Adbusters #80: The Freedom From Want

t CA ric PIT ks AL te IS r M

adbusters · JOURNAL OF THE MENTAL ENVIRONMENT

JOURNAL OF THE MENTAL ENVIRONMENT www.adbusters.org

US Edition $8.95

FREEDOM ISN’T FREE THIS IS ABUSE OF THE

F R E E DO M F RO M

WANT

the freedom from want issue november/december 2008 ∙ #80 · volume 16 number 6 (A1-1) Front CoverUS.indd 1

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WRITERS Pierz Newton-John (It’s a bleary winter morning...) is a Melbournebased writer, former psychotherapist, and winner of the Alan Marshall Short Story Award (2008).

Shonagh Strachan (A New Definition of a Normal Birth) is a mother and a member of RAG, an anarcha-feminist collective based in Dublin, Ireland.

Sarah Nardi (I Wanted to Paint Nothing) always knew she wanted to be a writer, but somehow felt that she should try every other conceivable occupation first. She lives in Chicago and is a regular contributor to Adbusters.

Maj Fiil-Flynn (Endgame: Prepay For Your Water) led a participatory research project that detailed the impact of prepaid water in South African townships. She is the former director of Water For All Campaign and now works as a consultant in Washington, D.C. Sarah Lazare (Too Big To Fail?) lives in San Francisco, where she spends her time writing and working on anti-war, labor, and community organizing projects.

JEFF DELONG

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A RT ISTS

Chip Kidd (Freedom from Want, poster, front CoVer) is an artdirector, author, and illustrator working for Alfred A. Knopf.

The poster is from a group show entitled The Four Freedoms at the Wolfsonian Institute, Florida International University.

Pedro Inoue (Nameplate Design, front CoVer) is a graphic artist and designer. From 2001 until 200 he worked with Jonathan Barnbrook at Barnbrook Design in London, UK. A regular collaborator with Adbusters, he currently lives in São Paulo, where he works for clients all over the world.

Luc Delahaye is a French photographer. Specializing in war photography, he has covered conflicts in Bosnia, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Rwanda, and Chechnya. A member of Magnum Photos agency from 199 to 200, Delahaye now works independently as a photojournalist.

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STEVE POWERS, THE WATERBOARDING THRILL RIDE, 2008.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID B. SMITH. COURTESY CREATIVE TIME.

when the government announced its official position on waterboarding in 2007, Americans responded with tepid disbelief.

The knowledge that the United States, in blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions, condoned the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” against detainees in Guantanamo was surprising enough to grab the public’s attention, but not shocking enough to hold it. After the obligatory collective muttering about torture and human rights, the issue quickly faded from the public spotlight and the government was allowed to carry on. With his installation piece The Coney Island Waterboarding Thrill Ride, artist Steve Powers is attempting to rouse some sort of emotion by contextualizing the situation in a way the average American can understand. He’s turned waterboarding into entertainment. Designed as an old fashioned peep

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show and situated amongst the arcades and hotdog stands of Coney Island’s famed boardwalk, the thrill ride is a simulation of the simulated drowning detainees experience during interrogation. A dollar buys the curiosity-seeker a glimpse of a stark concrete room inhabited by two animatronic robots – one in black, the other in an orange jumpsuit. Strapped to a metal table, the orange-clad robot writhes in his constraints as his captor covers his face with a steady stream of water. The “interrogation” carries on for a brutal fifteen seconds before the room goes black and the show is over. Since the thrill ride opened in late summer, reaction on the boardwalk has ranged from confusion, to glee, to disappointment over not getting one’s money’s worth. The one emotion that’s noticeably absent? “I think people have lost the capacity for outrage,” says the artist.

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a career

in total revolution?

Manuel Archain manuelarchain.com

Live every day, every moment like a cat on the prowl: alive, alert and still a little wild.

memewarriors.org

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PHOTOGRAPH © 2008 MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON

cultivate mindfulness A

t the sound of the brass bell, the children place their palms face up on their desks, close their eyes, and begin to breathe. Their bodies are still; their breaths come slowly and evenly. After ten minutes, their teacher quietly instructs them to open their eyes. The atmosphere in the room is peaceful and relaxed. Five minutes later, lessons begin.

It might not be a typical classroom scene just yet, but over the last four years mindfulness training – which uses techniques such as deliberate breathing and focusing on a single object – has been introduced to classrooms in California, Pennsylvania and British Columbia with marked success. After participating in mindfulness education – commonly referred to as ME – for periods of ten to 30 minutes several times a week, students said they felt calmer and happier. Teachers also reported that students misbehaved less often, were more focused and performed better on assignments and tests.

“I have observed endless positive changes in my students,” says Janice Perry, a primary school teacher who first implemented the ME program with her kindergarten students in 2005 and now trains other teachers in how to introduce mindfulness to their classrooms. “Students eagerly use mindful breathing to calm their minds and ready themselves for learning.”

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PHOTOGRAPH © 2008 MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON

Mindfulness is not quite the same as meditation – there are no chakras or chants involved. And while it does have roots in Buddhism, it’s not quite a “west-coast-new-agehippie” kind of thing because, hey, they’re trying it out in Pennsylvania, after all. Instead, mindfulness is best described as being present in the moment – completely aware of one’s thoughts and actions – and a counter to mindlessness – the act of zoning out, going through life on autopilot or the inability to focus completely on one subject.

Though it’s an ancient practice the role of mindfulness in the modern classroom is to address a purely contemporary problem. Over the past few decades, mindlessness has surely become the new childhood epidemic – one of the most common complaints heard about youth today is that they have no attention spans – following kids around like the ghost of polio past. It’s not surprising that they find it hard to focus though – they spend most of their lives staring at screens that change constantly every few seconds.

Kids spend an average of 1023 hours per year in front of the television – more hours than they spend in school. In the United States, children watch over 400,000 television commercials a year. And when they’re not watching TV, they’re surfing the net or playing video games. Worse still, the majority of children admit to doing other activities while they’re watching TV or on the computer, dividing their focus even further – a practice many likely picked up from their multi-tasking parents.

Social pressures are also causing stress among younger students. A 2007 study conducted by the United Nations Children’s Fund found that 3.5 million primary school children were affected by a “loss of childhood,” due to waves of “antisocial behavior, materialism and the cult of celebrity” in schools. The report also blamed rigid, standardized

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how to draw andy warhol:

seLf portraIt anDy WarhoL

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I wanted to paint nothing.

by Sarah Nardi

— Andy Warhol IN 2004, A PANEL COMPRISING 500 of Britain’s most esteemed artists, critics and historians voted Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain the most influential artwork of the 20th century. Created for the inaugural exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in 1917, Fountain was a urinal – a common plumbing fixture purchased from a wholesaler in New York City – signed by Duchamp with the pseudonym “R. Mutt” and rotated so that it lay on its back. A porcelain bowl designed to collect piss was recognized as the single-most important contribution to art in the past century. Ahead of Picasso, ahead of Pollack.

Matisse didn’t even make the list. Among the world’s aesthetes, there were scattered cries of foul. And just as it had in 1917, Fountain ignited a debate over the meaning of art.

That Fountain would inspire objection is to be expected. After all, Duchamp had no hand in the creation of the object itself. But what he did do is re-contextualize it. He presented the urinal in a way that forced the viewer to consider it differently, thus shifting the burden of understanding from the artist to the observer. It was an affront to tradition, an assault on paradigm. And with the creation of Fountain, Duchamp accomplished one of two things – he either gave birth to a new kind of meaning or obliterated the need for meaning in art entirely. But whichever door it was that Duchamp kicked open, one thing is clear – Andy Warhol sashayed right through.

If Duchamp was challenging our perceptions, Warhol was challenging our depth. Prompting us not to delve deeper, but to worship the surface. When he began to make

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The Anthropocene Epoch will be defined by the heating trend and the radical instability expected of future environments.

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squint/opera

Who says global warming has to be all about death and destruction? For a refreshing take on doom and gloom comes “Flooded London,” a series of illustrated photographs depicting London life in 2090, after sea levels have risen and submerged the cityscape. In the images people are depicted happily going about their days in a new waterlogged environment, from two women fishing off a high-rise to a couple who have collected pre-flood artifacts and are rigging them up in an effort to power a light bulb. The exhibit comes exactly 20 years after NASA scientist James Hansen warned of apocalyptical global warming effects. The scenes are ominously utopic with their evidence of distant turmoil, natural disaster and life-altering reality. It’s a contradiction familiar to this day and age when we continue with life as usual, even in the face of cataclysmic threats (Malé, Maldives anyone?). But it may well be this positive attitude and faith in ourselves that we’ll come to rely on one post-apocalyptical day. Out of the chaos will be a rebirth of creativity, self-expression and new interpretations of tradition, with the human spirit and our resilient ability to overcome adversity remaining unscathed. In that world of simple pleasures, once the fear of change has been replaced by the joy of rediscovery, we should all be lucky enough to dive from a church-gallery ledge into a serene pool below.

Emily Kendy

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PLANETARY endgame

After triumphing over Sovietism, capitalism doesn’t know how to do anything but celebrate itself. All spheres of power and influence have been swallowed by capitalism’s pseudo-realism that asserts that any alternative is impossible and that the only end to pursue in order to soften the inevitability of injustice is to eke out ever more wealth.

This would-be realism is not only ominous; it is

***

blind. Blind to the explosive power of manifest injustice. And blind to the poisoning of the biosphere that the increase in material wealth produces, poisoning that means deterioration in the conditions for human life and the squandering of the chances of generations to come.

From How the Rich are Destroying the Earth

by Hervé Kempf (Chelsea Green).

Manila, Philippines.

MATTHIAS ZIEGLER-WWW.AGENTUR NEUBAUER.COM

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in this issue: HIPSTER’s REVENGE We are the underclass of fashion, as necessary for a capitalist society as guys digging ditches and laying bricks.

I wanted to paint nothing.

Andy Warhol

I express hopelessness.

Takashi Murakami

TRICKSTER CAPITALISM After triumphing over sovietism, capitalism doesn’t know how to do anything but celebrate itself.

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