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Coffee, Cacao, Peanuts, Sugar and Mango: German Botanical Teaching Posters, n.d. Botany Archives of Oakes Ames. Via Harvard University Herbaria

#botanical illustration #scientific illustration #botanical #plants #food

Miles Johnston

#art #miles johnston

birds / mice / veggies / snails / fungi / plant + bugs / leaves + butterflies

#scientific illustration #color plates #art #botanical illustration #food

noelbadgespugh

aerial mum

#scientific illustration #pen #botanical #botanical illustration

Alice Carrier

#art #tattoo #scientific illustration #botanicals #fruit #food #alice carrier #wonderland pdx

Pteropus niger (Greater Mascarene Flying Fox, Mauritan Flying Fox, Mauritian Flying Fox, Mauritius Fruit Bat)

"Like other Pteropus species in the region, this species is threatened by cyclones, the loss of roosting and feeding trees, and by persecution and/or hunting. Although no major cyclone has affected bats on Mauritius in recent years, the risk remains high and climate change forecasts suggest that there will be an increase in the frequency and intensity of cyclones in this region. Cyclone damage can result in high levels of starvation and mortality, as well as loss of roost trees. Elsewhere, such cyclones have caused massive declines (up to 99%) in island fruit bat populations. In the previous 10 years six intense tropical cyclones had affected Mauritius. Note that, for example, a cyclone in the 1970s reduced the population of the endemic fruit bat on the neighbouring island of Rodrigues to less than 1% of its current population (Powell and Wehnelt 2003). Similarly a cyclone in 1988 has been suggested as the cause of a decline of over 99% in the population of the endemic fruit bat of Christmas Island in the eastern Indian Ocean, but where, perhaps from a combination of factors, there has been little recovery since (Richards and Hall 2012)."

images here and here and here

#iucn red list #vulnerable #climate change #bat #mammal #future

We cannot simply be passive. We must choose whose interests are best: those who want to keep things going as they are or those who want to work to make a better world. If we choose the latter, we must seek out the tools we will need. History is just one tool to shape our understanding of our world. And every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

History is a Weapon

#history #storytelling

History isn't what happened, but the stories of what happened and the lessons these stories include. The very selection of which histories to teach in a society shapes our view of how what is came to be and, in turn, what we understand as possible.

History is a Weapon

#history #storytelling

wo/manifesto

W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy) works to draw attention to economic inequalities that exist in the arts, and to resolve them.

W.A.G.E. has been formed because we, as visual + performance artists and independent curators, provide a work force.

W.A.G.E. recognizes the organized irresponsibility of the art market and its supporting institutions, and demands an end of the refusal to pay fees for the work we’re asked to provide: preparation, installation, presentation, consultation, exhibition and reproduction.

W.A.G.E. refutes the positioning of the artist as a speculator and calls for the remuneration of cultural value in capital value.

W.A.G.E. believes that the promise of exposure is a liability in a system that denies the values of our labor.

As an unpaid labor force within a robust art market from which others profit greatly, W.A.G.E. recognizes an inherent exploitation and demands compensation.

W.A.G.E. calls for an address of the economic inequalities that are prevalent, and proactively preventing the art worker’s ability to survive within the greater economy.

W.A.G.E. advocates for developing an environment of mutual respect between artist and institution.

W.A.G.E. demands payment for making the world more interesting.

source

Founded in 2008, Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) is a New York-based activist group whose advocacy is currently focused on regulating the payment of artist fees by nonprofit art institutions and establishing a sustainable model for best practices between artists and the institutions that contract their labor. source

#w.a.g.e.#art #artist #manifesto #wo/manifesto

New Occupy Museums Manifesto

Note: this text was written by consensus by the Occupy Museums group, and represents an update of the original manifesto of October 20th, 2011.

WE OCCUPY MUSEUMS TO RECLAIM SPACE FOR MEANINGFUL CULTURE BY AND FOR THE 99%. WE BELIEVE THAT ART AND CULTURE ARE THE SOUL OF THE COMMONS. ART IS NOT A LUXURY!

On September 17th, 2011, we occupied Wall Street because the wealthiest 1% who control banks and big corporations broke trust with the American people. Motivated by a quest for power they robbed the national treasury, bought off our democracy, and made a mockery of the justice system. They left us little choice but to step out in the streets, find each other, and begin imaging and building a new system.

We saw a direct connection between the corruption of high finance and the corruption of “high culture.” For example, MoMA shares board members with Sotheby’s auction house, where the value of art is synonymous with speculation. Sotheby’s auction house is now locking out unionized art handlers, refusing to pay them health care during a year of record profits. As art workers, we stand in solidarity with this struggle. Our labor will be truly valued only when we kick the addiction to obscene wealth that characterizes the American and international art world today.

So we began to occupy museums in New York City. We danced and chanted at their doors, and held open assemblies on museum steps to free up a space of dialogue and fearlessness for the 99%. More and more people joined us. Museums must be held accountable to the public. They help create our historical narratives and common symbols. They wield enormous power within our culture and over the entire art market. We occupy museums because museums have failed us. Like our government, which no longer represents the people, museums have sold out to the highest bidder.

This struggle will not be easy. We are beginning to unmask a cultural system of inequality and exploitation which has ancient roots. But we will not wait for future generations to take up this struggle. We are working together to replace the exchange of capital with a creative exchange for and by the 99 %. As we seek horizontal spaces for dialogue and collaboration, we begin to fill the hollowness of the capitalist art market with the warmth of meaning and the conviction that art is a necessity, not a luxury.

source

#activism #occupy #occupy museums #art #artist #noah fischer #manifesto

Meet 74-Year Old “Drag’n Fly”: Oldest Female Appalachian Trail Thru-Hiker

#badass ladies #appalachian trail

From Jon Rafman's 9 Eyes

#art #jon rafman #9 eyes

6 Ideas for a Cop-Free World

full article on RollingStone.com by JOSÉ MARTÍN

1. Unarmed mediation and intervention teams

2. The decriminalization of almost every crime

3. Restorative Justice

4. Direct democracy at the community level

5. Community patrols

6. Here's a crazy one: mental health care

#police #police brutality #america #rolling stone #JOSÉ MARTÍN

In the 18th century, Edmund Burke described the role of the press as a Fourth Estate checking the powerful. Was that ever true? It certainly doesn't wash any more. What we need is a Fifth Estate: a journalism that monitors, deconstructs and counters propaganda and teaches the young to be agents of people, not power. We need what the Russians called perestroika - an insurrection of subjugated knowledge. I would call it real journalism.

From "...John Pilger's address to the Logan Symposium, "Building an Alliance Against Secrecy, Surveillance & Censorship," organized by the Centre for Investigative Journalism, London, December, 2014." posted as the Trouthout op-ed "John Pilger | War by Media and the Triumph of Propaganda" 12/15/14

"John Pilger is an Australian-born, London-based journalist, filmmaker and author. For his foreign and war reporting, ranging from Vietnam and Cambodia to the Middle East, he has twice won Britain's highest award for journalism. For his documentary films, he won a British Academy Award and an American Emmy. In 2009, he was awarded Australia's human rights prize, the Sydney Peace Prize. John Pilger's films can be viewed on his website." source

#journalism #propaganda #john pilger #truthout #fourth estate

books books books

NONFICTION

Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics by Timothy Morton (quoted in this Adbusters article)

Time for Outrage! by Stéphane Hessel

This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein

Black Elk Speaks (E)

Endgame: Volume 1 by Derrick Jensen (E)

The Greening of America by Charles Reich, "His message was that truth-telling and political action had failed and only "culture" and introspection could change the world."

FICTION

Ursula K. Le Guin

Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins (E)

Replay by Ken Grimwood (Seth Godin, TGD)

The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk (E)

The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (E)

#list #to do #recommended reading

The Harry Potter Alliance

Mission statement The Harry Potter Alliance turns fans into heroes. We’re changing the world by making activism accessible through the power of story. Since 2005, we’ve engaged millions of fans through our work for equality, human rights, and literacy.

"The Alliance is a nonprofit that reasons that, if Hogwarts obsessives are willing to camp out overnight for a book, they might be persuaded to channel their passion in more productive ways. As the group’s Web site puts it, “Unironic enthusiasm is a renewable resource.” The Alliance claims more than a hundred thousand supporters; its campaigns have included Not in Harry’s Name, a crusade demanding that “Potter”-branded chocolate be made with fair-trade cocoa beans, and “The Dark Lord Waldemart,” a YouTube series on Walmart’s labor practices, which has been viewed three million times." - We Shall Overcome by Reeves Wiedeman, 12/22/14 issue The New Yorker

#harry potter alliance #activism #storytelling #the new yorker

"The governor did it because he was pushed hard by activists. Look at the weather vanes, but respect the wind."

Rebecca Solnit, on New York's Fracking Ban

Rebecca Solnit (born June 24, 1961) is a writer who lives in San Francisco, California. She has written on a variety of subjects, including the environment, politics, place, and art.[1] Solnit is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine, where bi-monthly she writes the magazine's "Easy Chair" essay. source

Quoted Democracy Now, December 19th 2014, New York Says No to Fracking: State Bans Drilling Following Grassroots Outcry over Public Health

#activism #rebecca solnit #fracking #new york #envionment #environmentalism #democracy now

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