'For peaceful meditation, we need not go to the mountains and streams, when thoughts are quietened down, fire itself is cool and refreshing.' Zen master Kwaizen 1580
I read a bit up on this project. Not too much other than on their webpage. Saw the thing as an ad on a TED talks recently (or some weeks ago). Anyway, I've been wanting to do something like this for the past few years. So, good for them that they're doing it! Cool video too.
- Aufsteigende Trailer Days - Out in the country, As the days go by, More and more, If we look we see em, Flying high in the sky.
A mural done for the Atlanta Beltline which is an attempt at making Atlanta a more human-friendly environment. Currently it is a city designed more for the car.
In Europe (or, for that matter, in South America), urban growth and excess of motorized traffic have not so far resulted in completely subverting the pleasures of walking. A city of four million like Paris is still holding out the promise of civilized Lebensraum. "In Paris," writes philosopher Hannah Arendt, "a stranger feels at home because he can inhabit the city the way he lives inside his own four walls. And, just as one makes an apartment comfortable by living in it, and not merely using it for sleeping, eating, and working, one becomes comfortable in the city by strolling through it without aim or purpose, stopping off at one or another of the countless cafes that line the streets and past which the life of the city, the flow of pedestrians, moves along.
The development of New York is a parable of progress, American style, a continuous expansion and urban saturation of land, with streets leading nowhere, with no recognizable center or centers. A tracery of traffic arteries, too impractical to be considered highways, too dismal to be called streets, sums up the essential shabbiness of the cities. Although each generation of planners is planning itself off as saviors, the towns appear more unappetizing with every year. In his book 'My Hope for America,' Lyndon B. Johnson expressed the cities' destiny in a single ringing phrase: "In the next forty years," he wrote, "we must rebuild the entire urban United States."
There is no reason for thinking that the next forty years will be different in spirit from the past forty years or, for that matter, from the eight times forty years that preceded them. Johnson's truism has long gained acceptance among developers and wreckers, the men who virtually make an unmake our cities. In fact, it ought to be written into the Constitution.
- Bernard Rudofsky
"Thank you veterans, try our pumpkin spice" - This modern American City Center consists of two perpendicular highways; one of four lanes, the other two, there are two gas stations, two grocery stores, and three parking lots one of which is visible from the moon as a grey smudge on what was once an entirely dark green area.
All ages before ours believed in gods in some form or other. Only an unparalleled impoverishment in symbolism could enable us to rediscover the gods as psychic factors, which is to say, as archetypes of the unconscious. No doubt this discovery is hardly credible as yet.
The religion of future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description... If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism.
For some reason or another I haven't been able to pull this up on any computer for some time. Maybe too many people were watching. Anyway, it's great, check it out! And more like it at TED. www.ted.com
With the way things are in some schools today, I'd rather be back in prison than back in school.
I taught for a time because I was asked to, and also because I was saddened by the mentally ruinous factory processes mere children were being subjected to daily. Perhaps I offered some hope during the brief time I was there. Obviously, I was not there for long as the very survival of modern educative systems, and contemporary society, depends on conformity which in turn depends on stupidity or fear.
I have problems forcing those things upon children.
Most systems of schooling I have encountered reduce humans into small parts of a grand industrial mechanization which breeds fear and violence. Thus, it is my belief that future generations (should humanity's future be in the direction of progress) will look upon current social systems of organization as barbaric and morally bankrupt. Nonetheless, the participants will be excused and forgiven with the same kind of rational we use to forgive most participants in crimes against humanity. Something like, "They didn't have a choice" or "They had to do it" or "It was the way things were back then." That the participants were driven by fear generated by a society of production and consumption will probably be too many words and syllables for most people to think about even a few hundred years from now.
I suppose the talking machines (Radio, TV, etc) will probably still exist in some way or another. As I close I wonder what's worse; the perpetuation of the myth of freedom in the minds of our young, or the incessant jabbering, flag waving, and enemy killing done by adults which protects the myth by destroying the ideal?
On a lighter note, although being around the prison-like buildings and the teachers was mentally and spiritually exhausting, often children would tell me things like; "This is the best day of my life!" or "This is the best day ever" and so on. And many of the children were so intelligent (although considered problematic by the wardens) that they were not to be bent by the system. So there's hope yet Mister Frodo.
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The artist currently known as LOAF, unfortunately no longer in Berlin but perhaps will return ?
Fond memories of our light painting experiments . . .
Many thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/eniat/ for uploading some pictures of my work. That evening began after a full day running around Manhattan, far too many drinks in Prospect Park, and a grueling 2 hour train ride in the intense heat of NY's metro system just to go from one point in Brooklyn to another. When the sun began to rise I didn't have the strength to hang around any longer just for daylight photos. One of these days I'll find another photographer to follow me around and document some of these happenings. Until that time, many thanks to those that do grab images of my work for me, without which I would often have no records for myself beyond what memory will keep.
Many thanks to : http://www.flickr.com/photos/greg_foster/ without which I would have photos of my work. It is such forms of communal organization to which I owe a debt of gratitude. So, thanks to everyone who uploads images of my work to the web.
Also, thanks to anyone & everyone involved with Living Walls and all the people of Atlanta!
Past couple days have been dumping a lot of older works I made onto the streets. Here are a few examples from a period where I was searching for a different direction. It lasted a few months, I don't know how much junk I ended up making in search of a different language of expression. This is but one outward expression of an inner dialogue which I feel it's better to put on display in the streets than to simply consign to some trash bin.
Put up a lot of these the other evening. I suppose I will only post these three, however, in total I suppose I put up somewhere between 30-50 of them & gave some to people in the streets who gave me beer & wouldn't stop laughing at the things. Some older Berlin graffiti writers came along and helped me put up a few. It was great except I drank so much and had to keep finding places to pee. jaja
Los lunes, paseo | 18:09 - 18:37
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Si te parece, quedamos allí a las 18:30. Yo iré con tiempo, dando un paseo,
ya sabes.
*18:09*
*18:15*
*18:17*
*18:20*
* 18:26*
*18:27*
*1...
Nuevo post , nuevo viaje
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*Lima y sus mas hermosos lugares*
Hola a todos nuevamente, después de estar abandonada la pagina por unos
meses vuelvo a retomar esta linda costumbre, los ...
Humble Heather
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*Early 19th century hand-coloured *
*engravings of heath flowers*
The vast majority of the 860+ species in the genus Erica (heaths/heather)
are endemic t...
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Y llegamos entre nieblas y divisamos el gran lago de Atitlan y subimos por
un camino con piedras pintadas de colores que dibujaban los sueños mas
profundo...
