“"Zongzi Cultural Festival" to be held in Macao - People's Daily Online” plus 3 more

"Zongzi Cultural Festival" to be held in Macao - People's Daily Online
Sex becoming 'cultural wallpaper' - Canada.com
Cultural building for aboriginal ceremonies opens at Regina ... - Regina Leader-Post
Deconstructing Architecture - Wall Street Journal

"Zongzi Cultural Festival" to be held in Macao - People's Daily Online

Posted: 11 May 2010 08:05 PM PDT

The sixth "Zongzi Cultural Festival" will be held in Macao from June 11 to 13，2010.

Zongzi is a traditional Chinese food, made of glutinous rice stuffed with different fillings and wrapped in bamboo leaves. They are cooked by steaming or boiling.

Zongzi is traditionally eaten during the Dragon Boat Festival which falls on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese calendar (approximately early- to mid-June), commemorating the death of Qu Yuan, a famous Chinese poet from the kingdom of Chu who lived during the Warring States period. Known for his patriotism。 He drowned himself in the Miluo river after penning the Lament for Ying. According to legend, packets of rice were thrown into the river to prevent fish from eating the poet's body.

Activities such as the "Zongzi Cultural Forum," "Zongzi Making Skills Competition," "Folk Foods and Goods Exhibition of the Dragon Boat Festival," "Outstanding Paper Selection of the Wufangzhai Cup," and "Technology Seminar of Dumpling Industry Entrepreneurs and Macao Counterparts," will be held during the festival.

Moreover, more than 120 teams from around the world will participate in the Macao International Dragon Boat Race.

The festival will be hosted by the China Food Industry Association (Zongzi Industry Committee) and the Macao Convention and Exhibition Association. Assistance in hosting duties will be provided by some departments of the government of Macao Special Administrative Region such as its Economic Bureau, Tourism Bureau, Administrative Department, as well as the Macao Foundation, with the exclusive title of Wufangzhai Group.

By People's Daily Online

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Sex becoming 'cultural wallpaper' - Canada.com

Posted: 11 May 2010 06:25 PM PDT

Young people engaged in an orgy, a porn star dressed only in thigh-high socks, and lingerie-clad women cavorting with vegetables are among the images created for new campaigns for Calvin Klein Jeans, American Apparel and PETA.

Clearly, sex still sells. One of this year's top-rated Super Bowl commercials, according to Ad Meter, was a Doritos spot that showed a woman's dress being whipped off at a male onlooker's whim, leaving her writhing on the sidewalk in her underwear. A separate ad, this one for GoDaddy.com, culminated with two women in the shower together -- one of them race car driver Danica Patrick -- while a trio of men watched from their webcam.

Neither has generated controversy and, in truth they do look tame compared to Calvin Klein's new campaign, which resembles a grainy skin flick in its depiction of a group make-out session between young models in various stages of undress.

"This has nothing to do with advertising and everything to do with the culture at large," says Advertising Age columnist Bob Garfield, noting that explicit sex has become the preferred currency for contemporary fame-seekers.

"This [trend] actually makes things more difficult for advertisers like Calvin Klein, who have spent decades trying to work the borderline between titillation and outrage. These days, it's hard to summon outrage."

Shot by Steven Meisel, the lightning-rod photographer behind Madonna's 1992 book Sex, Calvin Klein's print and video campaign appears online at calvinkleinjeans.com.

Censored adaptations of the ads will appear later this year in North America, while Europe -- long known for sexually liberal advertising -- will see the unedited versions.

With their hidden-camera esthetic and resemblance to pornography, the new ads are evocative of a 1995 campaign by the company that drew a probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into whether Calvin Klein Inc. had violated child pornography laws. (The models weren't minors, so the Justice Department found no statutes had been broken).

"The bigger the shock value, the more attention consumers are going to pay to the message," says Demetrios Vakratsas, an expert on consumers' response to advertising. "That's the underlying driver."

The McGill University professor says movies and cable TV have desensitized the public to graphic sexuality, noting that "consumers have seen pretty much everything." But unlike Garfield, he thinks marketers can claim to have pushed the envelope first.

"In general," says Vakratsas, "I would say advertising more likely drives pop culture."

In recent years, such companies as Abercrombie & Fitch, Sisley, the CW Television Network, Cabana Cachaca, Dolce & Gabbana and even women's skin care line Clinique have all produced ads that resembled stills from a stag film.

American Apparel -- the clothier founded by Montreal native Dov Charney -- has gone farther and featured professional adult entertainers as models in its advertising.

Carmine Sarracino, co-author of The Porning of America, says it's evidence of a society that has normalized the marginal.

"Porn is becoming our cultural wallpaper ... It's so commonplace that we're just figuring out how to manage it, rather than being really shocked by it," says Sarracino, a professor of English at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.

"The sex that sells now is the sex that's derived directly from the porn industry, always with the very explicit suggestion of a sex act or sexual situation. It's not just titillating photos of a female in a bikini."

Shari Graydon, a director of the Canadian watchdog group Media Action, says PETA's new online ad for vegetarianism is a perfect example of a company deliberately courting controversy in order to get noticed.

"Advertisers are bypassing billboards and other traditional placements and relying on the power of viral media, creating campaigns that they don't even need to put on TV to get seen," says Graydon, author of Made You Look: How Advertising Works and Why You Should Know.

XXX-PLICIT CULTURE

A culture once seduced by subtle sexuality now finds that nuance is not enough. Today's sexual messages are explicitly spelled out in advertising, music, movies, TV -- and even in church.

- Britney Spears' new radio single is titled If You Seek Amy (say it fast), while recent mainstream movie titles have included Zack & Miri Make a Porno and the Canadian-made Young People F--ing.

- YouTube videos by Mark Driscoll, the charismatic pastor of a Seattle megachurch, carry such titles as Biblical Oral Sex, Circumcising a Callused Heart and Porn Addict.

- A recent ad campaign by the CW for its teen-targeted show Gossip Girl showed a young man and woman in the throes of passion, along with the headline: OMFG (a coarse twist on the widely used acronym for Oh My God).

- During televised MotoGP events last year, many viewers were surprised to see oversized signage promoting race sponsor A-Style-- an Italian clothier whose logo depicts two stick figures having sex.

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Cultural building for aboriginal ceremonies opens at Regina ... - Regina Leader-Post

Posted: 11 May 2010 05:42 PM PDT

REGINA — Regina Correctional Centre cultural co-ordinator Leslie Gordon remembers walking through the jail's yard and hearing the inmates' drum group.

"That sound that they had — and that feeling and that pride that they had in themselves — was something that was so moving to me, because to me those were our brothers, those are our fathers," an emotional Gordon said. "And if we can give them any little bit of strength that's going to help them on the outside, then we're more than happy and more than willing to do that."

On Tuesday, the province announced some of that help will be offered within a new cultural building, intended to provide improved space for inmates to take part in First Nations and Métis cultural activities and ceremonies. A grand opening and blessing of the new building was held Tuesday morning.

"You may wonder why we should bother helping to meet the cultural and spiritual needs of our inmates in our correctional centres," Corrections Minister Yogi Huyghebaert said during the opening. "We believe that by helping maintain a connection to their communities, we're giving them an opportunity to heal in the tradition known to them (and it) will help reduce the risk of reoffending when those inmates are released into their communities."

The building — expected to begin hosting programming in about two weeks — took six months and $52,550 to build.

"This building is a vision that I've had since I started with the ministry," Maureen Lerat, manager of First Nations and Métis programs with CPSP, said. "I would like to see something like this at each and every one of our facilities here in Saskatchewan so that we can better help our clients when they're here."

The building is divided into two areas, with one side open to the earth for sweats, and the other containing space for cultural programming like pipe ceremonies, talking circles, feasts and workshops. Besides the cultural co-ordinator, it employs several full-time and part-time cultural advisors. Elders play a strong role in programming, which has been available for some time for all sentenced inmates — usually between 250 and 300 men.

The number of inmates able to take the four-week program will increase from 10 to 16. While teachings are geared towards Cree, Saulteaux, Métis and some Dene, non-aboriginal people can take part.

A similar facility is expected to open at Kilburn Hall in Saskatoon this month.

hpolischuk@leaderpost.canwest.com

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Deconstructing Architecture - Wall Street Journal

Posted: 11 May 2010 07:51 PM PDT

By JOANNE KAUFMAN

New York

Playwright Oren Safdie was in the basement of the Center for Architecture in Greenwich Village, hard at work with mesh and Mylar, building a model of a museum topped by three condominium towers.

"I'm going back to my architecture days. It's kind of nice," said Mr. Safdie, a Columbia University architecture-school graduate whose construction plans included satiric little jabs at Daniel Libeskind (check out the triangles and jagged lines) and Frank Gehry (note the toppling boxes and swooping curves) to say nothing of Rem Koolhaas and Coop Himmelb(l)au. "There are a lot of inside jokes. I don't have to worry," he added, "about whether it's buildable or not."

In fact, Mr. Safdie's only real worry was getting the structure to the center's performance space in one piece. After all, it's a key prop in his new play, "The Bilbao Effect," which begins previews Wednesday and is the second in a planned trilogy of architecture-themed works. The first, the critically acclaimed "Private Jokes, Public Places"—an X-ACTO knife-sharp comedy that dealt with pretensions and posturing in academe, and introduced a pair of adversaries, Margaret Kim and Erhardt Shlaminger—had a four-month run at the center in 2003.

"The Bilbao Effect" concerns a starchitect, Mr. Shlaminger, who faces censure by peers following accusations that his redevelopment project, described by one character as "a toaster on steroids," caused a woman's suicide. The play's title refers to the "build it and they will come and spend lots of money" trend that started after Mr. Gehry built the Guggenheim Museum outpost in Spain, turning the site into a prime tourist destination.

The genesis of "The Bilbao Effect" was a series of tongue-in-cheek interviews with fictional master builders that Mr. Safdie wrote for the design magazine Metropolis. "People really didn't know it was a goof," he said. "After the first one appeared, readers were calling to find out why they had never heard of this famous architect.

"I had all these characters dressed up with no party to go to," continued Mr. Safdie, 45, the son of eminent architect Moshe Safdie. "And I felt there were other things I wanted to say after 'Private Jokes, Public Places' that I hadn't gotten to and hadn't found the right way to write about for the theater."

While "Private Jokes, Public Places" focused on architectural theory, "The Bilbao Effect" is all about practice. "I wanted to show how academia has translated to the built environment of today," Mr. Safdie said. "The city has become almost an artist's canvas. I wanted to explore when the artistic end of the profession violates the ethics of the profession."

"Are architects artists? Do they have a social responsibility? That's ultimately what the play is about," said Fredric Bell, executive director of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). "Oren was brought up in this world, so he brings a knowledge of the issues that is not secondhand. He demystifies architecture for the general public."

That the setting for "The Bilbao Effect" is AIA's local headquarters, that the play skewers some of the institute's high-flying members, makes Mr. Bell a very tolerant landlord. "We engage in the same discussions as Oren all the time," he said. "We're just not as entertaining."

Mr. Safdie grew up in Montreal, and except for a brief period lived at Habitat 67, the celebrated Lego-like housing complex designed by his father. "I was the paper boy there and the tour guide," Mr. Safdie said. "There were world leaders coming through all the time. I showed Indira Gandhi around and the president of Senegal."

Young Oren spent summers in Israel, where the senior Mr. Safdie had an office, "and we would always stop at a European city on the way. It was churches and cathedrals up to the nose," he said. Also up to the nose: people asking if he was going to be an architect like his father. The kid had his answer ready. "I'd say 'no, I want to be a bank robber.'"

Nevertheless, eager to find some sort of path and hoping it would bring him closer to his father, Mr. Safdie enrolled at Columbia. During one of his first days on campus in 1987, he watched a professor hang a poster urging people to join a protest against real-estate grandee Mort Zuckerman's proposed building project at Columbus Circle. The architect: Moshe Safdie.

"It was more amusing to me than anything," Mr. Safdie recalled. "As a kid, I would accompany my father on various business trips. I remember going to hearings when he was designing a housing project in Baltimore," referring to Coldspring, a planned community. "And tenants were getting up and yelling at him. Whatever I did when I was growing up was architecture-related, and part of that was dealing with public reaction and criticism."

Mr. Safdie began considering a career shift—as it turned out, to another profession that would require dealing with public reaction and criticism—when during his last year at Columbia he took a playwriting class. One of his scenes got a public performance, and Mr. Safdie was hooked: "It wasn't very good, but to see it on stage, read by actors . . . when you discover something you want to do, it hits you so hard and you never turn back." Soon after, mentored by the playwright Romulus Linney, he began work on what would become "Private Jokes, Public Places." The title came courtesy of a controversial article, "Private Jokes in Public Places," that Moshe Safdie wrote for The Atlantic Monthly in 1981. Oren returned the favor by basing one of the characters, an idealistic architecture student, on his father.

"He was quite moved I think," Mr. Safdie said of his father's response to "Jokes." Moshe Safdie's reaction to "The Bilbao Effect" may be rather less enthusiastic. "He's friends with many of the architects who are called to task in some way," said Mr. Safdie. "I'm sure people will be wondering 'does my play reflect his point of view.' This is important to say: My views in the play are not his views."

Reporters, Mr. Safdie said, are routinely looking to find similarities between architecture and playwriting. They prattle on about possible links between the structure of a building and dramatic structure, and the mild-mannered Mr. Safdie has always listened politely. "But lately I've come to think the two professions are opposite," he said. "Architecture is about constructing. You pour the foundation. You build up your building. Me, as a writer I approach a structure like a family unit and say 'let's tear everything down and find out what's at the foundation.'"

He's recently begun work on another play that will center on the two main characters from "Private Jokes" and "The Bilbao Effect." "I want to investigate an architect who's at the top of his field but questions his own success," Mr. Safdie said.

"I can write about family, I can write about politics," he added, mentioning two of his favorite themes. "But many people are writing about those topics. I realize the one thing I have going for me is that there aren't that many people writing about architecture the way I'm writing about architecture."

Ms. Kaufman writes about culture and the arts for the Journal.

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Cultural

Tuesday, May 11, 2010