester in In Tandem's Theatre's new production, he's a devilishly handsome, hootin' and hollerin' good old boy who literally shakes the theater's foundations when he stomps around the stage. As his wife Elizabeth says--played by Libby Amato staring toward the horizon with palpable longing--"Roy is the last wild thing left around here."
Even though we never see Roy and Elizabeth lock eyes or lips (Thunderbird is written as two one act plays--the guys and gals in their separate spheres), we know their world, and this is one of McLure's great achievements here. It doesn't hurt that they remind us so much of Stanley and Stella Kowalski, who surely haunted McLure when he grew up in Louisiana. We can imagine the way they thrash together a shared life, in their frequent arguments as well as in the bedroom.
But in Thunderbird, Roy--not Blanche, a visiting sister-in-law--is the one who lives in the past. And it's easy to understand why. The characters' lives here are defined by small-town gossip and tedium, made all the more unbearable by the hazy Texas heat. In the first play, Laundry and Bourbon, Elizabeth and Hattie chat on a sun-drenched back porch while they drink and fold. Hattie (Lindsey Gaglano) is a boisterous and no-nonsense mother of several unruly kids ("no-neck monsters" Tennessee Williams would call them), who is catching a rare bit of "me time" while the brood is at grandmas. They are visited by Amy Lee (Mary McLellan), the town snoot who frequents the country club and is very concerned with saving the souls of African children, via her church's Baptist missionaries. Cattiness runs rampant, and the simple tawdriness of it all prompts Elizabeth (in a gently searching performance by Amato) to wonder about the future.
Meanwhile, in Lone Star, Roy has perched himself behind a honky-tonk with a case of Lone Star and a box of junk food, holding forth with stories about Viet Nam and his adventurous youth, most of which revolved around that pink Thunderbird. His drinking buddy, Ray (Rob Maass), is a dim and often hilarious foil. But the fireworks really get started when Amy Lee's milquetoast husband, Cletis (Matt Zembrowski), stops by for a visit.
It's a classic American story, with characters fueled by nostalgia, restlessness, and that niggling voice that reminds us that there's something more to life than, well, Lone Star and laundry (the Hank Williams and other country songs we hear capture the mood perfectly). In Tandem splits the directing duties--Jane Flieller directs Bourbon, Chris Flieller directs Lone Star—and they each balance the larger-than-life comedy with McLure's more introspective moments. It's a lovely valedictory, of sorts, to McLure, who died in 2011—a vision of American Dreaming that's ever colored with disappointment but still leavened by a good laugh with lifelong companions.
Photos by Mark Frohna. Mary McLellan and Libby Amato. Matt Koester and Rob Maass.


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A Pox on the Patriarchy
As I completed my victory lap* around the internet this morning, I did something I have trained myself not to do, after too many disheartening and even disturbing experiences. Yes reader, I read the comments. Cue the gentle rustle of the internet's collective head shaking.
Except of course, not the whole internet. Because some of the internet clearly likes the comments. I know this because they post in the comment area, have discussions with other commenters, and even hit that little 'like' or 'recommend' button. Ah, the like button, the holy grail of the professional commenter. That little notification of affirmation, of consensus, of community. Which is nice – or it would be if that community weren't a cesspit of sexism, that consensus not of hatred, that affirmation not of male superiority.
But you all know this. This is why 'don't read the comments' is practically a meme, an internet cliché, and why we have twitter accounts like "Avoid Comments". The comments section has become the valley of the shadow of misogyny, where women – and many men – fear to tread. We've given up this supposed equalising space and handed over the magic markers to the playground bullies.
A well-functioning comments section could be a glorious thing. It could be a chance to speak truth to power, a chance for true and engaging debate, with alternate perspectives, or little snippets of knowledge being added to the article above. But instead, the comments section is the internet's dirty little secret, the place where all the societal cracks we try desperately to paper over come out and play. Here be your racism, your homophobia, and above all, your rampant misogyny. Here, basically, be power relations we are desperately trying to leave behind writ large. Because it seems to me, judging by their overt prejudices, that practically the only people who comment on the internet are straight, white, men.
As I gorged myself on yet another comment glutted with hate, I wondered why. Why has the comments section become an enclave of male entitlement? A Radio 4 programme I heard about a year ago came to mind. The producer of Any Answers was being interviewed about achieving a gender balance in the show and she revealed the very different behaviours of male and female listeners: broadly, men called up immediately, never doubting the relevance and interest of their comments; women waited to see whose comments were aired, unsure of how they would measure up, of whether they deserved to be heard. It's the age-old male entitlement versus female reticence played out again. Gendered social conditioning shutting women out from debate. Again.
I see the sense in "Avoid the Comments", I really do. Who has the mental and emotional capacity to take on the bilious internet herd? The times I have 'waded in', I am routinely left with that dead feeling in my stomach that so many women will recognise, of having yet again taken on the world's hatred of my sex. I feel hopeless and exhausted, and reluctant to ever go back. I long for the quiet life. And yet, another part of me, that rebellious small voice that never knows when to shut up – the feminist voice, if you will – screams, "Why?" Why this quiet, resigned acquiescence? Why this public acceptance that the comments section is for loud, entitled male bores?
The comments section is too much for any one person to take on. But it's not too much for the internet as a whole to tackle. Studies of commenters repeatedly demonstrate that they represent a tiny minority of a publication's readers. They are not the invincible force we, or they, with their inflated sense of self-worth, think they are. If we all made a little effort, we could surely wrest this section back as a tool for the public as a whole. And yes, I know, who cares, right? Populated as it is by the vicious underbelly of society, the comments section doesn't matter. Let them have their little black hole.
Running The Women's Room has given me an insight into the myriad reasons why the percentage of female experts in the UK media remains so stubbornly fixed at around 20%. Part of this is the media's fault. But there can be no denying that part of it is because women are scared of speaking – and the daily dose of internet bile, and the daily reminder that there are big signs hung over large swathes of the internet saying "Women Keep Out" does nothing to help this. It's all very well for men in the public eye to say 'I get trolls too, I just ignore them'. No man has ever experienced anything to the degree that Mary Beard experienced. But perhaps more significantly, if more subtly, men are not on a daily diet of societal hatred, that feeds that other small voice in nearly every woman's head, the creation of years of being told to sit down, shut up and keep out, that maybe the trolls are right. That maybe we are stupid, inconsequential, ugly, unworthy, boring and inept. This is why telling women to just ignore the hatred doesn't work; after years of having loathing directed at us, it has turned inward, and it's barely worse than anything we tell ourselves.
So this is why I'm not happy to leave it at 'Don't read the comments'. These comments are not hosted beyond the event horizon. They are smeared across the website of every one of our national publications and so given that establishment stamp of approval. And in this way, nearly every article online represents a stark, slap-in-the-face reminder that hatred for women is still tolerated. That women are still silenced. And that the male voice rules supreme.
*revision avoidance lap
I spent 20 years in pr. the mantra was never ever leave a critisism unchallenged otherwise thats the only opinion left on record. I regularly wade in to sexist trolls with facts, figures and reasoned debate. When they become abusive i point out to them they are using violent hate speech to try and intimidate me rather than reasoned debate and that i cannot debate with someone using violence. I wont change the troll, but i hope to leave an accurate record of the counterside of the argument and to expose the sexist bullies for what they are to readers coming across the argument later. Silencing is what the sexists want, i try to do the opposite, if nothing more than to assert my human right to have a voice.
Pingback: Don't Read the Comments? Why The Hell Shouldn't I? | J Crew
"The comments section has become the valley of the shadow of misogyny, where women – and many men – fear to tread."
What sort of person is scared to look at a comments section? Misogyny doesn't exist, by the way.
Dan, your a dick.
Really, Dan? You think that there is no sexism in our society? Women consistently are paid less than men. The proportion of women in jobs drops the higher you go up the scale. Even in my arena of academic Psychology, a topic dominated by women at undergraduate level, sees very few women reaching professorship. I'm sure you'll say that this is to do with women having children. But that statement alone demonstrates misogyny. Why should it be only women who take career breaks? Where are the fathers? Why do they not take time off too? The mere fact that women take career breaks when they have children, and men do not is the clearest demonstration of patriarchy there is.
Perhaps you should take a long hard look at the world and your sense of entitlement before declaring "misogyny doesn't exist".
Also, this is OUR space. I'm reclaiming it for reasoned debate and discussion. Take your inflammatory and hostile comments elsewhere. We don't want them here! #silentnomore
What amazes me even more is the sheer number of women who'll descend to this level of viciousness in the commentaries they make when they enter that door. Perhaps they've been beaten down so long that they have come to the point of affirmation of the nonsense they've taken in, processed as perhaps reality so then express that craziness outward, thinking they are speaking truth.
I read some comments because most of them are like the impending train wreck, I can't keep my eyes off it. But then, like you, I see the carnage wreaked and I turn away in disgust and a sense of hopelessness. Don't bother trying to have civil, much less intelligent discourse there. That is only infinitismally a possibility.
I agree that many women have 'hidden away' for a quiet life. I'm always amazed at how my apparently strong feminist friends morph into wishy washy surrendered wives when their man is present. So much for living a life congruent with your beliefs. That double life just doesn't work. If you buy into it you end up living a life of quiet desperation. True liberation is speaking with your true voice, whatever the consequences. Thank you for being one such woman.


text:
Crocs Offers Ugly Forecast
Updated from 4/14/08
Crocs (CROX), the Niwot, Colo., sandals maker, slashed its estimates for the first quarter and 2008, citing a slowdown in consumer spending.
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For the first quarter, Crocs expects revenue of $195 million to $200 million. Previously, it was looking for sales of $225 million. Crocs also no longer expects the profit of 46 cents a share it had predicted. Now, it says it will post a bottom line between break-even and a loss of 5 cents.
Why Crocs Got Skinned
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making my way to the field after long time.
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Raises for state managers Increases for 2,100 non-union employees to cost $15 million
Associated Press
HARTFORD — About 2,100 non-union state managers and about 90 appointees in Connecticut state government will soon get a pay raise.
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