Climbing Hyoungjae Bong part one

Clip from Climbing Hyoungjae Bong/ 형재봉 등산 이야기 #mountainhiking #지리산 #등산 #hikinginkorea 

Full video via YouTube link: https://youtube.com/shorts/J01imHKLFw4?si=Repo9jWKUnARzx1Y

형재봉/ Hyoungjae Bong

 

형재봉높에서

At the peak of Hyoungjae Bong.

Full video at YouTube: Hiking the Jirisan Mountains./ 형재봉 그름다리의 풍경 #hikinginkorea #mountainhiking

https://youtube.com/shorts/8NIbygid5AU?feature=share

Winter in South Korea is Changing

 

Climate Change 2

 This is noticeable in South Korea where last summer’s crops were negatively impacted by heat. 

Now we’re in the middle of a weird winter that’s sometimes very mild and sometimes bitterly cold. 

More at YouTube: https://youtube.com/shorts/Bv19U8MaIYY?si=-t8-9Fjg23IbTsTL

Climate Change 1

 

Jaywalking in Seoul

https://youtube.com/shorts/U2XyGKyFekI?si=GisO58t56NFnyGp6

Jaywalking in Seoul: Why Not Often Seen? #pedestriansafety https://youtube.com/shorts/U2XyGKyFekI?si=GisO58t56NFnyGp6 via @YouTube

Visitors to Seoul sometimes comment on how law abiding the pedestrians are. There are structural reasons for that.

Living overseas away from hospitalized parents

 

What it’s like to be away from parents when living in another country.

Christmas Eve in Seoul

 

Roadways in Seoul

 

Borges contra the contemporary lit biz

  Borges once remarked that normal people want to be praised for what they’ve accomplished; writers want to be praised for what they will accomplish. Touché. 

And yet … what is deemed « accomplished » in 21st literary production tends to measured by skewed metrics. I have several mss I keep dutifully shopping ard; gatekeeping has bec dysfunctional — the influential agents and acq editors know it, and obv writers do too.

Gatekeeping — what I term Selector Class Systems (and extend to prestigious MFA programs, prize jury selection, etc) — needs public critique. Yet this rarely happens; it’s a career risk after all. In the meantime, speaking personally, the work I do have out there (including an online chapbook of poems/authorial moviepoems (something that hasn’t been done before: formerpeople.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/baram-… ) and a historical novel abt an attempted fascist coup in the US: eclectica.org/v23n2/harvor.h…— receive no critical attention. The excuse given is they lack an ISBN.

The presupposition is that online work is somehow less worthy; somehow akin to self published work. But both these works are curated, and what’s especially galling is work that IS self published but can camouflage itself as not receives reviews and shortlisting for prizes. The issue here isn’t one of the occasionally delusional self regard of writers or the rocky process of contemporary canon formation. Instead, it’s an issue of fundamental fairness. If work is out there, shouldn’t it be judged by objective standards?

동지/ Winter solstice

 

Hiver en Corée de Sud/ Winter/ 겨울

 

Yongin/ 용인

 

Winter’s Cold Memories

 

Baram V x 150

 

Korea in Autumn: Baram XC

 

Alibag Film Festival

Happy that/ heureux que a few more pieces selected by the Alibag IFF. The first, an experimental documentary, the second a smartphone doc (I posted about the latter a couple of days ago at a different festival). Both of these about the region where Suki grew up.

If curious:

Your World: https://youtu.be/kaI1ZtdRVPA?si=l0AJvzDrwTK3MmFN

Speaking with Mountains: https://youtu.be/vYrauBynRVc?si=03VMu3ndFQMOtod8

 

PicGall 20

Clip from PicGall 20

Full video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/20mxqKN_j7Y?si=1HJPF9ozYVKcNqDq 

#streetphotography #zve10 #photography #photooftheday #seoul #urbanliving

From a series of minute-galleries of recent photos taken in Seoul and Yongin, Kyonggi do. 

On Literature and Cinema

ON CINEMA AND LITERATURE 

Cinema and literature are art forms that are proudly distinct from each other, yet — at least from point of view of moviemaking — inextricably linked; movies, after all, need scripts.

But on an important level, literature needs cinema as well. For ‪one thing, literary writing is becoming simpler; “script-like”. For another, arguably, the sensibility of writers is becoming more and more focused on scene creation … on depicting setpiece situations in which we observe the surface of characters’ actions, this accompanied (sometimes) by the monologue of one character’s interior monologue.

It’s a perfectly fine narrative strategy. But it raises a question: why not acknowledge the obvious? Why not make literary works into “movies”? 

Ex 1: https://youtu.be/GV2sxT5t8yg?si=CKmHhWAoEFA_-TbV

2: https://youtu.be/MPivPuRAyYA?si=7zOeCIzu-4P661T1

/end

Workday’s end

 

Why?

 Clip from Why Are Some People So Nice?

Full video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/1-5L60wK5zc?si=GO5Ns7vQzgAIdROh

#poetry 

In Yongin

 

Gilsangsa/ 길상사

 

Canlit and the Hyper Modern 2

 CanLit and the Hyper-Modern 2

*

Canadian letters has always been good at highlighting environmental issues; it’s not a controversial issue, and artists, by their nature, tend to be sensitive to ecological concerns. 

However, concern is often contradicted by behaviour, especially when one’s career is at stake. 

The reality is that conventional book production has a significant carbon footprint, and so does book promotion. 

Yet authors need to make a living. How to square this circle?

CanLit and the Hyper-Modern 1

AI is in the process of being replaced by artificial general intelligence — known by the acronym AGI.

Many novelists have dealt with this potentiality — most famously, perhaps, Arthur C. Clark in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Stanley Kubrick adaptation of that novel was so groundbreaking as a work of cinema that it’s eclipsed the novel’s place in the cultural firmament. But it was a novel that inspired the movie.

In Canadian letters, there have been speculative fiction examples. But not nearly with the same cultural impact. Why?

Masking: The Korean Experience

 

Seocho-gu, Seoul

 

Yongin

 

서천에서/ In Seocheon, Seoul

 

Whispers in The Warehouse of Bombs

 

In Yongin/ 용인에서

 

Greening Korea: After Heavy Rain

Part three 

More about unusual rainfall patterns in Kyonggi do, South Korea.

#ClimateAction 

More on climate change in Asia at YouTube: Yes, Planet, We’re Warming

youtu.be/8EiEyA7bF14

PicGall 17

 

Who? What?

Happy that/ heureux que my brief VideoPoemSong entitled Who? What? To be screened at Minute Madness in Toronto.

COVID-19 is going to have an impact on all our lives, either directly through long term illness or indirectly through massive social cost. Yet we still understand very little about the origins of the disease and are not currently trying very hard. It may be that those origins are too obscure to ever be known. At the sane time, we pay very little attention to improved mitigation measures, and how we can prevent epidemic disease spread. That IS an area where we have some control. Yet we choose not to exercise this control.

If curious , YouTube link: https://youtu.be/wyEXTUYpwuE?si=U0si82Z2NcCe3mT9

Peacedemic or Wargasm?

 

Israel/ Gaza 2

 

Israel/ Gaza 1

 

Ukraine/ Russia 2

 

Ukraine/ Russia 1

 

The Human Volcano

What burns hottest?

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/G-gX1kUr-Xo?si=bvH8teMO-2A2nkDx

Yongin, two days ago

 

City and Temple

 World Bardo

Temple and City

YouTube link: Ambient: Temple and City (World Bardo 98 - new cut)

https://youtu.be/7qpR0IcL3G8

Screenings and awards:

Winner, best cinematography, Global India IFF, March 20, 2019

Festival selections:

Indo Global International Film Festival

Dec 25, 2020

 

Goa Short Film Festival

Nov 2, 2019

 

Chhatrapati Shivaji International Film Festival

Dec 26, 2019

 

MoziMotion

Sep 20, 2019

*

An authorial videopoem. The footage was shot over several months in/ near Seoul.

밤에 서초구/ Seocho-gu at night

 

Greening Korea: Boiling Oceans

Clip from Greening: Boiling Oceans.

Full video at YouTube: Greening Korea: Boiling Oceans

https://youtu.be/YgBivdKSzXo

*

It’s unusually warm in Korea this autumn. Ocean surface temperatures have a lot to do with that.

#climatechange #carbonemissions #oceantemperature

From the After Work series

 

Yesterday’s walk

 

Car More? — clip one

#ClimateAction 

The mean surface temperatures of much of the world’s oceans has reached historically unprecedented levels. This in turn is increasingly atmospheric temperatures — something we’re noticing right here in Korea. One would think there would be collective action to slow down these trends. And to some extent we do. But not as much as we flatter ourselves.

We’re greener than ever. We think.

The pandemic temporarily reduced levels of industrial pollution, but it also elevated car usage (as people avoided mass transit). Industry is back. Yet car usage remains high. 

Full video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/yBJaF2Wo3fk?si=zITYCJzGTNdEJxuD

Dinocaurs…

 

Peacedemic 6

Enjoy the peace of daily life.

Yongin

 

Yongin

 

절의 풍경/ Temple landscape

 

BTS? ㅋㅋㅋ

We came across this concert in Gwanghwamun. Thought they were pretty good.

In Yongi

Yongin

 

Still from the project Darkness Lighting Darkness

 

Israel/ Hamas

 

Peacedemic 2

 

Hamas / Israel

 

The Policy and the Pendulum

Who manages 

your little life?

Clip from « The Policy and the Pendulum », an authorial moviepoem about diplomacy and grand strategy.

Full video at YouTube: The Policy and the Pendulum - final swing

https://youtu.be/cf_LmVUHjjM

#war #geopolitics #poetry

The Wargasm

#peace #antiwar #moviepoem #poetryfilm #israelhamasconflict #ukrainewar #gaza 

Where is all this conflict leading the planet?

*

Clip from « World War 3 seems to be coming along nicely: The Wargasm » 

Text:

Why do we 

*desire* war?

Sung:

Don’t resist,

don’t contain,

don’t hold back,

don’t think hard…

Text: 

The steel casings fall,

and leaders declare

one or another firm resolution.

None of that is key;

what really matters

is the explosive emotion —

the craving for release…

the machinery 

of modern pleasure.

Spoken:

Bombing by night 

doth leaders excite.

But bombing by day

is still A-OK.

(October 8/23 version)

*

Where is all this conflict leading the planet?

Full video at YouTube: youtu.be/8IRq7KcE5v8

We need peace…

 YouTube link: Ambient: We Need Peace, Not Pieces... (World Bardo 103)

https://youtu.be/0C_VoHYVwW4

The Business Army

 THE BUSINESS ARMY 

Gerald MacGuire, the apparent driving force behind the business plot — an attempt to destroy democracy in the United States  — was simply a lowly bond salesman . He was used to doing others’ bidding.

He, in turn, was employed by seasoned capitalist Grayson M. P. Murphy. Murphy in turn was heavily involved with the American Legion — a veterans’ group involved in right wing activities. (It’s important to note here that veterans groups in Germany and Italy were pivotal in the rise of reaction and fascism.)

Grayson met with Murphy. For Murphy had a plan. But he needed to be sure that his agent was controllable and ruthless.

Your World

 Still from a project recently chosen by the Gao International Film Festival.

Full video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/kaI1ZtdRVPA?si=r0sX60o8fbEQPfyd

In Yongin

 

Climate change in South Korea

 

Climate change in South Korea

 

In Yongin

 

In Hadong

 

Trudeau the Dictator?

 #trudeau #glenngreenwald #podcasts 

Glenn Greenwald is asserting that Canada has « one of the works most repressive online censorship schemes ». A lot of people, especially on the right, agree with him. Is the assertion true?

More at YouTube: 

https://youtu.be/9lne1dDfMps

Don’t Kid Yourself — YouTube link

 

Don’t Kid Yourself — an authorial moviepoem (stills)

 

추석/ Chuseok

 

THE BUSINESS ARMY

 THE BUSINESS ARMY 

As the Roosevelt administration planned to move off the gold standard, some industrialists became hysterical…