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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
You know those laws that protect corporations but leave animals (and many individuals) out in the cold? Well we have them here in Canada. We also have polar bears that are canibalizing each other - a not very freakish by-product of the diminishment of polar ice floes, their natural hunting grounds. As a law student and environmentalist, it's demoralizing.
Everytime I hear about someone who is combining intellectualism and art to create an alternative vision, I feel excited. I've just about given up on our generation, but what if we can instill a more refined humanity in the children? Imagine, a generation that places ecosystems and life forms before profit and convenience. I think that art has been and will continue to be one of the key mechanisms for instilling such values.
Plus, now I have to go to New York to see some of that crazy artwork. I love New York!
This was just what I needed to read. Very cool stuff, I'll have to experience more.
However:
In recent years, genetics, math and physics have informed, respectively, genuinely moving works in literature (Richard Powers' "The Gold Bug Variations"), theater (David Auburn's "Proof") and opera (John Adams' "Doctor Atomic").
I flew to San Francisco to see Dr. Atomic with my husband and two friends and we all thought it sucked big time. My husband and I are physicists and well acquainted with the subject matter. And my two friends are experienced opera lovers with excellent taste and connections.
Dr. Atomic wasn't moving. And it wasn't opera.
We all decided together that it was a self-indulgent rehash of sixties teeth gnashing over the Atomic Age (TM).
We also all decided together that what it needed to be moving and to be opera and to be relevant to our time was:
1. Oppenhiemer's wife and maid needed some real emotions to express, rather than the slogans they chanted that represented the author's vision of their place in the socio-political-mythical landscape.
2. Some Pakistani and Indian nuclear bomb physicists swinging from trapezes making comments on the past from the POV of today might have been a nice touch.
3. Why couldn't the bomb have a personality? It's the villain of the story. How dead is an opera where the villain can't say his or her piece?
So much for my opinion on Dr. Atomic. If they want to rework the libretto, I am available for consultation.
Fascinating article about a fascinating woman and her work. I had never heard of Jeremijenko before so this was a nice introduction.
....for spirits like Natalie Jeremijenko's, for her way of seeing and her approach to sharing that with the rest of us. The comments about avian flu were fascinating, like something we have known intuitively finally endowed with credible words.
Hudson River fish on anti-depressants, mute swans in Europe (are there any left?)
and the responsible children in all of us have been given some rich positive energy.
Thank you Salon for this article. It has given me a lift this morning and that hasn't happened in a long while.
I found this article amazing, informative and inspiring. It is a complete thrill to learn more about one of art worlds true innovators. We should all be pleased that she is able to create so much and still teach.
Kind of like Frank Stella wandering through MoMA one day and commenting to the curator that they hung his paintings upside down. Seriously it sounds like someone who had an idea for an outline for an art project and was hyper and overbearing and frankly, unhinged enough to get it commissioned as a complete work. It's not exactly bullshit, but it's close.
I know lots of people like this woman. They talk ecology and revolution while living the most luxurious lives imaginable. It's all self indulgent nonsense.
It's hard to tell who's actually fooling who here.
I am so glad I stumbled upon this article. Thanks to Salon and Kevin Berger for sharing the story of Natalie Jeremijenko.
I'm a media junkie, and also a media snob (you will not catch me watching Fox News or the NBC Evening News), so the vast majority of journalism evokes an "uh-huh" from me. Not this story, and certainly not the work of Jeremijenko. Really refreshing, really interesting---I don't think I'll view the world in quite the same way as I did before.
And I'll be sharing the story with friends.
Thanks for this article!
"I know lots of people like this woman. They talk ecology and revolution while living the most luxurious lives imaginable. It's all self indulgent nonsense.
-- Fenella"
Yes, because everyone who wants to change the world and make it a better place needs to live like a monk ministering to the 3rd world poor. LOL!
It was a nice contrast to read about Jeremijenko's concern over the antidepressants that the fish in the Hudson River are exposed to (and not just antidepressants: statins, hormones, anti-psychotics . . . the list goes on) after reading the implication in today's "The Fix" that anyone who wants to treat their depression with something besides pharmaceutical drugs must be a wacko Scientologist. Of course, we are also imbibing these powerful chemicals in our drinking water, since most water purification systems are not designed to take them out and I believe something like 90% of these drugs are excreted from our bodies.
Many people, of course, benefit greatly from taking antidepressants, but for an alternative picture of the hell that many people go through taking them and then trying to get off them, check out http://www.aaronwall.com/archives/000028.html. The FDA and the drug companies themselves sure aren't going to tell you.
I'm glad that there are activist artists like Jeremijenko drawing attention to such issues. And I'm relieved that the rift between science and art is starting to close with visionaries like her. She makes an excellent point that it's a fantasy to think that we can possibly be scientifically "objective," the way we like to think we can be. And her reaction to the dread epithet "anthorpomorphism" was refreshing.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
