Vultures of Cultures

This week, in between trying to figure out which humanitarian effort to donate some of my small income to, I also chose to donate to some independent publishers as well. I know this seems wrong in a time when there is so much need but...as a NY publishing expat I have a fondness for media and, being that everyone is up in arms about being charged for the NYTimes online now, I have a special worry for the future of independent media. As someone who is now deeply involved in self produced art and independent filmmaking, I completely understand the need for the cost of media (looks at taxes). We didn't really want to make Gravity a limited edition art piece, we had to in order to pay our bills but even moreso to afford to make more work. Artists, filmmakers, writers are really small businesses whose commodity just happens to be enriching in a very unquantifiable way making things increasingly complicated in an open source world.

Every artist of every medium feels compelled to put stuff out into the world, even possibly for free, to be seen & heard and to stimulate the minds & lives of an audience but the point where one should be compensated for their artistic output is a gray area that I worry about often in our media driven age. It is definitely a transitional phase where rare things, like content and beauty, are acting on a strange scale of value- a strange scale that I feel the need to donate to, among other things, during these shakey, fluid times that every aspect of the world is going through. Culture makes us human, act humanely towards it!

Here are some pictures from 2009 of the beginning of Leonard's house, erected at a very uncertain time in the post boom of art history and, for that matter, at a very uncertain time in the history of the American dream. Now, more than ever, we need to think closely about the resources we use both culturally and as a human race during this time of huge transformation.