Each day for a year, starting on September 1, 2007, Superfund365 visited one toxic site in the Superfund program run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We began the journey in the New York City area and worked our way across the country, ending the year in Hawaii.
Today the archive consists of 365 visualizations of some of the worst toxic sites in the U.S., roughly a quarter of the total number on the Superfund’s National Priorities List (NPL).
via [ OurWorld 2.0 ] “Mapping critical politics: a land use expert talks tar sands” By Max Ritts
The late geographer Bernard Nietschmann once observed that “more indigenous territory has been claimed by maps than by guns”. Whether or not you agree that more can be taken back with maps, it is hard to overestimate the role of representations in the shaping of collective understandings and modes of possible intervention in political struggle.
Land use maps can have a number of applications. In many countries, they are prepared by government agencies, for a variety of reasons, or by individual groups and organizations. Often, land use maps are made publicly available for the benefit of those interested in land use trends. These maps can also become important in zoning and property disputes. Read more…
via [ Chicago Tribune ] “An inside look at an outsider - Self-taught artist gets exposure for better or worse through filmmakers, gallery” By Joel Hood
Trains rumble in the distance, cars and trucks rush by on the highway, but inside the house on Hemlock Street the everyday world seems a very distant place.
The stink of mildew hangs in the air as one gingerly steps around empty cardboard boxes, piles of trash, soiled carpet scraps and bits of broken furniture. The walls are cluttered with religious relics, faded newspaper clippings, poetry and quotes from the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mark Twain.
The home’s windows were long ago boarded up with plywood, the only light now emanating from two teetering bulbs and a gaping hole in the roof where a violent storm once blew through.
This is the ramshackle existence of Peter Anton, 79, a retired, lifelong East Chicago, Ind., resident whose peculiar story and unusual art are creating a buzz in Chicago’s growing “outsider art” community.
A showcase of Anton’s vivid paintings of obscure people, places and things is on display at Intuit, Chicago’s Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, in the River West neighborhood, through December. A documentary about his decades as a children’s art teacher and street artist, as well as his complicated private life, could be completed next year. A book may even be in the works. Read more…
These past many years have been emotionally traumatic for me. And last winter, I got hit again hard with the neglect of my studio and the lost of much of the last four-years of work. Since then I have been trying to be realistically positive and slowly work myself back into the studio. During the spring I worked mostly from my laptop. I posted to this blog. I participated in Paul Sargent’s show “Precious Cargo” (with many thanks to Paul), and the US Social Forum in Detroit, and I spoke a several times about my work and impacts on my community.
Recently, I made a stronger commitment to reenter my studio to rebuild it. I couldn’t just clean it up - I had to change it. In the process I found old work scattered, damaged and thought lost as my life was preoccupied with more pressing issues and wasn’t strong enough to hold and preserve them. It is nice to find them.
This week I tore into the second floor and knocked out a few walls to open up the space. I would love to cathedral the ceiling but I don’t have the money to do any of this - I just have to do something. We will see how things go.
The Idiotic Building is a miniature book about following all of your “idiotic” dreams, as told through the story of New York City’s first skyscraper. At 13 stories tall, the Tower Building seemed so ludicrous to people that they nicknamed it the Idiotic Building and waited for it to fall. It never did, paving the way for greater heights for decades to come. I felt compelled to make the book after hearing its brief mention in New York: A Documentary Film. The 53-page book also ends with a flip-book-like timeline of the world’s tallest buildings through history and serves as a fun introduction to architecture.
Ingredients; One layer of determined activist over a layer of obediently angry army men, and a layer of camera people (to give it that worldly flavor) with a bulldozer on-top!
Emily Henochowicz is the American artist/activist, who lost her eye during clashes with Israeli troops at the Kalandia checkpoint between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem yesterday, Monday, May 31, 2010.
“Activism as a Genre of Art” is a nice idea but difficult to follow to its logical end when the opposition is willing to exert it’s interests with overwhelming violent means.
Are you willing to give your eye, your hand, your hearing, or your voice to your cause?
Justice is one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history. Nearly one thousand students pack Harvard’s historic Sanders Theatre to hear Professor Sandel talk about justice, equality, democracy, and citizenship. Now it’s your turn to take the same journey in moral reflection that has captivated more than 14,000 students, as Harvard opens its classroom to the world.
This course aims to help viewers become more critically minded thinkers about the moral decisions we all face in our everyday lives.
In this 12-part series, Sandel challenges us with difficult moral dilemmas and asks our opinion about the right thing to do.
He then asks us to examine our answers in the light of new scenarios. The result is often surprising, revealing that important moral questions are never black and white.
Sorting out these contradictions sharpens our own moral convictions and gives us the moral clarity to better understand the opposing views we confront in a democracy.
