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.. and it’s clearly expressing the driving forces of economy
that at the time – right after the recession, were looked as
energy,
force, strength.
Even though we had many early warnings
in relation to the side effects
and the negative outcomes of this.
At the time we were
pushing forward
and
these two pictures
clearly show
what's going on here. And
they are very interesting because they express
the way we still think
they express the faith
in progress
the faith in development
as an ongoing thing that will never stop.
It expresses the faith
we had in change
and we still keep up
to this ideology.
So in a way this is reflecting what's inside most of us,
or should I say all of us?
well I went on with my walk
and I
sort of started
facing the
negative
outcomes
of what the picture was, sort of
showing us. It has to do with waste
not just this waste but
it’s very amazing that
you walk out the streets at night
in front of every place of consumption
you see this
huge amount of rubbish
night after night after night as if
we're living in an endless space
where all that could be stuck
for years and years without us having the impact.
And it’s very absurd because we all
walk through it
and we don't care,
we won't care until it reaches our doorstep.
But then it will probably be
too far.
Emptiness
sort of what
the market place is
showing us or giving us
empty aspirations
and finally, I happened
This is not the same night, the night after
to see something really amazing.
This is Times Square
there’s this man
just standing there.
He was silently standing there
with his eyes shut,
I stood beside him for a long time, I felt tempted to talk with him
I don’t know if this was an art performance or whatever
I stayed there for more than
fifteen minutes and then just decided to
walk away
because maybe he was mad
and it could have been risky.
But basically
it expresses the madness of how far we’ve got.
Immediately I associated
this image to
what Times Square means
especially for someone coming from Latin America
because this is just way too much
here in Manhattan you can see
too many things that are just way too much
and in a way it's like being bond
by many other things that
Tim was mentioning.
Perhaps here we can
find like the finest expression
of what we are
offered
and how we are tempted and how we bond. And how we all want here
when you walk the typical tourist places
you realize in the faces of the visitors
a certain sense of
“This is what I want to get, this is what I would like to have, this is what I want to be like.”
and it can be very depressing.
No one was really noticing him
and that’s saying a lot about
how insensitive we’ve become.
This is practically
a bit more than 80 years after
the painting that I’ve showed you before and clearly
we cannot look away from the
negative outcomes
that are shown to us all over the place.
And from this picture I'd like to jump into
another picture which is from the
late 50’s and this is an auto-portrait from
Frida Kahlo
and it's called “Auto-portrait in the
frontier line with the US”.
And in a very interesting way it expresses
it still expresses what’s going on in the developing World.
We're caught in the transition.
I've heard many times that
in the speech that comes from
the developed World
this is not taken into account.
That there’s a massive amount
of people
that are still living in a different
stylelife,
in a different way.
Of course they are all driven to become...
to pass the frontier, but we are still, most of the world
are still in a transition.
And talking about ...
here there is a huge opportunity
not on the developed world but on the developing world.
We need to make
developing governments realize
there's no way
they can continue following the path
of the development that was labeled during the 50’s
which is basically the way most of our developing countries are moving.
I would like to
sort of finish
with a kind of a long quote
by a fantastic art critic called ...
that expresses
mainly the message of what I
wanted to give to you and I would try to read it as best and as fast as I can.
“The environment
is merely a reflection of what is in us.
And if the environment is to change something in us must change.
Nothing will change however
as long as we remain unconscious of the fundamental forces
which shape our lives.
And be that as we are in the general cultural ambience.
At this point we need
some fairly coherent and organizing picture
of what has been happening to us.
so that we can weigh the cost of what we are doing.
If we can penetrate to the true inwardness
of a situation
if we do not duel our minds
to these dangerous
or unpleasant features
we are less likely to be seriously manipulated.
We have the possibility of choice,
once we see clearly what's going on.
Basically our need is
for a full acceptance of the moral nature
of so many of the problems that we face.
Then perhaps we can find a way
to pass through these conditions
and transcend them
like Edgar Ellen Poe’s sailor is able
by careful observation
as he sank into the maelstrom
to understand the nature of the vortex and thus could be carried
upon the same spiral
that sat him down.
And I would like to finish with
what I think is very
interesting image.
I don’t know if you all know this man.
Do you all know this man?
.... O.K. This is former minister of Agriculture John Gummer.
Who in the 90’s
to prove that eating beef
in the UK was perfectly safe
fed his little daughter Cornelia with
a hamburger.
Eight years later
we had 32 people dying from Mad Cow disease
and all the consequences that
that brought.
And I wanted to finish with this picture
sort of to highlight the moral
imperative
there's behind this.
Because this is as far as we can go
if we go on to the ideology of progress.
That mainly when you see the hearings
because he was brought to
a public audience
to explain why he had done the things he had done
in relation to Mad Cow disease you clearly understand
the ideology that’s lying behind it.
And it’s basically the ideology
of growth – economic growth. And I wanted to finish with this, because this is
very extreme
image of how far we've gone.
And it sets a sense of emergency
to react and to
realize where we are and please let us do something.
Thanks very much!