From: Fred Camper (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Feb 24 2010 - 18:22:17 PST
Chuck,
I, like others, am not sure what you mean.
Do you mean that the "optics" of finding a small (especially compared
to the billions Haiti needs) amount of money to preserve Deren's
Haitian footage are troubling bad when people are dying there? Or do
you mean that when people are dying, we should be spending no money on
art? If the latter, we might as well give up on art entirely, because
people have been dying of starvation since the beginning of time. But
before Americans give up on art entirely to spend money to help the
Haitians, I might suggest some other things we could give up first,
like, oh, lawn fertilizer, pet grooming, SUVs, cheeseburgers, cosmetic
surgery, and a lot more. Indeed, what about the "optics" of all the
things we spend money on that give us pleasure that we don't have to
spend money on, that aren't essential to life or to art, while people
are starving?
I remember a story Noam Chomsky told after he visited Hanoi during the
height of the Vietnam war. The Vietnamese wanted to hear his theories
of linguistics.
Fred Camper
Chicago
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.