Sunny — maybe too sunny?

Sunny weather … a little too sunny. Clip below. Full video at YouTube: youtu.be/3SOI5vp_7hs via @YouTube. #climatechange #climatecrisis #drought

It’s sunny in South Korea. That’s helping the flowers bloom. But it’s dangerously dry.

Regenerating ecosystems 1

#ecosystem #NaturalRejuvination #globalwarming 

Clip…. 

Sometimes human behaviour can help repair ecosystems — from damage done by previous human behaviour. 

Full video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/hryEkdBmt5E

Ecosystems in spring 2

#globalwarming #climatechange #ecosystem 

Clip. The blooming of spring flowers in the greater Seoul area varies a lot. Why? Full video at YouTube: Flower Power: micro ecosystems in South Korea

youtu.be/8xifIn6Gm6Y

Ecosystems in spring

#globalwarming #climatechange #ecosystem 

The blooming of spring flowers in the greater Seoul area varies a lot. Why? Full video at YouTube: Flower Power: micro ecosystems in South Korea

https://youtu.be/8xifIn6Gm6Y

American Gun Culture: What Are the Rules?

#kylerittenhousetrial #kylerittenhouse #anthonyhuber #kenoshawisconsin #kenoshashooting #alinaji #dearbornmichigan #dearbornmichiganshooting #gunlaws #gunculture #phoenixshooting #kevinsalasmadrid 

Full video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/KILtyRpc4Ns

Three lethal/ near lethal shootings with relatively strong parallels — but very different legal outcomes. What are the rules?

Minuscule Industry

 

#moviepoem #videopoetry #poetryfilm #globalwarming #climatechange 

A moviepoem shot in Hadong, at the southern end of the Korean Peninsula.

YouTube link: Minuscule Industry — a moviepoem about natural cycles

https://youtu.be/fxBy7WUuyO4

From my collection of authorial movies.

Doompoetry

Upcoming: The World As It Is … Now, an authorial doompoem. Previous work in this series: youtu.be/bkMNagLlOu0. #videopoem #poetryfilm #moviepoem

Climate change in South Korea

#globalwarming #climatechange 

Clip — full video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/w8e9G4TUcIk . 

Climate change is real and it’s been affecting the weather patterns in South Korea for many years.

What changes do you notice in your region? 

진달래

 

Sky Before Dawn

Sky Before Dawn: Blue like Grover

https://youtu.be/1jo66H26SWY. #videopoetry #poetryfilm #moviepoem 

A video based on my late brother Richard’s writing. More below (I’m working on a collection, ergo the list making):

Winter’s cold memories: https://youtu.be/3xUIBOnXUI0

Soul a lost doll: https://youtu.be/ivkoJywWObg

Richard’s last universe: https://youtu.be/wqroSWmtJyw

 

Weird Weather, Wonky Weather 4

Weird Weather, Wonky Weather - part four. YouTube: 

https://youtu.be/e0F4t4A3NKU. #globalwarming 

Period of warm weather followed by cold snap decimated a local frog population. Might not seem like a big deal, but it’s part of a larger global pattern. What’s happening in your region?

Don’t Kid Yourself

Clip from Don’t Kid Yourself (2), recently selected by the ReelPoetry FF in Austin, Texas, and the Alternative Film Festival in Toronto, Canada. 

Full video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/tiw04VYgxB8. #poetryfilm #moviepoem #antwar

The War on Smog 1

THE WAR ON SMOG [Text]

The bombs are smart

Even against camouflage,

And they drop their loads

With a righteous

Boom.

We are saved frequently

By these awesome systems.

They save us

From emergencies

And all the,

All the bad guys.

— Finn Harvor

*

From my collection of authorial movies. These poems are primarily from a massive project entitled Plastic Millennium. It subdivides into a series of modules and thematic concerns. What is here are a few pieces from a series of nature works entitled the "Baram" series ("baram" is the transliteration from the Korean word for wind). Also are a few interlinked pieces about war and what I term “The Constant Roar of the State”. I'm drawing a linkage between these and the nature poems insofar as industrialism now – as in, really now – is impinging on what we define as the natural; in other words, we are warring on nature itself. The metaphors have disappeared. We're in the midst of something that is moving with glacial speed, but is like a bomb going off.

The Baram Series contains a substantial amount of nature scenery (a passion of mine). But it is not meant to valourize or sentimentalize the reality of 21st Century nature, which, after all, is increasingly boxed in by 21st Century development. One can see that in Canada, where I grew up; one sees it especially vividly in Asia, where I now live. The project started almost by accident: I had a piece entitled “Baram Writer” accepted by an online lit magazine (now defunct). The title was a play on words: a few years before, I'd seen a movie in Korea entitled “Baram Fighter” – that is, the transliteration of Hangeul to the Roman alphabet sounded just the same. I liked the play on words, and kept the “baram” as a sort of talisman for what followed.

These pieces exist as poems and videos, with each element of the project linked but also discrete. I have been working on the project for many years, and am not trying to be trendy or “newsy”, but instead capture something of the larger age we live in. War and the environment are now connected: by the very act of “fighting an enemy”, we – via the exhaustive machinery of war – create another, more amorphous, but also threatening enemy.

In these poems, "baram" -- or other elementary aspects of nature ("geu-neul" [shadow] and "hai" [sun]) -- do not function so much as symbols of nature, but direct "branches" of it. In other words, nature touches us directly, and gives us tangible experience. Yet at the same time this is happening, nature also can bring us closer to other forms of more emotional experience that are linked to our connections with the others who are meaningful in our lives. Yet articulating this rather simple connection is hard, and that is because being conscious of the experience is hard. Therefore, these poems will, I hope, be read on several levels: as appreciations of the natural, as experiential-philosophical meditations, and as love poems.

These poems are in turn are from a much larger project that in its totality comprises over 800,000 words, 1,500 drawings, 1,000 plus original photos, 100 original songs, and 1400 authorial movies (movies based on a belletristic text in which every element is made – authored – by one artistic sensibility). It is a first. (There are longer textual works out there, obviously, but none as long and also with as much variety of artistic forms.) As I remarked above, I've been working on this material for many years now, and it has a broad thematic range. 

About myself: I'm an artist, writer, filmmaker, and occasional musician, and live with my wife in South Korea. I've published art and writing in The Partisan [upcoming], Pacifism21, Former People, The Puritan, Eclectica, Canadian Notes and Queries, Rain Taxi, The Brooklyn Rail, The Korea Times, Dogmatika, Dark Sky, the Quarterly Conversation, rabble, the HUFS International Journal of Foreign Studies, The Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, Now Weekly, The Canadian Forum, This Magazine and several other publications. I've had group and solo shows of of my artwork, have written and staged two fringe plays, and invented a new genre of experimental movie (the “authorial movie”, in which the basis of the narrative is a belletristic text, such as a poem, short story or movie, and one person – one author – produces all elements of the video, such as text, art and music (for more examples of these, see the links below)).  I have had group and solo shows of my  visual art.My videopoetry has been screened in the US, UK, Greece, Ireland, Hong Kong, South Korea, Kazakhstan, and India. Finally, I blog at Conversations in the Book Trade, where I have conducted interviews with people including Adam Bellow, Ian Brown, Philip Marchand, Bev Daurio, Brian Palmu, derek beaulieu, Ed Champion, and Richard Nash. Link: http://conversationsinthebooktrade.blogspot.com/

https://youtu.be/ZmCk1a6uDyk

Weird weather, continued

HOW MUCH OF THE FROG POPULATION IS LEFT?

우리 개구리 얼마나 마리 아직 있어?

*

Top video, tonight. Bottom video, a week ago.

More:

One: https://youtu.be/UPrH6pu2bsI

Two: https://youtu.be/cIHfmNwoQWA

Three: https://youtu.be/NzkSvSxISbs

ChatGPT and creative writing

#canlit #ChatGPT #chatgpt4 . ChatGPT is causing consternation among writers. What kind of effects strategies can we develop to prevent literary culture from being “disrupted”? The answer lies partly in better criticism. 

Clip above.

Full video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/UZuW9xPAgV4Hi 

Climate change in South Korea

Weird Weather, Wonky Weather — 3. Full video at YouTube: youtu.be/NzkSvSxISbs via @YouTube. #ClimateEmergency #ClimateCrisis #globalwarming #ExtremeWeather

Periods of unseasonably warm weather followed by cold snaps decimated a local frog population. How’s that important?

Weird Weather, Wonky Weather 3

Weird Weather, Wonky Weather — 3. Full video at YouTube: youtu.be/NzkSvSxISbs via @YouTube. #ClimateEmergency #ClimateCrisis #globalwarming #ExtremeWeather

Periods of unseasonably warm weather followed by cold snaps decimated a local frog population. How’s that important?

War Markets

War Markets

Where were you born?

In what city

was the future written

on the hard,

cakey walls

of destiny’s

blind alleys?

Well, don’t worry —

International markets,

dizzylingly high

on their abstract

mountains

of profit

and gas —

have been teetering lately;

their great volumes —

stacked high as peaks —

are due for a crash.

Experts

all bitcoined (till last spring)

take to media,

and reassure, reassure —

while stocking secret fridges

in faraway

cottage-bunkers

with veggies, dried meat

and fruit ...

food, in the near future,

will be the new loot.

Full video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/SWqLFVSWb5I

Drone Technician

 

Drone Technician — clip

Temperature fluctuations

#ClimateAction #climatechange #KoreanClimate #ExtremeWeather. 

A sudden cold snap killed a local frog population — which had bred en masse because of unseasonably warm weather. Normal spring patterns, or the sign of deeper climatological change? 

More here: https://youtu.be/UPrH6pu2bsI

Before SVB: Thievanomics

#videopoetry #moviepoem #poetryfilm. 

Clip from Thievanomics 2: The Perfectioneers, about the algorithms and coolly calculating humans who now manage the lives of us, the common people…. 

If curious, full video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/pqMS29M9rzA

Weird Weather, Wonky Weather 3

Frogs in background now dead; a cold snap did them in. Typical seasonal change or extreme weather event? More at Weird Weather, Wonky Weather: Abrupt Seasonal Change in South Korea youtu.be/UPrH6pu2bsI via @YouTube. #climatechange #moviepoem #globalwarming #weatherpattern

Weird Weather, Wonky Weather 2

#climatechange #moviepoem #globalwarming #weatherpattern

If curious, full video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/UPrH6pu2bsI

Sudden changes in temperature are nothing new during transitional seasons like the spring and fall. But in recent years, these changes in South Korea have become more abrupt and extreme, leading to noticeable changes in the breeding of frogs and blooming of spring flowers. What is happening in your part of the world?

*

#changementclimatique #moviepoem #réchauffementglobal #weatherpattern

 Les changements soudains de température ne sont pas nouveaux pendant les saisons de transition comme le printemps et l’automne.  Mais ces dernières années, ces changements en Corée du Sud sont devenus plus brusques et extrêmes, entraînant des changements notables dans l’élevage des grenouilles et la floraison des fleurs printanières.  Que se passe-t-il dans votre partie du monde ?

Weird Weather, Wonky Weather

 #climatechange #moviepoem #globalwarming #weatherpattern

Sudden changes in temperature are nothing new during transitional seasons like the spring and fall. But in recent years, these changes in South Korea have become more abrupt and extreme, leading to noticeable changes in the breeding of frogs and blooming of spring flowers. What is happening in your part of the world?

Can AI write good quality fiction?

Clip from an upcoming experimental project with AI creativity. Have you tried these programs yourself? What’s your take on them? What kind of work did they produce? #AIart #ChatGPT #publishing #machinelearning #Algorithms

A moviepoem based on my late brother’s writing

 

On censorship

Clip from a video on how the complex realities of censorship in North America are more complicated than you might think. Full video at YouTube: youtu.be/9rTi6BkLeUQ via @YouTube. #canadianculture #mexico #censorship

Boy Meets Girl After Battle 1

 

Missile Launch as Painting

 

Clip from Missile Launch as Painting, drone attack

 

Missile Launch as Painting

Clip from one of the moviepoems in the Missile Launch as Painting series. Full video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/bkMNagLlOu0

Global Fevering, part one

Spring on the Korean Peninsula usually is a dangerously arid time of year.

After the typhoon: rainfall in Asia

 

After the torrent, Korea

 After the torrent, YouTube link: 태풍후/ After the Typhoon

https://youtu.be/bYb9I39AbUs

Taiwan International Short Film Festival

 

Happy that/ heureux que three shorts selected by the Taiwan ISFF. The most recent, Speaking With Mountains, was recorded on a hiking trail near Suki’s family’s farm on a peak named Hyeongjae Bong. I’ve climb that trail several times, frequently with a camera in tow. But this was the first time the footage came together. The second, Don’t Kid Yourself, was also recently screened at the ReelPoetry Festival in Texas. The third is a short eco-doc (also a smartphone project) about global warming. It’s from a few years ago, so it’s totally out of date now.

Speaking: 

Vimeo link: https://vimeo.com/804542929

Password: baramone 

Don’t Kid Yourself: https://youtu.be/tiw04VYgxB8

Yes, Planet: https://youtu.be/8EiEyA7bF14

From Canada to Korea and Back Again

 

Toronto

 

Missile Launch as Painting

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/bkMNagLlOu0

Bamboo swoosh

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/vSACEevH7Bo

Korean Marketplaces

Korean market culture has shrunk drastically in Seoul as corporatization shoulders aside small merchants. But it’s still central to small town life. Greening Korea deals with this, as does Your World.

 YouTube links: 

Greening Korea: https://youtu.be/ex6K64LYVkc  

Your World: https://youtu.be/kaI1ZtdRVPA