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If my bank fails, will I still have access to my money? – Should I bail out of the stock market? – Are money market funds still safe? – What about other insurers? Should I be concerned about them? – Will I survive the financial crisis? -? -?

Meanwhile:
“Each year, over 1.6 million people world-wide lose their lives to violence. Violence is among the leading causes of death for people aged 15-44 years worldwide, accounting for 14% of deaths among males and 7% of deaths among females.”
- by WHO
“One of the most significant causes of fear and insecurity in many cities today is crime and violence. Between 1990 and 2000, incidents of violent crime per 100,000 persons increased from 6 to 8.8. Recent studies show that over the past five years, 60 per cent of all urban residents in the world have been victims of crime, with 70 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean. Clearly, crime, whether violent or not, is a growing and serious threat to urban safety all over the world.”
- by UN habitat

Terry Lynn is scanning her urban environment; the output is music: strong beats, frank words, unfiltered images. She is from the ‘ghetto’ Waterhouse, Kingston, Jamaica. Her urban environment is violent.
“I’m a child of the soil, I was born in the ghetto — Where the gangstas roll by and then gunshot echo — You have to hide inna your place and tuck down like a gecko”
- by Terry Lynn
The world-wide crisis is not just a money issue. There are not just banks dying – there are actually human beings dying in a great many. The situation is alarming; the people are desperate getting violent. But we don’t want to see guns and knifes. Terry Lynn and her creative partner Russell ‘Phred’ Hergert created a language (visual and audio) to transmit that reality straightforward. Hard to digest? But how do you speak about a topic not allowed to show/name it? Softness risks to not seeing the problem, which makes it impossible to solve it.

Listen to her own words here in the interview or in her music if you like the beat. Watch the videos – it’s not made for voyeurism – it’s a scan of everyday life in a neighbouring district.

interesting links:
a report on the public viewing of kingstonlogic 2.0
a report of Jamaica from amnesty international
a black production kingstonlogic 2.0
a white production kingstonlogic 1.0
a visual production
a creative production
a show in switzerland Frauenfeld OpenAir CH -JULY 10

If you still remember the story of RadioFavela is subtitled ‘Not assumable becomes consumable … becomes subsumable‘. The links here refer to RadioFavela’s website, where you can read the theoretical texts.

With the chapter ‘not assumable’ I tried to explain the situation in Rio (or in Megacities in general), you can listen to it again in the category RF01 – not assumable.
The middle part ‘RF02 – consumable‘ is any cultural production I had the chance to catch for you. This is definitely the most enjoyable part.

Now it becomes ‘subsumable’ which is my response to all what I have gone through here in Rio, which is a RadioProductionCentre in the carioca harbour zone. Within the next four podcasts you can follow step by step my understanding of the favela via the city to my RadioProductionCentre in a very high abstraction grade.


The diagram above illustrates the text you will listen to. For those who get the podcast via feed I added the image as cover.

Auf könnt Ihr Favela hier nachlesen.
Next Monday it will be continued with ‘Urban Landscape ‘Megalopolis”

If not …
We wouldn’t have any favela.
We wouldn’t have any cultural production from the favela.

It is an ironic shortfilm on cocaine and Rio’s urbanism. You know “she don’t lie, she don’t lie … cocaine” (J.J. Cale in 1975) On wikipedia you get more information on the song ‘cocaine’.

idea and production by dd.r and julakim.
postproduction and music by julakim.
The format is wmv because of 16:9, somehow this was difficult to achieve. So check for yourselfes while watching it. If you encounter problems you can download the media player for mac or flip4mac. Please tell me if this works fine for you, since I think the quality is better with .wmv than with .m4v and even smaller.

Remark from Bolivia:
Bolivia’s new president Evo Morales (a former coca farmer) plans to use government aid to promote the sale of coca products.
“Coca sí, Cocaína no” — yes to coca, no to cocaine — was one of Morales’ campaign slogans.
The coca plant is a basis for living. With his new program he aims to disassociate the plant that provides the substance used to make cocaine from the drug stigma. In the Andes, the coca plant is ‘only’ a medicine and this already for thousands of years (the use goes back to the Incas).
With community control the coca farmers are trying to avoid misuse of their holy plant. I think it is a good idea to make a clean self-control, but also I believe that cocaine makes some people very rich and they will always find their way around.
They even want Coca-Cola Company to change their name.

Some background information on the case, you can find here: Bolivia Coca Trade (BOLCOCA)

Related Posts on Drugs
Dreams and Results, I am interviewing VivaRio’s executive director about their program in a favela.
personal message, I am talking about the 2 districts Lapa and Santa Teresa in Rio de Janeiro.