21 Dec
Hello friends : )
With just a few days to Christmas, we are saying goodbye to the computer for a while and getting out into the real world! We’ll be sipping on great wines, immersing ourselves in a book, going for ocean swims, breathing fresh mountain air, and most importantly – spending quality time with the people we love. We hope you are able to do the same.
We wish you a very Merry Christmas!
16 Dec
Todd Selby‘s latest short film for Nowness follows performance artist Christine Sun Kim – a young woman deaf from birth – as she lets us in on her fascinating work translating sound into movement and vision through vibrations.
“Let’s listen with our eyes, and not just our ears.”
15 Dec
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12 Dec
San Francisco-based artist Pakayla Biehn was born with strabismus - a disorder in which her eyes failed to align correctly, causing double vision. Corrective glasses and three eye surgeries later, Pakayla has drawn inspiration from her childhood experience to create beautiful paintings that play on the duality she encountered every day.
A big supporter of the marriage between technology and the arts, Pakayla relies on photoshop to merge two images (often those of fellow artists Tamara Lichtenstein and Jeff Enlo) resulting in a double exposure photograph. She then projects this image onto a blank canvas and using oil and acrylic, produces stunning pieces of work that explore “the passage of time and thought, the eternal and durable, sustainability versus impermanence…things that are usually, but don’t necessarily have to be, mutually exclusive.”
Check out more of Pakayla’s work here.
7 Dec
2011 National Geographic Photo Contest - The Atlantic – 45 more stunning images for you.
6 Dec
Sarah Kay was just 14 years old when she began performing poetry in New York’s East Village in 2003.
As a wide-eyed teenager, poetry became Sarah’s way of navigating the world – of exploring and making sense of what she didn’t quite understand. So she spent many a night at New York’s Bowery Poetry Club soaking up every ounce of spoken word she could. Unhappy with the indignation she often encountered in this form of art, Sarah developed her own unique style of poetry overflowing with optimism, clever wordplay and wise-beyond-her-years meaning.
Since then, she has frequented poetry slams, performed on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, and received standing ovations at TED. In 2004, Sarah and fellow poet Phil Kaye created Project V.O.I.C.E. – an education initiative designed to help young people use spoken word poetry as an instrument of self-expression. A vehicle through which they can make sense of their world and their place in it. Sarah and Phil are passionate about helping students to “rediscover wonder, to fight their instincts to be cool and unfazed” and to “actively pursue being engaged with what goes on around them, so that they can reinterpret and create something from it.”
An inspiring young woman and a fabulous initiative (We certainly could have used a bit of Sarah’s wisdom & guidance at 14 years old!).
If you haven’t already, check out Sarah’s first TED talk for more of her story and two brilliant performances of “B” and “Hiroshima”
And in her most recent appearance at TED, Sarah shares two more powerful poems with us and speaks about her childhood belief that she could be an astronaut, ballerina, and princess all in one lifetime.
Find more of Sarah’s poetry and performances on her personal website – Kay Sarah, Sera.
1 Dec
Words: Wawira Njiru
In Sub-Saharan Africa, women constitute 60 percent of all people living with HIV/AIDS. Among young people aged 15-24, the HIV prevalence rate for women is at least three times that of men. Worldwide, women make up more than half of all people living with HIV/AIDS. Women are at least twice as likely to acquire HIV from men during sexual intercourse than vice versa and are more likely to be subjected to non-consensual sex.
When my friend Dorcas*, was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, the devastation was evident. However she was very fortunate that she and her family could afford good medical care. Because of this, 10 years on, she is happy, healthy and eager to share her story. Unfortunately, not all women are so lucky…
In 2008, Jane was diagnosed with HIV. Sadly, she felt she could share her status with no one – the stigma attached would be too much to bear. What would her family think of her? Her husband had already left her. What would the neighbours say? They would never look at her children the same. She could not put them through that. Her financial status meant that she did not have access to good medical care (as is the case for far too many) and so in a little hut in rural Kenya, she took her last breath. Jane died in silence. Unaware of what the world would have otherwise offered her…like a chance to live
When Sarah was raped, she had trouble telling anyone. The police told her that there was nothing they could do to catch the perpetrators and because they had failed to help, she concluded no one could. She was diagnosed with HIV. She died a slow and painful death. She never told her parents. They had very little education and so never understood why she got so sick. Because they could not afford medical care, no one could explain to them what had happened to their daughter.
Mary had four young children when she was diagnosed with HIV. Having lived a life of poverty, Mary was left in the hands of Kenya’s inadequate public health system. Her best friend tells me if she had had access to private health care, she could have lived long enough to see her daughters become women, her son graduate from highschool, her youngest daughter perform in the school choir. But she died in 2009.
~
This World Aids Day, as I mourn for these women that I have known and loved, I realize that their premature death is not a result of HIV/AIDS but a result of their lack of access to treatment that would prolong their lives. As we all reflect on the continued devastation of this disease today, please consider supporting the wonderful organisations working tirelessly to bring medical treatment to sufferers of HIV/AIDS around the globe. People like Selinah…
* All names have been changed for privacy reasons.
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