Progress and Resistance in Central India, Part 2

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For two months in 1999, I lived in a Gond village 11 km from the town of Dantewara in what was then Madhya Pradesh, India (the next year, in 2000, the Gond region was bifurcated by the creation of the new state of Chhattisgarh).  The Gond villagers had been struggling for fifty years to survive despite increasingly polluted water supplies, no schools, no hospitals.  Through an organization called Dakshinayan I worked on an ashram with villagers to build new irrigational structures, repair deep groundwater pumps, facilitate literacy and empowerment women's groups, teach English and bring medical supplies to remote villages. Despite the short time I spent there and the great amount of the history and politics I did not know, it was obvious to me that the tiny amount of "development" funding that was allocated for projects such as mine was completely insufficient, and that the official channels open to the tribal people of India to protest and take control of their own land and the resources within it were never going to be sufficient to make meaningful changes in the direction of increased hunger, poverty and dislocation they were heading.

Thinking further about Arundhati Roy's amazing article Walking With the Comrades, published earlier this month, concerning the tribal resistance movement in central India, has generated in me a flood of recollections of the two months in 1999 I spent as a volunteer on a watershed development and social justice project in the area that is now a Maoist stronghold.  In light of the continuing assaults on the people of this area by the Indian miltary and their  plans for escalated violence, I wanted to post some pictures from the time I spent there of the people I met and the landscape so rich in minerals as to attract the most focused and violent attention of capitalist forces worldwide.  The children I worked with and met would now be in their late teens and early twenties, and could very well be among the lists of rebels killed each day.

I have also posted a personal essay I wrote about my trip to central India in 1999, a few months after returning home to California.  I was eighteen years old, and did not know of much of the political activity that was surely going on around me in Dantewada.  This essay is essentially a distillation of the notes I took and sort of seismological recording of the personal impact that the project had on me. You can read the essay here.

Progress and Resistance in Central India

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PLGA Militants (photo from dawn.com)

Having dispossessed them and pushed them into a downward spiral of indigence, in a cruel sleight of hand, the Government began to use their own penury against them. Each time it needed to displace a large population — for dams, irrigation projects, mines — it talked of "bringing tribals into the mainstream" or of giving them "the fruits of modern development". Of the tens of millions of internally displaced people (more than 30 million by big dams alone), refugees of India’s ‘progress’, the great majority are tribal people. When the Government begins to talk of tribal welfare, it’s time to worry. 

— Arundhati Roy, Walking with the Comrades. March 21, 2010.

Last month Arundhati Roy broke the taboo of reporting directly on the Naxalite (Maoist) rebels in Central India. In the resulting articles and media appearances she has made, she has been attenmpting to draw attention to this struggle which is largely invisible and unreported in mainstream Indian media, to expose the hypocrisy of the joint corporate/government "relief" and "development" projects in the tribal areas of India.  As the Isreali government announces that a re-occupation of Gaza is immanent, the  Israeli military is training Indian "counter-terrorism" forces and supplying them with hi-tech weopenry to hunt down and destroy anyone who resists the destruction of the tribal culture, livelihoods and environment of  central India.  Please read Arundhati Roy's extremely well-researched, beautifully written and deeply troubling article, Walking with the Comrades from earlier this month here.

 

Playlist 02: Spring

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The Neighbours Can't Breathe
The Twilight Sad
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A New Kind Of Water
This Heat
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No 5 In The Book
Mormos
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RASAD IZRI
Izenzaren
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A Huadiga Fluag
Lunar Aurora
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The Twilight Sad is a band from Kilsyth, Scotland, comprising James Graham (vocals), Andy MacFarlane (guitar) and Mark Devine (drums). The band have released two full-length albums. Their 2007 debut, Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters, drew widespread critical acclaim, while their second album, Forget the Night Ahead, was released in 2009. 

This Heat was a British experimental music group formed in early 1976 in Camberwell, London by multi-instrumentalists Charles Bullen (guitar, clarinet, viola, vocals, tapes), Charles Hayward (drums, keyboards, vocals, tapes) and Gareth Williams (keyboard, guitar, bass, vocals, tapes).

Mormos was a Prog Folk / Progressive Rock band from the United States that moved to France and put out two albums, MAGIC SPELL OF MOTHER'S WRATH, and Great Wall of China in 1970 an 1971, respectively.

Izenzaren was founded in Morocco at the end of the Sixties was among the first groups to modernize and radicalize the Amazigh song. They are widely known and respected for their adaptation of the banjo to their brand of experimental (and sometimes psychadelic) derivations of tradional Amazigh music. Their first album was recorded in 1974, and having changed members numerous times since, they still exist in a modified form today.

Lunar Aurora is pure Bavarian black metal. Aran and Whyrhd formed Lunar Aurora in December 1994. The band is now on indefinite hiatus since the end of 2006. There will be no interviews, concerts, or any other statements.

Playlist 01

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Augur
Aria Orion
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Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima
Krzysztof Penderecki
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Parallelograms
Linda Perhacs
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Eishalle Pt. I - Koenig Winter
Paysage d'Hiver
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Technology Is Killing Music
Rachel's
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Aria Orion is a new project from composer and performer Jules Gimbrone, weaves mystical tales with experimental arrangements, orchestral dramatics, and soulful melodic phrasing

Krzysztof Penderecki (born November 23, 1933 in Dębica) is a Polish composer and conductor of classical music.

Linda Perhacs is an American psychedelic folk singer, who released her only album Parallelograms in 1970 to scant notice or sales.

Paysage D'Hiver is an Ambient black metal band from Berne, Switzerland, formed in 1997. The sole member is Wintherr (Tobias Möckl, also of Darkspace. Wintherr is a mix between "Winter" and "Herr",Lord of Winter).

Rachel's is an American band that formed in Louisville, Kentucky in 1991. Technology Is Killing Music is an EP released on Three Lobed Recordings in 2005, and contains a single 18-minute track.

Uncomfortable Hyperreality

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Jeremy Geddes, The Cafe. Oil on Linen, 2008-2009.

Some of the more absurdly photorealistic paintings of Jeremy Geddes make me very uncomfortable because — I can only imagine — what I value most in painting and drawing is finding a unique synthesis of innovative technichal and conceptual methods.  When I see images such s the one above however, the part of me that respects effort and craft, which has struggled with the hand/eye alchemy of representational skill, is very excited and dazzled — yet I do not feel that I have seen anything conceptually innovative.  Regardless of this disappointment, Geddes' paintings are certainly worth marveling at, and I appreciate the consistent reminders from artists of this technical calibur of the thrill that extremely detailed and convincing handmade works can elicit — and the irreplacablility of the handmade is enough of a provisional concept for me, to indulge — even if it is only a connotation. 

You can see more images of Jeremy Geddes paintings on his website, or in a zillion different magazines, or printed onto snowboards, etc.

The Photonic Beetle

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From the October, 2008 issue of Semiconductor International:

The proverb admonishes, “Look to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise.” The same sentiment can be applied to another member of the Insecta class, a green iridescent Brazilian beetle with the unwieldy moniker of Lamprocyphus augustus. Just by doing what comes naturally, this inch-long weevil has accomplished a task that to date has eluded the Hominidae class's best researchers: the evolution of a structure considered as the ideal architecture for the long-sought-after photonic crystal.

To produce ultrafast optical computers, it is first necessary to produce an ideal photonic crystal that will enable exacting manipulation of light. Currently, light in near-infrared and visible wavelengths carries data and communications through fiber-optic cables, but this photonic information must be converted back to electrons before it can be processed by a computer.

“Photonic crystals are a completely new class of optical materials that enable the manipulation of light in non-classic ways,” explained Michael Bartl, assistant professor of chemistry and adjunct professor of physics at the University of Utah (Salt Lake City). “Some colors [wavelengths] of light can pass through such a crystal at various speeds, while others are reflected as if the crystal were acting as a mirror.”

The Museum of Nature

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Roller-coaster, by Ilkka Halso, 2004.

Museum I, by Ilkka Halso, 2003.

Kitka-river, by Ilkka Halso, 2004.

Theater I, by Ilkka Halso, 2003.

 

From Ilkka Halso's press release for Museum of Nature:

IN ORDER TO PROTECT AND RESTORE NATURE WE NEED STRONGER MEANS. ILKKA HALSO HAS CONTINUED HIS CONQUEST IN ORDER TO SAVE THE WORLD. HE PRESENTS PLANS FOR BRIGHTER AND MORE DURABLE MILLENNIUM.

Museum of Nature is next step in continuum of imaginative nature restoring project, which started year 2000 as Restoration exhibition. Restoration series was about restoring single nature objects in means of technology and building skills. Museum project takes one step further. I make plans and construct visually buildings, which protect nature from treaths of pollution and what is more important from actions of man himself. I visualize shelters, massive buildings where big ecosystems could be stored as at present. These massive building protect forests, lakes and rivers from pollution and what is more important from actions of man himself. At the same time I study different aspects of mans relation to nature as rare unique endangered place. While putting nature into a museum you have to take under consideration aspect of audience/consumer. Nature becomes joyride for turists or beautyfull landscape turns into a meditative theatre show. Project is based on pessimistic vision of what is happening on earth. I am looking into future and I am not very happy about that. I am considering these pictures more as visual pamphlets than estetical images.  Digital process is constantly present in the works. I am combining freely photographs of landscapes and computer genereted 3D-models. Works are visualized building plans, plans I rather not want to see realized.

— Ilkka Halso

A Primer on American Imperialism

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"The fact is we are mixed in with each other in ways that most national systems of education have not dreamed of.  To match knowledge in the arts and sciences with these integrative realities is, I believe, the intellectual and cultural challenge of our time.  The steady critique of nationalism from the standpoint of real liberation should not be forgotten, for we must not condemn ourselves to repeat the imperial experience (although all around us it is being repeated).  How in the redefined and yet very close contemporary  relationship between culture and empire — a relationship that enables disquieting forms of domination — can we sustain the liberating energies released by the great decolonizing resistance movements and the mass uprisings of the 1980s?  Can these energizes elude the homogenizing processes of modern life? Can they hold in abeyance the interventions of the new imperial centrality?" 

— Edward Said, 1993.

Blue & Green

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Blue & Green, by Virginia Woolf.  Published by the Hogarth Press in 1921 in the collection of short stories entitled Monday or Tuesday.

 

GREEN

The ported fingers of glass hang downwards. The light slides down the glass, and drops a pool of green. All day long the ten fingers of the lustre drop green upon the marble. The feathers of parakeets—their harsh cries—sharp blades of palm trees—green, too; green needles glittering in the sun. But the hard glass drips on to the marble; the pools hover above the dessert sand; the camels lurch through them; the pools settle on the marble; rushes edge them; weeds clog them; here and there a white blossom; the frog flops over; at night the stars are set there unbroken. Evening comes, and the shadow sweeps the green over the mantelpiece; the ruffled surface of ocean. No ships come; the aimless waves sway beneath the empty sky. It’s night; the needles drip blots of blue. The green’s out.

 

BLUE

The snub–nosed monster rises to the surface and spouts through his blunt nostrils two columns of water, which, fiery–white in the centre, spray off into a fringe of blue beads. Strokes of blue line the black tarpaulin of his hide. Slushing the water through mouth and nostrils he sings, heavy with water, and the blue closes over him dowsing the polished pebbles of his eyes. Thrown upon the beach he lies, blunt, obtuse, shedding dry blue scales. Their metallic blue stains the rusty iron on the beach. Blue are the ribs of the wrecked rowing boat. A wave rolls beneath the blue bells. But the cathedral’s different, cold, incense laden, faint blue with the veils of madonnas.

 

 

Early Crystallographic Models

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Colored glass models, Unsigned, first half 20th century

Wooden models of twinned feldspar crystals, G.E. Kayser, Berlin, 1834

Wooden models, Unsigned, late 19th century

Wooden models, Unsigned, mid 20th century

Porcelain models, Unsigned [John Joseph Griffin], England, ca. 1841

There are far too many beautiful examples of glass, porcelain and wooden crystal models from the 18th and 19th century to display here — much more information can be found at The Virtual Museum of the History of Mineralogy.  These once functional objects have long since been replaced in the teaching of mineralogy by computer models, but their present-day obsolescence only heightens their mysterious and sublime aura.  Such interactive sculptures surely must have been seen and relished by the Surrealists, as Taglioni's Jewel Casket by Joseph Cornell reveals.  Outside of their scientific context, there is even a prefiguration of minimalist sculpture — an unironic yet non-literal juxtaposition of organic processes and geometric perfection.  There is, for me, a fascinating contradiction in the innocence of their toylike size and sentimental presentation given that crystallography — though largely esoteric and academic in its early phases — became the foundation for the most impactful material sciences of chemical and molecular engineering in the twentieth century, as well as the more potentially transfiguring twenty-first century developments in application of topography, virtual three-dimensional modeling systems, rapid prototyping and nanotechnology.  The early crystallographic model is the self-anachronistic object par excellance.

Two Large Crows

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From The First Angelinos: The Gabrielino Indians of Los Angeles by William McCawley (Malki Museum Press, 1996):

Other important observations made by the Spanish in 1602 describe Gabrielino religious practices.  Near Isthmus Cove on Santa Catalina the Spaniards o0bserved "a place of worship or temple where the natives perform the sacrifices and adorations."  According to Father Antonio it

was a large flat patio and in one part of it, where they had what we would call an altar, there was a great circle all surrounded with feathers of various colors and shapes, which must come from the birds they sacrifice.  Inside the circle there was a figure like a devil painted in various colors, in the way the Indians of New Spain are accustomed to paint them.  At the sides of this were the sun and the moon.  When the soldiers reached this place, inside the circle there were two large crows larger than ordinary ones, which flew away when they saw strangers, and alighted on some nearby rocks.  One of the soldiers, seeing their size, aimed at them with his harquebus [matchlock rifle], and discharging it, killed them both.  When the Indians saw this they began to weep and display great emotion.  In my opinion, the Devil talked to them through these crows, because all the men and women held them in great respect and fear.

Thirdworld

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Thirdworld (1998)
Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul


"This film depicts landscapes, metaphorically and actuality, of the southern island called Panyi. It reflects the impression of the shooting time at the island for several days. The sounds are taken from different sources, but all were recorded while the subjects were not aware of the recording apparatus. Thus, this piece may be called a re-constructed documentary. The title is intended as a parody of the word that is being used by the West to describe Thailand or other exotic landscapes. This film is the voice from individuals who reside in such environment. The film is presented in crude and rugged quality, as it is a product from the uncivilized." 

— Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Kryžių Kalnas

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Kryžių Kalnas ("the Hill of Crosses") is a site of pilgrimage about just north of the city of Šiauliai, in northern Lithuania. The exact origins are unknown, but it is considered that the first crosses were placed on the former Jurgaičiai or Domantai hill fort after the 1831 Uprising.  Over the centuries, not only crosses, but giant crucifixes, carvings of Lithuanian patriots, statues of the Virgin Mary and thousands of tiny effigies and rosaries have been brought here by Catholic pilgrims. The number of crosses is unknown, but estimates put it at about 55,000 in 1990 and 100,000 in 2006.

Wieliczka Salt Mine

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The Wieliczka Salt Mine, near the Polish city of Krakow, is a salt mine that has been in continuous operation since the 13th century, and still is producing table salt today. The mine stretches to a depth of 327 meters and is more than 300 km long.  In addition to its purpose as a mine, Wieliczka features a oturist route lined with statues of historical and mythical figures (all of them sculptured out of salt by miners), chambers and chapels lined with salt crystal chandeliers, underground lakes, and exhibits showing the history of salt-mining.

Cueva de los Cristales de Naica

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The Crystal Cave was accidentally discovered in 2000 by miners working in the silver and lead mine at Naica, Mexico. It lies almost 300 meters (900 feet) below the surface of the Earth and it contains the largest crystals known in the world, by far. The largest crystals are over 11 meters long (36 feet) and weigh 55 tons.  The crystals themselves are made of selenite which is crystallized gypsum, the same material used in drywall construction. Except these crystals formed over a span of about half a million years in a hot water solution, saturated with minerals. The temperature inside the cave remained very consistently hot for the entire time the crystals were growing.