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| THE SCULPTURAL PLAYGROUND PROJECT 2014. |
A PERMaCULTURE Life- tHE SCULPTURAL PLAYGROUND PROJECT, Art, THE SOCA DROME. what next
I read an article titled " A Permaculture Life" by Olympian swimmer, George Bovell. I have read several other article by Khalid Mohammed- Chef, Machel Montano - Soca Artist and Chris Cozier- Artist and Critic.
In light of what happened this Carnival; I feel it appropriate to highlight some of the things mentioned by these esteemed members of our cultural space.
It highlights the gaps in our critical thinking, big gaps that we need to address, if we wish to move forward.
1st. A PERMACULTURE LIFE. By George Bovell.
Story
Created: Dec 25, 2013 at 6:40 PM ECT
"Permaculture emphasises allowing nature to do what it
does best and aims to create as many symbiotic relationships as possible while
minimising waste. It is not about how many plants are in the garden but how
many ways can the plants that are growing there help each other."
"I then applied the concept of permaculture to my own
life and realised the sad truth of why it was so tiring and was requiring so
much effort on my part. Where I live, Trinidad, did not facilitate what I did
for a living as I trained alone in less Third World facilities, forcing
me to expend energy to travel often to train abroad in sometimes bleak and
lonely places, the women I had been going for did not understand what I did for
a living, nor the challenges I faced. They didn’t really enjoy what I did for
fun either, not many of my swimming friends shared my passions outside the
pool, and it was difficult for my friends outside the pool to relate to the
demands of my swimming.
I was wasting too much precious time in traffic.
Instead of having a productive permaculture garden at home it seemed as if I
had been attempting to grow my garden way down a highway full of traffic with
much labour, tonnes of fertiliser and pesticide to reap a meagre harvest."
Cleaning up Trini Cuisine
Published:
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
"We want to clean up
Creole cuisine: Less fats; healthier; stop overcooking everything; rethink the
meats. Will brisket stew better than clod and give you a better mouth-feel?
Foie gras and ox tail are equal. It’s only in our minds we make them unequal.
In Italy, their restaurant food is their homefood, too. Sada roti and ox tail
are our food and there’s no reason we can’t celebrate it. If someone thinks,
“That’s too fancy!” that’s the point: we could be fancy. Ten years ago, if I
served tomato choka in my fine-dining restaurant, everybody would have run out.
But call it, “tomato concasse,” which is the same thing, just the French
version, and they pay plenty money for it. The best thing about the new
Trinidadian cuisine is it’s so original. It’s not fusion. It’s new. It’s not a
play on fish broth; it is fish broth. Authentic flavour in a fine-dining way.
The bad thing is, sometimes, we don’t get everything right. Because we’re
figuring out the best way to do things. My last meal would probably be my
mother’s stew chicken, rice and red beans. Not some crusted rack of lamb. A lot
of things that come to mind about what a Trini is kinda don’t apply right now.
I think crime has a lot to do with it. I don’t have that feeling that I
have to be at the Oval for the first ball of a Test match. I’m worried about
what Trinidad my son will grow up in. Is he going to be in a curfew? When I was
his age, I was gone from eight in the morning and came back when the
streetlights came on. And my parents didn’t have to worry."
No handouts, please!
“We also need to build industries around the artistes. Now I’m not saying it’s all going to be about funds and grants because this is a competitive business, so we can’t wait for the handouts. “I think if the artistes improve and we make something that is worth selling, somebody will come here looking for it, to sell it. So we have to constantly improve that.
“We also need to build industries around the artistes. Now I’m not saying it’s all going to be about funds and grants because this is a competitive business, so we can’t wait for the handouts. “I think if the artistes improve and we make something that is worth selling, somebody will come here looking for it, to sell it. So we have to constantly improve that.
“It’s not the funds that are going to
help us become more popular. It’s going to help us. We need, more than
ever—more than funds—qualified people willing to sit down around us and embrace
us and teach us the right things.” In his assessment of the chronic cultural
shortfalls that has T&T without the requisite structures for nurturing
perfection and leveraging success, Montano said, educators and administrators
were key stakeholders towards achieving industry status. “Help us and teach us
what works out there in the world. It is a work in progress.
“We have to have a body and we have to
have greater frequency of conversations like this and every time we have a
conversation, we must hold ourselves accountable. “We must have some
deliverables, we must have a timeline. We must set a plan for us to achieve
these things. That’s how we will make progress.”
Award for the Critical Spaceman
Published:
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
"Much of Cozier’s concern about how art is
perceived/misconceived in T&T focuses on limitation, which stifles rather
than promotes production and experimentation, particularly with young artists:
“Here you’re not encouraged to do stuff. Abroad they’ll tell you, “Do something
to impress us…we want excitement.” While he’s still wary of outsider
appropriation and essentialising of Caribbean art, which prompted his return in
1989 after studying art in New York, 20 years on, he hopes “We’ve passed the
stage of the ‘exotic Other’ (although recently a woman in Kentucky commented
with the unwitting condescension of ignorance ‘Wow you’re so
articulate!’).” Negotiating a middle passage between here and there has
never been easy for Caribbean artists; “Searching for ways to create
meaningfully in what…have become very aggressive, shrewd, utilitarian and
mercantile-driven Caribbean societies, is quite a challenge.”
Art has never been liberated from its subsidiary plantation-society status: “We only encounter art in commercial spaces. Gallery spaces are only about selling, so the public has a limited view.” This limitation is compounded by media coverage- or lack of it – as generally the media only covers what is shown in the galleries. He contrasts this deficiency with the half page article in a leading Danish newspaper about a joint show he held in Copenhagen, Denmark with a Chinese artist in 2002. "
Art has never been liberated from its subsidiary plantation-society status: “We only encounter art in commercial spaces. Gallery spaces are only about selling, so the public has a limited view.” This limitation is compounded by media coverage- or lack of it – as generally the media only covers what is shown in the galleries. He contrasts this deficiency with the half page article in a leading Danish newspaper about a joint show he held in Copenhagen, Denmark with a Chinese artist in 2002. "
So, here we sit with an urban and rural space, that has been complicated by people who have almost no sensitivity towards the end users of the space they are planning. From our engineers, planners, politicians, union leaders, doctors, crafts people, construction....... artists!
So we have had...
1. The Oval Mural Project.
2. the Water Front project.
3. The Parliament Mural....
4. The Central Bank Mural.
5. Pan Trinbago, Pool in the
Greens.
6. Soca Drome.....................
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| THE CENTRAL BANK MURAL PROJECT. |
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| BROKEN DRAIN COVER. |
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| VENDOR SHED. DESIGN SOLUTIONS- SOCIAL DESIGN- SOCIAL ART IF ART WANTS TO BE THE PROTAGONIST FOR CHANGE IN A SOCIETY. WE WILL NEED TO GO TO THE PEOPLE. ONE EXAMPLE - THE PIE MAN CART PROJECT. walk up to a business person, listen, then redesign their space for them, understanding the economics, social, historical. These are projects that the Trinidad and Tobago Art Society, The Trinidad and Tobago Institute of Architects, ACTT, Unions, Can address, with the simplest of ease. To get it right at first isn't the point, through critical thought and proper analysis we will get it at the end.  |
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