Our Daily Bread

Official Website for Our Daily Bread

Director Nikolaus Geyrhalter has made a film that is as cool and unblinking as the machine that is our industrial food production industry. Cute little chicks are seen moving on conveyor belts like so many soda bottles, pigs legs are lobbed off and intestines separated by bored, machine like workers. Devoid of dialogue the films moves from one scene to the next engrossing as it is gross. In some ways this film shows just how natural our abuse of the natural world is; actions taken without remorse, just one life form feeding on another. Whether we fit into the web of life is another question. Watch this for a window into a world that ends on all our plates.

This excerpt starts out slow but stick with it. You will be surprised at what emerges from this sterile lab-like room. More excerpts are available on You Tube.

Speech as Art

This "special comment" transcends its medium to become art- pure and simple. I place it beside MLK's "I have a Dream" speech.

Prix Pictet Contest Winners- Photos on Global Water Crisis

Photo by Roman Signer

Check out this powerful video that shows the winning photos from the new sustainability photography award:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7701187.stm

Long Silent Voices Uniting in Chorus

I took a group of students to DC this October and one of our stops included The Torpedo Factory. Wandering through the complex and around the thousands of children and their parents actively making art during an open house, I discovered woodcut printer, Rosemary Covey, and her 0 Project (That's "Zero" Project.) Starting with a single image of a person speaking out / howling in protest / or being silenced - you choose, she has created an ever evolving installation and performance piece that is inspiring and exciting. She writes that the projects goals include:

."....express(ing) voicelessness but also the inverse, a howl of protest. The project demands response and response has come from sources worldwide—from musicians, writers, artists, photographers and others. In a very real way, their reactions are extensions of the artwork itself. And as the project develops, their reactions build on each other as well as on the artwork. One response is modified or amplified by another, and so on. Inevitably the project multiplies in the same endless manner as the original 0 art work. The project is designed to demonstrate that when art acts as a catalyst and invites responses, the ensuing dialogue becomes a form of art in itself."

I hope Covey can bring this project to the next Visualizing Human Rights Conference at UNC-Asheville next November. Until then check out the project's progress at http://rosemaryfeitcovey.com/0/

Visualizing Human Rights Conference

The Center for Global Initiatives at UNC Chapel Hill is hosting a conference billed as an anti-conference on Human Rights and the Arts. Called Visualizing Human Rights #1, this event will bring together artists whose work addresses human rights issues in unique and profound ways. A wide variety of media will be featured including documentary film, printmaking, performance, painting, installation, and photography. Go to http://cgi.unc.edu/vhr/ to register. If all goes well we will hold a bigger event next year at UNC-Asheville.

1,000 doors!

I have neglected this poor lonely blog for months now. My wife and I have been busy volunteering for the Obama Campaign every weekend. We have been part of a group that has knocked on over 1,000 doors, encouraging and speaking up for Change. My wife canvased one last time this past weekend while I was out with a youth group I help advise. Next we plan to help with driving folks to the poles, and voting, and holding our breath to see if it falls our way on November 4th.

My first Movie

I would appreciate any feedback you would like to give on my first imovie attempt. This one is an overview of my art projects. I plan to make more that document specific projects and will also incorporate video. Thanks for your feedback here.

Lost and Found?

Right after September 11, 2001 I wrote a short creed of what I believed in most. It was my best effort to pull myself out of feeling of despair and depression over a world gone mad. I tacked it to my office door and went on with life. I lost it after several years and recently found it again. I share it on this anniversary of 9/11 with a question or two weighing heavily on my mind; have we as a nation declared what we most believe in, or have we lost something?

My Creed

To always live a life full of love,
wonder and enthusiasm.

To listen for God's voice within me and
follow in Christ's example.

To be thankful.

To nurture others.

To create art that speaks to truth and beauty.

To be a faithful husband and parent,
inspiring teacher,
and lasting friend.

To be the best at what I do
and to learn from life.

To live my life without regret, fear, or malice
and to always remember
that love alone will carry me
across The Great River.

Fresh, Wild Eyes

Catherine Chalmers creates fresh, insightful, sometimes disturbing and always beautiful images of animal life. I saw her installation Safari at a recent show title "In and Around the Garden" at the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, NC. This video enraptured myself and those around me as we traveled along at a bug's eye level with creatures like salamanders, spiders, roaches, flies, and frogs. Better than any National Geographic Special from my childhood, I was transported into a wild world so foreign yet filled with such "familiar" characters. Reading the documentation on the exhibit I discovered that all the scenes were shot in her New York City loft; what a conceptually cool addition to a visually well made work of art. Check out her Website for more.

Update: Catherine has informed me that she has a larger show titled the entire American Cockroach project, of which Safari is a part, showing at the Boise Art Museum. You can see Safari in context with the rest of her workby taking a look at http://gallery.me.com/catherinechalmers

Meeting Ourselves in Meeting David Wilson

Searching the dial, I heard the familiar Tarheel accent come across the radio speaking of slavery. My back tightened uncontrollably. "Great." I thought "another argument on how the Civil War wasn't about slavery." Quickly, another voice entered the discussion, an African-American voice. Soon I learned both men had the same name, David Wilson, and were related historically as the relatives of an enslaved family and the family of their owners. What followed was a considered and balanced discussion on our heavy heritage we all carry in South.

Both David Wilsons had participated in creating a unique documentary titled "Meeting David Wilson" on the still lingering effects of slavery. The black David Wilson had uncovered his roots to slavery in Rokingham and Wilkes Counties, North Carolina and had the courage to come back and confront that heritage. What he found was a man that contradicted his own stereotypes. The White David Wilson is a thoughtful, kind, and carefully considering participant in this rediscovery. His qualified love of his family and his hope for a better world come across in this video. The Black David Wilson is equally intelligent and searching as he experiences unfamiliar territory and crosses lines drawn by race all too old and ready for erasing.

This is a ice breaking documentary worth buying, seeing, and sharing. That it happened in my own back yard makes it intriguing without lessening its universal importance. Its bravery and obvious longing for a better world make it eternally appealing.

Happy Birthday - What's Your Favorite?

This blog is one year old this month. I started it as a way to reach out and decrease my own sense of insulation I often feel as an activist artist. Searching for other artists making art with a social or ecological focus became a hobby. Soon I found other many wonderful things going on, some in my own back yard. Today, I have friends and contacts all over the world and do not feel so alone.

That community has resulted in good things;I am currently working with a group from across the state of North Carolina to pull of a conference of Human Rights and the Arts. Called an Anti-conference on Visualizing Human Rights it will be held on November 22nd, 2008, in the Global Education Center at UNC Chapel Hill. Artists from a wide range of mediums will share their activist art and working processes; students will share their own efforts, and face to face networking will abound. We hope to make this an annual event and move it to a national scale next year. I will provide links to the conference here as soon as they are created.

So what is your favorite entry on this blog from the past year? Mine is the kindergarten class dreaming for a better world.

I look forward to taking this blog into its "terrible twos", a year energized by new beginnings (only four more months!) and new focus on making the world a better place. Thanks for fulfilling the important role of reader.

Unconditional Love.....

"On September 11th, 2006, I packed my bags and headed to New York City for the 5th Anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Knowing that emotions would be running high on all sides of the political spectrum, I took a sign that encompassed the only thing I knew to be true: Unconditional Love is Global Security." - Bri Olson

Octavio Jones Photo Story on NC Migrant Conditions

Octavio Jones is a student at Randolph Community College and has taken some moving photos of migrant workers living conditions in North Carolina. Great job Octavio of showing the side on North Carolina that most of us never see. Click here and then press the play triangle to see and hear his photo essay.

287g: 1900 style

Watch this sad excerpt from Marko William's Documentary "Banished" on You Tube.

This Trains Gotta Stop!

The Quaker Service Committee's protest against the War, Eyes Wide Open, came to Greensboro several years ago. I along with my family visited the Old Downtown Depot ( recently remodeled ) to see this moving and sad installation. I just found a panorama online of this installation. The singing in the background makes it seem like a holy place. As each US death was marked with one pair of boots, today it could never fit within the depot. Along the outer edge children's and women's shoes were stacked in chaos to represent the civilian deaths. Today, they would need a mountain of shoes to do justice to their memory.

Be sure to direct your mouse upward to look upward at this amazing train station. I have been here to say goodbye to my son as he boarded the train to go to college. I cannot fathom the sadness of the parents who came here, to this memorial, to say goodbye once more to a loved one. This trains gotta stop, Mr. President.