Seeing Green: Art, Ecology, and Activism: Digital Arts and Culture at UWM
Seeing Green: Art, Ecology, and Activism opens Saturday, April 12, 5:00-9:00pm at Woodland Pattern Book Center, 720 E. Locust St., Milwaukee, WI.
Seeing Green encourages artists to leave the confines of the studio and take an active role with the community, to collaborate and address issues of the environment, and to open a dialog with the public. Guest curator Nicolas Lampert invited over 40 local artists to work on a project for the duration of eight months. During the month of April, 2008 the show will be exhibited at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where the gallery will serve as a hub space, informing the viewer and the public of the many environmental projects taking place throughout the city, exhibiting visual work and books, screening films and holding discussions and events based around the exhibition.
Calendar:
Saturday, April 12, 2008, 5:00-9:00pm
Seeing Green opens at Woodland Pattern Book Center (720 E. Locust St., Milwaukee, WI.)
Sunday, March 30th, 2:00pm
Reading by California author Rebecca Solnit
Wednesday, April 16th, 7:00-9:00pm
Curator talk by Nicolas Lampert 4:30-6:00 / Film Screening
(Screening of 5 minute films and videos on urban ecology issues by: Lane Hall, Lisa Moline, Lindsay Holden, Brandon Bauer, Ray Chi, Laura Klein, Eddee Daniel, Suzanne Rosenblatt, Spencer Tepper, Zachary Nesgoda).
Continue reading ‘Seeing Green: Art, Ecology, and Activism: Digital Arts and Culture at UWM’
25 Mar 2008 | 9:07 am | Art, Environmental Sustainability | No comments yet - Add your comments
March 22 is “World Water Day,” designated in 1992 to draw international attention to the plight of more than 1 billion people worldwide that lack access to clean, safe drinking water.
I hope the Tap Project has a strong pollution prevention aspect, and they aren’t underwritten by wastewater management companies.
Some thoughts on water:
- We need to close the loopholes which allow cities, countries and corporations to empty the Great Lakes. We need a Strong Great Lakes Water Compact.
- Which approach to clean water do we take — preventing its contamination or cleaning it up afterward? Our long-term focus needs to be on prevention of water contamination rather than on water clean-up programs, which ultimately benefit corporate interests by continuing to allow pollution and creating an opportunity for corporate intervention through river/lake/ocean clean-up programs and purification/filtration systems.
- We must all fight to keep our city’s water and waste water systems from being privatized and susceptible to corporate interests. Unfortunately, Milwaukee’s wastewater operation has been privatized for years. Efforts to keep it public failed this past year and a new contract was signed (not sure for how long).
- We need better rainwater runoff management, so that raw, untreated sewage doesn’t get dumped into the river and the lake.
- There’s a lot we can do individually to reduce our own water usage. Check it out:
Below is from: http://dnr.metrokc.gov/wtd/waterconservation/tips.htm
How much water do you use?
Flushing the toilet 1.5-7 gallons per flush, depending on the design of the toilet
Taking a shower 3 gallons per minute, or 25-45 gallons for an average shower Continue reading ‘March 22 is World Water Day’
21 Mar 2008 | 5:56 pm | Water | No comments yet - Add your comments
Here’s a cool little piece about a design competition in NYC funded by the Cooper-Hewitt and the DOT. Maybe we can get something similar here in Milwaukee. I see a collaboration between MIAD and the city.
http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/2008/03/five_better_bik.php
20 Mar 2008 | 10:03 am | Art, Streets, Bicycles, Pedestrians | No comments yet - Add your comments
While everyone has been buzzing about a recent report about our pharmaceutical-laced water, another report remains underground. Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern, was originally scheduled for release in July 2007. But several days before that, the study was suddenly withdrawn for “further review.”
The Center for Public Integrity has obtained the study, which warns that more than nine million people who live in the more than two dozen “areas of concern”—including such major metropolitan areas as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee—may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants.
Download the report here.
Great Lakes Danger Zones?
by Sheila Kaplan, The Center for Public Integrity
February 12, 2008
For more than seven months, the nation’s top public health agency has blocked the publication of an exhaustive federal study of environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states, reportedly because it contains such potentially “alarming information” as evidence of elevated infant mortality and cancer rates.
Continue reading ‘Great Lakes Water: Dioxins, PCBs, Lead, Mercury and Pesticides’
12 Mar 2008 | 10:24 pm | Water, Health | No comments yet - Add your comments
Beware the Farm Subsidy
“According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2005, farms with average household incomes of $200,000 per year accounted for 9% of all farms but received 54% of government payments.”
My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)
A couple of excerpt from the NY Times article:
[C]onsumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables… will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding.
The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers Continue reading ‘Commodity Farming and Subsidies Benefit Big Agribuisiness’
4 Mar 2008 | 1:06 pm | Economic Development, Environmental Sustainability | No comments yet - Add your comments
Brave, bold and brutally honest interview with Maude Barlow by Amy Goodman.
The Great Lakes are discussed.
Water is now a $400 billion global industry, the third largest behind electricity and oil. (Water is the new oil)
By the way, the focus of corporations, in response to the water crisis, is to clean up dirty water, instead of preserving water at its source. There’s a lot of money in cleaning up water.
This is why we desperately need a strong Great Lakes Compact. (The Midwest is the new MidEast)
Watch, listen or read about the end of our civilization as we know it, and the privatization of water here
Read the full interview here
AMY GOODMAN: Eight of the nation’s largest water providers from California to New York have announced the formation of a coalition to develop strategies on dealing with climate change. The members of the newly formed Water Utility Climate Alliance together provide water to more than thirty-six million people in the United States. The group has developed a list of goals that include expanding climate change research, developing strategies for adapting to climate change and identifying greenhouse gas emissions from individual operations.
Today, we’re going to spend the rest of the hour looking at the global water crisis. Flow: For Love of Water is a new documentary screened here in New York last night. The film examines how the world’s water supplies are diminishing and how the privatization of water is worsening the crisis.
PETER H. GLEICK: For the longest time, people have taken water for granted. Most people don’t think about where their water comes from. They just turn on the tap, and they expect it to be there. Those days are ending.
MAUDE BARLOW: This notion that we’ll have water forever is wrong. California is running out. It’s got twenty-some years of water. New Mexico has got ten, although they’re building golf courses as fast as they can, so maybe they can whittle that down to five. Arizona, Florida, even the Great Lakes now, there’s huge new demand.
PETER H. GLEICK: The Nile River doesn’t reach its end. The Colorado River, the Yellow River in China, they, for the most part, don’t flow anymore to the sea.
MAUDE BARLOW: So this notion that somehow these problems are far away, get rid of that. You know, take it out of your head. You know, delete that.
PATRICK McCULLY: We’re treating the water resources of the planet with contempt, which is just so stupid, because we depend on them. We need water to live. We will only survive for a day or two if we don’t have water.
WILLIAM E. MARKS: Scientists, through decades of study and millions and millions of pieces of data, now recognize the fact that we’re on the brink of the sixth great mass extinction ever to be experienced on the face of the earth. The fifth mass extinction was the dinosaur age.
MAUDE BARLOW: You know those movies where there’s the comet coming at the earth, and all of a sudden the governments of the world say, “Gee, we’re not—our differences aren’t so big anymore, because we’re about to all die”? That’s really where we are. There is a comet coming at us. It’s called water shortage.
PETER H. GLEICK: Climate change is a real problem. Humans are changing the climate. We already see evidence about it. One of the most significant impacts of climate change will be on our water resources.
PATRICK McCULLY: We’re going to see a lot of people are going die because of the floods and droughts and various social upheavals that are caused by global warming. What’s also tragic is that there’s a lot of awareness of that now, but so much of that awareness is then being used by corporate interests. Oh, we’re running out of water, and we need to invest so much money in water, and it’s so terrible how water is managed. And then, somehow they make the flip to: oh, we must privatize it, so then we’ll use it more efficiently and everybody will be better off—which is total nonsense, total amount of nonsense. It means merely that these people have an interest clearly in making money or to selling water to people.
Read the rest here
3 Mar 2008 | 2:32 pm | Water, Health | No comments yet - Add your comments
Thank you! by Sura, February 20
Dear Friends, Neighbors and Community,
I am so honored to have the dedicated support of so many amazing, intelligent, creative and hopeful people.
We did not make it through the primary, but if we stay together, there is still so much for us to gain. There are many ways to get what we are looking for. I will post more about that in the upcoming days, along with my endorsement in the upcoming aldermanic race.
Again, thank you for your support, love and respect. I am so privileged to have gotten to know so many people. If you want to get involved in local community issues, I will continue to be engaged. Come with me.
Peace and local power,
Sura
20 Feb 2008 | 1:48 am | 3rd District | No comments yet - Add your comments