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EcoLogic at the Powerhouse Museum is about the way we use the world. It’s about hopes, fears, imagination and action. It’s about redesigning the way we live. It’s about caring for our environment, our economy, tomorrow’s children and ourselves – without destroying the Earth.
EcoLogic is a multi-layered exhibition that includes compelling objects, graphics, sculpture and artworks. It presents videos, film and soundscapes that brings visitors face to face with people who are changing the way we live, manufacture and work. EcoLogic has fun interactives to help explain complex issues, and a play space for young kids.
We know that a sustainable future depends upon the choices we make today and every day. Making those choices isn’t always obvious or easy – the Powerhouse website claims that this challenging and inspiring exhibition presents new ideas and technologies that can reduce our individual and collective impact on the planet.
EcoLogic focuses on what we can do for the future of the planet and it demonstrates how smart ideas and environmental design can make a difference. It allows to take a journey through rural and coastal Australia and witness the soil and water crises threatening our food supplies, meeting farmers and communities who are finding solutions to the problems.
See how clever design, whether for a consumer product, industrial system, farming method, or a whole city, can minimise consumption of materials and energy, thereby reducing waste. Explore society’s changing values and attitudes to the environment. Walk through our sustainable ‘house’, full of products, energy-efficient appliances and materials that are available now.
EcoLogic is an integrated program, which includes public programs, special events and EcoLogic Online including amongst other references the following links:
What is ecologically sustainable development?
Sustainable means for a society to continue indefinitely. Beyond this broad definition what are the conditions, qualities and goals to support the sustainable future you would like to experience?
Life depends on cycles
Everything we consume comes from our environment. Our lives and industries are part of big natural cycles. Take a closer look at these cycles.
City Living
See how our homes, products, industry, transport, consumption and production can be more sustainable. See also Young designer for students and those interested in sustainable design.
Nurturing the land
The security of our food is vital. Are we adding a dangerous level of salt to our diet? Explore the connections of soil, water and biodiversity.
Living on the edge-the coast
Is aquaculture the answer to our diminishing fish stocks and other marine species? How can people working together make a change?
Measuring well being
Social values can and do change. What information and inspiration do we need to make these changes?
Online Interactives
Explore pathways to sustainability by playing these online interactives. How big is your ecological footprint? What future do you want for your town?
My friend Che is currently organising a wonderful event around education, which will include a conference as well as a three-day meeting space for students and professional people acting as elders, advisors, visionaries or what ever role might emerge for them in that space. In the context of hearing about the preparations I came across the Gudhara Holistic Sanctuary.
Gudhara is a not-for-profit organisation run by a small group of people under the principles of social, economic and environmental sustainability. It runs weekend retreats which are conducted by experienced facilitators with an emphasis on raising consciousness for personal and global transformation. The retreat centre itself too is based on sustainability principles which, for example, include each guest to the sanctuary being encouraged to undertake some environmental practice, such as organic gardening or bush regeneration, giving him or her a practical and hopefully also inspirational experience of what sustainability can mean in daily life.
What Gudhara valued most in life according to its website is:
- Equality, friendship and compassion
- Open communication and resolution of conflict
- Integrity in business and personal exchanges
- Valuing and living in harmony with the natural environment
- Health and spiritual growth
- Creativity and a zest for life
Upcoming workshops, retreats and other events include an African drum and dance camp; design workshops based on “sacred geometry”, Feng Shui and Vedic traditions; children’s creative arts and movement days during school holidays and workshops on active and passive solar design, mudbrick construction, practical applications of Bio-Dynamics, designing with natural materials, eco-Shamanism and ‘finding the designer within’.
For more information click on the links below or contact Gudhara:
Gudhara Holistic Sanctuary
22 Stoney CreekRoad
Marulan NSW 2579
Phone/Fax: 02 4841 1632
Mobile: 0403 203 963
Email: gudhara@bigpond.com
According to the (sydney) magazine, “almost three yeas ago a bunch of locals took over a run-down shop front and living space in Surry Hills and turned it into a creative hothouse called SYDNEY. Upstairs, the creative foursome work on their projects – graphic design, illustration, painting and culture jamming – while downstairs is open to the public.” Here are examples of some of the previous headliners as well as ongoing events …
SYDNEY, Big Fag Press, Squat Space, NUCA, and MICKIE QUICK present:
A Slideshow/Artist Talk on the Street Art Workers (SAW) and their Land and Globalization poster campaign.
SAW’s founding member, Claude Moller, is in Sydney promoting SAW, and he will be on-hand to talk about the group, their international poster project, and state of street art in America.
Established in the U.S. in 2OOl, SAW is a global network of artists who use graphic art to support social change. SAW makes and distributes posters internationally to publicize the work of local grassroots activism. The group relies on street art to take back cities and towns from the businessmen, cops, and politicians who define public space for their own benefit. Since 2001, SAW projects have talked about prisons, the mass media, and utopian ideas for the future.
SAW’s latest campaign, Land and Globalisation, looks at how corporate globalisation has affected our world, how it has impacted the land, and how people are fighting back. This series includes 25 posters representing artists from 10 different countries and over 20 different cities. These posters illustrate specific struggles in countries like Brazil and the United States, and they also tackle international issues around poverty and gentrification. Along with a strong critique of imperialism, the posters show how communities throughout the world are resisting corporate power for a more just and
sustainable world.
An evening with persistent friends:
‘Twilight Of The Cockroaches’ – a special end-of-summer screening of the classic 1987 Japanese hybrid-film (animated cockroaches interacting with live-action actors) – at SYDNEY, 302 Cleveland St, Surry Hills (the homeland of cockroaches)
“The plot is a staple of children’s classics from BAMBI to WATERSHIP DOWN: cute, little anthropomorphic animal creatures band together for survival when they are threatened by oafish humans. There is a difference, though. In this case, it is quite forgivable to root for a “sad” ending. As the title implies, the cute little creatures this time around are cockroaches, those greedy, scurrying little insects who foul your food and infest your kitchen. They carry diseases. They have made many a city apartment uninhabitable. And they’re the heroes? Go figure.”
But this is anime at the highest level of storytelling. A hedonistic cockroach utopia becomes cockroach hell as an analogy about Japan’s position relation with The United States: once holocaust victims of the latters military might, now living it up in boomtime decadence, but what if the US were to turn into an enemy again?
Be forewarned: after you watch it, you might not want to swat or spray that roach in your kitchen quite so fast again.
This will screen with a couple of roach related shorts from You Tube, and later after a break if people feel like the first film was too sad we may screen ‘Joe’s Apartment’, which is a “marvellous piece of goofiness”. Joe comes from Iowa to New York and, being short of money, wants to find an apartment with very low rent. His quest is successful, but he must share the residence with some 50,000 cockroaches. The insects turn out to be Joe’s best friends.
THIS TIME: Films & Re-Enactments from London and Sydney
The Teaching & Learning Cinema invites you to “THIS TIME”, a film screening that follows along from a residency that Lucas Ihlein and Louise Curham have been doing in the majestic Track 12 at Performance Space’s new home at Carriageworks.
“We’ll roll projector on some of the expanded cinema re-enactments we’ve been working on in the residency and some film prints we brought in for our research. The prints come from the National Film & Video Lending Service in Canberra and from the Lux, the artist’s film archive in London ( why doesn’t Australia have one of these?).
Marvel at the stamina of those who were there for the 24 hours of the ‘Long Film for Ambient Light’ (March 16-17, The Performance Space) when Lucas and Louise show their time lapse video (where one hour becomes one minute) and invite those who were there during the event to share their “mental residues”.
For details of other films/re-enactments to be viewed see the Teaching & Learning Cinema’s website.
ATTENTION!!! THE NEXT INTENSE NEST IS AT SYDNEY!!!
Intense Nest #5
XNO BBQX (album launch)
ABSOLUTEN CALFEUTRAIL
JUSTICE YELDHAM
Intense Nest is a monthly showcase of some of Australia’s most diverse, confronting and weird music acts…This month we celebrate the album launch of the noisy guitar and drum improvisationalists, XNOBBQX, also performing is Melbourne’s ABSOLUTEN CALFEUTRAIL (from True Radical Miracle and Whitehorse), and lastly Lucas Abela takes to the stage as JUSTICE YELDHAM, the amazing glass playing act not to be missed!
Intense Nest is the name of a project that aims to support Australia’s experimental, weird, punk, underground music scene by organising music and performance events, and if all goes to plan, eventually releasing music by some of these artists.
DORKBOT-SYD
Two super presentations this month! And a show+tell.
1. Stephen Jones will be demonstrating and talking about a number of video synthesizers that he built between 1978 and 1986 (see pictured below for one). Stephen used these synths when performing live with Australian electronic group Severed Heads and in other projects.
2. Nick Wishart will be presenting CeLL, a MIDI controlled pneumatic orchestra he has created in collaboration with Miles van Dorssen. They will be opening up CeLL to new composers via a new software interface that can receive compositions by email, play and record the composition then send that recording to the composer. ww.cell.org.au
For the uninitiated: DORKBOT is “PEOPLE DOING STRANGE THINGS WITH ELECTRICITY”
Dorbot brings people together from different fields who are interested in doing strange things with electricity; be you artist, engineer, musician, electrician, software developer, hermit, whatever. Regular meetings pose as an opportunity for public discussion, peer review and exploration of ideas, experiments and finished works and also to solidify and invite growth, encouragement and collaboration in a
community of curious people.”
Be there and be square!
www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotsyd
and finally:
JIMMY SING’S IMPORTS & RECORD STAND
Jimmy Sing’s is Australia’s premiere distro point for the latest and greatest in jump-up bass musics!
BAILE FUNK, BALTIMORE CLUB, DANCEHALL & REGGAE, REGGAETON, CRUNK, HYPHY, UK GRIME, AFROBEAT, SALSA, PSYCHE GARAGE and more…on vinyl and CD!
Part time local DJ, part time store owner and full time hustler, Jimmy Sing runs Jimmy Sing’s Imports – the record store that provides most of Sydney’s DJ’s with the newest most innovative shit. He spins and sells reggae, afrobeat and newer genres such as dirty south and British grime. Every couple of weeks, the racks are cleared and the space is taken over by DJs.
What’s popular right now Baltimore club (a rough blend of hip-hop and house) and baile funk (a frantic Brazilian strain of funk with ‘nasty’ lyrics in Portuguese).
JIMMY SING’S RECORD STAND has regular trading hours from the SYDNEY shopfront.
WEDNESDAY 6 – 9pm
THURSDAY 6 – 9pm
SATURDAY 12 – 6pm
OR BY APPOINTMENT
This year I didn’t look at anything relating to Burning Man – until I came across these and other photos at TechRepublic and LAist. What I’m not showing here are pictures of the burning effigies or the fireworks, which besides generators and recreational vehicles apparently created large amounts of pollution, leaving some attendees of the annual counterculture festival in the Nevada desert wondering how green the event actually was.
Several large art pieces at Burning Man 2007 attacked the oil industry head on. Mike Ross cut up pieces of two real oil tankers for his “Big Rig Jig,” curved them and hoisted them in the air in an “S” shape. People could crawl up inside the tankers.
Sean Orlando’s “Steampunk Tree House” evokes a vision of the future and the past. In a world with no trees there may be replicas, Orlando writes in an artist statement. His tree house is made of rusty machinery and gears and gives off steam in a nod to circa-1900s steam technology.
Bikes are a necessary form of transportation on the “playa,” the barren alkaline desert in northern Nevada on which Burning Man takes place. This year, an arch built out of bicycles was placed at the entrance to Center Cafe, where coffee can be purchased in recyclable cups. Along with espresso drinks and lemonade, ice is the only other item available for purchase at the event.
Hurtling down the road to the Black Rock Desert, the colors paint themselves like a spice cabinet sage, dust, slate gray. Maybe you’re in your trusty car, the one that takes you to and from work every day. Perhaps you’ve got a spacious RV, your Motel 6 on wheels for the next days in the desert. Or you’re driving your glittering art car, complete with poker chips and mirroring to do a disco ball proud.
You belong here and you participate. You’re not the weirdest kid in the classroo; there’s always somebody there who’s thought up something you never even considered. You’re there to breathe art. Imagine an ice sculpture emitting glacial music in the desert. Imagine the man, greeting you, neon and benevolence, watching over the community. You’re here to build a community that needs you and relies on you.
You’re here to survive. What happens to your brain and body when exposed to 107 degree heat, moisture wicking off your body and dehydrating you within minutes? You know and watch yourself. You drink water constantly and piss clear. You’ll want to reconsider drinking that alcohol (or taking those other substances) you brought with you the mind-altering experience of Burning Man is its own drug. You slather yourself in sunblock before the sun’s rays turn up full blast. You bring enough food, water, and shelter because the elements of the new planet are harsh, and you will find no vending.
You’re here to experience. Ride your bike in the expanse of nothingness with your eyes closed. Meet the theme camp enjoy Irrational Geographic, relax at Bianca’s Smut Shack and eat a grilled cheese sandwich. Find your love and understand each other as you walk slowly under a parasol. Wander under the veils of dust at night on the playa.
You’re here to celebrate. On Saturday night, we’ll burn the Man. As the procession starts, the circle forms,
You’ll leave as you came. When you depart from Burning Man, you leave no trace. Everything you built, you dismantle. The waste you make and the objects you consume leave with you. Volunteers will stay for weeks to return the Black Rock Desert to its pristine condition.
But you’ll take the world you built with you. When you drive back down the dusty roads toward home, you slowly reintegrate to the world you came from. You feel in tune with the other dust-covered vehicles that shared the same community. Over time, vivid images still dance in your brain, floating back to you when the weather changes. The Burning Man community, whether your friends, your new acquaintances, or the Burning Man project, embraces you. At the end, though your journey to and from Burning Man are finished, you embark on a different journey forever.
[For more info on the Burning Man festival check their website]
melange 
