News Posts (do not delete)
EXHIBITION: Reclamation: Artists’ Books on the Environment, San Francisco Center for the Book, San Francisco, CA
San Francisco Center for the Book and San Francisco Public Library host Reclamation: Artists' Books on the Environment, a juried exhibition of artists' books exploring our relationship to the environment at this moment on the planet.
Environmental concerns demand increasing attention, from rising temperatures and dangerous weather events, to crises in water quality, to multiplying fires...the list goes on, echoed around the globe. Book artists create works that involve, educate, and inspire action. Book art takes many forms. Reclamation: Artists' Books on the Environment seeks to inspire and educate viewers to reflect on climate change and its impacts locally, nationally, and internationally. At the same time, the exhibition endeavors to avoid dualistic arguments common to today’s divisive political scene.
This exhibition takes place under the umbrella of The Codex Foundation's EXTRACTION: Art on the Edge of the Abyss call to action.
PUBLICATIONS: Monthly Photo Magazine, Seoul, South Korea, May issue, 2021
EXHIBITION: Place and Beyond, Seoul, South Korea
Exhibition: ‘Place and beyond’
Book exhibition ‘Place and beyond’ composed of recent Datz’s publications is held at the D’Ark Room in Guui-dong, Seoul. Along the process of contemplating life and weaving it into a single book, there are poems derived from the boundaries of the inside and the outside, the reality and the ideal. We invite you to the time and space of the artists who may stand here but imagine the beyond.
Artists and Books:
Katherine Yungmee Kim ‘Longitude’
Jane Baldwin ‘Only the River Remains’
Linda Connor ‘Constellations’
Bryant Austin ‘sun, water, being’
Phyllis Galembo ‘SODO’
Mary Daniel Hobson ‘Offerings’
Barbara Bosworth ‘Sea of Clouds’
Yoonsuk Kim ‘Here to Stay’ Min Kyung ‘Her and My Parabola’
* Date: 2021.4.30 - 8.31 *
Place: D’Ark Room / D’Front Space, Seoul, South Korea
CATALOG: Extraction: the Megazine: Catalog and Exhibition Guide: See Part 5, p. 482-483
EXTRACTION: THE MEGAZINE
The “Megazine” is the CODEX Foundation’s forthcoming publication for Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss, widely available in early 2021. Like the Extraction Project itself, this book is many different things at once. Partly a group catalog of extraction-related artwork, each artist or creator’s individual contribution documents their own personal investigations into the extraction question, addressing a specific issue or set of issues under the broader umbrella of the Extraction Project.
The project is by no means limited to the visual arts—in these pages you will also find poetry, critical writings, philosophical treatises, manifestos, musical scores, conversations, historical or found photographs, and much more. The words and images collected here can thus be seen as discrete stories and aesthetic investigations that nonetheless make up part of a larger ongoing story in which we are all participants (the reader included).
A number of the submissions printed here offer snapshots of research projects that are ongoing, while others provide merely a small window into a larger body of work. For this reason the reader is encouraged to dig deeper, and to regularly check the Extraction website for the latest updates as the project continues to expand and develop after the printing and distribution of this volume. Our goal is to distribute 5,000 total copies of the publication for free to all the participating galleries, museums and exhibition spaces, before the beginning of the main Extraction program. Distribution of the Megazine will bring free publicity for participating venues, not to mention the hundreds of artists who have contributed art work to the publication.
PDF VERSIONS
PART 1: PREFACE, INTRODUCTION, WORDS ON THE EDGE
PART 2: SELECTED EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS
PART 3: COAL, OIL, AND NATURAL GAS
PART 4: OPEN PIT MINING: COPPER, LEAD, SILVER, GOLD, RARE EARTH METALS
PART 5: WATER, OCEAN PLASTIC, DEFORESTATION, URANIUM, BIODIVERSITY AND SPECIES DEATH
SAMPLE PAGES FROM THE MEGAZINE:
ARTICLE: African Feminisms and Black Feminist Thought, by B. Belaineh, April 14, 2016
AfroCentricity, Sisterhood and African Feminisms: An African Woman’s Standpoint in Black Feminist Thought by B. Belaineh
*African Women: Women in Africa and the African Diaspora
Everyone that’s ever been to Africa writes about African women, but rarely do we see African women become storytellers of their own narratives (Mekgwe, 2008). A quick google search with the term ‘Africa and Women’ reveals the West’s obsession with stereotypical images of African women: destitute, dependent, and uneducated. What do we know of African women besides the conditions ascribed on to them ? It seems that the terms ‘African’ and ‘Feminist’ were often not concurrently used, until very recently when Nigerian writer Chimanda Ngozi Adiche popularized African Feminism in her famous TED Talk and essay “Why we should all be Feminists”.
Kara Women Speak, Photographer: Jane Baldwin
ANNOUNCEMENT: Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss, Summer & Fall of 2021
EXTRACTION: Art on the Edge of the Abyss exhibitions will take place in multiple locations throughout the U.S. and abroad during the Summer and Fall of 2021—a multimedia, multi-venue, cross-border art intervention that will investigate extractive industry in all of its forms (from mining and drilling to the reckless exploitation of water, soil, trees, marine life, and other natural resources). The project will expose and interrogate extraction’s negative social and environmental consequences, from the damage done to people, especially indigenous and disenfranchised communities…
PODCAST: In conversation with Ian Weldon, author and host of Outerfocus 60 Podcast Newcastle, England, June 12, 2020
Outerfocus turns 60.
I hope that you are all well during what is becoming a very troubled time, on a global scale. I believe that there is a different future on the other side and this ‘down time’ can help us to focus on what that will mean.
This week I’m afforded the opportunity to talk with the very wonderful, Jane Baldwin about her long term project about women, culture, human rights and the environmental issues that threaten the communities of Ethiopia’s Omo River Valley and Kenya’s Lake Turkana watershed.
I’d rather not get into it here but this conversation has made me think. Especially about what else I could be doing moving forward. I very much hope that you enjoy this conversation and the stories and insight herein.
“They think that we’re not educated, but we know that whenever they open their mouths they say nothing but lies”
Jane Baldwin, an American artist and educator, uses black and white film and audio recordings to document her photographic work. Baldwin’s most recent project Kara Women Speak is a multi-sensory, immersive body of work about women, culture, human rights and the environmental issues that threaten the communities of Ethiopia’s Omo River Valley and Kenya’s Lake Turkana watershed. Her advocacy for the human rights and environmental concerns of the Omo River Valley and Kenya’s Lake Turkana watershed is based on her lived experiences in the field and represents over ten years of fieldwork—2005-2014.
Initially, Baldwin traveled to Ethiopia’s Omo River Valley as a photographer. Her advocacy for the human rights and environmental concerns of Ethiopia’s Omo River Valley and Kenya’s Lake Turkana watershed developed slowly and are based on her 10 years of annual travel to the region. These experiences became an entry into the issues and fate of the communities of the Omo River Valley and Lake Turkana watershed. The project has become an overlay of women’s stories told through photography, video, ambient sounds, and recorded interviews. Her goal has been to give voice to the vulnerable and reveal the humanity of the women and their communities whose stories might otherwise disappear.
Baldwin has been able to provide additional opportunities for the women’s stories to be heard—stories of fear and concern about their future. Since 2014, she had continued to work on behalf of the indigenous people of the Omo River through museum exhibitions and collaborations with international NGOs.
Baldwin is a founding board member of PhotoAlliance San Francisco, California;
2012 - 2018, a member of the board of directors of International Rivers, Oakland, California; BA English Literature, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington; photography, UC Berkeley, San Francisco campus. Baldwin resides in Sonoma, California.
© Jane Baldwin. Young Kwegu mother, Omo River, Ethiopia, 2005
Omo River, Southwestern Ethiopia, 2010
Aerial of the Omo River, Ethiopia, 2009
WEBINAR: In conversation with Cleary Vaughan-Lee, ED, Global Oneness Project, Inverness, CA, May 21, 2020
Webinar Interview with Photographer Jane Baldwin
I've always been intrigued by the way places change over time. This is one component that we are including in our new lesson plans. We will be releasing the first batch in the coming weeks. How are the people and places featured in our short documentary films and photo essays experiencing change and what are the factors that precipitate that change?
We will be exploring this topic with photographer Jane Baldwin in our next community storyteller conversation event this Thursday, May 21th at 11am/PST. Her photo essay "Kara Women Speak" documents the lives of the Kara tribe living in the Omo River Valley, located in southwestern Ethiopia. The Omo River is the main vein of the Omo River watershed and extends more than 400 miles to feed 90 percent of Lake Turkana's water, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Kenya. Over the past decade, Jane traveled to this region photographing and recording stories from the women of Indigenous communities.
Her work is an intimate portrayal of the women who have lived for centuries unaffected by colonialism or modernity. She writes, “It’s my hope this photo essay will encourage interest in the issues facing the people of Lake Turkana and Ethiopia’s Omo River Valley. The global drive for dwindling natural resources, and destruction of healthy ecosystems, of water, soil, and air will potentially affect us all.”
A former member of the board of directors of the non-profit International Rivers, Jane will share stories and photographs from her recent trips to the Omo River Valley, a place that has experienced drastic changes due to a massive hydroelectric dam and land grabs.
Jane will also share some photography tips for those students who are entering our student photography contest. Please do bring your questions to the conversation or send them to us in advance. If you can't join us, register and we'll send you the recording. Sign language interpreters will be available during the live event.
I hope you can join us!
All the best,
Cleary Vaughan-Lee
Executive Director
Global Oneness Project
Photo by Jane Baldwin
Discussion with photographer Jane Baldwin
FILM: Kara Women Speak | Omo River Valley, Ethiopia, 2010-2020
FILM: Kara Women Speak
ARTICLE: hundrED | Global Oneness Project
Cultures around the world are vanishing at a rapid rate. Unique forms of cultural knowledge—language, myths and stories, rituals, music, artifacts, traditional dress, and unique agricultural methods—are at risk. According to UNESCO, half of the languages spoken today will disappear if nothing is done to preserve them.
Why does this matter? Anthropologist Wade Davis, in an interview with National Geographic explains, "As cultures disappear and life becomes more uniform, we as a people and a species, and Earth itself, will be deeply impoverished." Learning what is at risk is essential.
A deeper look at indigenous cultures provides students with an ever-widening window of inquiry. Students discover remote geographical places and cultural artifacts local to various regions, learn about the wisdom and ways of life of indigenous people, and examine the global issues threatening these people and places. Students find themselves in an expanding world where they are witnessing history and can become inspired to examine their own cultural values and heritage.
Asia Society recognizes the following outcomes—investigating the world, recognizing perspectives, and taking action—as indicators of global competence. These strategies, along with resources, offer ways to integrate the study of indigenous cultures into the global learning classroom.
Investigating the World
Cultural museum exhibitions, either in-person or online, provide important opportunities for students to investigate the world. Exhibitions today bridge media with traditional art forms, such as painting and photography, and offer inquiry-based tours for schools and classrooms.
Jane Baldwin, photographer of Kara Women Speak, recently said to me, "As a photographer, I believe art can inform and focus our attention in powerful and insightful ways. Through engagement and conversation, art can inspire empathy and evoke our humanity by raising awareness of political issues and be a catalyst for change."
Kara Women Speak explores the indigenous women and culture of the Omo River Valley and Lake Turkana watershed in Southwestern Ethiopia. The indigenous communities of the region are threatened by upriver hydroelectric power projects and international land grabs. For an interactive exhibit at the Sonoma Valley Art Museum in Northern California, Baldwin produced life-sized portraits, audio recordings of the Kara women, and ambient sounds from the Omo River to provide visitors with a visceral experience.
Image by Jane Baldwin for Global Oneness Project
Brandon Spars, humanities teacher from Sonoma Academy High School, took his freshmen students to the exhibit to gain an understanding of complex projects that have damaging impacts. This fits with the freshmen curriculum, which explores the question, "How does geography shape culture?" The exhibit, Spars explained, was a valuable experience. His students were able to witness an important story, meet the artist, and ask questions.
Can't take a field trip to a museum with your students? Consider visiting online museums, such as the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, which is dedicated to the exploration and documentation of traditional knowledge with cultural communities around the world.
Recognizing Perspectives
A globally competent student needs to be provided with critical questions—ways to research and uncover how an issue in one part of the world affects the rest of the world.
For example, students can be exposed to specific challenges facing an endangered culture that is under threat due to modernization, globalization, climate change, or regional and national development. By asking humanistic questions students can reflect on their own lives and culture, empathize with others, and recognize the interconnectivity of the global community.
I've had great conversations over the years with teachers, technology specialists, and administrators at the International Society for Technology in Education conference (ISTE) about the importance of global education. I spoke with Holly Jobe, former board president of ISTE, who described some of the international places she has lived and worked throughout her life. "Learning about endangered cultures can help us understand diversity, our own culture, and our own humanness," Jobe said.
As the executive director for the Global Oneness Project (GOP), I've witnessed how cultural stories affect students' perspectives. Students and teachers can explore these multimedia stories on the GOP website: a photo essay documenting Mongolian nomads, a film about the Gamo people of the Ethiopian Rift Valley, and a film about the last speaker of the Native American language Wukchumni and the dictionary she created to keep the language alive. The accompanying lessons to these stories challenge students to consider their own perspectives in the context of the story's wider implications, such as the underlying notions of progress and the impact on specific cultures.
Taking Action
Student-driven projects provide opportunities for research and collaboration that can draw students into real-world issues related to cultural preservation.
Native high school students in rural Idaho, Utah, and Nevada are working to revive Shoshone, an endangered Native American language. The teens, documented in an NPR story, are creating word lists with elders in order to produce a dictionary. They are also creating children's storybooks derived from oral stories from the 1960s and '70s for the schools on the reservation. Lyle Campbell, Director of the Center of American Indian Languages, explains that "most of the wisdom of the world is encoded in languages, and when we lose a language with no documentation, all of that knowledge and wisdom is simply gone."
Additional resources that document endangered languages throughout the world include National Geographic's Enduring Voices project and UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. Take a look at the Enduring Voices interactive global map. They document language hotspots by color-coding the countries where languages are near extinction. Students can also explore the project's Talking Dictionaries, a resource with audio files that capture endangered languages, including Tuva, a Turkish language spoken in south-central Siberia, and Siletz Dee-Ni, an Oregon Athabaskan language spoken by Siletz tribes once local to northern California.
VIF International Education partners with districts and schools to build global education programs for students and teachers. Fabiana Casella, a former international and cultural exchange teacher with VIF, teaches high school in Buenos Aries.
Image by Taylor Weidman for Global Oneness Project
Casella's students conduct research about the associations that defend and protect the indigenous groups in the provinces in Argentina. Students also read novels and legends that include indigenous vocabulary from the region. Casella describes that the intention with these projects is to "narrow the cultural gap among teenagers living in the same country." She says that her school "tries to promote a feeling of compassion, understanding, and appreciation of those cultures that have inhabited our lands for centuries and nowadays are represented by their heirs, who somehow carry in their DNA part of the customs and traditions of their ancestors."
Exposure to indigenous cultures, combined with unique learning opportunities, enhance students' perceptions of themselves and the world, making them stronger global citizens.
This article was originally published in Education Week and has been reposted on HundrED with the author's permission.
Cover image by Taylor Weidman for Global Oneness Project.
If you're interested in exploring the theme of indigenous perspectives in the classroom further, visit this recorded and free webinar, Developing Empathy Through Indigenous Cultures and Stories offered by Global Oneness Project in March 2019 with partners at Share My Lesson for their annual online Virtual Conference.
Cleary Vaughan-Lee
I'm the Executive Director of the Global Oneness Project, a free multimedia education platform which hosts documentary films and photography on social, cultural, and environmental issues.
EXHIBITION: Sonoma Modern | Contemporary, Sonoma, CA
PUBLIC PROGRAMS: PhotoAlliance, a Day of Photo Books, San Francisco, CA
ARTICLE: Three African Exhibitions not to be Missed, Milan, Italy
ARTICLE: NIGRIZIA
ANNOUNCEMENT: Exhibition extended to January 6, 2019, Milan, Italy
VIDEO: Exhibition Video by Studio Azzurro, Milan, Italy
PROMOTION: Exhibition Banner, Milan, Italy
ARTICLE: Only the River Remains to Speak, Archi.Media Trust, Grosseto, Italy
Only the River Remains to Speak. Multimedia exhibition to promote and support the rights and cause of the Lower Omo Valley indigenous peoples
Project summary
“I have one question for you – what I am asking is – is this river, where we plant our food, where we catch our fish, will this continue or will we lose this farming land and water for the future? If you know, will you share with me? We have no say. Nobody comes and explains to us. We have no future.”
Houtil Naranya, Dassanech matriarch, Kara Women Speak
The cooperation between Jane Baldwin, Studio Azzurro Produzioni, Survival International (Italy) and Archi.Media Trust Onlus for the creation of this multimedia exhibition was developed from the common will to give voice to the peoples of the Omo Valley and Lake Turkana, in Ethiopia and Kenya, and to enlighten the environmental and human rights issues that threaten them. At the core of this advocacy initiative is photographer Jane Baldwin’s work Kara Women Speak, a project that represents over ten years of field-research, documenting the women of the Omo in their own voices and capturing the stories of issues that threaten their communities. With the cooperation of Studio Azzurro and the consultancy of Survival International (Italy), the images, the voices and the testimonies collected by Baldwin were edited and rendered in the multimedia, sensory rich and interactive exhibition Only the River Remains to Speak: a dense and compelling journey, combining the potential of new digital technologies with the materiality of raw matters, surfaces and objects, making them receptive and reactive to the gestures of the visitors. Aim of exhibition is telling a present-day story of a river and of the peoples that it sustains, narrated in their own voices, to raise awareness about the violations of tribal peoples’ human rights, calling for the protection of their ancestral knowledge and ways of life. Only the River Remains to Speak was exhibited from 1 October 2018 to 6 January 2019 at the Museum of Cultures – MUDEC of Milan.