CanLit and the Hyper-Modern 2
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Canadian letters has always been good at highlighting environmental issues; it’s not a controversial issue, and artists, by their nature, tend to be sensitive to ecological concerns.
However, concern is often contradicted by behaviour, especially when one’s career is at stake.
The reality is that conventional book production has a significant carbon footprint, and so does book promotion.
Yet authors need to make a living. How to square this circle?
CanLit and the Hyper-Modern 1
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AI is in the process of being replaced by artificial general intelligence — known by the acronym AGI.
Many novelists have dealt with this potentiality — most famously, perhaps, Arthur C. Clark in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Stanley Kubrick adaptation of that novel was so groundbreaking as a work of cinema that it’s eclipsed the novel’s place in the cultural firmament. But it was a novel that inspired the movie.
In Cdn letters, there have been speculative fiction examples. But not nearly with the same cultural impact. Why?
Happy that/ heureux que my brief VideoPoemSong entitled Who? What? To be screened at Minute Madness in Toronto.
COVID-19 is going to have an impact on all our lives, either directly through long term illness or indirectly through massive social cost. Yet we still understand very little about the origins of the disease and are not currently trying very hard. It may be that those origins are too obscure to ever be known. At the sane time, we pay very little attention to improved mitigation measures, and how we can prevent epidemic disease spread. That IS an area where we have some control. Yet we choose not to exercise this control.
If curious , YouTube link: https://youtu.be/wyEXTUYpwuE?si=U0si82Z2NcCe3mT9
Clip from Greening: Boiling Oceans.
Full video at YouTube: Greening Korea: Boiling Oceans
https://youtu.be/YgBivdKSzXo
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It’s unusually warm in Korea this autumn. Ocean surface temperatures have a lot to do with that.
#climatechange #carbonemissions #oceantemperature
Who manages
your little life?
Clip from « The Policy and the Pendulum », an authorial moviepoem about diplomacy and grand strategy.
Full video at YouTube: The Policy and the Pendulum - final swing
https://youtu.be/cf_LmVUHjjM
#war #geopolitics #poetry
#peace #antiwar #moviepoem #poetryfilm #israelhamasconflict #ukrainewar #gaza
Where is all this conflict leading the planet?
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Clip from « World War 3 seems to be coming along nicely: The Wargasm »
Text:
Why do we
*desire* war?
Sung:
Don’t resist,
don’t contain,
don’t hold back,
don’t think hard…
Text:
The steel casings fall,
and leaders declare
one or another firm resolution.
None of that is key;
what really matters
is the explosive emotion —
the craving for release…
the machinery
of modern pleasure.
Spoken:
Bombing by night
doth leaders excite.
But bombing by day
is still A-OK.
(October 8/23 version)
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Where is all this conflict leading the planet?
Full video at YouTube: youtu.be/8IRq7KcE5v8
Gerald MacGuire, the apparent driving force behind the business plot — an attempt to destroy democracy in the United States — was simply a lowly bond salesman . He was used to doing others’ bidding.
He, in turn, was employed by seasoned capitalist Grayson M. P. Murphy. Murphy in turn was heavily involved with the American Legion — a veterans’ group involved in right wing activities. (It’s important to note here that veterans groups in Germany and Italy were pivotal in the rise of reaction and fascism.)
Grayson met with Murphy. For Murphy had a plan. But he needed to be sure that his agent was controllable and ruthless.
Still from a project recently chosen by the Gao International Film Festival.
Full video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/kaI1ZtdRVPA?si=r0sX60o8fbEQPfyd
