Peoples Media Arts Uprising 2012

Target Love Need
Aim at Insecurities
Hide it in "fashion"

PMAU 2012 will be meeting at the Greenwood Library this Sunday the 11th at 2:00 pm. Please show up if you are even remotely interested.

FYI:"Occupy Wall Street" was coined by the man behind the magazine Adbusters.

"On July 13th, Kalle Lasn, and colleagues created a twitter tag #occupywallstreet."

They made a poster showing a ballerina on top of the bull sculpture near Wall Street.

"For some they were just words and images, For Lasn they were tools to begin remodeling the "mental environment" to create a new "meme," ( transcendent cultural message coined by Richard Dawkins)

"There's a number of ways to wage a "meme" war, Lasn said, "I believe the most powerful thing of all is aesthetics." (William Yardley, The New York Times via Seattle Times Dec 4, 2011))

Peoples Media Arts Uprising 2012 is not a war -it is a means of enlightenment. When the untrue beliefs and false premises of the old industrial, business model are exposed, they whither. They shrink in the light of today's knowledge.

However, the power of aesthetics is amazing either way. If Occupy is the battle, then PMAU (Peeps- Me And U ?) is the lamp. We want to shine light on the information that marketers avoid and governments ignore. Our health and the health of the whole is at stake and that is something too precious to leave to the memes of war.

The tools that made the problem need to be put into the hands of healers. Money is one of those tools and Occupiers are demanding a reevaluation of its use. And in asking for economic justice the whole of the system is being confronted for its unsustainable , callous and narrow viewpoint that promoted an American lifestyle of mass consumption. We have come to this and it is time to wise up the whole and heal. And so it is!

For the Record

photo of mural detail in Olympia + atomic symbol

"In Global Citizen, Donella Meadows, charges that the government has continually lied about nuclear power from as far back as 1945.....The basic bureaucratic rules of operation are designed to blur information about nuclear power: Use obscure words to hide plain truths. Never confess mistakes, even though they are inevitable. Always pretend certainty, despite enormous degrees of uncertainty." (Breton, M. Joy, Women Pioneers for the Environment, 1998, p 87-88,)

To confuse with authority, what a plan!!! Why, as in why limit the world to such a small, possibly erroneous reality?" Wow, how many wrongs are in this plan?

I think we can replace nuclear power with almost anything that looks to be able to make a high Return On Investment. That is why scientists in so many realms are ignored, fought or belittled when research points against the interests of commerce.

Hazel Henderson, another heroic pioneer was "labeled "the most dangerous woman in America " by corporate CEOs " after her articles in business publications including "Ecologists vs Economists" in the Harvard Business Journal raised some ire. (p 191)

"One of the century's foremost "high risk social innovators," Henderson says she likes to intercept policy debates anywhere in the world....offering new directions, expanded contexts, connections and possibilitiesfor creating win-win solutions in our ever-shrinking, more crowded, polluted planet.
Economists called her the lady that was poisoning the well. Since then Henderson has become a respected and sought after authority on global economics and human development issues."

More than 25 years ago, H.H. embarked on a crusade to persuade countries to overhaul the way they each measure economic growth and human development. Calling herself an anti economist, she challenged the traditional economic assumptions- based on obsolete nineteenth century industrialism- that govern gross national product (GNP) and gross domestic product (GDP) statistics. "

The GNP overlooks unpaid work, often contributed by women, even though they contribute half the world's food. (see the issue? feeding a family doesn't count, export crops do!) "Nor does the GNP accounting system classify natural resources as assets: for that reason it fails to deduct from growth statistics the cost of diminishing or destroying natural resources during industrial processes. Ironically, the system treats cleaning up pollution and repairing damage (such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Chernobyl nuclear accident) as additional production." (p 192)

"Henderson believes economics is merely politics in disguise. We need to send economists back to school to learn more sociology, cultural anthropology, and ecology before we trust their calculations."

Henderson and other environmentalists suggest that the narrow focus of economic courses needs broadening to include training in environmental and social sciences." (p 192)

We all need to know this in order to understand how choices are being made for us, sometimes against our best interests. Occupy Wall Street, Seattle, UK, Everywhere - has pulled back the curtains, now we need to make sense of what we are seeing and act in accordance.