Zubin Pastakia’s “The Built Landscape” series

A Facebook friend of mine posted a link to Zubin Pastakia’s photography this evening.  I’ve never heard of Pastakia, an Indian photographer, and the link my FB pal provided initially led me to his photos of the interiors of Bombay’s old movie theaters.  I first thought I might post here about this idea of interior landscapes that we touched on in regard to Edward Burtynsky’s photos of mines, quarries, and factories.  But as I explored Pastakia’s website, I came across another series he is currently working on called “The Built Landscape.” These photos bring to mind Andrea’s post about Griffioen’s Detroit photography, decaying urban environments, Burtynsky’s similar concept of manufactured landscapes, and the possibility of reconsidering how we think of and define landscape itself.

BDD Chawl, Sewri, Mumbai, 2008 - Zubin Pastakia

“A Cloud Still Hangs Over Bhopal”

An op-ed marking the 25th anniversary of Bhopal in today’s NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/opinion/03mehta.html

There’s a really fascinating section on thinking about the gas as a kind of sentient organism. I wonder what it says that Mehta imagines (or imagines the people of Bhopal imagining) the gas as a living being that can make choices (like sparing one animal and not others). I’m pretty sure Animal would disapprove.

Of Ruined Cities and Feral Houses

I grew up in the Rustbelt; I spent my early childhood in Chicago and my adolescence (until about two years ago) in the metro-Detroit area.  As some of you may know, Detroit’s in a bad way right now.  Detroit’s real troubles started with the 1967 race riots and have only been compounded by political corruption and the death of the automobile industry.

For a more by-the-numbers understanding of exactly how bad things are, you can check out the 2000 US Census information (with updated estimates for 2006)  here. Detroit’s population is has fallen from a peak of about 1.8 million to under 875,000 people (this number itself an 8.4% drop from the 2000 census!).  In 1999, 26.1% of the population of Detroiters were living under the poverty line.  I understand this has risen above 33% at this point but I can’t find official verification).

In light of our conversation today about Manufactured Landscapes, I am reminded of my home city…the decline in population hasn’t resulted in a decline of buildings.  Many, many abandoned buildings remain.

Birds, Out of Context (Paul Bellew)

Anyone need a coffee table book? Do you like… birds?

The other day I stumbled on a website promoting the book Birds by Andrew Zuckerman. It’s a book of photography full of more than two hundred pictures of birds. To view some of the photos, go to the website and click on the “Photographs” link. From here you can navigate a list of species and see various pictures of birds and even listen to some of their calls. Some of these birds are even rare. Wow!

Local Dispatches Before a Global Conference (Sarah Todd)

As world leaders prepare to meet next week for the United Nations conference on climate change, The New York Times posted four essays from writers in Copenhagan, Japan, South Africa, and Brazil on how climate change is impacting their countries. You can check out the essays here.

Our Noble Fir

On Saturday afternoon, my husband Damon and I spent a few hours, a tank of gas and $5 on a permit to get a live Christmas tree from the National Forest. As I contemplate the pine-winey presence of this young Noble Fir in my living room, I wanted to share with you some of the environmental surprises this tradition poses for me.

According to the National Christmas Tree Association, Americans buy about 30 million real Christmas trees a year and the USDA reports that about a quarter of these come from Oregon. This year, thanks to the softening economy, Oregon’s tree farmers are in trouble. Mature, ready-to-harvest Christmas trees are staying in the ground, even though by next year they’ll be too big to harvest for home-use. Cost-conscious customers are either skipping a tree completely or going artificial. This latter alternative remains a thorn (or a blue spruce needle?) in the side of the tree farming industry.

As you might expect, artificial trees introduce problems into the seasonal cycle of Christmas tree growth, harvest, and replanting. Artificial trees are imported, inorganic (with scary levels of PVC) and non-recyclable. They’re flammable, chemically-laden, and can’t offer the scent or soulful experience of a real tree. In contrast, real trees can be sustainably farmed and are completely biodegradable (hello firewood!). If you’re going to get a Christmas tree, the NCTA wants you to go real or go home.

Ecocomposition and the Environmental Crisis (Stephen Siperstein)

Thank you Dan for posting about the place of environmental thinking in the 121 classroom and for starting the conversation about how our work in Environmental Literature, and specifically in 670, might inform the work we do in our other (and perhaps more important) roles at the University of Oregon. I am just now taking a break from reading through my students’ latest essays, and wanted to respond to your great post and meditate on some of my own thoughts about ecocomposition.  The students’ essays which I am reading through had to in some way respond to “environmental issues” and specifically to several of the readings from our recent unit on the environmental crisis, which included selections from Terry Tempest Williams’ Refuge, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Joyce Carol Oates’ “On Nature,” Martin Lewis’ Green Delusions: An Environmentalist Critique of Radical Environmentalism, as well as several handouts and flyers about climate change that I collected from 350.org.  I began this latest unit with similar anxieties as those you describe in your post, but found that the joy and exhilaration of being able to engage with my students about issues that I feel passionate about more than made up for those fears.

As for the first two fears that you bring up; I don’t think we need to worry about our own political leanings or our own (lack of) expertise on the issues if we are forthright with our students about where we stand.  I made it clear at the beginning of the unit, and for that matter at the beginning of the term, that the whole reason I was at the University of Oregon and even in front of their class was because of the environmental crisis.  It’s the same reason why I’m in 670.  So clearly I have certain opinions

Can “Landscape” be Manmade? (Jiyoung Yoon)

Jennifer Baichwal’s documentary film, “Manufactured Landscapes,” interrogates the notion of “landscapes” in two ways. With a series of Edward Burtynski’s photographs on industrial production, the film urges us to look at what kinds of “landscapes” we have in our contemporary culture. More to the point, the title of the film, “Manufactured Landscapes,” raises critical questions we have been asking throughout this course: How should we define the notion of landscape (or, “environment”)?

I often imagined something “natural” when I faced the term “landscape.” Maybe that is why, after I happened to watch this film by chance a year ago, I felt a bit uncomfortable about the fact that the title of the movie is “Manufactured Landscapes.”  In contrast to my preconception, Baichwal’s documentary film contends landscape in our age, rather, is constructed by humans. Put differently, landscape is nature transformed by human needs. Surprising is, there is little hint of “nature” in the “manufactrued landscapes” of the film. The idea of the natural is presented as a matter of perception; a more expansive reading of the physical world to include materials and environments of human habitation.

 

from Manufactured Landscape

Learning with Animals: hard science meets the rhetoric of twee

Two recent online videos depict science and scientific experiments in compelling ways.

First, the Kansas School System employs golden retrievers as metaphors for atomic particles in order to teach elementary chemistry concepts (WWDHD?):

I wonder if there are any latent ironies here between this obvious performance of species-co-evolution and a state school district who infamously insisted on teaching Intelligent Design.

Does the environment belong in comp class? (Dan Platt)

A few years ago, I worked as an AmeriCorps volunteer in New Jersey. I spent part of my time teaching the 3^rd and 4^th graders of New Brunswick about watersheds and run-off pollution. In hindsight, it’s easy to romanticize the experience. I was a tourist, breezing through their school for an hour at a time. At the end of the day, I didn’t have to worry about whether they were learning basic skills or how they would perform on standardized tests. I went home feeling like a responsible citizen of the Earth.

Now, like many of you, I have a little side job teaching composition. It’s nice work, really, and I’m grateful for it. But when it comes time to talk about environmental issues in the comp classroom, part of me longs for the days of construction paper pollution activities and old-fashioned environmental didacticism.

End of Cyberspace Blog (Allison Carruth)

You may find this blog, by a historian of science, interesting in light of our discussions of <i>Neuromancer</i> and cyberspace as an environmental matter.

Bio-Diversity art (Jeni Rinner)

Thought you guys would appreciate this art piece from the New York Times’ “Abstract City” column called “Bio-Diversity“.  An interesting piece of appreciating the diversity of the humble fallen leaves cluttering our sidewalks these days. Also calls attention to interesting patterns of anthropomorphism, I think.  The artist, Christoph Neimann, makes art pieces to reflect his experience of life in New York City.  If you look to the right of the leaves, you’ll see his other columns, all of which take on a reflective, almost journalistic tone.  They also use a variety of interesting mixed media.  He has used woven paper to reflect on the Berlin Wall, pins and burlap on his sense of self-efficacy, coffee on napkins to discuss a coffee addiction, and even his own bathroom tile home improvement project. What do you think his choice of media says about his subjects?

“Recyclops will have his revenge!” (Stephen Siperstein)

I thought you might enjoy these clips from recent episodes of two of NBC’s most popular shows: “The Office” and “30 Rock.”  They were included as part of NBC’s Green is Universal campaign week.   Initially I was skeptical of a large corporation trying to be “green,” but if you go to the website and pledge to carpool, power down your computer, use a reusable water bottle, or make any other of a number of green lifestyle choices, NBC will donate $1 to the FEED Foundation, which provides healthy meals to children around the world. And in case you were wondering, according to this blog on “green gossip” 30 Rock is one of the greener shows at NBC Universal: “In addition to their standard recycling efforts, the show no longer uses water bottles and has instead installed water filters. Their caterer also uses compostable products, and the offices have switched to chemical-free cleaning products. They also rent hybrids for both talent and crew.”  Maybe not the most dynamic environmental position, but I’ll take what I can get, and the clips are hilarious:

Andy: “That’s aersol spray, it’s terrible for the environment”

Dwight:  “Humans are terrible for the environment”

Slow Violence in Verse (Sarah Todd)

Yesterday’s discussion on slow violence in the aftermath of environmental disasters like Chernobyl and Bhopal reminded me of the poem “Tar” by C.K. Williams. Rob Nixon defines slow violence as the unspectacular, long-term effects caused by environmental catastrophe — diseases caused by radiation, contaminated drinking water, and other invisible poisons. Because this kind of violence is often initially undetectable to the human eye, and because its effects become apparent over time rather than right away, those impacted by the catastrophe may experience an anticipatory and undefined form of fear in its aftermath. Williams’ poem, set on the morning after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979, captures this feeling of foreboding.

Humanimals in the Renaissance (Jenny Noyce)

In my other seminar this term, I’m studying Edmund Spenser’s 1596 epic poem The Faerie Queene.  I’ve been surprised by the number of connections that exist between Spenser’s material and our texts for our contemporary environmental literature course.  In regard to Indra Sinha’s 2008 novel Animal’s People, a particular passage from Spenser’s poem comes to mind.  In Book III, Spenser narrates the story of a jealous old man who holds his young wife (Hellenore) captive inside their castle, so that her beauty may not tempt other men.  Eventually, a wandering knight enters their home, flirts his way into Hellenore’s heart, and the two run off together.  When he abandons her (typical!), she takes up with a group of satyrs, in the “thickest woods.”  They make her their “May-lady,” and give her plenty of praise and kisses.  Her husband sneaks into the forest and sees Hellenore cavorting with her new admirers, and hides in the bushes while Hellenore and a satyr have sex nine times throughout the night.  At one point, he wakes her, apologizes, and asks her to return to their castle.  She “it all refused at one word,” and opts to stay in the woods.

nymphs & satyr