Ghetto Biennale the Third! Calling all artists...

As if I needed any more indications of the lightning passage of time, my dear friend Leah Gordon wrote recently to remind me that the THIRD ghetto biennale is imminent. For those of you have been living in a hole in the ground for the last four years, the ghetto biennale of Port au Prince, Haiti is an art extravaganza that now rivals Venice's in terms of prestige, aura and above all, ambiance. It is held on the campus of the sculptors of the Grand Rue, about whom I have written extensively. Here, in late November, going into December, successful artist applicants from around the globe will gather to make art amidst the ruins of what, pre-Earthquake, was an impoverished but bustling business district at the heart of teeming Port au Prince. Think of it, as Leah once put it, as an artist's residency in a shantytown. All work is produced, completed and shared on-site.

Screening a completed film project at the 2011 Ghetto biennale.
Photos: courtesy Leah Gordon

The deadline for proposals is June 23rd at midnight. I'm not sure if that is Port au Prince or Greenwich Mean Time. I urge you to apply yourself. For more information visit ghettobiennale.com.

Call me anytime you like

Here at antarcticiana we consider one of our core missions to be the calling out of mendacious, cynical and counter-human corporate behavior. Whenever possible, we enjoy battling greed and incompetence with snark and vitriol. But we aren't hypocrites, and when presented instead with excellence we feel duty-bound to share the good news with our vast readership. Therefore, we are proud to present the first ever antarcticiana award for superlativity in the field of customer service. The winner is USAirways.

Last week, I had a quick one-day job down in Virginia Beach. To get all the way there and back, and fit in a day of filming, required a bleary, pre-dawn trip to LaGuardia Airport, a USAirways shuttle to DC, and a quick USAirways connection onward to Norfolk. Under normal circumstances, I look at those promotional charging stations that Samsung now has dotted throughout the world's airports and I think: that's a recipe for losing your phone. In Washington I was still dozing, however, and my phone's charge was diminished. With a whole day in the field in front of me I needed all the juice I could get. At the gate at Reagan I plugged in, and then sat just a few feet away, half-guarding my phone while reading Keith McCafferty's The Royal Wulff Murders, crime fiction set in the trout fishing paradise of riverine Montana.* A fellow crew-member appeared, the USAirways flight was called. Minor distractions. Guess what: Those Samsung charging stations are a recipe for losing your phone.

On board the Norfolk flight our kindly USAirways stewardess informed us that the USAirways airplane doors had been closed and that it was therefore time to turn off all electronic devices. I patted my pockets, but I already knew. I had a feeling of dread not unlike that induced by turbulence, although we were still on the ground. I stewed and seethed with self-loathing. Hadn't I said to myself, just as I was plugging in my immaculate Samsung Galaxy S-series smartphone: you're going to forget that.? Indeed I had, and indeed I did.

Once airborn I took advantage of the USAirways in-flight beverage service to explain my plight and ask for advice. The stewardess immediately asked for all the details. "I'll talk to the USAirways Captain, and we'll call it in," she said. "We should still be within radio range of Reagan."

"It's in a blue protective cover, and must most certainly still be plugged into the Samsung console just to the right of USAirways gate 35," I said, somewhat breathlessly. She handed me a USAirways napkin, on which I wrote down the salient details. Meanwhile, she went to fetch me a USAirways club soda. She returned, took the napkin, got on the cockpit telephone and described the emergency to the Captain. Minutes later, she came back to my seat again. "The Captain has spoken to our people in concourse "C," and they are sending someone from USAirways to look for your phone."

The DC to Norfolk flight is only some twenty minutes, and we were soon in the terminal. I borrowed the producer's phone and immediately called my own. It was answered, by a USAirways employee from baggage services. She had recuperated the phone and said it would be waiting for me at the baggage desk near the baggage claim on my way back through the airport that evening. Meanwhile, the pilot of the aircraft, overhearing my conversation, suggested that I call again before getting on my return flight, and said that baggage services would likely bring the telephone to my Washington departure gate. I was mightily impressed. Here I was, standing in the terminal, discussing my lost telephone with the archetypal Captain, a guy who had taken a pause from his busy day to discuss my problem. Silvery gray hair still cut in military fashion; gold bars on navy uniformed chest; that stentorian, reassuring voice I had heard over countless aircraft PA systems: "If worst comes to worst, call them up and they will Fedex it to you." USAirways.

Nonetheless, I fretted all the day long. The phone having been found was one thing, actually getting it back into my paws was another. I pictured the phone being tossed into a giant cardboard box full of other phones left behind at other Samsung charging stations by other morons. I carefully calculated the minutes we would have to transfer to our connection on the way home. Then, disaster. The Washington flight was delayed. The competent USAirways agent at the checkin quickly reticketed us, but through Philadelphia. A quick taxi-ride from LGA, and shortly before midnight I collapsed on the sofa at home, phoneless. By now, I was certain, the phone's battery would be dead, the post-it note someone might have stuck to it would have become unstuck, and it would soon join the vast graveyard of the expired and unclaimed.

The next morning, Fedex account number in hand, I searched through piles of old newspapers and dirty socks, looking for the landline. Reduced to using the speaker feature on the base station, I quickly reached a competent USAirways baggage services employee. On Friday morning my phone arrived, wrapped like fish in yesterday's DC tabloid. Thank you, USAirways!

*Fly-tieing murder mysteries apparently represent an entire sub-genre of crime writing. Who knew?

Trying to lose some weight

...so I went shopping in Chinatown

Kimchi Jjigae Creole

Lately I have been making my own kimchi. Laden with raw garlic and vegetables, naturally fermented and entirely additive free, this spicy Korean condiment is said to be one of the healthiest foods on earth.   Properly made, kimchi is a living creature, a bubbling, blistering Far-East version of sauerkraut, a simple, humble cabbage brewing in its own juices. The thing lives, its flavor constantly altering as desirable bacteria munch and soften the once-crispy vegetables into submission. Nonetheless, I had always thought of it as a substance to be dabbed sparingly around the edges of other dishes, like hot sauce, or mustard.  This despite the fact that it is very easy to make vast vats of the stuff. In Korean markets in Flushing it is sold in quarts and half-gallons and even gallon tubs, and since it is a live ferment in continuous transformation, its shelf-life is not infinite (or even near-infinite, like hot sauce and mustard and ketchup). Connoisseurs believe kimchi peaks after ten days to two weeks, and that month-old kimchi will soon push what is essentially an ongoing process of decomposition into unpleasantly sour and funky realms. I determined, therefore, that I have been thinking about kimchi in the wrong light. It is not meant simply to accompany, to drizzle or augment. At least in Korea, it is to be munched with abandon, spooned up by the tubful, spread in thick slabs. If not, what to do with tremendous volumes of it?

I remember a perhaps apocryphal story, told to me before I really knew what kimchi was, about the abundance of garlic in Korean cuisine (in which kimchi is arguably the primary vector for garlic-delivery). A British ambassador to Korea, back in London at the end of his tour of duty, attended the opera. There, seated in his tuxedo on the ruby and gold-brocade chairs, watching the performance unfold, he discovered that he and his elegant wife had become pariahs. The stodgy Britains seated within their orbit were, despite the embarrassment of it all, getting up and abandoning the theater. So strongly did the diplomatic couple reek, with the garlic of dozens of Korean state dinners positively leaching out of their pores, that the other patrons departed well before the fat lady sang.

Gradually, I am becoming less obsessed with ethnic culinary authenticity, but one still wants to know if one's kimchi would fly in Incheon. I consulted with some Korean-Americans of my acquaintance. Sohui Kim, chef, neighbor and co-founder of the always excellent Good Fork restaurant (she does a killer steak with kimchi rice) declared it delicious and tasty, if rather too sweet. A few days later, tasting the same batch, the artist Nancy Hwang also questioned the sweet edge to my kimchi*. Then she said: "have you made kimchi tig-eye yet?"
"Kimchi what?" I sputtered.
"Oh that's one of the best things about making kimchi," she said. "You wait until it is almost too funky too eat, and then cook it down, usually with pork. It's the best."

When cooked, kimchi takes on an almost lurid, orange hue

When I typed in "tig-eye," Google corrected me, and I learned the Korean word for stew: Jjigae. Kimchi Jjigae, specifically, is the cure for those large, late-stage volumes of kimchi, which, like bread starter, gets more and more sour the longer it ferments. An indefinable moment arrivess when the stuff just gets too damn funky, the sourness oppressive. It is then time to make kimchi stew.

Due to how ridiculously delicious this is, this pot of kimchi jjigae was almost completely consumed before I remembered to photograph it It's a good thing there's anything left in the bottom of the pan.

There are many kimchi jjigae recipes online, with various added proteins, ranging from pork bellies to silken tofu. Some include both. I didn't have any tofu on hand, but I was recently returned from New Orleans, with an armful of smoky, cajun pork products. I chopped a wrinkled slab of tasso and a couple of onions and sauteed them until the onions were browning around the edges and the tasso had darkened and began offgassing tantalizing smokehouse aromas. Then I chopped about three brimming cups worth of three-week old kimchi and stirred it in. At this point, the Jjigae is all but finished. Just add water** sufficient to make your dish have a nice, soupy-stewy consistency, bring to a simmer and let bubble for five to twenty minutes. Serve with rice.

Looking down the barrel of kimchi oblivion. To the very bottom of a half-gallon jar. It's clearly time to make more.

*I've been experimenting, and none too scientifically. I have a vague recollection of adding a dollop of gochujang to the brine in this batch. Gochujang is basically hot pepper paste sweetened with corn syrup, and I've since been informed that adding it to your kimchi is highly unorthodox and would certainly result in that notably inauthentic sweetness.

**You can also add my new favorite substance, and word, gookmool, which are the intense kimchi juices that collect as a slurry at the bottom of the kimchi jar.

Not really awesome.

 In the gloom of a January evening near Wall Street, dim golden arches are suspended above a brilliantly illuminated poster advertising McDonald's McRib sandwich.

Is it just me, or does this promotional campaign for the McRib sandwich imply that at other times, and in other sandwiches, the pork hasn't been real, (but rather unreal)? Is anyone else detecting an implicit: "Now, with real meat...!"? Perhaps it's the retro, 1950's font, suggesting that we have finally arrived back in some fictitious but glorious past when actual pork was used in confecting the mighty McRib. I'm certain I'm making too much of it, but my, oh my does that sandwich look revolting, oozing its glistening brown sauce out onto a Fulton streetcorner.

A Pig's Tale, in all its glory!

VIEW "A PIG'S TALE" on Vimeo by clicking HERE.

My dear friend Leah Gordon was the co-directrix on this fascinating deconstruction of how United States pork industry paranoia and our Caribee-colonialist foreign policy devastated rural Haiti's economy in the early 1980s.

 I'm proud to have worked as the soundperson on this, all the way back in 1997. It remains the single best pre-production job I've ever seen implemented: Leah and Anne Parisio had made multiple trips into the hinterlands to interview villagers who remembered the orchestrated massacre of the kreyol pig breed, and they knew exactly what stories they wanted to capture on every foot of their precious 16mm film when we went back. Relocating the best informants from those pre-interviews was an epic feat in itself. All this in the days before the cell phone.

This is also the film that took me to the single most horrific location I have ever filmed in, and I've shot in all manner of vulture pits, brothels, garbage transfer stations, crematoriums and God-forsaken wastelands, on every continent. None of them have been anything near as revolting as the outdoor amateur-hour abattoir we visited on a vacant lot in Port-au-Prince, a muddy, offal-strewn blood-puddle that still gives me nightmares.

The film is well worth 50 minutes of your time, and you should be able to watch it right here on antarcticiana, above. Just in case anything should go wrong with the embed, the vimeo link is here. 

Fiery Threads

Some twenty years ago, early in my career recording sound for documentary film, I traveled to Honduras and El Salvador as part of a team working to expose the slave-like conditions suffered by the workers who make the billions of garments that Americans consume every year. What we found was that the typical individual sitting behind a sewing machine was an uneducated woman in her late teens or early twenties, often forced to take birth control against her will (to preserve the factory’s “investment” in having trained her), routinely subject to the predatory sexual advances of the floor managers. Many were naïve country girls lured to the city’s favela outskirts by the hope of a job. They were chosen because they were the most compliant and powerless segment of the population. Shifts were absurdly long, overtime routinely withheld. The pay was derisory, some tiny fraction of a dollar an hour; many women we clandestinely spoke with reported spending more than a quarter of each day’s earnings on bus fare and a meager lunch. The huge factories required no more investment than a few hundred sewing machines, some fluorescent tubing, and just enough fans to prevent the workers from fainting on the line in the tropical heat. Invariably, these maquilas were located inside the gates of a tax-advantaged “free trade zone,” protected by a private security force beholden only to the managers. Any demands for better conditions or wages were met with beatings, and promises from the garment contractors to simply pull up stakes and relocate in some even more inexpensive and unregulated country: Haiti, perhaps, or Nicaragua, or Bangladesh.

The stories emerging from this last country in the wake of the deadly Tazreen Fashions factory fire last weekend suggest that little has improved in the globalized world of garment manufacture. Scattered in the wreckage of the factory, among the charred bodies of the 112 dead, were scorched labels for Wal-Mart’s house jeanswear brand, “Faded Glory.” (An apt description of the American garment industry, demolished by “race to the bottom” outsourcing). The spokesmouths of the global retailing titan quickly announced that although Tazreen had once produced clothing for Wal-Mart, they were “no longer authorized” to do so. They blamed, and immediately fired, a supplier who they suggested had illicitly subcontracted with the unauthorized Tazreen, as if the conditions there were uniquely bad, or particularly dangerous. If you believe them, in today’s global marketplace, the world’s biggest companies don’t have the vaguest control over who is manufacturing their products, and under what conditions. Public relations departments and other corporate spin doctors have apparently become so sophisticated that huge international brands can manage to “stand behind their products” while simultaneously denying any knowledge of the savage conditions under which they are produced. Clearly the programs of “voluntary” self-policing put in place by many gigantic international brands are essentially window-dressing. The many contractors and sub-contractors operating their independent freelance factories from Dhaka to the Dominican Republic serve an important role: they obfuscate the supply chain. When something goes wrong, Wal-Mart, or Hanes, or the Gap, or any of countless others claim to be just another disappointed customer, (albeit a bulk customer) sorry to hear that some “renegade” factory didn’t live up to the exacting standards on the mimeographed form they had once held a photo-op to insist should be posted prominently on the wall near the exit doors.

I’m not the first to note the grisly similarity between the Tazreen inferno and the notorious Triangle Shirtwaist fire of Greenwich Village, New York, which killed 146 mostly young, mostly female, mostly uneducated recently immigrated seamstresses, just over a century ago, in March of 1911. That disaster was instrumental in the creation of the International Ladies Garment Worker’s Union, and a catalyst for the discussion of worker’s rights in the United States. In an age when the clothes we wear are produced on the far side of the continent, in a distant country most people cannot locate on a map, it seems optimistic to hope that Tazreen might inspire the same kind of movement. Instead, companies must be held to account, by their customers. We need to change our ideas about what makes a brand worth wearing. 

On that trip to El Salvador twenty years ago, Charles Kernaghan, our guide from the National Labor Committee, estimated the cost of the labor spent on the production of a t-shirt at one half of one percent of its ultimate retail price. The cost of the fabric itself, and the shipping involved in offshore operations represented larger fractions, but most companies spend vastly more on advertising and marketing than on anything actually reflected in the quality of the shirt on your back. This means that doubling the pittance these exploited workers are paid would have a negligible effect on the in-store cost of most garments. Uh, I don't know about you, but I'd be okay with that. 

Photos from my own wardrobe.

Fighting over gasoline on election day....

Farther than the eye can see...

I drove out of the neighborhood for the first time since Sandy hit, only taking the car because I needed to drop off some soggy but salvageable possessions at the mini-storage. It was quite a shock. In part because life seems utterly normal in Carroll Gardens, just a few significant feet higher in elevation than my own wet basement. This is in contrast to the constant presence of sanitation workers, FEMA personnel, roving police cars, boots, sump pumps, downed trees, anxious citizens, volunteers, mud and piles of rotten sheetrock in Red Hook.

I went to Caputo's for a sandwich and sat on the roof of the pickup to eat it in the afternoon sunshine. Caputo's is a full five blocks uphill from Hamilton Avenue on Court St., and what looked like the most unholy traffic jam ever to hit the neighborhood was actually, the deli-man told me, the line to buy gas at a distant BP station. I estimated 90 minutes to get down the hill, based on how often the cars moved. What's more, almost of these cars were on, running, idling as they idly burned gas in their urgent desire to wait for an hour and a half to go and buy more gas. Fuming climate-changing fumes out of their tailpipes, with their feet on the brakes. Staggering.

Newspaper reports describe fistfights breaking out in gas lines, and service-station attendants turning off the pumps until the police have restored the peace. Our society has a major addiction problem. This is, at a minimum, a tri-state multi-million person crisis of access to fuel, caused by a minor glitch in the supply chain. We need a major rethink.

The irony is too delicious. An intense storm, likely the result of global climate change caused by the profligate burning of fossil fuels, inspires humans to line up like sheep, and fight with one another like rams, in order to purchase more of those suicidal fuels. Someone is trying to tell us something.

"Walking to Guantánamo" at the University of the South

I am very pleased to announce that "Walking to Guantánamo," the photography exhibit, opens today at the Art Gallery of the University of the South, also known as Sewanee, in Tennessee. If in the region, the show will be up until November 20th.

On October 26th I'll be speaking in Guerry Auditorium at 3PM, adjacent to the gallery, reception to follow. I hope to see you there!

 Installation photographs courtesy of Shelley MacLaren, Sewanee

Half the Sky on PBS

Naptime at New Light, a children's hostel and daycare in the Kalighat red light district in Calcutta, India. Founded and run by my friend Urmi Basu, New Light aims to break a cycle in which caste, environment, tradition and stigma combine to force children to follow the footsteps of their mothers into prostitution.

Half the Sky, the PBS / Show of Force production based around Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's bestseller about women confronting the most gruesome problems and issues they face in the (primarily) developing world, will finally be broadcast this coming Monday and Tuesday, October 1st and 2nd, at 9PM EST, on PBS. (Channel 13 in NYC). But check, as they say, your local listings.

Working on this series consumed much of my 2011; I made multiple trips to Asia and Africa, many of which I blogged about in one way or another in these pages last year. Working on "Half the Sky" was a deeply moving and rugged experience, and I hope you'll find the time to watch it. This is one of those rare cases where I really do feel that a film has the potential to bring about positive change in the world!

A wheelchair made from a $2.99 WalMart lawn chair, at the Edna Adan maternity hospital, in Hargeisa, Somaliland. Edna's hospital trains midwives, an incredibly successful, simple, and comparatively inexpensive way to combat the staggering rate of maternal mortality in Somalia.

Gun Control

Is seven a wave? Red Hook is all atwitter. It's impossible to walk down the street without having a conversation about the rash of gun crime that has made the neighborhood itchy in recent weeks. Seven incidents of on-the-street stickup is without a doubt statistically significant number. No shots have been fired, but having looked down the barrel of a gun a few years ago (in another country) I would certainly prefer to be mugged with a knife. Keep your eyes open, friends and neighbors.

So far, the worst thing about this pattern of anti-social behavior for me personally is how it showcases my inclination to profile. When you hear that a sixteen-year-old black young man pulled out a gun at noon-thirty on a sunny day, it makes it really difficult not to look askance at each-and-every sixteenish-looking young black male when you pass him in the street. This is how the police do their loathsome stop-and-frisk business all day long, and I can't bear them for it, and now I see a reflection of myself in their mirrored sunglasses. I don't like any of it one bit.

Photo: Stolen from facebook (no gun used), taken, I think, by Karin Weiner

A Fabulous Afternoon in Red Hook!

Photo: Allen Murabayashi

Wedding Day! (with apologies to Christian Venier)

I'm getting married today!

and my father made these spectacular letterpressed wine labels, with which I have covered up the actual label of a spectacular wine, from Christian Venier in the Loire valley. So, Christian, I'm sorry, but it is all for a very, very good cause!

All the attractions, in one convenient location!

I was at an address today. I can't tell it to you. I'm keeping it a secret.

This was on a private, wedding related mission. I'm getting married, in case you haven't been paying attention.

The person I was going to see had said "call me when you get downstairs, the buzzer isn't working." Nonetheless, out of habit, I looked for their name on the directory outside. Without success. The whole building is full of secrets.

Relegated to the Salvage Yard of History...

The entryway to my bathroom, where renovations are ungoing, needs, among other finishing renovatory touches, a door. To ensure the privacy in that most private of rooms, I've been making the rounds of the Brooklyn salvage yards and upcyclers, looking for just the perfect portal.

Underneath the Smith and 9th Street "F" train station, itself eternally closed for renovations, lurks a vendor of previously owned clawfoot tubs, iron railings, doors, mouldings, and commemorative framed photographs of President Obama.

What a difference four years makes. Here I found poor Barack, available for a very negotiable, unfixed price, nestled right up against the antique mirror frames and unwanted fireplace mantles of brownstone Brooklyn. How long did it take the owner of this jubilant print to become disillusioned? Will Obama ever rise again, to be hung on the wall of some other proud American? I certainly hope so, the alternative being too dire to contemplate, but I also understand the feelings of dispossession and disappointment that brought this poor commemorative artwork to this low place. I'm afraid I was not buying it.

Now with enhanced security!

 This Quality Inn and Suites, where I stayed last weekend on the world's slowest drive up to Boston, should consider evaluating their security practices.

On top of the in-box, at the reception desk, so they'll be handy, for the night shift.

Bathroom Renovation

My apologies for the desultory and inconsistent bloggery exhibited here at antarcticiana over the recent seasons. In the brief few months of this year my personal life has gone from dismal and unfocused, even ruined, to completed, ordered, and joyous. This swing of the pendulum has taken its toll on my blog output. At the one end, I was too depressed and distraught to really see any point to it. And at the other, the exciting revelation that I had found my life partner made all that time spent online seem a waste of moments possibly spent with her.

She, however, has a job, so I can't blame all my lack of output on romance. I still do have much time to sit around and write things of little importance, during the day. So the rest I blame on a long-overdue renovation of the petite bathroom here at the homestead. Although I didn't do anything like the lion's share of the work myself, I have fussed and fidgeted enough to fill the days, making countless trips to Lowe's to purchase bits of this and that. In fact, there are still some days left to go. Bathrooms take time, like fine wine.

Although one of the many sub-themes of this eclectic blog is the  "greatest outhouses of the world," until now we have not given any coverage whatsoever to interior bathrooms. But on a (comparatively) recent trip to Louisville we were able to use a bathroom of such magnificence that it seemed appropriate to, in the vernacular, "go there." Off to be spectators at the famed Kentucky Derby, we stayed at the invitation of a dear friend in his Louisville manse, a spectacular residence now on the Kentucky state registry of historic homes. Each and every room was charming and well-appointed, but none so remarkable, perhaps, as the Delftware guest bathroom.

This is, you will have gathered by now, not my bathroom, and not my renovation. (I promise to post photographs of my own water closet soon--I sense a new theme developing.) In Louisville we washed and relieved ourselves using appurtenances decorated by the late ceramicist and artist Mary Alice Hadley. According to the Hadley Pottery creation myth, Miss Mary Alice in 1939 combined her artistic talents with the clay-tile glazing expertise of her Kentucky antecedents to create some dishware for the family houseboat. Her whimsical plates proved so popular that Hadley was urged to go into business, and the pottery bearing her name still operates in Louisville. To judge from the current Hadley Pottery listings on eBay, the company made rather a specialty of what are for my taste overly cute prancing ponies and childlike floral motifs. Her personal bathroom is a different matter.

The famed claypits of Louisville were not only useful for producing teacups and coffee mugs. In the days when the United States manufactured things, Kentucky was a source for toilets, sinks and baths. As the story goes, Hadley, when renovating her own powder room, shut down the assembly line at the local toilet factory long enough to custom-decorate her own bespoke crapper. Entering the john at the Hadley house, one is transported to the aqueous depths of Atlantis. One dives, hopefully not literally, into a world of starfish, bowl-swimming snapper and waving blue kelp. The tub is ruled by Neptune himself, together with a mermaid concubine.

Ms. Katherine Dixon, my lovely fiancé, in Derby finery, in front of the lovely Hadley House.