gin and little world

art and it’s biceps brachii

(Tereza Vlckova, ‘A Perfect Day, Elise’, 2007) 

Hip hop is the way to people’s hearts and consciences.

This was my belief when I wrote the rap ‘Environment’ and performed it, with three other friends for the whole school dressed in dungarees and adorned in plastic flowers.

‘Guilt’, I thought. That is the other way to people’s hearts and consciences.

With lyrics like ‘remember not to be so mean and keep the air nice and clean’

and

‘all of the fishies in the deep blue sea are tired of you and me’

I was positive that if I could seduce my audience in to a hip-hop trance and make them feel really bad about the way they lived, it would inspire change in their hearts. Perhaps I would become famous and eventually do a sweet environmental collab with my hero at the time, Mariah Carey.

I was nine.

So naive. *

No one cared about that stupid song except my teacher, who made me do it all the time.

Did I give a shit about the environment? Maybe. I think so. I know I also really liked telling other kids what to do. … I did like animals a lot, but did I really know what it meant to care about what happened to our natural environment? No. Lord knows why I actually wrote that rap (it wasn’t the last) but deep down I know it wasn’t entirely to do with saving the world. I had the hiphop beats in my soul and perhaps I felt inspired by my dog and those wicked ads about putting stuff in the bin at the time and liked the idea of being thanked by mother nature who, to this day I still picture as Gi from Captain Planet.

I give big shits now. Most of us do now, right? Our earth is really fragile, beautiful and terrifyingly changeable, we know this now more than ever. I believe the more knowledge we have about our natural environment, the more deeply we understand our relationship with it. Science helps. Science is good at telling us what is going on.

Thank you Science, thank you so much. Thanks for understanding everything so well and for endeavouring to find ways to fix shit.

Science has some amazing websites, like the ‘Global Footprint Network’.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/

Go and look now.

It is an amazing website full of some pretty scary shit. If you are anything like me, you look at this website and you go ‘oh..wow this is amaizing…oh god…oh no…oh, we’re fucked.’

Now look at this one website filled with Climate Street Art:

http://earth.350.org/street-art/

This website is also mind-blowing, only in a completely different way.

Science has been telling us about climate change for decades and yet we still aren’t interested, on the whole, in taking dramatic action. We know that if we don’t do something radical and huge in the next 10 years the consequences could and most probably will be catastrophic. I consider losing beautiful reefs and species of beautiful animals at a rapid rate quite catastrophic and sure most of us would. And yet so many people just can’t stand the thought of a tax on carbon.

A climate movement is what we need. And both fortunately and unfortunately it is art that creates big fat firey hot movements, not science.

In ‘Huff Post Green’, 2010, Bill Mchkibbon, Author of ‘Earth: Making Life on a Tough New Planet’ says:

‘You don’t build movements with bar graphs. You Build them, in part, with art….And with everything that engages the right brain. Or that engages the heart, trusting that where the heart leads, the brain will follow.’

So, how is it that art is able to reach the heart?

I think, by appealing to that very big part of us that responds physically and emotionally to images and sounds. It is art that can stir up feelings of nostalgia, empathy, love and hope.

For me, it’s hope that is the real key here.

I was fortunate enough to attend the official Earth Hour party this year at the MCA because Jess Bellamy’s Sprout had been shortlisted for an award!

The aim of Earth Hour this year was to encourage people to switch to renewable sources of power and on this particular evening the focus was on the role of the arts in inspiring people to make these changes. The speakers were ya standard artists, politicians and engineers BUT QUITE EXCITINGLY each was united in their belief that people are capable of creating enormous change in our world when we come together. And I think every single one of them used the word ‘hope’. It was a great night.

By merely looking at an entry in the Climate Street Art project I feel I am a part of a movement that already has momentum. I feel hopeful about change. This is quite different to the helpless depressed feeling I get when I learn a new climate prediction or become aware of some new statistic. And I think that most of us are more likely to share ‘Climate Street Art’ with our friend on facebook, twitter and tumblr than we would be with a barrage of scary statistics.

We all live on the same earth, it is important to know the science, but there is something magical and powerful about environmental art. It allows us the freedom to assess how the facts relate to our own lives, beliefs and our own intricate relationship to our earth.

Guys, before you get all excited, I don’t actually rap any more…so, I don’t have any new material on the environment…but if it’s sweet environmental beats you are after- check out youtube.

If you are interested in art with environmental/climate change focus, check this out.

 ‘Creating Worlds’ at the NGA

http://nga.gov.au/CreatingWorlds/Default.cfm

 

* Mariah Carey is still one of my heros.

can i WILL I survive?

i had a smart phone, i think. i’m still not sure if a smart phone and an ‘android’ phone are the same thing.

my dad gave it to me, which was a really nice thing to do. it made me very stressed at first because it was hard to understand but oh my, once i had figured it out… it was great. the most helpful thing i owned. when i was lost it would help me be found and when i was curious it would help me find dem answers like pow pow!

and i could check the emails.

oh, the emails. i could check them all day long if i wanted to. i was all like:

‘hey, they don’t charge me extra for data usage if i am just checking ma gmail. so i’ma check em again.’

and then i became like:

‘oh ma god i have to check my emails i might have an email I DO HAVE AN EMAIL I KNEW IT I KNEW I WOULD. i have to…i have to answer it right now…..quick…i have to quickly email this person back so they know i got their email’

and then, sadly:

‘wait sorry…hang on, i’m listening. i just have to reply to this email on my smart adroid..it’s from my…sorry…one second…’

now, i am not an important person. i do not receive important emails.  if i am going to be 100% pathetically honest with you…these days my inbox consists mainly of internet coupon notifications. 

sad, isn’t it.

somehow, my phone of possibility turned me into a really important and stressed person. oh my god and WHEN i became a person who would yell at their phone ‘WHY ARE YOU SO SLOW?’ i had to take a long hard look at myself. i didn’t ever think i would become that guy. 

(it turns out 4 minutes is too long to wait for your phone to open a folder or a message and that i probly should have done one of those ‘upgrades’ the phone kept offering me instead of saying ‘oh no you don’t, you just want my money you bastards’ like an old old woman idiot.)

now, don’t get me totally wrong here. i am not a total technophobe. i’m not a dickhead. i know this shit is great and helpful and wonderful and i  love my laptop and how great it is. and i love facebook and spell check and kettles that boil to the temperature best for green tea.  

i just want to know if i am going to be okay in this world without an android or smart phone.

i abandoned the phone about 7 months ago now. i now have a very old phone that texts, calls and has various coloured ‘themes’ i can choose from. and when you enter people’s numbers you can choose from a variety of black and white smiley faces to be the picture that comes up when they call and some have fringes and some have glasses and some aren’t faces at all but butterflies and soccer balls and i really like it even though the inbox is always full.

i don’t want our phones to become the only way to do things. to buy things…to find things…to scan promotional codes (what is that ABOUT i am still trying to get my head around those tiny squares of pixelated mystery.) 

pedro update

alright alright

i know yuz are all like ‘how is pedro?’, ‘what is going on with him these days?’, ‘WE NEED A PEDRO UPDATE.’

so here you are.

pedro, right now, is kind of a very intense mixture of the best thing in my life that has ever happened and a complete asshole. 

i don’t want to be completely negative about my boy and always try to emphasize his strengths. so here you are. 

pedro is good at:

1. making me love him SO much

2. showing EVERYONE how he feels

3. being kind of cute in a weird way

4. eating things really quickly that fall on the floor while we are cooking

HOWEVER

pedro unfortunately has:

1. anxiety issues leading to occasional aggressive acts directed at black or brown labradors

and

2.  a weight problem

both of which… are my fucking fault, of course. 100%. because i have loved him too much.

don’t worry. to target these problems I am:

1. saving a million dollars so that i can afford for a dog whisperer to come in and train me out of his anxiety

and

2. feeding him mostly celery and carrot (recommended by vet, i’m not a monster…)

this may all sound a little depressing and you may be thinking ‘oh man, fuck that dog right off and get a stupid skinny one that is less effort to love..’ and while i see where you are coming from…Pedro’s chunkiness and emotional attachment and detachment issues have always been my favourite things about him and i am really gonna miss them when he is hot and relaxed. 

i am going to post a little photo album with some pictures i took of him today. you will think he is very charming.

for those interested in a gin update here ya go

i am:

1. really happy not being a theater maker or goer right now

2. ginny weasly

3. missing my far away friends

4. happy at my desk doing things or even just going la la facebook oooh la la

in the little album there will be a picture of what i look at  when i am at my desk including a picture of my beautiful mama

and a picture i did that is meant to be patti smith. it looked alright to me until i picked it up off my desk and saw it was a bit elongated. for that reason i am now in the market for an easel as this strange elongations seems to happen every time i draw something at my desk.

stopitwhiteboy asked: and what exactly are these parts that make your bits tingle?

the parts that consist of people being really good to each other

bitches. love. shit. click. click dick dick dick

hi

things i have learnt this week

1. pedro is 2 kilos overweight and it’s all my fault.

2. trying to join certain circles of men playing poker as a non-player without being turned in to an accessory  or ron weasly is almost impossible. don’t do it if you don’t like hearing the phrases ‘there is a lot of pussy on the table’ or ‘i like my work coz there are heaps of hot chicks’ or if you want to have a fun time and are a woman without beer.

3. you can’t vote for pop songs in the jjj hottest 100 but you can vote for kanye west going blah blah blah click click click rhymes with DICK DICK DICK. i think that is interesting.