July 2011
Corporate State
Mimi and Eunice are on the case.
31 July 2011 | An Answer to Violence
“We must never cease to stand up for our values. We have to show that our open society can pass this test, too, And that the answer to violence is even more democracy, even more humanity, but never naïveté. That is what we owe to the victims and to the those they hold dear.”
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg the morning after the July 22 attacks in Norway.
Making Passes
Cute urban intervention from bicycle advocacy group Critical Mass in Hungary:
Related: this sticker I caught in Brooklyn.
Keep Calm and Carry On
New Year’s card from Réne Wolf, January 2011 (via)
“The Combat Paper Project utilizes art making workshops to assist veterans in reconciling and sharing their personal experiences as well as broadening the traditional narrative surrounding service and the military culture. Through papermaking workshops veterans use their uniforms worn in combat to create cathartic works of art. The uniforms are cut up, beaten into a pulp and formed into sheets of paper. Veterans use the transformative process of papermaking to reclaim their uniform as art and begin to embrace their experiences in the military.”Field Guide to Phytoremediation
New York City contains over 30,000 vacant lots covering a combined 11,000 acres (nearly the size of Manhattan itself.) Much of this space can not be reused because of toxic contamination and the expense of excavating it. Enter the sunflowers.
Phytoremediation is the use of plants to remove contaminants from the environment. This Kickstarter campaign hopes to both publicize and demonstrate phytoremediation in NYC:
“In 2010, youarethecity created the Field Guide to Phytoremediation, a DIY handbook to cleaning up toxic soils in your own backyard, neighborhood vacant lot, or other urban space. Working with soil scientists, urban farming activists, community groups, and others interested on (and in) the ground, we have expanded this research. We need your help to make this process more visible and accessible to anyone. We want to print 2,000 copies of the field guide, to distribute for free, and to create on-site installations that illustrate and explain the process of phytoremediation at field lab sites throughout New York City.”
I’m in.
100 Years of Sex
To commemorate 100 years of public health STD programs, the City Clinic of San Francisco has posted 100 posters on STD prevention. The images lack attribution and date, but the spectrum visual strategies and messages is fantastic.
I thought this one was particularly effective, both earnest and ironic, packing humor and fear in an urgent and familiar retro package:
To really catch all the zingers, click through for an, um, larger version.
Update 7/11/11. Mike wrote in to ID the poster above: it was designed by Art Chantry in 1993. There’s a bit more info on it here.
It’s also one of the 150 images in this exhibition of 25 years of international AIDS awareness posters. Some highlights are up at Design Observer.
