#Atmospheric Reclamation Complex Project

[sw5w]

Towers of Coruscant

STAR WARS EPISODE II: Attack of the Clones 00:02:35

[newmusicradionetwork]

Olivia Dolphin’s Witch Pop Album Transforms for the ‘Better’

Artist Olivia Dolphin recently released her highly anticipated sophomore album, Better. This project is a deeply personal – yet relatable – exploration of self-growth, transformation, and reclamation, combining elements of alt-rock, witch pop, and orchestral rock to create a sound that is as haunting as it is empowering. Following the success of her debut album Lion-Hearted Blood and recent singles like “Quiet Girls,” Dolphin continues to solidify her place as a rising force in the Rhode Island music scene and beyond. Her self-produced multi-genre shows feature a thoughtful blend of artists across all styles and backgrounds. This momentum has created buzz not only for Dolphin, but also the flourishing local arts community that fuels her. B-Side Guys praised her recent releases, saying Dolphin “crafts a sound that’s both atmospheric and fiercely resonant, marking a significant evolution in her artistic journey…she’s poised for recognition far beyond Rhode Island’s borders.” Better represents a culmination of Dolphin’s experiences, relationships, and reflections over the past several years, captured through a meticulously crafted collection of tracks. The project was recorded at Big Nice Studio in Dolphin’s hometown, with Emma Newton as co-producer and recording engineer. Newton’s ability to capture the emotional depth of Dolphin’s songwriting is evident throughout the album, particularly on orchestral tracks like “Once Again” and “Wanted.” The album also features contributions from musicians Johnny McMahon (bass guitar), Jeff Kidd (harmonica), Emily Dix Thomas (cello), Luke Leheny (guitar), Sam Jaksa (drums), and Charlie Larson (clarinet, saxophone). The project was mastered by Bradford Krieger, with photography by Maurisa Mackey and vinyl graphic design by Brittany Lizotte. Drawing inspiration from artists like Hozier, Florence and the Machine, and Billie Eilish, the world of Better is one of contrasts and dualities. It’s the red poppies growing amidst dark woods, the flicker of candlelight in a storm, the quiet of an empty room after a long day. The album’s lyrical content reflects Dolphin’s journey through her twenties, exploring the complexities of relationships, mental health, and self-acceptance. More about Olivia Dolphin: Hailing from Providence, Rhode Island, Olivia Dolphin bewitches audiences with her singer-songwriter prowess, skillfully infusing her discography with themes of community, embracing self-love, and practicing perseverance. With tracks steeped in poetic lyricism, Dolphin’s music possesses the remarkable ability to transform universal experiences into deeply personal and relatable moments. Effortlessly weaving together elements of indie pop and alternative rock, Dolphin crafts a sound that is as distinctive as it is irresistible, leaving listeners spellbound and hungry for more. With two feline friends by her side and her piano at the helm, she aspires to cultivate an inclusive atmosphere where everyone feels embraced in their uniqueness. Her debut album, Lion-Hearted Blood, earned her the title of “Stellar Songwriter” from Motif Magazine, affirming her position as a prominent figure in the Rhode Island music scene. With her sophomore album, Better, out September 20, Dolphin eagerly anticipates a year filled with forging connections with both new and longtime fans. Connect with Olivia Dolphin:  Instagram | TikTok | Youtube | Website | Spotify Read the full article

[demifulcrum]

Kryptonian Bodies: Solar Houses!

Kryptonian Physiology: Kryptonian cellular structure is much more dense, resilient, and biologically more effective than human tissue. Kryptonians do however possess superhuman strength levels even without their cellular structure charged with yellow solar energy but to a much lesser extent. Without such charging, their physical capabilities are limited to their enhanced senses and sight with a certain degree of super strength depending on their respective height and weight. As an alien, Kryptonians possesses several organs whose functions are not yet disclosed or understood but are believed to be part of or the source of their bio matrix force field and reclamation aura. Kryptonian bodies also store energy actively within their bio-cellular matrix as an energy pattern that is linked to their body's electromagnetic field. This energy powers most of their electromagnetic capabilities such as flight, heat vision and supplementing their physical abilities to superhuman levels.

Superhuman Senses: All Kryptonian's senses are heightened to superhuman levels.

Solar Radiation Absorption: Kryptonian cells function like a super battery, hyper metabolizing specific wavelengths of radiation as fuel to enable superhuman abilities. Different wavelengths of radiation have different effects on Kryptonian physiology and well being, but their cells cannot absorb or utilize all types of radiation. The wavelength of their home solar system's red sun enables their body to function as repressed versions of their charged states; while Earth's solar radiation in its filtered state through the Earth's atmosphere acts as fuel to enable all of their powers. Every time a Kryptonian uses any of their superhuman abilities, their body utilizes absorbed sunlight and is capable of utilizing any of them to various degrees through controlled circumstances. The constant exposure to proven "healthy" radiation sources is not required for them to live and utilize their powers, but prolonged periods without exposure to them and/or utilizing their powers will require Kryptonians to recharge in order to live and continue using their powers.

Enhanced Strength: The exact limits of a Kryptonian’s strength are unknown, but different periods and intensities of exposure to Earth's solar radiation can cause their strength to fluctuate over time.

Enhanced Speed: A Kryptonian is capable of moving, reacting, running and flying at superhuman speeds. While not as fast as the Flash or other experienced Speedsters, Kryptonians can still move at speeds on par with a novice Speedster.

Enhanced Stamina: Kryptonians have the ability to maintain continuous physical actions for an undefined period. They’ve been shown to have unlimited stamina if consistently exposed to yellow sunlight, though they still prefers to sleep like a normal human as their mind can suffer the effects of sleep deprivation.

Flight: Kryptonians are capable of defying gravity and flying at supersonic speeds in a planetary atmosphere and possibly faster while in space.

Ocular Heat Emission (Heat Vision): Kryptonians can fire beams of intense heat from their eyes. These beams can be made invisible, allowing them to work undetected, but when fired at full-strength the effect is displayed as an intense red burst from their ocular cavities.

Invulnerability: A Kryptonian’s body is nigh-invulnerable due to their super humanly dense cellular and anatomical structure as well as their radiating bio-electrical aura. Kryptonians under some circumstances, are resistant or immune to different forms and levels of lacerations, blunt force trauma, energy-based assaults, falls from great heights, explosions, the cold void of space, toxins and all known diseases on Earth. Their supercharged bio-electric "aura" acts as an invisible "force field" radiating within a few millimeters from their skin. Kryptonians can willfully utilize their aura strengthening its power to a greater degree to provide an additional defense against certain levels of physical and energy attacks for a considerably short period of time, but doing so can endanger them should the attempted feat prove inefficient for any reason. A Kryptonian can utilize their aura by expanding it around a person(s) or object(s) to enable their structural stability when lifting or traveling with them. Their invulnerability has been in a constant flux dependent on their levels of solar absorption.

Intense Lung Capacity: Kryptonians can create hurricane force winds by blowing, and also chill their breath to freeze a target. They can also breathe in large amounts of air to dispel clouds of gas by exhaling it.

Hearing: Kryptonians have the ability to expand their hearing range, giving them the ability to hear sounds before the sound waves actually reach them. This also gives them incredible hearing at extreme variances of sound and pitch frequency, allowing them to pick up noises from across the globe. They have also shown enough control to block out ambient sounds to focus on a specific source/frequency.

Smell: On various occasions, Kryptonians have demonstrated that their sense of smell is significantly enhanced to the point they can smell odors from up to a mile away.

Electromagnetic Spectrum Vision: Kryptonians can see into all of the EM Spectrum. They can see and identify radio/television and any and all broadcast/transmitted frequencies, allowing them to avoid detection through radar or satellite monitoring methods.

Telescopic Vision: The ability to focus their vision to see something at a great distance, without violating the laws of physics.

Microscopic Vision: The ability to see extremely small objects and images down to the sub atomic level.

Ocular X-Ray Emission (X-Ray Vision): The ability to see through anything except lead. Since it is passive, this ability would not generate harmful radiation in the same manner as a focused projection of hard X-rays.

Thermal Vision: The ability to see through the heat tracks left by a living being or object.

Solar Flare: A Kryptonians ability to immediately expel all of their stored solar energy in one gigantic burst of explosive force. This Solar Flare utilizes all the stored energy within their cells at once, allowing for an all out attack.They cannot use it more than once or twice however, as it drains them of all their powers, including their normally enhanced abilities with the exception of their enhanced senses and sight until they can recharge their cells with solar energy. Give or take 24 hours, in that expanse of time, they are rendered virtually human and vulnerable.

Weaknesses

Vulnerability to Magic: A Kryptonian's bio matrix is their most powerful asset, but the strength of this field is also its greatest weakness. Its permeability to certain wavelengths makes them vulnerable to certain radiations, particularly magical energies whose chaotic electromagnetic or extra dimensional signatures disrupt this force field. Kryptonian's vulnerability to magic varies depending upon the special effects of the magic. Magic can have powerful and unpredictable effects on a Kryptonian, certainly making it one of the deadliest weaknesses.

Vulnerability to Kryptonite: Since the destruction of Krypton, its remains (rendered radioactive by the explosion) have been spreading throughout the universe as Kryptonite, a crystalline substance whose specific radioactive wavelength is lethal to Kryptonians. The most common form of Kryptonite is Green Kryptonite, and its effect is directly poisonous to them.

Lead: Kryptonians cannot see through lead with their x-ray vision powers.

Solar Energy Dependency: A Kryptonian’s abilities will eventually weaken without replenishing their energy reserves with normal (yellow) sun radiation, especially if they don’t have any direct contact with yellow sunlight. When exposed to the same red solar radiation as Krypton's red sun Rao, it causes a Kryptonian to lose their enhanced powers with a large amount of exposure. Exposure to yellow sunlight will reverse this effect.

High-Pitched Noises: Because of their super hearing, A Kryptonian's ears are extra-sensitive to extreme noises.

Psionics: A Kryptonian's mind is vulnerable to psionic effects like any other.

Respiration: Even Kryptonians need to breathe.

The Meta Gene interaction with Kryptonians

The Meta-Gene is a genetic marker in certain individuals that allows them to endure catastrophic physical trauma by developing new abilities—i.e. superpowers. It has been speculated that the Meta-Gene is opportunistic in nature, taking advantage of pre-existing factors in an individual's system to cause a mutation.

Due to extremely complex genetic engineering done to Kryptonian’s over the years since live birth was abandoned for birthing pods, it’s extremely rare for Kryptonian’s to harbor any potential to develop a meta-gene’s activation unless engineered to be a Meta-Kryptonian, they are of natural birth, or are a hybrid. A notable Meta-Kryptonian being Doomsday, an unstoppable monster that warranted in the Kryptonians altering their DNA to prevent such an unstoppable monstrosity ever again.

[july-19th-club]

about to just start inventing picard episodes

star trek picard episode whatever “Electric Sheep”: Cris, Raffi, and the gang beam down to pick up supplies for malfunctioning holograms. Soji and Geordi conduct an experiment on lucid dreaming. (geordi’s here because i love him and the experiment they’re doing is ‘if soji puts enough parts of her brain in sleep mode can she or geordi talk to a remnant of her dad in there’ and the result is ‘yes and there are seventeen individual lines of dialogue that will have you bawling like a baby’. then they have to pilot la sirena out of a contested patch of space together because they accidentally let her drift while they were doing weird science and everybody else is planetside having wacky market haggling shenanigans and emmett & enoch are still not online. do they sit in The Correct Spots On The Bridge? brother, it’s the only reason the scene exists)

star trek picard episode whatever 2 electric boogaloo “Dinner and a Holonovel”: Raffi and Seven go on their first official date. Meanwhile, La Sirena receives a coded message from one of Raffi’s mysterious contacts. (in this one Raf and Sev get dressed up but they’re both sort of uncomfortable doing so and they try to have a date but neither of them are enjoying themselves trying to be normal, because Raf’s an old reprobate who’s definitely forgotten how to Have Fun With Others and Sev never learned because it wasn’t relevant to her interests. but then they wind up in some trouble(maybe they deliberately seek it out sort of unconsciously bc they’re bored) and it becomes a fun bar fight date that they really enjoy. everybody else is playing twenty questions trying to figure out this weirdly-encoded message for her bc she’s busy. they come back all bruised and grinning and the whole gang looks up at them with this half-decoded message and is like what kind of life do you lead).

star trek picard episode whatever 2 the sequel “Dr. and Mr. Smith”: Raffi’s contact has asked the crew for their help in a...discreet political matter. (it’s a reverse heist episode starring everyone’s two favorite sort-of-semi-retired-?-spies (if we are spies no we are not. yes we are. no <3). julian and raffi have a very good rapport and sev and garak don’t understand each other AT ALL. yes they are together in this one. no i dont think we need much backstory on when or how it happened i will leave that to the experts and their fucking youtube plays. keep up the good work. what are they reverse-stealing? idk yet it’s just a vehicle for character dynamics anyway).

star trek picard episode we cry a lot “The Daughters”: Soji confronts her legacy when an old friend of her fathers hails La Sirena, eager to repay a debt. (although to be honest, when is our sweet girl NOT confronting her legacy? that bitch is all legacy; she’s got legacy frankly oozing out of her positronic pores. this is partly a story about soji, but it takes a while to get there. first it’s the story of Sarge, who had an imaginary friend when she was six...

she can’t pinpoint exactly when she came up with him, and she doesn’t even remember what she named him - but she knows it happened sometime around the evacuations, and when they all moved back home and the world started growing again - lush and fast from the rich volcanic soil - she used to spend hours playing around with her birthday-gift radio set, ‘talking’ to her imaginary friend. of course, she never got actual replies, but as she aged out of the phase she retained an interest in radio and communications, and her parents indulged it and bought her more and better equipment, enrolled her in science programs, fed her curiosity. until one day as a young adult doing a school project on theoretical outer space transmissions, she arrived at a theory which (she later describes it as a CLICK, like something is settling into place in her brain) could account for the existence of extraterrestrial life, just out of reach. and perhaps, she posits in her presentation, the reason no aliens had yet contacted her world had little to do with them not being there and much to do with them choosing not to respond. the goal, she concluded, was to continue reaching out - to close the gap. she wrapped up the presentation with a nod to nostalgia. “And maybe someday, those friends will be imaginary no more.”

she wins an award for the project, and begins work in her chosen field that’s extremely rewarding, but it is still years before she reaches her second conclusion: the logical leap that if future alien contact was not only possible but likely, her imaginary friend might have been a real person after all. she brings this idea up with her mother one night over dinner, and her mother is somewhat alarmed - what do you mean you think you were talking to aliens, you couldn’t do that on a child’s transmitter kit, adults??? adult aliens? what are you saying they said to you? - but she can’t answer. she doesn’t have clear memories of that time, only an unshakeable conviction that the life she may have contacted is closer than anyone could possibly imagine. and so she starts a new project. she digs out the old childhood kit, fiddles with the dials, finds the frequency she used to tune it to. in her mind’s eye there’s the impression of a clear, frank voice, but no words. she tunes her own, more modern and complex instruments, to the same frequency, and keeps listening.

one day, she hears something. this time, she doesn’t talk first. the next few months are a whirlwind of information-gathering. there are people out there. whole societies. she pieces together the basics of what she’ll eventually learn is the prime directive; enough ships pass by the atmosphere of her world that she’s able to form a working conclusion as to why the come close but never hail. they know we’re down here, she thinks, they just think we’re not ready.

and maybe they don’t have the kind of boats that could get you that far into the sky. but she’s always been resourceful. she picks up a new frequency, and starts listening to starfleet. and after a few months of listening and planning, she starts packing. she takes the kiddie transmitter kit, she takes clothing designed for all-weather wilderness exposure, she takes the kind of emergency preserved food that people used to keep by the pallet in case of earthquake, and she takes a few other trinkets she can’t live without. and when the time is right, she hails. it might be a combination of luck or goodwill, but she manages to convince a passing freighter that she is the stranded comms officer of a downed private ship, the only survivor of the wreck hiding out on a pre-warp world. they beam her up and the first few weeks are very touch-and-go, but she manages to convince them she belongs up here, that the people who look like her are very far away and not just under their feet, darting around her green little world like a hill of bugs under the eyes of giant birds. she gets off at the nearest starbase, and she starts exploring.

she takes numerous vessels to numerous worlds, gathering information all the time. she starts calling herself Sarge, instead of Sarjenka, and it makes people think she’s a military type and nobody bothers her. she stops at a library planet for a month and researches everything she can about the major governing systems in the galaxy. without much to go on - no name, only a vague physical description (tall? pale? humanoid?) - it’s hard to determine exactly what kind of vessel the Friend would have been on, if indeed he existed. the yellow clothes, one of her few clear recollections, lead her to guess starfleet, but starfleet is a massive organization and so many of its vessels have come near her homeworld that it seems unlikely she’ll be able to narrow it down like that. so she tries a different tack, searching for the other two vague faces that she can bring to mind. one is a middle-aged woman, humanoid, but the search turns up nothing; the woman is a doctor who has retired from the organization and now works at a teaching hospital near vulcan. the other is a bald man with a deep voice, humanoid, and his record turns up an absolute deluge of information. she skips past most of it; she’s inpatient now, if anyone knows about the Friend he will, and so she checks his last known location. on board the private supply-class ship La Sirena, captained by ex-starfleet officer Cristobal Rios. Rios is tall, dark-haired, and humanoid, but absolutely nothing about him rings that little mental bell. she checks his last docking location. the ship visited a reclamation site briefly, and then disappears from the record.

but Sarge is nothing if not a searcher, so she adjusts her frequencies and tries again. it’s months before they’re in proximity to one another, months in which she’s taken the opportunity to secure her own vessel, a little rented, dented passenger bucket that’s probably worth more in repairs than the price she got it for. but she trades radio repairs for ship repairs at the port where she buys it, looks up its name (Avis) and finds it acceptable, and then she’s in the sky. she tools around exploring new bases and stations, and keeps the hail open. and one day, it’s answered. a human voice answers. “Avis, we read you. What can we do for you?” they go on-screen with each other, and she sees first the captain - the bearded guy - and then...him. the old man. he is an old man, the bald guy, and his eyebrows raise when he sees her come on the viewer.

“Permission to come on board?” she asks. “I have something which might belong to one of you.”

the old man looks wary for a moment, but then he turns to someone behind him, they exchange some quiet words, and he nods. “Permission granted.”

there’s a young woman waiting for her at the transport platform. shorter than her by a good half meter, humanoid. pale. “Dr. Soji Asha,” she says, “You look...”

and Sarge could swear she’s about to say ‘familiar.’

“Sarge,” she says, and the woman’s small hand grasps her long one in a firm shake, and then waits patiently while Sarge performs greeting, letting her fingers just-not-rest on the woman’s shoulders and arms. “I’m actually looking for an old friend of mine, and I thought you might have his whereabouts. Tall, pale, starfleet officer? Ops gold. I know that’s not much to go on, but if it helps, he would have once contacted and established a rapport with pre-warp Drema IV? Humanoid, but not human. He...” It’s weird. standing here, explaining herself to this quietly-held young woman, Sarge is able to articulate better than ever before her half-formed memories. “He told me once he was a machine.” and then, like another CLICK is settling, she has a name. At last. “Data.” I knew he’d had a name.

the woman’s face lights up and falls in such swift motion it is hard to tell which comes first - the recognition or the sorrow. but they’re both there, clear and present. “Dad died almost twenty years ago,” she says. “But if it helps, I have a positronic clone of his brain.”

Sarge starts laughing; she doesn’t mean to, but the way the woman - Soji - says it, so matter-of-fact, so frank...she stops herself before it’s rude, but Soji’s laughing too. “Sorry, I -”

“No, don’t - how do you - how did you know Dad? Come on, come with me -”

“What happened? I didn’t know him for long, I barely remembered him, but I knew he existed -”

“That’s a long story. Do you want to meet the crew?”

Soji reaches for her hand, and with a feeling of mechanisms interlocking as they properly should, she takes it. they start walking. “Oh.” She’s almost forgotten. “If...if he’s not around to take it back, then this might belong to you.” She reaches in her pocket and holds it out: a small, ceramic singing bird.)

[berniesrevolution]

SCIENCE FOR THE PEOPLE

“If, as history shows, fantasies of weather and climate control have chiefly served commercial and military interests, why should we expect the future to be different?” —James Fleming, Fixing the Sky1

After decades of lurking in the shadows of secretive military research, geoengineering has recently resurfaced in conversations about climate change and crept into the mainstream of international climate policy.2 A small group of climate scientists, elite policy advisers and industry representatives from high-polluting countries in the Global North are increasingly vocal about their support for geoengineering—large-scale technological interventions in the climate system—as a means to weaken or suppress some of the symptoms of climate change.

There are two basic categories of geoengineering technologies. The first is a suite of technologies that aim to reduce the amount of incoming sunlight to artificially cool the climate, Solar Radiation Management (SRM). Proposed SRM projects include shooting aerosols into the stratosphere andbrightening clouds or ocean surfaces to reflect sunlight back into space.

SRM has thus far only been simulated in computer models, but it could leave the lab as early as 2018. Backed by a multimillion geoengineering fund provided by Bill Gates, Harvard University scientist David Keith, and colleagues working on the high profile Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) project known as “SCoPEx” plan to run first field experiments in Tucson, Arizona, this year. Hardware-testing of the Marine Cloud Brightening Project, a research project with financial and professional connections to SCoPEx, is slated to take place in Monterey Bay, California, on Indigenous territory. Ice911, a self-proclaimed “Silicon Valley moonshot,” is already testing their geoengineering solution to lower global temperatures by restoring ice in the Arctic.

The second category of geoengineering interventions in the Earth system fall under the umbrella of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). CDR aims to suck CO2 from the atmosphere at a global scale and bury it underground or in the oceans.3 While pilot-scale facilities on land filter CO2 from ambient air, they are so far unable to permanently remove CO2 from the atmosphere. David Keith’s Carbon Engineering company, for example, produces synthetic fuel from captured CO2.Climeworks in Switzerland lists food and beverage, agriculture, and automotive manufacturing as (potential) industries for their product. In all cases, the captured CO2 sooner or later returns to the atmosphere when the products made from it are combusted, consumed, or otherwise disposed of.

Carbon Dioxide Removal schemes are not limited to land. As one of the most prominent marine geoengineering technologies, Ocean Fertilization applies iron or other nutrients in large oceanic areas to stimulate phytoplankton growth that sequesters atmospheric CO2. The phytoplankton eventually sink to the ocean bed when they die, supposedly taking the sequestered CO2 along. Thisidea has been tested a dozen times — with meager results for the technology’s efficacy (much of the sequestered CO2 was released again via the marine food chain), but with detrimental impacts on the marine environment.

Across the two basic categories of SRM and CDR, geoengineering aims to intervene in the world’s oceans, soils, ecosystems and atmosphere. Most geoengineering technologies are largely hypothetical, and major uncertainties remain as to whether they could ever work at all.

A Climate “Technofix”

Geoengineering is an attempt to solve the problem of climate change—a social, political, and ecological crisis—through large-scale technological projects. This “technofix“ mentality lends itself to a systematic disregard of risk, adverse impacts, and unintended side-effects associated with unproven technologies. Side effects are particularly threatening to strained natural ecosystems and economically or ecologically vulnerable populations.

Some consequences are fairly straightforward: the technological system known as BECCS is meant to couple bioenergy production with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies that bury CO2 underground. If rolled out at a climate-relevant scale, BECCS would lead to fierce competition over land and resources, widespread land grabs and forced displacement, and sharp increases in global food prices.

Computer simulations have predicted other possible impacts of geoengineering schemes on the natural world. Injecting aerosols in the stratosphere could suppress rainfall and potentially interfere with monsoon patterns. Carbon farm monocultures threaten to destroy natural ecosystems at a massive scale. Given that natural processes and systems are complex, non-linear, and in some measure chaotic and unpredictable, the overwhelming majority of effects that will ripple through our global ecosystems might only become apparent after geoengineering technologies are actually deployed.

The systematic dominance of physical science and engineering perspectives in geoengineering research encourages a neglect of social and environmental impacts. This negligence is characteristic of an approach that addresses symptoms but leaves the underlying conditions that spawned the problem in place. Yet the sociopolitical and socioeconomic implications of large-scale technological schemes to “fix” the climate are profound: under existing global power relations, geoengineering is bound to be exploited for corporate and strategic interest.

The perfect excuse for continuing business-as-usual

Finding a technological shortcut to climate change is in the interest of those responsible for the bulk of the problem. Were the international community to address the root causes of environmental destruction, major pollutants would bear the political and economic costs. It is therefore no surprise that fossil fuel companies and their representatives often draw on geoengineering as part of the “solution” to climate change.4 If pollution can be cleaned up after the fact and global warming and other symptoms of climate change can be technologically suppressed, then the industries responsible for environmental crisis can continue business as usual.

Oil industry moguls and their representatives, such as Haroon Kheshgi at ExxonMobil, have been at the forefront of developing geoengineering technologies, particularly to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.5 Kheshgi is also an author of the upcoming IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C, which for a broad range of over one hundred international civil society organizations constitutes a flagrant conflict of interest.6

In many cases, there is direct overlap between oil industry interests and geoengineering projects branded as environmental solutions. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), an important enabling technology for Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), was originally developed by the oil industry as Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), a technique to flush out the final drops of oil from nearly-depleted wells and reservoirs. Both fossil CCS and CCS coupled with bioenergy (BECCS) or CO2 from the atmosphere (Direct Air Capture and CCS, or DACCS) are now touted as contributions to climate change mitigation.

For a long time, geoengineering was too controversial for big corporations to publicly endorse. Yet as Steve Horn revealed in his DeSmog Blog article, “How the Biochar Industry Pushed for Offsets, Tar Sands, and Fracking Reclamation Using Unsettled Science,” powerful industries have lobbied extensively for geoengineering initiatives like biochar.

(Continue Reading)

[micaramel]

Artists: Pope.L, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Cheyenne Julien, Tschabalala Self

Venue: Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York

Exhibition Title: Embodiment

Date: September 12 – October 26, 2019

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release, and link available after the jump.

  Pope.L

Images:

Images courtesy of Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York

Press Release:

Mitchell-Innes & Nash is pleased to present Embodiment, a group exhibition of works by Pope.L, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Cheyenne Julien and Tschabalala Self that explores the different ways in which corporeality is envisioned and depicted within the spatial confines of the two-dimensional picture plane.

The body and its representations have often been used to give physical form to the intangible: a stand in, so to speak, for an emotion, an idea, a time or even an atmosphere. In sculptural and performative works, the viewer is able to observe the metaphors of the body in physical space from his or her perspective. However, on the flat surfaces of paintings, drawings and text-based works that use the body as subject, the perspectival becomes a matter of embodying someone else’s point of view.

With their renderings of bodies animated in dance, play and chore, Chase and Julien allow us to glimpse the dynamic experiences and rich inner lives of their subjects. Self, meanwhile, zeros in on the black female body as her subject and asks us to grapple with the respective social perceptions that foreground identity construction. Pope.L’s work in this exhibition, however, approaches the body through language in a series of text-based works known as Skin Sets. In these pieces, the body is delineated through the artist’s absurdist phraseology—people of color (blue, green, brown, black and gold) are situated within nonsensical spaces. Always puzzling and, at times, illegible, Pope.L’s Skin Sets make a comment on the legibility and visibility of alienation, especially as it concerns the body in space—a performance that negotiates between self-definition and definition of the self by others.

The works in this exhibition show, through the respective viewpoints of its authors, not only the spaces inhabited by real or symbolic figures but also the complex and multidimensional identities, ideals and anxieties embodied by them. In this, there is in each of these works the incarnation of the “other­”—an image of alterity that, paradoxically, is also a mirror that reflects back on the viewer. The worlds we see through these distinct, flattened windows are and are not, at the same time, our own.

Pope.L (b. 1955, Newark, NJ) is a Chicago-based visual artist and educator whose multidisciplinary practice uses binaries, contraries and preconceived notions embedded within contemporary culture to create artworks in various formats, for example, writing, painting, performance, installation, video and sculpture. Building upon his long history of enacting arduous, provocative, absurdist performances and interventions in public spaces, Pope.L applies some of the same social, formal and performative strategies to his interests in language, system, gender, race and community. The goals for his work are several: joy, money and uncertainty— not necessarily in that order.

Pope.L will be the subject of a trio of complementary exhibitions in New York this fall collectively titled Instigation, Aspiration, Perspiration, organized by the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and Public Art Fund. Recent exhibitions, performances and projects include One thing after another at La Panacée, Montpellier (2018); Flint Water Project at What Pipeline, Detroit (2017); Whispering Campaign at documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017); Claim (Whitney Version) at the 2017 Whitney Biennial (2017); Baile at the 32nd Biennal de São Paulo (2016); The Freedom Principle at ICA Philadelphia (2016) and MCA Chicago (2015) and Trinket at The Geffen Contemporary, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2015).

Jonathan Lyndon Chase (b. 1989, Philadelphia, PA) is known for his figurative paintings that highlight the complex nature of identity construction in contemporary society by centering the existing but often overlooked tenderness that finds form in the everyday. Chase’s abstracted and dream-like depictions of queer black men serve to tie the corporeal with the psychic, structuring the interiority of his subjects and their environments in ways that capture a range of emotions from joy to melancholy and offering up the suggestion of unconditional love for, from and between these characters. Apart from painting, Chase’s practice also encompasses drawing, collage and sculpture, and his work can be found in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Institute of Contemporary Arts, Miami; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia; the Wedge Collection, Toronto; and the Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia. Chase has had solo exhibitions at Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles (2018); Company Gallery, New York (2018); and has been included in notable group exhibitions including Punch, curated by Nina Chanel Abney, at Deitch Projects, New York (2018) and Reclamation! Pan-African Works from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection at the Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke (2018).

Cheyenne Julien (b. 1994, Bronx, NY) uses portraiture to convey quiet yet powerful moments of affliction, humor or pensive fascination, while using the body to negotiate a way of seeing that engages both the narrative of her personal experiences and the collective history of the larger world around her. Despite the cartoon-like features of her subjects, Julien imparts an undeniable and exuberant realism to anxiety, fear, happiness and contemplation. Avoiding an overtly politicized didacticism, the artist’s paintings and drawings are instead reflective, focusing on the effects of trauma rather than its causes. Cheyenne Julien received her BFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2016. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Cheyenne Julien & Tau Lewis at Chapter New York, New York (2018) and Homegrown at Smart Objects, Los Angeles (2017). Julien’s work has also been included in group exhibitions at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise/Unclebrother, Hancock (2018); Almine Rech Gallery, New York (2018); Karma, New York (2018); Loyal Gallery, Stockholm (2017); and White Cube Bermondsey, London (2017).

Tschabalala Self (b. 1990, Harlem, NY) is a New York-based figurative painter who uses the black female body as her primary subject. These figures, or “avatars” as she is known to call them, are often situated within the familiar public spaces of everyday life, such as the corner bodega or a neighbor’s front stoop. In other works, her figures are shown floating in space, staring defiantly back at the viewer. Self’s canvases are noteworthy for its sewn elements, often incorporating fabrics and furs—a practice that is tied to the artist’s memory of her mother and the emotional and physical labor traditionally associated with women. Self’s work often upturns the conventions of the feminine ideal, wary of adding to the myth of the ideal female body. Her paintings of bodies accentuate identity as it is formed and affected by not only race but also by the spaces, both symbolic and physical, it inhabits. Tschabalala Self received her BA in Studio Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson (2012) and her MFA at Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art, New Haven (2015). Recent solo exhibitions include Bodega Run at Pilar Corrias Gallery, London (2017), which traveled to the Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2018); Tramway, Glasgow (2017); Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, London (2017). Self’s work has been included in recent group exhibitions at Crystal Bridges, Bentonville (2018); James Fuentes, New York (2018); Foxy Productions, New York (2018); Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles (2017); and the New Museum, New York (2017).

Link: Group Show at Mitchell-Innes & Nash

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[whittlebaggett8]

China’s Next Phase of Militarization in the South China Sea

China’s astonishing growth into the South China Sea’s 1.35 million square miles and its subsequent militarization of the location about the past quite a few decades has cultivated a intricate stability atmosphere. The first period of that developing complexity was predicated on geopolitical fascination and growth, notably in the course of U.S. President Barack Obama’s next time period in business.

While it has been argued that regional tensions may continue to be secure simply because China has ceased its land acquisition endeavors to the south, the complex regional security environment may possibly enter into a new stage of heightened pressure and complexity for the duration of 2019. This future period could arise as a result of China’s devoted press to consolidate its gains in the South China Sea (SCS) by the use of military and political powers in tandem with sharp threats as a final result of armed service patrols and a quantum leap in the deployment of surveillance aircraft, guided-missile destroyers, and a bank of armed forces products.

In spite of a momentary lull in including to its treasure trove of SCS capabilities, China’s actions in the SCS exemplifies the intention of achieving regional dominance. Even so, Beijing has nonetheless to realize the amount of handle it seeks about the strategically essential waterway. In a area in which five other events – Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Taiwan – have created territorial claims, China’s placement remains underneath strain and its territorial assets less than continued danger.

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Certainly, Beijing’s outcry around what it sees as provocative U.S. incursions, which China has dealt with as naked army aggression, serves as a solid sign that China’s belongings in the SCS and the country’s passions in the region continue to be vulnerable. So prolonged as external threats persist, acquisition and buildup can be anticipated to go ahead.

With China’s first island-setting up marketing campaign almost 10 many years outdated, the next phase of China’s SCS expansion is the consolidation and military fortification of its territorial belongings – garrisoning the quite a few little islets at the time considered uninhabitable, such as the strategic Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Dao), lying just 140 miles west of the large Philippine island of Luzon and at this time beneath development. The institution of army bases has culminated in the generation of China’s “strategic triangle.” Even with the building of aircraft bases, detection devices, and weapon shipping systems, the impact of China’s methodical efforts in the SCS have failed to generate appreciable alter in the status quo of power relations.

Around the past many decades, China has expanded existing reefs and atolls by thousands of acres, but its military existence and preparedness continue to fall shorter of a level suitable for professing handle over the complete SCS. The method is probable to be a considerably lengthier 1 than envisioned. Islet acquisition and progress has not mitigated existing territorial statements by other states sharing the sea, nor are people statements – supported by distant partners and allies – probably to disappear in the in the vicinity of or distant future.

A blend of a few aspects exponentially raises the potential for even further militarization in the SCS: China’s previous growth and continuing consolidation, which clash with persistent claims by states located adjacent to the SCS Washington’s declaration that the liberty of navigation (FON) principle of customary global regulation should be preserved and Beijing’s departure from previous promises not to further create its SCS belongings.

Civilian and rescue functions have been the principal justification for the ongoing design of navy installations and the placement of weapons and weapon systems, which include innovative fight plane, surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), anti-ship (ballistic) missiles, and jamming engineering, in spite of President Xi Jinping’s assure that China’s territorial belongings would not be militarized. Beijing has indicated that upcoming United Nation’s (UN) peacekeeping missions involving the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would necessitate added bases. These methods are essential to strengthening China’s anti-accessibility/place-denial (A2/Advert) potential.

In mild of China’s incapability to match all aspects of U.S. armed service ability – at least in qualitative phrases, while numerically-talking, China possesses incredible navy toughness – in the short term, a armed service presence over and above China’s rapid borders is a logical and required rung if China hopes to project its power to a amount that goes outside of parity in the SCS. China’s military expense carries on to boost and the country, while struggling with a cluster of opposition off its eastern shores, has only a one front on which to aim. These kinds of incidents as the arrest of Huawei’s chief monetary officers, Meng Wanzhou and China’s persistent trade dispute with the United States have created sizeable focus, giving helpful foliage for Chinese actions in the SCS. As a outcome, China’s passions in the SCS have become fairly peripheral in the media.

Distracting problems also give China valuable time to set up a stronger armed service presence on its existing holdings in the SCS relatively than looking for to develop and go after further reclamation assignments. China has turned to other solutions for rolling out its declare to the south in the latest earlier, with Brunei deepening its economic reliance on China by way of economic and buying and selling arrangements. At the wave of a political wand, China not only secured a piece of its individual interests, but individuals of Brunei as perfectly, whilst attaining a substantially-desired ally in the SCS location that can both continue being silent or sway in a direction that fits Beijing’s strategic interests.

The Philippines has cozied up to China just after remaining properly seduced by the guarantee of China’s Belt and Road. The grandiose improvement approach is as a great deal a political instrument as it is an financial initiative and just one with which Beijing can raise its political affect over the coverage trajectories of SCS states in the context of SCS promises and territory.

Vietnam, having said that, stays comparably defiant and stalwart in its approach to the SCS, with a history of challenging China and systematic endeavours to turn the SCS into a “lake” of its individual. Vietnam’s endeavours to proscribe Chinese ventures in the SCS, notably the development of even further synthetic islands, an inflow of warships, and the opportunity establishment of an air defense identification zone (ADIZ), show the limitations of Beijing’s pleasant tension on other folks to quietly take out their flags from disputed places.

China has shown that other avenues exist for inching its way ahead in the SCS and growing its de facto management. Dragging out official talks and buying off its neighbors are just two possible ways. Four yrs after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, Moscow has and continues to utilize related practices to tighten its hold on and more and more fortify the Black Sea peninsula. Similarly, the strategy that China will maintain its existence on many characteristics in the SCS and maximize its military services presence in a clearly show of handle simply cannot quickly be gainsaid, particularly as the culmination of China’s initiatives to date have significantly augmented China’s military existence in the SCS and substantially upgraded Beijing’s peacetime and wartime place.

Dr. Scott N. Romaniuk is a Postdoctoral Investigate Fellow in Stability Scientific tests at the China Institute, College of Alberta. His research focuses on China’s world-wide safety and armed forces roles, China’s political, financial, and (cyber)security policies as well as the rise of safety architectures in Asia, robotic systems in international protection, and technological know-how and the long term of warfare.

Tobias Burgers is a doctoral applicant at the Otto-Suhr-Institute (Free University of Berlin) where by he researches the increase and use of cyber and robotic programs in stability relations, and the upcoming of navy conflict.

The post China’s Next Phase of Militarization in the South China Sea appeared first on Defence Online.

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[fiaalbania-blog]

Careers At Plan International Malawi

Occasionally task management schedule will certainly be too tight, going out of very little time to write down thier organization requirements, and less moment for them to be evaluated by business or specialized teams. Conduct private financial management and accounting training for project personnel and also other stakeholders. The R. E. S. Program is designed to enhance ongoing professional advancement through participation in numerous learning experiences and actions related to the discipline of project management. Oversee the debt consolidation and advancement the Plan Area(s), supporting at a strategic level the representational and operational interim quality manager remits from the Program Implementation Manager and Program Managers. Completion of pilot task for the company in Manjung, Perak within spending budget and time frame. My CV clearly reveals my knowledge of Design and style basis, material selection, prep of full construction record and project coordination and management, as well because my capacity to utilize Automobile CAD, sketchup, ArchiCAD, Microsoft company Office, Adobe and different graphics communication programs. Comprehensive and tested knowledge of the task management cycle. Laws 1989, Part 266 came up with the Department of Child Corrections and established the State Juvenile Educational Program Board. Make extra use of specialists in economics, statistics and structure management can strive to inhabit senior management posts in major contracting organizations, various other commercial firms and open public sector (RICS, 1983a). Management Workload - Lessening management workload and in peak seasons and offering existing management teams momentary help and additional methods in times when a great organization's business cycle can be putting a strain about top management is a type in avoiding management burnout and ensuring optimal organisational productivity. To perform regular review on project documents to be able to assure that all documents will be properly maintained and submitted to the action functions. The issue of landowners choosing recognise the business as their favored project managers, for a construction site on the area is nothing more than obstructive hair splitting. For feminine interim and project operators, no jeans, no fight trousers, no gothic beans, no low cut To shirts with, or with no, meaningless slogans. The Az Commerce Authority (Authority) was established to facilitate the beneficial economic growth and development of the state and to promote prosperity through the development and security of the legitimate passions of Arizona business, market and commerce within and outside this state. Interim Manager Network is screening and growing a talent pool of Managers and executives who also have extensive experience in handling complex short to long term challenges that occur periodically in organization operations. A Bureau of Reclamation survey identified problems of control of the land along the river caused by simply meanders of the river” and the controversy among Arizona and California while to the location of each state's boundary. ” The Bureau established a special office, the reduced Co Land Use Office in Yuma, to work with federal, state and personal landowners to deal with various worries.

Laws and regulations 2012, Chapter 170 is made up of the conforming amendments needed by the 2011 guidelines. Quantity Surveyor should include the management skills or perhaps knowledge just like harmonious and trusting business relationships with contractor totally free of conflict, very well defined allocation of tasks between parties to agreement, full and clearly comprehensive accountability, particularly in the public sector and minimal exposure of the consumer to risks (Seeley, 1997). Arizona laws relating to the Agricultural Employment Relationships Board (AERB) are simply in A. R. S. Subject 23 (Labor) at A. R. S. § 23-1381 et seq. Interim executives along with interim managers of Adaptable Resources Colleagues are lively, well-qualified and remarkably skilled pros, who will assist your business increase quicker simply by implementing strategies that are according to the latest marketplace developments. One call of staff told the interior investigation that the atmosphere inside the division at this time was horrid. Across Bord bist du Móna, there are five Business Units maintained a Central Support Group including of Finance, IT, Purchase, Technical Services, Marketing & Communications, HR and Development.

[jdunner23-blog]

Coastal Flooding

Currently, Miami Beach is facing increasingly troublesome flooding and the northeast region could face similar impacts in the near future. Just like anyone else, people living in the northeast deal with personal problems all the time, but this is a problem that is coming and adaptation should be given considerable consideration before it is too late. The Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. is at a high risk for coastal flooding due to ice melt increasing during warm months and sea ice recovery decreasing during cold months. “Temperatures in the Arctic are quite remarkable and very alarming,” proclaimed the David Carlson, Director of the World Climate Research Programme, which is co-sponsored by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the International Council for Science. The volume of sea ice at each pole was at its lowest for the month of January recorded by a 38-year old satellite, according to data WMO collected from both the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and Germany's Sea ice Portal operated by the Alfred-Wegener-Institute. Climate change is driving average annual global temperatures up, and as temperature increases in the Arctic and Antarctic, less water is encapsulated in the ice at the poles. When there is less water is concentrated in ice at the poles, more land surface is needed to account for the extra water. The result is sea level rise and coastal flooding, which is a problem many citizens and businesses have to pay for, even though they are hardly responsible for it. The oil and gas industry is a significant contributor to climate change, which is accountable for coastal flooding. Burning oil and gas is vital to many daily necessities, like driving cars and producing electricity, however it produces a byproduct called carbon dioxide (CO2), which is a primary driver of climate change when too much is released into the atmosphere. CO2 is one of many green house gasses (GHGs) humans produce but is the most abundant in the atmosphere. GHGs absorb solar radiation from the sun that is reflected by the surface of the Earth and re-emitted back towards the surface of the Earth. The process warms the surface of the Earth and the lower atmosphere. China produces the most CO2 of any country in the world, however the U.S. emits over twice as much per capita. The oil and gas industry represents only a portion of U.S. citizens. Unfortunately, many people not associated with the industry will have to pay for a predicament they are not responsible for. People living in coastal areas are specifically at risk. Rising sea level not only floods coastal areas during high tide but also during rainstorms. Aquifers and soil becomes more saturated with water, causing infiltration rates to decrease and runoff rates to increase. Many people and institutions must cooperate with each other and finance projects to adapt to increasing coastal flooding. There is no short-term solution to completely combat coastal flood, so adaptive measures must be taken, which will cost a significant amount of money. The federal, state, and local governments are responsible for protecting its citizens against safety hazards, like flooding. They must finance and facilitate projects to protect their citizens from coastal flooding. Businesses in coastal regions have to spend money to adapt to the flooding or can relocate inland, which is a hefty price to pay. Most importantly, the citizens living in coastal areas must pay for and comply with adaptive measures taken by governing bodies and businesses or relocate. Serious distress occurs between friends and family members when people are forced to relocate. The residents of South Florida are already facing significant impacts from sea level rise. South Florida, like the northeast, is downstream of the Artic and people and institutions have had to adapt to the new reality of coastal flooding. Flooding will increase the millions of dollars Florida already spends each year to reclaim its beaches. Flooding does not just affect beach reclamation but also public safety and businesses. Miami Beach has a $100 million project in place to help it adapt to the increasing sea level and subsequent flooding conditions. The project includes, installing pumps and water mains, raising roads, and redoing sewer connections over the next few years in homes that are at risk in the neighborhoods of La Gorce and Lakeview. The project is only a part of a larger plan to spend $400-$500 million. The project will directly impact the property of homeowners in the area. It will be difficult for Miami get residents to fully cooperate, because homes have been built at different times, have different structures and layouts and are at different elevations. There are many other obstacles, including bushes, sprinkler systems and walls. If sea level continues to rise, the impacts of flooding will become more severe and complex. The U.N. estimates land ice to melt between 7.5 and 9.8 inches by 2100, however South Florida considers the estimate to be conservative and is preparing for more severe sea level rise. The Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact estimates sea level to rise 6 inches by 2030 and 31 inches by 2100. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Atmospheric Administration call for even higher levels of sea level rise. Sea level is expected to continue to rise on the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. People and institutions in South Florida must spends hundreds of millions of dollars to adapt to increasing coastal flooding, and the coast of the northeast might be facing similar impacts in the near future. It is important for residents living on the coast to be aware and ready to start planning for.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Miniature Military Drones Decorated in a Pakistani Folk Art Tradition

Mahwish Chishty, “By the Moonlight” (2013) (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)

LONDON — Drone warfare is silent, invisible, depersonalized killing. It is frictionless death. For those living in the countries from which the unmanned aircraft are piloted — far from war zones or terrorist bastions or unsuspecting wedding parties caught in the crosshairs — drones remain a faceless weapon of war. They exist in an unseen elsewhere, in an information vacuum imposed from above and undisturbed from below. Not so in those nations terrorized by drone strikes. When Pakistani-born, US-based artist Mahwish Chishty visited her homeland in 2011, she was struck by the elaborate conversations being had about drones, complex details shared and passed on, the machines taking on a heavy freight of fear and fantasy, their sleek bodies elaborated on by the local imagination.

Mahwish Chishty, “MQ-9 Predator” (2011)

Chishty’s current solo exhibition at London’s Imperial War Museums is a visual manifestation of that dynamic. In her paintings and objects, completed between 2011 and 2015 (years in which the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that almost 200 strikes were carried out in Pakistan), drones become garish, individual, easily identified. Chishty studied miniature painting in Lahore and here she utilizes elements of that technique, projecting Pakistan’s folk art traditions against the blank flanks of America’s weapons of war. With carnivalesque colors and flashes of gold, the unmanned aircraft are subsumed by the very culture they target, suggesting the ways in which drones have become an inescapable element of Pakistan’s psychic landscape and an obnoxious feature — for some — of everyday life.

Installation view of Mahwish Chishty at the Imperial War Museums, London

Inspired by the truck art tradition of South Asia, Chishty’s drones are copiously embellished with icons, patterns, and motifs. In “Reaper” (2015), a wide eye balances on a black tripod while smaller eyes huddle on each wing: the painting, at the entrance, seems to watch visitors as they make their way around the room. Eyes recur — a sinister take on the apotropaic talismans that flourish across the Mediterranean and the near east — as do fish skeletons, doves, guns, snakes, the sickle moon, and stars. In “MQ-9 Predator” (2011) a drone with a lotus flower at its heart drops brightly colored bombs in an elegant arc. Complex, colorful interlocking designs metastasize across the aircrafts and malevolent warpaint-daubed faces coalesce out of the frenzied decoration.

Mahwish Chishty, “Reaper” (2015)

With her hovering plastic models — their loads of missiles resplendent in tinny primary colors, a delicate crab inscribed chillingly under the chin — Chishty transforms lethal weapons into children’s toys. In doing so, she hints at the remote control aspect of contemporary warfare, the models’ clean lines and cheerful, antiseptic brightness nudging at the kind of sensibility that produced the term “surgical strike.” These drone trinkets might make one wonder whether Chishty’s work veers too close to aestheticizing the war on terror — and indeed the artist herself has said she was eager to see what effect “friendlier looking” drones might have — but a quick review of the exhibition makes such notions impossible. In “MQ-9/2” (2011), the craft boasts a skull’n’crossbones besides revolvers and bomb motifs, a vivid red fire licking at its belly. These machines are beautiful but horrible; their drone faces, emerging from the assembled symbols, are nothing if not malicious.

This atmosphere of menace is most evident, perhaps, in Chishty’s three-dimensional paintings, in which drones are splayed across wooden structures, casting shade against the gallery’s pale walls. Here, the aircraft lurk, predatory, in landscapes of bombed-out cities, fields of sandbags. Slender and deadly, these drones slice through sepia terrain, leaving shadows and silence.

Mahwish Chishty, “Reaper” (2015)

I was in South Africa recently. Outside Cape Town’s Iziko National Gallery is parked a restored Casspir Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle, gilded beyond recognition by an elaborate coat of colorful traditional beadwork, completed by local artisans in Mpumalanga province and Zimbabwe. Casspirs were used mercilessly by apartheid-era police, becoming a tool of oppression in the hands of a fearful administration. “The Casspir Project” is thus cast as an act of reclamation, a de-fanging of the instruments of terror and a celebration of the cultures such instruments were employed to repress.

But in South Africa, the era of Casspir is, at least nominally, over; catharsis is possible. The drone program, on the other hand, is only just beginning. Chishty’s project can occasion no healing, no reflective triumph of culture over terror. Instead, her beautiful war machines leave the viewer feeling uneasy, apprehensive. Which, no doubt, is the point.

IWM Contemporary: Mahwish Chishty continues at The Imperial War Museum (Lambeth Rd, London SE1 6HZ) through March 19.

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