Nigerian Environmentalist Nnimmo Bassey at Copenhagen: The Global North Owes a Climate Debt to Africa

Leave the oil in the soil. Leave the coal in the hole. Leave the tar sands in the land.

There are some great activist environmental speakers at Copenhagen, many I’ve never heard of until now.  One of Nigeria’s best-known environmental leaders, Nnimmo Bassey, is the founder of Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria, and he serves as the international chair of Friends of the Earth. He has campaigned against Shell Oil’s presence in the Niger Delta for nearly two decades. Last night he spoke at the opening of Klimaforum09. His forthcoming book is titled To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and the Climate Crisis in Africa. See DemocracyNow’s interview with him here.

“Offsetting is upsetting.”  To paraphrase some of what he said:  Resist, Mobilize, Transform — these three key words that capture what we are looking for. Do you care about land grabs?  Now we are seeing sky grabs. All this grabbing is enough. This grabbing has to stop.  The issues of climate change and climate justice are important.

Also at issue according to Bassey:  REDD is bringing misery.  All the deforestation must be stopped.  You cannot buy a forest somewhere and manage it.  We need to change the way we behave, change the way we consume things, and begin to realize we have just one planet.

Why are countries such as the United States so resistant to the idea of paying poorer countries for the effects of climate change, since they are obviously suffering the most and not to blame?

Because then we would be in debt for all the wars for oil and resources and land we have waged around the world.  When powerful and hugely polluting countries like the U.S. take things by force, things like oil, things like land for pipelines, and then use that stolen oil and land to further pollute the world, is the most massive and expensive of wrongs.

This is obvious to people from most other countries.  It’s obvious that developed highly-polluting countries have to make this right, both by ending our own pollution and then helping developing countries continue to develop without pollution.   That’s it in a nutshell, and why certain dishonest and frantic political factions in the U.S. are terribly resistant to action on climate change. It’s why dishonest politicians such as Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann continue to deceive the American public about climate change in every way they can.

Imagine what is being said in meetings at Exxon this week.

We have to fight back.  Climate change is going to be worse tomorrow than today.   “We need a real climate deal, and we need it now, not tomorrow.”

More on Nnimmo Bassey here and here (an interview).

Determined to bring down the climate summit, the most important world meeting in history, the agents of dissolution and dissent are hard at work.   We suspect we know who they are, but we don’t know for sure. They might be politicians, they might be Big Oil, they might be oil exporters.  Real dissenters are welcome and necessary, but not the corporate ones. They are  trying to spread stories designed to break up the summit in Copenhagen and destroy the hard work already done so no climate deal is reached. It’s much bigger than “hackergate” (the illegally obtained and blown-way-out-of-proportion emails) now.  The dissension campaign is working on mainstream media, including the UK newspaper the Guardian.  It has fallen prey nearly completely to the dismal cynicism that a leaked plan by the US and the UK called the Danish Text is undermining the climate conference and on the brink of destroying it, already. Who leaked the text? Is it even real?  Andrew Revkin of the New York Times calls the Danish text a floating “trial balloon” and now it’s causing serious dissension in the ranks.

True, the text says the U.S. wants to basically ditch the Kyoto Protocol. But like the Tora Bora story, we knew this a long time ago.  The Kyoto Protocol has not worked as advertised, either. We do need a replacement for it.

The Guardian — Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak – has the whole story and they have made it as pessimistic as possible.

Repeat after me:  “All is not lost, and there is no reason to be completely depressed about this yet.”  Of course, we can all choose to be cynics and choose to think the worst.  It’s a hard habit to break. Maybe James Hansen will parachute in (with Al Gore?) and save the day.

Developing countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN’s negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol — so says the depressing Guardian. They have taken the leaked information at face value and obviously have not been suspicious of this or its timing at all.  (I have read part of it, too. Where is the horrible part?  I can’t find it.)

How does anyone who reads this newspaper (and other similar news sources) prevent themselves from jumping off a bridge every day?  There is something (small) to be said for braindead, Tiger-Woods-obsessed media — it’s less likely to result in people committing suicide.

The media needs to remember, we can handle the truth. Just don’t make it sound far worse than it actually is.

• Read the ‘Danish text’
• In pictures: Copenhagen day two

Decade of 2000s Will Be Warmest Ever, Scientists Say

It dawned with the warmest winter on record in the United States. And when the sun sets this New Year’s Eve, the decade of the 2000s will end as the warmest ever on global temperature charts.

‘CLIMATE INACTION COSTS LIVES’ — Using fire ladders, firemen and police attempt to arrest Greenpeace protesters who scaled the walls and draped a banner on the Parliament buildings in Ottawa, Monday December 7, 2009. (Photo/The Canadian Press/Fred Chartrand)

Warmer still, scientists say, lies ahead.

Through 10 years of global boom and bust, of breakneck change around the planet, of terrorism, war and division, all people everywhere under that warming sun faced one threat together: the buildup of greenhouse gases, the rise in temperatures, the danger of a shifting climate, of drought, weather extremes and encroaching seas, of untold damage to the world humanity has created for itself over millennia.

As the decade neared its close, the U.N. gathered presidents and premiers of almost 100 nations for a “climate summit” to take united action, to sharply cut back the burning of coal and other fossil fuels.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told them they had “a powerful opportunity to get on the right side of history” at a year-ending climate conference in Copenhagen.

Once again, however, disunity might keep the world’s nations on this side of making historic decisions.

“Deep down, we know that you are not really listening,” the Maldives’ Mohamed Nasheed told fellow presidents at September’s summit.   Read more here.

I feel sorry for the Maldives and every other beautiful island nation, but it’s too late for them already, even if we stop all CO2 emissions tomorrow.  There is a temperature build-up already in the atmosphere that will be there for a long time whether we continue to pollute any more or not and it will make the ice continue to melt and the oceans continue to warm. The Maldives need to relocate their people.

By the way, it’s now completely accurate to call CO2 pollution. Yesterday the EPA carried through on its endangerment finding on CO2 and other GHGs and said they are nasty stuff in high concentrations and have to be regulated. Watch out, Big Coal. The EPA is coming for you and millions of people are cheering them on.

The message: Time is up. This is how important the Copenhagen conference is.  From the Age of Stupid people:  “Congratulations to 10:10’s biggest fan, Ian Katz at the Guardian, who has pulled off a genuinely historic coup by persuading 56 newspapers in 45 countries to print the same editorial this morning, marking the start of Copenhagen. First time the world’s media has ever spoken with one voice. Almost… you’ve gotta love one US paper’s response to the suggestion that they join: “This is an outrageous attempt to orchestrate media pressure. Go to hell.” Hmmm, all the world comes together to agree climate text, except the US – where did we hear that before?”

Only two U.S. newspapers will publish the editorial, (that they know of) and one is Spanish-language: The Miami Herald, USA , and the El Nuevo Herald, USA in Spanish. What is wrong with American newspapers? American newspapers have become so politicized they are frightened to even print an editorial stating an opinion about a planetary problem that will affect us all. Pathetic.

Here is the Editorial in full. Pass it on and help make up for the awful state of American newspapers.

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species [...]

The Copenhagen climate summit got off to a big start on December 7th with many meetings and opening statements. Here is the COP 15 opening press briefing:

“COP 15 President Connie Hedegaard and UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer held a joint press conference on the opening day of the meeting.

Ms. Hedegaard spoke of an unprecedented political will to reach an agreement. With 110 Heads of State confirmed as attending the conference, she said there is a huge pressure on everyone to deliver not just a deal, but an ambitious deal in Copenhagen.  She emphasized the urgent need for such a deal to be reached here in Copenhagen, saying that we cannot send 110 Heads of State home to tell their populations that we couldnt make it.

Yvo de Boer stated that countries in the conference room this morning made clear their desire to deliver a strong and ambitious outcome in Copenhagen. I believe the conference will write history, but we must make sure it writes the right history, he said.  He underlined the need for ambitious commitments to cut and limit emissions, for immediate funding and for prompt action on the ground.”

See below for a strong message on the agreement NASA Scientist James Hansen is expecting from Copenhagen and how it needs to be improved.

A message from climate scientist James Hansen on December 7th:

“I published an op-ed in today’s New York Times on the deadly cap-and-trade fiasco (”Cap and Fade“) that conniving governments are attempting to foist on us to the detriment of our children and grandchildren. Their scheme, hatched in collaboration with Wall Street big banks, is a reprise of the Kyoto Protocol. Global emissions after Kyoto actually increased more rapidly (in real terms, percentage terms, and exponential rate of growth) than before. Even those few countries that reduced their emissions (and few did after “offsets” are eliminated) did so by exporting their emissions (and jobs) to developing countries (to make products exported to the developed countries). “

Sack Goldman Sachs Cap-and-Trade

The revolving door between Washington and Wall Street has produced a new scheme to fleece the public. “Cap-and-trade” is the heart of the Obama Administration’s plan to slow global warming and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Permits to emit a “capped” amount of carbon dioxide will be traded on Wall Street by big-time players like Goldman Sachs.

Cap-and-trade was anointed hero status for helping reduce pollution from power plants, specifically acid rain from the sulfur in coal. Seldom have accolades been less deserved. Indeed, this “success” story is a case of calling black white.

Here, in essence, is how it worked. Congress passed a law, Title IV of the Clean Air Act, capping sulfur emissions from power plants at 50 percent of 1990 amounts. Utilities reducing emissions more than half could sell excess reductions to other utilities, which then did not need to reduce pollution. Physical changes were simple. Many power plants switched to [...]

Look at the box on the left! The Climate Change Conference starts today in Copenhagen. Throughout the next two weeks, Futurism Now  will bring you a wide range of topics associated with the conference, and update you on news from Copenhagen as much as possible.   Some of our partners in this effort (there are many) include  Link TV and OneClimate.net.  They are both devoted to bringing up to date media from Copenhagen to everyone around the world who tunes in.   We are embedding their daily video here so you can check back here or visit their site for the latest media.

Your browser does not support iframes.

“Millions of viewers are expected to tune in December 7-19, 2009 during the climate summit, which has been called ‘the most important conference since World War II’.” The videos will include breaking stories, the lowdown with experts, and crowd-sourced video.

It’s called  “Copenhagen Live 24/7″ on the OneClimate.net channel.

And don’t forget, the official Copenhagen COP15 media channels are there for everyone too. Here is the page with everything on it from the UNFCCC, where you can also participate virtually, every day.

Photo: Gopal Chitrakar. A view of Mount Everest is seen during moon rise from Syangboche in Nepal December 3, 2009.

The Wall Street Journal published this on Saturday. If this happens this week, President Obama will have a better negotiating position when he attends the Copenhagen climate summit.  We don’t know yet if that’s good or bad, but it could at least help the EPA regulate greenhouse gas emissions if Congress fails in its obligation to do its job on the climate change and jobs front.

The article begins:

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will early next week, possibly as soon as Monday, officially declare carbon dioxide a public danger, a trigger that could mean regulation for emitters across the economy, according to several people close to the matter.

Such an “endangerment” decision is necessary for the EPA to move ahead early next year with new emission standards for cars. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said it could also mean large emitters such as power stations, cement kilns, crude-oil refineries and chemical plants would have to curb their greenhouse gas output.

The announcement would also give President Barack Obama and his climate envoy negotiating leverage at a global climate summit starting next week in Copenhagen, Denmark and increase pressure on Congress to pass a climate bill that would modify the price of polluting.

While environmentalists celebrate EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, it has caused many large emitters to cringe at the potential costs of compliance.”

Aww.  No, don’t feel sorry for them. They have been destroying our climate for decades.

“According to a preliminary endangerment finding published in April, EPA scientists fear that man-made carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are contributing to a warming of the global climate. Senior EPA officials said in November the agency would likely make a final decision in December around the time of the summit.

Joe Mendelson, Global Warming Policy Director for National Wildlife Federation, said the endangerment decision, would happen at “absolutely the right time.” . . . .

Good, they are timing it.

Read more here.

Here is it:  The Last and Final Smackdown of the illegal hacking and other break-in crimes committed in recent weeks (one involved stealing a dead computer and old papers!)  being used by the misguided and dishonest Denial Movement to score political points.  Right-wing talk radio is all over this — mainly because their understanding of global warming is so compromised by their politics.  It is the last because FN has already probably devoted too much space and time to Hackergate and deniers lately, but what they are saying has to be corrected and exposed.

Now we can all move on.  “Climate deniers have been making a lot of noise about a set of stolen emails from one of the world’s leading climate centers, The Universtiy of East Anglia. The spin they’re putting out is that the emails reveal what they always suspected, an evil global conspiracy.”

There is another video at the bottom of this entry.   Also see:

Impact of CRU Hacking on the AMS Statement on Climate Change

AMS Headquarters has received several inquiries asking if the material made public following the hacking of e-mails and other files from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia has any impact on the AMS Statement on Climate Change, which was approved by the AMS Council in 2007 and represents the official position of the Society.  Read on for Nature’s take on this.

And from Nature:

Climatologists under pressure

“Stolen e-mails have revealed no scientific conspiracy, but do highlight ways in which climate researchers could be better supported in the face of public scrutiny.

The e-mail archives stolen last month from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, have been greeted by the climate-change-denialist fringe as a propaganda windfall (see page 551). To these denialists, the scientists’ scathing remarks about certain controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial ’smoking gun’: proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are warming the globe.

This paranoid interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the country’s much needed climate bill. Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause. That case is supported by multiple, robust lines of evidence, including several that are completely independent of the climate reconstructions debated in the e-mails.. . . .”

It’s a good science article too.

Here is the best, last video on this topic unless Quentin Tarantino makes one:

The "We got it, so let's use it" argument is a bad one, especially when it comes to coal - and nuclear weapons.

“Advisory panel calls for a $1.2 trillion investment in carbon capture and storage”

Remember “There’s No Such Thing as Clean Coal“?  The new “conventional wisdom” is the opposite:  Let’s fool the public into thinking there is such a thing as clean coal, and make billions and billions of dollars from it. How?  We’ll just tell them we have to use it. We’ll say we can “capture” all the CO2. Why do we have to use it?  Because there’s so much of it.

I’m very grateful this argument does not apply to the thousands of nuclear warheads the U.S. has bought and paid for.

The mere fact that something is plentiful and cheap and therefore we have to use all of it is an argument that shouldn’t apply to any fossil fuel.  In the first place, we don’t have to use fossil fuels anymore because we know what kind of energy is renewable, we know how to get it and how to use it.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter to the pollution profiteers what the truth is, as long as they’re raking in the dough. It doesn’t matter how many people eventually die from climate change to the pollution profiteers.

In fact, in order to prevent catastrophic climate change, we should stop using coal right now.   If carbon capture and storage is ever to be used, it won’t be for 10-20 or maybe even 30 years.  It might work only partially.  If so, it’s mostly useless.  No one knows to which degree it will work, yet even people who know better are insisting we have to try and therefore depend on CCS.  And they are willing to gamble $1.2 trillion on it.  It would make a lot more sense not to put that CO2 up into the atmosphere to begin with.

Advocates of this eternal use of every last bit of coal are some of the same people who think health care for everyone is too expensive, or that developing solar power all over the U.S.  is too ambitious.  But it’s not too ambitious to them to sink  $1.2 trillion into development of  something that might not work at all.

Wouldn’t that kind of money buy a lot of solar panels?

An emphasis on clean renewable energy is no longer something people seem terribly excited about.     Health care and other issues have long ago trumped concern about climate change.  It’s now generally accepted in Washington that the cap and trade bill won’t pass our Congress next year,  or possibly ever.   Lawmakers (lawyers) are now actually flirting with a carbon tax, which would be an enormous improvement to the cap and trade idea.  The bad news is, Republican Lindsey Graham is the one now writing the most eagerly anticipated bill, (see below)  despite the fact that we already have several better climate bills that have received very little attention.

Graham’s will [...]

Cap and Trade is not the answer.

This is a great video by the Story of Stuff people.  “We’re trashing the planet, we’re trashing each other, and we’re not even having fun.”

Cap and trade is a huge problem. The video maker’s explanation:

The Story of Cap & Trade is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at Copenhagen and on Capitol Hill. Host Annie Leonard introduces the energy traders and Wall Street financiers at the heart of this scheme and reveals the “devils in the details” in current cap and trade proposals: free permits to big polluters, fake offsets and distraction from whats really required to tackle the climate crisis. If youve heard about Cap & Trade, but arent sure how it works (or who benefits), this is the film is for you.

It’s easy to agree with this assessment even if it’s simplistic and she makes some claims that are hard to prove.  The Story of Stuff original movie was longer and more detailed. Cap and Trade is a difficult scheme to understand for non-economists (and even some of them).  What’s happening now is that countries are setting emissions (and will make it official in Copenhagen) goals no one can realistically meet using the process of cap and trade by the target date.  2050 seems a long way off,  but it’s not.   It’s too soon to get down to a necessary reduction in CO2 emissions without something more aggressive than cap and trade.   The goals are usually a reduction in emissions by 80% or more by 2050, but depending on markets and trading is not a  serious way to get there.  It doesn’t look like cap and trade will even get us close.

It’s also easy to agree that the cap is good and  necessary.  Carbon taxes are also necessary, and so is returning the revenue to the people, and not with a payroll tax.   We are still losing jobs, too many people are unemployed, some by choice (the self employed)  so payroll taxes are not the way to go.  It should not be tied to employers or taxes, just keep it simple and give direct rebates to people in the form of direct deposit or direct payment of energy bills.  Either way, allowances are “not cool” at all.   Giveaways to polluters are the most uncool thing of all.  Tying ourselves down to coal for ever and ever is the worst thing of all.  There is no such thing as clean coal. Cap that carbon!

Also obvious:  We should leave the carbon that is left in the ground, already sequestered. Why dig it out, burn it and then sequester it?  It’s not at all necessary.

People who think it’s necessary are approaching this from an economic point of view. The world has to look at this differently.

Climate change is a natural science issue about how our environment, whether we like it or not, is changing drastically in response [...]

Repeated criminal attempts to break into universities and access scientific emails have happened several times, not just once. It’s becoming more clear that these are organized attempts to sabotage any action on climate change, especially before the Copenhagen summit.

Remember Nixon’s crime — Watergate. That was an illegal break-in from which all other “gates” are named. The illegal break-in was the crime, not to be confused with some effort to take correspondence out of context and fool the public into thinking something that is happening is not happening. Watergate was clearly a crime. Climate Hackergate is a serious crime. The fact that it is happening over and over again makes it a conspiracy.  It’s a form of political terrorism too.  Sabotaging the climate talks and ending attempts to mitigate climate change is tantamount to condemning millions of people to death.  Below is a recent article on this from Raw Story:

“A series of repeated break-in and computer hacking attempts at a Canadian climate research institute are a sign of a “well-orchestrated campaign of harassment” against climate researchers ahead of the Copenhagen summit, several news sources report.

Employees at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, have revealed that the school’s Centre for Climate Modelling has experienced at least two break-ins in recent months, as well as several attempts at hacking into the center’s computer network.

The news comes a week after revelations that computer hackers stole thousands of emails from a climate research center at the University of East Anglia in the UK, some of which purportedly show attempts to cover up data that does not fit with claims about global warming.

Those leaked emails are at the center of a political push-back by climate skeptics, who are arguing that the “Climategate” emails show that global warming is a fraud, or at least has been exaggerated.

Canada’s National Post reports:

“Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria scientist and key contributor to the Nobel prize-winning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says there have been a number of attempted breaches in recent months, including two successful break-ins at his campus office in which a dead computer was stolen and papers were rummaged through.

“The key thing is to try to find anybody who’s involved in any aspect of the IPCC and find something that you can … take out of context,” Mr. Weaver said, drawing a parallel to the case of British climate researcher Phil Jones, who was forced to step down this week after skeptics seized upon hacked emails they allege point to a plot to exaggerate the threat of climate change.

“People don’t like it, so they try to discredit it, and the way they try to discredit it is by attacking the individual responsible for it,” Mr. Weaver said.

“They went through my desk drawers,” Weaver told the Victoria Times-Colonist. “It was bizarre and the only computer that wasn’t secured was [...]

NATIONAL CONFERENCE

Il Futurismo: bilancio provvisorio di un centenario

December 10, 2009
Palazzo Sora, Corso Vittorio Emanuele - Rome
Sindacato Libero Scrittori Italiani

more info

more about Marilena Cavallo

Zang Sud Sud

December 4-31, 2009
Museo del Presente - Rende (Cosenza)
Curated by Alessandro Masi and Tonino Sicoli

Futurismo a Savona

December 12, 2009 - February 14, 2010
Fortezza Monumentale del Priamar (Savona)
Curated by Franco Sborgi and Leo Lecci
Catalog

more info

CASA BALLA, CROPPI: “ENTRO 2010 APRIREMO AL PUBBLICO”

“Qualche mese fa scoprimmo le condizioni in cui verteva la Casa di Giacomo Balla di via Oslavia e ci impegnammo per la sua salvaguardia, restauro e apertura al pubblico in accordo con gli eredi. Abbiamo avviato un gruppo di lavoro con la sovrintendenza comunale per il restauro conservativo dello famoso studialo di Balla, appena concluso, mentre con la sovrintendenza archivistica di stato stiamo lavorando alla catalogazione e messa a norma del materiale conservato. Con gli eredi stiamo arrivando ad un accordo che consentirà l’apertura in qualche modo al pubblico per far scoprire questo tesoro straordinario. D’altronde Balla e’ il più romano dei futuristi ed e’ giusto che la citta’ dia a lui il giusto rilievo e importanza”. Lo annuncia l’assessore capitolino alla Cultura, Umberto Croppi, oggi all’Ara Pacis a margine della presentazione del “Genio Futurista”. ” (omniroma.it)

link

previously

google map

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Pubblicità e propaganda. Ceramica e grafica futuriste

December 5, 2009 - April 11, 2010
*Vernissage Friday, December 4th - 6pm
Wolfsoniana (Genova, Nervi)
Curated by Silvia Barisione, Matteo Fochessati, Gianni Franzone and Maria Teresa Orengo
Catalog

PRESS RELEASE via STUDIO ESSECI

Nell’ormai immenso elenco di mostre dedicate al futurismo, eccone una di realmente originale. È quella dedicata a Pubblicità e propaganda. Ceramica e grafica futuriste proposta dalla Wolfsoniana dal 5 dicembre all’11 aprile.

Sempre nel filone della ricerca sulle arti applicate propria del Museo genovese, dal prossimo febbraio la mostra sarà affiancata da una seconda esposizione dedicata alla produzione dell’argentiere Arrigo Finzi e, in particolare, al nucleo contrassegnato dal marchio “Sant’Elia“.

La mostra Pubblicità e propaganda. Ceramica e grafica futuriste - curata da Silvia Barisione, Matteo Fochessati, Gianni Franzone e Maria Teresa Orengo e organizzata dalla Wolfsoniana - Fondazione regionale per la Cultura e lo Spettacolo di Genova e dalla Regione Liguria in occasione del centenario del manifesto di fondazione del movimento futurista - si concentra sulla presenza della persuasione pubblicitaria e politica all’interno della produzione ceramica e grafica futuriste degli anni Venti e Trenta.

La straordinaria stagione della ceramica e della grafica futuriste verrà analizzata mettendo in rilievo come, attraverso le sue peculiari e innovative sperimentazioni linguistiche e iconografiche, queste specifiche ricerche contribuirono alla diffusione di messaggi pubblicitari e alla celebrazione di quei motivi propagandistici che, peraltro, la retorica del regime elaborò in parte attraverso gli stessi modelli poetici del movimento futurista.

L’esposizione, oltre a documentare in maniera originale la molteplicità delle esperienze formali che si svilupparono in questo ambito di ricerca, rappresenta un momento di riflessione sulle dinamiche espressive di quella sottile linea di demarcazione che separa la persuasione pubblicitaria e la propaganda politica, a cui i principali esponenti del movimento adattarono i temi precipui della loro originaria poetica: il culto della velocità e della modernità, dell’aggressività e della guerra, l’idolatria della macchina, l’ideale di un uomo nuovo, sportivo e ardimentoso.

Non a caso la mostra si svolge a Genova. La Liguria giocò, infatti, un ruolo di primo piano nell’avventura della ceramica futurista.

Se è vero che esempi di ceramica futurista vennero prodotti a Faenza negli anni Dieci, una vera produzione fu per così dire istituzionalizzata solo intorno al 1927 all’interno della Casa Giuseppe Mazzotti di Albisola, diretta dal celebre Tullio che nel 1938 firmò con F.T. Marinetti il manifesto Ceramica e aeropittura.

Accanto al primato abisolese con opere degli artisti più noti (Nicolay Diulgheroff, Farfa, Fillia, Tato, Alf Gaudenzi, Giovanni Acquaviva e lo stesso Tullio), la mostra propone anche esperienze che, pur non potendo essere definite futuriste, presentano tangenze, soprattutto linguistiche, con le creazioni del movimento marinettiano.

Come certa produzione delle Ceramiche Rometti di Umbertide (Perugia), nel momento in cui vi fu attivo un artista del calibro di Corrado Cagli, o quella poco conosciuta della FACI (Fabbrica Artistica Ceramiche Italiane) di Civita Castellana nel viterbese.

Relativamente alla grafica, compaiono, oltre agli artisti già citati, i nomi di Fortunato Depero e Tullio Crali, mentre alcune opere rappresentano l’inizio dell’immagine promozionale coordinata per prodotti e aziende di livello nazionale, come Fernet Branca, Amaro Cora, Campari e Cinzano.

Come evento collaterale alla mostra, a febbraio, verrà presentata una significativa selezione di argenti del milanese Arrigo Finzi (Venezia 1890 - Milano 1973) che la figlia Olga Finzi Baldi ha affidato in comodato alla Wolfsoniana. Una parte della produzione di Arrigo Finzi fu infatti contrassegnata dal marchio “Sant’Elia“, depositato nel 1933, e riprendeva in chiave déco i modelli disegnati prima della guerra dal celebre architetto futurista Antonio Sant’Elia, con cui Finzi aveva stretto amicizia a Milano nel 1909.

PUBBLICITÀ E PROPAGANDA. Ceramica e grafica futuriste, Genova Nervi, Spazio Mostre della Wolfsoniana (via Serra Gropallo 4), 5 dicembre 2009 - 11 aprile 2010. Orario: martedì - domenica 10.00 - 19.00; ingressi: intero € 5, ridotto € 4, scuole € 2,80. Sono previsti programmi e laboratori didattici per le scuole.

Mostra a cura di Silvia Barisione, Matteo Fochessati, Gianni Franzone e Maria Teresa Orengo. Catalogo edito da Silvana Editoriale.

Informazioni e prenotazioni:

Wolfsoniana, tel. 010.3231329 - 5761393, info@wolfsoniana.it

http://www.wolfsoniana.it, http://www.fondazionecultura-liguria.it

Antidiets of the Avant-garde: From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art

by Cecilia Novero
University of Minnesota Press, January 2010

Check out this interview with the author on the Art21 blog!
(thanks for the link!)

Futurismo. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, l’avanguardia giuliana e i rapporti internazionali

November 28, 2009 - February 28, 2010
Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Gorizia

-AND-

Gli anni Trenta. Omaggio a Tullio Crali

November 28, 2009 - February 28, 2010
Castello di Gorizia

-AND-

Futurismo - Moda - Design. La ricostruzione futurista dell’universo quotidiano

December 19, 2009 - May 1, 2010
Musei Provinciali in Borgo Castello

VIVA IL FUTURISMO!
Official Trailer

Artistic and cultural event series on the occasion of the 100th anniversary since the foundation of italian Futurism

Lectures • conference • exhibition • performance • music • cinema

Cologne + Bonn + Düsseldorf
from june 2009 until january 2010

futurismus.kulturserver.de
futurismus@kulturserver.de

Photos + video recording
Ludger F. J. Schneider
lichtbildgestaltung.kulturserver.de

Music
Diss Harmon
diemaschine.kulturserver.de

Translation + Montage
Donatella Chiancone-Schneider
donatella.chiancone.eu