Causes That Can’t Wait, Kony 2012
KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.
Jason Russel is an activist that has taken film and narrative to new heights to raise awareness of a long hidden conflict in central Uganda. The West has seen glimpses of social, political and economic violent crimes prevalent in the African continent through Hollywood dramatizations like Blood Diamond and documentaries like Ghosts of Rwanda, but what started out as Russel’s campaign against injustice and violence has become the global communities’ campaign.
The Kony 2012 movement wants the world to know Joseph Kony. For twenty years, he remained largely nameless, just a blurb on on the back pages of mainstream media. During that time he has tortured, maimed and killed thousands of his own people. In your own way you can participate in the effort to stop more lives from being hurt. Follow the link to find out how to help Russel spread the word about what’s happened to the families and children of central Uganda and what’s bound to happen to more without intervention.
Dwelling on Cities, Gary Hustwit, Urbanized
Riding down Devon Street, on the way to Wrigleyville’s celebrated Music Box Theater, mothers wrapped in saris guide their children along by the hand. Cabs lurch from cross-streets attempting to join the main traffic line heading uptown. The sun slings low in the West beaming off building facades, some outfitted from the 1970′s with large, conventional, yellow-tinted lightbulbs wrapping marquees advertising Punjabi cuisine.
Feet have no fear of the sidewalks, neither people’s hindquarters of public benches. Faces greet known neighbors, and peer curiously at strangers. Bodies enter grocery stores and exit Bollywood movie variety shops. Arms carry gifts of jewelry and clothing from South Asian themed boutiques. Heading South on Clarke Street, the drive turns through a completely new global community. These way markers display the contours of City life.
Design By Design
An Urban Planner’s delight, Gary Hustwit takes his previous glances at how design influences us, in Helvetica and Objectified, and magnifies them to City scale in his latest work Urbanized. Never looking to impose definitions on his audience, Hustwit lets decision-makers, and descion-shapers, discuss the finer points of city design imperatives from perspectives in their corner of the globe.
Since cities rise and fall around economic and social activity, the forces guiding both pull tight the philosophical threads along the continuum of urban design practice. Jane Jacobs, Robert Moses and Oscar Niemeyer place major landmarks on the dialog. Hustwit then captures reverberations of these themes within contemporary echoes of the activist, developer and high modernists.
Urban champions, like Bogota’s former Mayor Enrique Penalosa, enrich the discussion of cities further and, more importantly, highlight practical quality of life considerations that make America’s civic values and local politics look ridiculous in comparison. Milwaukee, although not featured in Urbanized, benefited greatly from Mayor John Norquist’s experiments with New Urbanism, giving sweet kool-aid from which future domestic urban champions could develop their own flavors.
Providing more than a primer on Urban Planning, Urbanized also logs Hustwit’s travels during production of his previous two films. The cinematography energizes wanderlust as Hustwit wisks from Brighton, UK to Rio De Janeiro, Brazil (I bet you can’t guess which is older) and a bunch of famous and not so famous stops in-between.
Urbanized screened in Chicago last weekend, stopping next in London on October 21st.
Related Post
John Norquist Milwaukee Tour – Congress for New Urbanism, Jeramey Jannene, Urban Milwaukee
Pt. 2, ExFabula, John Gurda on Capital Court’s History
Looking Back
Historian John Gurda guided the evening’s story tellers by explaining signposts of historical significance to the Capitol Heights neighborhood and Milwaukee’s Black community. In 1956, a mall that came to be known as Capitol Court made Capitol Heights its home. It was Milwaukee’s third major shopping center, after Southgate, on South 27th, and Bayshore. At Capitol Court’s founding the neighborhood was barely 10% percent African-American. Today at least 75% of Capitol Heights is African-American, with a growing population of Hmong-Americans.
A few blocks away, on Fon du Lac Avenue, sits Satin Wave Barbershop. Gurda relays that Fon du Lac Avenue, once an old plank road, epitomized the folk saying describing Milwaukee “Look to the East the Lake, and to the West the Land”. Back then, farm goods carted into downtown from as far as the name sake of the street, true also of Appleton Avenue and, at one time, Windlake and Muskego Avenues to the South.
As diagonal roads, they represent seminal thoroughfares that pre-date Milwaukee’s grid system of streets. Around the same time, in the 1850′s, Sully Watson became one of Milwaukee first Black land owners, after migrating with his manumission papers gained from Virginia. He and his wife Susanna lived successful lives in ante-bellum Milwaukee, supported by his work as a tradesman.
Overcoming, Making a Life
Although under the constant looming menace of the Fugitive Slave Act, which gave any white person claiming ownership over a black person force of law to take them into their possession immediately, the Watson family carried on raising a family. The Watson offspring found little success extending their family tradition of gainful trade under the repressive, reactionary and often violent post-Reconstruction American social caste system. The Milwaukee Public Museum recently added a tribute to the Watson family to the Streets of Old Milwaukee.
Contents
Pt. 1 Shaping Influence, ExFabula, Barbershop
Pt. 2 ExFabula, John Gurda on Capital Court History
Pt. 3 ExFabula, The Sherrill’s, A Black Business Legacy
Pt. 4 ExFabula, Sunshine and Rain<
Pt. 5 ExFabula, Tom Crawford, a Thankful Trim
Pt. 6 ExFabula, Monumental Integrity and Murals
Pt. 3, ExFabula, The Sherrill’s, A Black Business Legacy
Still a Tale of Two Towns
Ronnie Sherrill saunters up to the microphone. He’s Satin Wave’s proprietor, style deacon and local icon. In good spirits, he’s set the tone all night. To introduce his delivery of Satin Wave’s roots, soul music beat moderate ambiance from a classic juke box. You can ask just about anyone from the baby boomer generation and older from the Black community about Satin Wave and they will tell you that hands down Satin Wave was the place to get your do done right.
Satin Wave’s lineage began in the 1950′s with Colonial Barbershop on 6th and Walnut. These days it may be referred to as Hillside, but then it was Bronzeville. Barbershops, taverns, chicken shacks and a hotel were thriving businesses and gathering spots for culturally proclivities. A thriving area, to set a gauge for the importance of Walnut Street to the cultural landscape in Milwaukee, the doo-wop quartet The Esquires formed in and frequented Bronzeville. By 1967, they gained enough notoriety to release the song Get on Up nationally. The record went Gold and nearly cracked the Billboard top ten. As local lore recounts the band never received any royalties for the song.
Ending Bronzeville’s heyday, beginning in the late 1962, the Department of Transportation claimed much of the neighborhood as right of way for Interstate 43. Today on the corner of Sixth and Walnut, the complex that once held a Black owned hotel and shopping area now houses the Salvation Army Emergency Shelter and a Department of Corrections Probation and Parole office, respectively.
Contents
Pt. 1 Shaping Influence, ExFabula, Barbershop
Pt. 2 ExFabula, John Gurda on Capital Court History
Pt. 3 ExFabula, The Sherrill’s, A Black Business Legacy
Pt. 4 ExFabula, Sunshine and Rain<
Pt. 5 ExFabula, Tom Crawford, a Thankful Trim
Pt. 6 ExFabula, Monumental Integrity and Murals
Pt. 4, ExFabula, Sunshine and Rain
A Common Bond
Marvin Pratt attended Terminal Milwaukee as the poet laureate of the evening. He treated the audience to a trip down memory lane, through the steps of a young man that emerged, from an era tainted with the trappings of fast talking, slick dressing cats just trying to survive in a time of intense depravity and a racial caste reality, to emerge as a man with political prospects. Fulfilling his ambitions in 1986, Pratt’s district elected him to a Milwaukee Common Council. A seat that he held until 2004, when he ran for Mayor against the current incumbent Tom Barrett.
Along his path to political achievement, Pratt always held close in his memory the tendency for the Barbershop to draw people of all walks of life. His appreciation for the people aspect business and politics mended a common bond with Ronnie over the years. Pratt’s fancy for a certain young woman solidified their connection, when a romance sprung into a loving and lasting marriage with Ronnie’s older sister Dianne.
Dianne treated Terminal Milwaukee to amusing tales of adventures in the Bronzeville, where she, family and friends often and innocently traveled about the City on the 23 City bus into foreign worlds barely miles away from her home. On one occasion, she and her playmates found themselves far from home at Mayfair Mall, where the only route back required a paid fare. Having no money, but in good spirits and unbegrudged after being refused a ride, she lead her fellows on foot back to her Sixth Street neighborhood.
Tying Ronnie, Marvin and Dianne’s stories together, a sown thread bearing the tremendous influence that family played in establishing and maintaining the barbering trade in their lineage, all attached to the first patch in the quilt, Ronnie’s grandfather the first Black Master Barber in Milwaukee.
Contents
Pt. 1 Shaping Influence, ExFabula, Barbershop
Pt. 2 ExFabula, John Gurda on Capital Court History
Pt. 3 ExFabula, The Sherrill’s, A Black Business Legacy
Pt. 4 ExFabula, Sunshine and Rain
Pt. 5 ExFabula, Tom Crawford, a Thankful Trim
Pt. 6 ExFabula, Monumental Integrity and Murals
Pt. 5, ExFabula, Tom Crawford a Thankful Trim
Grown Out, Up
No other social function of hair exists that intrigues as much as rebellion. The central character in the Terminal Milwaukee series Tom Crawford has, among other conspicuous features of his appearance, a flop of bushy wavy mane draping over his forehead nearly covering his glasses. During those days post the decade of civil unrest, the afterglow of hippiedom still prevailed for sometime before spiraling into garage rock, which all affected post-hoc the overgrowth of Crawford’s mop of hair and his strained relationship with his father.
At the breaking point all parents reach with their kids, Crawford’s mother exasperatingly urged him to ask his father, who had barbering in his survival tool belt of occupations, to cut is god-forsaken hair. When approached with the task Crawford recalls his father growling in an authentic Scottish accent, “The lawnmower is broken”. Of course, his father agreed to the hair intervention and, although receiving the uncoolest haircut of all-time, in a moment humbled by a parent’s patience, Crawford sincerely thanked his father.
Contents
Pt. 1 Shaping Influence, ExFabula, Barbershop
Pt. 2 ExFabula, John Gurda on Capital Court History
Pt. 3 ExFabula, The Sherrill’s, A Black Business Legacy
Pt. 4 ExFabula, Sunshine and Rain
Pt. 5 ExFabula, Tom Crawford, a Thankful Trim
Pt. 6 ExFabula, Monumental Integrity and Murals
Pt. 6, ExFabula, Monumental Integrity and Murals
A Rip in Time
Framing well an evening of cultural intersection, John Gurda spoke of man from Missouri that escaped enslavement in 1854 that sought refuge in Racine, WI. Under the authority of the Fugitive Slave Act, the man’s alleged owner arrived in Racine with Federal Marshals, took the man into custody and detained him in Milwaukee, commandeering the jail. Arriving by boat, a contingent of men from Racine arrived in Milwaukee demanding the man’s release.
Hearing of this atrocity and the seafaring protestors, the local human rights activists descended on Cathedral Square, which at that time was the footprint of the County Jail. At the peak of dissent, over this man’s arrest under unjust Federal Law, 5,000 people gathered outside of the jail. Taking a beam from the construction site of St. John’s Cathedral, they bashed in the door of the detention facility and freed the man. The namesake of primary street in the Riverwest neighborhood, Sherman Booth rose to the center of this display of intolerance for injustice.
After being indicted for his involvement in the Cathedral Square incident, Booth appealed the Wisconsin Supreme Court for a writ of habeas corpus. The Wisconsin high court granted the writ and furthermore declared the Fugitive Slave Act a violation of States rights, stating that no citizen of Wisconsin would be reduced to a “slave catcher”. Ironically, States rights provided the pretense for Southern succession from the United States five years later, demanding their right to practice slavery. The twice freed man escaped to Canada, his name, Joshua Glover.
Stubborn to defend heathen practices, the Federal Supreme Court accepted Joshua’s captor’s lawsuit and awarded him $1000 dollars (the value of a person in bondage to the captor) and fined Booth $1000. In today’s dollars that’s approximately $30,000, roughly equal to the cost incarcerate an individual for one year.
Contents
Pt. 1 Shaping Influence, ExFabula, Barbershop
Pt. 2 ExFabula, John Gurda on Capital Court History
Pt. 3 ExFabula, The Sherrill’s, A Black Business Legacy
Pt. 4 ExFabula, Sunshine and Rain
Pt. 5 ExFabula, Tom Crawford, a Thankful Trim
Pt. 6 ExFabula, Monumental Integrity and Murals
Shaping Influence, ExFabula, Barbershop
Contents
Pt. 1 Shaping Influence, ExFabula, Barbershop
Pt. 2 ExFabula, John Gurda on Capital Court History
Pt. 3 ExFabula, The Sherrill’s, A Black Business Legacy
Pt. 4 ExFabula, Sunshine and Rain<
Pt. 5 ExFabula, Tom Crawford, a Thankful Trim
Pt. 6 ExFabula, Monumental Integrity and Murals
Related Post
Drink the Well, ExFabula, Terminal Milwaukee, http://wp.me/p1hPwN-Bn
Intersections, Sherman Perk, ExFabula, http://wp.me/p1hPwN-U3
Shaping Influence, ExFabula, Barbershop
Set in the Capitol Heights neighborhood for Terminal Milwaukee’s current episode, ExFabula teamed up with the owners of the oldest Barbershop lineage in Milwaukee, Satin Wave, to host an evening of storytelling revolving around grooming experiences.
ExFabula and Satin Wave deserve major kudos for breaking uncharted ground. Let’s look at it this way. I over heard a 17 year-old African-American young woman (well okay, my niece), noticing the scene at the event, immediately pipe up “White people in the ‘hood, oh this is so exiting!” Her sentiment expressed genuine surprise and feelings of encouragement that where she lives isn’t place where only Blacks care to be.
Her reaction was gut and essentially summed up my grand anticipation for what ExFabula was doing on this night, a willing and unprompted effort to extend and mutually share creative conscious across the deep racial divide that prevails in Milwaukee. It’s not an everyday occurrence, and couldn’t occur as successfully impromptu, but a highly commendable effort to bring a group of people together to mutually enjoy the company of those from a different background (and at an event far from the Eastside, Downtown, or Third Ward).
Let’s have some Fun
ExFabula centers on story telling and the stories reached a variety of experiences with the hair grooming process. One story accounted the fabled barber for who you dread being next, in line to receive the hasty wrath of his clipper. Another set of stories told of the venerable barber’s ability to impart discomfort on kindergarten age children. Depictions of the tactics deployed by the barber to quell adolescent fits ranged from pysch-ward restraints to Donald Duck voices, revealing that the Barber can be jack of many trades and hopefully master of at least one.
A Faithful Effort
Likening the group at Terminal Milwaukee, collectively, to the 5,000 seeing to Joshua Glover’s freedom may be a bold statement, but the thought conjures up the gravity of progressive possibilities made offered by events that aren’t designed make proclamations of values, rather the event itself presents the value.
ExFabula continues their path through Milwaukee in Sherman Park with Intersections. Take a look at ExFabula’s Recap of the night at Satin Wave!
Related Post
Drink the Well, ExFabula, Terminal Milwaukee, http://wp.me/p1hPwN-Bn
Contents
Pt. 1 Shaping Influence, ExFabula, Barbershop
Pt. 2 ExFabula, John Gurda on Capital Court History
Pt. 3 ExFabula, The Sherrill’s, A Black Business Legacy
Pt. 4 ExFabula, Sunshine and Rain
Pt. 5 ExFabula, Tom Crawford, a Thankful Trim
Pt. 6 ExFabula, Monumental Integrity and Murals
Retrospective: Levine and Heimerl, Handmade Nation
I really enjoyed the film Handmade Nation, the work of Milwaukee documentarians. The review I authored entitled Manifest Dexterity originally posted February 8, 2009 on Sane Artworks Blog.
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Manifest Dexterity
Wanna stick it to the “the man”? What if I told you that you could do it in the comfort of your own home, on a park lawn, by yourself or with a crew of friends. What if I told you that you could and only reap the rewards of soul-inspiring fulfillment and not the affection of INTERPOL. Sounding unreasonable? The United States premiere of the film Handmade Nation made believers out of a capacity crowd at the Oriental Theatre in Milwaukee.
Judging from the flock of movie-goers you would have thought the Dali Lama was in town. With the theatre’s Buddha statues mounted on the balconies presiding, Handmade Nation written and directed by Faythe Levine and Courtney Heimerl took us on an easy ride through the winding open road of ‘crafting’. HMN covers 19,000 miles worth of perspectives, traveling cross-country to interview crafters in all four corners of the continental US.
If your senses are easily overloaded this is not the film to see. HMN begins with a sentient needle scurrying across the screen, with beady friends and inky playmates, adding to the ever-morphing patchwork quilt and screen-printed background. They say you cant judge a book by its cover, but opening sequences definitely set the tone for great films in the 21st century and HMN‘s doesn’t disappoint.
Know Thyself
What is crafting anyway? Any person engaging in this activity will be reluctant to tell you with any certainty; that would ruin the fun. In different pockets of the US, HMN documentarians asked partakers of the tactile fellowship their thoughts on crafting. Harvesting various answers, a few common threads still ran threw the craft-persons’ responses each unique in the coloring and texture describing their ethics in relation to their preferred craft.
Without prompting, it became apparent that to a crafter our consumer culture is a bother and a bore. Consumerism is impersonal, mass produced, ruthless in its hoarding of resources, and most tragically mind-numbing. Fed up with corporate sales associates ringing-up cloned scarfs and greeting cards incubated on computer screens, the keepers of the crafting code urge you to stop and think before you brandish your magnetized plastic filled with money credits.
Here a distinction must be made. We’re not talking about the crafting that will take you to Michael’s after watching a couple of Martha Stewart episodes and cause you to break out the bedazzle gun. As HMN plays on, it’s clear that transforming reality, by taking a stand against idle fingers and the capitalist big-box, requires commitment to an ethic.
On the most fundamental level the crafter, born through a series of realizations, possesses an intriguing awareness of the relationship between using your hands to interact with the materials around you and the sensation of connectedness to your habitat. This process departs from the traditional artist, likely more concerned with conveying an idea, evoking irony, or a portraying a particular aesthetic. Seeking confirmation of life’s presence, the stimulation of senses provide crafters a motivating catalyst to create. The crafter removes the isolation of modern life by making things and sharing them.
The crafter locates self by eliminating the mysterious origin of objects both novel and utilitarian. Craft-culture rejects all-things paternal and challenges us to not hinder our personal maturation by standing in-line for things we want or need all the time. According to a certain social theorist, people are cooler in uptown Manhattan anyway.
Conservation Bandits
The need to conserve by recreating with the previously used is a renewable theme throughout the film. Rather than staging a workers rally, one with busy hands admits that she buys only pre-owned fabric to make her garments. Before tailoring a class piece of formal wear, another crafter contemplates the implications of cutting into a 50 year-old piece of fabric commenting, “what gives me the right to cut into this fabric?” Doing more than ‘tree-hugging’, a dedicated crafter uses recycled paper as the medium of choice for post cards and such, decreasing demand for felled trees. The principle is one less fiber purchased retail is one less environmentally inconsiderate product that needs to be re-stocked on the shelf.
It’s not coincidental that ‘Do-it-Yourself’ has an activist application. Conservation is kind of like the crafters’ Swiss army knife; it’s a versatile instrument of change. Endearingly, crafters are willing to engage social problems on a level that departs from an annoying issue-mongers’ tendency for screaming, guilt-tripping and proselytizing. Maybe we don’t need another hero, we just need a bunch of tiny creative moments to make change.
The limits of conservation extend beyond physical materials to preservation of ancient methods. In one scene, a young woman teetering light-reflecting safety goggles from her nose, donning a tattered long sleeve sweater with strings dangling from the wrist and a payload of necklaces B.A. Baracas-style, ignites a blue-flamed torch a foot from her face that looks like it could melt a diamond. We soon learn that Tracy Bull of Happy Owl Glassworks is nonchalantly risking her eyebrows to preserve a 2,000 year-old glass-beading technique. Now that is hardcore.
Minute sized paper cutouts of cultural symbols and fauna are carefully whittled with an Xacto blade at the fingertips of Nikki McClure, her works are anthropological manuscripts translating bygone creative eras practiced by Chinese, African, and Middle Eastern cultures, connecting us to what our human ancestors were doing with their energy.
Expressing conservation comes not only with their chosen mediums and techniques, but also with diet. Working from the inside out, for some, tuning-in to the craft wavelength requires the compassion for all living beings expressed through vegan practices. That’s how one participant entered the craft chamber, “just getting together with friends to craft and enjoy good food.” That’s the beauty of it. It’s just that simple.
Causing a Commotion
If human interaction and conservation are not motivation enough, crafting also appeals to the inner renegade rebel in all of us. It was hippy-ness and punk rock for the younger Baby Boomers and grunge for the Gen X-ers. Now since both are well into their thirties, forties and fifties, according to the fist law of thermodynamics, that rebellious energy has to go somewhere, but where? (I’m a young Gen X-er pardon my sarcasm, it is well intended). The recent generations are not immune.
Some of my favorite parts of HMN depict deviant behavior that is decidedly anti-establishment. The proprietor of Anti – Factory stages a public contest to see who could knit the best bootleg of the Burberry pattern. Receiving many demonstrations she is able to construct hand bags that soon become popular. Take that posh name brand!
A posse of Texas knitters take the proverbial cake. With nicknames like Notorious N.I.T and J – Nitty, the group Nitta’ takes crafting guerrilla. When night falls they pile into a compact economy car. Timing the precise opportunity-maximizing-moment they jump out, to stealth-bomb-knit a Technicolor muffler onto a street sign post and vanish into the night. Cleverly mocking municipal bureaucrats and graffiti artists simultaneously with a stab of the knitting needle, the least crafting can do for you is provide some amusement.
Handmade Nation (2009) Trailer, Levine and Heimerl
Thumping Pareto
There is a parallel story to this motion-picture look into an American subculture that adds instead of takes away from our collective wellbeing. One of the film’s makers, Levine, also runs a local Milwaukee outlet called Paper Boat Boutique and Gallery (kind of defunct now), which as recently as January 30th was set to close, nearly unfathomable given the talent and drive of Levine. However, crafting economics defy the conventional wisdom of enterprise enough for an imminent shutdown to make sense.
Presenting an alternative model for business proves a little trickier than selecting the perfect place for a new hem. Shamelessly labor and input intensive, craft-based shops snub the profit-maximizing formula in favor of unconventional antics. If you see a six-foot-tall canvas cuboid resembling a vending machine inching toward you, wildly painted with small pictures on the front and a slot for stuffing in dollar bills, you might think you are on Japanese television, but know that a starving crafter just wants to make ends meet with some of his prints.
Efforts of magnitude replace economies of scale and sweat-equity won’t cut it. Evidenced by a vendor’s ordeal, who while embellishing one of her craft fair displays accidentally staples her index finger, badly, you have to be willing to sign your check in blood. Ensuing film frames capture a friendly neighbor arriving, without cue, to lend some clot-aiding pressure and moral support. The HMN viewer then understands that ink runs thicker than water.
The mend of the crafting community weaves together a closely packed network of individuals devoted to a common bond. HMN confirms that interaction with objects is secondary to the magic that happens when humans decide to appreciate what they agree on. The turnout to last Thursday’s premiere gives an unequivocal testament to this fact. Levine and Heimerl have clearly dedicated their energies to the most deserving places. Smacking the smiles off the big yellow circle-faced end-caps that dominate our consumption habits, Levine’s film makes a strong case for the premium warranted for crafter-made items.
Crafters are giving much of themselves physically and emotionally to carry alternatives to commercial-merchandise. A splurge in Handmade Nation is a tithe that sustains the availability of choices that American’s crave. Their take is not so much gratitude, as just desserts. It’s the only way they can stay afloat. A good amount of the film’s craft fair footage takes place outside. That means you have plenty of time to plan an outing to a craft fair.
Riders of the Storm
Having a group ‘collective unconscious’ definitely does not preclude self-consciousness. Ironically, in the heat of the struggle to remain Indie and commercial-free, the Handmade Nation is aware that their experiment with creativity could turn on the doctor. There is a dark-side. Will the evil empire cunningly find a way to capture one of the last remaining reaches of uncharted market segments? High-end designers and retail executives need to stand down and mind their demographics. Although the odds are stacked against them, the craft guild and its admirers are a fortuitous bunch. It’s up to free thinkers to bestow the social and economic capital that can keep the penny hoarders at bay.
Upcoming screenings of Handmade Nation include stops in New York’s Museum of Art and Design next week, and venues in Toronto, Canada, Barcelona, Spain, Melbourne, Australia, returning to the area at Madison’s Wisconsin Film Festival April 2 – 5, 2009 details TBA. Handmade Nation is also in print! Check here for the latest HMN news.
