Kaskade's Jet-Set Marathon

This past New Year's was a good one -- three cities, three parties, one night. I joined Kaskade and his entourage on his private jet, kicking it off in Los Angeles, to San Francisco, and then to Las Vegas for a final 7 to 10 a.m. set. Crazy. Check the full story at Complex Magazine...

Film Series Focuses on the Reality of the Latin World

Ed. Note: This is an article that I wrote back in 2002. The original can be viewed

here.

Woman in a Maquiladora (foreign-owned assembly plant) on the Mexico-U.S. border in Maquila: A Tale of Two Mexicos.

Latino/Hispanic Heritage Month, celebrated nationally from September 15 through October 15, recognizes the rich cultural influence of the quickly growing minority.

Congress created the observance more than 20 years ago, originally as a weeklong event. But, by 1989 the event had become so well regarded and ethnically important that the government expanded it into a month long celebration.

As part of the awareness-raising efforts, City College hosts a film series titled Understanding Latino Culture.

Documentary filmmaker and adjunct professor of Latin American Studies, Greg Landau, contributed two videos to the series. Landau, 47, is a soft-spoken, ostensibly modest man despite his overflowing list of accomplishments. A two-time Grammy nominee, Landau also serves on the Board of Governors for the Grammy organization. He has produced more than 30 CDs and film soundtracks, and worked on numerous documentaries and videos.

Maquila: A Tale of Two Mexicos musically scored by Landau and produced by his father, Saul, takes a sobering look at the manufacturing industry in the northern border cities of Mexico such as Juarez and Tijuana. The film illustrates the harsh reality of the transitional effects of industrial globalization on both rural and urban communities.

Maquila examines and draws conclusions about the ethical conduct of multinational corporations that set up shop in Mexico seeking cheap labor. An unnerving contrast of perspective depicts English-speaking maquila managers defending (or denying) their actions while conversely, English subtitles translate desperate factory workers telling stories of inhumane treatment.

Maquiladoras soon developed as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994, between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Maquilas were intended to boost the Mexican economy. But, low wages, lack of union organization, and the abolition of the Mexican Constitution's Article 27 which protects the communal use of land, created a setback rather than a progressive, in-works solution. The free trade treaty brought competition for land. Consequently, farmers had to make way for the construction of the factories. As a result, rural agricultural systems are ever disintegrating, forcing farmers and peasants off their indigenous lands and into the urban workforce.

In addition to the failing economical construct of maquilas, Mexican sociologists discuss their pollution's human toll and the lack of environmental regulation. One sociologist interviewed tells the story of a peasant girl burnt by acid when she accidentally falls into a river swelling with toxic sludge. Camera shots of once green trees are shown wilting gray with fiberglass residue. Elderly folks discuss the unexplained skin blotches that ornament their skin while farmers wonder why their chickens are dying.

Women face additional safety issues in these border towns. Leaving maquilas after work in Juarez, women face unprecedented risk of rape and murder. Today hundreds of cases remain unsolved, and families wait in vain for justice to be served.

Viewing the film takes a strong stomach, but it is well worth the discomfort. Exposure to the reality of such activity, to see firsthand the issues Mexico faces, to better understand globalization and the rising world market, makes this video absolutely essential.

Landau produced the second video, Five Days in March, directed by revered Oscar winning filmmaker, Haskell Wexler. "I can't say enough good things about these two radical documentarians," says The Indigo Girls' Amy Ray in her online travel diary. "[Greg's] work is very important...Haskell is an older gentlemen who came up through the activism of labor politics, opposing McCarthyism, civil rights, etc."

The two filmmakers were invited to be the official documenters of a song-writing workshop and cultural exchange program fittingly titled Music Bridges, between famous Cuban and US musicians in Havana in March, 1999. U.S. artists included Montell Jordan, Mick Fleetwood, the Indigo Girls, Bonnie Rait, Gladys Knight, and Joan Osbourne, among many others.

"What the organizers were looking for was a kind of MTV documentary, but what we saw and felt in Cuba at that particular time, it didn't seem very appropriate," says Landau. "With the transitional time in Cuban history we felt compelled to document more of the Cuban musical culture, rather than follow all the rock stars around."

Five Days is full of spontaneous "freestyle" sessions, as camera crews follow artists through various city scenes, stumbling upon musical talent amid the labyrinth of streets. The film touches upon elements of Cuban culture such as the influence of Che Guevara, baseball, and the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion. Far from apolitical, this film is a positive, poignant tribute to the people of Cuba, and the unique lives they lead under the dictate of Fidel Castro.

Landau will lead a group of students and faculty to Cuba for a two-week study abroad anthropology class. Open to all, with an overall cost estimated at $2,500, the class will explore colonial cities and museums, and talk with Cuban intellectuals, writers, poets, and anthropologists. It will cover the development of Cuban culture, the African-Spanish influence, folkloric history, and other relevant Cuban issues.

Rare 60s Poster Art Rocks Visual Arts Gallery

I'm on a roll here: three posts in one day. Of course, all I'm doing is repurposing archived articles I have just stumbled across on the web, which I wrote years ago. So really I'm just preserving or, archiving, for myself. (2008 update: Jesus. I almost gagged on this preface. "I'm just preserving or, archiving, for myself." Man, so gay. But I guess I'll "archive" to remind myself that's it's easy to write like a pretentious-sounding fool.)

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Anyone who has attended a concert at San Francisco's famous Fillmore Audito-rium can't help but admire the collection of 60s rock posters that line the walls of the upstairs lounge. Posters featuring legendary musical artists and bands such as the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Santana, and Jefferson Airplane make up the iconographic wallpaper. The 60s posters' eye-catching imagery, with their psychedelically shaped outlines, seemingly illegible lettering, and vividly schemed stylistic traits, artistically document a revolutionary time in rock history.

Opening September 16th, the Visual Arts Gallery brings a piece of this psychedelic rock history to City College.

"The show is comprised of 20 to 30 of the earliest rock posters, but we will also include a few contemporary posters," said Jim Torlakson, the Gallery's coordinator, and participating member of CCSF's Outlook program, whose function is to promote visual education throughout the campus. "The advent of technology plays a large role in the progression of rock poster art, and it's important that we include newer posters in the show so that viewers can see where rock poster art is today," he added.

The rock poster today serves as the most tangible identity of the psychedelic rock era of the 60s.

The term "psychedelia" was applied to the drug culture, a lifestyle that concertgoers began to embrace around 1965. Those willing would regularly partake of hallucinogenic properties such as LSD and mescaline while attending performances, an activity labeled as the "psychedelic experience."

The rock performers, to aid in this experience, would play protracted sets against elaborate backdrops, featuring mind-tripping lightshows.

Event producer, Bill Graham, played an instrumental role in fostering the dance-psychedelic-rock-concert movement. Gra-ham got his start in San Francisco in 1965 promoting loft parties. Using flyers, the soon-to-be music industry magnate commissioned artists to create straightforward promotional literature: date, time, place, and performer.

What Graham got instead was an artistic piece of free-spirited expression of the capricious, experimental Haight-Ashbury community. Realizing the potential power of such posters, Graham capitalized on the idea, and began promoting dance concerts at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium in January of 1966.

Sixties poster art soon developed its own unique stylized aesthetic; and, similar to 19th century French artist Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec, who drew imagery of the spirited Moulin Rouge dancehall, the imagery depicted was convincingly hallucinogenically influenced. Vis-�-vis Toulouse-Lautrec, who sought inspiration through bottles of Absinthe liqueur, rock poster artists often kindled creativity through the use of mind-altering substances. The rock poster installation, running through October 11th, will also feature guest lectures by poster artist Chet Helms, collector Mark Powers, and others TBA. For further information or comments log onto www.trps.org

Getting A Face Lift

I just found this on the web. It's an old article I wrote. Thought I would post.

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Restoration begins on the Olmstead Murals

Ronnie Goodman and Lisa Honda labor meticulously on the $50,000 restoration of Fred Olmstead's 1941 mural, "Theory and Science," to be completed by the end of September, 2002.

Two historic City College murals, painted by artist Fred Olmstead are currently undergoing a meticulous, labor-intensive restorative process. The murals, located directly inside the front doors of the Science Hall, depict themes of theory and science.

Jointly organized, the restoration project will cost approximately $50,000, with an estimated completion by the end of September 2002.

The murals, created in 1941, which depict women and people of color practicing science, were visionary at the time. Olmstead was not painting present day 1941; he was painting the future. This type of revolutionary thinking is in every way representative of City College of San Francisco.

Olmstead, (1911-1990), who was academically trained, wanted to create murals with science-related subject matter, the idea being to integrate art with science, emphasizing both disciplines with equal importance.

Members of the physics department, notably Will May-nez, helped to create an intriguing juxtaposition of the murals next to practical applications of science and theory: a real-time seismograph, digital downloads of space imagery, a Muon apparatus that detects actual particles coming down from the atmosphere are just a few of the various displays that sit adjacent to the murals.

"One of the important things about this project is that the Science Building was intended to be and still is the official front door to this campus," said Julia Bergman, who chairs the visually educative CCSF Outlook program. "A dirty, vandalized entrance will impress negatively upon first time students...The completion is absolutely symbolic to student success."

The murals, painted during World War II, were commissioned as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1935 Works Progress Administration (WPA), a social program aimed to create jobs during the Great Depression. The program funded more than 2,500 murals for public schools, hospitals, and public centers around the nation, including the Coit Tower murals, where Olmstead contributed a three-foot piece above the main entrance.

Dating back to prehistoric cave painting in France, mural painting is one of the oldest forms of artistic expression. The word "mural" is derived from the Latin word murus, meaning "wall."

The Mexican mural movement, led by Diego Rivera and his compatriots Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, strongly influenced American mural painters of the 20th-century. Using a decorative, animated Mexican folk art style, they typically drew the figures flat on the picture surface, filling areas with bold colors, immense in size and shape. The subject matter of the Mexican muralist is socially and politically conscientious. Rivera's work especially was considered revolutionary and, at times, controversial.

Clearly Olmstead's work is influenced by stylistic traits developed by the Mexican muralist. But unlike Rivera's Pan American Unity mural, which is painted as a fresco (application of earth pigments to wet plaster), the Olmstead Theory and Science murals were painted on dry plaster with watercolors.

In addition to painting the two murals for City College, Olmstead also sculpted out of tufa stone two busts, or upper heads, of Leonardo da Vinci, and Thomas Edison, both remarkable scientists. They are located on the east side (rear) of the Science Building.

Founded in 1935, City College officially opened its Ocean branch in 1940 with three buildings: the North Gymnasium for women, the South Gymnasium for men, and the Science Hall. Back in 1940, the Science Hall served as a student center with lounge, cafeteria, library, and administration, all in one.

Timothy Pflueger, the original architect of City College, was instrumental in integrating art into the college. Taking advantage of the WPA and heading up a program called Art in Action, which took place at the World's Fair of 1939 and 1940 on Treasure Island, allowed Pflueger the necessary connections to bring works to the college like the Olmstead sculptures and murals, the Rivera mural, the Volz Mosaics, Sergeant John-son's bas relief sculptures, and Dudley Carter's "The Ram."