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Book review: Great Adaptations. In the shadow of a climate crisis

Great Adaptations. In the shadow of a climate crisis, by Morgan Phillips, co-director of the charity The Glacier Trust, an NGO that works towards climate change adaptation in Nepal. The book was published by Arkbound.

Official blurb: There are great ways to adapt to the climate crisis that confronts us, but there are disastrous ways too. In this book, Morgan Phillips takes us from the air-conditioned pavements of Doha and the ‘cool rooms’ of Paris, to the fog catchers of Morocco and the agro-foresters of Nepal. He makes an often-neglected topic engaging and relatable at precisely the moment the climate movement is waking up to it. A just transition is at stake. Great Adaptations is a provocation, an invitation, and an urgent call to action. If we don’t shape what adaptation is, someone else will.

With just the 1.2°C of warming experienced so far, climate change is already destroying millions of (human and non-human) lives. Sadly, many climate experts believe that temperatures are likely to continue rising in the coming decades, bringing unlivable heatwaves, floods and drought.

Morgan Phillips firmly believes that pursuing mitigation won’t be enough if we want to avert a further increase in widespread extreme weather. Mitigation measures will have to be paired with strategies of adaptation.

Climate Action analytics and NewClimate Institute

Great Adaptations covers the most inspiring and the most misguided of twenty-first century adaptations. They are being implemented by individuals, communities, businesses, institutions, governments but also by animals. The book explores the forms adaptations will take and their possible knock-on effects: if we prioritise our own adaptation needs over the wider needs of others (including other species), we might aggravate inequality, injustice and environmental degradation.

One of the many compelling examples of adaptation that Phillips gives is air conditioning in rich areas of the world. Qatar enthusiastically air-conditions stadiums, hotels and even pavements, street cafés and outdoor shopping malls thanks to its abundant supply of fossil fuel energy. Qatar thus practices what the author calls “climate change maladaptation.”

The city of Paris has adopted a radically different approach by extending the opening hours of swimming pools and parks and by making available a series of cool rooms where people who cannot afford air-conditioning can have access to cooler temperatures. Unlike Qatar’s all-air-co strategy, Paris’ measures to deal with extreme heat are communal, accessible to all and do not exacerbate climate disruption nor inequalities amongst citizens.

A wildfire on Evia island, Greece, as the region endures its worst heatwave in decades, which experts have linked to the climate crisis. Photo: Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP/Getty Images, via

Helicopter delivering snow for the sky station in Luchon-Superbagnères, France, in 2020. Photo: Anne-Christine POUJOULAT — AFP

Other examples of maladaptation include ski resorts in the European Alps using snow cannons to spray fake snow over slopes or the rather baffling choice of Luchon-Superbagnères in the French Pyrenees to transport by helicopters snow from high altitudes down to the slopes. These strategies are not only energy-intensive and CO2-emitting, they also help to maintain an impression of normality, a feeling that significant changes to our comfortable and entertained lifestyle aren’t yet needed.

Dar Si Hmad’s CloudFisher. Photo via Atlas of the future

Because fighting for the future of the planet means you have to scare people but also give them a reason to be hopeful and act, Phillips has plenty of uplifting stories of virtuous adaptation up his sleeve. He explains how, in Aït Baâmrane, on the edge of the rapidly expanding Sahara Desert in Morocco, a local NGO called Dar Si Hmad has developed an innovative climate change adaptation project. It involves Fog Harvesting, a simple technology that uses nets or mesh in fog prone locations to catch the humidity as it rolls uphills and channel it into a pipe that brings the drinking water to nearby homes and fields. The technical success has an added social dimension: local women can use the extra time they now have to learn agroecology techniques and attend workshops to improve their digital and literacy skills.

Philipps is often brutally honest. For example, when he explains that many adaptations have been conceived under an assumption that climate change will progress slowly and incrementally, while everything else remains broadly the same. But what if climate change escalates abruptly and ruthlessly? A growing number of people in the climate movement are advancing the idea that ‘Western’ civilisation is on a fast pace to self- destruction. The author’s feeling is that, to have any hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change, ‘Western’ civilisation needs to be disassembled with care and replaced with new, more ecological, just and climate-safe civilisations (plural!)

Elsewhere the author warns against governments’ reassuring stories and in particular their plans to reach Net Zero by 2050 and limit global heating to well below 2°C while relying on almost exponential growth. This “green growth” would in part be made possible thanks to a suite of innovations known as Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs). You know the ones: they siphon excess carbon dioxide out of the air or they involve planting billions of trees while continuing to burn the rainforest in Brazil, DRC or Indonesia. NETs stories are of great comfort but most are neither scalable nor just.

Great Adaptations. In the shadow of a climate crisis is a compact, compelling book. The text flows, the examples are engaging and the design of the publication is lively and fresh. Phillips is rather good at balancing the depressing and the inspirational. Even better, he doesn’t refrain from being a bit political. He warns against adaptation as a top-down process, adaptation that is done for us, for our own good, by politicians and tech innovators, and without too much questioning of our socio-economic systems. His words certainly resonate on this first day of the COP26

The book is not prescriptive. It doesn’t provide the readers with DIY solutions and fail-safe answers. It does however encourage its readers to imagine different, bold and systemic visions of the future that would respect both social and ecological justice. Maybe art has a role to play here?

Image on the homepage: the Eagle Creek wildfire. Photograph: Kristi McCluer/Reuters.

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FIRE Advice for Federal Employees and Other Government Workers

The post FIRE Advice for Federal Employees and Other Government Workers appeared first on Budgets Are Sexy.

Yo, yo! Happy Monday money nerds! Today we’ve got a celebrity guest blogger — Sam a.k.a “Gov Worker” — who runs a kick ass FIRE blog that helps government/federal employees work towards financial independence. What I love most about Sam is his attitude toward his job. It’s a refreshing change from the common complainy-pants people […]

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Angel Investing … Maybe Not the Best Idea

The post Angel Investing … Maybe Not the Best Idea appeared first on Budgets Are Sexy.

Good morning, guys! Happy Friday!! I have a confession to make. I’ve been a naughty investor. I just entered into a highly speculative, extremely risky, might-never-see-my-money-back-again kind of investment. It was only a modest amount (not gambling the whole farm or anything!), given to a start-up finance company I learned about recently. The reason I’m […]

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Foto/Industria. The political, technological and cultural dimensions of food

The exciting city of Bologna and a biennial dedicated to photography on Industry and Work. Say no more, I’m in!

This year’s edition of the Foto/Industria biennial explores the food industry and its complex connections to wider questions of philosophy, politics, history, science and technology, culture, economy. Mixing archive material and contemporary photography, the works selected cover a period of a century. The time frame allows visitors to get a sense of the evolution in the food industry, in our relationship to it but also in photography’s approach to food.

Bernard Plossu, Hollywood, California, 1980

Jan Groover, Laboratory of Forms. Exhibition view at MAMbo. Photo: Foto/Industry

I’ll start this quick overview of the 11 exhibitions of the biennial with a body of work that reveals the massive gap between, on the one hand, our perception of a food system based on ancestral agricultural and farming practices with cows grazing in the meadow, jolly farmers on tractors bringing vegetables to local markets and, on the other hand, a reality made of the advanced technologies, stringent hygiene and safety controls and increased volumes of production.

Henk Wildschut, Prototype, Myne Food processing technology, Amsterdam

The result of 3 years of fieldwork and research in The Netherlands, Henk Wildschut‘s Food shows what food manufacturing is like today: optimised, industrialised, accelerated, globalised and engineered to respond to changing demographics, accelerating climate disruptions and the need to produce within the limits of planetary boundaries.

Wildschut’s series brings to light a nuanced picture of the food industry. “I started this assignment with a notion that many people probably have: that our food production system has all kinds of failings,” he explained. “I’ve changed my mind about that. Large-scale production also means innovation, energy savings, better food quality control and even better animal welfare.”

I have my own vision of what a significant improvement of animal welfare would mean and it looks nothing like what I see on Wildschut’s images. #GoVegan and leave animals in peace if you live in a Western country.

Henk Wildschut, Stichting Wakker Dier, Amsterdam, March 2012. Animal welfare organization Wakker Dier (‘Animal Awake’) gave this breed of industrially bred broiler chickens the name ‘plofkip’ (chicken fit to burst) because of its rapid growth within six weeks from a chick to a 2.3 kilo bird, having consumed exactly 3.7 kilos of feed to get there. The chicken in the photograph is getting a health check from a vet at the request of Wakker Dier

Henk Wildschut, Brushing, Velzeboer, Middenbeemster

Henk Wildschut, Maatschap Stroo, Slootdorp, July 2012. After three weeks in the Patio module, the chicks–now a full 700 grams–are carried by a conveyor belt to the ‘ground floor’, where within three weeks they will grow to 2.5 kilos. After each cycle, the two levels are washed and disinfected. Once the manure is removed, the whole area is cleaned with a detergent and later thoroughly disinfected with a sprinkler. The process of cleaning takes three days for the Patio module and two days for the ground floor.

Henk Wildschut, Torsuis Ei, Putten, March 2012. 2,400 m2. Torsius has a total of 120,000 laying hens. Besides the standard free-range birds, the hatchery has a further 5700 organic laying hens. At Torsius there is no need to debeak the chickens; the barns are minimally lit with special high-frequency strip lighting so that the chickens are kept calm. They also have enough distractions and enough room to move. Stressed-out chickens tend to peck others, something that happens a lot less at Torsius

Henk Wildschut, Verbeek hatchery, Zeewolde, July 2012.. As for white poultry, there has been no success as of yet in achieving a clear visual distinction between the sexes. A specialized external firm is enlisted to sex these chicks. The difference can be read off in the wing feathers. One specialist can sex 25,000 chicks a day. The male chicks are carried off on a special production belt to the gassing unit

Henk Wildschut, Varkens Innovatie Centrum, Sterksel, August 2012. In the VIC (which translates as Swine Innovation Centre), Wageningen University is working with trade and industry on innovations in pig husbandry. Research on Pigsy, a toilet for pigs, began in 2012. Its development was informed by the pig’s natural behaviour. A pig usually looks first for a place to sleep and then – at a comparatively great distance away – a place to defecate. The research focuses on stimulating and facilitating this natural behaviour as much as possible within the confines of a standard company

Vivien Sansour, Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, 2019

In 2014, Palestinian artist Vivien Sansour started looking for seeds to grow baladi bandora, a drought-resistant heirloom tomato. People in her community told her there were none left. Sansour later found that a huge range of other local vegetables bred by Palestinian farmers over thousands of years for their ability to thrive in their particular geologies and climate might soon disappear if nothing was done to rescue and revive them.

Her project Palestine Heirloom Seed Library attempts to save and revive her people’s agricultural heritage threatened by the spread of Israeli settlements, by climate change, by the challenges of growing food under militarily-enforced apartheid and by the introduction of industrial methods in the 1960s that saw the adoption of hybrid seeds – sterile and dependent upon manufactured fertilisers and pesticides.

Vivien Sansour, Cauliflower harvesting season, Hebron 2020. © Vivien Sansour. Palestine Heirloom Seed Library

Sansour began crisscrossing the West Bank, searching for heirloom varieties to save and propagate not just as seed but also as cultural stories. To stimulate conversations and exchanges, the artist built a Traveling Kitchen, which can be dismounted and packed inside a car.

She firmly believes that saving ancient seed varieties means preserving cultural roots. With each seed comes a tradition, a way of life, a recipe, a set of knowledge, a story of who a community is. Palestine Heirloom Seed Library addresses thus what Boaventura de Sousa Santos has called epistemicide, a marginalisation of the knowledge and wisdom that had been in existence in the global South following the arrival of a colonising worldview.

Furthermore, heirloom seeds could actually offer a possible insurance policy against climate change. Some Palestinian varieties have remarkably drought-resistant properties that, in the context of climate change and water stress, could ensure greater food sovereignty for communities who have been living under Israeli occupation of the West Bank for decades.

Vivien Sansour, Palestine Heirloom Seed Library. Exhibition view at Palazzo Boncompagni. Photo: Foto/Industria

Vivien Sansour, Palestine Heirloom Seed Library. Exhibition view at Palazzo Boncompagni. Photo: Foto/Industria

The center of Sansour’s show in Bologna is a huge communal table covered in fresh produce to celebrate the importance of sharing food and saving both heirloom seeds and the stories that accompany them. In Palestine and everywhere around the world.

Mishka Henner, Scopes, 2021. Courtesy the Artist and Galleria Bianconi

Mishka Henner, Coronado Feeders, Dalhart, Texas. From the series Feedlots. © Mishka Henner. Courtesy of the artist and Galleria Bianconi, Milano

Mishka Henner doesn’t shoot photos. He “makes” photos by grabbing images from the web. He then appropriates them and reveals realities that would otherwise be invisible to us. This was the process he used for the three projects selected for this exhibition.

The show opens with the iconic Feedlots, a series of blowups created by stitching together hundreds of Google Earth images. Seen from afar, the images look abstract. In reality, what you see are huge cattle farms or feedlots.

Also called CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), feedlots host thousands of animals that are fed grains for the few months preceding their slaughter. In order to accelerate the growth of the livestock, their diet is “enriched” with hormones and antibiotics. Once fattened up, they are sent to the slaughterhouse.

The scale of the farming operations means that the amount of urine, manure (both tainted with the drugs fed to the animals) is massive. Further chemicals are needed to break down the waste as it collects in lagoons and drains into the soil. Different chemical cocktails explain the varying hues of each lagoon. The direct discharge of manure and the accompanying pollutants causes a serious public health risk. Feedlots have been associated with the contamination of groundwater, antibiotic resistance, air pollution and health problems suffered by farmworkers and nearby residents.

What makes Henner’s images particularly precious is that they show what should not be seen. Just like the vast majority of slaughterhouses in the USA and in Europe would not allow visitors to witness their operations, feedlots do not welcome of scrutiny of journalists and animal rights activists. So-called ag-gag laws were passed in several US states that make it illegal to photograph or document these farms. Henner somehow encountered a loophole in the legislation.

Mishka Henner, Scopes, 2021. Courtesy the Artist and Galleria Bianconi

Another series exhibited at Foto/Industrie is Scopes, which uses various videos found on YouTube and edits them to show a pig, an elephant and a lioness (at least I think it was a lioness) discovering a camera fallen from the sky, ingesting and then digesting it.

Mishka Henner, The Fertile Image, 2021. Image courtesy Foto/Industria

The third work on show is a new version of The Fertile Image. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) churn out photos of impossible animals that are the visual descendants from two parent images. The results are charming, eerie and fearsome.

It made me think of an article I read this week about the craze for lilac dogs and, more generally, all the animals we modify, commodify, crossbreed and otherwise engineer to suit our narcissistic and capitalistic imperatives. The AI-generated photos are bizarre and I wish I could share good close-ups of some of them. Unfortunately, the biennale only shared the one above and the photos I took are truly horrific.

Henner’s exhibition in Bologna is called In The Belly of the Beast. A very appropriate title for a show that explores how much the animal and mechanical worlds are trapped in an endless process of consumption, digestion and waste.

Herbert List, Favignana, 1951. The nets are raised slowly, while the men are singing an old song. The large boat has reached the many smaller boat in manner that a square is formed in which the fish are trapped

Herbert List, Favignana, 1951. The big head of the tuna is being cut off

Herbert List, Favignana, 1951. The big tuna steaks are trimmed by hand and placed into big tins

Herbert List, Favignana. Exhibition view at Palazzo Fava. Photo: Foto/industria

In 1951, Herbert List photographed the typical tuna fishing, slaughtering and processing on the Sicilian island of Favignana. In a calibrated sequence, List documents every step of the traditional tonnara practice.

There’s something almost viscous in List’s images. They recall the smell of blood and suggest the cruelty of the fishing industry but they also pay homage to the work of local communities and depict them as the last custodians of archaic knowledge.

Takashi Homma, Trails

Takashi Homma, Washington D.C. 2009/2010 © Takashi Homma

Takashi Homma is showing two projects inside the Padiglione dell’Esprit Nouveau, a small pavilion designed by Le Corbusier but built by local architects at the outskirt of Bologna in the 1970s.

Both works suggest attitudes to meat consumption that are antithetical to each other. The first one is a series of shots of McDonald’s architecture around the world. The McDonald’s aesthetics is garish, a bit crappy, instantly recognisable but never fails to bring comfort to the amateurs of fast and cheap meals.

In contrast, The Trails follows the traces of blood left by deer wounded by hunters in the mountains on the island of Hokkaido. The cruel elegance and abstract lightness of the patterns in the snow recall traditional calligraphy.

Homma’s exhibition in Bologna opposes thus the speed of consumption with the patience of hunters who confront the source of their meals head-on.

More images from the Foto/Industria biennial:

Lorenzo Venturi, Money Must Be Made

Lorenzo Venturi, Money Must Be Made

Ando Gilardi, Fototeca. Exhibition view at MAST. Photo: Foto/Industry

Hans Finsler, Schokoladenfabrik. Exhibition view at Genus Bononiae – San Giorgio in Poggiale. Photo: Foto/Industry

Foto/Industria was organised by the MAST Foundation and curated by Francesco Zanot. The exhibitions remain open until 28.11.2021 in historic locations thoughout the city center. Fototeca, at MAST and Laboratory of Forms at MAMbo are up until 2.01.2022. Entrance to all exhibitions is free.

Previous stories about Foto/Industria exhibitions: Prospecting Ocean. The extractivist Wild West and H+. We are all transhumanists now.

from Finance https://we-make-money-not-art.com/foto-industria-the-political-technological-and-cultural-dimensions-of-the-food-industry/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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My Cliffs Notes on How to Make, Save and Invest Money

The post My Cliffs Notes on How to Make, Save and Invest Money appeared first on Budgets Are Sexy.

I received a sobering comment the other day… “Joel, thanks for the nice stories and happy emails but please give us some content that’s actually worthwhile in terms of making and saving money.” Ooops … I guess I’ve been a little sidetracked with random stories on the blog. I figured that most regular Budgets readers […]

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All About Wills and Estate Planning in Plain English

The post All About Wills and Estate Planning in Plain English appeared first on Budgets Are Sexy.

Wow — there were a ton of responses to the recent letter to my wife post about estate planning if I were to suddenly die. I guess I’m not the only one feeling underprepared for that type of situation! Researching this stuff a bit further, I wanted to share with you all what I’ve been […]

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Wanna Win $1,000? Apply for the 401k Champion Award!

The post Wanna Win $1,000? Apply for the 401k Champion Award! appeared first on Budgets Are Sexy.

Attention 401k lovers!!! Want to win 1000 bucks!? It’s time to enter the 3rd annual 401(k) Champion Award competition! Three $1,000 prizes will be awarded to 401(k) participants who complete an application and essay about their 401(k) experiences by Oct 28. Now I know you might be thinking… “I never win anything and my chances […]

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What Is FUD? (Don’t Fall for It!)

The post What Is FUD? (Don’t Fall for It!) appeared first on Budgets Are Sexy.

I learned a lot of sales and marketing techniques throughout my career. I want to share one with you today that I see a lot in everyday situations … It’s called FUD. What is FUD? FUD is an acronym for: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Like most sales tactics, FUD was designed to help potential customers. […]

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I Could Have Been FI by Now …

The post I Could Have Been FI by Now … appeared first on Budgets Are Sexy.

Have you ever looked back and thought, “If I didn’t make that dumb-ass financial mistake years ago, I would have had XXX more money right now!! What was I thinking!?” 🤦‍♂️ I came to a similar realization recently… If I’d never left my sales job a few years ago, there’s a fair chance my wife […]

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Net Worth Report #13 “Unlucky for Some” (Down $22,730) 😭

The post Net Worth Report #13 “Unlucky for Some” (Down $22,730) 😭 appeared first on Budgets Are Sexy.

Maybe you’ve noticed … I’ve been naming all of these net worth reports according to bingo sayings for the last year…  (2 = One little duck, 3 = Cup of tea, 4 = Knock at the door, etc…) Well, last month was #13 of public net worth tracking… And the bingo call for number 13 […]

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INFORMATION (Today): Data diktats and human complacency

The generation, handling, propagation and control of information orchestrate our lives. For better or worse. Digital technology has granted us wider access to knowledge and to all kinds of services that seemingly make our life more pleasant and productive. It has also burdened it with algorithmic biases, surveillance, filter bubbles & disinformation, monetisation of private experiences and other (by)products of 21st-century data-based capitalism.

INFORMATION (Today), an exhibition currently open at Kunsthalle Basel, features artists who investigate the dynamics behind information production and the kind of impact they have on society.

Marguerite Humeau, Riddles (Jaws), 2017–2021 (front) and Laura Owens, Untitled [SMS [phone]], 2021 (back). Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

American Artist, Veillance Caliper (Annotated), 2021 (front); Alejandro Cesarco, New York Public Library Picture Collection (Subject Headings), 2018 (back, left); Alejandro Cesarco, New York Public Library Picture Collection (Subject Headings – Cross References), 2018 (back, right). Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

The title of the show is a direct reference to INFORMATION, an exhibition of conceptual art curated by Kynaston McShine at New York’s Museum of Modern Art 50 years ago. INFORMATION gave visibility to the then emerging “Information Age” and to the influences that advances in computing and communication technologies could have on society. The artworks exhibited in Basel show, how, 50 years after the landmark MOMA show, information has taken such an essential place in our existence that we prefer not to think about its most unpalatable sides.

INFORMATION (Today) confronts today’s crisis of information from angles I wasn’t expecting. The works talk about privacy, infrastructures of power and other issues that have already been examined in many shows before. But they also travel back in time, hovering between past technologies and future innovation; they consider sources of information that I would normally dismiss and reveal data-generating mechanisms I had never heard of.

Liu Chuang, Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities (video still), 2018

Liu Chuang, Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities, 2018. Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Liu Chuang, Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities (video still), 2018

Liu Chuang, Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities (video still), 2018

My favourite work in the show is Liu Chuang‘s Bitcoin Mining and Field Recordings of Ethnic Minorities. The three-channel videowork describes Bitcoin miners chasing cheap energy source around China (where most of the mining still appears to take place despite the country’s ban on cryptocurrency mining.) They would bring their machines to dams in Sichuan for low-cost hydropower during rainy seasons, to Xinjiang for wind power in times of drought, to coal-fired power stations in Inner Mongolia in spring, and finally back to Sichuan. The energy provided by decommissioned hydroelectric power plants provided the artist with much food for thought. The semi-abandoned plants not only provide cheap energy source but they also act as a suppressor of noise from the mine’s cooling fans. In this “post-industrial” scenario, a new economy of extraction is feeding off the ruins of an earlier industrial age, revealing how the ongoing virtualisation of the economy still depends on further exploiting our planetary commons.

Chuang’s work also exposes how miners have reverted to a transhumance lifestyle once associated with some ethnic minorities that used to live in the same regions. After field trips and extensive research, Liu noticed that many of the Bitcoin mines were installed in what the historian Willem van Schendel has designated as Zomia – a vast area of Southeast and East Asia spanning parts of Myanmar, Thailand and four provinces of southwest China. The regions were inhabited by ethnic minorities who have historically maintained antagonistic relationships with Han Chinese states and who have been massively displaced by modern infrastructure projects.

Liu interweaves the cryptocurrency mining and the colonisation of ethnic minorities threads together with a vast array of political and sociotechnical topics – from the early days of the telegraph (which caused some Chinese operators to suffer from repetitive strain injury) to platform capitalism, from modernity in pre-1949 China to cult sci-fi movies from the 1970s. The work draws attention to material and immaterial lines of power that have been deployed in China, over its long history, to control people, energies and territories, and to generate profit.

The content of the video is gripping. The images are exquisite. They mix early archival material with videos of fiber-optic cables emerging from the sea, drone images of river valleys and dams, footage taken from the social media accounts of an intrepid power-line repairman, etc. The voiceover narrative is delivered in the endangered Sino-Tibetan language of Muya.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, For the Otherwise Unaccounted, 2020. Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, For the Otherwise Unaccounted, 2020. Exhibition view Secession, 2020. Photo: Iris Ranzinger

In 1997, Dr Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist and professor at Virginia School of Medicine, published Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects. Based on some 30 years of research on people across the world who claimed to remember past lives, the two-volume publication reported two hundred cases in which birthmarks and birth defects seemed to correspond to a wound inflicted in a previous life, often in a violent way.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan‘s For the Otherwise Unaccounted consists of a series of thermographic prints that investigate the idea that birthmarks associated with reincarnation could be considered a medium for justice. These birthmarks suggest that testimony can be stored in and on the body, become archives of past traumas, injustices and violence that have otherwise escaped the historical record due to colonial subjugation, corruption, lawlessness or legal amnesty. This new type of testimony, because it does not constitute scientific facts, has yet to be accepted for the production of truth and history.

Trevor Paglen, Autonomy Cube, 2015. Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Autonomy Cube, by Trevor Paglen and Jacob Appelbaum, is a transparent minimalist sculpture filled with circuit boards, wiring and electronics that doubles as an open-Wi-Fi network. Any visitor can use it for free. All your Wi-Fi data traffic is sent over the Tor network, anonymising the web traffic and protecting it from any tracking, surveillance, external profit or censorship. Furthermore, for the duration of the exhibition, the sculpture turns the host institution’s internet connection into a Tor relay, helping others around the world to anonymise their own internet traffic using the Kunsthalle infrastructure.

By offering untraceable surfing in a space such as an art institution, the cube forces visitors to question their own readiness to hand over their data without even checking whether adequate levels of privacy are ensured.

Alejandro Cesarco, New York Public Library Picture Collection (Subject Headings – Cross References), 2018 (via)

Alejandro Cesarco uses photographs of open binders to expose some of the classification principles of the New York Public Library, one of the largest public libraries in the world. The subject headings listed on the pages of the binders make it easier to use the collection but they also reveal some of the exclusions, prejudices and systems of values that govern it.

Reading the entries in the binders you learn that: Freaks are archived under “Humans & Other curiosities”, “Cherubs are children. Angels are adults”, “Birds does not include Chicken, Ducks, Geese or Turkeys”, “Native Americans are still called Indians”, “Jesus is not found under Bible but under Christ”. And many of us will do what they want with the information that “Orgies have very little sex. It’s mostly people eating and drinking.”

The artist calls this classification “the pre-cursor to Google Image’s algorithm.” Both facilitate the navigation of information but they also reflect the biases of the humans who established the criteria and categories that underpin these systems.

Cameron Rowland, 0D20612, 2014

Cameron Rowland placed a LoJack device powered by a car battery on the floor of one of the exhibition rooms. A LoJack is a stolen vehicle recovery system that is hidden by a certified technician inside a vehicle and transmits a signal. When the car is missing, if the LowJack has been registered in the LoJack database, it can be located by the police. Dealers can also check battery and inventory status, manage lots and even send targeted marketing campaigns to customers.

Rowland’s LoJack is operational but not registered.

Sondra Perry, IT’S IN THE GAME ‘18 or Mirror Gag for Projection and Three Universal Shot Trainers with Nasal Cavity, Pelvis, and Orbit, 2018. Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Simon Denny, Remainder 1, 2019 (right); Simon Denny, Remainder 2, 2019 (middle); Sondra Perry, IT’S IN THE GAME ‘18 or Mirror Gag for Projection and Three Universal Shot Trainers with Nasal Cavity, Pelvis, and Orbit, 2018 (left). Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Simon Denny, Remainder 2, 2019. Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

Sung Tieu, Loyalty Questionnaire, 2021 (front) and In Cold Print, 2020 (back, detail). Installation view, INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel, 2021. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel

INFORMATION (Today) was curated by Elena Filipovic. The exhibition remains open until 10 October 2021 at Kunsthalle Basel.

from Finance https://we-make-money-not-art.com/information-today/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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3 FinTech Innovations I Want You to Know About

The post 3 FinTech Innovations I Want You to Know About appeared first on Budgets Are Sexy.

Just got back from FinCon in Austin last week! For those of you who don’t know, FinCon began in 2011 as the Financial Blogger Conference, but now it’s a place for all types of digital content creators, money nerds and brands to get together and geek out on personal finance stuff. This was my second […]

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Fun and Weird Money Superstitions 🐸

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Back in 2008, a co-worker came up to my cubicle and put this ceramic figurine on my desk. It’s a tiny little cat with one paw raised. She said to me, “as long as you keep this on your desk, money and wealth will flow your way.” I’m not a superstitious person, but for some […]

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Radicalization Pipeline

I discovered Theo Triantafyllidis‘ work while reading my favourite game art blog but I experienced it for the first time a couple of weeks ago at the opening of Radical Gaming at HEK (House of electronic Arts) in Basel. I haven’t stopped talking about his Pastoral installation ever since. As soon as I was back home, I booked a train to Milan to see his solo show at the NOVO gallery.

Theo Triantafyllidis, Radicalization Pipeline (exhibition view), 2021. Photo: The Knack Studio, Courtesy the artist and NOVO – Eduardo Secci Milano

Even the name of the exhibition is intriguing: Radicalization Pipeline. The title is a reference to the theory that YouTube is an engine of socio-political radicalization. “A significant amount of commenting users systematically migrates from commenting exclusively on milder content to commenting on more extreme content,” the authors of a research published in 2020 wrote.

Theo Triantafyllidis, Radicalization Pipeline (frame), 2021

Theo Triantafyllidis, Radicalization Pipeline (frame), 2021

Theo Triantafyllidis, Radicalization Pipeline (preview), 2021

Radicalization Pipeline, the live simulation audiovisual work at the center of the exhibition, portrays radicalised people as they furiously throw weapons and blind hatred at each other. The video, dense in action, swarming in characters and constantly regenerating is pell-binding and disorientating. It also escapes any attempt to be fully absorbed. A bit like the endless stream of bad news, trolling and conspiracy theories that assaults us every day.

Most of the figures in the melee are familiar: white nationalists brandishing KEK flags, the usual Medieval warriors, fantasy creatures out of World of Warcraft, police officers wearing helmets and bulletproof vests, anarchists wearing similar attire, MAGA-type maniacs, etc. Most of the characters are male. Because of the visual composition and darkness, I was reminded of Hieronymus Bosch’s vision of Hell. Because of the theme, I thought about the fetid alt-right. And indeed, the work draws connections between the world of fantasy and real events that happened in the US such as the invasion of the Capitol earlier this year and phenomena such as the rise of QAnon.

Theo Triantafyllidis, Radicalization Pipeline (frame), 2021

To be honest, I thought about the video several times over the past few days. When no masks/no vaccine people created disorder inside a church in Pescara (Southern Italy), when drivers were fighting over fuel at a petrol station in the UK or any time i see the social media comments that accompany every single apparition of French far-right polemicist Éric Zemmour on TV. Can this type of brutality reach new levels in the coming years? Am I getting paranoid? Radicalization Pipeline, however, is never as gloomy as my vision of the future. Some of the figures are quite grotesque, others are incongruous (did I see pink furies?), even the soundscape conceived by sound creator Diego Navarro manage to enlighten the atmosphere here and there.

Theo Triantafyllidis, Steal Stoppa, 2021. Image Eduardo Secci Contemporary Gallery

Theo Triantafyllidis, Alpha Skiver, 2021. Image Eduardo Secci Contemporary Gallery

Some of the weapons that the characters in the video are swinging around have been recreated in ceramic. The glazed stoneware pieces are a strange mix of craft, DIY and industrialised commodities. They look amateurish and are reinforced with more sophisticated materials such as tennis overgrip tapes and pieces of laser-cut acrylics. The names given to the ceramic weapons include Chadslayer, Normie Slicer, Anprim Talon, Snowflake Skorcher and Soyboy Shredder. This type of vocabulary echoes the rage found in incel forums, far-right chats, black bloc groups, the manosphere and other rancid circles.

Theo Triantafyllidis builds installations and experiences where the virtual and the physical dialogue with each other. He’s not the first artist who attempts to establish this kind of alliance. He is certainly one of the very few who blends both worlds in a way that is exquisitely natural, poetical and full of humour. His works are also deeply anchored in today’s socio-political preoccupations. Add to the picture that they are visually seducing. Very very seducing. I’m a fan.

Theo Triantafyllidis, Radicalization Pipeline (interview with the artist), 2021

Theo Triantafyllidis, Hippie Breaker, 2021. Image Eduardo Secci Contemporary Gallery

Theo Triantafyllidis, Commie Choppa, 2021. Image Eduardo Secci Contemporary Gallery

Theo Triantafyllidis, Wrong Side of Freedom, 2021. Image Eduardo Secci Contemporary Gallery

Theo Triantafyllidis, Wrong Side of Freedom (detail), 2021. Image Eduardo Secci Contemporary Gallery

Theo Triantafyllidis, Kristal Klaw, 2021. Photo: The Knack Studio, Courtesy the artist and NOVO – Eduardo Secci Milano

Theo Triantafyllidis, Radicalization Pipeline (exhibition view), 2021. Photo: The Knack Studio, Courtesy the artist and NOVO – Eduardo Secci Milano

Theo Triantafyllidis‘s solo show, Radicalization Pipeline, remains open until 2 October 2021 at NOVO, Eduardo Secci’s project space in Milan.

Related stories: Radical Gaming – Immersion. Simulation. Subversion, The feminist and the manosphere. An interview with Angela Washko, “Universalization is a colonialist heritage.” An interview with video game curator Isabelle Arvers, Gaming Masculinity. Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Gendered Battle for Online Culture, etc.

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Métaboles. On the need to decolonize nature

The drastic drop in biodiversity. The deforestation in the Amazon and the acidification of the oceans, the melting glaciers and the microplastics inside babies, the sea level rises and the reduced fertility of the soils. We know about all these tragedies because we have seen the graphs and images on our computer screens. And we know exactly how bad these phenomena are because we surround ourselves with machines that scrutinise, measure and “decode” the living world for us.

Postcoïtum concert at Métaboles. Photo by Florent Kolandjian

Métaboles, an art festival that took place in late June in Marseille, presented the work of artists who explore “the metabolic exchanges” between humans and their environments. Some of the works selected observe how other cultures have managed, far better than we do, to never forget that humans cannot be fully alienated from the living. Other pieces attempt to formulate new strategies to connect to other animals, plants, rocks, to atmospheric phenomena even. Together, they probe into the effects that this (very Western) estrangement is having on the biological and spiritual exchanges between humans and ecosystems.

Métaboles seemed to resonate with the broad public. I not only saw the usual crowd of culture addicts, I also saw groups of children, families and passersby living in the neighbourhood. It probably worked because the event never tried to be didactic and prescriptive. Or because its programme mixed debates, beers, screenings, sound performances, conversations in the sun and art installations. It was poetic and it was fun. There were tajines and food for thought. A great formula to start difficult questionings.

Here’s a tour of some of the works and moments I found most interesting:

Félix Blume, Essaim/Swarm, 2021. Photo by Luce Moreau

Félix Blume, Essaim/Swarm, 2021. Photo by Luce Moreau

Félix Blume, Essaim/Swarm, 2021

Félix Blume, Essaim/Swarm, 2021. Photo by Luce Moreau

Félix Blume, Essaim/Swarm, 2021. Photo by Luce Moreau

Félix Blume, Essaim/Swarm, 2021. Photo by Florent Kolandjian

Félix Blume, Essaim/Swarm, 2021

Félix Blume, Essaim/Swarm, 2021

The Essaim/Swarm sound installation is composed by 250 small speakers, each one reproducing the sound of an individual flying bee. The artist recorded the flying bees using a sound recording studio specifically designed for them. When you approach the installation, you can hear the sound of the whole swarm. By getting closer, however, you become part of the swarm. You are immersed in the buzzing sound but can detect the individual “voices” of the tiny insects.

I’m always a bit suspicious of the need to use technology to appreciate nature but since I’m not planning to shove my head inside a swarm any time soon, I must say that the installation worked for me. The soothing sound, the visually mesmerising sculpture… Pretty much anyone who entered the space was immediately drawn to it.

Luce Moreau, Brèches mécaniques. Photo by Florent Kolandjian

Luce Moreau, Brèches mécaniques. Photo by Florent Kolandjian

Luce Moreau, Brèches mécaniques. © Luce Moreau

Brèches mécaniques by Luce Moreau is a honeycomb made of bees wax but 3D printed by humans. Placed on the ceiling of the exhibition space, the piece quietly awaited to be discovered, appropriated and customised by bees as their new home. The human artist offers the basis of a home and the insects then decide if and how they should inhabit it.

The trans-species collaboration shifts the border between what is natural and what is artificial but it also highlights the close interconnectedness between humans and pollinators. We rely on them for food. They rely on us not to destroy the wildlife where they thrive. Moreau’s artwork echoes the preoccupations of other French citizens who are active in campaigning against the widespread use of chemicals that harm wildlife and decimate crop-pollinating bees.

Alexandre Chanoine, Sculptures & sound performance, 2021. Photo by Florent Kolandjian

Alexandre Chanoine, Sculptures & sound performance, 2021. Photo by Luce Moreau

Alexandre Chanoine, Sculptures & sound performance

Alexandre Chanoine, Sculptures & sound performance, 2021. Photo by Florent Kolandjian

Alexandre Chanoine, Sculptures & sound performance, recorded in his studio in 2017

Alexandre Chanoine manipulates stones and turns them into sculptures and musical instruments.

Back in 2010, the artist discovered the graining of stones in the lithography studio of a fine arts institution in Nantes. Once a stone has been printed from too many times, it is necessary to “re-grain” it by removing the greasy layer, exposing the unprocessed stone underneath and enabling the stone to be re-used. That’s when Chanoine discovered that stones could produce primitive and harmonic sounds.

From that moment, his stone sculptures would also become instruments that create sound pieces. His performances look physically demanding. With each gesture of pushing and pulling, turning, shaking, scratching, eroding and dragging, the artist releases some of the many layers of time enclosed within the mineral matter.

Špela Petrič, Skotopoiesis. Photo by Florent Kolandjian

Špela Petrič, Skotopoiesis

Špela Petrič was showing a video of her iconic performance Skotopoiesis. Part of the series titled Confronting Vegetal Otherness which challenges the anthropocentric approach to the vegetal world, Skotopoiesis (meaning shaped by darkness) is an attempt to establish a more egalitarian relationship with plants.

For nineteen hours, Petrič stood still and cast her shadow onto a garden of cress. By obstructing the light, the artist stimulated the production of auxin, a group of plant hormones that regulate growth and cause stems to lengthen. The cress plants that grew under Petrič’s shadow were thus whiter and more elongated that the others. The artist not only experienced time from a plant perspective, she was also physically affected by the encounter: while the cress morphologically changed, the artist also did, her body temporarily shrank as a prolonged standing position caused her backbone to shorten.

Jonathas de Andrade, O Peixe (The Fish), 2016

Jonathas de Andrade, O Peixe (The Fish), 2016

A programme of evening screenings (I already wrote about Paparuda, Maxime Berthou’s investigation into cloud-seeding) accompanied the exhibition. I’ll only mention a couple of them:

O Peixe (The Fish) follows the fishermen of villages on the Northeast coast of Brazil as they enact a ritual of embracing the fish they have just caught. The animal gasps for air and dies in the arms of its predator. The gesture is ambiguous: it speaks of gratefulness but also of violence and domination.

I found the images unbearable. The atmosphere is peaceful, the natural surroundings are stunning but, to a westerner like me, the hug evokes both sheer brutality and maybe also a desire to connect to the species we live from. There is something lucid and honest in that gesture, it is so remote from what happens in societies like ours, where the killing of the animals we eat happens on a massive scale, behind closed doors and is delegated to poorly paid people. Another difference is that unlike the fishermen in the Brazilian village, our daily survival doesn’t depend on the killing of animals.

“The fish is about the collapse of the relationship between man and nature, but also about working, surviving,” de Andrade says. “And it’s about a village that lives in harmony with the environment, asking permission. Nonetheless, it is a fatal hug, one of domination. In terms of the Anthropocene, it becomes a metaphor for the total failure to limit exploitation, the normalization of killing, unbounded consumerism, self-serving environmental devastation. But the image could also be read as a simple idea of surviving on this planet.”

Felix Blume, Curupira, creature of the woods (trailer), 2018

Felix Blume, Curupira, creature of the woods, 2018

Felix Blume presenting his work at Métaboles. Photo by Luce Moreau

Felix Blume traveled deep into the Amazon forest where inhabitants of the Tauary village told him about a creature hiding among the trees. Some of them have heard her. They say her voice is not human but neither is it like the one of any other animals. Very few have seen her, and those who did find her never came back. Her name is Curupira and her story lives on in the oral memory of the villagers. Felix Blume uses sound as an instrument to look for a creature that escapes human eyes. His recording acts both as an invitation to listen to the sounds of the jungle and the animals that inhabit it and as an instrument to reveal other means of gathering knowledge and to investigate the place of myth in today’s world.

More images from the event:

Performance at Métaboles. Photo by Florent Kolandjian

Métaboles. Photo by Luce Moreau

Métaboles. Photo by Florent Kolandjian

Métaboles. Photo by Florent Kolandjian

Métaboles. Photo by Florent Kolandjian

Métaboles. Photo by Florent Kolandjian

Performance at Métaboles. Photo by Luce Moreau

Métaboles. Photo by Florent Kolandjian

Métaboles is a co-productions of Les Ateliers Jeanne Barret, 1979, DDA Contemporary Art, M2F Créations｜Lab GAMERZ and OTTO-Prod. The event took place at Les Ateliers Jeanne Barret, a cultural space named after an 18th century explorer and botanist, the first woman to have, disguised as a man, completed a voyage of circumnavigation of the globe.

Previously: Who owns the clouds and the water they contain?

from Finance https://we-make-money-not-art.com/metaboles-on-the-need-to-decolonize-nature/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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Time Is Money. And Money Is Time.

The post Time Is Money. And Money Is Time. appeared first on Budgets Are Sexy.

You’ve probably heard the saying time is money. As weird as it sounds, it was one of my favorite concepts growing up. As a teenager, my first jobs were hourly paid. The more hours I worked, the more money I made. If I didn’t work any hours, I didn’t get paid anything. Back then I […]

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Dear Wife, Here’s How to FIRE If I Die Early

The post Dear Wife, Here’s How to FIRE If I Die Early appeared first on Budgets Are Sexy.

I was thinking the other day that although my wife and I make all of our financial decisions together, I am usually the one pulling the trigger and moving the money around. I like to read boring terms and conditions, geek out on all our tax stuff, deal with real estate, etc.  I have a […]

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