East Eats West

Dreams instead of donations

Picture: The Hunger project in Uganda (picture courtesy of Bill Liao).

If you live in a landlocked country in the poorest part of Africa, you cannot read and you are female, what do you think are the chances for you to become a bank manager? Zero? Wrong, it might only take five years if you get some help! In Burkina Faso in West Africa exactly this happened when an NGO called The Hunger Project initiated a development initiative that eventually led to the creation of three rural banks run by locals. The banks are run by formerly illiterate and uneducated women and are constantly growing their lending base. How do they do it?

As always in life it starts with a dream (or a vision) that translates into a commitment and eventually action, in short VCA. The NGO experts ask the local people what they want to achieve and what they dream of. Once the locals come up with a dream, like a local school, better farming equipment or a garden (as in Mexico) the whole village commits itself to the task and organizes itself. Normally this session takes three days. And this is where the magic happens: cooperation instead of waiting for donations. The NGO provides mostly expertise and little starting capital; it does not provide plain donations but human collaboration. In Africa for example many locals wait for the white man to come and give them donations, as happened many times before. So the VCA-process first and foremost breaks this mindset and makes the locals realize that they can achieve anything they set their mind to, if they cooperate. In Burkina for Faso example, in a second step a so-called epicentre is built with the approval by the government. The epicentre is operated by several villages and provides for example a school, a food bank, maybe a rural bank that gives micro credits and health facilities. It is built and managed by the people, not by NGO staff. The Hunger Project operates such programs around the world from Africa to India , Bangladesh and to Mexico . The projects get adapted to local conditions but all are based on the creation of a civic society (collaboration) and the empowerment of women. The beauty of this civic society-approach is that it is operated by the people for the people. It is therefore immune to corruption as there is little cash involved. And it is sustainable.

Learn more about The Hunger Project here: http://www.thp.org/

Surprising art

Picture: Laughing Buddhas by Peter Regli (Reality Hacking No. 222) in the courtyard of PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Art and museums seem always to go together. But often they don't. Art sometimes needs space, as the Swiss artist’s Jean Tinguely’s massive metal installations do. And then there is art that plays with reality around us, it lives with us. One artist who creates such reality altering art is Peter Regli. He takes everyday objects or situations and gives them a surprising spin. One of my favourite projects of his is called Reality Hacking No. 222 and consists of five massive marble laughing Buddhas sitting in a circle in the courtyard of the PriceWaterHouse Building in Zurich. The Buddhas were made in the Marble Mountains in Vietnam and are of the type “laughing Buddha” (Hotei in Japanese or Butai in Chinese). According to Buddhist believe the Buddha laughs when there is wisdom. The Buddhas are shielded by a Asian tree and placed on gravel. And once a month they laugh together.

http://easteatswest.typepad.com/photos/marble_mountains_vie/index.html

www.realityhacking.com

When is art excellent?

Picture: Art by Fischli and Weiss (picture courtesy of www.kunsthaus.ch)

I recently discussed with a friend of mine if one can tell the quality of art or if there is only commercialism and cash washing up at auction houses that creates the illusion of quality. Can one truly value art (and put a price tag on it)? She thought yes, I did not. Then I went to the opening of the Fischli and Weiss show. They are the probably the two most acclaimed Swiss artists. And all for a sudden I saw with my own eyes what truly exceptional art is, it hit me, right there: good art creates sudden emotional responses in people, any people! Good art does not need to be explained or commented, it speaks for itself. And Fischli and Weiss achieve this as hundreds of visitors slowly walked through the show they reacted with astonishment, laughter, awe and surprise. They laughed about the installation “Plötzlich diese Übersicht” (suddenly there was order) and roamed with wonder among the little clay-figures depicting scenes from history and movies, they watched in awe the video “Der Lauf der Dinge” that shows an amazing chain reaction of movement and they drifted to far away places while watching intensively the hundreds of little dia pictures from around the world. All the visitors knew immediately that this art was extraordinary.

PS: And you can hardly get cooler than the artist duo Fischli and Weiss: they attended the opening of their show, listened to the opening addresses by the curator and director and did not say a word themselves! They believe that their art speak from them. Right so!

http://www.kunsthaus.ch/ausstellungen/2007/fischli-weiss/index.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUomQnqHTl8

Six hours in the theatre

Picture: From the play Dragon's Trilogy (picture courtesy of www.schauspielhaus.ch)

Would you want to sit in a theatre for almost six hours? I would not, except if I did not know in advance. This week I went to see the by now acclaimed play Dragon’s Trilogy by Robert Lepage from Canada. The monumental play of over four hours started a six pm and finished at 11.30pm, including two short and one long pause. And I enjoyed every single minute of this visually enwrapping play across continents and times. In the lives of normal people from East and West the play tells the eternal story of life’s struggle. The story is framed in wonderful pictures and atmospheric music and has a wonderful sedate pace. Little is spoken and the languages switch from French and English to Japanese and Chinese (with subtitles). The stage is a Japanese Zen-Garden flanked on two sides by the audience, bringing the audience right into the play and close to the supreme actors. This proximity draws the audience into the epic tale of love and death across continents and times. It is worth to see and definitely good value for your money!

Here is the link to the play: http://www.schauspielhaus.ch/www/107_430.asp?PlayID=310

The UN and sex

What comes to your mind if you hear the word United Nations? Blue helmets maybe, peacekeeping, the atomic dispute with Iran? But do you know what it is like to be on the ground for the UN? A friend of mine works as a United Nations volunteer in East Timor and helps to prepare for the upcoming elections. Here is what he told me:

He is located in a little village with ten other volunteers, male and female. With much time on their hand and little to do, one thing keeps their idle minds busy: the opposite sex. Or as my friend put it: “it is like Big Brother”, meaning there is a lot of talking in the beginning until there is nothing more to share except physical attraction. According to my friend some volunteers get out rightly obsessed with sex. And apparently it is not uncommon that one exchanges bodily favours for moving up the career ladder. Therefore it is not surprising that the HIV-infection rate among UN staff is high at shocking 5 percent, despite sexual education before every posting.

But besides being a wonderful platform to meet like-minded humans, the UN provides also a lucrative career: as a volunteer one gets $2’700-3’500 for the three to six months postings, in cash. As a fulltime employee one gets $6’000-7’000 a month in cash, tax-free and with additional benefits like a relocation fee of $17’000 upfront and $15’000 for re-integration back into the normal life. But mind you, a posting in remote locations as for example East Timor or Nepal seriously disrupts your social life. One volunteer for example has six children with five different wives. No wonder the salary is so high with all those mouths to feed!

What one can learn from US marriages

As I wrote about Indian wedding preparations last week I shall now switch continents. The weekly magazine The Economist (issue of May the 26th) published interesting findings about marriage from the USA. Probably the most surprising finding of which is that couples who had lived together before they married divorced more often. Why? The authors of the study reckon that particularly men refrain from splitting up once they live in with someone. Therefore they “agree” to get married instead of splitting up. The study also found that marriage is actually a “wealth-generating institution”. Couples end up wealthier than singles and so do their children (as compared to single-parent families). But where there is marriage divorce looms around the corner. As the bonanza in the hedge funds industry in the USA creates hundreds of super-wealthy youngsters, divorce lawyers are having a ball. Apparently, according to another article in Hedgeweek, being young, married and super-rich is not a healthy combination. On the other hand the richer they are the more generous the hedge fund managers are in divorce. So marry and become wealthy; but not a hedge funds manager.

The Cambodian King visits Zurich

The Cambodian King, King Sihamoni, was in

Zurich

last week. He attended a charitable circus performance in favour of Beat Richner’s children hospitals in Cambodia. It is not that common for kings to visit Switzerland as Switzerland never had a king. But it is common for royals to receive their education in Switzerland. For example the current Thai King Bumiphol studied in Switzerland and so did the former Shah of Iran and Aga Khan, the Imam of the Ismaili (a Shia Muslim sect). The later two together with Dodi al-Fayed and the children of John Lennon, Elizabeth Taylor and Roger Moore studied at the prestigious Le Rosey Institute near Geneva.

http://www.rosey.ch/

Please touch this piece of art

Picture: A piece of rusting Swiss art.

Art rarely makes sense to kids but then again, there are artist that remain kids for their whole life. Jean Tinguely is such an artist. He is famous for his machines made out of recycled metal that move and make noises. Many years back he won my heart when I was around ten years old and he had an exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zurich (Museum of Modern Art). On display was a huge machine named Rotozaza. It had to be fed with footballs and then spit it out again with some tremendous noise. And kids were supposed to feed it, touch it and enjoy it. Wonderful! I was hooked, mesmerized and it was probably my first profound contact with art. The machines look best outside and I was very happy to discover that one smaller machine is back in working order in a little garden of the Kunsthaus Zurich. And my love for Jean Tinguely is reignited.