Tuesday, March 21, 2023
Monday, March 20, 2023
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
Sunday, March 19, 2023
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
Saturday, March 18, 2023
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/UZuW9xPAgV4
Friday, March 17, 2023
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?
Thursday, March 16, 2023
War Markets
War Markets
(Originally published in Mudlark)
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
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
Drone Technician
Clip from Drone Technician: with text. Full video at YouTube: https://youtu.be/ygmANaVDC5U via @YouTube. #DroneAttacks #RoboticWarfare
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
Tuesday, March 14, 2023
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
Monday, March 13, 2023
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 ?
Sunday, March 12, 2023
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?
Saturday, March 11, 2023
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
Stephen Markley’s The Deluge
From the Guardian:
Around the midpoint of The Deluge, a character laments how quickly “you wake up and you’re in a bad movie from the future”. It’s an offhand but accurate description of the economic, ecological and technological turmoil in Stephen Markley’s bleak vision of the coming decades. In his alternative 2030s, surveillance capitalism has ended privacy and AI has eroded human agency; financial markets collapse and the political sphere becomes yet more rabid. Above it all looms our inescapable, spiralling climate catastrophe.
Beginning in 2013 and rolling inexorably forward into a darkening century, The Deluge depicts an apocalypse in slow motion. There is no schism separating before and after, no single epochal event that marks a terminus for civilisation. It’s a story of incremental chaos, political lethargy and scientific minutiae, and it is utterly mesmerising. There have been many more flamboyant end-of-the-world scenarios in fiction, but few as frighteningly plausible.
Markley spent a decade on the book, which is constructed as a collage of texts: first- and third-person narratives intermingled with magazine articles, scientific papers, White House briefings and podcast transcripts. His ability to inject these ostensibly dry sources with pathos, verisimilitude and agility of voice sets the novel apart from other apocalyptic melodramas. Point-of-view characters span the sociopolitical spectrum and the wealth ladder. A marketing exec turned hedge fund manager, an ecoterrorist, a neurodiverse data analyst, an alienated addict: each offers a peephole into events, but together they form a comprehensive tapestry of a civilisation coming undone. Markley begins with the character of climate scientist Tony Pietrus in a chapter titled “The Phase Transitions of Methane Hydrates”. It feels like an open challenge to the reader, forewarning that this book will neither hold your hand nor care about your feelings.
Friday, March 10, 2023
Thursday, March 09, 2023
On censorship in North America
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
Tuesday, March 07, 2023
Monday, March 06, 2023
From the Missile Launch as Painting project series
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.
Sunday, March 05, 2023
Saturday, March 04, 2023
Speaking With Mountains
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
Friday, March 03, 2023
Thursday, March 02, 2023
Greening Korea series: bamboo swoosh
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/vSACEevH7Bo
Wednesday, March 01, 2023
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
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
Sori Oasis 2
Poster from my mini doc Sori Oasis (“Sori” means sound in Korean). Was shot in and around the Soraepeul hiking trail in central Gangnam, Seoul. Cities need “quietness zones.”
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/X8Ybg1LkaHQ
#SoundPollution #Seoul #urbanbiodiversity
Sori Oasis 1
Monday, February 27, 2023
Your World
Clip from Your World, a semi experimental documentary/moviepoem about rural life and food in South Korea. YouTube link: youtu.be/kaI1ZtdRVPA #poetryfilm
Sunday, February 26, 2023
Thursday, February 23, 2023
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
Monday, February 20, 2023
Sunday, February 19, 2023
Greening Korea: Green Tea and Kimchi
Traditional food and agriculture in South Korea.
Wednesday, February 15, 2023
Monday, February 13, 2023
Thursday, February 09, 2023
Wednesday, February 08, 2023
The Authorial Moviestory
Tuesday, February 07, 2023
Greening Korea 1
How the mega city of Seoul tries to balance development and nature.
Monday, February 06, 2023
Sunday, February 05, 2023
Balloon Apocalypse
#Balloon #uschinatension #geopolitics #chineseballoon
Will WW3 be triggered by … balloons?
A brief authorial moviepoem on those who will ultimately pay the price of geopolitical miscalculation. #poetryfilm #moviepoem #poetry. Full video at YouTube: youtu.be/VpO4FfwFcOA
Saturday, February 04, 2023
The Wargasm XV
Clips from the Wargasm XV. Happy this project to receive another screening. If curious, YouTube link: https://youtu.be/Aix1vLTja0k
Friday, February 03, 2023
Thursday, February 02, 2023
Apocalyptic Sadness
« Given that a lot of us might not be alive some time in the near future, here’s something for you to think about… »
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/qwkrD1brVD8
Wednesday, February 01, 2023
Boy Meets Girl After Battle
Still from Boy Meets Girl After Battle. What young men do during war, and what happens when, later, they encounter young women during war:
Full video via YouTube link: youtu.be/r9FPC9A0Mz4
#poetry #poetryfilm #poetrycommunity #antiwar
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
The Sadness Series
#experimental #videopoetry #poetryfilm
An experimental ambient and poetic piece divided into two parts. It opens with images that trigger anxiety, such as images of weaponry. These are contrasted with the nature and peace that will be destroyed by this weaponry. As the videopoem progresses, we realize that we, too, are in denial of how close we all are to apocalypse.
The next part of the video has its genesis in an experience — actually, a series of experiences — I had while biking along the Han River. In these, I recalled my brother — a very gifted poet who died tragically at the age of 49. But during I also caught glimmerings of the emotions he himself felt the final years of his life: his love of the world and its nature and human constructions, and also overwhelming despair at the realization of how quickly it could be destroyed … and how likely, given the craziness of human behavior, that destruction was. As well, during these periods of recollection while biking, I thought of my wife. These emotions are conveyed visually, but also aurally, through chant.
Monday, January 30, 2023
Sunday, January 29, 2023
Saturday, January 28, 2023
Boy Meets Girl…
Clip from Boy Meets Girl After Battle. What young men do during war, and what happens when, later, they encounter young women during war:
Full video via YouTube link: youtu.be/r9FPC9A0Mz4
#poetry #poetryfilm #poetrycommunity #antiwar
Tuesday, January 24, 2023
Monday, January 23, 2023
Sunday, January 22, 2023
Your World: an experimental moviepoem
Happy that/ heureux que my quasi experimental documentary/ moviepoem Your World took a prize at the Athvikvaruni IFF and is a selection at the Sittannavasal IFF, both in India. Perhaps because of the project’s subject matter, this movie seems to be resonating with juries in India.
If curious, YouTube link: https://youtu.be/kaI1ZtdRVPA
Friday, January 20, 2023
Sound versus Noise: full documentary
How does noise pollution affect us?
Sound versus noise
#documentary #pollution #noisepollution #canada #southkorea #industrialnoisepollution #trafficnoise
YouTube link: http://youtu.be/wqNgWw2fblc
Synopsis: South Korea, despite its small size, is filled with beautiful nature. However, because of its high population density, this is interfered with.
Thursday, January 19, 2023
Hadong Market
입구 하동 중앙 시장 사람이 한명 있다
People in place — solitary man at entrance to the Hadong Central Market
Hadong
South Korea
Wednesday, January 18, 2023
Tuesday, January 17, 2023
A documentary on noise pollution
From Korea to Canada and Back Again: Sound vs. Noise youtu.be/wqNgWw2fblc via @YouTube. I’m premiering this documentary on noise pollution at YouTube. If anyone’s interested in the theme, would like your comments. #pollution #noisepollution
Monday, January 16, 2023
Sunday, January 15, 2023
Thursday, January 12, 2023
Global Fevering 2
Part two of an authorial moviepoem about climate change.
From 2006: Lovegraphy — a highly illustrated screenplay narrative






Wednesday, January 11, 2023
Three Tragedies, Four Seasons
#poetryfilm #videopoetry #videoart #moviepoem
This is an early cut of one of the first feature length moviepoems I made.
Synopsis: Three Tragedies, Four Seasons is the result of three projects that came together and merged. One was from a series called World Bardo, which were short ambient pieces or videopoems, and some were about the death of my mother-in-law in the summer of 2018.
She passed away in July. It’s a sultry time of year in South Korea, and the sound of insects, the heat, and the humidity suffused everything.
The second death was that of my brother — in January, 2013. The weather then was the opposite: frigid and spartan. My brother was fascinated by both summer and winter, especially the bleak, spectral beauty of winter. The final story is a work of fiction — also set in winter. Throughout all these pieces, wanted to capture a feeling of seasonality, and also the sense of the nature/life/death cycles that exist in the world. It’s easy to talk about cycles in an abstract way; after the death of someone you care deeply about, these sensations becomes very profound. The world, the environment, feels like it’s entering you. Intense sadness dissolves us.
Awards
Krimson Horyzon International Film Festival
Nov 15, 2021
Gangtok International Film Festival
Nov 5, 2021
Chaplin International Film Festival
Nov 12, 2021
Gully International Film Festival
Oct 31, 2021
Tagore International Film Festival
Mar 17, 2021
Virgin Spring Cinefest
Jan 7, 2021
Selections
FILMYSEA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Mar 18, 2022
Chennai Indie Film Festival
Dec 26, 2021
*
From my collection of ambient and authorial movies. My focus is on videopoetry; however, I work in other genres and art forms as well.
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/finn.harvor
VideoStorage:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/250816849097045/
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
Monday, January 09, 2023
CanLit and Gender
Is anglophone Canadian fiction gender balanced? To discuss…
Friday, January 06, 2023
Global Fevering 1
A medium length moviepoem about the planet.
Thursday, January 05, 2023
Soul a Lost Doll: writing of Richard Harvor
My brother died ten years ago today. Among the papers Richard left behind were many pages of listed sentences: epigrammatic, sometimes connected in terms of imagery, sometimes existing as isolated thoughts. What linked them was his tremendous originality of metaphor.
In memoriam, Richard Harvor August 23, 1963 - January 6, 2013.
Tuesday, January 03, 2023
Your World: a poetic documentary
The Highly Illustrated Screenplay Narrative 1
THE HIGHLY ILLUSTRATED SCREENPLAY NARRATIVE
Fade in.
A bus travels along a bumpy intercity road, the surrounding scenery a jumble of discount food marts, restaurants, car repair shops , and other forms of suburban service provision.
On the bus is a man wearing a mask. With each asphalt-enhanced bump of the vehicle, he shakes a bit. But he’s clearly used to the ride. He seems half-bored, half-obsessed with his smart phone.