Catadores Find Dignity at Jardim Gramacho

Waste Land is a 2010 documentary by Lucy Walker documenting Brazilian artist Vik Muniz' art creations with the help of garbage pickers in Rio's Jardim Gramacho (the "Garbage Garden"), the world's largest landfill. As a youth in São Paulo, Muniz had the "good fortune" to be shot in the leg by a rich kid, who paid him off; he used the money to buy a ticket to America. It is Muniz' grand vision that creates treasure out of trash and restores great human dignity to these catadores (Portuguese for scavengers) as they take great pride in their artistic creations that are auctioned in London and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo. Muniz fashions re-creations of famous paintings, including Jacques-Louis David's Death of Marat. The posed photographs are then re-created in giant Seurat-style pointillism with salvaged materials. In the end it is the elite world of art auctions that funnels monetary reward and recognition to these struggling workers.

Muniz' close rapport with six pickers is especially touching. Tiaõ is the head of the Association of Recycling Pickers of Jardim Gramacho. Muniz and his wife (his ex by the end of this three-year effort) debate the ethics of taking Tiaõ to London to witness the auction. There is concern that after seeing how the other half lives, he could never return. In the end he makes the trip and is overwhelmed with pride. This is a film that is much more about humanity than about garbage, much more about a culture of catadores than a culture of waste.

Art and Pornography Make Strange Bedfellows

9 Songs is a 2004 British film directed by Michael Winterbottom (The Killer Inside Me). The title refers to the nine songs played by seven different indie rock bands (Dandy Warhols, Primal Scream, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Von Bondies, Elbow, Super Furry Animals, and Franz Ferdinand) and Michael Nyman (contemporary classicist) at Brixton Academy and other venues in London that complement the story of the film. The film is controversial in its depiction of unsimulated sex between its two co-stars, Kieran O'Brien and Margo Stilley, in a mainstream film that received a certificate for general release. The film is framed as a reminiscence from glaciologist Matt, while working in Antarctica, of his 12-month romance with American exchange student Lisa.

It is hard to imagine that the graphic sex scenes contributed artistically to the film's meaning, but a case can no doubt be made. One reviewer (Jim White) has commented that "this is not acting we see, this is activity." Ironically, despite the effort to portray a tender love story, the net effect is wholly unerotic. So what is the point ? While pornography strives to eroticize, this artistic film falls short in that arena. White makes the insightful point that film is too mechanical, intrusive, and voyeuristic a platform in comparison with literature. The film author is at a huge disadvantage, his mode of communication is literal, not literary.

Haiti's ISPAN Up Against a Wall

While doing volunteer work in Haiti last March, I could not help but marvel at something that no one even thinks about discussing post earthquake: the fabulous Haitian architecture. I was fascinated to see a poster in Jérémie for the Institut de Sauvegarde du Patrimoine National ("ISPAN"), an organization devoted to architectural preservation. Jérémie is like a Hollywood set of an African city late 1800s, a city that time forgot. The colonial architecture is striking.

Most impressive is the whimsical ginger-bread Victorian architecture in Port-au-Prince. So many villas feature "witch's-hat" spires, many beneath the rubble. How can preservation efforts even begin to compete with the desperation of restoring infrastructure and saving lives ?

Films Highlight Arab Persian Chasm

Omar Sharif stars with a young Pierre Boulanger in the French film Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran (2003) by François Dupeyron. Cairo-born Sharif plays a Sufi grocer, Ibrahim Demirci, in a Sephardic Jewish section of Paris on rue Bleue in the 1960s. Sharif describes this in the voice-over commentary as the Sentier section in the 2nd arrondissement, center of the "schmatta business", although rue Bleue is a bit north of rue Sentier. The young Jewish Moise Schmidt (Momo) befriends Ibrahim as a father figure, after his own father has abandoned him. This heartfelt affection between Muslim and Jew forms a backdrop of tolerance relative to the chasm between Arab and Persian culture.

Momo's father frequently asks him to go across the street to purchase items from the "Arab." There is a great line from Ibrahim "I'm not an Arab, Momo. I'm from the Golden Crescent." And later, "I'm not an Arab, Momo. I'm a Muslim." This is reminiscent of the similar line in the triple-Oscar winning American movie Crash (2004), by Paul Haggis, a film based on racial stereotyping. The Iranian shopkeeper is so distraught after his store has been wrecked and tagged with racist graffiti. He says "They think we're Arab. When did Persian become Arab?" It seems that mistaken identity is more damaging than the trashed store. Of course, this is against a backdrop of 9/11.

There is a strange nexus between the two films. Ibrahim and Momo go off on a trip to his homeland,Turkey, in a brilliant red Simca Aronde Océane (spyder). Well, that sports car ultimately crashes and leads to Ibrahim's death. By the way, Brigitte Bardot appeared in a red Simca Océane in the movie la Parisienne, which is the basis of a scene in the film, played by Isabelle Adjani.

Timmy Thomas' Why Can't We Live Together (1972) is the main soundtrack for Monsieur Ibrahim. The lyrics speak wonderfully to the "collision." Sade did a great cover on Diamond Life (1984).

Tell me why, tell me why, tell me why.

Why can't we live together?

Tell me why, tell me why.

Why can't we live together?

Everybody wants to live together.

Why can't we be together?

No more war, no more war, no more war...

Just a little peace.

No more war, no more war.

All we want is some peace in this world.

Everybody wants to live together.

Why can't we be together?

No matter, no matter what colour.

You are still my brother.

I said no matter, no matter what colour.

You are still my brother.

Everybody wants to live together

Why can't we be together?

Everybody wants to live.

Everybody's got to be together.

Everybody wants to live.

Everybody's going to be together.

Everybody's got to be together.

Everybody wants to be together.

I said no matter, no matter what colour.

You're still my brother.

I said no matter, no matter what colour.

You're still my brother.

Everybody wants to live together.

Why can't we be together?

Gotta live together...Together.

Candy Wrapper Weaving: Cleantech No More

There is some argument over the origin of candy-wrapper weaving. Many scholars say it is based on ancient Mayan paper-weaving techniques. It has also been traced back to prison or "tramp" art from the early 20th century. Men in prison made sculptures out of cigarette packs or gum wrappers sewn together with shuttles fashioned from plastic bottles and fishing line. Gum wrapper sculpture and jewelry making became a popular hobby in the U.S. during the 1960s and 1970s.

Now that this craft has entered the mass market, it is no longer a product of "innocent art." Modern manufacturing operations buy candy wrappers new and fabricate items directly. Ultimately, this product is no longer a cleantech solution as we are no longer reusing spent wrappers.

1838 Brooklyn Navy Yard Hospital: Culture of Abandonment

Would you like to pretend you are Hernan Cortés discovering lost ruins in a steamy South American jungle ? Well, you can do that in Brooklyn (August is hot and steamy) at the Brooklyn Navy Yards, wandering around pre-civil war hospital grounds that astound the senses. This is the epitome of a Culture of Abandonment. It is abhorrent that such a magnificent piece of high style architecture (reflecting a certain cultural attitude in 1838) could fall victim to such neglect.

This urban archeology is the closest thing New York City offers to Cambodia's Angkor Wat. The Navy Yard Hospital Building and the Surgeon's Residence are both designated as NYC Landmark buildings. Technically, they lie outside of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and can be viewed through the gates on Flushing Ave. - they were referred to as an "Annex of the U.S. Naval Receiving Station, Brooklyn, NY." The property was acquired in 1966 by the City of New York and administered by the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp. During the Civil War, the hospital would supply over 1/3 of the medicines used by the Union troops.

According to the AIA Guide to NYC, the Greek Revival hospital is made of marble quarried locally (Sing Sing) by those hapless prisoners. AIA suggests that such buildings were inspirational for Albert Speer's visions for Hitler's Berlin. Martin E. Thompson was a talented Greek Revivalist architect. Excellent photos of both the Hospital and the French Empire Surgeon's House (with a concave-profiled mansard roof) appear on the web inadvertently uploaded to the Quarters A NRHP site at http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/Photos/74001252.pdf. A tall flagpole and obscure memorial commemorating soldiers who died in the Canton River (now Guangzhou and Pearl River) in 1856 during the Battle of the Barrier Forts at the beginning of the 2nd Opium War are the only clues of a stately lawn long forgotten. A photo in Berner's The Brooklyn Naval Yard shows the Canton memorial originally stood at the Sands St. gate.

The Kingston Lounge (who advertise as guerrilla preservationists and urban archeologist's) have fabulous photos of the Annex at http://kingstonlounge.blogspot.com/2009/02/brooklyn-navy-yard-hospital-complex.html.

Asmara's Secret: A Gift From Mussolini

The Kingdom of Italy created Eritrea at the end of the nineteenth century, using the classical name for the Red Sea ("erythra"). The colony of Italian Eritrea was established in 1890 (and lasted officially until 1947). Between 1936 and 1941, Italy's Fascist rulers transformed Eritrea into one of the most industrialized modern colonies in all of Africa.

Asmara has been described as a "surreal, out-of-body tourist experience" (The New York Times, 3/19/06, 10/8/08), leading one to ask "Where am I ?" Africa ? The Mediterranean ? The Middle East ? South Beach (minus the miniskirts and Ferraris) ? Asmara became an Art Deco laboratory during the 1930s for designs too avant garde for Italy. Rationalism, Novecento, neo-Classicism, neo-Baroque, and monumentalism are represented. The crown jewel is the Fiat Tagliero gas station designed in 1938 by Giuseppe Pettazzi to look like an airplane. One can imagine the locals living La Dolce Vita many decades ago.