Above Magazine Spring 2010 by ABsite Ltd

MAGA ZINE

FOR THE EARTH

ELETTRA by BET TINA

RHEIMS SUMMER RAYNE OAKES Activism 3.0

DAVID DE ROTHSCHILD

SWAMP DREAMS

Almost Afloat

by Tierney Gearon

HELENA CHRISTENSEN

STARCK

Secret Garden

Comes Clean

CAROL ALT Raw Health £5

$ 10

ISSN 1747932

OCEANOCIDE by Claire Nouvian

9 771747 932015

a spirit with a soul

Endangered There are now less than 3,500 Snow Leopards left in the wild and, as such, the species is classiﬁed as ‘critically endangered’. Snow Leopard vodka will save the Snow Leopard by raising valuable funds and awareness of its plight. 15% of our proﬁts are given directly to Snow Leopard conservation projects through the Snow Leopard Trust. Join the adventure and watch our progress www.snowleopardexperience.com

EDITO 'S LETTER “Beauty will save the world” Fyodor Dostoyevsky

he Copenhagen summit in December yielded a particularly bountiful harvest of dashed hopes. Yet here we are in spring and eco-consciousness is in full bloom. There isn’t a newspaper or magazine without its “green” supplement. Innumerable websites and blogs track climate change, global warming, pollution but also eco trends, ethically made products, environmentally friendly diets. All of a sudden the planet matters, or at least it does to some of us in the West. In too many other parts of the world, daily survival is the big issue, and the droughts and famines envisioned by climate-change forecasts are causing mass suffering here and now. We at Above believe our planet’s health is too vital a topic to be handled solely by the usual suspects. We have faith in human nature and in our ability to save ourselves from doom, not only for political, scientific and economic reasons but, and perhaps most importantly, for emotional and even artistic reasons, too. We actually think that in order for us to defend and help save nature we must first love it. Above offers plenty of reasons to love nature. We begin by displaying the world’s magnificence through fashion, photography, art, architecture, design, beauty and great writing. Showcasing wonderful people and places serves our cause: saving the beauty that is the Earth. For this issue Above’s correspondents and contributors travelled to many remote locations: Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Miami, Paris, Milan, Copenhagen.... Bettina Rheims, one of France’s most esteemed photographers and artists (her most recent collection, The Book Of Olga, was published by Taschen in 2008), signed our cover. Her model: Lancôme muse Elettra Wiedemann. In addition to being the daughter of Isabella Rossellini, the granddaughter of Ingrid Bergman, and luminously lovely in her own right, Elettra is a scholar and an active campaigner for eco causes, and she had a lot to say to Above Features Editor Tina Isaac. Another celebrated artist-photographer, Tierney Gearon, embarked on an expedition to the Florida Everglades, where she shot her signature double-exposure photos of Karina Deyko modelling 100-percent organic, 1,000-percent sexy underwear from Miami designer Ivelin Giro. Veteran photographer and ace pilot Christophe Jouany took to the skies (and swamps) to show the Everglades in all their fragile glory, while our feature story by Kirk Nielsen warns with meticulous detail about the persistent threats to this vast and vastly important wetlands ecosystem. The other major expedition covered in this issue is that of David de Rothschild, a 32-year-old, modern-day Robinson Crusoe – although we’re confident David’s imminent Plastiki voyage will be a good deal more fortuitous than anything Defoe’s fictional castaway endured at sea. Above Contributing Editor Alexander Sharkey journeyed to San Francisco to talk with David on the eve of his departure to the Texas-sized plastic waste maelstrom in the North Pacific. Cecilia Rodhe, former Miss Sweden and current mother of both basketball star Joakim Noah and model Yelena Noah, discusses her egg-ceptional sculptures with Stephen O’Shea, while veteran

SPRING 2010

lensman Antoine Verglas photographs Cecilia in what has become her natural habitat – Brooklyn, USA. Elsewhere in New York City, supermodel and environment activist Helena Christensen poses for Martien Mulder and introduces Above’s readers to a quiet corner of Greenwich Village. Legendary cover girl Carol Alt talks about her raw lifestyle and raw beauty products. Then we head back to the West Coast, where actress and model Josie Maran presents her own all-natural beauty line. Next we have Above Editor-at-Large Summer Rayne Oakes contributing a stimulating narrative of her “journey to green,” an account we hope will serve as a rallying cry for like-minded young people to take the future of the planet into their own hands. And lastly, Claire Nouvian, Above Marine Conservation Editor and IUCN Ambassador for the Oceans, delivers her straight-to-the point report of “oceanocide,” blowing the whistle on deep-sea trawling and other practices that could very well cause the complete extinction of marine life within the next 40 or 50 years. This is Claire’s relentless and often lonely fight, a fight we are making our own here at Above. As you might have guessed, we believe that saving the planet has a lot to do with personal initiative and less to do with waiting around for governments and large companies to make everything all right. More often than not, real progress begins with a few extraordinary individuals who have a vision, an idea, a dream. Who understand what must be done and who act for the common good. Above is proud to present the unique human beings who are showing us the path to a better future. And we urge the powers-that-be to recognize that each small concession, such as the French government’s decision to delay by 18 months its moratorium on industrial blue fin tuna fishing, further jeopardizes the recovery of the planet’s badly depleted resources. I would like to end with a quote from Andy Warhol, who might seem an unlikely choice for ecological inspiration but who said something I find both prescient and pertinent: “I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.” Nicolas Rachline

Portrait SABINE VAN VLAENDEREN

alfred dunhill ltd.

the dunhill classic watch, made with a high precision swiss mechanical movement from Jaeger-LeCoultre. understated elegance is ensured by the 38mm case diameter and simple guillochĂŠ dial.

bourdon house 2 davies street 48 jermyn street, harrods, selfridges www.dunhill.com 0845 458 0779

CONTENTS p 48

SURFACE EDITOR'S LETTER

p 10

CONTRIBUTORS

p 14

MASTHEAD

p 16

VIEW FROM ABOVE: POWER PLAYS

p 20

RIGHTCLUBBING

p 22

BRIDGET NICHOLLS’ PEST FEST

p 24

STUART HAYGARTH’S GLOW IMPACT

p 26

LUCIANO BENETTON’S ECO YACHT

p 28

DECYCLED DEER

p 30

AYMARA: WEAVING PARADISE

p 32

GARY HARVEY’S THROWAY FASHION

p 34

ARCHITECTURE: PASCHAS OF PREFAB

p 36

CLAIRE MORGAN: WILD AT ART

p 40

REDWOOD SAW

p 44

FIGURES: DAVID MCCANDLESS

p 46

ABOVE SALUTES: MARC JACOBS

p 50

CORE

p 54

PHILIPPE STARCK by Randall Koral

p 62

ELETTRA BY BETTINA by Tina Isaac

p 76

FOREVERGLADES by Kirk Nielsen

p 92

p 48

SWAMP DREAMS “Explosures” by Tierney Gearon

p 92 p 114

DAVID DE ROTHSCHILD by Alexander Sharkey

p 122

FIRST PERSON: ACTIVISM 3.0 by Summer Rayne Oakes

p 114 p 130

OCEANOCIDE by Claire Nouvian

STRATOSPHERE ABOVE THE FRAY: WADE DAVIS

p 188

ABOVE & AWARE: PERILS OF PALM OIL

p 192

MUSIC: WHEN MAMMALS JAM

p 196

ECOTOURISM: MARARI BEACH RESORT

p 202

ECOTOURISM: SPRING SKIING

p 204

FOOD: SLOW AND STEADY IN UMBRIA

p 206

RELUCTANT ECO-WARRIOR SADDLES UP

p 210

BEAUTY: TERMS & CONDITIONERS

p 212

BEAUTY: CAROL ALT ON RAW LIVING

p 214

BUSINESS: SUSTAINABLE LUXURY

p 218

ABOVE SOLUTIONS: WATER FILTERS

p 219

A QUARTERLY GUIDE TO GREEN ART

p 220

FASHION: COMMUUN CAUSE

p 222

FASHION: H&M GARDEN COLLECTION

p 223

A CUT ABOVE: LENY T-SHIRTS, WOOD

p 224

SECRET GARDEN: HELENA CHRISTENSEN

ABOVE & AROUND: PARTIES

p 236 p 238

ABOVE & BEYOND: LAST FLIGHT

p 242

HEAD FOR THE TREEHOUSES by Sean Elder

p 168

p 150

CECILIA RODHE by Stephen O’Shea

p 158

ART: LAND OF PLENTY by Elizabeth Upper

p 168

BEAUTY: JOSIE MARAN by Alexander Sharkey

p 214 p 176

EXTREME ICE SURVEY Portfolio by James Balog

p 230

OVER & ABOVE: FOR THE DOLPHINS

SPRING 2010

p 140

p 230

SURFACE

POWER PLAYS - SUSTAINABLE DANCING PESTIVAL - STUART HAYGARTH BENETTON’S BOAT - FREDERIQUE MORREL AYMARA - THROWAWAY FASHION - PASCHAS OF PREFAB CLAIRE MORGAN - REDWOOD SAW INFORMATION IS BEAUTIFUL - MARC JACOBS

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

VIEW FROM ABOVE

POWER PLAYS Photo MICHAEL KENNA Ratcliffe Power Station, Study 50

Surface

In case you’re unfamiliar with bad king coal, here’s a quick introduction. Coal-burning power stations are responsible for a third of the total CO 2 emissions on earth, making them our biggest global-warming culprit. Among the byproducts of burning coal are mercury, arsenic, lead, chromium,

cobalt, zinc and radionuclides, and these hazardous substances don’t always stay out of our way. The coal plant shown here, Ratcliffeon-Soar in the UK, is considered to be one of Europe’s most polluting and has been the target of several major protests. This image, a good example of art being lovelier

than reality, is part of a 19-year photographic study called Power Stations by Michael Kenna. The only lovely thing about burning coal is this: eventually all the reserves will be gone. The question is, are we willing to wait that long for all the coal-burning to stop? – R.K.

ART

BEST OF THE PESTS Text BRIDGET NICHOLLS Photo ©JOSEPH BURNS

— To judge from what’s on hand at PESTIVAL, a celebration of insect achievement, bugs can be master builders, too.

Pestival founder Bridget Nicholls has just been awarded the ﬁrst Zoo-Art Fellowship at the Zoological Society of London. For more information about Pestival: www.pestival.org

Termites and ants have been on the planet for around 300 million years, so they’ve had a long time to evolve social structures and find out what does and doesn’t work. Humans, on the other hand, have been around for only about 295,000 years. Other animals have an evolutionary head start, so we seem to be evolving technologies to catch up with them. We easily forget that other animals can be great architects and designers. In fact, in some ways they’re cleverer than we are. They use whatever’s available – mud, spit – and still manage to build things that are not only quite visually remarkable, but also serve the exact purpose for which they were built.

SURFACE

Top: Inside the Termite Pavilion, a scaled-up version of a Namibian termite mound, made for Pestival in 2009.

I organized the first Pestival in London in 2006 and 10,000 people came along. By calling it Pestival I was clearly going to annoy entomologists, but I saw the name as a lure to attract people who don’t like insects and to provoke debate. For the second Pestival, in September 2009, we created an entomological utopia, taking over all of London’s Southbank Centre, and more than 200,000 people showed up. For the centrepiece we built a 6-square-metre Termite Pavilion, a scaled-up version of a 6-square-centimetre section of a Namibian termite mound. You could walk into this organic form and feel as if you were one of the millions of termites within the

structure. It also had a practical, educational purpose: what can we learn from termites about how we might create breathable buildings that self-ventilate? The Termite Pavilion was a truly collaborative endeavour, involving a physiologist, an entomologist, an architect, two engineers, three designers... and termites. It showed how you can take science to the next dimension so that people can immerse themselves in the lives of other animals and see the world through their eyes. After hundreds of millions of years of bad PR, generating good PR for insects is great. I’m conﬁdent the next Pestival in London (May 2012) will reveal another insect talent every bit as absorbing and essential to our existence as those creative termites.

stay vibrant Weak hair fades fast: improve breakage resistance by up to 65%* with Color Conserve, our 3-step system with naturally derived UV ﬁlters that preserves your hair colour longer. Keep high deﬁnition colour. ™

Visit a participating Aveda salon, spa or department store counter now for your professional haircare consultation and free shampoo and conditioner sample.** To ﬁnd your nearest participating Aveda location please call 0870 034 2380 or visit www.aveda.co.uk *

In an immediate combing study of the 3-step Color Conserve™ system. ** One consultation and one sample per eligible customer. Sample sizes of minimum 10ml. Haircare consultation subject to availability. Offer valid while sample stocks last. Offer ends 31st August 2009.

GLOW IMPACT Text TOM RIDGWAY

— STUART HAYGARTH turns discarded plastic into shining bright examples of upcycling.

Optical (Large Clear), chandelier, 2007 Edition 2/5 1 AP. Courtesy Haunch of Venison, ©Stuart Haygarth.

Stuart Haygarth reminds us just how beautiful the banal can be. Take Tide, a delicately translucent chandelier that, on closer inspection, reveals itself to be made from

SURFACE

discarded plastic objects – including bottles, sunglasses, toy spades – that Haygarth retrieved from an English beach. The spherical shape is meant as a nod to the moon, for sending

that tide of plastic in Haygarth’s direction. “I am not consciously ethically recycling,” the artist told the Design Museum in London, but he admitted, “I do hate waste – and it’s rewarding finding a creative use for unwanted material.” Since he adopted his waste-not-want-

ART

not stance back in 2004, after spending the previous 15 years as a commercial photographer, Haygarth has made light ďŹ xtures from party poppers, brakelight covers, plastic wine glasses, and, in Optical, 4,500 prescriptionspectacle lenses, each one carefully

hung on a monofilament line and beautifully refracting light like an inside-out disco ball. In the process, he has created the foundations for a body of work that might be called an artistic taxonomy of trash.

Tide chandelier, 2005 AP of edition of 12. Courtesy Haunch of Venison, ÂŠStuart Haygarth.

www.stuarthaygarth.com ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

DESIGN

SHIP OF DREAMS Text TOM RIDGWAY Photo RENATO POLO Top: Tribù at sea Left: The master bedroom Right: The master bathroom

— LUCIANO BENETTON and his Tribù set the standard for low-impact high life on the high seas. Luciano Benetton, founder of the eponymous clothing empire, had an important objective in mind when he commissioned Lissoni Associati, the Milan architecture firm, and the Mondomarine boatyard in Savona to build his yacht for him. Benetton was determined to bring into being the first-ever private yacht to gain Green Star certification for what the issuing authority, RINA, calls “maximum respect for the environment.” Benetton, who turns 75 this year, saw that everyone rose to the challenge, and was able to flash his SURFACE

colours at the 2007 Monaco Boat Show: “I believe that respect for the sea and for nature in general is the duty of everyone, and for those who sail and who love the sea above all.” Tribù is the name Benetton gave his 50-metre yacht, and, yes, he got his Green Star. Onboard sewage-treatment plants (nothing goes over the side), special ballast tanks that don’t displace harmful pathogens and microorganisms – the list goes on. Tribù’s fairly unsurprising exterior, designed to brave the world’s harshest seas, yields no visual clues to the stately

pleasure dome hidden within. “The project was really about contrasts,” says Michael Peter Stahlmann, one of the architects who worked on the project. “You have this really rough type of structure for the ship and then really clean and modern architecture on the inside.” This means abstract art, muted colours and not a single gold column in sight. The kitchen, complete with prosciutto slicer, looks like one you’d ﬁnd in a high-end restaurant (Mr. Benetton likes to cook). The only problem, Stahlmann says with a smile, is that Tribù gives Benetton too good a reason for keeping out of the ofﬁce: “Everyone’s complaining he’s not there.”

DESIGN

A STITCH IN TIME Text AARON LEVIN

Recycling is about mashing up one raw material and making it into another consumer product; “decycling” is taking something that has lost its value and giving it a new one in more artistic or social terms. Frédérique Morrel, my

SURFACE

Photo GIASCO BERTOLI

partner in life and business, and I “decycle” vintage needlework we ﬁnd in thrift stores and garage sales. Frédérique began using them on animal forms about 18 months ago. There’s an idea of rebirth: we’re giving an animal life and

giving new life to the tapestries. Each “Artifact” animal is inspired by the tapestries themselves: our first full-sized deer was clearly looking for his mate, so we covered it with erotic and love scenes. www.frederiquemorrel.com

STYLE

WEAVING PARADISE Text TINA ISAAC Photo STINE HEILMANN

— AYMARA’s knitwear looks good, feels good and does a lot of good in Bolivia where it’s made. Maria Høgh Heilmann and Trine Fyhr met in 1996 at design school, in Denmark where they both grew up. In 2004 they founded Aymara, using money from a government grant to source llama wool in Bolivia. “When we realized we could combine fashion and fair trade, it was like the consumers were just waiting for us,” Heilmann recalls. The Danish duo presented their first knitwear collection in 2006, and they’ve gone on to put “cashlama” (a technique and coinage developed by their Bolivian producer) onto the international luxury map. Among cashlama’s advantages: longer ﬁbres mean it doesn’t pill and is more durable than cashmere, and it costs one-half to one-third the price. In 2009 Aymara won the Ethical Prize at the Danish fashion awards and saw 120 percent growth. “The Bolivians have been SURFACE

generous in teaching us their handicraft,” says Heilmann, who oversees the design of Aymara’s collections, while Fyhr handles development projects, corporate social responsibility and corporate social innovation. The pair develop their designs in Denmark and then travel to Bolivia to perfect shapes, ﬁnishes and details, and to develop new colours and techniques. Aymara’s pieces run from $60 to $700 and are available, so far, in eight countries. The company enjoys full membership in the UN Global Compact (a charter outlining sustainability and responsible business practices), and SA8000 certiﬁcation (a guarantee that all production is done with respect for workers and the environment) is expected to come through this year. Since 2008 the company has donated $1 from each item sold to

charitable causes in Bolivia, notably for children. Next on the Aymara agenda is obtaining organic certiﬁcation for raw wool, having a 100-percent organic product, and for a fair-trade purchasing system designed to improve the living standards for llama herders. For Spring 2010 Aymara’s women’s collection has expanded to include a new cotton-jersey line of tank shirts, breezy tops and T-shirt dresses. Neutral colours prevail for travel-friendly shawls, ponchos and a peacoat-style knit jacket or cream weave vest, while the home collection’s Hollie throw is made of 1.5 kilos of llama wool, its wave ﬁnish done by hand. Next up are men’s knits and jerseys, as well as possible cooperation with other like-minded companies. “Our main dream,” Fyhr and Heilmann say, hopefully, “is to open people’s eyes to the positive results of innovating in a responsible way.” www.aymara.dk

‘The Bolivians have been generous in teaching us their handicraft.’

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

STYLE

THROWAWAY FASHION Text TOM RIDGWAY Photo ROBERT DECELIS Model TABITHA HALL @Models1

— GARY HARVEY is making the disposable divine. As chain stores around the world continue to churn out the latest trends for prices so cheap they often provoke a double-take, Gary Harvey’s conceptual collection SURFACE

“Fashion with a Conscience” aims to inspire a more meaningful reaction. The designer, who knows about fashion’s ins and outs after having spent nearly a decade as creative

director of Levi’s Europe, has taken classic fashion shapes, such as ball gowns, and reinterpreted them using discarded items. From base materials such as plastic bags, old T-shirts or even copies of yesterday’s Financial Times,

Harvey sets about reengineering fashion’s DNA, upending any preconceived notions of practicality and aesthetics. One model is made from 10 old wedding gowns, giving new life to the ultimate in one-shot clothing, while another

sees 28 army jackets sitting pretty in a grittily elegant fishtail corset dress. Harvey, who takes special commissions for his dresses, is part of a growing movement that wants to steer ethical fashion away from its roots in hemp and halos. “I believe

we can contribute to an ethical fashion revolution,” he said when he launched the collection. “By sourcing fabrics and raw materials that have been thrown away, you can look good and be good, too.” www.garyharveycreative.com ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

ARCHITECTURE

WHIZ KITS Photo BENNY CHAN Text ALEXANDER SHARKEY

— The quick-and-dirty way to building a California dream home can also be quick-and-clean. Above goes to LA to meet the high priests of prefab. Perhaps only Los Angeles could produce an architectural firm like Marmol Radziner. This is a company that designs and builds elegant, ecological ly sound, moder nist homes in its own factory, drops them into place with a crane, and then oversees every aspect of final construction and finish, right down to landscaping the gardens. Over the last two decades this Culver City-based firm has grown to become a leading specialist in prefabricated design, and unique because it handles on-site construction, too. “Prefab

CORE

is a much-abused term,” says Ron Radziner, one half of the innovative partnership that employs a team of 50 at its design ofﬁces. “A lot of building that’s called prefab really isn’t; I think we can safely say that our work is.” It’s true that many so-called prefab houses are not prefabricated at all, but rather are delivered as basic building kits – walls, flooring, roof, and so on – that are then bolted together on-site. Marmol Radziner’s concept and execution is considerably more

sophisticated. The company’s steel frame modules are 3.6 metres wide and high, and can be ordered in increments of 3.6 metres, up to just over 18 metres. Constructed at the company’s factory just south of downtown LA, these modules come fitted with floors, ceilings, kitchens, bathrooms, countertops, doors and cabinetr y, and are painted to customer specifications before being sealed and trucked to the site. One of the most obvious benefits of this type of construction is speed: while the foundations are being prepared, the modules are assembled simultaneously in the factory, where quality control is

greater and bad weather won’t cause delays. “A lot of the problems with any building project arise because of some conﬂict between the architect and the contractors,” says Radziner. “But we do both the design and the construction, so if there are any on-site problems, we deal with them ourselves.“

One of the obvious benefits of this type of construction is speed. which we completed on time,” Radziner remembers, “but just ﬁve months before the school was due to open for the fall semester, the administrators learned there would be 300 more pupils than expected. So we had to build classrooms, and quickly, to accommodate them. The school owned some adjacent land, so we made prefab classrooms and got them on site just in time.” The lessons gleaned from these two projects convinced R adziner and his colleag ues that prefabrication was the way ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

Marmol Radziner’s refreshingly practical design-build approach – this is not a practice where words like “theory” or “philosophy” are thrown around – is based on historic models of the “master builder” and classic Bauhaus principles. Clean, modern, craft-based, the company’s vertically integrated design process extends through architecture, fabrication, custom furniture, interior and landscape design, fostering “cohesive solutions” to modern living with the lowest

possible environmental impact. Two projects, both competition winners and separated by only a few kilometres, initially prompted t he par t ners to t h i n k about specializing in prefabrication. In 1996, they built the LAX Child Development Center, a day-care facility for employees’ children at Los Angeles International Airport. “We were told in advance that there was a possibility that one of the airport runways might be extended into the site, meaning the centre might have to be moved,” Radziner explains. “Naturally, we made it prefabricated, so that it could be shifted. In the end, it’s still there. But we learned a lot from the project.” The second was the Accelerated School, a school in South Central that opened in 1997. “The main project was a non-prefabricated school building,

ARCHITECTURE

This page and preceding pages: Desert House in Desert Hot Springs, California, was Marmol Radziner’s prototype prefab house. The 370m2 of interiors, patios and pathways were designed to make the most of the views of the San Jacinto mountains.

forward. “You have much better quality control over every aspect of the building process,” he says, “and you can manage time and materials more efficiently and economically.“ Radziner points out that it’s also a much greener process, as the steel used in the company’s modules is all recycled, all its woods are certified, and all its paints are far less toxic than standard paints. “Naturally, we also have much more control over wastage than out on a site. And finally, instead of all those people driving trucks and vans and dragging plant and tools out to the site, our employees come to work at our factory, in the city.” SURFACE

If the company’s sleek buildings are evocative of classic modernist architecture like that of Richard Neutra, it’s no accident. The ﬁrm is also a leading specialist in the restoration of landmark modernist homes, having got its start in 1992 when it was hired to restore the Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs. Made famous by Julius Shulman’s iconic photograph of the house at dusk, this seminal Neut r a residence h ad b e en significantly modified from its original size and form. Five years and countless hours of research went into restoring the building as closely as possible to its original condition – right down to tracing

down the Utah quarry where the the sandstone that Neutra had chosen half a century earlier had been excavated. Yet there was little glamour or sense of history when the two partners launched their practice in 1989, with most of their work then being garage additions, bathroom renovations and alterations to industrial buildings. One of their earliest lessons was that erratic and unreliable subcontractors could throw even the most meticulous planning into disarray. In 1992, for example, a group of electrical contractors disappeared from a site overnight when they realized they

All the steel is recycled, woods are certified, paints are far less toxic...

could be earning far more money in Florida, cashing in on the lucrative rebuilding work that needed doing in the wake of Hurricane Andrew. Unsurprisingly, the architectural team began to think about taking control of construction themselves. “Today, it’s difﬁcult for staff and clients to imagine Leo [Marmol] and myself wearing tool belts and digging ditches,” says Radziner, “but that’s how we started out.” The partners’ willingness to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty wasn’t the only way that Marmol Radziner set out to distinguish itself from competitors. When the company moved to an ofﬁce

with a theatrical-style marquee, the partners decided to put it to use, posting a new quotation each week. One came from Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos: “Let us open up this space and confront the people with ideas, not weapons.”

what it saw as potential conﬂicts of interest. Then, having deﬁned architecture as being distinct from construction, the AIA developed standardized contracts that put architects in overall control of the building process yet removed them from the construction site.

Two decades after the company’s launch, that slogan could double as its mission statement. Yet curiously, despite the beneﬁts of the prefabrication system, for over a century the American Institute of Architects considered design-build both unethical and aesthetically impure. Until 1979, the AIA banned design-build practices because of

“Because of that attitude, over the years many people in our profession lost respect for making objects,” says Radziner, with a wry smile. “We always found that strange and counterintuitive. Because when you get right down to it, architecture is all about making an object.” www.marmol-radziner.com ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

ART

WILD AT ART Text TOM RIDGWAY

Top: Gone With The Wind Wild-ﬂower seeds, taxidermied kittiwake gull, nylon, lead, acrylic. 220 x 200 x 1100 cm. Commissioned for the Great North Run Cultural Programme. Exhibited at the Laing Gallery, Newcastleupon-Tyne. Photo CLAIRE MORGAN

— British artist CLAIRE MORGAN explores nature and winds up telling humans something about themselves. The ﬁrst thing that strikes you is the fragility of these suspended sculptures formed from dandelion seeds or dead fruit ﬂies. Then it’s the delicacy of the work, its lack of insistence. Then it’s the sheer craft that goes into Claire Morgan’s art, work that makes the invisible solid and the fragile strong, that tames nature by revealing its wildness.

SURFACE

The moments that grab her are those when the animal and natural worlds bump into our own. “I’m interested,” she explains, “in the way that society tries to control nature and make it more easily consumable, less scary, and how we seal ourselves off from it.” So in her piece entitled Fantastic Mr Fox, we are faced with a stuffed fox standing in a ﬁeld of threads, underneath a cube made of ripped plastic bin bags. At the end of each thread are bits of what Morgan calls “crunchy meat.” It’s as if an urban fox is scavenging through an abstract vision of our trash, ﬁnding the best of what we throw away for

Morgan’s work is also concerned with a quality too often derided in contemporary art – beauty. The beauty of the natural world, of geometric forms, of the artist’s particular vision. She uses materials that are “more detailed and beautiful than anything you could possibly create out of them.” So she works with thistle seeds that in her work become fixed in their floating to form delicate spheres, as well as flies – which she used to collect direct from butchers’ electric fly-zappers – habitual symbols of decay and disgust. “If you forget the fact that they’re flies,” she says, “they’re really amazingly detailed things,” and in Architecture, she has attached them to threads to form what could be a fantasy Le Corbusier building in the sky.

Opposite: Cats and Dogs Torn polythene, two taxidermied rooks, feathers, nylon, lead, acrylic. 240 x 150 x 200 cm. Photo from the exhibition Periphery, at UCA, Farnham. Photo CLAIRE MORGAN

Morgan now lives in London but tells us she has used animals and insects in her work since her days at art school in Newcastle. At first she took the unpreserved dead because she was interested in “visible” decay, in watching how nature takes back its own, rotting everything back to carbon. Later, as her work progressed and her technique grew she taught herself taxidermy (“It’s quite difficult but I’m definitely getting better“) and

began using stuffed animals and birds – foxes, squirrels, jackdaws and ducks – to freeze an instant, “to create something that looks like a moment within a process.”

his own survival. Yet we don’t give anything away for free – the meat is attached to ﬁshing hooks. Even when we discard we lay a trap.

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

ART

A hedgehog – stuffed by Morgan herself – sniffs suspiciously.

Top: Clearing Taxidermied hedgehog, torn polythene, lead weights, nylon, acrylic. 300 x 200 x 240 cm. Courtesy Galerie Karsten Greve Opposite: A Part at the Seam 2009 Taxidermied jackdaw, thistle seeds, torn polythene. 300 x 93 x 93 cm. Courtesy Galerie Karsten Greve

Claire Morgan says her work has progressed in an organic way, a process of fine-tuning and complication. In Clearing, perhaps her most complex sculpture to date and one that took about a month to construct, another black cube of ﬂoating bin-bag scraps changes as you move around it, lines of emptiness through the cube, creating an illusion of depth and a depth to its illusion of solidity. At SURFACE

its base, a hedgehog – stuffed by Morgan herself – sniffs suspiciously at this perfectly geometric shape, a sort of threatening 2001-style monolith that confuses the beasts and intimidates us with its glowering, passive intent. This uncertainty of meaning stretches to works that at first glance might appear more literal. In Ophelia (wake), a duck sits suspended a metre above the floor, its body stuffed to limpness, floating in what looks like water but which turns out to be a mass of plastic. You can read it as a comment on how plastic pollution is killing birds and animals around the world, which it might well be. But Morgan won’t confirm or deny. “I don’t like the idea of my work having a definite opinion or encouraging people

to think in a specific way,” she says. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable with saying that it is a political or environmental statement. It’s just supposed to be me exploring different things that I’m not really sure about.” Keep exploring. www.claire-morgan.co.uk Claire Morgan’s work can be seen at Dead or Alive, a group show at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, April 27-October 24, and early next year at the Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania, Australia.

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

ART

REDWOOD SAW Text SEAN ELDER Photo RICHARD ROTHMAN

— RICHARD ROTHMAN spent the better part of ﬁve years photographing California’s ‘sacred trees’ and a town that’s oblivious to them. Probably known better for his giant black-and-white images of urban environments reclaimed by nature, Richard Rothman got his first glimpse of the old-growth redwood forest of the Californian northwest back in 2004. He began photographing, working with his cumbersome 4x5 view camera, in Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park, just east of Crescent City, a logging and fishing village in the northernmost corner of the

SURFACE

state. Rothman returned again in the spring, and kept coming back over the next ﬁve years. The resulting project, Redwood Saw, is a chronicle of that exploration. The arc of the forthcoming book is the artist’s own. “After the forest came the town and its architecture; the portraits; and ﬁnally the nudes and the ocean.” What he sensed in his human subjects was something vulnerable, and even wounded. What he learned from the forest

was far more ﬂeeting. “You have to be fast doing this kind of work,” he says. “This kind of light is going to be gone.” Most people tend to shoot the redwoods the same way: trees converging on the sky, or sometimes a car or person in the frame to lend them scale. “I was just going to photograph the light in the forest,” he says. To compare the light in the redwood forest to that of a cathedral is a cliché, but it was not always so. The forest primeval was something to be avoided (or chopped down) in early America. It was only after

the “discovery” of Yosemite and other great California groves in the mid-19th century that the country got guilt, or perhaps religion. “The Big Trees, in short, were sacred,” wrote Simon Schama in Landscape and Memory, “America’s own natural temple.” But you know how we treat temples. It wasn’t long before these trees were similarly threatened, ﬁrst by logging and then development. As foresting on a wide scale stopped in Crescent City, the town withered as well. The burned tree on this page was found near the appropriately named Wonder Stump Road.

“The minute I came across the clear-cutting,” says Rothman, “I thought: this is going to be a great transition to the town.”

On these pages: Two views from Richard Rothman’s Redwood Saw project

Rothman spent several visits just photographing Crescent City’s architecture and people, only to ﬂee again to nature. “I can only imagine what having a redwood forest in my backyard might have felt like,” he says. “And yet, in the town, almost everyone I met seemed to be oblivious to it.” Rothman’s photos can be seen in the group show Schwarzweiß at the Robert Morat Galerie in Hamburg through April. ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

FIGURES

INFORMATION IS BEAUTIFUL Infographic DAVID MCCANDLESS

$440 US defence budget

$3000 Iraq war estimated total

$465 Feed and educate every child in the developing world for five years

$60 China

$11 Russia $133 Iraq war 07

$60 $102 Iraq war Iraq war 06 predicted cost 2003

$352 Wal-mart revenues

$206 Big tobacco settlement

$515 Per year to shift the entire world to solar power and renewable energies

$11 Wal-mart profits

$300 Yearly amount given to charity by Americans

$520 OPEC earnings

$320 Global illegal drug market

$41 Beijing Olympics

$54 Feed every child in the world for a year $3 OPEC climate change fund

$32 Video games market $97 Internet porn $27 Gift cards

$18 Yoga industry

$21 To save the Amazon rainforest

Billion-Dollar-O-Gram

$103 Foreign aid given by the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wealthiest nations

Billions spent on this. Billions spent on that. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all relative, right? 46

CORE

David McCandless, like a lot of us, was feeling a bit like roadkill on the information superhighway, but then he came up with a ﬁendishly

clever solution. His infographics make hard-to-visualize concepts not only understandable, but also easy on the eye and often good fun. More of his

$230 Manned mission to Mars

work can be found in his latest book Information is Beautiful (Collins, 2010), and at his website, www.informationisbeautiful.net.

$316 Bribes received by Russian officials

$68 Nintendo market value

$175 Google value

$46 Bill Gates’s fortune

$15 Facebook

$385 Worldwide advertising spend $534 Global pharmaceutical market

$21 $20

Online advertising

$19

Erectile dysfunction

spending

Freebies for doctors

Anti-depressants

earning

giving

fighting

ABOVE MAGAZINE

losing

SPRING 2010

illin’

FIGURES

Water Towers

Daily total use per person

4645 bottles Direct use

low-flush toilet (3 litres)

162 | 163

SURFACE

brush teeth wash hands shavelegs (5 litres)

toilet flush (13 litres)

Indirect use

5 minute lo-flow shower (20 litres)

5 minute shower (30 litres)

water the lawn (50 litres)

to grow an orange (50 litres)

to grow an apple (70 litres)

bath (80 litres)

no bath (0 litres)

3 star washing machine (92 litres)

energy star washing machine (44 litres)

to make one egg (200 litres)

one litre bottle of water (5 litres)

source: Wikipedia, Good Magazine

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

ABOVE SALUTES

MARC JACOBS Photography GILLES BENSIMON It’s not only about what he sells (although he gets points from Above for that naturalhemp tote bag we saw a while back, the one with the sad penguin on it proclaiming, “Save My Pole”). We like fashion designer Marc Jacobs for being someone who cares. About the environment, yes, but also about the people of New York, the place where he was raised and where he has raised a lot of money for local charities like City Harvest, Riverkeeper, Circle of Life Foundation, Citymeals-onWheels, Downtown for Democracy, Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, Fresh Art, God’s Love We Deliver and many others. His friend Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth summed it up nicely: “It’s very hard to really be authentic...if your foremost thing is being really cool. You have to have a full range of emotion, and Marc has that.” 5pm, Flamands Beach, St. Barts.

SURFACE

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

STA CK

CONTRAST — The 1980s were good to PHILIPPE STARCK. Too good, perhaps. He allowed himself to be lulled into complacency, to believe the world was going to be OK. Once he understood otherwise, he got interested in helping the world get better. So let’s stop blaming him for making all that stuff we thought we wanted. The world’s preeminent design guru accepts his share of the guilt, and he has sentenced himself to rethink his profession. Text & Photography by RANDALL KORAL

CORE

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

CORE

PORTRAIT

‘We’re more in need of service, of real answers, than we’re in need of more objects.’

ere’s what Philippe Starck has to say on the subject of uselessness, meaning his own: “I feel like for the past 30 years I have been perfecting a set of skills that no longer have any effectiveness in the context of the crises facing people today. People are dying from wars, from illness, from lack of water, from tsunamis, from earthquakes, from the beginnings of huge famines – and here I am with three lamps and a chair. That’s why I have said that, today, I feel completely useless.” Not that this confession comes as a scoop. Starck frequently dismisses himself as a “designer of Christmas gifts.” The problem is, his pronouncements have been so often misconstrued it has been hard to know what to take seriously. By the way, didn’t he say he was retiring? About 10 years ago? “I never said I was going to retire,” he replies. “I would be totally incapable of that. I was supposed to have said I would stop when I was 50, but now I’m 61 and I still haven’t stopped. The thing is, I never said I was going to stop; I said I was going to change, and that’s what I’m saying again now. I’m going to change structures, tools. I’m going to stop practising design such as it is today: obsolete, archaic….”

f Philippe Starck didn’t actually invent the Yuppie zeitgeist of the 1980s, he certainly knew what Yuppies liked. His designs were fun without veering into frivolity. Starck never went for baroque. And he never went broke, because after Paris, where Starck ﬁrst hatched his mad plan to redesign the universe, a lot of other cities lusted after what he was selling. He became a leading French export. He became an international brand. He became the ﬁrst-ever design superstar. But what Starck really became was Dr. Frankenstein. Shifting into product design, Starck unleashed his vision and, by the end of the 1980s, he was recoiling in horror at his own success. The big difference is that Frankenstein’s monster terrorized the villagers; Starck’s creations made them reach for their chequebooks. More than 550,000 of his Juicy Salif citrus presses have been sold since Alessi started producing them in 1988. Kartell has sold nearly a million of his Louis Ghost chairs. Looking back, Starck says “there have been times, moments of calm and luxury, perhaps of civilisation, of enlightenment, when design has been more about wasting time, elegantly. In such times, speaking about the qualities of a lamp or a chair was perhaps tolerable.” Now, he says, the game has changed and so, too, has the designer’s mission: “One’s weapons have to be adapted for combat, not for opportunism. Of course it would be more practical to just adapt yourself to bring in business instead of adapting yourself to combat, but that’s not who I am. You have to have the best tools to make yourself useful.” Starck got off to an inauspicious start in 1978 with his unremarkable interior design ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

Opposite: Revolutionair, the wind turbine Starck unveiled in Milan in January. Whereas industrialscale wind farms have been decried for noise, visual pollution and for killing birds and bats, Revolutionair is intended for lowimpact home use. Placed in a garden or on a roof, the windmill’s plastic blades can rotate to catch a breeze from any direction, generating what the manufacturer says may amount to as much as 60 percent of the average home’s power needs. More info: www.pramac.com

If Starck sounds more lucid than he usually does when speaking English, that’s because he’s not speaking English. He’s speaking French and I’m translating for him. Usually when Starck in quoted in English you get a heavy dose of Pepé-Le-Pewisicisms, or worse. “The most important thing in life is a penis,” Starck is supposed to have told a GQ writer. “Without a penis, a man cannot do anything....” Starck may have been attempting to say “Happiness…” but whatever he actually said, the joke was still on him. So when we were both in Milan for the unveiling of Revolutionair, Starck’s home-use wind-turbine project, I suggested we speak his native language. Starck rose to the occasion. Or rather, he reclined in an armchair in his suite at the Bulgari Hotel. Jasmine, Starck’s stunningly attractive fourth wife, rarely leaves her husband’s side but now she was at mine, sharing the sofa with me for the duration

of the interview. From time to time she looked up from answering e-mails and gently reminded Starck (as she refers to him) that he was running late for his next appointment of the evening: the wind-turbine launch party in Milan’s Triennale Design Museum. Four hundred people were already there, waiting for the world’s most famous product designer to stride onto a stage and elaborate on what he had said earlier that day at the Revolutionair press conference: “We have to help people to produce energy, to be part of the ﬁght....”

PORTRAIT

Top: Privé chair and quilted-leather “island sofa,” designed for Cassina in 2007. Though not among Starck’s Democratic Ecology projects, the foam in the sofa happens to be CFC-free.

for the Bains Douches nightclub. When Café Costes opened in Les Halles in 1984, however, it was clear Starck was bringing something new to the table, as well as to the stairs (theatrical) and seating (his “Costes Chair” became ubiquitous). And then there were the urinals: phosphorescent walls of light, surprising and a bit unnerving, looking as if they might beam you aboard the Enterprise before you could zip up.

efore the paint was dry on the Café Costes, Starck was commissioned to design a new nightclub in Dallas. It opened in 1984, became the Texas answer to New York’s Studio 54, and offered generous helpings of celebs and drugs (MDMA would still be legal for another year). They named it – get ready – Starck Club. From Texas it was a short hop to the real Studio 54 in Manhattan, or rather, to the two men responsible for Studio 54’s disco-era dazzle. Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell were pretty much done with nightclubs by the time they met Starck, so they put him to work designing their hotel properties. The Royalton opened in 1988 and kicked

CORE

off a worldwide craze for Starck-designed “boutique hotels.” As the 1990s began, Starck was hard at work constructing a new persona for himself, even if all those people buying his lemon squeezers and plastic chairs may not have noticed. He wrestled with big problems – consumerism, greed, pollution – and he worked on solutions. In 1998 he launched his Good Goods catalogue with French mail-order company La Redoute. As he became interested in living an organic lifestyle, Starck developed Good Goods to disseminate that interest. Among the catalogue’s “nonproducts for the nonconsumer in the new moral market” was Champagne Brut Biologique, an organic version of Starck’s all-time favourite beverage. It was a small step, but the “moral market” was a prescient notion in 1998 (too bad the banking sector didn’t run with it). Starck had shown he was not merely looking out for himself, he was looking ahead for all of us. “If a designer continues to answer questions in a material way – with objects – that means he belongs to the 19th century, the century of mechanics, ocean liners, locomotives,” Starck says. “Today we’re more in need of service, of real answers, than we’re in need of more objects. Eighty percent of the objects around us are

Starck has big plans for the future, plans “on a civilisation-wide scale,” but he was reluctant to tell me much about them. I asked him if those plans might have something to do with outer space. In 2006 he designed the logo for Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s “space tourism” company, and Starck was rumoured to have something do with a Virgin Galactic “spaceport” in New Mexico. He waved off the suggestion, saying, “Space is merely mechanics,” but then decided to divulge some of what he’s planning for Earth: “We’re in the process of constructing the ﬁrst university – no, laboratory – dedicated solely to research into creativity. Today there are physicists who track dark matter, who track neutrinos. I want to track the workings of creativity. I want to create the world’s greatest particle accelerator

for creativity. I am in the process of putting together an enormous structure, with biologists, psychoanalysts… If we succeed, and we are going to succeed, then we’ll have something important to transmit.”

Top: Philippe Starck is currently working on the H+, a prototype no-emissions hydrogen-cell car.

Meanwhile Starck has been ramping up the sustainable and eco designs that fall into his Democratic Ecology line. His two models of Revolutionair wind turbines are being manufactured and distributed by Pramac, an Italian generator company. He is building his own eco-prefab house near Paris, and before long we can expect designs for solar panels, electric cars, mopeds and a solar-and-hydrogen-powered boat. And he hasn’t stopped thinking about the need to preserve what we have left of the planet: “We can say we don’t care about ﬁsh and we don’t care about chimpanzees – we can say that, yes, but that’s certainly not the right evolutionary storyline for us. I think today we should try to keep playing the game holding the cards we were given at the outset. Playing the game after having lost 49 of the 52 cards we were given, it’s not the same game anymore. I think that will mean losing the ﬁrst game and not being able to play in the new game.” Does Starck feel optimistic about humanity’s chances

made by great people – people with extraordinary talent and creativity, but who use up their talent in a cynical way to take money from the pockets of what they call their ‘target consumers,’ and with the extraordinary, premeditated idea of giving nothing back in exchange. It used to be modern to try to take without giving. That’s a part of consumer society, the Kleenex society, but that’s over.”

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

PORTRAIT

‘I’m trying to understand a bit better what we should be, what we could be. Everything is evolution. There is no other subject.’

Top: Miss Lacy, 2007

for survival? “I’m extraordinarily optimistic. For a very long time, like any good French intellectual, I was extraordinarily romantic but I owed it to myself to be structurally pessimistic. That lasted until the day I made an effort to work a bit more. My research led to my new obsession with trying to remember what humankind used to be – bacteria – and to understanding what we’re going to be in 4 billion years when the sun implodes and we explode. Any idiot can do it, but I’m trying to understand a bit better what we should be, what we could be. Everything is evolution. There is no other subject.” Well, there is one other subject: happiness. “My intuition tells me we aren’t here merely to be happy,” he says. “If we’re happy, ﬁne, but I don’t think happiness lies in the search for happiness. I think we’re here to work. We’re workers. To look back on your life and think you’ve done good work, maybe that’s life’s only truly meaningful happiness.” Starck mentions his monthly meetings in California with Steve Jobs, apologizing for not being able to tell me what the meetings are about. He tells me this instead: “Steve Jobs is not particularly funny. I like him very much. I have a lot of feelings for him. He’s extraordinarily intelligent, reﬂective, serious. The other day we were talking and I had to make an ‘adjustment’ – the way you adjust one machine to be in harmony with another, like you have to adjust a boat with two

CORE

engines so both engines work together. So I asked him to sum up for me in one word everything that’s important to him, to tell me the one word that’s most fundamental. So he stopped, thought about it, and then said, ‘Honesty. That’s the only answer: honesty.’”

he following morning I arranged to meet Starck at Driade, the Milanese design company that has been distributing his creations since 1985. Many of his classic chairs were on display in the company’s showroom: the “Costes Chair” (ofﬁcially known as Pratfall), the Von Vogelsang (1984), Lola Mundo (1986), Lord Yo (1994), and my personal favourite, the shiny chrome Miss Lacy (2007). I found Starck at the back of the shop, enmeshed in some kind of sales meeting with a dozen business-suited men and women, several of whom were taking notes. I lingered in the doorway, not wanting to interrupt, when Jasmine Starck caught sight of me. She turned in her seat and uttered a barely audible “mon amour…?” in her husband’s direction. The effect was instantaneous. Starck stopped in mid-spiel, trotted out to the courtyard, dropped into a Miss Lacy chair and let me take his picture. A few minutes later he was back in the shop, picking up where he left off, talking to the furniture people about his next collection.

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

Necklace made of recycled watch faces and silver CARMINA CAMPUS. All make-up LANCĂ&#x201D;ME

CORE

COVER STORY

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; She may not have much to say about the glamour genes she inherited from her mother (Isabella Rossellini) and grandmother (Ingrid Bergman), but listen to what ELETTRA WIEDEMANN has to say about vertical farming and solar-powered clinics in Africa. By TINA ISAAC

Photography BETTINA RHEIMS Stylist MARTINE DE MENTHON Hair stylist MARTYN FOSS CALDER c/o AIRPORT AGENCY Make-up CHRISTINE CORBEL c/o JED ROOT Set design ARMAND DE TAYRAC Photo assistants HARRY MATENAER, PATRICK ANIN, JEREMY MASSA Stylist assistant SOKAT EM Make-up assistant MELANIE SERGEFF

COVER STORY

‘I assume that the universe will kind of unfold in a certain way and I will be able to follow it.’

lettra Wiedemann would like to set the record straight: her name is not Rossellini, no matter what Google has to say on the subject. How the Rossellini started sticking to her name (sometimes before Wiedemann, sometimes after, sometimes instead of) isn’t entirely clear. “Some editor or journalist somewhere decided to put the name in there and it stuck,” she says. “But it’s loaded with implications about my family and who I am trying to be. I did not want people to think that I was using this family name to work, which is just not the case. That name is not on my passport or my birth certificate. Calling me Smith would be just as wrong.” Then, lest anyone be tempted to weigh in with yet another layer of analysis, she adds, “It’s not meant to be disrespectful to my mother. It’s just a question of being respectful to me. She’s my mother and I love her. But there are other things to talk about. We all do our best and try to make a name for ourselves and feel like our accomplishments are our own.” As legacies go, few are more steeped in glamour than Elettra Wiedemann’s. But the 26-year-old descendant of one of the most celebrated and scandalous love affairs in the history of cinema never knew her maternal grandparents Roberto Rossellini, who died in 1977, and Ingrid Bergman, who died in 1982, the year before Elettra was born. And she’s understandably tired of interviewers sifting her past to spice up their stories. I ask her about the five films that Bergman and Rossellini made together, about Casablanca, about her mother Isabella Rossellini’s turn in Blue Velvet. “I have seen some of them,” she says, trying her best to be polite, “but only about once. They are good films. I don’t really have anything more to say about it.”

CORE

She has plenty to say, it turns out, on things that really interest her: environmental issues, for starters. Even as she was achieving lift-off as a fashion model, Wiedemann was already exploring ways to become involved in eco causes. As a newly minted graduate of international relations at the New School in New York, she travelled to Kenya, where she spent the better part of

Leggings MARNI. Necklace made with raw coral pieces on a handmade cotton passementerie KARRY’O.

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

Dress ALEXANDER MCQUEEN.

CORE

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

COVER STORY

‘The environmental thing is really complex – if it wasn’t, we would have figured it out by now!”

a summer with Ian Douglas Hamilton and his elephantconservation team. Fascinating though that experience was, she notes, it also taught Wiedemann a lesson about her own threshold. “I always thought that I would get into NGO work, conservation or something, and although I met amazing people and had an incredible time, I thought to myself ‘You know what? I am just not made of the stuff that is required for this job.’” Months and even years at a time in the bush, incommunicado with family and loved ones seemed too high a price, and it led to what she calls a “re-evaluation moment”.

odelling, it turns out, was far from an obvious career choice for Elettra Wiedemann, any genetic predisposition notwithstanding. The young woman I meet in the lobby of Le Meurice in Paris is a willowy beauty with towering heels and auburn tresses (the recent experiment in semi-permanent colouring suits her), but as a teenager, Wiedemann suffered from scoliosis and spent nearly six years wearing a back brace. “Modelling was deﬁnitely not on the horizon then,” she says. “It popped up in my life at an opportune moment and I have been riding the wave since.” On the previous Saturday the wave had landed her in a photo studio where she was bathed in mud for Above’s cover shoot with Bettina Rheims. “That was really a blast,” she says. “I kept thinking of that scene in 101 Dalmations where they’re covered in soot. Mud and hazelnut shells is what I will always remember about that day.”

CORE

Five years ago Elettra followed in her mother’s footsteps to Lancôme. Elettra remains the face of Lancôme’s Hydra Zen skincare line, and the relationship has blossomed into two other collaborations this spring: as the face for Ô My Rose, Aaron de May’s make-up collection, as well as for Trésor in Love, Lancôme’s new perfume that launched worldwide in March. “I never really thought that modelling would turn into a career,” she muses. “I’m still pretty shocked, although I am enjoying it immensely. When I started, I just wanted to enjoy it while it lasted, meet new people, travel and make some money.” Still, the modelling hasn’t required Elettra to put the rest of her life on hold. She is currently wrapping up two years of graduate study in biomedicine at the London School of Economics. “It sounds lofty,” she admits, “but it’s just a sociological, philosophical approach to understanding the effect of science on society, or society on science.” An ideal fit for a lifelong science buff, it dovetailed neatly with her undergraduate degree. As this issue of Above went to press, Wiedemann was polishing her dissertation (“it feels like composing an opera”) on vertical farming. Vertical farming, a proposal first developed in 1999 by Columbia University professor Dickson Despommier, explores relocating food production into big-city, indoor gardens, which are all cultivated aeroponically or hydroponically, a method that is soil-free, chemicalfree, conserves water and produces year-round. Farmers, in turn, are paid to return nature to itself by restoring trees, grasslands and swamplands. Among vertical farming’s considerable fringe benefits are wildlife conservation, self-sufficiency for cities and alternative power supplies. But its biggest advantage is that it would eliminate the onus of creating enough land – equivalent to the area of Brazil, plus 20 percent by Despommier’s reckoning – to feed a global population that is not only predominantly urban, but is expected to increase by 3 billion by the year 2050.

A first stint for Abercrombie & Fitch, courtesy of photographer and family friend Bruce Weber, launched Wiedemann’s career. In the seven years since, she has appeared on the catwalk for Diane von Furstenberg and Bill Blass, and she headlined, alongside Shalom Harlow, at the ﬁrst Earth Pledge green-fashion show, which showcased one-of-a-kind, sustainable designs by Marc Jacobs, Stella McCartney, Versace and Derek Lam, in partnership with Barney’s New York. She has

also appeared in print campaigns for Dinh Van, Le Bon Marché and Hogan.

Dress ALEXANDER MCQUEEN. Boots SPORTMAX.

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

Bloomers LOUIS VUITTON. Shoes AZZEDINE ALAÏA. Artist bracelet, unique piece in bronze and wood ELIZABETH RAMUZ c/o KARRY’O.

CORE

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

Jacket MONCLER GAMME ROUGE. Bra SABBIA ROSA. Panty MARNI. Stilettos CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN.

CORE

COVER STORY

Elettra’s dissertation may wind up triggering an expansion of her university’s curriculum.

espite reservations about space, cost and the security of “gardens in the sky,” vertical farming is a subject that’s catching on, especially in the United States. Last July, the New York Times reported that the Manhattan borough president’s ofﬁce was sketching out a feasibility study for a vertical farming project. In an op-ed piece published in August, Despommier pointed out that the US has already lost billions of dollars in crops due to calamities triggered by climate change. “With billions more people on the way,” he wrote, “before we know it the traditional soil-based farming model developed over the last 12,000 years will no longer be a sustainable option.” Elettra admits that, while she could go on talking about it for days, the vertical-farming scenario will most likely evolve over the next 50 years or so, given current technological limitations as well as economic, legal and political hurdles. “It’s a ‘perfect storm’ situation. You’ve got this massive urban migration, which is happening anyway, and if population growth, global warming, environmental degradation and food and water shortages become a reality, then there might be no choice but to invest in technology like this.” Splitting the world into two separate systems – on one hand, the civilisation eco-system, and on the other, wilderness management – and letting the earth regenerate itself is, to her mind, “an interesting philosophy in terms of human biological control and human understanding of planetary processes.” She’s not alone: her interest in vertical farming has so intrigued professors in her department that Elettra’s dissertation may wind up triggering an expansion of the LSE curriculum.

hus was born Just One Frickin’ Day. “In New York, there is so much pressure to get involved with charities and causes – and they are all great – but you seldom actually see the result. I thought, wouldn’t it be great to get involved with something where you would hear back in six months that, boom, this is where your money went?” Elettra explains. The concept behind JOFD was to get people to give just one day or one hour of their annual salary. “We did the math and ﬁgured that if we could get 5,000 people to donate about $80, we would reach our goal. With social networking on Facebook and Twitter, it seemed difﬁcult but realistic.” The site launched in September 2008, kitted out with a calculator and designer T-shirts for the cause. Although they did not raise the entire sum, all proceeds went to the clinic, which opened last summer. “I have spoken to Bob since then,” Elettra says, “and doctors can now refrigerate vaccines, sterilize equipment and perform surgery at night, which they could not do before. They’ve treated tens of thousands of people. And that was the beauty of it: just this one project, for not so much money in the grand scheme of things. And in nine months we were done.” The trickledown effect, she says, is that the initiative gave people the energy to do more. “They make a connection. They think, ‘Oh, that’s what it takes. What can I do next?’” ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

Elettra has also turned her attention to Africa. In 2008, she and a band of eco-minded friends teamed up to help Bob Freling, whose initiative Solar Light Electric Fund (SELF) had partnered with Dr. Paul Farmer’s Partners in Health (PIH) to set up rural clinics to provide solar-powered health care to people who have access

to neither. Bob Freling, it turns out, was a high-school friend of Elettra’s father (Jon Weidemann, a Microsoft executive and former model). As a follow-up to ﬁve hugely successful rural health clinics in eastern Rwanda, Freling had set his sights on Burundi. “Bob kind of ﬂoated a number past me and I was like, ‘whoa, how much?’ because the magic number to get things up and running was $420,000,” Elettra says. “I mean, it’s more than I have, but it’s nothing compared to some of the budgets you hear about. It sounded to me like something totally attainable for the payoff: a clinic that could serve up to 60,000 people and have enough power to run for 25 years. It would have been hideous not to get involved.”

‘You have to call the shots for yourself. A risk-free existence is a utopia that doesn’t exist.’

ctually, it’s too early to say exactly what they can do next, because her next project is still in the pipeline. Elettra hints that it will draw upon the fashion community, and that it involves Haiti – the project was already in the works when the earthquake struck in January. “When that happened, I wondered if we should hurry up and get in there,” she says. “But now I want to re-draw people’s attention to it six or nine months down the road, with something that is hopeful and not just focused on tragedy.” Although JOFD is not solely tied to SELF, she notes, for now she is content to focus on just one thing. “We know and trust the people and they do great work,” she says. “I am someone who, if I get involved, I am in there all the time. I don’t get involved in causes unless I super-know what is going on.” In terms of her lifestyle and the brands she believes in, Elettra notes that she admires brands like Stella McCartney: “She doesn’t always talk the talk, but she walks the walk. People need to get accustomed to the idea that you can have luxury and comfort in a way that is environmentally responsible, but the two worlds have not quite meshed. So I really admire people who just do that. There are a lot of younger designers out there who are thinking about the impact that certain choices have.” In a time when the word green is thrown around just as freely as “luxury” was two years ago, she admits that she has as hard a time as anyone navigating what is and what isn’t. “You just have to do the research and call the shots for yourself. The idea of a risk-free existence is a utopia that doesn’t exist. I never judge. The whole environmental thing is about choice and it’s really complex – if it wasn’t, we would have ﬁgured it out by now!” As for ﬁguring out what happens after graduation in June, Elettra has no particular plans. “I have never been someone who knows what she is going to do 20 years

CORE

out. The path is wide open. I think when you focus too much on a single goal, you shut a lot of other things out – at least that’s been my experience.” So for now, her plan is to continue juggling vertical farming, JOFD, her personal life and modelling. “I don’t know why it keeps coming, but it does, so I’ll take it!” she laughs, before adding, “I think my ideal job doesn’t exist yet. I think I need to give it time to develop – which is probably why I’ve been on this path thus far. I’ve had a great education and exposure to people with great ideas and on the other hand I’ve had exposure to fashion and elegance and how to sell things – creating a dream, an image, translating it and getting it out there.” It might take form in a young, green tech company. It could be an association with Dr. Despommier. It could be lobbying Washington. “Things that seem disparate often weave together,” she observes. “I assume that the universe will kind of unfold in a certain way and I will be able to follow it.” One direction she will not be headed, however, is Hollywood. “It’s funny to me that people always assume that,” she says. “With the celebrity reality-show culture out there now, everybody can become a star. I think that people have sort have forgotten about the craft that goes into great acting. It’s a hard job. It takes patience and dedication, and you really need to commit to it. So if you don’t have that passion, why do it? Just because you have the genes does not mean that you go down that path. It just means that you have more family photos.”

www.justonefrickinday.com For more information on vertical farming, see verticalfarm.com

Bloomers and shrug YVES SAINT LAURENT. Cuissardes PIERRE HARDY. Necklace made of recycled watch faces and silver CARMINA CAMPUS.

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

XXXX

CORE

FOREVERGLADES — Humans have been saving the Everglades, the largest subtropical wilderness in North America, for almost as long as they’ve been paving it. ABOVE looks at the marsh reality. By KIRK NIELSEN Photography CHRISTOPHE JOUANY

Produced by HGPRODUCERS.COM

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

EXPEDITION

ot too long ago I drove from Miami to Orlando across the Everglades. Even from the vantage point of a rented Ford Focus hurtling down the Florida Turnpike, I could feel the peaceful power of this seemingly endless expanse of sawgrass, slash pines and lagoons. This is Florida’s answer to western desert solitude: hushed green-brown stillness beneath a cloudless sky. If you travel these shallow waters by canoe, kayak or, as some still do, by foot, you’ll see dozens of white, spindly-legged wading birds and, just above the dark surface, the black-green snout and bulging eyes of an alligator. At night frogs croak so loudly they drown out the trucks on the turnpike. In 15 years I’ve never seen a Florida panther in the wild, but biologists say the wheat-coloured cats are out there – about 100 of them. There have been fewer ducks, herons, ibises, and egrets since the canals and bulldozers came, because these birds survive on fish and fish live in water. And there was supposed to be a lot more water out there. Water is to the Everglades what blood is to the human body. Cutting the flow can be lethal. As the Everglades meanders over 160 kilometres from Central Florida to the Florida Bay, 80 kilometres across, it runs a gauntlet of canals, cow pastures, housing tracts, parking lots, streets – the legacy of people and policies that drained huge swathes of Florida in the first half of the 20th century. There was a different mentality about a lot of things back then, and particularly about subtropical marshes and swamps. Converting them to agricultural land and housing subdivisions was where it was at; canals and flood control, all the rage. Efforts to destroy the Everglades – the largest, most desiccated, carved-out, paved-over wetlands in North America – got under way around the time the first combustion-engine automobiles were rolling off the assembly line. And people have been trying to save this great swamp for almost as long. In 2000, President Bill Clinton signed the Everglades Restoration Act, authorizing the first $1.4 billion of a projected $7.8 billion in government funding to return the region to ecological health. The law put in motion the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), which envisions dozens of projects encompassing nearly 47,000 square kilometres across 16 counties. So far, though, the CERP has barely scratched the surface. And another decade has drifted by. 78

CORE

“Water was the enemy,” Richard Coleman, a rugged sports fisherman, hunter, US Agriculture Department chemist and Sierra Club devotee from Central Florida told me in 1996, the year my Everglades edification began in earnest. “It was the enemy all the way up through the ’50s and early ’60s. In the ’70s we began to realize it wasn’t the enemy, that in fact it was the environmental limiter to us being here.” Coleman was among those who fought hard for the demise of the Ditch, a wide, 90-kilometre-long coffeewith-cream-coloured canal – all that was left of the Kissimmee River and its bucolic, glittering marshes. When the US Army Corps of Engineers canalized the Kissimmee in the 1960s, they inadvertently created a vast receptacle for phosphorous- and nitrogen-laden runoff, especially from dairy farms that had relocated from the Miami area to make way for suburbs. Like other perspicacious outdoorsmen, Coleman saw how the canal waters were killing fish, dooming waterfowl, and generally mucking up the ecosystem. Throughout the 1970s he schlepped a slideshow all over town so that “Joe Sixpack and Minnie Dishwater” could see “a monster in the act of devouring a river,” as Coleman put it. Developers and farmers called him a communist. So how, I wondered, did he manage not only to persevere but to prevail? Well, Coleman said, with Joe and Minnie sufficiently educated and outraged, especially about the demise of sport fishing and hunting, politicians had to start listening. Eventually, real-estate developers, farm owners, and state and federal water managers did, too. When the 1990s arrived, the mentality had changed, but the reality hadn’t. In June 1996, after showing me his slideshow, Coleman took me skimming along the surface of the Ditch in his airboat, a skiff-like craft propelled with a small airplane engine, for my first up-close look at a Florida water-flow fiasco. The canal was as ugly and creepy as ever, but my guide was excited and optimistic. “There’s never been a river restored in this way ever!” he raved before we boarded the deafening little vessel. Any effective Everglades restoration effort would have to start with the Kissimmee, Coleman reckoned, because its waters feed into Lake Okeechobee, the huge, fairly shallow aquatic oval that spills into the Everglades and had turned pea-green. People might be able to survive on water polluted by fertilizers and cow dung, as long as the water was sufficiently chlorinated, but fish and fowl can’t. “When we actually straighten out this water quality,” Coleman told me, “we’re doing it so that our lakes look worth a damn and habitat and

Water is to the Everglades what blood is to the human body. Cutting the flow can be lethal.

wildlife actually can exist there!” Conservation crews began filling in the canal in 1999 and re-establishing a river with real flood plains. Coleman didn’t live to see the Kissimmee’s resurrection; he died on the waterway after he rounded a curve and collided with another airboat in 2003. Many other Floridians have or will have perished by the time the project is complete. Two phases of in-filling the canal have now restored about 30 kilometres of river, and de-canalization of another 13 kilometres is under way. Full emancipation of the Kissimmee is due in 2011, more than three decades after the Ditch began drawing fire.

ther plans aimed at restoring the Everglades to their former glory have moved forward with a similarly excruciating sluggishness – the pace, you might say, of a stagnating canal. South of Lake Okeechobee sugarcane fields – some 500 square kilometres of them – have been the enemy. Run-off from the fertilized fields contains unnatural concentrations of phosphorous, which for decades now have transformed large areas of the River of Grass into great marshes clogged with thickets of tall brown cattails. The owners of the fields – sugar companies – have a preeminent reputation, in some people’s eyes, for not only refusing to budge, but also for aggressively crushing the slightest suggestion they should.

Buker and Wragg also advised me that U.S. Sugar was already sending millions of dollars to the state of Florida for restoration projects; that the ﬁrm cleaned the runoff before it ran off; and that scientiﬁc evidence linking sugar farming to cattail infestations was scant. I had my doubts. Moreover, U.S. Sugar had been spending millions on lawsuits, public outreach and campaign contributions, which many people believed were aimed at blocking new restoration efforts, including the penny-tax plan, which died in Congress not long after our meeting.

Following pages: Aerial views of the Ten Thousand Islands region of the western Everglades. The area contains the largest expanse of mangrove forest in the United States.

With the turn of the century, federal and state agencies began developing dozens of Everglades restoration projects but, as was the case with the Ditch, little progress could be made with all those sugar fields in the way. Nearly another decade of stagnation transpired, but then in 2008, there were signs that sugar farming in the Everglades had perhaps run its economic course. Florida’s Republican governor Charlie Crist and U.S. Sugar started negotiating a sales agreement. That year they agreed on a plan under which the state would pay the company $1.34 billion for its nearly 73,000 hectares of agricultural land. The combination of increased regulatory pressure and the right sum of money persuaded U.S. Sugar to end decades of bitter opposition to releasing its fields for the greater good. “When someone wants to pay them a billion dollars, they take it seriously – especially when that somebody is the governor,” Mike Grunwald, author of The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise, told me. (He’s also a senior correspondent for Time.) Grunwald thinks sugar growers were “freaked out” by a new group of state water regulators who had been appointed by Crist, and who started to crack down on the growers’ practice of pumping fertilizer-contaminated water into Lake Okeechobee to keep the lake level sufficiently high for irrigation purposes. ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

My ﬁrst tutorial on that score came from U.S. Sugar Corporation executive Bob Buker and the voluble Miami PR man Otis Wragg. They double-teamed me at the company’s offices in the small town of Clewiston on Lake Okeechobee’s southern shore in early 1996, when the Clinton administration was pushing for a one-cent tax on every pound of sugar produced in Florida. The revenue was earmarked to fund Everglades restoration. Buker, a tough, intense guy who was a company vice-president then (now he’s CEO) told me the tax’s purpose was to kill the Florida sugar industry. “It’ll put 40,000 Floridians out of work!” he declared. Wragg ragged me for daring to question the federal price-support system for sugar

producers. Sugar prices in the US were low – so low that restaurants could afford to give it away – and import restrictions on foreign sugar, as Wragg saw it, were entirely justiﬁed.

CORE

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

EXPEDITION

he company faced other contretemps, including an extraordinar y spate of freezes, f loods, and diseases that devastated the Florida citrus industry, already besieged with fierce competition from Brazil. The deal with Crist was a perfect opportunity for U.S. Sugar to dump its 13,000 hectares of citrus groves on the state, Grunwald says. And it nullified a lawsuit brought by employee stockholders who were upset that management had passed up an earlier offer from the state for far less money. It was all “a reminder that as great as it can be to grow a protected crop – with subsidized water and subsidized flood protection and the best lobbyists money can buy – the business model can really be ravaged by regulatory uncertainty,” Grunwald added. “Historically, the state has been their protector. This was a wake-up call for them.” By the end of 2009, however, the recession had prompted Crist to downsize the offer to just under 30,000 hectares for $536 million, with an option to buy another 43,000 hectares from U.S. Sugar over the next decade or so. Governor Crist and U.S. Sugar are due to close the deal later this year. In the meantime, the company’s main neighbour and competitor, Florida Crystals, and the Miccosukee Tribe are suing to stop the deal. Florida Crystals is refusing to sell its sugar fields, which many believe means they will likely continue to clog hundreds of square kilometres of Everglades south of Okeechobee for years.

Today biologists at the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), the main state agency involved in fixing the Everglades, are in the second decade of a protracted war to reverse all those unchecked melaleuca invasions. For the most part, they’ve given up on chopping and poisoning them. They now employ tiny proxies from the animal kingdom: the melaleuca snout weevil and the melaleuca psyllid, insects that feed voraciously on melaleuca leaves; and the melaleuca stem gall fly, whose larvae burrow into and destroy melaleuca branches. It sounds crazy, but undoing what has been done to the Everglades has come down to this game of ecological football. “The objective is to introduce herbivores such that the competitive edge of the invader is significantly reduced,” Leroy Rodgers, an SFWMD biologist, recently explained to me. “Putting the invader on a level playing field with native plants lessens the invader’s dominance in the ecosystem.”

A hundred and sixty kilometres to the south, in and around Everglades National Park, another strain of contrarian is keeping restoration at bay. Melaleuca trees began menacing the Everglades in the early 1900s when botanists ﬁrst planted the invasive Australian species as part of a misguided plan to dry up swampland.

Meanwhile our dreams of restoration live on, occasionally assuming heroic proportions. The Everglades Skyway is a scheme that would transform a segment of the asphalt dam otherwise known as the Tamiami Trail highway into a bridge spanning 18 kilometres. No matter that the most advantageous solution for all but a very small percentage of Homo sapiens would be to tear out the damned dam road altogether and leave truckers and car owners to use Alligator Alley, the strip of Interstate 75 that parallels the Tamiami Trail route 50 kilometres to the north. Since that’ll never happen, elevating the Tamiami Trail would indeed allow a whole lot of water currently contained by the L-29 Canal, which parallels the highway, to ﬂow underneath and into Everglades National Park. Amazingly, last November the Army Corps of Engineers broke ground on just such a bridge, although a considerably truncated version: 1.6-kilometres-long and 3.6-metres-high. The Corps plans to raise another 16 kilometres of road so that the L-29 can release even more water into the swamp. The $81 million project is due for completion in 2013.

In the 1930s, enterprising land developers dropped melaleuca seeds from airplanes in a brilliantly clueless effort that would sew ecological evil more exponentially than concrete ever could. They could scarcely have picked a more nefarious ally than Melaleuca quinquenervia. Wildﬁres, which became more frequent in the Everglades as the canalized swampland grew drier, actually help melaleuca seeds proliferate and germinate. Eventually – after only a lifetime or so of unrestrained melaleuca growth – collective wisdom concluded that the proliferation of these trees might very well dry up a national park whose unique purpose was to preserve one of the world’s largest and most unusual wetlands. 82

CORE

While SFWMD biologists believe they have contained melaleuca growth in the Everglades, they admit that several other wetlands-destroying plants – particularly Brazilian pepper weeds, Old World climbing ferns and shoebutton shrubs – are “out of control,” according to Beth Williams, a wetlands restoration-planning project manager for the SFWMD. “Their rapid growth and spread have the potential to alter the Everglades ecosystem.” You could say the same of the Burmese pythons, whose ancestors once served as pets and who are now invading the Everglades and killing off wading birds, raccoons, deer, and other indigenous mammals.

Melaleuca trees would sew ecological evil more exponentially than concrete ever could.

ucky Cole, a construction contractor and nude-portrait photographer, is just over 60 and quite healthy, but he believes there’s a strong chance he’ll die of old age before the Everglades Skyway project is ever completed. Cole and his wife Maureen live on a bumpy, winding back road about 60 kilometres west of the Tamiami bridge construction zone, in a large swamp-view trailer with outdoor shower and swimming pool. “It won’t be over in my lifetime, or yours for that matter,” Cole assured me. In order to reroute traffic during construction, the Army Corps has paved over a dirt road that parallels the highway. Which is, Cole grouses, “another whole thing they’ll have to take out, and clean up, and haul off!” On the way to their home the Coles pass a long row about 30 suburban-style ranch houses at swamp’s edge just south of the Tamiami Trail. The Miccosukee Tribe, which opposes the bridge project on environmental grounds, built these ironic abodes a decade ago over the objections of the Everglades National Park superintendent but with the blessing of the Army Corps of Engineers. As for the overall restoration, “There’s no telling how many lifetimes that’s going to take,” Cole says. He thinks the idea of restoring the Everglades’ sheet flow into Florida Bay to pre-1920s levels without causing a freshwater crisis in Broward and Miami-Dade Counties (current population: 4,200,000) is “bull.” Nevertheless, to the astonishment of naysayers, the Army Corps has opened up a further beachhead that aims to release more water from the C-111 canal, a 32-kilometre-long trough that bifurcates Everglades National Park and the town of Homestead, south of Miami. Ever since the Corps dug it in the 1960s to aid farmland drainage, the C-111 has deprived the Taylor Slough section of Everglades National Park of 75 percent of the waterflow enjoyed by its wildlife before canalization. As usual, that desiccation had ripple effects, preventing fresh water from flowing naturally into coastal marshes and the Florida Bay and creating an unhealthily salty environment for marsh vegetation, sea grass and fish. At a cost of $25 million, crews will

be installing two new pump stations and digging a 239-hectare retention pond along the C-111 canal to serve as a reservoir for rainwater. Those amenities will enable water managers to maintain higher levels in the canal and thus allow them to raise the water level in the surrounding swamp – about three centimetres a year over the next five years. Despite these groundbreaking developments, the counterinsurgency is deeply entrenched, threatening to reverse Everglades restoration wherever it can. Over the past decade, rock-mining companies have destroyed approximately 2,000 hectares of wetlands in an area known as the Lake Belt just north of Everglades National Park. Artificial “lakes” form after miners blast craters in the limestone bedrock and water rushes in. In February, the Army Corps outraged environmentalists by approving new permits that allow rock-mining companies to expand operations into another 4,000 hectares for at least another decade, to help meet Florida’s ceaseless demand for cement and concrete. Head west off the Florida Turnpike and you come face to face with a mountainous example of where some of that concrete goes and where the dream of Everglades restoration evaporates. The Miccosukee Resort is a nine-storey hotel and 4,300-square-metre convention centre-casino surrounded by a kilometre of asphalt for parking and situated, according to the promotional literature, “along the southeastern edge of the beautiful Florida Everglades.” The complex opened in June 1999, a year before the inauguration of the Everglades Restoration Act, and I was on hand for the openingnight festivities, which included professional wrestlers and ageing rock bands. A huge red ribbon draped down across the façade; someone stepped out onto a balcony midway up, ceremoniously cut the ribbon and let it fall in a heap on the balcony floor. I watched as fireworks, launched from the hotel roof, rained sparks and ignited the pile of ribbon. Flames shot up, the fireworks continued, and for a moment I imagined the whole resort ablaze, triggering a huge wildfire in the dried-up swamp, germinating more melaleuca seeds. Then some guys with fire extinguishers blasted the flaming balcony, and the partying went on. ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

The counterinsurgency is deeply entrenched, threatening to reverse Everglades restoration.

CORE

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

CORE

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

CORE

There used to be a different mentality about swamps â&#x20AC;&#x201C; converting them to agricultural land and housing subdivisions was all the rage.

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

CORE

In the foreground, U.S. Sugar’s reﬁnery in Clewiston, Florida, capable of producing 2,100 tonnes of sugar a day. This 28,000-square-metre facility is part of the Clewiston Sugar Factory, which is, according to its owners, “the world’s largest integrated cane-sugar milling and reﬁning facility.” In the background: Lake Okeechobee

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

CORE

SWAMP DREAMS Photography TIERNEY GEARON In an era of digital this and megapixel that, Tierney Gearon makes thrilling art with ﬁlm and a camera. She isn’t bothered by practicality. “It’s not a business for me,” she once said.“My work is like a diary. I do it for my soul.” She has a particular penchant for double exposure – a photographic technique which, in the wrong hands, can be an unfortunate accident, but which Gearon turns into “Explosures.” She exhibited a wonderful series of them at the Phillips de Pury gallery in London in 2009. In January this year Gearon travelled to the Florida Everglades for Above to make the Explosures on these pages.

Stylist IVELIN GIRO Model KARINA DEYKO Hair & make-up TERESA PEMBERTON Photo assistant JAESUNG LEE Produced by HGPRODUCERS.COM Airboats provided by WWW.CAPTAINDOUGS.COM

All clothing TOUCHE MUAH

CORE

ABOVE MAGAZINE

WINTER 2009_10

CORE

10 0

ABOVE MAGAZINE

WINTER 2009_10

10 1

10 2

CORE

10 3

10 4

CORE

10 5

10 6

CORE

10 7

10 8

CORE

10 9

STYLE

has also done some acting, starring in Tierra de Pasiones and other Spanish-language telenovelas. But her real passion is Touche Muah, the eco-chic underwear line she launched in Miami last December. The Touche Muah range, for men, women and children, is made entirely from organic bamboo. “I was looking for some simple underwear that felt light and fresh, and I simply couldn’t ﬁnd it. When it comes to intimate apparel here in Miami, everything is very elaborate, with fussy little ribbons and detailing. And for me, that’s uncomfortable. So ﬁnding the right fabric was the most important thing.”

QUEEN OF UNDERSTATEMENT — The bamboo-based underwear designed by IVELIN GIRO (and worn in Tierney Gearon’s photos on the preceding pages) may be the next best thing to… nothing at all. By ALEXANDER SHARKEY

“As a model I quickly realized how important it was to have the right underwear,” says Ivelin Giro, getting straight to the point. “Naturally, you don’t want any visible panty lines under your skirt or pants, so that’s why my panties don’t have elastic, and are low cut to ﬁt naturally on the hips. But it’s equally important that your underwear feels good against your skin. So I set out to make panties that were so comfortable, you feel like you’re naked. Because that’s the best feeling of all.” Giro began her modeling career in her native Cuba before signing with an American agency, moving to Milan for a couple of years, before a ﬁve-year stint in Paris. Her resume includes editorial work for Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire and Glamour, and commercial endorsements for L’Oréal and many other brands. She 110

CORE

Months of research eventually led Giro to Istanbul, where she met the factory owners who now manufacture the organic-bamboo fabric used in her range. “It’s the most wonderful feeling against your skin, but it’s also antibacterial, antimicrobial and water-absorbent, so it was obvious that it would be perfect for underwear.” The fabric is dyed using vegetable dyes in Germany, no pesticides are used in the bamboo’s cultivation, and no chemicals are used at any stage in the manufacturing process. “That’s not only good for the planet,” she says, “it’s good for the customer – especially people with allergies, as well as women and babies, who are more sensitive to chemically-treated fabrics.” Giro is proud that her range also includes men’s tank tops and briefs, and boy’s boxer briefs designed with the help of her two young sons. “I studied what was useful and what wasn’t in underwear. And after listening to males of all ages, I realized that the ﬂy opening in the boxers, men don’t really use it anymore. So in my design I closed it, and that makes the boxer short a unisex garment, because women can also use it for sports, jogging, relaxing at home or sleepwear.” Every piece in the range, she says, can double up as sports or lounging wear. But what about that curious brand name? “Touche Muah? It’s a phonetic version of the French phrase, ‘Touche-moi,’ meaning ‘touch me.’ But ‘moi’ also sounds like a kissing sound, and I wanted the name to evoke touching and kissing. Because that’s what you want to do when you feel the fabric.” www.touchemuah.com

X-POCKET DENIM SPRING/SUMMER 2010 CLOSED.COM

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

111

Shrinking. Greenpeace. McCann Erickson Budapest. Hungary Since 2001, Swiss-based not-for-proďŹ t organisation ACT Responsible (Advertising Community Together), has been collecting global advertising that 'promotes responsible communication on sustainability, equitable development and social responsibility' in a bid to highlight how the creativity of advertising professionals can be used to address the world's problems.

114

CORE

ADVENTURE

ALMOST AFLOAT — DAVID DE ROTHSCHILD may be the most laid-back adventurer of his generation. Even major weather setbacks aren’t enough to dampen his spirits as he prepares to set sail across the Paciﬁc in his little plastic boat. Text ALEXANDER SHARKEY Photography LUCA BABINI

David de Rothschild drives a Civic hybrid, eats a vegetarian diet, buys local and organic produce whenever possible, never uses plastic bags, and drinks ﬁltered tap water. He recycles everything he possibly can, but like most of us, he feels it’s not enough. Unlike most of us, though, he’s going to do something about it. He’s going to sail across the Paciﬁc Ocean in a catamaran built from recycled plastic water bottles, in the hope of raising awareness about marine pollution, and changing the way we look at plastics in our environment.

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

At least, that’s the story he’s selling. And a quick trawl on the Internet reveals that story to be a ruse. David de Rothschild is actually the key player in a dastardly plot to overtake the world, or something like that. Apparently, you can tell this because of his belt buckle. As we walk across a grey and blustery Sausalito waterfront towards the bay and his boat, Plastiki, I ask him to hitch up his jacket and show me the offending item. He stops and obliges. And there it is, an oval of oatmeal-coloured resin with a purple skull and crossbones emblazoned

on it. “I think that’s so funny about my belt,” he says, looking down at it. “I always find it interesting to read all these conspiracy theories. Apparently, I’ve created climate change, personally, so that I can profit from it.” Indeed, one of the loonier blogs to focus on David’s belt buckle describes it as “…a universal symbol of death, piracy and a key emblem of the Nazi regime.” Despite the fact that the Rothschilds are one of Britain’s pre-eminent Jewish dynasties, the same foam-flecked blogger dismisses the 31-year old ecologist and adventurer as “a true eco-fascist,” before adding that, “the Rothschild family stands to gain even more from carbon-trading schemes than Al Gore does, all the while pretending to save the Earth.” David can barely suppress a chuckle as he scratches his bearded cheek. “I’m like, ‘Really?’ I don’t have to do this, you know. I could go into the finance industry and sell my soul. I mean, if I were interested in financial reward surely there are easier and quicker ways of making money than building a plastic boat and sailing it across the Pacific.”

115

ADVENTURE

‘We’re saying plastic can become a valuable resource.’

lmost four years have gone by since David de Rothschild, scion of one of the world’s most prestigious and successful banking families, ﬁrst decided to devote himself to raising awareness about marine ecology, after reading a report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) called Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Deep Waters and High Seas, which highlighted the staggering levels of plastic waste entering the world’s oceans. Since then he has relocated from London to San Francisco, and he has assembled a crack team of boat-builders, scientists, ocean-going seafarers, as well as a group of key sponsors – among them Swiss watchmakers IWC – who share his vision. Working out of the city’s Pier 31, the team has built a radically innovative 20-metre catamaran, engineered almost entirely from 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles which, when ﬁlled with dry ice, provide nearly 70 percent of the boat’s buoyancy.

116

“I think Plastiki can offer solutions on two levels,” David tells me. “First, to readdress the perception of plastic as a single-use, throwaway item. That perception is why we discard it so readily, and that’s why it’s polluting our environment. But we’re saying CORE

Right: The Plastiki prepares for sea trials. In early March the boat completed a 400km test run with full crew on board: David de Rothschild, Jo Royle, David Thomson, Olav Heyerdahl, Max Jordon and Vern Moen. The Plastiki proved“very comfortable in varying conditions.”

David hopes that his boat, Plastiki (its name is a nod to the Kon-Tiki, the balsa raft that Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl sailed across the Paciﬁc in 1947) will become more than just an extraordinary ocean-going vessel that highlights the problem of marine dumping. The Plastiki project, he says, was designed speciﬁcally to generate new thinking about recycling and about plastics. Which is why the boat’s mast is a reclaimed aluminium irrigation pipe, and its sail handmade from recycled PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic. Not only will Plastiki be equipped to desalinate seawater into drinking water, and get its energy from solar and wind-turbine cells, but there is also a hydroponic garden on board to provide the six-man crew with fresh kale, beets and alfalfa sprouts.

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

117

the way we perceive our world, how we engage with it, design products and consume them. Because a green Hummer, that’s just not going to cut it.” Plastiki’s voyage will take David de Rothschild and his five companions through several ecological crisis areas in the Pacific, including the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a vast stretch of ocean bounded by the North Pacific gyre, where several hundred thousand tonnes of plastic refuse swills around, being broken into ever smaller particles by the elements, and gradually entering the food chain. This, more than any other problem, is what motivates him: “A lot of that waste is plastic bottles, which is crazy. If we recycled what we already have, we wouldn’t ever have to manufacture another plastic bottle.”

plastic can become a multi-use, valuable resource.” He points out that part of Plastiki’s hull consists of PETG, an incredibly robust material made from seven different recycled plastics. His vision is to make recycled, post-consumer materials a mainstream choice. “Ultimately, we want people to reevaluate the idea of plastic as a worthless item, and to look at the applications and solutions we’ve created in this project.”

A 118

CORE

The previous day I had been invited to go out and take a look around Plastiki. For some reason this visit had been planned to occur during the worst weather conditions of the week. Still, it gave me a glimpse of what the Plastiki team can expect on the high seas. As our boarding party arrived at the pier a squall was blowing in from the ocean, the winds tearing at our coats, the rain driving into our faces while we waited on the wooden pier for our ride. By the time we boarded an Explorer boat to head out into the churning, steel-coloured bay we were already soaked. Even the crew, seasoned seafarers with tens of thousands of nautical miles notched up between them, looked at the sky warily. As we boarded Plastiki, the winds were gusting so strongly we had to lean into them to avoid being blown overboard. But as someone remarked, these were relatively benign conditions compared to the kind of storms that can blow up in the middle of the world’s largest ocean, the Paciﬁc.

secondar y Plastiki spin-off is a range of products. Under t he auspices of David de Rothschild’s Adventure Ecology group, the Plastiki team has set up its own innovation and development lab. The team’s first success is a new organic glue made from molecular components of sugar cane and cashew nuts. “We used it on the boat, that’s how confident we are about its properties,” David says. “And we’re already in conversations with Target about selling it in their stores. Part of the great fun of this project has been throwing out ideas, using this boat as a ﬂoating laboratory, a hotbed of ideas, and a platform for learning, unlearning and re-learning. We have to shift

“Buckminster Fuller said there is no such thing as pollution, but we are ignorant of the value of the materials we waste. So this voyage is saying, ‘We’ve got a list of problems, but if we can be compassionate, we can turn the page, and there’s a list of solutions on the other side.’” All this seems moot while Plastiki sits moored in the San Francisco Bay, however. This is where the boat will remain until the weather conditions are right to sail. And while I was in town in late February, the weather really wasn’t entering into the spirit of things.

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

119

ADVENTURE

‘Sometimes I definitely sit there and wonder how it will work out.’

emergency drills with the crew? What if there was a major typhoon and the boat lost radio contact? “You can waste your life pondering things like the what-ifs,” he says. “You can spend a lot of time going what if this, or what if that. But at the end of the day, when those things arise, you deal with it, and in the moment you don’t have time to worry. You just focus on the situation at hand. So again, it’s not worth having any preemptive anxiety or fear.”

Photo: STEVE JENNINGS/ WIRE IMAGE The Plastiki was engineered almost entirely from 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles which, when ﬁlled with dry ice, provide nearly 70 percent of the boat’s buoyancy.

ith weather as unpleasant as this, the crew would be confined to the Plastiki’s living quarters. The boat’s interior, loosely modelled on Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome design, makes the typical one-car garage look spacious and luxuriously appointed. With rain crashing on the deckhead and the sky rumbling every few minutes with thunder, the thought of being confined in this floating cell with five others for endless days invoked dizziness and anxiety: there would be virtually no possibility of privacy. By the time they get to Sydney, the Plastiki crew will certainly know each other intimately. Though eager to set out, David admits there are moments when the voyage seems daunting. “Of course, this is by far my longest seafaring journey,” he says. “And sometimes I definitely sit there and wonder how it will work out. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of it. But you learn something quickly when faced with that kind of scale and an endless horizon. I learned it in the North Pole and again in Antarctica, and it’s very simple. You just have to take every day and every step as it comes. “If you think of it as an entire process, you’ll get lost in the enormity of it. It’s too much to contemplate, you’ll start to unravel.” Had he worked out a series of

12 0

CORE

Then what about hygiene? Would cleanliness be an issue? “Yes, it’s an issue because salt gets into all those places where it itches and drives you crazy. But personally I don’t have a problem going months without washing. In the North Pole I went four months without washing and I was fine. Eventually you stop stinking and develop a different kind of smell. And I quite like that smell; I think it’s quite natural. Actually, I think it would be great if human beings were more like dogs and would just go up to each other and sniff each other’s bums. That would be so much more honest and direct.” With the wind buffeting us on the wooden pier, we stand and wait for the Explorer boat to arrive and ferry David de Rothschild to the Plastiki so he can perform some routine checks. The forecast for the morning is good, and David and his crew are hoping to finally set sail and get the voyage under way. However, for seafarers – a notoriously suspicious lot – there’d been a bad omen earlier in the day. “I heard the coast guard calling the emergency services over the radio. Somebody had jumped off that thing,” says David sombrely, referring to the Golden Gate Bridge. The next morning, at breakfast, we heard the bad news. While the weather was fine for sailing today, a massive earthquake in Chile the previous night had triggered a tsunami, which was rolling up the western coast of the Americas as we tucked into our eggs. Another day’s delay for Plastiki, another day for David de Rothschild to twiddle his thumbs. Was he starting to feel frustrated at all this waiting around? Not at all, says the most laid-back adventurer of his generation, flashing an enigmatic smile: “I’m a great believer in destiny.”

By choosing seafood that carries the MSC ecolabel you will be supporting ﬁsheries that have demonstrated their sustainability against the world’s most rigorous standard. Fisheries with sustainability at the heart of their practice, even in the harshest conditions. The MSC ecolabel is your assurance that the seafood you are buying can be traced back to a ﬁshery that thinks seafood should be available to this and future generations.

LOOK FOR THE MARK OF

Photo© Dylan Skinns. Australia mackerel iceﬁsh certiﬁed 31 March 2006. ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

12 1

12 2

CORE

FIRST PERSON

— No two journeys to green are exactly alike, but there are common threads. You take a stand, you get on a bus, and next thing you know, you’re part of a movement. By SUMMER RAYNE OAKES Illustrations FREDERIC MAZZOLA

t takes at least ﬁve hours to travel by bus from Cornell University to New York City. I know the route well because I took it every week for three years at college. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday I’d be at school and then Thursday night or early Friday morning I’d wait for the bus to rumble into the parking lot and take me away.

On a good day Anthony would drive the first leg of the journey from Ithaca to Binghamton. He was a tall, jaunty Jamaican who DJed on weekends at a local Ithaca nightclub, but his day job was bus-driving. We became friends of sorts. Anthony always told me, only half-jokingly, that he’d be my bodyguard/driver when I became famous. Most times he would cut me a break and take me to the city for free. I have to tell you that this was a big deal: a roundtrip ticket with my student discount ran around $86, a serious amount of cash for me at the time. I was accustomed to scraping by. A small act of kindness such as a free bus ticket could have enormous repercussions. Anthony’s largesse would mean 43 extra dollars in my pocket for food and subway fare when I got to New York. Those days were both difficult and exciting for me: difficult because I had struggled most of my teenage years with finances; exciting because I was setting out for uncharted territory armed with a vocabulary that lacked the word impossible. In college I studied entomology and environmental science. By my second semester I had convinced myself that I should use my knowledge of the environment to reach a wider audience. I balked at the notion that my research would be restricted to science journals. I needed to get my message to the world. I would just have to find the right way to do it.

The right way, I decided, was fashion. I happened to know absolutely no one in the fashion industry, but that wasn’t going to stop me. I wanted to see if I could bridge those two unlikely worlds, fashion and ecology. So there I was, taking the long ride to the big city on nothing more than a whim. Like a million other girls before me I set my sights on becoming a fashion model – but my motivation, I believed, set me apart. I was on a mission, and I never forgot that as the modelling jobs rolled in. I have managed to align my image, my passion and my expertise with environmentally and socially relevant projects, companies and programs. I work only with brands and projects that share my vision. They don’t have to be perfect, but they have to work in the spirit of positive progress if they want my support. I’m not saying my work

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

12 3

FIRST PERSON

has been more meaningful than that of someone who goes out and gets 100,000 signatures on a petition or of someone who improves 100,000 lives, but I think I’ve managed to do some good. I’ve been able to participate in and even spearhead a number of worthwhile projects – from the “Don’t Bag Indonesia’s Rainforest” campaign, with Rainforest Action Network, to building a new company that allows fashion designers to source and purchase more sustainable materials for their collections. I’ve challenged the status quo of an industry deeply set in its ways. I’ve tried to inspire my peers to carve their own paths. I’ve accomplished a lot more, in fact, than I ever dreamed possible when I stepped onto that bus eight years ago. Courage can take many forms. For me, it was getting on the bus. For my friend Billy Parish, the founder of Energy Action Coalition, it meant dropping out of Yale University. Billy recognized that global warming wouldn’t wait for him to graduate college, so he left Yale and went on to found one of the largest youth movements ever to focus on climate change. In the spring of 2007 Billy sent me this e-mail: “What would you do if you had 5,000 young people at your ﬁngertips? We’re doing Power Shift.” Billy’s words were a strong wind for my sails. I didn’t need time to think what I would do. My mind was already made up before I clicked “reply.”

have been involved in many social protests but none quite like Power Shift, the largest gathering around climate change and green jobs the United States has ever seen. Six thousand young people from 50 states and 43 nations descended on Washington, DC in November 2007. Oddly enough less than a month before, Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, singled-out young people for being “too quiet.” He wrote: “Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good…Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms. Activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way – by young voters speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers, on campuses or the Washington Mall. Virtual politics is just that – virtual.” I begged to differ. Young people surely weren’t mum in DC that November. And last spring 12,000 of us showed up there again, braving the snow and ice, for the second Power Shift. And in Copenhagen at the COP15 conference, politicians may have failed to sign international treaties but young people managed to make themselves heard. To exist or not to exist online shouldn’t even be a question. Power Shift has been able to connect with so many people across the states and across the world because we have ﬁgured out how to turn technology toys into tools for grassroots organizing. Sure Martin Luther King wasn’t “conﬁrming” or “ignoring” fellow crusaders back in the day, but if he were here today, he would be. That’s exactly what his successors are doing: from friends on Facebook to Twestival Celebrations and integrated “Get Local” climate change actions across shared Web platforms.

124

CORE

Those of us who grew up with the Internet have learned to connect in a very powerful way. We’re using the tools we have been given – and, in some cases, invented – to connect, inspire, come together and do some social good. Agreed that online petitions and “little green patches” go only so far. That was Activism 2.0. Activism 3.0 is all about the online-ofﬂine connection. We are now using the Internet to connect and communicate to the far corners of the globe in order to bring people together more quickly and efﬁciently than has ever been possible.

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

12 5

12 6

CORE

FIRST PERSON

his communication has helped give the environmental youth movement the legs – and the voice – it has today. At Power Shift, young people from their campuses and communities helped arrange citizen action workshops; took time to tell their stories; led lobby-training sessions; spoke to the House Select Committee on Climate Change; coordinated breakout meetings for different states. My own state of Pennsylvania focused more on regional issues of coal and joblessness, but our goals stayed on-message: reduce carbon emissions; create 5 million new green-collar jobs; stop building coal plants. The result: state-by-state acceptance of climate policies; a national Green Jobs bill; 11 state-wide Power Shifts held in 2009; the formation of Pennsylvania’s Keystone Environmental Youth (KEY) Coalition; international gatherings; new friendships; new leaders. You need to unlock social movements, and Power Shift has been an important key. In February, on my way back to New York from a Rainforest Action Network meeting in San Francisco, I was taken back to another movement – the Civil Rights movement. CNN was documenting the life and times of Martin Luther King, and I was startled when a face I knew appeared on the plane’s video monitor. One winter at Cornell I spent my afternoons in a chilly garage, helping a 70-year-old woman sort through a tangle of history from the Civil Rights era: yellowed newsprint, coffee-stained letters, photos of Dr. King, and other memorabilia from a not-sodistant past. I remember the stillness of the air between us, the way the heat of my breath looked when I asked her questions. Her name was Dorothy Cotton, the only woman on Dr. King’s executive staff and the Education Director for 12 years of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Her role in history is difficult to quantify but unquestionably significant. Most often she is identified as the lone woman who “marched” with Dr. King. Dorothy herself will tell you how she helped train students in Birmingham and educate citizens throughout the southern United States and help them organize around the issues – voting rights, de-segregation, non-violence. “Creating the troops,” she called it. Everybody knew Dr. King, but Civil Rights leaders were cropping up all over the country. “Leadership,” she told me one day, “comes out of the actions we create.” And now there she was, interviewed on CNN, her words coming back to me as I was penning this piece. I’m sure Dorothy Cotton would approve of the upwelling of support and courage it has taken for my peers and I to come together to fight climate change. She, too, was moved to action as a young woman – enough to convince her then-husband to take her to Birmingham to join MLK, Jr. She never went back home. She was hooked. And that is where the best part of my generation is heading: willed to action by a belief, a movement, a cause worth fighting for. For many of us it stems from that initial notion that says one of us can make a difference and a lot of us can make a lot of difference. We have the power to change the way people think and act, beginning with ourselves. In doing so we change the fabric of society. It’s the same belief that moved me to take the bus; Billy to leave college; and Dorothy to travel to Birmingham. In the end, it doesn’t matter what we dreamed up or how we got there; what truly matters is what we do once we arrive.

*** ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

12 7

SUMMER RAYNE OAKES PHOTOGRAPHED FOR ABOVE BY PETER BEARD

Makeup CORINNE CLANET

12 8

CORE

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

12 9

XXXX BAUMRAUM, Plendelhof Stables, Germany, by Andreas Wenning. www.baumraum.de

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; We may be going out on a limb here, but why bother with a loft in the city when you can live aloft in your own treehouse? By SEAN ELDER

13 0

CORE

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

131

13 2

CORE

ARCHITECTURE

‘We want to keep the trees safe... There’s a heavy party side to treehouse builders.’

ou say ‘treehouse’ and everyone has a different image in their head. Some might think Ewok village; some might think two-by-fours and plywood. Then you have to show them your journal and sketches…” Roderick Romero and I are driving out to Southampton on an icy winter’s day, to visit one of the treehouses he has designed and built. The 44-year-old East Village resident is articulate about his calling, probably because so many people keep asking him, “What is it you do again?” Since most of us think of treehouses as something you build for the kids in the summer, between breaks for beer and lemonade, the idea of a designer model, costing as much as $100,000, is rather hard to grasp. This is where the artist’s journal comes in handy. Closer to Jung’s Red Book than your average architect’s portfolio, Romero’s chronicle is ﬁlled with dream-like sketches and writings, as well as photos of some of his famous clients (Sting & Trudie, Donna Karan, Julianne Moore) and the treehouses he has made for them.

But lest you think Romero – who also sculpts and, along with his wife Anisa, fronts the indie-rock band Sky Cries Mary – is the lone practitioner of a singular craft, take a glance at the recent book New Treehouses of the World. The visionary structures within – from Swiss-FamilyRobinson style to what look like giant wooden eyeballs – are representative of an international phenomenon, and there are enough treehouse designers and aficionados in the US alone to fill an annual conference devoted to the subject in the Pacific Northwest.

Left: 4TREEHOUSE, Lake Muskoka, Canada, by Lukasz Kos, 2002-2003. www.studiolukaszkos. com

The strip malls and rest stops give way to the spare, snow-covered trees of the outer Hamptons. As we roll along I ask Romero if there’s a shared philosophy among the builders. “It’s not like we all came from the same Pythagorean school or something,” he says, “but we all definitely have a deep respect for nature.” Nelson put it even more bluntly. “We’re all treehuggers,” he says. “We want to keep the trees safe.” Then he adds, perhaps unnecessarily, “There’s a very heavy party side to treehouse builders.” Anyone working in a treehouse needs to party with caution, of course. Romero fell from the first treehouse he built in Washington and broke his back; he was sleep-crawling and convinced he was working on a sculptural installation. “I have a new level of respect for heights and fear of falling,” he says. But Romero, whose braided hair falls to his knees, is nothing if not spiritual, and he used his time in the cast learning to calm his hyperactive mind. “It changed my life, absolutely,” he says. “That’s when I went back and rebuilt the stairway.” Most of Romero’s clients have kids or grandkids, who may provide an inital reason for building a treehouse. “I’ll go out there six months later and the adults have moved in,” Romero says. “The kids get to visit, but they don’t get to live there.” The nest-style treehouse we are visiting today began as a place for children to go and read. “And then it turned out to be such a magnet for people, they decided to expand, go up another floor,” says Romero. The effect is like a double-decker pterodactyl’s nest, situated in a pair of old, intertwined linden trees, overlooking an expanse of land, water and 100-year-old mansion – kind of Flintstones meets The Great Gatsby. The woven wood of the nests themselves, braids of branches from similar trees, is pure Romero. ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

“We call it the Global Treehouse Symposium,” says Pete Nelson, the host of this year’s conference, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Nelson is the author of New Treehouses and five other similar titles, and co-founder of the Seattlebased Treehouse Workshop, which has built more than 100 treehouses in the last 13 years. You can call him a pioneer in the field and he will not object. “I got excited by adult-scale treehouses in the ’80s,” he tells me over the phone. He’d been building conventional houses – the kind you find on the ground – but was

aware of the growing treehouse trend and wanted to capture his own and others in a book. It took him seven years to ﬁnish the project, but the ﬁrst Treehouses of the World went on to inspire countless others and a movement was born. “My favourite part of this is getting letters from people saying, ‘Look what I did!’” says Nelson.

13 3

ARCHITECTURE

Top: LAKENEST TREEHOUSE, Southampton, New York, USA, by Roderick Romero, 2008. www.romerostudios.com

13 4

CORE

Right: O2 TREEHOUSE, Pewaukee, Wisconsin, USA, by Dustin Fieder, 2005. o2sustainability.com

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

13 5

ARCHITECTURE

Laceprat voluptatur? Occum faccus et peliqui lendan tibusaped magnis experumquas

Photo RAPHAELE SHIRLEY CCW1: Crossing Circles of Wholeness

13 6

CORE

‘I was inspired by mudswallow nests. I thought it would be great if I could pull that off.’

try to use wood as close to the tree I am building in as possible,” he says, “so they’re in harmony together. When you’re looking up it should seem more like nature made the tree, rather than some architect or designer.” From the inside the experience is even more sensual: the driftwood banisters surrounding the stairs that lead up to each loft are warm to the touch, like a woman’s limb. The wood he used to build the walls and ﬂoors of each 18 square-metre room was rescued by Vintage Woods of America, and Romero prides himself on his salvage rate – almost 98 percent now, he claims. “It’s wonderful because it makes you ﬁnd the local source, who’s doing reclaimed, who’s doing salvaged.” Though oftentimes he has to do it himself.

Left: WILKINSON RESIDENCE, Portland, Oregon, USA, by Robert Oshatz, 1997-2004. The main level of the house sits in the tree canopy, “to evoke,” according to the architect, “the feeling of being in a treehouse.” www.oshatz.com Photo: Cameron Neilson

Take the house he built for Val Kilmer on Kilmer’s ranch near Pecos, New Mexico. Probably best known for playing Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s The Doors, Kilmer has a kind of walkabout approach to finding his character, so it shouldn’t be surprising that his instructions to Romero were equally shamanistic. “When I first got there Val was like, ‘It’s 6,000 acres; go find your tree,’” recalls Romero. “So I walked the land for four or five days, each time going in a different direction.” What Romero finally settled on was a band of oak trees clinging to the side of a cliff, and he wanted the final house to look like it had fallen there. “I start off with more of a collage, metaphorical vision of what it’s going to look like,” Romero says of his process. “I’m inspired by something I discover there – the nests of the mud swallows in Pecos, say. I loved how they built these little adobe-esque villages in the cliffs. I thought it would be great if I could pull that off.”

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

The wood itself came from a falling-down barn belonging to one of Kilmer’s neighbours. “It took about six days to convince the owner to sell it to me,” he recalls. “I just kept going back with six-packs of beer; I don’t think he really trusted me in the beginning. The price kept going up, too, so it was a long negotiation. It was helpful that my wife’s family had settled in New Mexico in the 1670s.”

13 7

ARCHITECTURE

‘Val Kilmer was like, It’s 6,000 acres – go find your tree.’

T USEFUL INFO: Before building your own treehouse you might like to try living among the branches in a treehouse hotel. ARIAÚ AMAZON TOWERS: The world’s largest treehouse hotel, near Manaus, Brazil, is situated 20 metres above ground in the Amazon canopy. TREEHOUSES OF MONTVILLE: Located at the entrance of Kondalilla Falls National Park, Australia. For full-on luxury and a private pool, request the Picnic Creek treehouse. CEDAR CREEK TREEHOUSE: The most environmentally sensitive of our three hotels, located in Washington, USA. The lone cabin is built 15 metres up in a 200-year-old cedar with amazing views of Mount Rainier National Park.

oday the roof of Kilmer’s treehouse has been recycled from that old barn, as has most of the wood. When the building was ﬁnished he invited the rancher and his family to come and see what he had done. They were amazed “and even started crying,” says Romero. “They said, ‘Wow, we had no idea what you were really going to do with this.’” The great leap forward in treehouse building can be credited to another pioneer – Michael Garnier. His Out-’n’-About treehouse hotel in Oregon was the site of the earliest treehouse builders’ conventions. His battles with local authorities caused him to create, along with Seattle-based engineer Charles Greenwood, a system of steel reinforcements now known as Garnier Limbs, or GLs to treehousers. The GLs allow individual trees to bear far more weight, so dreamers like Romero can stack the decks of the homes and getaways they build in the sky. And it allows DIYers to order their own GLs, ﬁnd their own wood, and build treehouses for a fraction of the cost of the kind Romero makes for the stars. One of his more intriguing projects involved teaching street kids in Tangiers to build treehouses themselves. “I saw images of what these kids were trying to do,” he recalls, “crazy patchwork makeshift structures inspired by workers’ scaffolding in the city. They were built out of ‘found’ wood,” he says, employing air quotes, “which I’m guilty of doing myself!” The project, captured in the 2007 documentary Tangiers Treehouse, was funded in part by some of Romero’s wealthier yoga friends (Sting, Russell Simmons). Rather than import GLs from Oregon, Romero and his partners found local workers in Morocco who fabricated them – meaning the technology now belongs to them. It’s kind of like open-source software, except the platform is one you can stand on.

Photo: Interior of Wilkinson Residence, Portland, Oregon, USA, 1997-2004, by Robert Oshatz www.oshatz.com Photo: Cameron Neilson

Now Romero can’t see the forest without imagining the possibilities. “I can’t look at trees without thinking of how you could join them,” he says, “or see people on the street. You guys are living in cardboard boxes! Let’s go build a house; we could do it in two days. It’s difﬁcult to shut the brain off.”

13 8

CORE

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

13 9

LIVING

RODHE WORKS — When her children left home and her nest seemed empty, CECILIA RODHE did the logical thing – she began sculpting eggs and rediscovering nature… in Brooklyn. By STEPHEN O’SHEA Photography ANTOINE VERGLAS Photo/Digital Assistants CHRIS EWERS, DAVID CHAPMAN Stylist RISA KNIGHT Hair/Make-up NATALIA RAMIREZ Thanks to ALEXANDRA DIRACLES

Cecilia Rodhe comes bounding up the steps from the subway, late from organizing a fundraiser for Haiti. She was a celebrity wife, is a celebrity mother, a former star of the catwalk, a recording artist, a tireless charity worker, and a sculptor of renown. She is also a former Miss Sweden, which, given the competition up there, is somewhat like having been a chess grandmaster in Russia. Across the street in a smile, eyes sparkling, she slips her arm through mine and announces, “I must take you to the river.”

14 0

CORE

Moments later the river in question is before us: the East River, eddying silver as the tide comes in. Across the way in Manhattan stands Stuyvesant Town, a gargantuan housing project recently turned into a real-estate football by developers. “Look at that water!” she says excitedly. “Look how powerful it is! If you fell in, it would kill you!” “I’m grateful to have grown up in a country where I could believe in trolls,” she later explains, sort of, as we pass a crumbling Domino Sugar reﬁnery. “There is no separation between us and nature. We will always have it. The rest of the world is only now catching up.” In fact, Cecilia grew up in fairytale surroundings: when she was 10 years old her parents moved to a house in a forest far from her native Göteberg. As her older brothers had already struck out on their own, she was left alone much of the time, surrounded by her trolls and her trees, to cultivate an artistic imagination that still carries her aloft, over the streets of Williamsburg.

And so we are off, Cecilia and I, under a cold and brilliant January sun, through the Williamsburg quarter of Brooklyn, a stronghold of Hasidic Jews picturesquely co-existing with migratory hipsters. On our stroll down Bedford Avenue, trendy business after trendy business passes in review; even the hardware stores could be vegan. A sharp right, waterwards, and on a side street of artfully run-down rowhouses, Cecilia points to the sky and cries, “Look!” Against the wintry blue, two separate ﬂocks of doves wheel and swoop above the grime, the sun turning them a blinding white, like sheets on a line. “Look how the light makes their wings translucent,” Cecilia observes in a whisper – and she’s right. “I love

coming across nature, I’m always on the lookout for it. Especially here.” Yes, a tree grows in Brooklyn, but doves? “Someone must have a dovecote on his roof,” she says matter-of-factly and walks me on.

Shirt/dress URBAN ZEN

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

141

Clothing CECILIAS OWN 14 2

CORE

LIVING

Her artistic imagination carries her aloft, over the streets of Williamsburg.

time but no one thought to look at what I could produce. Paris, Milan, Tokyo, New York, I was moving around constantly… Sculpture was a way of getting to know myself. I had everything, but I had nothing.” It may not have helped that her husband was a supernova of celebrity at the time. In 1983, the year he married his Swedish beauty, Yannick Noah, the Franco-Cameroonian athlete (and now singing star), had just become the ﬁrst Frenchman to win the French Open tennis tournament in almost four decades (by beating, of all people, a Swede, Mats Wilander). Together the couple had two children – “When we ﬁrst met,” Cecilia recalls, “Yannick and I knew instantly we wanted children together” – but their marriage ended in divorce later in the 1980s. The two remain on good terms. “We’ve never broken in our commitment to our children. It’s really, really awful to break up a family,” she states. “We, Yannick and myself, always put our children before ourselves. And that is beautiful and I’m very proud of it. I’m proud of him and I’m proud of myself. It’s very important to keep that love, that protection, because it’s always the kids who get bashed up in divorce. Bottom line.” ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

Left, top: Cecilia with her daughter Yelena

ut of the cold at last, we enter her high-ceilinged loft near the top of a tall pillar of artist studios that towers over the neighbourhood’s low-slung grid of exuberant piety and urban pioneering. Floor-toceiling windows offer dove’seye views of Brooklyn; before the windows stands Cecilia’s latest forest – of plinths, supporting her warm marble sculptural works. On the forest ﬂoor are several large eggs, the artist’s quiet paean to creation. The mood changes, the energy subtly given off by the eggs quite palpable. Cecilia’s recollection of her start in sculpture furnishes a partial explanation for her latest series. “The crucial moment came when I was pregnant for the ﬁrst time. I was young, 22, and I felt the need to express myself. I was afraid, didn’t know if I’d be a good mother, if I could handle it. You don’t know at all where you’re going, but you know your life is going to change forever.” A pause. “Sculpture came to me like a gift from the angels. You see, I’d been working since I was 16. I was a beauty queen, a model, so I was looked at all the

14 3

XXXX

‘I’m grateful to have grown up in a country where I could believe in trolls. The rest of the world is only now catching up.’

14 4

CORE

Tank Dress URBAN ZEN ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

14 5

LIVING

ine is poured. Cecilia speaks at length of her remarkable trajectory, from a scared young mother in Paris, caught in the paparazzi headlights of a celebrity divorce, to a conﬁdent New Yorker, exuding joy at the diversity of her pursuits. The long night of self-realisation came through learning her art in her studio in Belleville, in the northeast of the French capital. “It was such a wonderful journey to be alone for ten years, hitting on a stone, releasing beautiful shapes and having stories go through my mind and all of them had names and concepts,” she recalls. “It was like me living the Grimm Brothers’ tales.” Then there was yoga, which she practised “religiously” and eventually instructed, as part of her ﬁrm belief in the mind-body connection, and psychoanalysis – “Of course I needed a shrink!” she says emphatically – on the Left Bank. Of those Parisian years she says, “My soul was in Belleville, my mind was in St. Germain, and I slept in Neuilly.”

Top: Cecilia in her modelling days, and with her son Joakim, now and as a baby

And raised her children, one of whom, Yelena, now lopes through the apartment front door along with her ﬁancé. Mother Cecilia glances over at me with a look that says isn’t-she-a-gazelle? and I nod. Yelena, student of political science and international relations – and, soon, acting – disappears into another room. Only missing from the picture is the product of that ﬁrst, life-changing pregnancy, her son Joakim Noah. He’s on the road with the Chicago Bulls. The only self-styled “African Viking” NBA basketball star, Joakim is beloved by fans for his outsized personality – he recently berated LeBron James on national television for his on-court antics – and his infectious enthusiasm. “He’s always enchanted us,” says his mother. “He has an incredibly charismatic and expressive persona. Even as a baby.” But how did he get to be 2.1-metres tall, 30 centimetres taller than his mother and sister? “I’ve always thought he willed himself to be that tall,” Cecilia replies, serenely.

14 6

CORE

She has drawn this clan into her passion for helping others. When the move was made from Paris to New York, to Hell’s Kitchen, then a gritty boho/hobo section of west midtown Manhattan, Cecilia wasted no time in turning her hard-won therapeutic self-knowledge to good use. In Harlem, Queens and the Lower East Side she organized art-therapy workshops for children in difficulty under the rubric “Expression from the Inside for Kids.” That led to her participating in Innocence in Danger, an international group that helps child victims of sexual abuse. “Children are extremely vulnerable. They will live their lives by the way they were treated as children,” she says with conviction. To that end, the Noah’s Ark Foundation has been created. “I’m the CEO, Yelena is director of operations, Joakim is president, and Yannick is vice-president,” she says triumphantly. While completing a degree in Creative Art Therapy at New York’s New School for Social Research, Cecilia, along with her three Noahs, organizes basketball camps and tournaments, and art-therapy sessions, all within a summer-long framework for high-risk youth in the borough of Queens. There are plans to expand the programmes to other cities and countries. So what about her marble eggs? “The eggs started when my children left, and I had an empty nest. I moved from Hell’s Kitchen to here, and I broke a large piece I was sculpting,” she says. “The pieces lay around on the floor, and finally they suggested their shape and their message.” Which was? Cecilia pauses, then continues unexpectedly, “The eggs were on display in the office of the Swedish ambassador to the UN. A British diplomat came in, all very chatty, and asked me what they were supposed to be saying. And you know what I said to him? I told him they said: Hope.” As Cecilia showed me to the door for my journey back to the subway, she made sure that I truly got the message of her art. “I think that love and sharing is the most important thing that we have to do in our lifetime,” she said in farewell. “There’s really nothing else.”

Clothing CECILIAS OWN ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

147

14 8

CORE

OCEANOCIDE â&#x20AC;&#x201D; How we are passively observing and actively supporting the fastest large-scale ecological destruction of all time. By CLAIRE NOUVIAN

Photo ARNO GASTEIGER

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

14 9

ewer than 300 boats in the world are destroying the deep sea, the largest reservoir of biodiversity on Earth. They are wiping off the map deepwater coral reefs and sponge beds thousands of years old as they chase their lucrative quarry – a few highly priced fish, known to be extremely vulnerable to overfishing because they are long-lived, slow-growing and late at reproducing. The entirety of the deep-sea catch, without exception, is sold to rich industrialized countries that certainly don’t need – nor even really want – those fish. And deep-sea bottom trawling continues despite a scientific consensus

15 0

CORE

that emphasizes how utterly unsustainable and destructive this ﬁshing practice is. In blatant ignorance of science and oblivious to common sense, bottom trawling – or “bulldozing,” as it should be called – goes on with the complicity of our governments and our own support. Large subsidies are paid to trawling ﬂeets with our tax money, estimated at $126 million of public funds worldwide. Every one of us is paying for ships to go out and destroy our planet’s last pristine wilderness, thus contributing to an unprecedented “oceanocide,” the largest and fastest ecological crime of all time. Without public aid, most of those ships would be operating at a loss. Why on Earth are public funds used to promote the irreversible

SPECIAL REPORT

Imagine if you were to bulldoze Yellowstone National Park in the interest of selling off a few choice morsels.

and funded. Oil subsidies provide the financial incentive for industrial-scale ships to pillage the most vulnerable habitats and species the planet possesses, in order to make a few private corporations – fewer than 50 around the world – profitable. These bottom trawlers are targeting long-lived creatures that cannot withstand the fast-paced exploitation that technology allows. Let me clarify: I am not against fishing. On the contrary, I think everything that can be fished should be fished. What I strongly oppose is the shortsighted exploitation of non-renewable resources. I count three categories of these: whales, sharks and deep-sea animals. All have a long lifespan – as long as or longer than human beings – and their reproduction rates are low, extremely low. In the shallows, fish have extremely high food requirements to feed their rapid lifestyle and muscular bodies. They produce millions of eggs and have a short lifespan: an anchovy or a sardine lives from three to five years, a tropical tuna six to nine. In the deep sea, however, a fish commonly lives to 60 years of age. A few notable species reach well over a century, and orange roughies, which live to 160, top them all. Imagine eating a fish born at the time Thomas Edison invented electricity. No one knows how often deep-sea fish breed or how successful they are at it, all we know is that they reach sexual maturity extremely late and that they produce many fewer eggs than their shallow-water counterparts.

ife in the deep ocean happens in the slow lane, in a dark, cold and food-deprived envi ron ment. Despite these harsh conditions, the deep sea is home to a diversity of animals beyond anything our brain can handle, comprising millions of new species yet to be discovered. This immense diversity is not immediately apparent because deep-sea animals are usually so few and far between. We typically and mistakenly associate “deep-sea fauna” with the weird, mid-water creatures that live in the abyss. This “monster circus” is of little commercial interest, with notable exceptions such as that of the tiny lantern ﬁsh, harvested to produce engine oil because these animals are so rich in lipids. The less phantasmagoric creatures living close ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

destruction of the common good for the shortsighted beneﬁt of a few? The whole thing is a bit surreal. Imagine if you were to obliterate Yellowstone National Park with monstrous bulldozers in the interest of retrieving a few choice morsels to sell. The only thing you would bag from this Terminator-style operation would be a few big mammals that would sell for a reasonably good sum of money. How much government support do you think your bulldozing endeavour would attract? How would you rate your chances of winning public opinion to your cause? In fact, you’d stand a good chance of landing in jail for this shocking crime against a unique, precious and necessarily protected common heritage. Now consider that, when it comes to the ocean, this scenario is not only tolerated but actively encouraged

Opposite: The slender snipe eel Nemichthys scolopaceus can reach 1.5 metres in length. It undulates in the water with its bird-like beak slightly opened and its small hooked teeth ready to entangle shrimp antennae. © David Shale / Claire Nouvian

151

Right: The passage of a deepwater trawl, like this one on top of a seamount belonging to the Corner Rise Chain in the central North Atlantic, near the mid-Atlantic Ridge, blindly removes all life found on the deep seaﬂoor. Dragging a net over multi-millenary animal structures equates to driving a bulldozer through the Amazon forest. © Les Watling for the Mountains-in the Sea Research Team, IFE, URI-IAO, and NOAA.

to the seafloor, however, are quite fleshy and are prime candidates for the boneless white-fish fillets consumers demand. These armourheads, oreos, alfonsinos, blue ling, black scabbardfish, orange roughies and grenadiers, to name but a few of these bottom-dwellers, often live in association with deep-sea coral reefs or sponge beds that are hundreds or even thousands of years old. Radiocarbon techniques have recently re-calculated the age of some deepwater corals at more than 4,000 years, making them the planet’s oldest living animals. Uprooting corals with trawlnets and then dumping them as ocean waste is akin to exhuming Egyptian mummies and disposing of them as trash. It’s a crime. 15 2

CORE

suppose it might be important to mention that these interactions between trawlers and deep-sea habitats are not incidental or rare. First, wherever there’s hard substrate, there are corals. And second, wherever trawlers pass, they remove 98 to 100 percent of what’s on the seafloor: sponges and corals, of course, but also all sorts of animals: octopi, brittle stars, crustaceans, sea lilies, sea pens and worms, along with all the tubes, burrows, dens and other structures these animals may have built for themselves. University of Hawaii professor Les Watling reminds us that attention must also be paid to sediments and not just to coral reefs and sponge

‘Think of the seafloor as the library of Alexandria. Are you sure you want to burn two books out of three, randomly?’

beds, as 90 percent of marine biodiversity is located in sediment. “Think of the seaﬂoor as a DNA bank,” he says, “or as the library of Alexandria. Are you sure you want to burn two books out of three, randomly?”

Let’s go back to a few fundamentals that make exploitation of underwater resources acceptable or even possible. Fish are typically the last wild items on our dinner menu, along with a few mushroom species. We don’t sow fish seeds or plant coral reefs. Some fishermen continue to put forward the 19th-century argument that ploughing the seafloor makes it more productive, although hundreds of scientific studies have shown otherwise. Fishing is not the same as agriculture. Pretending that it is, with investors setting yield expectations as if fish were industrial crops, has led to the current overfishing crisis shaking our world. ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

Deep-sea corals are most often associated with huge reef structures found, for example, in deep waters off Florida or Norway. Actually, fewer than 10 species can form reefs in the deep, whereas . thousands of species of long and fragile gorgonians (top and facing page) are found throughout the deep ocean, wherever there is rock for them to anchor. © Les Watling for the Mountains in the Sea Research Team, IFE, URI-IAO, and NOAA.

The passage of a trawler transforms this truly complex, three-dimensional habitat into a muddy soup in which animals are no longer able to lay the foundation for life. Sediments follow a complex infrastructure, just like a city, but only on a different, much smaller scale. A trawlnet dragged over a seafloor wreaks havoc on inhabitants as surely as a bombing raid creates homeless refugees. Lacking vital shelter and supplies, survivors of deep-sea trawling don’t stand any chance of survival. This raises the crucial question of habitat destruction. Even if catch ratios were to suit the biological rhythms of deepwater fish, deep-sea fishing would still have to address the disastrous impact it has on the marine ecosystem. That’s why deep-sea animals are the universal mascots of unsustainability.

This oceanocide becomes even more tragic when we understand that it is occurring during the sixth mass extinction, the most severe life crisis our planet has gone through in the past 500 million years. The rate at which animals are going extinct, due to the actions of man, is 100 to 1,000 times faster than any similar background event. What disappears today will not come back.

15 3

15 4

CORE

SPECIAL REPORT

Every one of us is paying for ships to go out and destroy our planet’s last pristine wilderness.

arvesting wild resources means being in tune with what nature can give. So what can the deep sea give us? One scientist has calculated that “sustainable” fishing in the deep Central Pacific would mean each ship would catch one fish a day. What’s difficult to grasp is that deep-sea populations are vulnerable even though they are, at specific times and places, extremely abundant. Some fish form gigantic aggregations to feed or breed in very deep waters (as deep as 2,000 metres), but this localized biomass does not indicate the size of the overall population. The entire subpopulation of a species can concentrate over a given area and can be fished down to commercial extinction in a few years, generally less than 10. The typical “boom and bust” pattern of deep-sea fisheries is dictated by the low productivity of deep-water animals, which encourages investors to “mine” fish populations rather than exploit them sustainably. In banking terms, the fish biomass doesn’t renew itself quickly enough to sustain anything but short-term exploitation. There is no way to live off the interest, so we destroy the capital. But if the capital is a common resource, why hesitate to turn it to individual profit? Rush for the gold!

Deep-sea bottom trawling is the result of a massive collective failure to sustainably manage productive areas

and fish stocks. Over the past 50 years, the oceans have been victims of serial depletion. First we fished down the easy-to-catch, close-to-shore populations. Once the fish bonanza was over, fishing fleets moved into the northern hemisphere on their hunt for cod, hake, flounder and halibut. When those stocks were depleted, the fishing went into the southern hemisphere. When all this bounty was gone, the fleets moved to deeper waters and simultaneously started “fishing down the food chain” for other species (smaller and uglier) that used be discarded as bycatch. At the end of the line – and this is already underway – we’ll be fishing for krill and jellies in maritime deserts. It’s a catastrophic scenario, and, for obscure reasons, we won’t change our course. Why do we accept, and even encourage, the extermination of deep-sea animals and habitats? That’s the real question. I wish there were at least one or two solid arguments to justify this ocean genocide, such as the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs, or perhaps seafood exports to countries with staggering poverty and an overwhelming need for animal protein. Reality-check: there is no global generosity scheme to justify this massacre. Deep-sea catches, which account for only 0.3 percent of all fish caught on the high seas (waters beyond national jurisdiction), are sold entirely to industrialized countries which, by the way, throw away perfectly tasty and renewable fish such as hake every day. The silent slaughter goes on for the increased profit of a few: 285 boats in the whole world, to be precise. How hard can it be to stop them, you may wonder?

REPACKAGING A TRAGEDY Deep-sea animals should be kept out of sight and off our plate. “Will it be ‘rattail’ or ‘slimehead’ today for you, madam?” I’m not sure deep-sea ﬁsh would have been so quickly embraced if they had been allowed to assume their true identities, with their ugly monster faces and disgusting names. Deep-sea ﬁsh began arriving in France, the United States and other rich, industrialized nations in the 1980s, as

overfishing depleted stocks of common species (cod, salmon, swordfish etc.). Marketing experts advised on presenting the newcomers as “fillets” or invented attractive names for them. This is how rattails became “grenadiers,” slimeheads “orange roughies,” and Patagonian toothfish and deepwater sharks became, respectively, “Chilean seabass” and “rock salmon” (the last has now predominantly replaced cod in “fish and chips” shops in the UK). In

order to further entice consumers into switching to these strange new species, fishermen gave away the fish fillets in free “taste tests,” just like cigarette brands encourage addiction by handing out free packs in nightclubs. Consumers were kept in the dark about the food they were buying, but now they are finding out, sometimes in awe, that they have been taking part in a silent tragedy and directly driving the fishing industry to mass environmental destruction. – C.N. ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

15 5

SPECIAL REPORT

How much more will have to be lost before society starts suing individuals for environmental crimes?

he only thing that has made this fishing activity legal is the fact that it started before science was able to prove it was unacceptable, unjustifiable and irreversible. Now that it has been unanimously established that deep-sea bottom fishing should be immediately halted, now that more than 1,400 scientists have expressed (in 2004) a statement of concern to the United Nations General Assembly about the vulnerability of deep-sea ecosystems, now that the UN has voted a resolution to prevent the impacts of bottom trawling on vulnerable marine habitats, now, in a word, that deep-sea fishing has finally been made illegal, why don’t these fishing nations (10 countries in the world are accountable for 80 percent of all activity) disengage from such a small industry? All it would take is cutting the oil subsidies given to these fleets. This would so strongly jeopardize the profitability of these fishing operations that they would inevitably cease. Instead of that, states are pumping public funds into keeping those few ships afloat, using the ignorance of the public as a tacit benediction of an inexcusable environmental crime. That diverted use of public money without the explicit consent of taxpayers constitutes an environmental “odious debt” that will eternally shame governments that failed to put a halt to deep-sea bottom fishing. An odious debt, as legal theorist Alexander Sack first pointed out, serves to fund actions that go against the public interest. It is contracted by a political regime and, as such, can and should be considered as the debt of a specific government and not as that of the nation as a whole. Translation: our governments must acknowledge past mistakes and buy back deep-sea bottom trawlers to dismantle them. “Real politicians, our elusive saviours,” fisheries expert Daniel Pauly once said. If worse comes to worst, if the 10 main bottom trawling nations continue to act contrary to scientific evidence and common sense, can’t the other 180 or so nations at the UN just impose a ban on deepwater bottom-trawling? Let’s bear in mind that we will all suffer equally from the mass destruction of biodiversity and from the correlated

15 6

CORE

weakened resilience of the oceans when climate change hits us really hard. Nations are currently fighting tooth and nail at the UN about the governance of biodiversity on the high seas, but at the current exploitation rate of deep-sea living resources, by the time they find an agreement (the UN convention on the Law of the Sea took 15 years to negotiate and another 12 to be ratified), there will be no biodiversity left to fight over. Fishing nations have failed so badly at ensuring sustainability and non-destructiveness of high-seas bottom-fishing operations, it is time to declare them incompetent at equitably managing the common good of humanity. What we, as consumers and citizens, must urgently do is ban all types of deep-sea fish, once and for all, from our menus. We must put forward a global citizens’ petition before the United Nations General Assembly calling for

the whole of the high seas to be set aside as a Marine Protected Area. Any fishing operation seeking to tap the free-for-all resources on the high seas would be obligated to produce a scientifically sound management plan demonstrating that their activities would neither jeopardize the future of the planet nor infringe upon other nations’ interests. Why aren’t fisheries managers held accountable for their blatant failure to protect the marine environment and species? How much more will have to be lost before society starts suing individuals for environmental crimes? Schopenhauer said that all truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; third, it is accepted as being self-evident. I wonder which stage we’re passing through now.

Top: Stauroteuthis syrtensis is one of the rare octopus species that can produce a luminous emission from the suckers. Bioluminescence is its response to the deep-sea food shortage: it attracts prey, avoiding chases through the obscurity. © David Shale / Claire Nouvian

The deep sea makes up 85 percent of the ocean, a world seldom seen and even less understood. Immersed in total darkness, it is the mysterious world explored by Claire Nouvian in The Deep. Combining the latest research and 200 photographs – some of never-before-seen creatures – the book is a guided dive into the abyss. The Deep, Claire Nouvian (Chicago University Press)

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

15 7

ART

LAND OF PLENTY — The dirty secret of Earth Art is that it isn’t always good for the Earth. Often understood as profound statements about man’s relationship to nature, the pieces themselves can have a profound environmental impact. Using natural materials doesn’t necessarily entail respecting the environment; rather than leaving no trace, the movement left works that can be seen from space.

By ELIZABETH UPPER

15 8

CORE

he scale of even the most iconic and celebrated piece is staggering: to make Spiral Jetty (1970), Robert Smithson displaced 6,500 tonnes of earth on Utah’s Great Salt Lake in just six days. That work is dwarfed by Double Negative by Michael Heizer (1969-70), which involved shifting 245,000 tonnes of sandstone to create a void through Nevada’s desert. Of course, there were exceptions, such as the work of Alan Sonﬁst and Richard Long, but the male-dominated beginnings of the Land Art movement was notorious for

Land Art didn’t die in the 1970s, but it has outgrown the raping-and-pillaging of its youth. Many artists, who are also environmentalists, have reconciled their desire to work with the landscape with their duty to preserve it. They produce low-impact works and, like the original Land Artists, document manmade changes to the landscape through photography. Some, in the aptly named Art in Nature movement, make short-term, small-scale, biodegradable installations or interventions in the landscape from immediately local materials. Others create the changes on a computer screen or in a studio instead of in a living landscape. ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

ANDY GOLDSWORTHY Red River Rocks ground to a powder slowly released upstream of a waterfall. Botany Bay, Scaur Glen, Dumfriesshire, July 1997. Six unique cibachrome prints. Image courtesy of the artist and Haines Gallery

macho aims and diesel-fuelled methods. Wastelands were reclaimed for art, not for nature. There are many variants: Earth Art, or Earthworks, is a type of Land Art (work that alters a landscape) that uses earth as a sculptural medium. It is related to Environmental Art (which is located in the environment), but seemingly at odds with Eco Art (which makes an ecological statement). The terms overlap, and they all fall under the umbrella of site-speciﬁc art. The point is that, despite the terminology, Earth-based art is not necessarily great for the Earth. Michael Heizer once called the H-bomb the “ultimate sculpture.”

15 9

ART

any of the original Land Art works are known today through (or exist only in) documentary photographs made by their creators at the moment of creation, as natural changes in the environment have subsequent ly and deﬁnitively altered the works. A new movement, what might be called “post-Land Art” has now arrived. In it, photography assumes a more essential role, with the photographers foregoing the earthmoving: they identify evidence of environmental change instead of creating it, turning man-made alterations of the landscape into poignant statements about man’s power over nature. The artists’ ecological outrage helps their work ﬁt into a new framework of Land Art.

Andy Goldsworthy and Nils-Udo, leaders of the Art in Nature movement, have been artist-environmentalist pioneers for decades. They minimize the footprint of their sculptures and installations in every way. Goldsworthy uses only what he finds on site. He uses his teeth as a tool and his saliva as an adhesive. His projects include covering a rock in a clear river with bright yellow leaves to make it appear golden in the sunlight (Yellow Elm Leaves Laid over a Rock, 1991), or putting crumbling red rocks in a waterfall to turn it briefly red (Red River Rocks, 1997). Nils-Udo tends to work on a larger scale to draw the viewer physically into the modified feature of the landscape. He has made a nest not in a tree but with a tree (Willow Nest, 1994), for instance, and he has installed grass-covered ramps, made from wood and earth, leading into a treetop (Towards Nature, 2008). The work of these artists celebrates, rather than obliterates, a landscape. Michael McGillis explores the cycle of environmental

destruction and industrial creation. In pieces like Wake (2006), he returns cordwood (painted purple) to disrupted nature (a trench) in an artiﬁcial arrangement (as pathway walls). The “denatured” installation leads the visitor a metre or so into the earth, while forming a barrier protecting the visitor from it. Unlike Richard Serra, the Land Artist who shocked viewers with an installation of logs cut from endangered California redwood trees in the Pasadena Art Museum in 1970, McGillis turns viewers into accomplices, forcing them into the “disruptive gesture…of opening the earth.” Tokihiro Sato’s interventions can spread over

vast distances across a landscape but exist only in photographs. Using a flashlight, he moves (or swims) across an area and shines his light at the camera. The shutter speed of two to three hours means that the dots of light, not his body, are captured on film. He modifies the landscape visually, but leaves it unaltered physically.

16 0

CORE

TOKIHIRO SATO #389 Kamaiso, 1999, black-and-white transparency over lightbox. Image: 98 x 120 cm/ lightbox: 100 x 125 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Haines Gallery

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

161

16 2

CORE

ART

Is nature being protected from humans, or is it the other way around?

ike Sato’s work, much post-Land Art photography responds to damage by depicting changes to the landscape. Unlike landscape photography, it has a visual effect and root concept similar to those of photographs of works of Land Art. It doesn’t celebrate the triumph of man over nature by shifting tonnes of soil, but shows how human activity can unwittingly but permanently alter the landscape. There is a third alternative for artists who want to work with the landscape without affecting it: digital art. Chus García-Fraile constructs nightmare scenarios by depicting ways of appreciating nature that avoid interacting with it. It’s hard not to think of stair-stepped structures built by 1970s land artists when looking at his image of an escalator on a forest hill, which both redeﬁnes the space around the built structure and man’s interaction with a natural space. The series’ title Protected Zone also begs the question: is nature being protected from humans or is it the other way around? Photographer Yao Lu documents what he calls “radical mutations affecting nature” by composing traditional Chinese landscapes of mist-clouded mountains – but with mountains made from garbage mounds covered in tarpaulins. He constructs his landscapes like a land artist, changing them, and then documenting that alteration.

CHUS GARCÍAFRAILE Protected Zone, 2007, digital photo/ Dibond, 130 x 110 cm. Ed.5 +1 AP. Courtesy ADN Gallery, Barcelona

This new trend of engaging with the landscape suggests that Land Art has evolved. It doesn’t involve moving earth or transforming the landscape, but instead documents transformations that already exist. It doesn’t celebrate the power of man to permanently “embellish” landscape, but condemns changes to it. Robert Smithson once said that the development of Land Art meant that “the artist, ecologist and industrialist must develop in relation to each other,” but he never could have guessed that it would turn the artist into both ecologist and industrialist. NANCY THIBAUT, who is writing a revisionist approach to Land Art, contributed to this article.

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

16 3

ART

“Rubbish dumps covered with a ‘shield’ of green netting, are ubiquitous in China,” says Yao Lu. They were also the inspiration for his “traditional” Chinese landscapes: these mountains are actually piles of garbage covered in tarpaulin. Yao was nominated for the 2009 Prix Pictet, a prestigious environmental photography prize.

YAO LU New Landscape Part 1-YL03 Smoke-like Clouds at Zhongshan, 2006, chromogenic print, 120 x 120 cm. Courtesy Bruce Silverstein & the artist

16 4

CORE

YAO LU New Landscape Part 1-YL06 Viewing the Waterfall from the Pine Rocks, 2007 chromogenic print, 120 x 120 cm. Courtesy Bruce Silverstein & the artist

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

16 5

MICHAEL MCGILLIS Flow Line, 2007, willow and paint, 230-metre circumference. Puy de Chambourguet, Super-Besse, France. michaelmcgillis.com This piece was located around the rim of an extinct volcano in central France, part of Rencontres Arts Nature in 2007. The piece could not be seen from the valley, but only after a 30-minute walk up the mountain.

16 6

CORE

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

167

BEAUTY

CALI

FORNIA REAL — JOSIE MARAN has parlayed her career as a model and actress into a successful line of eco-conscious cosmetics, but it’s more of a return to her roots. Text ALEXANDER SHARKEY Photography DAVID MUSHEGAIN

16 8

CORE

aware of your lifestyle choices and their impact on the planet. So when it came to doing my makeup line, I knew I wanted something healthy, non-toxic, with green packaging. Living that way — healthy and natural but also stylish — and doing what I can to promote that, that’s my life now, that’s what I do.” Maran and her brother grew up in Palo Alto, in a family she describes as “bohemian” but that might also qualify as visionary. Her father was one of the ﬁrst ecologically oriented builders, while her artist mother was fastidious about recycling — long before it became acceptable, let alone politically correct. “My parents were only 21 when they had me, and I guess they were nonconformist and determined to live in a conscious way. So I grew up very socially and environmentally conscious. They wouldn’t have any plastics or chemicals in the house, we had no microwave, we grew food and we recycled everything. But we didn’t call it ‘green’ because that phrase didn’t even exist then. It was just the way we were taught to do things: try not to waste anything, and strive to be creative.” Her mother’s resourcefulness, she says, was a natural result of being the ninth of 13 children. Meanwhile, her paternal grandmother, a professor of international law

Sitting in the café of a yoga studio off Sunset and Vine, wearing a battered cream leather jacket over a white muslin dress and a pair of scuffed knee-high boots, Josie Maran could be just another of the lithe, attractive Hollywood mothers who frequent this place, often with their babies. But it’s unlikely the other hot moms at nearby tables will have a résumé like Maran’s. Following a two-decade stretch as one of America’s most successful models, and a ﬁlm career that includes a breathless scene with Leonardo DiCaprio, in 2007 she launched her eponymous, eco-conscious cosmetics and beauty line. As Maran explains it, her product line was the natural consequence of her precocious upbringing, intense career, and the all-natural birth of her daughter, named Rumi after the Persian mystic and poet. “Of course being a mother makes you more conscious of your health and diet,” she says, glancing round at the modern Madonnas surrounding us on all sides, “but even before I got pregnant, for a year or so I was subconsciously preparing, because I cleaned up my lifestyle and diet, did a lot of yoga, became more aware of my thoughts, and did a lot of meditation. “Naturally, having a child changes your life completely, it’s like a big love bomb. But it also makes you acutely

All clothing VINTAGE Thanks to MYRIAM MALAKPOUR ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

16 9

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Having a child is like a big love bomb. It makes you acutely aware of your lifestyle choices and their impact on the planet.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

170

CORE

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

171

172

CORE

BEAUTY

‘I kept asking makeup artists if they had stuff that was healthier, less toxic, less chemical.'

at UC Berkeley, was a major inﬂuence on the family’s social conscience. “I also grew up with the idea that you have to question everything, protest when necessary, help people who are weaker and poorer than yourself, and generally try to make a difference.” Her younger brother has just graduated from Columbia University with a degree in politics, she says. “So I’m pretty sure he’s going to be socially active, too.” Maran’s extraordinary career path began at the age of 12, when she attended a barbecue thrown by a photographer friend of her family, who referred the “skinny kid” to a San Francisco modeling agency. A few years later she was signed by Elite and living in New York. “I’d always wanted to live there,” she says. “My dad’s from New York, so I’m half-city, half-nature girl. I just needed to get that out of my system, or maybe into my system.” Either way, New York galvanized her career, as she landed dozens of magazine covers, became the face of Guess jeans and Maybelline cosmetics, and featured in Sports Illustrated’s annual swimwear edition three years in a row. She also appeared in numerous pop videos, including the clip for Fiona Apple’s smash-hit Criminal. “For four years, there was a lot of partying. It was very exciting, but it almost killed me. I was deﬁnitely not so healthy or peaceful at that point. Hey, I was young, and young people drink and do… stuff. But in the end, I was done with it, and moved back to LA.” Around the same time her movie career began taking off, with roles in

Little Black Book, Van Helsing, and a memorable cameo opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator (she was Thelma, the cigarette girl). But she had already begun the research and development work that would lead her to create the range of makeup and beauty products that would become Josie Maran Cosmetics. “I’d learned a lot about makeup during my years as a model,” says Maran. “I kept asking makeup artists if they had stuff that was healthier, less toxic, less chemical. And they were always, ‘No it just can’t be done.’” The main problem, she found, was getting industrial labs to remove or replace the cost-effective but essentially toxic base products in their creams and oils. “These labs work with all the big companies, so they already have formulas that have been priced and tested. They don’t want to remake their base chemicals. But while they use some good stuff, I needed them to take out the bad stuff, and they hated that.” “Right now I’m poor because of the product range,” she laughs. “Sure it makes money, but every penny we earn goes straight back into it. So my ass is on the line.” While she says she doesn’t regret sinking her life savings into this business venture — natural beauty is her passion, after all — Maran says she’s glad she was ignorant about the effort required to launch a brand. “Otherwise I’d never have done it. The hours are endless, and money is constantly an issue. I used to have a lot of money, but now I don’t even have a paycheck — just like a lot of people out there! But it’s so exciting.”

GOING ARGAN Is there anything Argan oil won’t do for you? The signature ingredient of Josie Maran Cosmetics is Argan oil, an all-natural, 100-percent organic, chemical-free food and beauty product. Produced by crushing the nut of the Argan tree, found in arid rural areas of Morocco, Argan oil has been used by Moroccan women for centuries for its nutritional and cosmetic

beneﬁts. Abundantly rich in vitamin E and essential fatty acids, Argan oil has powerful healing, conditioning and anti-aging properties that keep skin and hair nourished and revitalized. With twice as much vitamin E as olive oil and a host of vital antioxidants, it can play a major role in a healthy diets and is commonly used in traditional Moroccan recipes. As a beauty product, Argan can

soften dry skin, help minimize ﬁne lines and help heal acne blemishes and scarring, and prevent the occurrence of new breakouts. It is also perfect for softening cuticles, treating split ends, and is safe enough to use even on a baby’s delicate skin for treating dryness and soreness. Josie Maran sources her Argan oil directly from female-run and owned organic cooperatives in Morocco. — A.S. ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

17 3

174

CORE

‘I grew up with the idea that you have to question everything, protest when necessary, try to make a difference.’

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

175

ON THIN ICE — JAMES BALOG and his team set up 27 time-lapse cameras at 15 sites in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska and the Rocky Mountains. The sequences and still images from this “Extreme Ice Survey” dramatically demonstrate what we’ll be missing when the glaciers are gone.

ILULISSAT ISFJORD, GREENLAND, June 7, 2007 These icebergs in Ilulissat Isfjord broke off from Sermeq Kujalleq, one of the fastest-moving glaciers in the world. Said to be sliding at the astonishing rate of 19 metres a day, it calves 35 cubic kilometres of icebergs into the ocean each year, the most of any glacier outside Antarctica. Extreme Ice Now: Vanishing Glaciers and Changing Climate is published by National Geographic; www.extremeicesurvey.org

GREENLAND ICE SHEET, July 18, 2006 A hundred miles southeast of Ilulissat, a meltwater lake sits on the surface of the 1.7 millionsquare-kilometre Greenland ice sheet. Lakes form during the spring and summer melt, before the water ďŹ&#x201A;ows through the ice and under glacier to the ocean. Global warming has speeded up this process and continues to do so â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the more water that passes under the glacier, the faster it melts, which creates more water, and so on. Between 2006, when this picture was taken, and 2008 the Greenland Ice Sheet lost 273 cubic kilometres of ice, which represents a rise in global sea levels of 0.75 millimetres a year.

JÖKULSÁRLÓN, ICELAND, March 2005 Fed by the Vatnajökull glacier, which, despite increased melting, still covers 8 percent of the country, Jökulsárlón, a glacial lagoon in southeast Iceland, did not exist until the 1930s; today, it is spread over nearly 20 square kilometres.

DISKO BAY, GREENLAND, August 24, 2007 This iceberg broke off from the Greenland ice sheet. Its distinctive, wave-formed scallop pattern shows that at some point it rolled over in the water.

JÖKULSÁRLÓN, ICELAND, March 2005 Jökulsárlón drains to the sea via the Jökulsá river. Icebergs that have calved from the Vatnajökull glacier drift down the river until they become stuck on the riverbed. They are gradually worn away by wind and tides until they are small enough to ﬂoat out to sea.

18 6

S T R ATO S P H E R E

WADE DAVIS - PERILS OF PALM OIL - MAMMAL JAM ECOTOURISM IN INDIA - GUILT-FREE SKIING - SLOW FOOD IN UMBRIA RELUCTANT ECO-WARRIOR - BEAUTY LEXICON CAROL ALT - SUSTAINABLE LUXURY - THIRST AMENDMENT GREEN-ART GUIDE - FASHION FROM COMMUUN, H&M, LENY ECOSHOPPING - HELENA CHRISTENSEN - ABOVE & AROUND FOR THE DOLPHINS - READING LIST

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

18 7

ABOVE THE FRAY

Beyond Copenhagen

— WADE DAVIS went to COP15 and came back wondering why we haven’t declared war on global warming. Photography WADE DAVIS

A year or so ago I travelled from Igloolik in the Canadian Arctic 3,200 kilometres to northern Greenland with a native friend who had once made the journey on foot with his dogs. Almost immediately, as our chartered plane crossed over Baffin Island, I could see from Theo’s expression that something was wrong. It was April and our flight path took us 12 degrees south of the North Pole. The sea ice was not there. Smith Sound, which Theo had crossed with his dogs, was open water. He stared out the plane window in disbelief. Once we had landed and reached Qaanaaq, the northernmost inhabited place on Earth, we found great open channels in the ice. The ice used to form in September and remain solid through July. Now it comes in November and is gone by March. Climate change has become humanity’s problem, but the problem was not caused by humanity. The crisis has in fact been provoked by a relatively small subset of the human population, a particular cultural tradition that over time has reduced the world to a mechanism, the planet to a commodity, with nature itself being seen as but an obstacle to overcome. Our economic models in the industrial world are projections and arrows when they should be circles. To define perpetual growth on a finite planet as the sole measure of economic wellbeing is to engage in a slow form of collective suicide. To deny or exclude from the calculus of governance and economy the costs of violating the biological support systems of life is the logic of delusion. Just 10 years ago, though much of the scientific data was firmly in hand, those who warned of the greenhouse effect were still being dismissed as radicals. Today it is those who question the existence and significance of climate change who occupy the lunatic fringe. There is no serious scientist alive who questions the severity and implications of this crisis, or the factors, decisions and priorities that caused it to occur. We have for three centuries now, as Thom Hartman has written, consumed the ancient sunlight of the world. What I saw in December at the COP15 18 8

STRATOSPHERE

Civilisation needs a new operating system and we are the new programmers.

conference did not inspire conﬁdence. The major industrial nations continued to gloss and exaggerate the signiﬁcance of their emission-reduction plans. The countries of the developing world, meanwhile, grew ever more shrill in their demands for compensation, turning a tin ear to political realities in the north in a manner destined to doom the process even as they clamoured for cash. Saudi Arabia had the audacity to demand compensation. The African nations spoke of reparations, as if a carbon conspiracy had been afoot since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. China offered to reduce its carbon intensity, a sleight of hand that would allow absolute emissions to rise, provided they did not surpass the amphetamine-fuelled surge

of industrial growth that has left 300 million Chinese without potable water, and condemned upwards of 300,000 to die each year from toxic air. India, in a perverse gesture of post-colonial psychosis, effectively stated that, having been slow to modernize, it deserved a turn at poisoning the world. The fact that we are all in this together, and that we have to take collective responsibility for this particular moment in time, seemed utterly lost on the formal delegations.

According to IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri, the climate crisis could be fully mitigated and the world’s economy transformed with an investment equivalent to just 3 percent of global GNP. By way of comparison, the United States devoted fully 40 percent of GDP to military victory in World War II. For the US war effort, ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

If the fate of the world hangs in the balance, if a projected rise of sea levels promises to ﬂood the Nile delta and inundate the homes of 120 million people in Bangladesh and India, if nearly half of

the world’s population is condemned to live without certain access to fresh water, if the glaciers of the Andes and the Tibetan plateau, source of life for half of humanity, will be gone, then why has our response failed to be in any way commensurate with the severity of the crisis? Why have we not fully mobilized and declared war on global warming?

18 9

For three centuries we’ve consumed the ancient sunlight of the world.

shipyards in Long Beach and Sausalito spat out “Liberty ships” at a rate of one a day for four years. The Ford Motor Company alone produced more industrial output than the entire country of Italy. Farm boys of 17, after a mere seven months of training, were flying B-17s over Germany. The US and its allies recognized a mortal danger, reached an inescapable conclusion, and went to work. If climate change is the threat we now know it to be, why has the international response been so fundamentally tepid? On my last day in Copenhagen I put this question to Carter Roberts, head of the World Wildlife Fund. The situation, he suggested, comes down to four basic possibilities. If the scientists are wrong, and we do nothing, little changes. If they are wrong and we act, the worst that will happen will be an economic stimulus that will result in a cleaner environment, a more technologically integrated world and a healthier planet. If they are right, and we do nothing, the potential consequences are at best bad and at worst catastrophic, with scenarios so bleak as to defy the darkest imaginings of science fiction. If the scientific 19 0

STRATOSPHERE

consensus holds, and we aggressively marshal our financial resources and technological brilliance to confront the challenge, we will be able, for a relatively small investment, to head off potential disaster and make for a better world. It was difficult to conjure a losing scenario, save that of inaction. As environmentalist and author Paul Hawken recently told a group of graduating seniors at the University of Portland, civilization needs a new operating system, and we, whether we like it or not, are going to be the new programmers. As we move forward it behoves us to listen to the voices of the many hundreds of cultures struggling to be a part of the global dialogue that will define the future of life on earth. There are currently 1,500 languages gathered around the campfire of the Internet and the number is increasing. These voices matter because they can remind us that there are indeed alternatives, other ways of orienting humans in social, spiritual and ecological space. I’m not suggesting we abandon everything and attempt to mimic the ways of nonindustrial societies. Nor am I asking any one culture to forfeit its right to benefit from the genius of technology. The idea is to draw inspiration and comfort from the fact that the path we have taken is not the only one available. The diverse cultures of our world bear witness to the folly of those who say we cannot change – and we must change the fundamental way in which we inhabit the planet. Previous page: Río Apaporis in the northwest Amazon, Colombia. This page: A fire in northern Australia, set by aboriginal hunters as part of a kangaroo fire drive.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Campaigns gathered by ACT Responsible whose goal is to federate, promote and inspire responsible communication on sustainability, equitable development and social responsibility. Visit www.act-responsible.orgâ&#x20AC;?

ABOVE & AWARE

The Perils of Palm Oil

— It’s not what palm oil is but where we ﬁnd it that causes so much trouble. By the editors of Above Photography GREENPEACE

Palm oil is in our bread, margarine, cereal and pizza, but don’t waste time hunting for it over breakfast. On food packaging, palm oil may come disguised as “vegetable oil,” while on other products, such as shampoos, soaps, washing powders, fabric softeners and skin creams, it’s hidden behind chemical names (hexadecylic acid, anyone?) Last year the Independent newspaper identiﬁed palm oil in 43 of the UK’s top 100 grocery brands. Now that we know where palm oil is (sort of) we might be curious to know what it is. Turns out we have to keep playing detective. To Merriam Webster’s dictionary, palm oil is a “semisolid or solid red or yellowish brown edible fat.” European policymakers see it as the centrepiece of the European Union’s biodiesel programme. The Malaysian Palm Oil Council peddles it as “a more efficient carbon sink than a tropical rainforest” that “helps absorb greenhouse gasses.” Greenpeace decries palm oil production as “the leading cause of rainforest destruction in Malaysia and Indonesia.” When we step back and consider palm oil, however, we see a pretty onerous picture that looks like this: illegal loggers, multinational corporations, their customers (us) and

governments all cooperating, wittingly or unwittingly, in venality and wholesale destruction. Palm oil makes good economic sense, no argument there: the palm-oil tree is one of the world’s most productive, with annual yields of 3.6 tonnes a hectare (compared with half a tonne a hectare for soy or rapeseed). It’s one of the cheapest cooking oils in the world, and while it’s high in saturated fat, it’s probably better for you than hydrogenated fats or butter. The problem comes from where palm oil is produced and how. Eighty-three percent of the world’s palm oil comes from Malaysia and Indonesia, countries whose rainforests are being destroyed at a frightening rate. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimated in 2007 that 98 percent of Indonesia’s rainforest would be destroyed by 2022 by logging for export (much of it illegal) and the subsequent use of the land for palm-oil plantations. This massive destruction of ecosystems is eradicating habitats and endangering a variety of species, among them orangutans, Sumatran tigers, elephants and rhinoceroses. “A palm-oil plantation supports only about 15 percent of the mammals of a primary forest, and far, far less of a percentage of flora and other fauna,” says Leila Salazar-Lopez at Rainforest Action Network (RAN). “And this 15 percent are small animals like wild pigs or rats, not endangered species.” If those animals and habitats were palm oil’s only victims, that would be bad enough, but the news for the planet is pretty bad, too. Much of the rainforest sits on peatlands, which must be drained before the land can support plantations. Companies cut the forest and dig drainage canals in the peatland. The canals are then used to float the logs down to processing plants. Fires are used to clear the peat once it has dried. It was these peat fires that were largely responsible for the massive pollution that left much of Southeast Asia choking on smoke in 1997-1998. On top of this air pollution comes a far more damaging and invisible danger: peatlands are massive “carbon sinks,” trapping huge amounts of carbon that, when the peat is drained, oxidizes to produce carbon dioxide. Peatlands cover just 3 percent of the world’s surface but store somewhere between a fifth and a third of the total carbon in the terrestrial biosphere. Greenpeace calculates that burning or allowing all this peat to fully

19 2

STRATOSPHERE

Much of the rainforest sits on peatlands, which must be drained...

as the perfect solution. Which has meant a windfall for producers: a 2009 UNEP report said that, “Recently, […] 95 percent of the increased production of palm oil in Malaysia and Indonesia was driven by the growing demand for biodiesel.” In the Indonesian province of Riau 3 million of its 4 million hectares of peatland Top: Drainage canals through cleared peatland, Indonesia Opposite: An Indonesian palm-oil plantation

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

degrade would release 1,935Gt of CO2 — 190 times the annual emissions currently pumped out by the world’s fossil-fuel power stations. It is a direct result of this deforestation and peat degradation that Indonesia has become the third biggest producer of greenhouse gases after the USA and China. Misguided good intentions, on top of all the missteps and mishaps, are what amplify the palm-oil story to the level of environmental tragedy. In 2007 the European Union issued a directive stating that, by 2020, six percent of its fuel needs should be met by biofuels. Biofuels are supposed to be an answer to climate change, right? Yet with Europe’s own production of oil-seed rape insufﬁcient to meet biofuel requirements member states began looking elsewhere for sources of biodiesel – diesel makes up 60 percent of European fuel use – and palm oil presented itself

19 3

ABOVE & AWARE

Misguided good intentions make this an environmental tragedy.

have been earmarked for oil-palm plantations. This despite UNEP estimating that the conversion of forest peatland to palm-oil production releases 3,452 tonnes of CO2 per hectare, and a 2008 article published in Science revealed that it would take 423 years of biodiesel production to offset the CO2 produced by clearing the peat. Despite the EU’s recent announcement that “further assessment should be made of the environmental and social consequences of the production and consumption of biofuel,” palm-oil consumption is still expected to double by 2030 and triple by 2050. In its drive to become “greener,” the European Union is not only creating pollution on a scale that dwarves its current output from fossil fuels, but also contributing to world hunger and land grabs. A recent report by British charity Action Aid said that, “Biofuels are conservatively estimated to have been responsible for at least 30 percent of the global food price spike in 2008,” as valuable agricultural land around the world was transformed from food to biofuel production. (The price surge is estimated to have driven 100 million people into poverty.) In Indonesia, indigenous communities have found their ancestral land sold to multinational palm-oil producers such as Sinar Mas and Cargill, which are granted permits to exploit land that has been used by indigenous communities for centuries. And once companies have their permit, says Salazar-Lopez at RAN, “it is largely up to them how they treat local communities.” Pak Jamaludin, a community leader in Indonesian Borneo, told RAN that “the forest provided us with many ways to earn money: fish, honey, saps, resins, oils, game, rattan vines. Now, there is no more land, all of our rice paddies, our fruit orchards, everything our grandparents left us is gone.” Sawit Watch, an Indonesian NGO, estimates that no fewer than 3,000 land conflicts – for the most part linked to logging and oil palms – have been registered with the government. So what can you do? You might start by tracking down the palm oil that has been sneaking into your home or office. Once you know where it’s hiding you can make 19 4

STRATOSPHERE

informed decisions. Some companies have already started paying close attention. Lush cosmetics in the US now makes only palm oil-free soaps and will soon remove it from all its products. In 2008 Unilever promised to use only sustainable palm oil by 2015, and in late 2009 it cancelled a contract with Sinar Mas, Indonesia’s leading palm-oil producer, after the company’s forest-destroying, peat-burning and illegallogging practices were revealed by campaigners. “Unilever’s decision to cancel a contract that was worth 10 percent of Sinar Mas’ annual revenue shook up the industry,” says Salazar-Lopez at RAN. “We hope this will be a turning point for other buyers to pay attention to their own supply chains.” But wait, before you break out the Champagne, there’s another slight problem: those supply chains make

it almost impossible to know whether palm oil has been sustainably produced or not. This is because the oil is treated, shipped and traded in such an opaque fashion that no one – not even the traders who deal in it – is sure of its original source. (Oils are mixed together at the refinery, in storage facilities and in tankers.) The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was created with the intention of certifying oil that’s produced sustainably, but even the organization’s own members aren’t sure it’s doing its job. One told Greenpeace, “We do not believe it is possible currently to robustly trace and segregate a specific source – country and region – for commercial volumes of palm.” So why not write to RSPO and demand better enforcement of their certification standards?

There have been a few recent victories in the palm oil struggle. In New Zealand last year, after consumers started Facebook campaigns to pressure Cadbury’s to remove palm oil from its chocolate, the company gave in. Cadbury’s heartening announcement (“We got it wrong”) came in August, just one month after the Auckland Zoo had banned Cadbury’s Creme Eggs chocolate from its premises. RAN campaign: www.theproblemwithpalmoil.org Don’t Palm Us Off: www.aucklandzoo.co.nz Europe’s Energy Commissioner: ec.europa.eu/ commission_barroso/piebalgs/ RSPO: www.rspo.org

Top: Clear-cut forest in Riau Province, Indonesia

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

19 5

MUSIC

When Mammals Jam

— Sometimes you’re listening to nature, sometimes nature’s listening to you, and sometimes, says DAVID ROTHENBERG, it starts sounding like music. Photography WAYNE LEVIN

The song of the humpback whale is unlike any other animal sound. It is a series of haunting and beautiful musical phrases, with rhythms, recognizable melodies and a theme-and-variations kind of structure. It’s a song no human knew anything about until the 1960s, when the United States Navy started picking up whales on its underwater listening stations, designed to track Soviet submarines. Since the international moratorium on whaling of 1986, the population of humpbacks has rebounded enough that they are much easier to encounter in the wild. All you have to do is be in one of those tropical places where they gather in winter to mate. When a humpback sings, he is usually alone and suspended as if in a trance about 15 metres down. You can anchor a boat nearby, toss in a hydrophone, and listen to the music. My plan was to play live with the whales on my clarinet, using an underwater speaker, to broadcast my sound into the world of whales, and an underwater microphone to hear what was going on. I wrote a book called Thousand Mile Song about the process, and it includes a CD called Whale Music. It has always been my belief that the best way to understand nature is to interact with it, rather than just to observe it or study it. To a musician, the environment seems a vast untapped area of possible collaboration. We jam with birds, whales, even insects. We learn about the natural world and maybe we can learn how to save it.

19 6

STRATOSPHERE

They sing all alone, but listening together, scattered all across the winter ocean. Humpback song, like many low sounds, can travel fast and far underwater, at least 25 or 30 kilometres. So if you dip a hydrophone in and start to listen, it seems like you’re in the middle of a huge chorus of singing male whales, all bellowing out the same tune, feeling as if they’re alone. Why do they do this? No human knows. Perhaps they are on some kind of all-male singing retreat. “Tail dive, four o’clock, hundred yards away.” Samone Yust is a tanned and tough-looking woman who appears to have spent years on the whitecaps and swells. Her boat is decorated with an airbrushed painting of cavorting dolphins, and a mermaid adorns the front gap between the two close-set pontoons. She turns the engine off and we start to drift. “Lower the ’phones, check it out,” Samone says, and we drop down our brand-new Cetacean Research hydrophones, one on each side of the boat, to try for a stereo effect. The whale sounds amazingly close. Right under the boat. The hull itself is buzzing. How is it possible that no one noticed this level of sound before the 1960s? I play my clarinet for 30 minutes or so, and the whale never stops. Two minutes in, he really seems to get louder in response to the spaces I leave in between my notes. He’s alternating with me, not interrupting, like nightingales who compare each other’s riffs in the dark. Then I play a high wail, and he seems to add a whoop to his bruup. He’s adding resonance to

Since 1970, when the US Navy declassiﬁed its whale recordings and let scientists and musicians get at them, we’ve learned a few things. We’ve learned that only male humpbacks sing the songs. As the singing happens mostly during the winter mating season, it stands to reason that the songs should be aimed at females, like the songs of male birds, a performance to get the other sex to pay attention. However, in the 40 years scientists have been paying attention to this activity, no one has ever seen a female humpback whale show any interest in the male song. So who

is listening? Other males. After 10 years of detailed observation, researcher Jim Darling concluded that 86 percent of the time what happens is this: a lone, motionless, suspended singing humpback male is joined by another male. The ﬁrst one stops singing, and then the two swim off together abreast for some minutes, in silence. Then they separate, and once far enough away from each other, both males may start singing again.

Perhaps the real music is something deeper, wilder, more primal â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the kind of sound that can cross the border between one species and the next.

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

19 7

Once you hear the song of a humpback whale your life will change forever.

his tones, making them richer, louder. Suddenly he leaps from a really low growl to a super-high squeak. I feel the interspecies music. Some of it is harsh and shrieky, but that’s what the whales were up to. I entered their wild world of sound. After several minutes I’m ﬂowing deeper into the style, ready to shriek wildly into these klezmer-like vibratos I’m hearing. I remember something I once heard about Sidney Bechet, practising his soprano sax in a Paris apartment in the 1950s. He’d play scales and arpeggios for hours, but at the end of each session, he would conclude with a series of howling animal noises. A neighbour in the building once asked him about this, and Bechet paused a moment and said, “Sometimes I think what we call music is not the real music.” Perhaps the real music is something deeper, wilder, more primal – the kind of sound that can cross the border between one species and the next, from human to cetacean and beyond. Beaming the clarinet into the dense underwater world, I’m wailing, screaming, tying to pack as much emotion as I can 19 8

STRATOSPHERE

into this one moment when a whale is joining in. Our song roars through the seas. Each musician makes space for the other, our duet an overlap of themes from different worlds, human and cetacean. Undersea and above, it is music with no beginning or end. We pause only to back away from the possible sounds that still remain. Then we stop paying attention to one another, back in our separate worlds. Neither human nor whale can forget the song we’ve made together. Human support for whales has grown nearly universal, and the whaling moratorium of 1986 has become one of conservation’s true success stories. Of course, there are still countries like Japan and Norway that want to defy international law and bring back a full-scale whaling industry. But the world is mostly against them. Like those few remaining dissenters against the rising reality of global climate change, these nations will eventually give in. In August 2007, Iceland announced it was suspending its commercial whale hunt for lack of demand for the product. Most people want to save our planet, and most of us want to save the whales. It was the song that did it, that got us to care. Once you hear the song of a humpback whale your life will be changed forever. And the more closely you listen to it, the more the ocean itself becomes a greater music – melodies and waves, rising and falling, always changing, while we still don’t know why. In memory of Samone Yust, 1960-2008

ECOTOURISM

Garden of Delight

— Marari Beach Resort is a place where MONISHA RAJESH can wander barefoot and pick organically grown chilis. Photography HARALD HAUGAN

I spent the first few months of this year travelling India’s railways, gazing out on paddy fields and orchards littered with chai cups, foil biriyani packets, plastic water bottles and other debris. I was living off fast food and had developed a fume-induced cough. India and eco-friendly were seeming like two very dissimilar concepts. Then I went to the Marari Beach Resort in Kerala. I first heard about the place from a retired lawyer on a train from Trivandrum to Mangalore. He told me about a gated hideaway in Kerala, his home state. I knew about Kerala’s “new Goa” label and I wasn’t convinced, but the Marari Beach Resort sounded different. It was about an hour away from Kottayam station, my lawyer friend confided, and I should be careful not to miss the turnoff. Marari Beach Resort sits behind a stretch of spotless creamy yellow sand shaded by coconut palms. Within 10 minutes of arrival I was drinking fresh coconut juice and preparing for my first non-deepfried lunch in four months. This is a place where you wander barefoot, grill fish on the beach, and spend 202

STRATOSPHERE

hours on the sands with no one else in sight, all of which I was eagerly intended to do. Despite their steadfast dedication to sustainability, the owners are reluctant to market Marari Beach as an eco-friendly resort. The Dominic family, who started the CGH Earth group of sustainable properties in the early 1980s, before the environment was the hot topic it is today, prefer to pitch their luxury hotels as “experiential” rather than opulent. “We owe it to nature to do everything in a sustainable manner and it’s with ultimate conviction that we do it,” Michael Dominic told me. “It’s just a part of our culture.” However you slice it, I’ve never been anywhere eco-friendlier than the Marari Beach Resort. Village fishermen haul in their sustainable catch daily. Spinach and mangoes are handpicked from the organic garden. Only natural oils and local remedies are used for pest control. Groundwater quality is carefully monitored. Earthworms break down kitchen waste into compost, and a “biodigester” uses bacteria to biodegrade the rest of it. Whatever waste can be recycled is reused locally: paper is taken off for local shopkeepers to make bags; plastic is melted down and mixed with bitumen to resurface the roads. The Dominics stumbled upon Marari Beach in 1997. The local economy was in tatters and there was a clear opportunity to create employment and breathe a bit of life into the community. Today most of the

resort’s 150 staff is local. “Because they come from the area it makes them feel like they are welcoming [hotel guests] into their own home,” Michael says. “The warmth is not artificial and that’s why it’s so important to have local people employed on site.” And he’s right. There’s a tangible warmth from the staff and an unmistakably fierce sense of pride. Each of the 60 cottages on the 12-hectare resort is designed to resemble a thatched fishing hut, but unlike the actual huts in the nearby village, a white concrete ceiling keeps out the rain and bugs. The rooms themselves are large and cool, accented with fresh red hibiscus. Bathrooms are open to the sky and filled with sunshine. The pièce de résistance is a thumping power shower with pebbles underfoot and tiny bulbuls chirping in the rafters. Even the bath products – a natural loofah made from soft bark, bars of sweet-basil soap – are entirely homemade. Ayurvedic treatments, specific to Kerala, are a must at Marari. Hundreds of herbs and spices are used to detox, rejuvenate or just relax you. And you won’t find many therapists as capable of kneading out knots and smoothing out tired muscles as they are here. Cuisine in luxury Indian hotels often leans towards a disappointing array of pastas, roast chicken and ratatouille, indulgences favoured by many wealthy Indians. Fortunately, local cuisine takes precedence at Marari. The main restaurant is named Chakara,

I ’ve never been anywhere eco-friendlier than the Marari Beach Resort.

a Keralan term that describes the jubilance of local ﬁshermen after they’ve brought in a good catch. Then there’s the new outdoor restaurant that sends guests out to the organic garden to forage for their supper with Jishu and Nithin, the restaurant’s two chefs. Depending on the menu, you might end up snipping mint and curry leaves, collecting red chillies, hacking down gourd and papaya, or lugging giant aubergines. A Portuguese couple in matching shirts and linen trousers chose to spend their last night enjoying steamed mackerel wrapped in mint and palm leaves, papaya soup, and green beans in coconut and mustard. At the end of the meal, Jishu and Nithin haul out a large book with suggestions for the restaurant’s name: “Roots and Shoots,” “Garden of Eden” and “Spice Garden” are bandied about, although rumour has it they’ve settled on “Farm Kitchen” – a succinct and simple name that nicely sums up this cosy spot. www.cghearth.com ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

203

ECOTOURISM

Happy Trails

— ALEXANDER KOLYA MAKSIK enjoys the serenity of a low-impact ski run. Photography ALEXANDER KOLYA MAKSIK

I grew up racing here in Sun Valley, Idaho, and since leaving I’ve skied in Italy, France, Austria and Switzerland. In all of those places I’ve been carried into the mountains by lifts, trains, gondolas, moving sidewalks and T-bars, but today I’m 2,000 metres up in the Sawtooth Wilderness, in a sea of fresh snow with no way up but to climb, nowhere to eat but from our packs. We’ve left our car on the side of the road half way up this mountain pass. I’m following Erik Leidecker, my old friend and mountain guide, through the trees. I’ve been skiing with Erik since I was 14 years old but never like this – with avalanche beacons strapped to our chests and without lifts. We’re on alpine touring skis cutting fresh switchbacks through the snow. Eventually we emerge from the shade of the forest and into the sunshine and soon we’re skinning up the long steep spine of a treeless ridge. Except for our breathing and the sound of our skis moving through the fresh snow, it is silent. Erik spends his life up here, but I’m a tourist – my legs are tired and my lungs burn. At the summit, 204

STRATOSPHERE

2,700 metres above sea level, we stop to rest and look far out across the valley to Bald Mountain and the lifts cranking away. We zip up our jackets, lock down our bindings and push off to cut gentle turns between trees and through wide-open meadows. It is an ecstasy – because of the fresh powder, because of the solitude, the silence and the extraordinary beauty of the place, but just as much because of the work we put in, the purity of the experience and all the possibilities these few hours suggest. There are ridgelines everywhere, untracked faces in all directions. I can’t imagine ever riding a ski lift again. I want to keep hiking, keep sailing down these deserted mountains. The 3,300-metre Galena peak, with its wide face the shape of a perfect gingko leaf, is lit up in the afternoon light. I ask Erik if it’s skiable. Come back in the spring, he says. We’ll do it then. I look up at the mountain and imagine the two of us hiking along the high ridge. I can see us, far from lift or lodge, arcing across that broad face. I draw our line into the narrowing valley; we’re vanishing into the low trees. From the bottom, we’re looking up at our tracks, at those iconic parallel curves cutting through the otherwise untouched snow. It is all we leave behind.

Since 2001, Swiss-based not-for-proﬁt organisation ACT Responsible (Advertising Community Together), has been collecting global advertising that ’promotes responsible communication on sustainability, equitable development and social responsibility’ in a bid to highlight how the creativity of advertising professionals can be used to address the world’s problems.

Treebike. Live Green Toronto. Agency59, Canada

FOOD

Slow and Steady in Umbria

— People in this corner of Italy have been eating slowly, locally and deliciously for centuries. ALEXANDER LOBRANO hunts black trufﬂes and comes close to making the perfect fettucine. Photography COURTESY OF PURPLE TRUFFLE

The woolly grey fog dissolved and the Umbria countryside became an autumn tapestry of bronze, gold, rust and wine. The air smelled of leaf mould and apples, with occasional delicious draughts of baking bread. Staring down into the rolling valley from my room at Borgo di Carpiano, it was impossible to know what century it was; nothing modern marred the view. Time had, in fact, pretty much stopped since James and I had arrived two days before at this charming country-house hotel. James, a divorced, food-mad banker living in London, had been having misgivings about his career in the City. He had decided to take a break in Italy and invited me to join him – on the condition that I plan the whole trip.

206

STRATOSPHERE

All James had said he wanted was great food, preferably “slow food,” and unspoiled countryside (“and, oh, maybe something to do with truffles”). The rest was up to me, so I canvassed a few friends in Italy. Unanimously, they suggested Umbria. “The Slow Food movement may be based in Piedmont, but for me, Umbria is just about the slowest part of Italy,” my friend Enrica Rocca, who runs cooking schools in London and Venice, told me. “And if you go during the autumn you can go truffle hunting, since these days more truffles come from Umbria than from any other part of Italy.” A quick aside here about Slow Food, one of the world’s most influential organizations dedicated to promoting and protecting both gastronomic diversity and organic farming. It was started in 1989 by Italian food writer Carlo Petrini with the motto: “Good, Clean, and Fair.” Today, Slow Food, headquartered in the small Italian town of Bra, counts some 100,000 members, chapters in 132 countries, and the term “slow food” has become shorthand for traditionally produced and prepared foods and cooking.

So, after consulting with Bonnie Fuller, founder of a new Paris-based bespoke travel company called Purple Trufﬂe, we found ourselves on a pear-grey November morning, sitting by the crackling ﬁre in the Borgo di Carpiano’s dining room, drinking cappuccino and eating freshly baked rolls with delicious homemade organic apricot jam. It was a luxury, too, to be a little lazy after a perfect visit to Perugia the day before. Following the advice of Marilisa Parisi, our innkeeper, we had eaten a superb lunch at Trattoria del Borgo,

run by Emilio Cassioli, an expert norcino, or pork butcher. We’d started with homemade salami, coppa del norcino and torta al testo (head cheese), before superb papardelle with wild boar sauce and a stunningly succulent suckling pig roasted with rosemary, wild fennel and garlic. “That may well have been the best meal I’ve eaten in 10 years,” said James as we idled over a grappa at the end of lunch. Doped with pleasure and keen on a nap, all I could do was nod dumbly. After only two days in Umbria, both of us were amazed by how good the food was, and when I asked people why the region is so gastronomically gifted, they always gave me the same answers. “Much of what happened during the 20th century was a terrible mistake,” said the waiter at Trattoria del Borgo, a friendly man with snow-white hair and bright-blue eyes. “After World War II a plague of ugliness was unleashed everywhere, and big chemical and food companies tried to industrialize our food, often with terrible results. But here in Umbria, we said no. We love this ground because it nourishes us. There’s no reason to do anything differently, since good food takes time to grow and time to cook.”

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

“Venite, ragazzi!” said Marilisa, “time to go hunting.” Forty minutes later, James, Marilisa and I were following Asia, a frisky Italian pointer, through a muddy grove of hazelnut trees just outside the town of Città di Castello. Catching occasional glimpses of the medieval landscape of Umbria through the trees, I felt like I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else in the world. And then everything got even better. Asia barked and started clawing at the wet ground until Silvio Salverio, our designated tartufaio (truffle hunter), came rushing up to call her off with a slice of sausage and take over with a garden trowel. Working slowly, he unearthed the first of a dozen or so truffles we found on

207

208

STRATOSPHERE

FOOD

I didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world. And then everything got even better.

our morning hunt. A while later, I finally got to taste one of these precious gizzards of the ground when we visited Tartuffi Bianconi, a small, family-run truffle purveyor six kilometres from the truffle grounds. Here we wandered through a fascinating little truffle-themed museum, and then joined the charming Bianconi family in their kitchen for the most delicious sandwiches I’ve ever eaten – open-hearth-toasted country bread brushed with olive oil and sea salt and topped with fine slices of fresh black truffle. “Umbria, and specifically the Upper Tiber river valley, has the perfect climate for truffles,” Gabriella Bianconi explained to us. “Truffles want both sun and rain during the summer, and the best truffle grounds are hazelnut and oak plantations that are between 25 and 30 years old. There are basically 14 different varieties of truffle growing in Italy, but the best are the black Tuber melanosporum and white Tuber magnatum and Tuber borchi,” she added. And how could such a great day get better? With a spectacularly good lunch at L’Antica Osteria in nearby Montone: toast with lardo and a spread of potato and Savoy cabbage; amazingly good salume from Norcia, the Umbrian town renowned in Italy for its charcuterie; and roast wild boar, all washed down with a ruddy Umbrian red, and then a visit to painter Dante Sambuchi’s farm to sample his freshly made olive oil and new wines. The following day James and I moved on to the spectacular Palazzo Terranova, a luxurious countryhouse hotel on a hillside near Ronti. After several days of truffle-hunting and truffle-sampling and an excellent dinner on our first night, both of us were looking forward to a hands-on cooking lesson with Antonio Petruzzi, the Palazzo’s enthusiastic chef. “Umbria is kissed by God,” Petruzzi announced as James and I fitted ourselves with chic striped aprons. After six days of discovering this confidential corner of Italy, neither of us doubted him. “OK, so in Umbrian cooking, if the truffle is the king, our olive oil is the queen, and the real goodness of our gastronomic empire comes from our pork. I think you know now that Norcia makes the best salume in the world,” Petruzzi told us.

“But just in case, try this,” he said, cutting a few thin slices of salami flecked with something black that didn’t look like pepper. It was salami with black truffles, and the meeting of savoury pork fat and truffle was spectacular. “It’s good, yes?” Petruzzi asked, preparing, to my relief, a few more slices. “OK, now we cook, but first, what do you do in life?” On hearing that James was a banker and I was a food writer, Petruzzi shook his head and grinned. “Okay guys, I’m going to make you do some real work,” he said. Firstly he shared his outlook on good food with admirable vehemence. “I hate the homogenization of food, the idea that in so many rich countries all anyone wants to eat is fillet steak and chicken breasts. It’s wasteful and ridiculous. A really good cook uses everything that comes into the kitchen, and the best inspiration for good food may well be poverty.” And then, with nothing more than two organic eggs, 200 grams of light wheat flour, a little salt and a little olive oil, he demonstrated how it easy it is to make fresh fettucine. Or easy for him, anyway. Neither James nor I seemed to have the requisite touch, and after each mediocre attempt, Petruzzi would insist we start anew. Then, on a fourth try, both of us seemed to get it. Petruzzi fingered our respective pastas and pronounced them worthy of the truffle shavings that were to be their ultimate garnish. “Maybe I’ve been a little hard on you,” he said, “but I want you to go away knowing you can make something simple and delicious, too.” His words weren’t wasted on James. Back in London a few weeks later James gave notice at his bank and made plans to return to Italy for professional cooking lessons. www.borgodicarpiano.com; www.enricarocca.com; www.tartufibianconi.it; www.palazzoterranova.com; www.purpletruffle.com; TRATTORIA DEL BORGO, Via della Sposa 23A, Perugia, Tel. +39 075 5720390. L’ANTICA OSTERIA, Piazza Fortebraccio 5/6, Montone, Tel. +39 075 9306271. L’AZIENDA AGRICOLA DANTE SAMBUCHI, Localita Le Pietraie 15, Francione Ronti, Città di Castello, Tel. +39 075 8574458 ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

209

RELUCTANT ECO-WARRIOR

Bike to Where You Once Belonged — STEPHANIE THEOBALD contemplates the spectre of 6,000 Londoners cycling through a veil of Nietzschean illusion. Illustration FINN MASON

I arrive at the offices of Transport for London hoping I don’t bump into anyone I know. I’ve been asked to test drive the new bicycle that will form part of a 6,000-strong fleet in Mayor Boris Johnson’s free (for the first half-hour) bike scheme that starts this summer and, frankly, I’m anticipating Miss Marple. When I ride my own nifty Marin Hybrid through the lairy streets of London, I like to channel Steve McQueen in The Great Escape (think Chinos, leather jacket, Nazis behind and barbed wire ahead), yet the bike from the Paris hire scheme (which inspired the London one) has a very “sit-up-and beg” style and a bit of a “Hello birds! Hello trees!” vibe. Thankfully, when TFL’s Terry greets me, wheeling in the new hire bike, it’s not as bad as I’d feared. The designer, a 68-year-old French Canadian called Michel Dallaire, was keen that his bike should look “more contemporary” than the “retro” beige ones used in Paris’s massively successful Vélib’ scheme. The London bike is a deep blue and lighter in weight than its French equivalent. It’s still Miss Marple, but she seems to have been working on her yoga and Pilates. The London scheme is based on Dallaire’s Bixi model in Montreal, and will start up in Boston simultaneously with London late this summer. Dallaire, who has beatnik-style facial hair and who bears more than a passing resemblance to Papa Smurf, recently told a Montreal newspaper that one of his favourite Nietzsche quotes is, “Knowledge kills action. To act, one must be enveloped in a veil of illusion.” This is probably a good motto when you’re thinking of inviting a bunch of people, many with little or no knowledge of cycling, to cruise round a city whose traffic system, unlike those in Paris, Barcelona or Berlin (all cities with hire-bike schemes), is more like Delhi on a good day. Add to this the fact that Boris Johnson is predicting “44,000 more cycle journeys per day in London,” and it suggests that the capital’s soon going to resemble Delhi on a bad day. London’s mayor, obviously no stranger to Nietzschean illusions, is an avid cyclist 2 10

STRATOSPHERE

himself (spookily enough, Boris has the same bike as I do – only the £100-more-expensive version: the Marin Fairfax), and he has admitted, when he first talked about the £140 million bike-borrow scheme, that, “I lack some safety gene.” So good on him. None of your Nanny State there. I nearly forgot to mention I’m wearing, under my jeans, a pair of French cycling shorts that claim to help you lose weight. (Slogan: “Les vêtements qui vous veulent du bien”). Aside from the carbon-friendly aspect, there has been a big emphasis from City Hall on how Boris’s bike scheme is going to make us all fitter, and a lot of companies have been keen to buy into the excitement. “Maybe you could go down the natural ingredient route?” suggests Gilly, the PR for my Lytess shorts, adding helpfully that they contain “Shea Butter? Which has been extracted from the seed of the African Shea Tree? By crushing and boiling?” She also mentions my shorts contain caffeine, but we’re not sure where that fits on the eco scale. Basically, the idea is that the “stimulating and slimming microcapsules” from the cycling shorts pump into your legs as you move. So, given the strange tingly feeling coming from under my jeans, I’m feeling pretty positive about Michel Dallaire’s turbo-charged old lady as I cycle her past Buckingham Palace and peddle down the wide, breezy Mall. It’s when I get to Picadilly that I’m reminded that London is not a big boulevard city like Paris or Barcelona, but a city of illogically placed narrow roads clogged up with mad buses and evil white-van drivers. If it wasn’t for the gentlemanly behaviour of cabbies, London’s traffic culture would descend into complete chaos. There’s no chance of weaving gracefully past the traffic jams on this bike because it’s too chunky and heavy. The veil of illusion lifts and I suddenly have a horrible vision: come summer, 6,000 of these Super Miss Marples clogging up the roads for regular cyclists like me. When I stop at the lights, an office worker tells me that the bike looks cool. “I can see that some people would go for it,” he says, drawing on his cigarette. “Promotes health, and that…” “Fancy a go?” I ask. His eyes bulge. “Oh no! Not for me.” He takes another puff and adds, “but I can see that some people would

Under my jeans I ’m wearing French cycling shorts that claim to help you lose weight.

like it a lot.” I ask a matronly woman in glasses and a smart coat if she could see herself hiring a bike out come summertime. “No, I can’t!” she booms. “I had a terrible accident on a bicycle and now I walk on

these!” She points brusquely to a pair of shiny black pumps with peeling soles. A couple of young girls on Bond Street are more positive. “I’d have a go,” one says. “Yeah,” her friend adds, “and we always carry ﬂats with us in our bags so heels wouldn’t be a problem.” When I later go back to deliver the bike, Terry at Transport for London headquarters is eating a hamburger. I consider telling him about my magic cycling shorts. After all, you don’t actually need to do any cycling in them. Knowing lazy Londoners, maybe Boris would be better investing his £140 million in shea butter and caffeine clothing. That way everybody would lose weight and nobody need ever get run over. ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

2 11

2 12

STRATOSPHERE

BEAUTY

Terms and Conditioners

— Still scratching your head over that shampoo label? ANTONIA WHYATT offers some ﬁne print to help you sort the good from the bad and the ugly.

FAIR TRADE n. s

So many beauty products depend on ingredients from the developing world. If you see this stamp it means the shea butter or argan oil comes from a sustainable development and proceeds directly beneﬁt producers, workers and their communities. * (ASTERISK) n. s

Stars after the name of an oil means it is a known allergen. Illustration FRÉDÉRIC MAZZOLA

ORGANIC & NATURAL CERTIFICATIONS BDIH A s

WHOLE PLANT n. s

Just like the concept of “whole foods” (eating the fruit or vegetable in its entirety without altering it by cooking or peeling), some people believe that a plant’s potency and active components are increased if the plant is kept in its whole form.

A not-for-profit French label for natural and organic skincare products. Allows flower water to be counted as organic for more than the extracted plant amount. In other words, companies can boost their organic percentages by using flower water as a filler material. But, hey, flower water never hurt anyone.

WILD-CRAFTED adj. s

ECOCERT. s

HOTLY DEBATED

Originally created for the certiﬁcation of organic agriculture in France, has now been expanded to other consumer products. Also allows ﬂower water to be counted as organic. NATRUE s

This is the latest, greatest labelling system in Europe, created by a trade group of natural-cosmetics manufacturers. It divides cosmetic products into three categories, a realistic and helpful approach that allows for the fact that not all cosmetics (shampoos, for instance) can be 100-percent natural or organic. NaTrue allows natural or nature-identical preservatives. NaTrue* (with one star) guarantees that the products are authentically natural, stipulates which ingredients are permitted and how they may be processed. NaTrue** (two stars) denotes natural cosmetics containing ingredients of organic origin. At least 70 percent of the natural ingredients must stem from organic production or controlled wild collection. NaTrue*** (three stars) stipulates that at least 95 percent of ingredients must come from organic production or wild collection. NASAA s

The National Association for Sustainable Agriculture, Australia, has stringent standards for cosmetic products. A product can be labelled “organic” only if 95 percent of its constituents are certified organic – and water is not included. NASAA encourages processing to be minimal and claims to be accurate. Manufacturers unable to meet such high standards can label their products as “made with organic ingredients” if 70 percent is certiﬁed as organic. Such products, however, cannot use the NASAA label. SOIL ASSOCIATION s

Founded in the UK by Lady Eve Balfour to ensure soil is pesticide-free and crops are rotated and organic; has now been expanded to include cosmetics. USDA ORGANIC s

Set up as a certiﬁcation system for organic food by the US Department of Agriculture, this is now being used for some cosmetic ingredients. Partly allows raw materials containing mineral oils, but doesn’t allow nature-identical preservatives.

COMMON TERMS BIODYNAMIC adj. s

An über-organic crop cultivated and harvested to the rhythm of the sun, moon and stars, the idea being that soil needs nurturing in order to produce vital plants. Biodynamic farmers believe that harvesting at the right time of day or the right point during the month ensures the plant’s maximum potency. COLD-PRESSED adj. s

Olive oil tastes better when it’s cold-pressed because no heat has interfered with its chemical structure. The same goes for cold-pressed face oils, which appear to be absorbed better by the skin.

A plant picked by hand in the wild so its natural potency isn’t altered by cultivation.

PARABENS n. s

Many companies see no problem with using parabens as a preservative, preferring safe products with a longer shelf life to ones that go off. “Parabens aren’t too nasty to start with,” says Colette Haydon, a scientist who worked on Jo Wood’s organic line, among many others. “The problem is that they’re found in food and in any liquid we don’t want to go off, from cleaning products to drugs from the chemist. So we’re over-exposed to parabens, which can lead to skin irritation – and perhaps even cancer.” The big C word is bandied about a lot when it comes to parabens, but so far no research has been conclusive. A 2004 study of breast tumours by Dr. Philippa Darbre, from the University of Reading in the UK, and published in the Journal of Applied Toxicology, found parabens in each of the studied 20 tumour samples. This led researchers to suspect that parabens, which mimic oestrogens when absorbed through the skin, may play a role in the development of breast cancer. They concluded, however, that more research is necessary. If you choose to steer clear of parabens anyway, the names to watch out for are methylparaben, butylparaben, isobutylparaben and propylparaben. MINERAL OIL n. s There’s a big question as to whether or not there are any cancercausing elements in this petroleum derivative. The one thing on which most people agree is that mineral oil tends to block the pores and stop skin from breathing. PHTHALATES n. s Industrial plasticizers commonly used in nail polish to make it flexible after it dries. Also used to enhance fragrances and soften skin. Studies indicate that phthalates cause a wide range of birth defects and lifelong reproductive impairments, and can have adverse effects on every part of the male reproductive system. They are being phased out of most children’s plastic products – from bottles to toys – as a result. The cosmetics industry is not required to list fragrance ingredients or “trade secret” ingredients on products, and phthalates often fall into one of those two categories. So here’s a little help in identifying them by their chemical names and abbreviations: DBP (dibutyl phthalate) and DEP (diethyl phthalate) are often found in personal-care products, including nail polishes, deodorants, perfumes and cologne, aftershave lotions, shampoos, hair gels and hand lotions, while BzBP (benzyl butyl phthalate) is used in some flooring, car products and personal-care products. “Fragrance” is used to denote a combination of compounds, possibly including phthalates, which are a subject of recent concern because of studies showing they can mimic certain hormones. Also, choose plastics with the recycling code 1, 2 or 5. Codes 3 and 7 are more likely to contain phthalates. SLS-FREE adj. s Sodium laureth sulphate (SLS) and sodium lauryl ether sulphate (SLES) are used to make shower gels and shampoos foam. There have been many rumours about their possible link to cancer, but despite numerous scientific studies no links have been made. The ingredients are also used as industrial cleaners and can dry out hair and irritate skin. ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

2 13

BEAUTY

Healthy ALTernatives

— CAROL ALT tells Antonia Whyatt how going raw makes you feel and look like new. Photography CHLOE CRESPI Photo Assistant KEVIN KERR Styling SOPHIE COLLE Hair MAX PINNEL Make-up GIANPAOLO CECILIATO

After talking to Carol Alt, it’s hard not to open the fridge and throw into the bin everything that has to be fried, boiled or grilled. Carol’s utter belief in the power of raw food is transporting, and no wonder. She credits it with saving her life after a physical breakdown at the peak of her modelling career. “I was on a shoot in the rainforest, and was the big name on the project, but just felt moody and tired,” she recalls. “I remember being bloated and hiding behind rocks because I was so embarrassed. I was worn out at 32, and that’s not old! I was taking pills for everything from stomach acid to headaches. I arrived back in LA feeling miserable and thinking my career was over.” Carol found herself praying for a miracle, when a friend introduced her to a naturopathic doctor. His ﬁrst question wasn’t, “What’s wrong?” but, “What do you eat?” “I expounded to him on all of my food theories,” Carol says, “thinking I was teaching him. You know, things like, ‘I have tomato with pasta because models have to stay thin, and it’s not a cream sauce.’ The doctor listened and then listed my top-six health problems, in order!” He started telling Carol what she should be eating and why, then told her to try it for the weekend and meet him the following Monday. Carol ate only raw vegetables, avocado, cold-pressed olive oil and fruit. She immediately felt less tired and, for the ﬁrst time since she started modelling, she wasn’t hungry. Based on this evidence, the usually sceptical, always strongly opinionated Carol Alt decided to give the nutritionist and his ideas a chance. Fast forward 17 years and Carol has utterly embraced the raw lifestyle. The physical evidence speaks for itself; she is the hottest 50-year-old on the block. The killer bone structure and long limbs obviously help, but she insists that it’s to do with raw. “Cooking food alters its molecular structure and doesn’t give your body the fuel it needs,” she says. “Just think about it. If you heat water it goes from liquid to gas, paper turns to ash. Food is no exception. Olive oil 2 14

STRATOSPHERE

is full of essential fatty acids; fry an egg in it and the heat makes molecules move so fast they bang against each other, and hydrogen ﬂies off into the air. Now you’ve got a trans-hydrogenated fatty acid, and we all know how bad that is for us.” It’s a view of food backed up by leading UK nutritionist Vicki Edgson. “I really advocate eating raw,” she says. “You get the whole food, complete with the enzymes, proteins and essential fatty acids that your body requires. It is hard to follow, so I tell my clients to do it 40 percent in winter and 75 percent in summer.” Carol has now applied the theory to her line of raw skincare products, Raw Essentials. “I started making my own creams to avoid all the chemicals and cooked ingredients in conventional moisturisers. My girlfriends would come over and they’d want it – all of a sudden I saw there was room for a line of completely raw and affordable skincare.” She spent years researching a way to preserve the products without using chemicals. “We can now emulsify using a cold-process, which everyone told me was impossible to do, and give products a two-year shelf life without chemical preservatives.” A massive achievement, but is it worth it? Imelda Burke, owner of Being Content, London’s premium organic-skincare shop and spa thinks so. “What you notice with cold-pressed oils is that they sink into the skin immediately, there’s no oil slick left behind,” she says. “My clients who use raw, cold-pressed oils never return to conventional skincare, the results aren’t the same.”

A well-known actress started using Carol Alt’s Raw Night Cream and was amazed to see how it helped her skin. “She demanded to know how it did that and wanted to buy the entire line,” Carol says. “It’s so obvious to me: my Night Cream is packed with cold-pressed oils full of collagen-building essential fatty acids.”

‘Cooking food doesn’t give your body the fuel it needs.’

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

2 15

CAROL ALT’S GUIDE TO RAW LIVING 1. EAT RAW

4. AVOID PLASTIC-BOTTLED WATER

The unofﬁcial rule is that a raw diet should contain at least 75 percent of food not heated above 47°C. Go raw and you’ll be eating organic unprocessed foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, grains, legumes, and dried fruit. But, as Carol says, “You’d be surprised how much raw food is around: seared tuna [sustainably caught, course], carpaccio, tartare, they all count! It doesn’t have to be boring.”

“Plastic bottles,” she says, “contaminate water with xenoestrogens.” These are man-made chemicals that mimic the female hormone oestrogen and are caused by bisphenol A (BPA) leaching out of the plastic and into the water. BPAs are particularly harmful to children and expectant mothers, can interfere with the development of the male reproductive system, and can raise the risk of breast cancer in women. To avoid that, Carol always carries a small glass bottle with her own water in it.

2. SAY NO TO PASTEURIZATION Carol believes that while pasteurization kills “bad” bacteria in food, it also zaps the good bacteria that are essential to our digestive system. So avoid pasteurized milk and dairy products, and fruit juices.

5. GET A WATER DISTILLER These mimic nature by evaporating and distilling water into pure droplets of H20, eliminating in the process all types of bacteria, heavy metals, radon, inorganic materials and other contaminants.

3. ALKALIZE YOUR BODY The body is acid by nature, alkaline by necessity. We produce only acid, not alkali, and depend on food to keep our pH in balance. Acidic blood doesn’t carry oxygen properly and extreme acidity can give rise to inﬂammatory diseases. Carol uses green powders to alkalize her body and says US chain Whole Foods has an impressive selection.

2 16

STRATOSPHERE

6. PURIFY THE AIR THAT YOU BREATHE Carol now lives in New York, but that doesn’t stop her breathing clean air most of the time: “I run ozone machines in my house and have air puriﬁers in my ofﬁce, even a mini-one in my car.”

Knit sweater LUTZ PATMOS Jeans CAROL’S OWN

7. THE OUTSIDE COUNTS If you’re embracing the raw lifestyle, then your skin care should match. Treat your skin with raw. “Avoid products containing petroleum, sulphates, detergents, synthetic preservatives like parabens, artiﬁcial colours and fragrances,” says Carol. “Breast-cancer tumours carry the same biostamp as parabens.”

BROOKLYN BOTANICAL GARDENS, NY (Steinhardt Conservatory)

9. YOU DON’T HAVE TO GIVE UP THE BEAUTY TREATMENTS You don’t need a chemical peel to get rid of built-up dead skin cells and sun damage. Carol treats herself to micro-dermabrasion a couple of times a year and jokes, “It polishes away all my sins!”

10. RAW DOESN’T MEAN VEGAN 8. YOU DON’T HAVE TO GIVE UP COMFORT FOOD Yes, that’s right! Take some strawberries and raw agave syrup and throw both in the blender. Buy some bread made with sprouted whole grains and no yeast, then spread raw almond butter on your bread followed by the strawberries, and you’re good to go – Carol says it’s anti-cancer and full of nutrients. Or try Carol’s raw macaroni cheese: “Cook some spelt, kamult or rice pasta, anything but wheat, which is a hybrid. After it’s drained and sitting in the pot, mix in raw grated Parmesan and Emmental, the cheese will melt but not cook, add spices, organic evaporated salt and you’ve got your comfort food, but healthier.”

Find the balance that works best for you, some of us need the protein from meat and ﬁsh. “The whole thing is about health and what’s right for each and every individual body,” says Carol.

***

www.rawessentials.com

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

2 17

BUSINESS

Luxury Good

—BARBARA COIGNET, founder of the 1.1618 trade fair and art exhibition, explains why luxury doesn’t have to cost the earth. Text TOM RIDGWAY

Watch the shoppers leaving boutiques on Paris’s Avenue Montaigne, their new handbags nestling snugly in oversized shopping bags, and you’d be tempted to conclude that “sustainable luxury” is not only oxymoronic, it’s plain moronic. But Barbara Coignet is someone who sees the good in luxury goods. “Luxury and sustainable development,” Coignet explains, “are inseparable. They have exactly the same roots because, before luxury became about big companies and marketing, it was about heritage, savoir-faire, a human touch, and time.” Add “creativity and innovation” to the list and you have Coignet’s wishlist for objects featured in 1.618, the “sustainable luxury” fair taking place in Paris’s Palais de Tokyo art museum in May. 1.618 (the name refers to the golden ratio, evoking proportional perfection) is an idea that stems from Coignet’s travels and her visits to European hotels that have been putting sustainability into practice. “Sustainable development used to mean ecology, and ecology for many people was holidays in old caravans and Peruvian woolly hats. So I thought that it was important to show that saving our planet can also include the beautiful, the creative and innovative.” The result was a ﬁrst show last year that included products and companies that had integrated ideas of sustainability and an awareness that consumerism 2 18

STRATOSPHERE

doesn’t have to be destructive. “The idea is to combine more established companies that have changed the way they do business with younger companies that have been created around the values of sustainable development,” she says. To ensure that each product or company featured is actually true to its stated ideas, Coignet has gathered together a jury of 10 professionals in different ﬁelds who carry out audits. “It’s about each company’s process,” she says, “how it works, where it’s based, how it treats its employees, and so on. The selection process is not about ‘greenwashing,’ but rather a holistic approach: before the product, the product, and its end-life.” This often means, however, that, just like classic luxury items, the products featured are often prohibitively expensive. (This led some to label last year’s show, Coignet says, as “a show for the rich.”) For Coignet, however, this is sadly an inevitable consequence of the current market. “The products are made in small quantities so they’re rare and expensive,” she says. “There just isn’t an industrial answer for everything.” Barbara Coignet believes 1.618 should also be about showcasing products that set an example for the wider market. “Last year we had all these young companies and innovative people, and the big multinationals came along to discover these talents who had already integrated the values of tomorrow. Our plan is to be positive and remove people’s guilt about luxury. We’re trying to say, ‘Yes, it’s possible, we’re going to ﬁnd a solution and today we know how to do it.’” 1.618 is at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, May 6-10, 2010; www.1618-paris.com

ABOVE SOLUTIONS

Thirst Amendment

—Water, water everywhere and lots and lots to drink – but ﬁrst you may want to ﬁlter it. Text WILLIAM COMPSON

Summer is on its way – at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere – which means sun, fun and staying hydrated. Avoiding sugary sodas instead of water is easy, but there are a few problems with those little bottles of H20. All that plastic is made from oil – 178 million litres of it a year for the US market’s plastic bottles alone, according to one NGO – and the bottles mostly end up clogging landfills or floating out to sea. Then there’s the simple fact that in most industrialized countries, tap water is not only safe to drink but quite possibly cleaner than bottled water. So safe, in fact, that it’s used by bottled-water companies: both Pepsi’s Aquafina and Coca-Cola’s Dasani are simply purified tap water. Then there’s price: bottled water is about 1,000 times more expensive than tap water. So what can you do if you want to quit the bottle and save some cash, but are still unsure about your tap water? You could begin by getting a filter jug, like those produced by Brita or Pur, or if you don’t want to have to keep refilling it, you could fit a system that delivers filtered water straight out of the tap. There are plenty of these around, but we like Triflow ’s range. It looks great and its taps come equipped with a ceramic and charcoal filter unit that gets rid of any contaminants, such as chlorine, bacteria, pesticides and heavy metals that might have sneaked their way into your water. (Lead, for example, can get into tap

water when it arrives in your home in old pipes.) The Triflow system means that, despite water coming from the same tap, your filtered drinking water is never “contaminated” by untreated water. Triflow taps also come supplied with a sturdy Triflask beaker so you can take your filtered water to go, but if you run out then there are alternatives: portable water filters can do the job quickly and efficiently. Before buying one, however, check that the bottle itself is free of bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical contained in many plastics that’s believed to disrupt hormones in the body and has been linked to heart disease and diabetes. The simplest way to do that is get a metal bottle (which has the added advantage of lasting for far longer). The Ecousable Echo2 bottle, for example, has a pleasingly simple design, is made from recyclable stainless steel and has a lid-mounted filter that makes virtually any water (except seawater) instantly drinkable. And even if you’re really stuck, then there’s one other, even simpler, method for treating water you don’t trust: SODIS or solar water disinfection. Simply take a clear bottle – preferably glass to avoid any chance of BPA leaching – fill it two-thirds full with water and leave in the sun for at least six hours. The sun’s UV-A rays and heat’s pasteurizing effect will kill up to 99.9 percent of the microorganisms that cause common intestinal diseases. Drink up! www.brita.net www.purwater.com www.triflowconcepts.com www.ecousable.com www.sodis.ch ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

2 19

ART ON VIEW

Quarterly Guide to Green Art

— ISABEL ANDREWS picks some not-tobe missed architecture, design and art for the coming months. Djenné: African City of Mud Djenné, an island town in

Mali’s Inland Niger Delta, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to the world’s best examples of traditional sustainable mud buildings. An exhibition and a series of talks at RIBA, the Ismaili Centre, and the School of Oriental and African Studies celebrate this architectural heritage. Until April 29, Royal Institute of British Architects, London; www.riba.org Rethink – Contemporary Art & Climate Change In the wake of COP15, 26 installations by Nordic artists – among them Tomas Saraceno, Superﬂex and Olafur Eliasson – all working at the intersection of art, culture and climate change offer personal perspectives on environmental catastrophe. From May 15-June 13, Taidehalli, Helsinki; www.taidehalli.ﬁ 220

STRATOSPHERE

Water: H2O = Life Water is an opportunity to immerse yourself in the challenges posed by the sustainable management of the planet’s most precious natural resource. With half of the Earth’s freshwater found in only six countries, the show explores how water has been used throughout history and reveals the innovative technologies being used to keep it flowing. Until May 16, National Museum of Australia, Canberra; www.nma.gov.au David Nash “I want a life and work that reflect the balance and continuity of nature,” says celebrated land artist David Nash. See how he’s doing so far at a Yorkshire Sculpture Park retrospective celebrating his 40-year career. Nash’s renowned installations include Ash Dome, an enchanting circle of trees planted by the artist in 1977, and Wooden Boulder, a sphere of 200-year-old oak he released into a Welsh stream in 1978 and that’s been buffeted by nature ever since. From May 29, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, UK; www.ysp.co.uk

Sustainable Futures – Can Design Save the World?

A selection of existing and future projects showing how design can help to deliver a more sustainable future. Proof – if it were needed – that ecologically minded design can make a difference. From March 31-September 5, Design Museum, London; www.designmuseum.org The Ecological City Düsseldorf’s environmental agency and city-planning department have teamed up to present photographs, models, statistics, archival records, and ﬁlm and sound recordings to answer the question, What is an ecological city? The show is accompanied by a series of debates and lectures. Until May 2, Stadtmuseum, Düsseldorf, Germany; www.duesseldorf.de Bespoke: The Handbuilt Bicycle A new exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, celebrates the ultimate in green transportation – the bicycle. It features the designs of six internationally renowned bicycle builders, and 21 handbuilt bicycles, parked where design, craft and art intersect. Sometimes, it seems, you can get to work on an artwork. From May 12-August 2010, Museum of Arts and Design, New York; www.madmuseum.org

Collect 2010 Organized by the UK’s Crafts Council, Collect 2010 showcases the work of some 300 established and emerging artists, many of whom have produced works on the theme of sustainability. Highlights include Rebecca Wilson’s Finest Paper-ware, a range of paper objects mimicking the neo-classical Wedgwood style and highlighting today’s throwaway culture, and Tithi Kutchamuch’s reincarnation of domestic rubbish by casting it in plaster and metal. From May 14-17, Saatchi Gallery, London; www.craftscouncil.org.uk

1.TUE GREENFORT Der er ikke en frø, ikke en fugl, ikke en ﬁsk..., 2009 Photo: Anders Sune Berg, Kunsthallen Nikolaj 2. RURI Glass Rain, 1984 Photo: Anders Sune Berg, Kunsthallen Nikolaj 3. ERIC ANDERSEN Solplænen, 1982 Photo: Anders Sune Berg Kunsthallen Nikolaj 4. Roofscape of the Djenné Mosque Photo: ©Trevor Marchand 5. OLAFUR ELIASSON Your Watercolour Machine, 2009 Photo: Anders Sune Berg, Statens Museum for Kunst 6. THILO FRANK Vertical Skip, 2009 Photo: Anders Sune Berg, Den Frie Udstillingsbygning

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

221

STYLE

Commuun Cause

— Leather-like rubber and recycled paper translate into fashion for the future. Text TINA ISAAC

Launched in 2005, Paris-based label Commuun is already sold in some of the world’s most inﬂuential fashion boutiques, from L’Éclaireur in Paris to London’s Dover Street Market. Of late, the company’s 30-something founders, Kaito Hori and Iku Furudate, have been attracting attention not only for being cool design-wise, but also for their eco-minded philosophy. “From the beginning, we decided that we would place a priority on high-quality organic and natural ﬁbres,” explains Hori. “What’s out there on the market is not so great, though, so we’ve been working a lot with producers to develop fabrics for the luxury 222

STRATOSPHERE

market.” Commuun recently incorporated Japanesemade organic jersey into its collections, for example, and its decision to forgo leather led the designers to collaborate with Brazilian producers on leather-like rubber and latex sheet fabrics, the results of which will be unveiled for Spring 2011. Accessories, meanwhile, are made by recyling traditional washi paper. Commuun blends nature-inspired designs with strong shapes, ﬁne detailing and traditional French cutting techniques. Unlike most fashion houses these days, the designers are reluctant to push their environmentally friendly approach, though. “It’s not such a special thing in the end,” says Hori, “because everyone should be considering it. We don’t brand ourselves as ‘eco’ – what’s important [to us] is the design, making beautiful garments. All this eco-consciousness can only live through good design.”

STYLE

Fast And Friendly

— H&M is out to prove that fast fashion can be sustainable, too. Text TINA ISAAC

If you consider fast fashion to be synonymous with wasteful ways, or eco-conscious dressing as a pursuit for the high-minded but well-heeled, H&M is out to change your mind. This spring the Swedish retail giant unveils the Garden Collection, its ﬁrst fully sustainable collection of clothes and accessories. Not only is the message on-trend, the timing is propitious: last winter boxes of unsold H&M merchandise were found slashed and dumped near the retailer’s New York ﬂagship in Herald Square, triggering a media tempest. (H&M has since announced that unsold products will no longer be wasted but donated to local charities in its markets).

The 80-piece capsule collection is not H&M’s first foray into sustainable fashion, however. In autumn 2008 the company began incorporating more environmentally friendly materials, such as recycled wool and polyester, into its collections. “We’re definitely taking a long-term perspective,” says Laura Maggs, who oversees CSR and Sustainability for H&M in the UK and Ireland. “We are looking at ways to run our entire business in a more sustainable way.” The Garden Collection has been wholly produced using sustainable and recycled materials such as polyster made from PET bottles or textile waste. That means pinafore and smock dresses and shorts in organic cotton and linen sourced from India, Indonesia, Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan and China, and a floral jumpsuit and anorak made of relatively eco-friendly Tencel, a regenerated cellulosic fibre. ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

223

A CUT ABOVE

Time For T

— LENY is raising awareness about global warming one limited-edition T-shirt at a time. When Mariel Gamboa walked out of Al Gore’s ﬁlm An Inconvenient Truth, she decided she had to do something to help the cause. So she got in touch with the Climate Project, Gore’s environmental charity, and pitched an idea: how about using fashion’s high proﬁle to raise awareness of environment issues? The result was a clothing label called LENY (or Limited Edition New York). Gamboa asks designers and celebrities to personalize limited-edition T-shirts, which are then sold in the world’s hippest boutiques, 2 24

STRATOSPHERE

with all net proceeds donated to the Climate Project. Since LENY’s creation in 2007, Gamboa has managed to round up the likes of Kate Moss, Eva Herzigova, Diane von Furstenberg and Stefano Pilati to design a T-shirt. (Even Richard Branson had a go.) This season sees efforts from model and actress Amber Valletta, fashion heiress Teresa Missoni, and celebrity hairdresser Odile Gilbert. www.leny-icons.com Top row, left to right: Linda Bialas – Chico Bialas – Amber Valletta Bottom row, left to right: Emmanuelle Alt – Teresa Missoni – Odile Gilbert

Let’s keep the waters clean. Romanian Waters National Administration. Spotlight, Romania

SECRET GARDEN

Downtown Idyll

HELENA CHRISTENSEN ﬁnds a green sanctuary in a New York City churchyard. Text STEPHEN O’SHEA PHOTOGRAPHY MARTIEN MULDER Styling APRIL HUGHES Make-up HUNG VANNGO Hair ANDRE GUNN

In a place as high-octane and high-decibel as the City That Never Chills, the West Village’s combination of sedate streetscapes and old-world townhouses fairly beckons as an oasis. But few non-Village people know there is an oasis within the oasis, just a couple of blocks in from the Hudson River near the early 19th-century Church of St Luke in the Fields. The fields, to be sure, are long gone, but the bucolic has been kept alive in an 800-square-metre warren of greenery maintained for the frazzled and footsore. Beloved by locals, St Luke’s Garden got its start in 1842 with a graft from the Glastonbur y T hor n, the holy English hawthorn tree at the heart of a mumbojumbo religious legend. Shrewd planting d e c i sion s e ve r si nce h ave m ad e S t Luke’s a Manhattan stopover for scores of migrator y bird species and dozens of colourful butterf ly swarms. Replete with berries and bushes, shaded byways and quiet courtyards, the place has been designed to attract beauty.

Dress BOUDICCA Sweater ZERO + MARIA CORNEJO Wrap URBAN ZEN Shoes ISABEL MARANT

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

And it has succeeded in ways its constant gardeners m ig ht not h ave foreseen, for the incandescently lovely Helena Christensen – photographer, model and activist – comes here often, to commune with her secret garden, but not to veg out in the vegetation. “There are three different places with a different feeling there,” Christensen tells me, back in her West Village f lat, an exquisite chaos of collectibles and cast-offs. “There’s a

2 31

‘They’ve got butterflies that are impossible to find anywhere farther north than Georgia.’

school beside the garden, a loud and vibrant place where you can tap into the energy and wisdom of the kids, and the church – all churches have this feeling of serenity – and then there’s the garden, which is nature.” Christensen’s infatuation with her urban fastness transcends the feel-good for the factual: “The garden is surrounded by walls and so, very interestingly, the temperature in there in the summertime is always a little higher than it is outside the walls. So they’re able to cultivate flowers you don’t see outside of the Southern states. And they’ve got butterf lies that are rare, impossible to find any where farther north than Georgia.”

232

STRATOSPHERE

Dress BOUDICCA Wrap URBAN ZEN Shoes ISABEL MARANT V

For once the greenhouse effect can be spoken of with affection, an irony not lost on a high-profile climate-change activist like Christensen. Last year this daughter of a Per uvian mother and a Danish father was tapped by Oxfam to do a photo reportage in the high Andes (really high, 4,500 metres) on the plight of indigenous families threatened by shrinking glaciation. Their alpaca herds graze on land fed by rivers fed by glacial run-off: no glaciers, no run-off; no runoff, no rivers; no rivers, no livestock; no livestock – no livelihood. If the situation is not reversed, these Quechua will be forced to descend to the cities, where a life of destitution awaits. Huge inter national at tention greeted Ch r istensen’s st un n i ng photographic essay, reminiscent of the late Gertrude Blom’s documentation of the Lacandon Maya of southern Mexico. Christensen’s children of the Andes – heartbreakingly unaware of the fate they may face – became poster children at last December’s climate conference in her native Copenhagen. On the summit’s opening day, in what she describes as “the most mind-blowing thing” that she’s ever done, Christensen addressed a crowd of more than 100,000 activists in the city centre. “The ocean of banners and colours and faces… there were people everywhere, filling up the side streets, on the bridges,” she recalls.

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

233

ABOVE & AROUND

Which endangered place would you like to visit before it’s too late?

MANOLO BLAHNIK

LIVIA AND COLIN FIRTH,

Actress

Shoe designer

Founder of Eco-Age and Actor, respectively

— Endangered place? How about LA? Only kidding! Although someone told me it was sinking.

— I would love to visit the North Pole on a comfy plane and drop food to polar bears.

— It has to be the Maldives! We’ve never been, and we admire so much President Mohamed Nasheed for all he’s trying to do to tackle climate change.

MARIACARLA BOSCONO

CHANEL IMAN

Model

STRATOSPHERE

— I’d love to go to the rainforest. That’s one of the most beautiful things.

Photo ELIN HÖRNFELDT

MEREDITH OSTROM

— I would probably be very fascinated by the underwater world. It’s so enormous and untouchable at the same time.

236

Photo STEFONIE KEENAN

Photo STEPHANIE THEOBALD

ABOVE puts the question to partygoers in Paris, London, Milan and Los Angeles.

ANNE-SOPHIE BONNISSEAU / ANDRE Communications Professional / Artist — The Amazonian rainforest

Photo LARRY BLANFORD

Photo ELIN HÖRNFELDT

Photo STEPHANIE THEOBALD

THANDIE NEWTON

VLADA ROSLYAKOVA

SUMMER RAYNE OAKES

Actress

Model

Model, Entomologist, Above Editor-at-Large

— I’d like to go back to Zimbabwe which is where my family are from.

— Antarctica. That is my dream because I have never seen the white white bear and this is an extreme trip.

Photo LARISSA GIERS

Photo ELIN HÖRNFELDT

Photo STEPHANIE THEOBALD

— Coral reefs off the Philippines.

ENNIO CAPASSA

KIM NOORDA

KATE WINSLET

Fashion Designer

Model

Actress

— I’ve travelled quite a lot but I’ve never been to the Amazon. Borneo is the other place I’d like to go some day. I think both those places will be something totally different for our daughters and sons.

— Coral reefs.

— When I’m feeling endangered I love to escape to New Zealand because it’s the most special, magical place I’ve ever been to.

ABOVE MAGAZINE

SPRING 2010

237

OVER & ABOVE

For the Dolphins This photograph was taken between Corsica and the southern coast of France, in a triangle of waters that has been a designated sanctuary for marine mammals since 1999. Every year between June and September, for as long as I can remember, large numbers of tuna would jump around boats in the area. Nowadays most of the tuna are gone – massive overfishing has seen to that – but dolphins are still there. I have seen them on nearly every one of my numerous trips between Cap Corse, Corsica’s northern tip, and the French mainland. So close to us in so many ways, dolphins love to follow boats, seeming to enjoy humans photographing them and trying to make contact with them. In other parts of the world, however, dolphins aren’t so fortunate. The Cove, the American documentary that just won an Academy Award, revealed the annual slaughter of dolphins in the Japanese town of Taiji. The town has reportedly suspended the hunt, but dolphins continue to be at risk from purse-seining in the Pacific Ocean, to name one major threat. As The Cove reminded us, the needless slaughter of these magnificent, loving creatures must be brought to an end.

– Nicolas Rachline Photography NICOLAS RACHLINE

Half Trees. Pasaules dabas fonds/WWF. Esplanade, Latvia Since 2001, Swiss-based not-for-proﬁt organisation ACT Responsible (Advertising Community Together), has been collecting global advertising that ’promotes responsible communication on sustainability, equitable development and social responsibility’ in a bid to highlight how the creativity of advertising professionals can be used to address the world’s problems.

BOOKS

Spring Reading List Text ANDREW WANLISS-ORLEBAR

What happens if it all goes wrong and we humans don’t make it is as a species? That’s Weisman’s starting point in this fascinating, imaginative exploration of a post-human biosphere, in which he details just how quickly New York’s towers would surrender to trees and carnivores would take over your morning commute. The World Without Us, Alan Weisman (Virgin Books) In a climate-change debate that thrives on approximations and misconceptions, MacKay is the antidote. He debunks one energy myth after another, making numbers and complexity accessible to all, without shedding optimism along the way. Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air, David JC MacKay (UIT) A few years on and C.K. Prahalad’s landmark call to action on poverty is no less resonant, showing how the opportunity-seeking force that is business has perhaps the biggest role to play in shifting people out of poverty. A compelling reminder of how the other half buys. The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Proﬁts, C.K. Prahalad (Wharton School Publishing)

SUBSCRIBE TO ABOVE MAGAZINE ...for the Earth.

Cradle to Cradle picks apart the take-make-waste thinking behind today’s manufacturing and proposes a cyclical, nature-inspired design process in which waste and toxicity are longer accepted by-products of consumption. Short on examples, but long on eye-opening insight. Cradle to Cradle, Michael Braungart & William McDonough (Vintage) As Einstein reminded us, we can’t solve today’s problems with the same mindset that created them. Singling out one key, promising shift, Co-opportunity show how sharing and collaboration are creating fresh solutions to our sustainability challenges. The thrilling examples will have you running to join the movement. Co-opportunity: Join Up for a Sustainable, Resilient, Prosperous World, John Grant (John Wiley & Sons) The annual Prix Pictet is awarded to a photographer whose work uses “the power of photography to communicate crucial messages” about sustainability and the environment. The work of the 12 ﬁnalists from 2009 comes together in Earth. Of special note is the winner, Israeli-South African photographer Nadav Kander’s series on the Yangtze in China. Earth (TeNeues)

Subscription information: www.above-magazine.com www.magazinecafe.co.uk/

ABOVE & BEYOND

Last Flight Take a good look at the Spix’s macaw on this page, one of the estimated 120 living in captivity. Which is likely to be the only place anyone will ever see one again. Destruction of the parrot’s natural habitat (along the São Francisco river in Brazil), illegal bird trafﬁcking, the takeover of nesting sites by non-native bee species.... The result: not a single Spix’s macaw has been seen in the wild since 2000. Photography ANDREW ZUCKERMAN

SPIX’S MACAW (Cyanopsitta spixii) Photographed in ﬂight by Andrew Zuckerman for his book, Bird (Chronicle Books, 2009)