NEW MOVEMENTS FOR SOCIAL CHANGE: DiEM25, THE EMERGENCE NETWORK, EMERGE, THE ZEITGEIST MOVEMENT

 

2009 UN CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE, COPENHAGEN

The Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25)

'A pan-European, cross-border movement of democrats. We believe that the European Union is disintegrating. Europeans are losing their faith in the possibility of European solutions to European problems. At the same time as faith in the EU is waning, we see a rise of misanthropy, xenophobia and toxic nationalism. 

'If this development is not stopped, we fear a return to the 1930s. That is why we have come together despite our diverse political traditions - Green, radical left, liberal - in order to repair the EU. The EU needs to become a realm of shared prosperity, peace and solidarity for all Europeans. We must act quickly, before the EU disintegrates.'

'In February 2016, a group of activists, thinkers, and agitators gathered together in Berlin’s Volksbühne theatre and vowed to shake Europe.
 Many doubt us. The establishment fears us. But in the course of just two years, we have shown that it is possible for the people of Europe to come together in the fight for democracy.

'Two years on, our movement is rumbling around the globe, with 70,000 members and more than 100 Spontaneous Collectives (DSCs) worldwide. DiEM25 local groups are sprouting up in cities from London to Ljubljana to address Europe’s crisis of democracy. DiEM25 chapters are marching in the street for a European New Deal. And — as of this year — DiEM25 has activated an ‘electoral wing’ to contest elections and take its Progressive Agenda for Europe to ballots everywhere. And that fight has just begun.'

 #GreenNewDeal

Yanis Varoufakis on what's wrong in Europe today and how to fix it tomorrow morning | DiEM25

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THE EMERGENCE NETWORK

Their theme for 2019 is HOPE IN A TIME OF HOPELESSNESS

What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis?

'We are a constellation of humans and nonhumans working together trans-locally to curate projects, rituals, conversations and events that nurture senses of the otherwise via practices that trouble the traditional boundaries of agency and possibility. 

'We seek to shock outmoded modes of perception and action. We want to show how human bodies are changing, how whales and discarded pieces of gum are also ‘activists’, how remembering ancestry has political consequences, how thought is not a human feature, how bodies secrete time, and how slowing down in times of urgency makes sense in specific circumstances – especially now.

'The Emergence Network surfaces at a time when there seems to be a felt need for ‘alternative’ modes of engaging with our more troubling realities. What we offer are ways of diving into the cracks in our skins, processes that allow us notice that there are other items on the menu. That there are other places of power.

'Our work is to make more room available for movement – to emancipate action and responsiveness from its narrow humanist confines. Our approach takes for granted the fact that humans can no longer be centralized in our conceptions of change – and that, instead, we must begin to take into consideration the eco-cultural environments that are the conditions for our acting.

Our work is to facilitate conversations, curate assemblies, foster trans-disciplinary and trans-professional interactions, convene events that mobilize people into exploring the occluded and the invisible, and nurture regenerative practices that allow for other compelling questions and values to be articulated in the face of crisis.'

 Emerge is an independent, non-profit media platform sowing the seeds of a new civilisation

How Did Emerge Begin?

Emerge began as a three-day live event in Berlin in November 2018 initiated by three non-profit organisations: Perspectiva, London; co-creation.loft, Berlin and Ekskäret Foundation, Stockholm. The gathering brought together pioneers in complexity science, philosophy, spirituality, psychology, sustainability, creativity, and wisdom to explore dynamic solutions to our planet’s greatest challenges and discover new pathways of working, living and creating together. 

What We Believe

 The challenges facing our world today are more complex and species-threatening than ever before in human history. The global threat of climate change and the social impacts of digitalisation and globalisation are currently far more complex than our collective capacity to comprehend. In order for us to move forward, our thinking about global problems has to evolve to match their complexity.

Our personal psychology is of huge consequence to the outside world. If we are going to transform as a society then the personal development of individuals must be taken seriously as a societal, as well as an individual, concern.

There is no one ‘true’ way of seeing the world. In order to move forward we need to transcend binary thinking.This means moving beyond left and right political divides, thinking in terms of individual and collective responsibility, national and global identity, honoring individual identities and recognising the need to focus on a greater “we”.

Our world is socially constructed in more ways than we habitually tend to think. Human beings are dependent on and connected to the natural world, but when it comes to human society we are the creators. This means that we have more power than we realise to change it.

The emerging future will be co-created by all of us. The world is learning to come together in new ways and each of us has a vital role to play. Emerge is a place where all are called forth to bring our gifts to the greater circle.

Across the world, there are hundreds of initiatives, projects and persons who are already tackling real world problems from this place of deeper awareness. Our aim is to bring awareness to this growing movement and connect the dots between the people and projects contributing to this emergence.

This is a time of profound collaboration and we see you as a vital part of this mission. We’d love to weave your voice and vision into all that is being created and keep you updated on the launch of new projects, events and initiatives around the world.  Email contribute@whatisemerging.com and sign up to our newsletter here.

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THE ZEITGEIST MOVEMENT

Science, Technology, Nature, Sustainability

Founded in 2008, The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM) is a sustainability and public health advocacy organization.

It conducts research and activism through a network of regional chapters, public events and various forms of educational media.

The focus includes recognizing that the majority of the modern world’s social problems, including mounting ecological crises and destabilizing economic inequality (oppression, poverty, conflict, corruption, etc.) is not an inevitable outcome of our civilization. Rather, TZM sees these issues as consequential symptoms of an outdated social system.

While common reforms and general community support to improve conditions are of interest to TZM, working to galvanize the population in a move to change the very nature of our social system itself is the goal.

In this, a central criticism has been in addressing the inefficient nature of market-based economics or capitalism itself. TZM concludes that without a dramatic move away from the incentives and structural dynamics of the market system, there is little hope today for further, relevant improvements in the areas of human rights, ecological sustainability and general public health.

Supporters refer to the model promoted by TZM as a “Natural-Law Resource-Based Economy”. This model is inferential, derived from modern principles of scientific, sustainable earthly management, along with contemporary findings in social and epidemiological research.

TZM’s interest in change is global.

It has no allegiance to country or traditional political platforms. It views the world as a single system and the human species as a single family. It recognizes that all countries must disarm and learn to share resources and ideas if we expect to survive in the long run. Self-interest must become social-interest and the solutions arrived at and promoted are in the interest to help every human being.

Peter Joseph Full Interview with Lee Camp, June 2017 [ The Zeitgeist Movement ]

REMEMBERING ANDREW TYLER [1946-2017]

It's sad to lose a friend - even sadder when you discover that he had died two years before and you didn't know that. Didn't also know that, such was the pain he was living with, that he elected to end his days at Dignitas in Switzerland.

Andrew and I met at the NME and were both freelancers. I had no idea, for some reason, of the large number of significant music pieces he wrote. I remember him much more for his superb and lengthy pieces on social issues. Our time at the NME overlapped. He was there from 1973 to 1980; I worked there under the name Dick Tracy from 1975-1982. Andrew wrote considerably more than I did, was often out on assignment and was a skilled feature writer. He graduated, as I did, to the national press,Time Out  and other magazines. His investigative work was first rate.

I shared his concern for animal rights. We published The Beast, the first (or one of the first) animal lib magazines in the UK or US. [See Previous Post] which ran from 1975-1981.

Andrew made his concern for animals into his full-time occupation as head of Animal Aid, one of Britain's leading groups promoting veganism and working for the welfare of animals on many levels.

His memoir 'My LifeAs An Animal' documents his working life in his own inimitable style, a book written whilst he was suffering with both Parkinson's disease and a degenerative condition in his back which meant he was in constant pain. It is a mark of the man that he is modest about his own achievements.

His long Kerouac-type meanderings with his guitar across the US in his teens was another whole chapter in his life that I was also unaware of.

He and his twin brothers grew up in a Jewish orphanage and he left school at 14 having read nothing but biblical texts and with minimal writing skills. He learnt on the job at small trade magazines. His background left him with a great concern for the poor, the dispossessed, the unloved, which he expressed in his work with difficult youths who he was able to communicate with on their level. Later he would write moving narrative stories about life on the street which few other journalists would have been able to.

Andrew's quiet and determined nature, his integrity, his focused anger always impressed, layered as it was with a great sense of dark humour. He was the finest of fellows who devoted so much of his life to fighting for the most mistreated of all - the animals.

'My Life As An Animal' is available from Animal Aid. Its existence is due to Sara who  wrote the book's last chapter and organised the whole production of the book, a huge learning curve for her and an exhausting experience. She wrote to me as follows:

'Andrew asked me to campaign for voluntary assisted deaths (VAD) after he'd gone - which I've done to the best of my ability.  I was very lucky and got a front page and two page spread in the Mirror for Andrew.  Because of that was then invited onto This Morning (which I had never seen or heard of as  we have had no TV for 20 years - also I was never an am TV watcher.  Never understood how people had the time!).  Anyway This Morning and Dignity in Dying put a clip of my interview on their FB Pages and I got over a million hits in a week - which I was told is basically unheard of for a non- celeb.  Just goes to show how this issue is in the zeitgeist, as I got over 3,000 comments mostly backing what I said.'

There's a fine obituary by Mark Gold in May 2017 in The Guardian 

Also another great tribute can be found on Charles Shaar Murray's blog

Andrew made 19 short videos in the last six weeks of his life. One of these is on his Facebook page in which he explains why he is off to Dignitas.  Check also this video on Vimeo.

Links to some of his printed works can be found on Wikipedia

ANDREW WITH STEVIE WONDER. He also interviewed John Lennon,
Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen and many others.

UK RADICAL PRESS PROJECT

Back in late 1971, when the Generalist was working for the national underground newspaper Frendz, I began writing a regular column called 'Provincial Poontangs' about the numerous small regional and local papers and magazines being produced at that time. It appeared more or less in most issues until the paper folded in 1972 and it elicited a flood of papers from around the UK.

[In my naivety, being 22 at the time, I picked up the word 'poontang' from US underground papers and thought it sounded funny and cool. If you look up the word you'll find its completely inappropriate slang. Ooops!]

In this  May 1972 issue, PP was splashed over a double-page spread, with a list of around 110 publications opposite a map of some beauty created by the illustrator Bobby Dazzler. [Who he?]

The relevance of all this is that The Generalist is delighted to have made contact with a project based at the Regional History Centre at UWE Bristol entitled 'Recovering the Regional Radical Press in Britain 1968-88'. 

'It aims to identify the wealth of small, co-operatively produced local papers that played an important role in radical politics between the heady days of the late 1960s and the rise of Thatcherism in the 1980s. Few of these are now remembered and their history has been largely overlooked. This project, co-ordinated by Phil Chamberlain and Professor Steve Poole from the journalism and history departments at UWE, along with Jess Baines as research associate, will rediscover these lost papers and reconnect with the people who produced them.'

 
More details to come.

A NEW WORLD: GLOBAL ENERGY TRANSFORMATION

This report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) - a central platform for international cooperation on renewables- is a clear-sighted well-written accessible document about the geopolitical implications of the shift from the Fossil Fuel era to a world running on renewable energy.

An IRENA Global Commission, supported by the governments of Germany, Norway and the United Arab Emirates, initiated this  year-long study which was published in January 2019. It can be downloaded for free. Here are some filletted highlights:

'The shift from fossil fuels to renewables is driven by new technologies and falling costs, increasingly making renewables as competitive as conventional sources of energy. The energy transformation is also driven by the policies and actions of governments, businesses, cities and civil society, as well as the world-wide movement to combat climate change and dangerous air pollution.'

 -  Chairman Ólafur Ragnar Grimsson, former President of Iceland

'Renewable sources of energy—particularly wind and solar—have grown at

an unprecedented rate in the last decade and have consistently surpassed

expectations. The growth of their deployment in the power sector has already

outpaced that of any other energy source, including fossil fuels, which include

oil, coal and natural gas. Renewables, in combination with energy efficiency,

now form the leading edge of a far-reaching global energy transition.'

'Many developing economies will have the possibility to leapfrog fossil fuel based systems and centralized grids. Renewables will also be a powerful

vehicle of democratization because they make it possible to decentralize the

energy supply, empowering citizens, local communities, and cities.'

'The impact of the extraordinary growth in renewables has mostly been felt in the electricity sector. Since 2012, renewables have added more new power generation capacity than conventional sources of energy. Solar power added  more new capacity in 2017 than did coal, gas, and nuclear plants combined. Wind and solar now provide 6% of electricity generation worldwide, up from 0.2% in 2000. In the aggregate, renewables account for around a quarter of global electricity generation. 

Countries such as Denmark already generate more than half their electricity from variable renewable energy sources. In 2017, Costa Rica’s electricity was generated entirely from renewable energy for 300 days. For several days in the past year, the power systems of Germany, Portugal and Denmark were able to run entirely on renewables.'

 Electrification. Electricity accounts for 19% of total final energy consumption,

but its share is expected to grow as increased electrification of end-use sectors

takes place. The deployment of heat pumps and electric vehicles, for example,

permits electricity to be used for heating, cooling, and transport. Electricity

has been the fastest growing segment of final energy demand, growing two-thirds

faster than energy consumption as a whole since 2000. This trend is

set to continue. Since 2016, the power sector has attracted more investment

than the upstream oil and gas sectors that have traditionally dominated energy

investment, another reflection of the ongoing electrification of the world’s

economy.

This data is taken from the Shell Sky Scenario (2018), which has the merit of forecasting to 2100 and therefore projects the nature of the energy transformation over the course of the century.

[According to The Times [25th March 2019] the Royal Dutch Shell group, valued at close to £200 billion, wants to become the world's biggest electricity company by the 2030s]


 Six enabling trends drive the rapid deployment of renewables.

1. Declining Costs:  

The steep decline in costs of renewable energy and energy storage has surprised even the most optimistic observers. Once dismissed as too expensive to expand beyond niche markets,solar and wind can now beat conventional generation technologies on cost

in many of the world’s top markets, even without subsidies. 

Since 2010, the average cost of electricity from solar PV and wind energy has

fallen by 73% and 22% respectively. In countries as dissimilar as Chile and

Saudi Arabia, India and the United States, electricity is being produced in

optimal locations for around 30 US dollars per megawatt hour (MWh).

The cost of lithium-ion batteries, which are used in electric vehicles,

has fallen by 80% since 2010.

 Significant cost declines are expected to continue over the course of the next

decade. IRENA estimates that by 2025 the global weighted average cost of

electricity could fall by 26% from onshore wind, by 35% from offshore wind,

by at least 37% from concentrated solar power (CSP) technologies, and by

59% from solar photovoltaics (PV).18 The cost of stationary battery storage

could fall by up to 60%,19 and there is growing confidence that electric and

conventional vehicles will be sold at comparable prices by the mid-2020s.

2. Pollution and Climate Change

The World Health Organization estimates that nine out of every ten people in the world breathe polluted air that is hazardous to health and wellbeing, and that air pollution kills 7 million people every year, making it the fourth largest cause of death.

An analysis by IRENA has shown that deployment of renewable energy combined with improved

energy efficiency provides the most cost-effective way to achieve the 90% reduction in energy-related emissions that is required to meet the Paris Agreement target.

3. Renewable EnergyTargets

So far, 57 countries have developed plans to decarbonize their electricity

sector completely, and 179 have set national or state renewable energy targets.

4. Technological Innovations:

In the long term, next generation biofuels and renewable hydrogen

generated from electrolysis may permit renewables to extend into a

growing range of hard-to-electrify sectors, such as aviation, shipping and

heavy industry

New digital technologies, such as smart grids, the internet of things,

big data, and artificial intelligence, are being applied in the energy industry,

helping to raise its efficiency and accelerate the use of renewable energy

within emerging smart generation and distribution systems.

5. Corporate and Investor Action

Both Apple and Microsoft recently announced that their facilities

are completely powered by renewable energy. Many other companies, including

IKEA, Tata Motors and Walmart, have committed to source 100% of their

electricity consumption from renewables.

6. Public Opinion

Pope Francis has endorsed phasing out fossil fuels in

the encyclical 'Laudato Si′.

Public opinion is not only being expressed through words but also through direct

actions. Demonstrations against air pollution have taken place in numerous

cities, from Beijing to London. Approximately 15,000 Australian school children

took part in a school strike to demand action by their government against climate

change. New social movements, such as Extinction Rebellion and the Sunrise

Movement, are campaigning for radical action to tackle climate change

Litigation is on the rise too. A court in the Hague ordered the Dutch government

to reduce the Netherlands’ greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25% by

2020 compared to 1990 levels

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COUNTRIES

China is the biggest location for renewable energy investment, 
accounting for more than 45% of the

global total in 2017.

No country has put itself in a better position to become the world’s renewable energy superpower than China. In aggregate, it is now the world’s largest producer, exporter and installer of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles, placing it at the forefront of the global energy transition.

Germany leads the way with almost 31,000 renewable energy patents. Germany’s domestic Energiewende, or ‘energy transition’, has made the country a frontrunner in renewable energy deployment

India has set itself an ambitious target of 175 GW of renewables by 2022.

Iceland is a good example of the benefits that can accrue from an economic

transformation based on renewables. During the 20th century, it evolved from

being one of Europe’s poorest countries, highly dependent on imported coal

and oil, to a country with a high standard of living, which derives 100% of its

electricity from hydro and geothermal energy. The effective development

of its renewables has enabled Iceland to bolster its energy security, widen

its economic base, and attract new industries to the country, including aluminium

smelting, data storage and greenhouse agriculture

Some countries, such as Albania, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Norway, Paraguay and Tajikistan,

already obtain all or almost all of their electricity from hydropower, which is

an established technology that provides stability in the transmission system.

Others have achieved similar results using a mix of renewables. Brazil,

Costa Rica, New Zealand and Kenya, for example, generate more than 80%

of their electricity from a combination of hydro, geothermal, wind, biomass

and solar power.

Australia’s economically demonstrated solar and wind

energy resources are estimated to be 75% greater than its combined coal,

gas, oil and uranium resources.

 In the Atacama Desert, Chile has amongthe world’s best solar resources, as well as high potential or wind, hydropower, geothermal and ocean energy. In both cases, however, the remoteness of these locations will probably constrain electricity exports.

ENERGY INTERNETS and MICROGRIDS

Due to the falling cost of solar PV and wind power, as well as smart distribution

systems, almost anyone with a rooftop or some land can produce electricity,

either for self-consumption or for the grid. These developments will generate

a more diverse energy ecosystem. Local and distributed forms of energy

generation give households and communities more autonomy than centralized

grid systems.

As more people install solar panels, batteries and smart software, formerly

passive consumers of electricity may become consumers and producers of

electricity in an interconnected grid.Advances in communication technology

may lead to the emergence of an ‘energy internet’, allowing hundreds of millions

of people to produce electricity in their homes, offices and factories and share

it peer-to-peer

In 2016 private citizens in Germany owned 31.5% of installed renewable

power capacity, making them the largest ‘bloc’ of investors in the sector

In the United States, microgrids became popular after Hurricane Sandy

knocked out power for 8.5 million people in 21 states

Countries in Africa and South Asia have a golden opportunity to avoid expensive

fixed investments in fossil fuels and centralized grids by adopting mini-grids

and decentralized solar and wind energy deployed off-grid—just as they

jumped straight to mobile phones and obviated the need to lay expensive

copper-wired telephone networks.

CITIES

Cities occupy a central role in the energy transformation. By the middle of

this century, 70% of the world’s population is expected to live in cities. Cities

consume around two-thirds of generated energy and produce 70% of the

world’s carbon emissions. They are also especially vulnerable to the effects

of climate change, including coastal flooding and urban heat island effects.

At the same time, they have the means to shape the new energy landscape.

Cities are already taking decisive action. In 2017, more than one hundred

towns and cities were sourcing up to 70% of their electricity from renewables,

compared to 42 in 2015. Several capital cities are among them, including

Oslo (Norway), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Quito (Ecuador) and Wellington

(New Zealand). 

Yokohama, Japan’s second largest city, is deploying a smart

city project that has led to a roll out of smart grids, solar PV panels and electric

vehicles. New megacities are being announced and built to run entirely on

renewable electricity, such as Neom, which will be constructed near the Red

Sea and Aqaba Gulf.

Cities and local municipalities are also forming global alliances and networks,

including C40, ICLEI and the global covenant of mayors

MINERALS and METALS

The widespread adoption of renewable energy and related technologies, such

as solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and energy storage technologies,

will increase the demand for a range of minerals and metals required

for their production

The largest reserves of metals and minerals required for renewable

technologies are found in weak states with poor governance records. More

than 60% of the world’s cobalt supply originates in the Democratic Republic

of the Congo (DRC). 

In Colombia, a country in which the

longest-running internal armed conflict has taken place, various armed groups

have controlled and exploited illegal tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold mining

resources.

Efforts have been made to address the issue of so-called conflict minerals.

WATER

By 2050, the demand for water and food is expected to rise by over 50%.

The interplay between water, energy and food supply systems—the nexus—

creates major geopolitical challenges for countries at a time of accelerating

climate change.

Renewable forms of energy can help to reduce water stress. Renewables

require water withdrawals 200 times lower than conventional energy

On current trends, about 674 million people, mainly in Africa, could still be without power in 2030.

Estimates suggest that off-grid solutions (standalone and mini-grids) could supply approximately 60% of the additional generation needed to achieve the goal of universal energy access by 2030.

ANCIENT CITIES: AMAZONIA2 and GREAT PLAINS [USA]

Seven years ago this month, THE GENERALIST ran a long piece on the archaeological discoveries in Amazonia that showed evidence of a considerable number of  ancient settlements across the region that were much larger and more advanced than previous theories suggested, surrounded by areas that were extensively cultivated. SEE PREVIOUS POST 

So was interested to read a bang up to date summary of the latest evidence and theories in 'Finding the Real Eldorado' by Michael Marshall [New Scientist/19th Jan 2019].

Long before the arrival of Europeans, millions of people were living in Amazonia, building vast earthworks and  cultivating multitudes of plants and fish.

When the Europeans did arrive in the 1500s there were several reports of cities, road networks and cultivation. The mysteries of these lost cities fuelled many a gripping yarn and several expeditions searched for the legendary El Dorado without success. As a result, for many years, Amazonia was regarded as a pristine wilderness, with lush vegetation but poor soils that would not be able to support substantial human occupation.

Marshall says that this view changed in the 1990s. Fresh evidence of larger settlements and a new understanding of terra preta - patches of dark earth first discovered in the 1870s - emerged. This fertile soil is now thought to have been enriched by charcoal, created by burning waste including bones and seeds. However it only dates from 2,000 years ago and Amazonia was inhabited much longer than that.

Recent DNA samples of current Amazonian tribes has confirmed that colonists from east Asia, who first arrived in the Americas 17,000 years ago, quickly reached Amazonia, whose population began to expand  for the next 3,500 years. By 9,000 years ago, we now know that the Amazonians had domesticated 83 species of plants, including many that would become the most important crops in the world. There are traces from 4,500 years ago of fruit tree planting and rice growing. Large fish farms have been found.

It is clear that they also built substantial structures, principally out of soil.They never used stone and didn't have metal. Archaeologist Michael Heckenberger has spent 25 years mapping a substantial group of ancient settlements, home to some 50,000 people, that were linked by a network of roads.

It now seems that the entire southern Amazon belt [1800 kms long], was occupied by earth-building cultures from 1250-1500 AD.Their cities were linked networks of smaller clustered settlements woven into the fabric of the forest. They farmed fish and trees not wheat, barley and cattle.

Their population peaked in 1000 AD and began to decline over the next 50 years for reasons thatare not known..The best estimate is that there were 8-10 million people living in Amazonia by 1492, the year Columbus "discovered" America. When Europeans arrived, the rate of decline of the Amazonian population accelerated.

Modern deforestation has also revealed huge earthworks, further evidence of the extent of civilisations thousands of years ago. 

In 2010, a Finnish anthropologist Martti Pärssinen reported on his discovery of more than 300 large-scale geometrical patterns - mainly consisting of mounds and moats - in the Brazilian state of Acre alone. This construction feat has been compared to the scale of the Egyptian pyramid building. Radiocarbon dating conducted on the construction show that the earliest ones were built some 2.000 years ago.

Denise Schaan, co-author of the study and anthropologist at the Federal University of Pará, in Belém, Brazil.“We are talking of enormous structures, with diameters ranging from 100 to 300 meters, connected by straight orthogonal roads. They are strategically located on plateaux tops above the river valleys. Their builders took advantage of the natural topography in order to construct spaces that were full of symbolic meaning.”

“The geoglyphs are an astonishing discovery...They are the vestiges of a sophisticated pre-Columbian monument-building society.” 

[Source: ZME Science]

See Also: Under The Jungle by David Grann  [New Yorker. 7th Jan 2010]

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CAHOKIA and ETZANOA

There is a similarity between this story and discoveries made in the Great Plains of America. Again my main source is another excellent piece 'The Missing city on the Plains' by Daniel Cossins (New Scientist/1 Dec 2018). Most people will think that the vast grasslands of the Midwest were peopled by tribes of Native Americans who led a nomadic existence in small groups.

This view was disproved by the discovery of Cahokia, America's first city, centred on a large grassy knoll directly across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, Missouri. A cluster of small villages of the Mississippian people in the 9th century expanded over the next 200 years into a city of 20,000 people. Cossins writes: 'A 30m high terraced structure hewn from the clay-heavy soil, overlooked a grand plaza, outside of which people lived in thatched huts scattered across the landscape.' It was abandoned by the mid-14th century.

According to Wikipedia, the site is now a historic park covering 2,200 acres (890 ha) /3.5 sq mls (9 sq km),  containing about 80 mounds. In its heyday,  the ancient city was much larger, covering 6 sq miles (16 sq km) and included about 120 man-made earthen mounds.

'Cahokia was the largest and most influential urban settlement of the Mississippian culture, which developed advanced societies across much of what is now the central and southeastern United States, beginning more than 1,000 years before European contact. Today, Cahokia Mounds is considered the largest and most complex archaeological site north of the great pre-Columbian cities in Mexico.'

 'Archaeologists estimate the city's population at between 6,000 and 40,000 at its peak, with more people living in outlying farming villages that supplied the main urban center.  If the highest population estimates are correct, Cahokia was larger than any subsequent city in the United States until the 1780s, when Philadelphia's population grew beyond 40,000. Moreover, according to the same population estimates, the population of 13th-century Cahokia was equal to or larger than the population of 13th-century London.'

The discovery of the second largest prehistoric settlement Etzanoa in modern-day Kansas can be traced back to the historic records of a 1601 Spanish expedition across what is now Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.Cossins reports: 'The Spanish recounted how they were led to a settlement of people they called the Rayados so that it would have taken two days to walk across it. They called it Etzanoa and reckoned it was home to 20,000 people.' 

Further testimonies of the expedition and an enigmatic map have come to light, piquing the interest of anthropologists Donald Blakeslee who went out into the field to follow-up previous speculations that Etzanoa lay at the confluence of the Arkansas and Walnut rivers in southern Kansas. By matching clues in the documents to the landscape, excavations have uncovered evidence of clusters of houses surrounded by gardens and some metal objects which may be Spanish. Further excavations to follow.

(Photo by William S. Soule/Wikimedia Commons)

According to an account in La Crosse International in August 2018: 'Centuries ago, people lived there in thatched, beehive-shaped houses that ran for miles along local riverbeds, the 75-year-old said. [Blakeslee] bases such claims on the unearthing in recent years of a huge trove of pottery, arrowheads, stone scrapers and other relics along a five-mile stretch along the banks of the Walnut and Arkansas rivers.'

Two videos on the Wichita Eagle website: Blakeslee refers to other discoveries: a settlement of 10,000 people in West Ohio and another in North Dakota.

THE ART OF THE MIMEOGRAPH: A SYMPOSIUM /ALT GAR BRA

It's taken THE GENERALIST a week to get around to writing about the Mimeograph Symposium at the University of Westminster campus on London's Marylebone Road, in a giant industrial basement area, painted white, three floors down.

This picture was taken the afternoon before the event started. Just loaded and checked the Powerpoint presentation - on two screens. All looked great and I could feel some adrenaline flowing. I turned round and welcomed the absent audience. My friend Peter Messer commented on Facebook: 'He's not the Messiah, he's just a very naughty boy.' Brilliant! Enjoyed the whole experience.

'The stencil duplicator or mimeograph machine (often abbreviated to mimeo) is a low-cost duplicating machine that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper... Mimeographs...were a common technology in printing small quantities, as in office work, classroom materials, and church bulletins. Early fanzines were printed with this technology, because it was widespread and cheap. In the late 1960s, mimeographs began to be gradually displaced by photocopying.' [Wikipedia]

Mimeographed Programme
printed on-site

ALT GÅR BRA

Alt Går Bra is a group of visual artists researching the intersections between art and politics through discursive events, exhibitions, and publications. Their title is Norwegian for Everything Goes Well.

T H E • AR T • OF T H E MIMEOGRAPH
International conference convened by Alt Gar Bra at the University of Westminster, 7-8th February 2019, 9am-6pm, Ambika P3, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

P RO G RAMME
Thursday, 7th February
8:45 Welcome and arrivals. Tea & coffee
9:10 Opening by Alt Gar Bra and Senior Lecturer Jane Tankard

9:20 Alt Gar Bra Technology and Labor, A 21st Century Artistic Experiment With a 20th Century Tool

10:15 John May  The Generalist Archive's Mimeo Publications, History of the Underground Press Syndicate and UK Publications

11:20 Elizabeth Haven Hawley Duplicating for the Movement 

12:15 Jess Baines Community Activism, Papers and Printshops
14:00 Teal Triggs Zines and the Graphic Language of Duplication

[In reality,Teal Triggs gave her interesting talk on the great punk zines [Ripped & Torn/Sniffing Glue etc] in the 12:15 slot. Then we had lunch and I had  to leave.

14:55 Rob Hansen & Oscar Mac-Fall The Mimeograph and Science Fiction Fandom in the UK

[Got to talk with Rob who showed me some copies from his massive archive of historic SF mags. He is one of three major collectors in the UK of this prolific stream of small print publications. The graphic cover art is amazing in many cases]

15:50 Video Screening Human Mimeo: MidAmeriCon (1976)

Friday 8th February
9:20 Lawrence Upton Writers Forum or How to Use the Gestetner Duplicator to Try to Change the World

10:15 Bruce Wilkinson Hidden Culture, Forgotten History: Little Poetry Magazines, Diverse Countercultures and Their Lasting Impact

11:20 Douglas Field: A Paper Exhibition in Words, Pages, Spaces, Holes, Edges and Images: Jeff Nuttall, William Burroughs and My Own Mag

[Douglas is based at Manchester University and was recently involved on the revived and republished edition of Jeff Nutall's '60s classic 'Bomb Culture'. SEE PREVIOUS POST ]

12:15 Ueno Hisami Mimeograph: The Fertile Field Between Industry and Art in Modern Japan

14:00 Alessandro Ludovico The Mimeograph and Post-digital Print

15:00 David Mayor & Dr. Amy Tobin Beau Geste Press: A Community of Duplicators Doing, Discovering and Disseminating

15:55 Conference closing by Alt Gar Bra 16:15

Closing Performance by Cephalopedia  Kitchin Publishing - Chopping up the Past and Stapling it Together: A Homage to Martha Hellion and Takako Saito, and in memoriam Felipe Ehrenberg

Arts Council England, Norwegian Arts Council, OCA, Bergen City Council, Norwegian Visual Artists Association, Norwegian Embassy in London. In partnership with the University of Westminster. Printed on a Gestetner 366 and typed on an Olympia 7.6 De Luxe.

Big Thanks to Oscar and ALT GRA BAR. Thanks to Keane, Raphael, Jerome and Richard who sent me a Guardian article by Sam Leith on the boom in books on how to speak in public  - and a message on a postcard.

ACTIVISM: THE TOLPUDDLE MARTYRS, THE ANGRY BRIGADE and GRAPHIC PROTEST

The Generalist enjoys the chancy nature of fishing for good DVDs in charity shops. This 3-DVD set is a treasure - the 1986 film 'Comrades' about the Tolpuddle Martyrs (3hrs 3mins) directed by Bill Douglas, in Blue Ray and DVD formats, and a great third disc of Extras, mainly interviews with the director. It was a great pleasure to watch the film for the first time with Shirley Collins, widely regarded as the queen of British folk music, who had never seen it either.

The Tolpuddle Martyrs site is a good place to get up to speed on the basic story of how, in 1834, a group of farm workers in west Dorset formed what is widely considered to be one of the first trade unions in Britain. At that time unions were legal and were growing fast but the six leaders of the Tolpuddle workers were arrested for taking an oath of secrecy. Sentenced to be transported to Australia for seven years, their case triggered a massive national protest, with thousands marching through London. Numerous petitions and meetings calling for their release helped to strengthened the union movement. There is annual festival celebrating their memory in Tolpuddle every year (19-21st July).

This little-seen film is a curio of great interest. The main part of the narrative is based in the Dorset landscape and is beautifully conceived and filmed on rich coloured film stock. The six largely unknown lead actors are superb, as are the women and children. Their suffering and emotional lives are realistically portrayed, the period is cleverly evoked, the costumes are great and the narrative skilfully unfolds, capturing your deep attention and touching your sensitivity.

The second shorter section, shot in Australia, is, by contrast, harder to like.The prisoners are split up and we follow their different fates. The landscapes are dramatic but the filming and the stories are rambling and less skilfully told and edited, with throwaway cameos by Vanessa Redgrave and James Fox.

A delightful aspect of the film reflects Bill Douglas passionate interest in the early years of optical instruments leading up to the silent cinema days. Thus characters appear throughout the film from that early world of moving images. Alex Norton who plays 11 roles in total, opens the film as a travelling magic lantern entertainer, and is later seen as a Diorama showman, a silhouettist and a mad photographer.

 As well as making films, Bill Douglas (b.1934) and his friend Peter Jewell assembled a remarkable collection of over 50,000 items which, after Bills death in 1991, was gifted to the University of Exeter to found The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum that now houses one of the largest collections in Britain of material relating to the history of the moving image.

Bill's other work for which he was best known was  an influential trilogy which harks back to his impoverished upbringing in the early 1940s in Scotland. According to IMDB : 'Cinema was his only escape - he paid for it with the money he made from returning empty jam jars - and this escape is reflected most closely at this time of his life as an eight-year-old living on the breadline with his half-brother and sick grandmother in a poor mining village...Later he works in a mine and in a tailor's shop nefore he is conscripted into the RAF, and goes to Egypt, where he is befriended by Robert, whose undemanding companionship releases Jamie from self-pity.'

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On the Acknowledgments page at the back of this remarkable novel (thanks to Mick B for the tip-off), the author Hari Kunzru writes:

'Certain things are always erased or distorted in a novel and this is no exception. It seems worth saying that it is not a representation of the politics or personalities of the Angry Brigade, which carried out a series of bomb attacks on targets including the Police National Computer and the Employment Secretary's house in the early seventies. Readers who want information about the Angry Brigade are directed to the papers of the Stoke Newington Eight Defence Group, and writing by Gordon Carr, Jean Weir, John Barker and Stuart Christie.' 

I remember those days at the end of the 60s/early 70s when everything was happening every week and it was scary and exciting.

This novel captures the energy of that time and sweeps you along right from Page One as we join the assault on the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, guarded by riot police with truncheons on horseback.Hunzru's novel has several narratives interweaving with each other, back and forth, and several mysteries. I was hooked for three or four days. A great read.

THE ANGRY BRIGADE on WIKIPEDIA
THE ANGRY BRIGADE ON YOUTUBE

Look back in anger

Martin Bright The Observer/Sun 3 Feb 2002

They were the British Baader Meinhof, '70s icons of the radical left. Thirty years ago, the Angry Brigade launched a string of bombing attacks against the heart of the British Establishment. No one was killed, but after a clampdown on the 'counter culture' and amid accusations of a Bomb Squad 'fix', four radicals were sentenced to 10 years in prison. Now, for the very first time, two of the Angries break their vow of silence.'

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This is the Activism issue of VAROOM, the bi-annual magazine of theAssociation of Illustrators.This issue is still available here. One of the keynote essays 'Graphic Protest'  written by Margaret Cubbage, an independent curator, explains the role graphics have played in protest and campaigns for change. This is a valuable issue, beautifully designed.

SF MASTERS: CIXIN LUI, STANISLAW LEM and JODOROWSKY'S DUNE

 


This extraordinary science fiction trilogy by CIXIN LIU, China's leading sf writer, is a mind-enlarging experience. For night after night over a period of a month I was in the grip of this gargantuan tale, swept along by Cixin's powerful imaginings. It is clear why people have drawn comparisons to the work of H.G. Wells, Olaf Stapleton and Arthur C. Clarke. Chinese sci-fi dates from 1898 but it wasn't until the 1990s that an SF renaissance, led by Cixin, emerged. The three volumes get chunkier as the scale of the story expands exponentially through space and time.

In a great piece in the London Review of Books by Nick Richardson entitled 'Even what doesn’t happen is epic' he perfectly sums up this masterwork as follows:

'The trilogy concerns the catastrophic consequences of humanity’s attempt to make contact with extraterrestrials (it turns out that the reason we haven’t heard from aliens yet is that we’re the only species thick enough to reveal our own location in the universe). It is one of the most ambitious works of science fiction ever written. The story begins during the Cultural Revolution and ends 18,906,416 years into the future. There is a scene in ancient Byzantium, and a scene told from the perspective of an ant. The first book is set on Earth, though several of its scenes take place in virtual reality representations of Qin dynasty China and ancient Egypt; by the end of the third book, the stage has expanded to encompass an intercivilisational war that spans not only the three-dimensional universe but other dimensions too.'

 According to a story published by The Verge website:

'An adaptation of Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body trilogy was filmed in 2015, only to sit on a shelf because of post-production structure and budgeting problems. And while there have been persistent reports that Amazon wants to adapt the series (for a mind-boggling $1 billion), Chinese studio YooZoo says it’s the only rights holder for any potential TV or film production.' 

The full story 'The Three-Book Problem: Why Chinese Sci Fi still Struggles' by Yin Yijun

[Jul 09, 2018] can be found on the Sixth Tone web site

The title story of Cixin's short story collection 'The Wandering Earth' has been turned into China's first big budget-science film directed by Guo Fan.

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STANISLAW LEM intrigued me initially as the author of Solaris. Tarkovsky's movie of the book came out if I remember correctly just before or after 2001. The hardback of the book was published by Faber & Faber in 1971 but I read it first in this 1981 King Penguin edition along with two other titles. In 1982 came another one volume book of three tales.

















In 2018, in the bookshop in St Pancras station, I needed to buy a fresh novel. Out of the overwhelming selection I chose Lem's last great novel Fiasco. An expedition has been sent to a distant planet to make contact with a new civilisation. Things are not as they imagined. Brilliant.

According to Simon Ings, in a tribute piece entitled 'The Man With The Future Inside Him' in the 60th Anniversary issue of New Scientist (19th Nov 2016), Lem had a 'pessimistic attitude to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It's not that alien intelligences aren't out there, Lem says, because they almost certainly are. But they won't be our sort of intelligences... extraterrestrial versions of reason and reasonableness may look very different to our own.'


His first novel 'Hospital of the Transfiguration' was followed by 17 others, among them Solaris, in his most prolific period from 1956 to 1968. By the time he died in 2006, he had sold close to 40 million books in more than 40 languages and was celebrated by the likes of Alvin Toffler, Carl Sagan and Daniel Dennett.

He had no time for most sf visions of the future. 'Meaningful prediction' he wrote, 'does not lie in serving up the present larded with startling improvements or revelations in lieu of the future'

Ings writes 'He wanted more: to grasp the human adventure in all its promise, tragedy and grandeur. He devised whole new chapters to the human story, not happy endings...'Twenty years before the term "virtual reality" appeared, Lem was already writing about its likely educational and cultural effects.'

He concludes: 'As far as I can tell, Lem got everything - everything - right'

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ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY, Chilean filmmaker and Tarot expert, set out to create the greatest mind and soul blower of a movie based on Frank Herbert's blockbuster sf book Dune. 

Working with two French producers who were raising the £15m to realise Jodorowsky's visions, he set out to recruit a stellar group of spiritual warriors.

Jodorowsky had a reputation for crazy films - El Topo and The Holy Mountain - so the producers suggested that, to build confidence with the studios. Jodorowsky should storyboard the whole film, with all the camera angles.

The project took him 2 1/2 years. His first recruit was Jean Giraud known most widely as Moebius, the great French comic artist who could draw as fast as Jodorowsky could speak.

He tried to tie up with sfx maestro Douglas Trumbull but they fell out. But he did get Dan O'Bannon sfx producer  who masterminded 'Dark Star.', directed by John Carpenter and Chris Fosse, leading sf spaceship designer and painter.

He hired David Carradine, persuaded Pink Floyd to do some music, tried to enlist Dali and his current muse Amanda Lear, got Giger to produce a set of drawings, found other actors at Warhol's Factory, and even sweet-talked Orson Welles into playing a part.

In the end, they were £5 million short and the project was cancelled in 1975. Some ten copies of the giant storyboarded film book were produced and it's clear that it had a big influence on a generation of projects - including of course the David Lynch film version which heavily borrowed or stole from it. Star Wars may have borrowed the light sabre idea the documentary suggests.  Scenes of the Holy Grail ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark' are compared with drawings from the big book.

Damn O' Bannon of course went on to concieve Alien and worked with Giger to create a major sf  classic. Giger's paintings for Jodorowsky are compared with scenes from Prometheus.

Jodorowsky and Moebius repurposed many of the ideas from their storyboard of Dune and built it into the three-volume Incal comic classic.