UnderCurrents: Journal of Critical Environmental Studies (E-Journal - York University)
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Lysenko Lives?
Full text linkWhen Trofim D. Lysenko took control of biology in the Soviet Union, The New York Times explained it would be “just as if we had to accept Republican or Democratic dictation in scientific reasoning, depending upon which of the two major parties happens to be in power” (New York Times 1948: E6). It was 1948 -- the year of the Berlin Airlift, communist coup in Czechoslovakia, founding of Israel and launch of the Marshall Plan; the start of the Cold War. At a session of the Lenin AllUnion Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Moscow Lysenko declared genetics was a fascist science practiced by worshippers of Wall Street. The “gene theory” had provided the rationale for racism, colonization and the exploitation of the working class. With the words--“The Central Committee of the Party has examined my report and approved it”-- Lysenko launched a purge of genetics that would be terme
Introduction to a Home
Full text linkHe wants to invent a home where borders blur into surrounding prairie, river, anatomical maps. He wants to live in many places at once, but preferably in one place. He is tunneling through a past that is coded in other organs which refuse to speak. If they speak, they speakbackwards and he refuses to arrange. At the Wagha border is both sanity and madness. Home emerges from simultaneous pasts intersecting and creating homes that never were, but here in this space, it is possible to build another home every morning: to unimagine the border that is locked now. When Amritsar and Lahore were simply signs; the wrought iron gate and a parade were seething tension underground, in the marble floored room of an Englishman. Within the body is coded meaning, the flight of bats
Everywhere Flies the American Flag
Full text linkThe publico rattled along,bounced over pot holes,locals called out their stop:Tex-Ah-Co. We veeredpast McDonalds, pulled overto the gas station justlong enough for the mento get off the bus
thumbpins, 2005-2006
Full text linkIn this project, I ask: are we at war for control of our security, our privacy, our identity? I began by using the fingerprint to intervene in the public sphere. I enlarged my own thumbprint and began leaving a silkscreened version of it in public spaces such as windows, and bus shelters. I went on to create silkscreened textiles with the thumbprint pattern, using an army green camouflage motif
Witness
Full text linkDriving down a country roadelated by the sun’s warmth and rolling corn fieldsI glimpse an old woman shuffling down a gravel lanetoward the roadside mailboxa red coat thrown over her housedres
Operationalizing the State: Notes on Military Responses to Environmental Disasters
Full text linkOver the past decade, Canadians have seen our armed forces increasingly deployed in response to environmental disasters. In 1996, the Saguenay River in eastern Quebec flooded, destroying homes in the region and bursting hydroelectric dams. In 1996 the Red River overflowed its banks, flooding large areas of central Manitoba; the largest Canadian military force deployed since the Korean War (8400 personnel) was sent in to contain the flood and deliver emergency supplies under Operation Assistance. In response to the Ice Storm in 1998, which left millions of Canadians in Quebec and eastern Ontario without power, the Department of National Defence launched Operation Recuperation, which it called “the largest deployment of troops ever to serve on Canadian soil in response to a natural disaster” (www.forcesgc.ca/site/operations/recuperation_e.asp). Climate change and the growing incidence of extreme weather mean we have most likely not seen the last of this new humanitarian role for the military
Cabinda: Africa's Forgotten War
Full text linkWith the cessation of conflict between the Angolan government and UNITA (União Nacional para a Independencia Total de Angola) militias, in April 2002, attention turned to the ongoing separatist conflict in Cabinda. An oil-rich enclave separated from the rest of Angola by a slender strip of territory of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cabinda has been the site of a decades-long war of independence between the Angolan government and various separatist factions, a struggle that has been called “Africa’s forgotten war.” Approximately30,000 people have lost their lives in almost 30 years of struggles for independence. Despite the severe humanitarian crisis, access to the enclave has been largely closed to all but those who work in the oil industry
if these textiles could speak, 2006 (in progress)
Full text linkIn this project, I examine issues of intimacy and surveillance and their relationship to sound and silence through textile production. I began by tapping my own phone, and recording phone conversations with willing intimates. I then used textiles to record these intimate conversations by embroidering the sound waves onto cloth. In this project, I am very deliberately my own surveiller. I am interested in the effect of surveillance and technology on intimacy and the relationship between public and private environments. What is security? How does knowingly being under surveillance affect my environment