Page 16 RAIN February-March 1979 MEDIA The Rubber Stamp Album, by·Joni K. Miller and Lowry Thompson, designed by Louise Fili, 1978, 216 pp., $6.95 from: • Workman Publishing Co. 231 E. 51st St. New York, NY 10022 Rubber Stamps have always been exciting to me-there's a special feeling of pleasure in the act of stamping, as the authors have described: "Rubber stamps have a universal and almost inexplicable appeal. The feel of a stamp in hand gives a feeling of pow~r • and command. Stamping .is the .grand communicator ... . In an environment that put~ distance between people and things in every respect, stamps bring things into contact. When there is a sameness to things, stamps are an interrupter, a displacer, a visual pause." This book is delightful and playful and explores and invites us to enjoy an appropriate tool in a creative way. Has all the information you need to DIY, lots about inks, making stamps, history, lists of catalogs, etc. I bought it for a Christmas gift, and haven't been 'able to giye it up yet! -LS • VIDEO HEALING Copy Art: The first complete guide to the copy machine, Patrick Firpo, Lester Alexander, Claudia Katayangi, Steve Ditlea, 158 pp., $7.95 from: Richard Marek Publishers Inc. 200 Madison Ave. New Y.ork, NY 10016 Another "technological tool" becoming popular as an art form in recent yearsperhaps simultaneous with the birth of rubber stamp art, also evolving into a mail art movement. Copy art's instantaneous "nature" is extremely consistent with and reflective of our instantno fuss, no muss-push button society. More and more our cultural pattern •seems to mimic as _well as incorporate technological tools into art: as a mea1ns . of confronting it, challenging it, and becoming un-alienated from it. Perhaps it makes those technologies more approachable to us all. Laser art, electric art, auto art, nuclear art? The technolo~ gies are there and are continuing to be developed, so how do we as a society deal with them? As artists, as appropriate technologists. I have friends who are fanatic and fantastic xerox artists. Within any creative medium there is an element, potential, possibility to educate, communicate, and I wonder if using xerographic art to educate about a:.t. is a contradiction in terms. In doing Rain layout, xeroxing has been an incredible and primary me;ins for us to perfectly reproduce line artwork with excellent results at very low costs, and thereby share with you information a._.nd illustrations that would otherwise be finan-· cially prohibitive to reproduce. Another area of contradiction within xerography . -is the·area of privacy, bureaucracy, politics. The authors of this book state that "The copy\ng machine has already altered the course of world history. • Without a copi<:r Daniel' Ellsberg might never have been able to leak the Pentagon Papers, and for all we know the U.S. might still be entangled in a war in Southeast Asia. ... It is ironic that back in 1950 the CIA bought the world's first commercial dry copying machine. . .. Today the Freedom of Information . Act, by which anyone can request copies of U.S. Government records, including the CIA's, would be impossible to implement without the instant copier." This medium has other political implications as well-the "information industry is the nation's second largest bu'siness.... The largest is still energy and now the Exxon Corporation has become Xerox's latest direct competitor. ..." Hmmm .... ·copy Art, although mentioning_ political importance of the.copier, is primarily dealing with the use of the machine as an art medium, and this is done very dada-ly, with a collection of incredible -images. - LS Videographer/herbalist Loren Sears will show excerpts and review his work in a discussion titled Planet Medicine: Healing Ourselves, Healing the Community, Healing the Planet-Corrective Cultural Strategy. Sears began Tribe of All Nations, a community collective, and the Tribal Vision Network in 1971, traveling the West Coast in a video-van, reporting life-style evolution and native medicine. Diverse interests and informa~ tion processes, Indian Shamans, herbal medicine and raising horses, as well as many collaborators .contribute to the holis- . tic view he presents. His works, which include Day / Year- The Pacific_Lake, Tribal Vision, poetic descriptions of small postindustrial communities along the Pacific Coast; Spirit Doctor, a view of Dr. Raymond, a Shoshone healer; Native Medicine, practices.of Pomo, Maidu, Paiu~e and other tribes; andHuichol Marrakames, portraying the activities of Mexican Indian Shamans, will be available for screening in full at the Video Access Project until February 16, by appointment. 1 (223-3419). Presented at and co-sponsored with the Northwest Artist's Workshop and the Video Access Project, 117 N.W. 5th, Portland. Ad'mission $2 general, $1.50 members. Precis The process is evolution. The hurdle,. cultural .transition. Problem is incapacitation of ourselves, individually and collectively, to accomp_lish it. As mediciners and videographers, what methods heal the planet? Alienation from self, and from each other, is a health crisis. Ecological and political disaster, as well. Holistically, health of the individual corresponds with, and is not separable from, health of the living community. Contemplating this-reciprocity yields bio-morphic descriptions of culture which are healing and transformative. Scaling it to each other and the planet, we view traditional, indigenous cultures for example and standards of comparison. Video offers means of mediating social change. . . . . The promise that television began with was you'd be able to . see people all over the world at the place, in the way they live. The anticipation was that some of them were your people-,- kin. Broadcasts were bought, however, by business, whose intere~t it is to keep us apart. The Tribal Vision Network was construed to move through boundaries of alienation and create paths of relation identical with the dist.ribution of peoples. It meant'to augment the development of autonomous lifestyles by connecting people where they live/grow their families, and to place it in a context of the planet instead of nation/state domaia. In doing this, we have traveled the Pacific coast, widely; through communities and families of the Northern Sierra; and to.developing life regions of Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico. We have become skilled at gathering i_mages as well as food, and distributing some; we ifllage the poetry of being alive and seek to learn and share lo.cal medicines-the basis of a health analogy le'nt to these spawning cultures. Musi,c,. food, images, medicine are gathered, prepared and distributed as we travel these roads; scribes.with tape, informing a culture of diverse peoplfs in wide-spa.'ced locati9ns at the planet. - Loren Sears, at th~ Pacific Lake (Thanks to Jack Eyerly) C
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