Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
The Hopi curse of Koyaanisqatsi marks the total disintegration of the life of harmony and balance. The subject of a 1982 tone poem of modern day environmental devastation by Godfrey Reggio, also shown in the mythological destruction of the ancient Hopi city of Pivanhonkyapi.
Permaculture is an integrative approach to re-creating sustainable cities, towns and villages, emulating ecologic relationships from wild nature. The practice encompasses architecture, horticulture, energy, waste management, and urban planning.
Disaster can be avoided, if you just don’t go there. Yet our human nature is to go, to build, to deny the omnipotent laws of nature, then suffer that all too familiar consequence.
The world’s dirtiest oil is produced by strip mining the Athabascan Tar Sands of Alberta, Canada, destroying an area of Northern Boreal forest and wetlands the size of Florida, with toxic settling ponds that pollute rivers fished by First Nations people, requiring pipelines to the Gulf Coast and hauling routes through the Northern Rocky Mountains.
Anaheim’s conflicted planning is ruining the opportunity to create a dense urban village, high-speed-rail-friendly for tourists, sports fans, and 25,000 new residents.
Helicopter photos by Christoph Gielen reveal the beautifully-designed patterns and shapes of our auto-dependent homes on the range, walking not preferred, neighbors as yet uncontacted, wildlife unwelcome, sustainable future in question.
Short poems, anecdotes, mocking or reverent tributes, called calaveras or “skulls,” are given to celebrate public or private figures. In Los Angeles, for the last seven years Tropico de Nopal Gallery has taken the custom into the realm of performance art-fashion show-walking altar display.