abate the dystopian future

Stated on The Daily Show by Jon Stewart on 6/29/11, "So you are both saying that no matter which party gains the upper hand in 2011, it leads to a dystopian America governed by apes?"

Wikipedia defines dystopia as "is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Dystopian societies feature different kinds of repressive social control systems, various forms of active and passive coercion. Ideas and works about dystopian societies often explore the concept of humans abusing technology and humans individually and collectively coping, or not being able to properly cope with technology that has progressed far more rapidly than humanity has been able to evolve. Dystopian societies are often imagined as police states, with unlimited power over the citizens." 

Shouldn't we be valuing ideas?  an educated populace?  Why aren't we using technology to better our lifestyle? to allow us to work less?  Who are we competing against?  Why are we competing?  Don't we have enough resources, man-power and knowledge to live comfortably in the US?  Why aren't we making decisions as a community instead of as greedy misers?

I would like to see the government make changes so that individuals are better able to receive small business loans to open mom and pop businesses.  So we have neighborhoods filled with cafes, clothing stores, bookstores, music stores, art galleries, produce markets, butcher shops, fish markets, hardware stores, hand-made furniture shops, shoe stores, millinery shops, fabric stores, tailors, seamstresses, pet stores, horse stables, skateboard shops, board shapers, print makers, stationery stores.  All those shops that used to exist made up a community and gave us variety.  Now we have monotony and a bad economy in a sea of oppressive sameness.  Why was more money given to the big corporations that were culpable in the raiding of our economy?  Let them fold and give individuals the ability to contribute to the economic health and stability of our society.  I don't want to be a cog in a wheel.  Do you?

Bob Geldorf

Saw Bob Geldorf on a recorded show of Craig Kilborn where they had a discussion and on David Letterman where he played a song from his latest album.  His hair on Letterman looked blond and was not a good choice, but on Kilborn his hair appeared to be grey/platinum and looked terrific.  While his music is not my thing, I liked hearing him talk as he was involved with the punk movement and transitioned to involvement in making the world a better place for people who have less power.  He and Craig discussed the lack of a movement to voice anger with the current state of affairs - as punk had spoken up when the airwaves were held by the likes of the Bee Gees, Olivia Newton John, and Tony Orlando. 

This catharsis in music follows cycles - In the 60s it was Bobby Vinton and Frank Sinatra replaced by Rock & Roll; In the 80s, corporate backed hair bands caused the backlash of Seattle grunge rock found in Nirvana.  Independent music as alternative to money driven corporate machine music. 

I looked up a twitter account for Bob Geldorf and found "Bob Geld" as his supposed official site.  Although he has no tweets, he follows Zoe Keating who is a cellist I was unaware of.  Zoe has a good website etc for promotion of her solo cello work and youtube has a video where she played at the club "La Boule Noire" in Paris.  Her music is a bit too repetitive but is in the vein of new classical music.

Alternative Art Spaces

I have been watching an earlier released video on alternative art spaces in Los Angeles on the Hammer Museum website.  Here is a link to part 1 (part 2 consisted mostly of questions from the audience and was not interesting):  http://hammer.ucla.edu/watchlisten/watchlisten/show_id/260267/show_type/video?browse=none&category=0&search=art space

Yoshua Okon is involved with SOMA in Mexico City which is like an open non-certified art school with artist residencies where the artist teaches and hangs out without making work and pays 1/2 their own cost - so like an inexpensive art vacation where you get to meet artists of Mexico in a mellow environment.  He said that most artists in Mexico do not get MFAs and many are not formally trained - which in my mind harkens back to pre-US-GI bill which gave members of most classes (men) the chance to study in Universities on grants - so many more people were able to study art formally, so today it is taken for granted that an artist needs to go to art school and get an MFA to be certified officially.  Mr. Okon is very heart-felt in his desire to express the need for community and communication in the artist community.  A lovely idea.  I can feel the quiet of the location, the wind in the trees, the birds singing outside while sunlight streams in through the windows and I sit in the studio in the morning working on a small collage or a simple musical composition waiting for lunchtime to bring visitors to the courtyard where I can hang out drinking an iced coffee and discussing civilized living and uncivilized oppressions.  A wonderfully romantic situation.

Daniel Joseph Martinez was involved with Deep River, an unaffiliated art space without nonprofit status that was personally funded by him and his friends in the 90s(?).  Mr. Martinez extolled the virtues of running an art space that did use money or outside imposed requirements as qualifiers for the work that was shown inside the space.  The art exhibited or performances presented were presented based on the space providers definition of art work.  So the work was chosen on art parameters and not on meeting family friendly or city building requirements; rather, simply to explore ideas about art.  He now teaches as UC Irvine.  Mr. Martinez spoke about the LA alternative artworld prior to the 90s when money became the driving force.  He has a good sense of history and contextualizing the driving force behind art exhibitions in LA over the past few decades.  He would make a great dinner companion to discuss what has been going on in the art world since the 70s and where we take our work within this context.

Mark Allen runs Machine Project on Sunset in Echo Park which looks like it has grown out of the idea of having a community center but with really interesting workshops and events.  This space is great model for what should be going on in all of those empty but terrific community spaces in parks throughout cities.  They hold events that attract 20-somethings, kids, parents, all-ages.  The work is always playful and intelligent.  I don't want to even describe the work because it would lessen its specialness; you just have to watch his portion on the video. 

Julie Deamer of Outpost was interesting in her description of San Francisco art vs. Los Angeles art as she described LA art as being more pragmatic and slick whereas SF art is more homemade and not meant to be precious.  She brought in artists from New Zealand and other countries to make art here that was responsive to their reaction to this culture and having that new set of eyes is interesting.

Lauri Firstenberg runs LAXArt in Culver City and the work there seems very pedestrian compared to the other art spaces as it deals with didactic text that spouts platitudes and presents itself as so much better than the people who live around the space.  It is way too academically influenced and feels like a balloon that has puffed itself up - with slickness and self-importance - so you can't wait for next week when air seeps out and it is only a wad of used rubber.  But Ms. Firstenberg seems very nice and earnest; she just needs to take a trip elsewhere and get her hands in the dirt and shake her head free of the schoolhouse babbelling.

Blueprint for a Better Nation.

Take a few moments and imagine what you think would be a good way for us to live together.  

We have the knowledge and ability to feed everyone in North America with healthy farming of the land including the encouragement of small personal vegetable gardens.

We have the knowledge and ability to provide plenty of clean water to North America by respecting the natural methods of filtering and stopping our pollution.

We have the knowledge and ability to provide inexpensive single family homes with yard space for individuals using ideas taken from the case study houses and using materials straight out of the hardware stores and lumber stores to make inexpensive, well-insulated, attractive and livable homes right now that can be built on vacant lots.

We can educate everyone who wants to learn by employing out of work middle aged and senior individuals to teach what they know in community colleges, in extension courses and in store fronts.

We can continue our quest for knowledge by attending classes throughout our lifetimes so that 20 somethings are not the only students that are expected to be seen in a classroom.

When we are able to change our profession and improve our happiness by pursuing our interests when we so desire, our society will be healthier and will grow and prosper.

There are grossly unfair tax advantages given to the wealthiest individuals and that the working class suffers an unduly disproportionate burden of taxation. 

Estate taxes can be increased so that the maximum amount that may remain untaxed upon death is one million dollars per person and any amount over that can be taxed at 45%.  The use of the bypass trust provision currently available to a surviving spouse can be continued.

We can direct our society to reward work based on merit instead of on lineage and fraternity.