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Jegan Vincent de Paul

Emergency in Slow Motion

Posted by Jegan Vincent de Paul on April 19, 2012

Apr 192012

By Rachel Riederer, April 19, 2012
Cross posted from: Guernica Magazine

“The Island President,” a new film about the crisis in the Maldives, wants to heat up the way we talk about climate change.

Jon Shenk’s documentary The Island President, now in limited release, follows Mohamed Nasheed through the first year of his term as President of the Maldives—but the movie doesn’t open in that tropical string of islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, it opens in Denmark, at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit. Nasheed is surrounded by cameras and interviewers asking him about the climate negotiations. Will they get a deal potent enough to save his nation from destruction?

To the people of the Maldives, the climate change debate is a matter of survival. On average, the 2,000 tiny islands that comprise the country are just 1.5 meters above sea level. As the sea level rises, they are washing away. Perhaps only climate watchers will remember the specifics of that summit and the toothless deal it produced, but Copenhagen casts a long shadow over Nasheed’s story. We didn’t solve climate change three years ago. It’s like watching Kate and Leo cross the gangplank to the Titanic: Whatever else might happen along the way, we know that boat is going down.

>continue article

>Synopsis of the Island President

Pray for Japan Film – Premier March 14th

Posted by Jegan Vincent de Paul on March 12, 2012

Mar 122012

http://prayforjapan-film.org/

The film focuses on four key perspectives of the tragedy – and with each perspective we meet victims who faced significant obstacles and fought to overcome them.

Through these four vantage points, the audience is able to understand the vast ramifications of this large-scale natural disaster – and the battle these real-life heroes fought on behalf of their loved ones and their hometown.

The Fight for Amazonia

Posted by Jegan Vincent de Paul on March 11, 2012

Mar 112012

Source: Al Jazeera

The Justice Boat
A film by Arne Birkenstock

For 13 years now, Judge Sueli Pini has been travelling from the provincial capital Macapá to the remote villages on the Amazon Delta.

Watch the rest of the series

To this day, the Brazilian state does not know exactly how many people live on the Amazon because many of them have no passport or birth certificate. To the authorities, these people who live in remote hamlets and villages are invisible: they have no access to social services, health care or the justice system. It is as if they do not even exist.

“These people were simply ignored and forgotten by the Brazilian state for many years.”

With her ‘justice boat’ Pini brings a wide range of state services to the population of the North Amazon region. The steam boat houses a court with a public prosecutor, bailiffs and public defenders, a medical team, including a dentist, doctor and nurses, and a passport office with civil servants and ID card forms.

But Pini has had to fight to be able to deliver these services.

“The cultural divide is even bigger than the geographical divide we have to bridge. Most of my colleagues and superiors have never been here, so they cannot appreciate how important our tours are for the locals and for the Brazilian state.”

So far she has been able to prevail – and thus make her contribution to protecting the inhabitants of the rainforest.

Tendenko: Surviving the Tsunami

Posted by Jegan Vincent de Paul on March 7, 2012

Mar 072012

Source: Al Jazeera – The Witness

We ask if a code promoting self-preservation in a tsunami could account for one Japanese community’s high survival rate.

Filmmakers: Donald Harding and Ben Harding

The March 2011 tsunami in Japan caused death and devastation on a shocking scale. In one town, however, survival rates were unusually high and hundreds were saved thanks to a different approach to tsunami survival called Tendenko.

Tendenko prioritises individual action and self-preservation – and yet such thinking is anathema to Japanese culture.

As communities begin to rebuild their lives, this film explores one family’s remarkable story of survival and looks at what lessons can be learned from the disaster.

Could Tendenko offer a better solution for the future of both Japan and other tsunami-prone regions?

Japan Tsunami Memorial – Sunday March 11, 11am-3pm

Posted by Jegan Vincent de Paul on March 7, 2012

Mar 072012

Time: Sunday, March 11, 2012; 11:00 am – 3:00 pm
Place: MIT Student Center 3F 84 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA, 02139
Main Events: Picture displays, Speech by professors and researchers involved in projects related to the reconstruction

(Prof. Kanda of Architechture, others), Messages to the affected areas, Raffles, and moment of silence at 2:46 p

Shun Kanda

Director, MIT Japan 3/11 Initiative

Department of Architecture
Room10-422M

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cambridge, MA 02139 USA

eMail kanda@mit.edu

携帯　　 090 1062 6939

skype shunkanda

URL http://japan3-11.mit.edu/

The Fukushima Disaster and Japan’s Occupy Movement

Posted by Jegan Vincent de Paul on March 5, 2012

Mar 052012

This is a cross posting from: http://www.possible-futures.org, published February 28, 2012

By Hiro Sito

On October 15, 2011, Occupy Tokyoprotests took place in three different districts: Hibiya, Shinjuku, and Roppongi. Before the rallies began, protesters gathered in parks where organizers and participants gave speeches. They expressed solidarity with the worldwide Occupy movement, criticized a widening economic gap in Japan, and demanded a more just world. Protesters then took to the streets with their placards, drums, and megaphones to shout slogans to reclaim society for “the 99%.”

Yet, the Occupy Tokyo protests were underwhelming: they drew only about five hundred people in total. The protests also lasted only a day and did not make a claim on public spaces that could have turned Occupy Tokyo into a durable movement. At first glance, the Occupy movement that spread across the United States and Europe seemed to have little resonance in Japan.

On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that the Occupy movement did not lack resonance but was articulated in a distinct way: Japan’s Occupy movement intersected with the nationwide nuclear power phaseout movement that emerged in response to the Fukushima disaster. This peculiar articulation of Japan’s Occupy movement is best exemplified by the presence of three tents in front of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), the organization responsible for formulating Japan’s economic policies. Since September 11, 2011, activists have been taking turns to occupy the tents twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They are protesting the Japanese government’s pro-nuclear energy policy.

> continue on Possible Futures

Four Lessons from Chernobyl and Fukushima

Posted by Jegan Vincent de Paul on March 4, 2012

Mar 042012

This is a cross posting from: http://smithjan.com/

In an effort to maintain interest in the disaster media will gravitate toward the most shocking stories–and then stay there. In the case of nuclear accidents the hot topics are almost inevitably: disease (cancer) and mutation. These are very valid concerns, but overwhelm other important messages and communication channels. How Western and Eastern media covers the issue has nuances, but is generally in the same tone.

CONTINUE

Black Sea Files, Ursula Biemann

Posted by Jegan Vincent de Paul on February 28, 2012

Feb 282012

Video Essay, 43′, 2005, Ursula Biemann

Black Sea Files is a territorial research on the Caspian oil geography: the world’s oldest oil extraction zone. A giant new subterranean pipeline traversing the Caucasus will soon pump Caspian Crude to the West. The line connecting the resource fringe with the terminal of the global high-tech oil circulation system, runs through the video like a central thread. However, the trajectory followed by the narrative is by no means a linear one. Circumventing the main players in the region, the video sheds light on a multitude of secondary sceneries. Oil workers, farmers, refugees and prostitutes who live along the pipeline come into profile and contribute to a wider human geography that displaces the singular and powerful signifying practices of oil corporations and oil politicians. Drawing on investigatory fi eldwork as practiced by anthropologists, journalists and secret intelligence agents, the Black Sea Files comment on artistic methods in the field and the ways in which information and visual intelligence is detected, circulated or withheld.

Japan considers green future after nuclear disaster

Posted by Jegan Vincent de Paul on February 23, 2012

Feb 232012

By Brendan Barett, Al Jazeera, February 11, 2012

Source: http://www.aljazeera.com/

In the long process of rebuilding after the triple disasters, the country should focus on renewable energy.

Tokyo, Japan - In March 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing and destroyed 125,000 buildings in the Tohoku region of Japan. The two disasters also caused three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to melt down, which released dangerous levels of radiation into surrounding areas and led to national power shortages. Tokyo’s iconic neon signs were switched off as rolling blackouts spread across the country. Faced with the greatest reconstruction task since World War II, Japan is asking difficult questions about the future of its energy supply and just what sort of society should emerge from the ruins.

So far, rebuilding efforts have focused on construction of temporary housing, restoration of crippled infrastructure and clearing the estimated 25 million tonnes of debris created by the destructive force of the tsunami. Officials say it could take ten years to completely rebuild the affected areas.

In the coming months, even years, there is a catchphrase familiar in disaster recovery that we can expect to hear a lot of in Japan: “Build back better.” This concept has gained prominence since the recovery process following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and, more recently, with the earthquake in Haiti.

The underlying principles of build back better include:

Maintaining and enhancing quality of life for those affected by the disaster

Enhancing local economic viability

Promoting equity

Maintaining environmental quality

Reducing vulnerability by increasing disaster resilience

Incorporating a participatory process with respect to rebuilding efforts

Prime Minister Naoto Kan, before his resignation, urged Japan to embrace the European eco-town model – with communities that strive to be both carbon neutral and affordable – as the country looked to rebuild. In the United Kingdom, eco-towns are being explored as new developments that reflect the “four Cs” – climate, connectivity, community and character.

>continue article on Al Jazeera here

Imaging Disaster – International Conference

Posted by Jegan Vincent de Paul on February 17, 2012

Feb 172012

The violence unleashed by natural disasters exposes human beings to the most elemental of borderline situations. Human will and capacities, poised on the precarious frontier between nature and culture – a frontier defined differently by each epoch and culture – are forced to undergo an ordeal of life and death. Disaster – viewed as a condition of emergency – becomes the site of survival or failure not only of individuals but of entire communities. The conference will investigate specific culturally formed patterns of action and collective ways of coping brought forth by catastrophic events. This makes all disasters, even those which unfold in the heart of “nature”, profoundly socio-cultural happenings. For survivors the experience of disaster can become a search for meaning: in what terms is the encounter with elemental violence perceived, interpreted, described and interiorized? In order to express that which defies description, cultures take recourse to visual media: verbal images, myths, signs, symbols and films. Representations of calamities domesticate and contain them as icon. Various dimensions of the event – signs of imminent danger, the shock of disaster, destruction and ruin, escape and rescue, overcoming danger, victory over the elements, help for the victims – have generated a repertoire of motifs with a view to portray disaster through a wide range of media, across time and history. The analysis of the ways disasters are imagined and visualized is the theme of this conference, in two senses. First, it will address methodological questions pertaining to a transcultural vocabulary and iconography of disasters and second, it intends to systematically analyze the event of disaster and its medial representation as a complex and composite socio-cultural process.

Internationales Wissenschaftsforum, Heidelberg, March 1 - 03, 2012

“IMAGING DISASTER”
International Conference – Organised by
Prof. Monica Juneja (Heidelberg) and Prof. Gerrit Jasper Schenk (Darmstadt)

http://arthist.net/archive/2727

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