Bhutto's Questions for Global warming

It has been snowy and beautiful here and I’ve had lots of time to think. I have been thinking about the issues raised by Bhutto’s assassination in terms of planning for sustainability.

She was killed because some people thought she would threaten their territorial plans. That is an animal behavioral response when habitat is at stake, as it is with global warming affecting huge swathes of the world now.

The work I've done over the past two years with the Virtual Concerts, has clarified connections between global patterns of geopolitical tensions, global warming and animal-behavioral territorial drives. I have opinions but no clear agenda to design strategies to address the questions I’m pondering. I’d love to hear from anyone who has also been alarmed, as I am about the implications for a clear analysis of global sustainability.

Allan Kaprow's Ice

Zach Rockwell's class at the Cooper Union recreated Allan Kaprow's ice sculpture, "Fluids," in downtown Manhattan, in back of the school, last week. he invited em tow rite about it on his blog. I did.

Watching Fluids melt brought up memories of the many conversations in and out of class and for years afterwards, that I had with Allan over thirty-five years. Those conversations had ranged from psychology to politics to formalism to the works of others. If Allan had been alive, I might have asked him what it was like to make Fluids on a cold November day on New York City concrete as compared to a hot summer day in Pasadena?

We might have compared what people wore on each occasion and what it means to handle ice half naked in the sun vs bundled in warm layers of swathing. We might have discussed at length, the difference between the smell of perspiration from sweating workers in 1967 vs the smells of New York City in the age of global warming. And we might have talked of the pollution swathed in frozen water.

The day of the 2007 Fluids event, Coryl Crane Kaprow and I discussed the pristine water in Swizerland that was specially made for that version of the Fluids event. We thought Allan would have preferred the funkier NYC version. If I’d met the Fluids-workers, I might have asked the class what they thought about the irony of ice melting on the streets when ice is melting at the poles into floods around the world? To myself, I pondered the trickle of water surrounding Fluids compared to the floods that will take coastlines everywhere in just a few years. I kept waiting for a dog to pee on the ice but then it was surrounded by yellow tape and that was the end of my fantasy of yellow translucence.

If I’d eavesdropped on the students talking during or after the making, I might have made comparisons with our discussions three decades past, many of which remain vivid in my mind still. Perhaps it was fairest to both that I didn’t. Still, I would have liked to have had a glimpse of what was experienced this time around, as a student myself of their Fluids.

I wondered what kind of gloves you all wore for the work and what was the take-away? My mood that day was wistful for innocence and Allan. We were all so committed to immediacy and impermanence then. It was a double-edged sword. I’m glad it was all documented, both times: ice at the end of the Hippie era vs ice in the beginning of the Age of Global Warming.

Coryl and I took endless photos of the details of the ice as it transformed, melting and refreezing while we discussed Allan's conflicts and solutions over recreating work he never meant to repeat and how he resolved that by expecting it to be a new invention- if he was clever about his instructions. I considered how Allan taught me to build a performative structure that has that resilience to what is uncontrollable. The next day Coryl & I were still talking about the Zen of relinquishment, the discipline of choices.

That Saturday afternoon, as twilight fell, we headed down to Queens for "18 Happenings." As the ice disappeared from my line of sight, we decided to stop at Starbucks. I gratefully held hot tea to my hands and we descended into the earth below Manhattan to take the subway. My take away is a memory from my father, shortly before he died, quoting from Latin, "tempus mutandis..." Time changes everything, including Fluids.

The West, the country, the future

Last week in the New York Times Magazine section, there was an article by Jon Gertner: The Perfect Drought. Halfway thru the article, which referenced how the combination of subsidence fueled by over-population, profligacy and global warming were resulting in imminent water shortages out west in this country, someone was quoted as saying that this could not be called a drought anymore than one referred to weather in the Sahara as a drought. In other words, things have already irrevocably changed.

Friday, as part of a symposium at Rutgers ("The F Word Symposium"), I was speaking to people about how I deal with the emotional impact of the current barrage of information about global warming disaster. I had just shown the dvd that was produced for the Venice Beinnale and the Weather Report show in Boulder about comparing several global sites in the era of global warming. An image I had generated was discussed on the the dvd with Dr. Jim White, my collaboator. I had just referred to how we (the USA) are going to be a very little (and isolated) country in the path of arctic melt and desertification. In the discussion period at Rutgers, I said I was fine as long as I was "in" the work of addressing the problem. When I step back, I resort to a variety of personal solutions, from 12-step programs to taking a nap.

This morning, I woke with the uncomfortable thought that if terrorists target American port cities, as Los Angeles & New York City, as they have no doubt already figured out, granted the diplomatic unpopularity fostered by this administration, we will not only be small and isolated and in some places water starved and stressed with massive migrations (as will the rest of the world) but also may not have access to the kind of cheap food we have enjoyed in the USA for generations.

If, as many scientists are now coming out and saying, we have perhaps 3 years to make drastic changes, then as far as acting on any of those changes, on a policy level, we will likely squander half that tiny window of opportunity as long as this administration is in place.

So then I think about business models. Because not everyone is as stupid as the White House. In business, it seems the cleverest people take the longest to make their plans and position themselves for action. Osama Bin Laden is a smart business man.

So I am going to take a cue from that and plan on planning. I have been doing a lot of writing off my blog lately, some of which will be in a couple books that will come out early 2008. In those writings, besides repeating over and over that there is a positive model to be seen in how terrorists planned 9/11: to use minimal means for maximum effect. I have also been writing about the potential effect of viral virtuality. It is not something I know how to do, but perhaps Gore does. He mobilized 1 billion people for a concert to draw attention to Global Warming. these are models to consider. Margaret Mead famously admonished us never to underestimate the power of a few determined people. Terrorists took that to heart. Others can. With the help of the internet and a little planning, it may just save our skins to remember those models. I know I will remember and be thinking about what to do next for maximum impact with minimal means.

Meanwhile, I think I'll take a short nap.

Following up the Work

I always imagined that one big blast of insight & vision would transform the world I know. I know better now. Before and after, there are endless phone calls, notes and paperwork to fill out. Offers come in to participate in events and appear at important places with important people, without much recompense and I have to thread my way diplomatically and prudently thru the priorities of what I believe in.

Meanwhile chunks of ice fall into the warming oceans, more polar bears die and penguins may be extinct in the wild soon. And here, back home I need to be sure my bills are still paid on time, my car gets fixed, my animals are happy and I have a chance to recuperate from exhaustion to have another day of work completed, one day at a time.

I have been keeping this blog, albeit intermittently, for almost two years and have gone from feeling like only a few of us are shreiking alarms in the wilderness of global warming, to knowing that millions are now concerned and confused. But the news keeps getting grimmer and more urgent every day.

Today, nation's leaders met at the UN in NYC. Bush was "too busy" to attend. Ahem, no comment. Except to say that any child born in the free world uses 25 times the resources of any child born in the third world.

Bush believes in "voluntary compliance" to address global warming. That only works when perpetrators actually feel the pain they inflict on others. As Bush dickers over the fine print on medically insuring children in this country, the same day he was "too busy" to show up to discuss global warming with his peers, I wonder, does he feel ANY pain, for anything or anyone? And if that indifference is his model for voluntary compliance, then the very words are meaningless. Half the work of following up global warming is in the heart and the spirit.

Backing off from the Tipping Point?

Today, in the Arts & Leisure section of the NY Times, on page 35, Claire Dederer wrote an article about the new show my work is in: "Looking for Inspiration in the Melting Ice." The show is at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (bmoca.org), and is terrific: 51 artists and a fabulous catalog.

For almost five months, I did little except work on preparing my collaborative project for this show: "Trigger Points/ Tipping Points," which was also shown at the Venice Beinnale. The work was with Dr. Jim White, for "Weather Report," curated by Lucy Lippard for the BMoCA and opened Sept 14.

I took the train there and back, did two "Virtual Concerts" the week I was there aboutt he show and now am reflecting on what was accomplished besides the work, which I'm proud of. Dr. White and I created a project comparing a series of conflict zones in river deltas: Darfur, Bangladesh and New Orleans, to understand the relationship to global warming. We posed various questions to eachother and studied research and mapping to analyze data.

There is one lingering question now, are there actions we might take, now that we are in the rock bottom baseline point that will tip us into disaster with in the next five years, to forestall utter calamity of hundreds of millions more people and species than are already devastated?

AK7's , Population Control & Global warming

communityarts.org just had a little blurb about the Virtual Concerts and today's guest, Gary Machlis. http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/index.php . It gave me an opportunity to check out what they are up to. I subscribed and encourage others to also because it is so informative about liberal issue events.

Machlis has been working collaboratively on “Human Ecosystem” modeling and the ecology of war. One of his points was that besides the zero pop. Growth issue and consumption, there is the problem of food distribution and the obstacles of constraining ideologies. He spoke to the idea of cascading effects in predictive modeling- ie., minimize labor to get clean water = free time to educate women & allow them to open small businesses = cultural change (challenge to ideology?); engaging with/ educating military systems re: distribution of AK7’s to African children, etc. Interesting & provocative stuff…

International Options

For the past Spring, I have been experiencing a prolonged emergence of fragrances, as the unseasonably cool & wet weather has left me drunk every morning before breakfast. every morning, my acupuncture- revived elderly dying dog & I take early walks, inhaling with every step to the tune of the birds. Eden today.

But all is not well in Eden, I am always aware of the fragility of this corner of the universe. Energy and human conflict preoccupy me.

In conversations with Dr Jim White of Instaar & Univ CO recently, the issue of serious trade-offs has come up repeatedly. There are NO simple solutions to the energy-global warming crisis. Any of the "solutions" to global warming-carbon emissions so far, have profoundly disturbing "side-effects," inc ocean carbon sequestration, for example.

The brick wall we keep coming up against is population increase= unsustainable energy demands. Every "solution" comes in conflict with finite resources and some vulnerable population-species-resource suffers unconscionably.

These conversations will be part of "Weather Report" for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulder, CO as well as at the Joseph Beuys Event Sept 6 @ the Venice Bienale.

In energy & human terms, I am interested in the gray areas of mixing up solutions. On my island, we are considering wind energy and the state of Maine is exploring tidal power. As most of you know, I try not to fly and now conduct much of my collaborative work virtually. In that vein of gray areas, I’m interested in the implications of the work of the artists cited below:

From Stockholm, Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Leif Elggren at the Venice Bienale:

“in 1992 they decided to declare themselves kings of their own country, one made up completely of the borders between other countries: the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea; the blue line between Lebanon and Israel; the porous line between Mexico and the United States.”

“In many cases their vast, far-flung territories can be measured only in conceptual terms, just as thousands of infinitesimal, invisible lines exist only on maps and in international law. Wherever borders are disputed, the lands of Elgaland-Vargaland can be measured in actual miles: its land, in other words, is no man’s land, the places that don’t quite belong to anyone.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/09/arts/design/09bien.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Conversely, I am appalled at the recent proposal from the UK, for academic institutions to blackball Israeli academics. I have been equally dismayed by the global silence in response. In these times, we need infinitely MORE dialog, not less.

From a colleague there:

“At the moment things here in Britain are spinning out of control … All of this is obviously very worrying for me, but also for everyone else studying here because the boycott attempt that the UCU (University & College Union) is currently running against Israeli institutions and academics seriously threatens academic freedom in this country. As you can probably imagine, the consequences of such a boycott will seriously affect my studies and those of many other people here. I hope that you will support my quest to oppose this boycott and to signal that there is opposition to this crazy idea of discriminating against academics merely because of their nationality. I know that there are many political opinions amongst you, but this is not a political question, but rather one of freedom of expression.

I would be very thankful if you would sign the following petition and forward it to all your friends, so that this initiative can become successful in achieving its aim of stopping the boycott: http://www.petitiononline.com/stopucu/petition.html “