Active Socioplastics
Grace's diary of discovery
James Reid: Alienation
Jimmy Reid Rectorial Speech, Glasgow University
Still so relevant 40 years later!
Some extracts;
“…..If modern technology requires greater and larger productive units, let’s make our wealth-producing resources and potential subject to public control and to social accountability. Let’s gear our society to social need, not personal greed. Given such creative re-orientation of society, there is no doubt in my mind that in a few years we could eradicate in our country the scourge of poverty, the underprivileged, slums, and insecurity.
….In this context education has a vital role to play. If automation and technology is accompanied as it must be with a full employment, then the leisure time available to man will be enormously increased. If that is so, then our whole concept of education must change. The whole object must be to equip and educate people for life, not solely for work or a profession. The creative use of leisure, in communion with and in service to our fellow human beings, can and must become an important element in self-fulfilment.”
Love: fear management
The Secret to Intimacy, so interesting hear that love is also about fear management
Love, sex and attachment a fascinating On Being podcast with Helen Fisher
‘The { } And‘ an interactive documentary that shows what happens when couples are completly honest with each other.
Camilo José Vergara
Camilo José Vergara’s photographic documentation of Americas slums and decaying urbanism is fascinating. A trained sociologist with a specialism in urbanism, Vergara systematical documents places at the point of urban decay.
In this great interview he explains whyhe photographs buildings, people and decay.
VERGARA: Not in the sense that I want them to fill the frame. I want them as part of the city, as part of the block. I want it to be seen that there is someone that’s walking around. Partly to give you scale and partly to show that the places are inhabited, because you know, certainly people still live there.
But the problem with people, on focusing with people, is that they are very demonstrative. And their clothes reflect the time, and their games they play and their expressions, all of that: they’re important from a historical point of view. But the buildings speak more eloquently about the time passing than the people themselves. I mean, what do you see? You see a face?
One of my big surprises was to walk into a room of Roman heads at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And I looked at those heads and I said, “These folks lived 2000 years ago.” And they just looked like the folks out on the street, you know? So then what can you say about the city by focusing on faces, expressions, their delight? I mean faces are interesting; I’m not against portrait photography. But portrait photography doesn’t tell the story of a city.
….
STAVANS: Now very few photographers bring out their work in the fashion that you do. You put the photographs in books, and you editorialize the context in which those photographs came about– or your experience of the place– by creating a narrative that mixes the autobiographical with the sociological-anthropological-historical. And so more than small captions, you have an entire story about it. Is that how you photograph, thinking how that image is going to sit in a larger book?
VERGARA: I photograph thinking that the places themselves are going to tell me a story eventually. And they do. The story needs time so that it can tell itself. And I need to go there frequently enough so that I can get that story.
Now the elements of the story are, on the one hand, the building and whatever is happening to the building: who is using it, for what purpose, what is falling, what’s being fixed, how? Is the City boarding it up? How is it boarding it up? Is it using tin, is it using wood? Who is doing this sort of stuff? Are they putting a fence around it? All of those things.
And then the other element of the narrative is what people tell you about that building: what’s going on inside. How do they perceive it? What’s their idea of the building? See, they are allowed to say that “this is a darn shame that that library is abandoned.” But I’m not allowed to say that.
STAVANS: I see, you let those voices tell the story.
VERGARA: Yes.
Don’t ask where I’m from, ask where I’m a local
This talk really made me think. It’s a much a better question than where are you from?
I’m always fascinated by the young people I do workshops with, quite a few are from different ethnic groups, they love asking me where are you from? And when I ask back they always say “I’m from Glasgow but my parents are from…”
The question “where are you from?” often gives us a preformed picture of the person. However, identity is a fluid thing. It’s often more influenced by the cultures we are familiar with than place. Even individual places within a country have very differing identities. So asking “where are you local?” gives us a better picture of who the person is and what their cultural references are.
Where am I a local? I’m local to Glasgow, via London growing up, birthplace in Nigeria and brief stint in Vienna :).
Brian Eno John Peel lecture
Notes from Brian Eno John Peel Lecture
The way I work is not to set a goal and reach for it but what i do anyway and how I can make use of it
Exploring the idea of the arts as an economics entity
- Is art only a luxury?
- Is there a way you can create a situation in which the arts flourish?
Rethink how we talk about culture. What are we doing when we make & consume art
Definition- Culture the creative arts. Art is everything that you don’t have to do. Essential need we do with interest, highly and carefully stylised.
What is it for?
Children start world building very young. Empathy comes from imagination, humans can imagine whole worlds.
Children learn through play adults play through art.
Culture- collective conversation
Senius talent of a community
Genius talent of individual
ecosystems, richly interconnected, co dependent, no hierachy
New ideas articulated by individuals but generated by community
Altruism generosity towards the future
We’re moving from scarcity and economics of scarcity and competition to an era of abundance and co-operation. What are we going to do? We’re going through change faster than ever before. resynchronise with each other, adventurous mind games about different things. Share resources. Altruism, writers like William MacKaskell. Constantly remoulding ourselves. We work out our actions in relation to everybody else. Art and Culture is central to this.
dancing in the street barbara ehrenreich
