“j’avais envie de répondre à Nayadja Aghatourane, de hurler à travers la nuit chaude que l’étrange est la forme que prend le beau quand le beau est sans espérance, mais je restais bouche close, et j’attendais.” — antoine volodine.
… here is another pieces of techno-beauty for you : it is a digital magazine that is about as interactive as you can imagine. in order to make the most of this site, you really have to play around with.
some tips : when you get to the site, look for the “view project” link and click on that. you might want to press F11 at some point to make the screen full … regardless, when you get to the digi-mag, you can create the ‘frame’ that houses the article, and in many cases the article fits the frame. if you look at other editions (in the archive), the interface is different … some of them completely disconcerting, but wonderfully stimulating!
… truly a magazine that challenges how one thinks, and learns …
happy reading!
c.
i love this:
Who is this man? What makes him tick? No doubt he is busy. No doubt he is deluded by that busyness. No doubt being Prime Minister fills his entire consideration and froths his sense of busied importance to the very brim. And no doubt he sounds and governs like one who cares little for the arts.
But he must have moments of stillness. And so this is what I propose to do: not to educate—that would be arrogant, less than that—to make suggestions to his stillness.
For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness. That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written. I will faithfully report on every new book, every inscription, every letter, and any response I might get from the Prime Minister, on this website.
and so it is that yann martel (the author who gained notoriety for his quirky exploration of spirituality, shipwreckage and the animal kingdom (including the human animal) in the book “life of pi” has made a “vow” to send canada’s conservative prime minister a book that encourages “stillness” every two weeks, for as long as stephen harper (said canadian prime minister) remains canada’s prime minister.
what an interesting idea! check out the website to see what yann martel suggests as reading materiel to one of canada’s most peculiar prime ministers, including the explanatory letters that he sends along with each suggestion (and don’t forget to read his explanation of what inspired the idea in the first place).
the short story is that mr. martel and some artsy-fartsy friends (50 of canada’s most impressive professional artists to be exact, who had a one point in the last 50 years received government funding to help them realize one of their works of art) were in the house of commons (canada’s hq for politics) to honour what the canada council for the arts has done to enrich canada’s cultural heritage and legacy … an homage to the arts, then, and arts funding, culture, life and whatnot …
yann the man realized on this day that “stillness” is a crucial ingredient to art (at least the appreciation of it, but certainly also the creation of it), but that unfortunately mr. prime minister harper probably had very little time for stillness in his busy country-leading lifestyle — something mr. yann the martel thought was unfortunate (for everybody, i am imagining). i can’t resist quoting him some more, since he really does explain it well:
On March 28th, 2007, at 3 pm, I was sitting in the Visitors’ Gallery of the House of Commons, I and forty-nine other artists from across Canada, fifty in all, and I got to thinking about stillness. To read a book, one must be still. To watch a concert, a play, a movie, to look at a painting, one must be still. Religion, too, makes use of stillness, notably with prayer and meditation. Just gazing upon a still lake, upon a quiet winter scene—doesn’t that lull us into contemplation? Life, it seems, favours moments of stillness to appear on the edges of our perception and whisper to us, “Here I am. What do you think?” Then we become busy and the stillness vanishes, yet we hardly notice because we fall so easily for the delusion of busyness, whereby what keeps us busy must be important, and the busier we are with it, the more important it must be. And so we work, work, work, rush, rush, rush. On occasion we say to ourselves, panting, “Gosh, life is racing by.” But that’s not it at all, it’s the contrary: life is still. It is we who are racing by.
I was thinking about that, about stillness, and I was also thinking, more prosaically, about arts funding, not surprising since we fifty artists were there in the House to help celebrate the fifty years of the Canada Council for the Arts, that towering institution that has done so much to foster the identity of Canadians. I was thinking that to have a bare-bones approach to arts funding, as the present Conservative government has, to think of the arts as mere entertainment, to be indulged in after the serious business of life, that—in conjunction with retooling education so that it centres on the teaching of employable skills rather than the creating of thinking citizens—is to engineer souls that are post-historical, post-literate and pre-robotic; that is, blank souls wired to be unfulfilled and susceptible to conformism at its worst—intolerance and totalitarianism—because incapable of thinking for themselves, and vowed to a life of frustrated serfdom at the service of the feudal lords of profit.
and so yann martel suggests all sorts of important works of literature, from agatha christie (yes!) to art spiegelman, to voltaire, to tolstoy ( … and there are more; go check it out!).
it seems that to date mr. harper’s assistant has responded to only one (the first) of mr. yann’s book suggestions.
i wonder if mr.stephen harper is actually reading these books (if not, i hope that at least his assistant is, and that she is subsequently de-briefing him on all the wonderful stillness she is experiencing thanks to them).
i have always cherished book suggestions from others, and so i think this idea is absolutely lovely. i really do wonder what harper thinks of all this?!
: )
have you read this book? it is by hal niedzviecki, and it definitely warrants a read.
the general premise is that individuality is the new conformity: everyone trained from youth to do their best, believe in themselves, and focus on what they want, … the doctrine of believing in one’s specialness … and what awaits us all is some form of pop culture celebrity. we’ll become rockstars, movie stars, celebrity psychologists, celebrity horse-trainers, celebrity biologists saving much-loved animals on the brink of extinction, or if none of those work out we might even become criminals who have surpassed all expectations and pushed the boundaries of the unthinkable just a little bit further …
hal argues a good case when he suggests that our infatuation with ‘the individual’ has dramatically changed how our societies are structured, and how they function … how our traditional institutions work, and the way we view and support them … and, by encouraging us all to focus on ‘me,’ our pop culture sensibilities have managed to trivialize even sincere forms of dissent and rebellion.
the book is good read, and at least does the job of encouraging us to sit and ponder why we are the way we are … it forces us to question the motives behind our ‘personal’ convictions (hal’s argument being that many of our personal convictions are really fancy ways of achieving some sort of pop culture credibility).
according to hal, the most troubling part of this tendency to be swept along in pop culture is that it lessens our ability to make real change, to suggest meaningful alternatives, and to speak in a voice and with content truly unique, different and challenging. what hal is really getting at is that we are losing our ability to think, imagine and create and the consequence is our societies are the lesser for it.
for another take on this book, check out this review …. or, just go buy the book (or visit your local library)!
c.
hey, why not listen to the greatest explorers in the world? it’s helping me wake up into my new week!
c.
gary paul nabhan is a great writer. i mean, if you like traditional cultures, food, nature, vegetables, pollinators, raising kids … stuff like that.
he is an ethnobotantist that shares stories, often hundreds of years old but set in a contemporary telling, about the birds, animals, plants, humans and cultures that dot the globe. his special focus is on the deserts of north america. he talks about obscure but fundamental wonders such as pollination, art, mischief, and clear and systematic thinking. he has also dared suggest that humans belong in nature, and in fact have never left it, and that those who live ‘in’ their place, as cultures of a particular habitat, don’t detract from their area’s biodiversity but contribute to it, making their environment not less but more diverse.
what is the most beautiful about his writing is how simply and skillfully he tells stories, and how knowing them leaves you feeling that your life is richer. for those who wish they knew more about ‘the environment’, gary paul nabhan provides insights in the form of warm conversation that i guarantee will put you on a level sturdy enough to discuss almost all big ecological issues with any biologist you’d happen to come across (although, unfortunately i’m not sure most biologists are as savvy and insightful as mr. nabhan, since most biologists don’t ‘get’ people, and don’t even ‘get’ the need to get people … ).
check out this list of his books to see for yourself that his topics covered are impressive … there is undoubtedly something for everyone. as a special note, i would say that for parents wondering how to bring nature into their childrens’ lives in a meaningful way, ‘geography of childhood’ is a great read. and, ‘cultures of habitat’ and ‘the desert smells like rain’ (with the latter being the shortest, quickest read) are good examples of his overall take on culture and nature. there are many i haven’t read, but i’d recommend any of them wholeheartedly. his most recent books on local food seem like must reads, since the next big important environmental fight (other than, but related to, climate change) will be to push for local food and products, especially as big corporate giants like wal-mart, loblaws, and safeway continue to chisle away at gains made by the organic movement.
the true sign for me that mr. nabhan has a special way of seeing and understanding the world comes from his own lifestory, which he draws upon often in ‘cultures of habitat’. art class and colour-blindness led him to science, a broke down ship and too much spare time spent walking through ecuadorian markets marvelling at the incredible diversity of fruits and vegetables led him to ethnobotany. long and fascinating story made short: he’s spent the greatest part of his life studying how culture can fit into place, and shape it, and how place can do the same to culture.
c.
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