textfiles/magazines/TELETIMES/teletimes-94-02.txt

I N T E R N A T I O N A L                  T E L E T I M E S

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¥ Vol. 3 No. 1                                January 1994 ¥
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CONTENTS
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-- Features --

SLEEPING WITH ELEPHANTS
  "In 1990 over 90% of screen time in Canadian theatres was 
  taken up by foreign films. So why is it that the Canadian 
  film scene was and is so dominated by American imports?"
  - by Dr. Euan Taylor

WHAT'S THE IP ADDRESS OF MY TV?
  "The television industry provides information and 
  entertainment to the people. What is lacking is the 
  availability of entertainment or more information on 
  demand." - by Prasad Dharmasena

X-PRESSING OURSELVES
  "This universalization of our generation across racial, 
  sexual, class, cultural lines -- lines that matter -- 
  erases and marginalizes profound human differences."
  - by Johnn Tan


-- Departments --

KEEPERS OF LIGHT
  "This month we visit the Station Street Arts Centre to 
  view Female Nudes, and exhibition by Vancouver artist Skai 
  Fowler." - by Kent Barrett
           
THE WINE ENTHUSIAST
  "With the end of apartheid, international trade barriers 
  are being lifted, worldwide. This means that South African 
  wines will be available in many parts of the world for the 
  first time in many years." - by Tom Davis
                  
NEWS ROOM
  "It has become quite fashionable of late to attack 
  political advertisements. Some decry the corrupting 
  effects of televised political manipulation, while others 
  fear the advantage they bring to more affluent parties. 
  Both, however, are wrong." - by Jon Gould

  "Because political commercials are produced by the same 
  advertising agencies that spew forth corporate 
  commercials, they provide politicians with the opportunity 
  to control the image seen on television fully and 
  completely." - by Paul Gribble

THE QUILL
  "The Beast has a hypnotic eye. When it stares at me, into 
  me, its thoughts become my reality, and I can't 
  discriminate between my own consciousness and the trance. 
  It's not unpleasant, really. The Beast is gentle when it 
  has my mind, but persistent." - by David Fitzjarrell

DEJA VU
  "One cannot imagine a situation more primed for social 
  explosion. It was with little surprise, that the Zapatista 
  Army of National Liberation, stormed the town of San 
  Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, and officially proclaimed 
  its armed insurrection." - by Andreas Seppelt

CUISINE
  "This bread is very easy to make, sounds very weird, but 
  is a true delight in my own opinion."
  - by Markus Jakobsson


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EDITOR'S NOTE
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-- Belated February Issue --

Of all of the issues of Teletimes published yet, this must 
have been the slowest one yet. We had a series of delays due 
to my absence (fencing competitions out of town) and to 
delays realted to the new graphics (which, I'm sure you'll 
agree, are quite lovely.) I was planning on writing an 
article about Schindler's List to coincide with this month's 
theme, TV and the Movies, but unfortunately I couldn't find 
the time. Perhaps for the next issue...

On to more exciting news...International Teletimes is going 
to be hosting its first annual Photography Contest! All 
photos submit must correspond with the theme for the April 
issue, Travel. The first prize photo will be displayed on 
the cover for the April issue. Extra goodies will be handed 
out to finalists (see next month's issue for details). There 
is no entry fee, virtual fame and fortune await, so send us 
your photos by the March 15th deadline!

Ian Wojtowicz
Editor-in-ChiefÊ


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MAILBOX
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-- Reader Comments --

Excellent publication! Would like to see more articles on 
computers and maybe politics. How about adding more 
graphics?
  - Kenneth Cheuk, Hong Kong

YOUR WISH IS OUR COMMAND. MORE GRAPHICS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO 
THE DEPARTMENTS SECTION. CHECK THEM OUT AND TELL US WHAT YOU 
THINK!

Very nice graphically.  Only read some of the articles, but 
they satisfied. In all an impressive journal and an expample 
of what can be done. As they say, Keep up the good work!
  - Raul A. Zaritsky, Chicago, USA


-- Help! --

Hello Ian,
I just received the January '94 issue of Teletimes, and I 
would love to read it, but I don't have "BinHex 4.0" to 
translate it on my Mac. I wonder if you could 1) send me a 
version of Teletimes that requires no translation, or 2) 
tell me where/how I can get hold of BinHex?

Thanks for your assistance!
  - Rick Cooper

RICK, THERE ARE PROBABLY QUITE A FEW PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT 
FAMILIAR WITH THE USE OF BINHEX, SO I FEEL I SHOULD EXPLAIN 
IT OUT HERE IN THE OPEN. BINHEX CONVERTS BINARY (10101) 
FILES TO ASCII (TEXT) FOR TRANSPORT THROUGH E-MAIL AND TO 
AVOID PROBLEM WITH MACHINES WHICH CAN'T HANDLE MACBINARY. 
BINHEX 4.0 IS AVAILABLE AT MOST LARGE MACINTOSH ANONYMOUS 
FTP SITES (LIKE SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU) AND IS ALSO BUILT 
INTO MANY UTILITIES AND COMMUNICATIONS PROGRAMS LIKE 
STUFFIT, COMPACT PRO, EUDORA AND FETCH. IF YOU CANNOT, FOR 
SOME REASON, DEBINHEX THE MAC VERSION, I SUGGEST THAT YOU 
SUBSCRIBE TO THE ASCII VERSION OF TELETIMES.


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FEATURES
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-- Sleeping with Elephants --

"Living next to the United States is in some ways like 
sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-
tempered is the beast, one is affected by every twitch and 
grunt." That was how Pierre Trudeau, former Canadian Prime 
Minister summed up the country's relationship with America.

That relationship has been especially evident in the movie 
industry. For example in 1977, of 970 films distributed 
here, only 2.5% were of Canadian origin, and about 50% were 
imported from the US. During 1979 almost all royalty 
payments went to copyright holders outside of Canada. In 
1990 over 90% of screen time in Canadian theatres was taken 
up by foreign films. So why is it that the Canadian film 
scene was and is so dominated by American imports?

It has been suggested that Canadians just like American 
films better, but that is only part of the story. In a 1978 
poll about 40% of Canadians said Canadian films were 
inferior to others, but about 35% said they were the same as 
or better than those from elsewhere. In any case, many 
Canadian films have received critical acclaim around the 
world, and been supported by audiences here in Canada.

Part of the reason is the generally American flavour of 
Canadian society and hence the similarity of individual 
expectations and so forth. In 1950 the American author 
Horace Sutton noted how Canadians had "adopted American 
commerce and culture." For this reason the flow of 
information between the US and Canada is fundamentally much 
easier than in many other cases, the English speaking 
portions of the Canadian and American populations share both 
language and culture. The significant linguistic, cultural 
and religious obstacles which might act as a barrier to 
foreign penetration of the market elsewhere do not operate 
here (outside of Quebec at least).

Another reason is simply (or perhaps not so simply) 
commercial competition; TV, radio and film can be provided 
more cheaply by outlets of American networks because they 
can recoup their costs in the US market and thus run their 
foreign operations more cheaply and profitably. Certainly 
they own a huge proportion of the Canadian cinema industry.

According to Dave Barber of Winnipeg Film Group, one of the 
biggest problems in Canada is publicity. Hollywood does 
excellent publicity work for its releases, Canadian films 
are relatively poorly advertised. In fact Barber says it is 
difficult to get air time and media space for Canadian films 
at all. He has to "hound" the media to get any kind of 
coverage for many of the films he deals with. The result is 
that people are far more likely to know the names of the 
reviews of Hollywood films, than they are of Canadian ones. 
That is probably one reason the cinema chains use so few 
Canadian films. In fact Barber feels that Canadian films are 
more appreciated outside Canada than inside Canada. 

[There is an argument that the overwhelming influence of the 
US media is not merely due to good business. Some in the US 
have viewed the expansion of the media as a duty "a sacred 
duty," a part of the "worldwide ideological struggle for the 
hearts and minds of men."] 

The debate about foreign influence in the film (and other) 
industries is an old one in Canada. The Liberal Trudeau 
government took legislative steps to regulate foreign 
ownership and influence, the Conservative Mulroney 
Government negotiated the Free Trade Agreement. Both were 
aimed at promoting the best interests of Canadians and their 
industries, working on different assumptions of what these 
were and how they would be best served. In fact even the 
outlook of individual Canadians has been different depending 
on their circumstances. For instance years ago Cineplex (a 
major cinema chain) appealed to the Restrictive Trade 
Practices Commission for help against the power and 
practices of foreign interests (i.e.. US based film 
production-distribution companies) which kept them from 
prospering in the Canadian market. With this help Cineplex-
Odeon became a prosperous company and a major circuit for 
American films. The same entrepreneur who had courted 
government intervention some years earlier, now talked about 
government measures to help the indigenous film industry as 
"alarming", "unethical", and generally a bad idea. If you 
are looking at the balance sheet for a large vertically 
organised and foreign based corporation that makes, 
distributes and shows films, then to maximise your returns 
you don't want other film makers and distributors taking a 
slice of your market. (Hollywood has strongly resisted the 
idea of a quota system for Canadian films - such systems do 
exist in some countries). If you can exclude them from your 
cinemas you do, and if you can keep some sort of monopoly 
over showing major films you do that too. (Which is one of 
the reasons Cineplex originally sought government help to 
defend and strengthen itself in the market). If you are a 
small independent film maker, then making films is much more 
of a gamble than for a large organisation which controls 
both production and distribution. You might like the 
government to impose on the distributors a quota of 
independent films, so your products would reliably make it 
to the screen and some of the financial risks of film making 
would be eliminated. Not only that, according to Barber the 
funding situation for independent film makers is relatively 
very poor here in Canada (in the US for example there is 
more private and foundation money which can be accessed).

Some put the dismal showing of the smaller independent 
companies down to the issue of competition, access to a 
market which is effectively controlled by a powerful 
oligopoly. In that view the "free" trade model, simply 
maintains the dominance of a powerful segment of the 
industry (meaning the large scale, vertically integrated 
corporations in this case).

On the other hand we do have the National Film Board, set up 
by the government in 1939. It is the best known producer of 
Canadian films. But Barber told me about some outstanding 
independent film makers you might want to check out. Sharon 
Jennet (from right here in Winnipeg), John Cozak and Guy 
Madden. There are, in fact, Canadian films around, many of 
them are excellent, but a fair proportion of them never make 
it into the public eye here in Canada.

---

For what it's worth this is a list of some of the better 
Canadian films (in no particular order). Try a few. Decide 
for yourself if like Canadian films.

Jesus of Montreal
Who Has Seen the Wind
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
I Heard the Mermaids Singing
My American Cousin
Ninety Days
Careful, Archangel, Tales From the Gimli Hospital (Guy 
Madden)
Dog Stories (Sharon Jennet)

  - Dr. Euan Taylor, Winnipeg, Canada

Sources:
Embattled Shadows, A History of the Canadian Cinema. Peter 
    Morris, 1978.
Canada's Cultural Industries. Paul Audley 1983. Canadian 
    Dreams and American Control. The Political Economy of 
    the Canadian Film Industry. Manjunath Pendakur, 1990.
My very special thanks also go to Dave Barber, Programmer 
    and Co-ordinator at The Winnipeg Film Group (running the 
    independent cinema Cinematheque here in town). He 
    provided me with much valuable insight and information.


-- What's the IP Address of My TV? --

The television industry in the United States can be broadly 
classified into three categories. "Commercial network 
television" is available free of charge to everyone, non-
commercial "public television" is also available free to 
everyone, and "cable television," which is not free. Let us 
examine each category and understand their differences. 
Network TV is free for the viewer. Since it relies on the 
revenue from the advertisers on the medium, and since there 
is a big competition between the networks over the ratings, 
all the networks constantly try to improve their services. 
Public television (PBS channels in the US), on the other 
hand, does not compete with other stations and, therefore, 
does not worry much about the ratings. It relies on the 
support from viewers who find its programming valuable. The 
inherent, non-commercial nature of this service has its own 
advantages and a lot of viewers find an alternative taste in 
this category of broadcasting. Cable TV, contrary to the 
other two, is not free and is provided only to paid 
customers via a dedicated line. Since cable TV is a package 
deal, there are more specialized channels. As a service to 
the customers, most cable TV service providers carry the 
"free" Network TV and PBS channels on their "basic" package.

The television industry provides information and 
entertainment to the people. Although there is a broad range 
in the supplied services, it is only a one way street. What 
is lacking is the availability of entertainment or more 
information "on demand." (There are certain movie and music 
channels on some cable TV services that do provide a 
selection from their choices for a fee.) What it lacks most 
is the ability for the viewer to find out more details about 
a certain piece of information given on a news oriented 
program. New technology is being applied to patch some of 
the short comings of television and to combine other 
communication mediums with television technology. 

There are two distinctly different trends in the television 
industry. One is to provide all the "on-the-air" programming 
via a dedicated cable to the consumers with several hundred 
of other cable-only channels. The other trend is to provide 
competition to the previous type of dedicated services via 
direct satellite broadcast of several hundred channels. The 
Cable trend has the advantage of being able to implement 
with very little initial cost to the viewer. The satellite 
trend has the advantage of being a free service once you 
make the initial purchase of the required equipment. It is 
estimated that the next generation "dedicated" satellites 
will be able to broadcast 500 or so TV channels to 
relatively small receiving antennas with the picture and 
sound quality comparable to that of a dedicated cable 
connection. The initial equipment purchase would not exceed 
a few thousand dollars. If this trend is continued, most 
people will opt for the satellite connection over cable 
connections which tend to charge a monthly fee. However, 
this has not discouraged the cable TV industry. Since a 
dedicated wire to each and every customer can carry more 
than just a few television stations, the cable TV giants are 
now teaming with other service providers such as local and 
long distance telephone companies. Providing TV and 
telephone services is not their only intention. The next 
step is providing data, interactive television, Internet 
services, paid dedicated computer connections to specialized 
data banks, and other services over the same connection. The 
satellite industry will not take this lying down. It is also 
experimenting with the idea of providing certain Internet 
services such as the Usenet via "regular broadcasts" to 
receivers scattered around the country.

Before we gaze into the crystal ball to see what the future 
holds, let's look at the main fault of today's TV industry. 
The fault, as I see it, is that the TV dictates what and how 
much of it that the rest of us should receive. Most TV 
programs lack a contact point for us the viewers to provide 
a feedback. Most of the time, it involves writing to the TV 
station or the parent network station. This means, we are 
faced with the problems of finding out addresses or phone 
numbers to contact the "right" person. Most entertainment 
programs do not have a feedback point other than their 
ratings. For instance, a recent NBC sitcom "The Good Life" 
episode ridiculed Buddhism. I wanted to convey my strong 
opposition to distasteful use of a religious faith. However, 
there was no quick and easy way to do this since the local 
TV station that carried the program was not responsible for 
the creation and neither was its parent network. The 
production staff and writers are not easily reachable by the 
average Joe viewer. Another aspect of this lack of feedback 
is the inability of the viewer to get at information that he 
or she needs in a timely fashion via a TV news broadcast. 
This is best illustrated by an example. After the recent 
earthquake in Los Angeles I spent few hours in front of the 
TV, switching between network and cable news channels to 
finally see the map of the badly damaged areas. The first 
thing that I wanted was to find out if the area in which my 
family lives, which is less than 5 miles from the epicenter 
of the quake, was effected badly or not. What we need is 
interactive television. Being able to go deeper into the 
stories that we are interested and disregard other stories 
that the television people think that we ought to know. 
There is only one TV program that I know of that has made 
this feedback a little easier. Now you can reach NBC Nightly 
news via e-mail at <nightly@nbc.com>. Hopefully this is a 
step in the right direction and other programs will also be 
easily reachable via phone or e-mail without us having to 
dial a 900 number. 

In the development of cable TV service providers giving us 
everything but the kitchen sink via a dedicated line, Bell 
Atlantic and the cable TV giant John Malone have indicated 
that they will wire all the schools, kindergarten through 
grade 12, in the Bell Atlantic service areas to be able to 
be "on the net" within this year as a donation. PSI, another 
giant commercial Internet provider in Northern Virginia, has 
made plans to combine its services with a cable TV giant. 
This leads us to the question of "as consumers, are these 
mergers of service providers in best interest to us?" Some 
analyst see it this way. Information, entertainment, data 
transfer, and computer services are fast becoming a one 
giant industry. Therefore, there should be a cooperation 
between the major players in order to develop this massive 
"information super highway." Only after this cooperation of 
commercial companies can this information highway be 
established. Others see it differently. Information should 
be free to everyone. If the information providers merge with 
each other to give us a "selection" of just one company, 
they will be the masters of information. The consumers will 
not have any option but to pay outrageous service charges to 
get at the information. It is believed that this proposed 
information super highway will have toll booths at every 
intersection.

It is true that there should be a certain cooperation among 
the industry leaders to agree on a standard. However, 
agreeing on a standard is vastly different from being 
partners and agreeing not to compete with each other. On 
most areas of this country we have a "selection" of one 
cable TV provider and one local phone company. If we are 
going to put all our eggs in one basket, then we'd better 
safeguard that basket like our freedom depended on it. 
Because, our information freedom WILL depend on it. This 
means, that the "one stop service provider" will have to be 
well regulated by the industry, the government, and the 
consumer groups. 

Some people will wonder what the connection between 
television and data transmission is. The connection is that 
even in today's TV broadcasts, it is possible to send data 
between vertical blanks between the pictures and sound 
without expanding the broadcast bandwidth. (It is possible 
to get plug-in boards, for even PCs, to decode this 
information from experimental broadcasts. If you are 
interested in more information on this, please check the 
anonymous FTP site <sunsite.unc.edu>:/pub/sun-info/sunergy/) 
The proposed information highway will have a much more broad 
bandwidth to carry a lot more information such as data, 
sound, pictures, etc. Moreover, digitizing everything in 
sight seems to be the trend these days. Hence it will be 
possible to transfer everything via a data network. Also, 
interactive television will need a much more computerized 
network than the cable TV network of today. 

What this all will come down to is that one day our 
computers, televisions, VCRs, telephones, video-phones, 
stereos, and even microwave ovens will be somehow or the 
other tied to the "net." "Document transfer," "going 
shopping," "working from home" and "going to the movies" 
will all have different meanings when the TV comes with a 
built-in ethernet card.

  - Prasad Dharmasena, Silver Spring, USA


-- X-pressing Ourselves --

Generation X. The Twentysomethings. The 13th Generation. Who 
are these people that sound like they come from another 
planet? And why are they so talked about these days? 
Watching and listening to mass media, particularly 
television, I get the impression that this generation, which 
has been put up for national consumption, is some monstrous 
group of young people who all think, dress, and act alike; 
who want to discard the "liberal" values of their 
predecessors (another strange monolith of people, called the 
Baby Boomers) and restore things to the way "they ought to 
be;" who spend all our time jamming to music with their 
girlfriends, boyfriends, or both; who whine constantly about 
societal problems but ultimately don't give a fuck about 
solving them.

Listening to myself and my friends, however, it dawns on me 
that this outerworldly mass of people that the media is 
talking about is none other than ourselves. Why do we, as 
youth between the ages of 18-30, feel so out of touch with 
this commodified "Twentysomething" crowd that's supposed to 
represent us? As with most questions, there isn't just one 
answer, but there are a number of possibilities. Maybe, just 
maybe, this very diverse group of young people cannot be so 
easily clumped together across race, gender, sexual 
practices, class, and, yes, even age. Maybe some of us 
actually disagree with both Rush Limbaugh and Bill Clinton. 
Maybe some of us avoid corporate goods that seek to 
uniformize us and choose, instead, products that enhance our 
statement of who we are, as unique individuals. Maybe some 
of us don't prioritize being able to buy our own three-car-
garage homes in white suburban neighbourhoods for our 
families and material gadgets and widgets -- maybe some of 
us don't even buy into the traditional, western nuclear 
family (you mean, there are people who still believe in 
*gasp* FreeLove??) Maybe some of us care about other human 
beings, about the Earth that we tread on, about 
nonmaterialistic values -- and maybe we do have legitimate 
ideas about what to do about these, what to do to make 
society better. 

Who are we? Where are we? Why hasn't mass media talked about 
"us"? In a capitalist world, the role of media is not to 
tell us about ourselves and about each other, but rather to 
sell mass audiences to client corporations. An idealistic 
and diverse audience that deeply cares about the Earth and 
its inhabitants (including the human kind) is a hard group 
to sell to businesses based fundamentally on growth, 
overconsumption, and "the bottom line," at the expense and 
misery of humans, animals, and the environment. On the other 
foot, it's much easier to sell an audience that is concerned 
with buying homes, buying cars, buying computers, buying 
TV's, buying music, buying clothes, buying images, and, 
ultimately, buying people. No matter that media has to first 
create this image, fictional as it is -- after all, in a 
self-fulfilling manner, they will eventually be able to sell 
this image to (i.e., force it on) the very group that the 
image is supposed to represent.

This universalization of our generation across racial, 
sexual, class, cultural lines -- lines that matter -- erases 
and marginalizes profound human differences. Some of us have 
resisted this lumping. Now we need to progress beyond that 
and, in the space of resistance, create ourselves anew, 
define ourselves, in all our myriad and unique ways. If 
media cannot accept us in all of our glorious diversity, 
then we must leave it behind too, and create our own media, 
our own images -- images that truly reflect us...every 
single one of us.

Let us, not the television, decide who we are. 

  - Johnn Tan, Ogden, Utah, USA


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DEPARTMENTS
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-- Keepers of Light --

Greetings, Cyberfolk, and welcome to the February Keepers Of 
Light. If you are reading the Mosaic version of Teletimes, 
you will probably see the colour images in fairly high 
fidelity. If you have the downloaded version, you are 
unfortunately going to be seeing dithered versions of the 
colour works, though the B&W's should be fine. We here at 
Keepers Of Light Quality Control are at work on overcoming 
the limitations of the software involved, and if any one out 
there has any bright ideas in this regard, we would love to 
hear them.

This month we visit the Station Street Arts Centre to view 
Female Nudes, and exhibition by Vancouver artist Skai 
Fowler. Right. Off we go.

---

The Station Street Arts Centre

A note for the theatre's front-of-house personnel reminds 
them to keep a look out for late arrivals, just to make sure 
patrons don't trip over the junkies in the alley. Station 
Street Art Centre is a strange place to meet the Masters. 
Located behind an infamous biker joint, tucked in between 
the CN Station and the American Hotel lies Station St., from 
which the art centre, located in a converted pickle 
warehouse, takes it's name. 

According to Sherry McGarvie, the theatre' s feisty 
marketer/general manager, the building was first converted 
for use as a theatre by the Fend Players Theatre Company, a 
group of ex-convicts who somehow decided that theatre was a 
good idea, and also that it would be a good thing to name 
their troupe the "Need To Offend Players." Unfortunately, 
the name offended people, and it was shortened to "Fend" in 
the interests of getting along with funding agencies. 

"Since 1988, Fend has produced over fifty plays, over thirty 
of them Canadian," says McGarvie, "and of those thirty, 
twenty were local." The group's output has been impressive. 
The last production mounted by Fend was "Open Couple", a 
play written in Italian by the husband and wife play writing 
team of Dario Foo and Franca Rame. The play was translated 
into Spanish, French, English, and Cantonese, and the 
performances ran concurrently. Alas, the Fend company is 
currently out of production, this season having been 
canceled due to a lack of funds, which McGarvie attributes 
to past mismanagement of resources. However, the 130 seat 
art centre continues to operate profitably as a commercial 
venture, and the revenue will insure a production season 
next year.

As a visual arts venue the art centre needs attention, and 
it's good to see that it's finally getting some. There has 
always been work displayed on the walls of the lobby and bar 
areas of the theatre, and usually with some attempt made to 
match themes between the art and whatever was playing in the 
theatre, but the displays always had the feeling of an 
afterthought. It was a defacto gallery, but until now it has 
never been considered as a stand alone resource with a spine 
of it's own. Female Nudes, in fact is the first exhibition 
to get it's own opening event, complete with wine, cheese, 
and printed invitations. It will not be the last. The walls 
have been painted, and I understand they will be refinished 
and the lighting will improve as funds permit. (Donations 
are accepted).

The Station Street Art Centre is located at 930 Station 
Street in Vancouver. The hundred plus seat facility is 
available for booking for arts events of most types, though 
it is booked up until the middle of May (at time of 
writing). Interested parties may call Sherry McGarvie at 
(604) 688-3337 for rates & dates.

---

Female Nudes
Photographs by Skai Fowler
Presented at Station Street Arts Centre, January, 1994

The Station Street Arts Centre is a strange place to meet 
the Masters. Yet, there they were. Rubens, Michelangelo, all 
the big guns. You would instantly recognize the subjects: 
Paris; Pan; Aphrodite; Diana, Venus; and...hey! Who's that 
goddess there? No, not that one, the one with the curly 
hair. Was she always in that painting? Hey! She's in this 
one, too...and this one...

Skai Fowler has approached the study of the female nude with 
a unique perspective. Using herself as a model, she has 
composited her own images with photographs of reproductions 
of famous paintings. The results, printed at heroic sizes 
(about 4 by 6 feet), are fascinating. 

Fowler drew on her own experience as an art school model (a 
"cultural stripper", as she puts it) and wondered how her 
counterparts two hundred years ago felt when they were 
posing for the paintings we now enshrine on museum walls. 
Did they go through the same emotions when they removed 
their clothes? How did they deal with being exposed and 
positioned and draped? And what, furthermore, might they 
have to say today after hanging in the Louvre for all those 
dusty years? Might they not want to escape from the over-
heated dramas they have been painted into? Do they tire of 
standing coquettishly? Do the models come to life at night 
when no one's around, to sit and drink tea, smoke 
cigarettes, and gossip about the painters they worked for?

I expect so, after seeing Fowler's pieces. From these and 
other musings Fowler has created a series of enchanting and 
whimsical images through which she floats like a knowing 
ghost, sometimes brazenly engaging the viewer, sometimes 
peering off into corners. Her presence is sometimes obvious, 
sometimes subtle. It's a remarkably versatile device.

The simplicity of "Curtains", for example, is deceptive. The 
skintone match between the painted model and the one 
photographed is nearly perfect. The graceful curves of the 
painted model's back are echoed equally as gracefully in the 
photographed. The imposition of the second figure, so close 
in form to the first, gives the image a fourth dimension of 
time. We see a time lapse double exposure. Our twentieth 
century brains interpret a sequence of events. We are 
watching a movie, we feel, we know what's going on. And yet, 
it is the painted model who stares boldly at us, asks "Well, 
you've had two hundred years to think about it. Why did you 
never ask what was behind the curtain?"

"Secrets" has secrets. The skin tones have not been matched. 
The photographed model has quite clearly escaped from 
another work. An upstart has stolen in here to stand in the 
light on the freezing floor with information to covey. And, 
thoughtfully (and possibly against union rules), she has 
brought a chair for her colleague's back. Lumbar support. 
Modeling is hard work.

In "Bacchainal", the photographed model is integrated 
smoothly into the painting. Detail appears and disappears in 
the darker transparent areas, giving a dream-like glow, and 
the model fades into history and memory, a participant 
there, not here, and quite lost to us.

With Untitled, Skai has made a flawless juxtaposition of 
images. The painted drapery whips around her hips as she 
turns to the satyr, and she shares one leg and a breast with 
her painted counterpart, introducing an odd cubistic note. 

This careful compositing is particularly noteworthy since it 
is extremely difficult to accomplish. All of the images in 
this show were shot as "in camera" double exposures. Fowler 
would expose an entire roll of film, shooting images of 
paintings from art books. Then the film was rewound to the 
beginning and the camera placed on a tripod. Fowler then 
arranged the lighting to match that in a painting and posed 
in front of a black background. She re-exposed the film 
frame by frame, and the results are what you see here. No 
additional darkroom composting techniques were used. The 
large colour prints were produced by a commercial lab, and 
Fowler produced the black and whites herself.

Goddess Of The Water is at once the most direct (and 
obvious) manipulation, and the least accessible of the 
pieces (at least to me). The model is superimposed on a 
painting, and looks directly at the viewer, holding up for 
approval the very image into which she has been placed. Not 
an infinite recursion, for it stops after one iteration, but 
strange.

The cumulative effect of the show was quite pleasant. I 
enjoyed the feelings they invoked, and the images have 
stayed with me. I have not had the opportunity to view all 
of the pieces at their intended sizes. The Station Street 
Arts Centre is not a large enough venue for the 4x6 foot 
prints to be displayed, so smaller prints of most images 
were shown on this occasion. I would like to see the large 
originals some time, in a proper setting for their 
scale...perhaps at the Louvre...

Next month: The annual "Eye Of Eros" exhibition at Exposure 
Gallery.

---

Profile: Skai Fowler

Skai Fowler did her first nude modeling job in 1975. At the 
time, she says, she was eighteen and convinced that the only 
real reason nudes were used was to lure students to art 
schools. She's thirty-four now, still modeling, and still 
convinced. She started practicing art while modeling part 
time, and eventually, by 1985, was using herself as a model. 
Being both artist and model solved for her the unsettling 
issues of objectification and misuse. In her artist's 
statement she says, "Some years ago I became interested in 
my historical counterparts. Every time I disrobed I had the 
sensation of this very same action having been done for 
centuries; in doing this I become aligned with all the 
female subjects of the old masters. It is in this 
perspective that I started my series on the nude." 

We talked while I was making the scans of her prints and 
Jasper, her dog, amused himself yanking out cables.

SF: I use myself, partly because I was the handiest person, 
and I didn't have to translate for someone else what it was 
I wanted, I had the luxury of just using myself...you know, 
if you use somebody else, what does that mean? Especially 
because I used a lot of nudity in my photographs. I'd go 
into all the questions in terms of using some one else's 
image or abusing it...I'd ask people (to model nude), and 
they would be uncomfortable with it, or they weren't sure 
about it. People are quite protective, it's...it's somehow 
different if you draw them, you know, but if you photograph 
them they're much more reluctant. Originally I wanted to do 
this series using all different kinds of body types, so I 
asked my friends. And they were well, they don't know if 
they wanna be in a photograph, hung on a wall--

KB: I always used a kind of a Tom Sawyer thing. I'd say, 
"Yeah, I'm doing this series of images and I need a nude 
model for this shot...," you know, and look at them for a 
second or two--

SF: (Laughing) Yeah. 

KB: --then say "nah..." and they'd say like "Hey! What's 
wrong with my body?"

SF: Yeah. This new series that hasn't actually distilled in 
my mind. I really don't want to use myself for this. I feel 
like I need to use other people, to explore that, the 
relationship between the photographer and the photograph and 
the image and the person...and using myself is sort of an 
excuse now. It was fine for a time, but now I need to stop 
using it as an excuse to not photograph other people.

KB: OK, what's this [photo]?

SF: Oh, that one's...Untitled...there's got to be a great 
title in there somewhere...

KB: So, this new project, will it be more of the same kind 
of--

SF: No!! It's getting away from this kind of imagery 
altogether. I've been working on this whole series, this 
whole Female Nude concept for...quite a while now, and I'm 
quite tired of it. I really wanna venture off into something 
else.

KB: But will you be using this collagey kind of--

SF: Probably...yeah...yes, in fact. I like putting different 
realities together...like these, though I also view these as 
historical advertisements, in the sense that even though 
many of these are allegories, they're selling a concept of 
that time. You'll see the Judgment of Paris reproduced again 
and again, and you can see the change in the body styles, in 
the things that they choose to represent, so all of that is 
used to sell a social concept, which is what advertising 
does. Now you have the tall, thin model, that's the body 
style of our contemporary period...
	
KB: This [photo]?

SF: Um, Goddess Of The Water.

KB: Which way does this one go?

SF: It goes the other way...I have a list of all the 
painters...somewhere here...

KB: Never mind. If they wanna know they can write letters.

SF: Right...and as you can tell, they're all from 
reproductions, they're all taken out of art books...

KB: No. I thought you were prancing around naked in the 
Louvre...

SF: (Laughing) Yeah...that would be nice.

KB: That would be fun.

SF: Yeah. And I do wonder, you know? I've been meaning to 
see if I could get a grant to do it. Go through the 
channels, write to the Louvre, see if I could do it using 
the originals...

KB: ...the expression "a frosty day in hell" creeps up...but 
you never know, fill in the forms, and...

SF: well, exactly.

Skai Fowler may be reached at (604) 253-2510

  - Kent Barrett, Vancouver, CanadaÊ


-- The Wine Enthusiast: South African Wines --

In April, South Africans will hold their first true general 
elections in its history. South Africa is a wealthy, 
industrialized nation and despite its history of racial 
injustice and factional violence, it has, more than any 
African nation, the best odds at peace, prosperity, and 
social justice in the coming century.

With the end of apartheid, and the move to full democracy, 
international trade barriers that helped to enact this 
change, are being lifted, worldwide. This means that South 
African wines will be available in many parts of the world 
for the first time in many years. 

This may bring down the price of entry level varietal wines 
significantly, for though South Africa only produces about 
as much wine as Rumania, about 8 million hectoliters, the 
reputation of South African wines are very high indeed, and 
we should see fierce competition.

South African wine production is almost twice that of 
Australia, and its history of wine production dates all the 
way back to 1659, when it was a Dutch colony. Constantia, a 
rich dessert wine made from the Muscat of Alexandria, was 
famous the world over during the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries.

Like California, South Africa's wine regions are blessed 
with very reliable, moderate climates. Poor growing seasons 
are very rare.

There are two main wine regions in the country, the cooler, 
moister, Coastal Belt, northeast of Cape Town, and the 
Little Karoo, further eastward, past the rain shadow of the 
Drakenstien mountains. As with California, the coastal 
regions produce the finest table wines, and the Little 
Karoo, like the San Joaquin Valley of California, is a 
great, overly-fertile, irrigated, inland region best suited 
for dessert wine production.

The main sub-appellations of the Coastal Belt are: 
Constantia and Durbanville, Stellenboch, Paarl, and Tulbagh. 
All of these regions are moderate in climate, have good 
soils and topography, and produce South Africa's finest 
table wines. 

The main noble grape varieties used in this Coastal Belt 
are, starting with the reds: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet 
Franc, Carignan, Merlot, Shiraz, Hermitage (Cinsault), Gamay 
Noir, Pinotage (a cross of Pinot Noir and Cinsault!), Pinot 
Noir, and even Zinfandel.

The main noble white varieties include: the ubiquitous and 
versatile Steen (Chenin Blanc), Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, 
Kerner, and the Semillon or Greengrape. Oddly, or perhaps 
thankfully, Chardonnay is not grown in great quantity, 
though this is quickly changing. 

In 1973 South Africa enacted a system akin to Appellation 
Controlee laws called Wines of Origin. Wines with the W.O. 
seal on their capsule, or W.O.S., of Superior Origin are to 
be sought after. This system has been successful in 
encouraging the existence of many smaller, quality 
producers. These wineries are pretty well up to date in 
their winemaking equipment and techniques, as well as their 
use of oak cooperage and sound viticulture.

I recommend taking Hugh Johnson's Pocket Encyclopedia of 
Wine along with to purchase South African wines, as you will 
need to familiarize yourself with the regions and their best 
producers.

This writer has admittedly no experience of tasting South 
African wines, but I look forward with great anticipation to 
experiencing them in April, when these wines become 
available here in British Columbia. I also look forward to 
toast to the success and potentially bright future of the 
new South African nation.

  - Tom Davis, Vancouver, CanadaÊ


-- News Room: Political Television Ads --

-- PRO --

It has become quite fashionable of late to attack political 
advertisements. Some decry the corrupting effects of 
televised political manipulation, while others fear the 
advantage they bring to more affluent parties. Both, 
however, are wrong.

Much has been made of the American experience and especially 
the ad campaign of George Bush's 1988 election. I remember 
it well, for I was on the national staff of his opponent, 
Michael Dukakis. George Bush's ads were manipulative. They 
were cynical, pandering ads that preyed on the worst 
impulses of the American voters. They also worked. But they 
succeeded not simply because of their craftiness. Rather, 
George Bush had some help. Not only did a nominally 
independent group direct its own attack ads against Governor 
Dukakis, but Dukakis himself failed to respond effectively 
to the ads' assertions.

Neither of the problems stated at the beginning should 
necessarily spell the doom of political advertising. In the 
first case, televised ads can be limited to candidates and 
political parties, and in the second, televised advertising 
should be kept in perspective. Even the infamous "Willie 
Horton" ads could have been neutralized if Governor Dukakis 
had challenged them early on. Voters are not so manipulable 
that they cannot chose between competing versions of the 
truth. If we're worried about people being taken in by 
simplistic messages, then we're pointing the finger at the 
wrong culprit. No one is forced to watch political ads; if 
we cannot distinguish fact from fantasy, perhaps the 
problems lie deeper in our educational systems.

More importantly, in the right hands televised political 
advertising can be an effective educational tool. Putting 
aside all of the objections -- that television is shallow, 
that it can manipulate -- no one can deny the power of 
televised advertising to bring new political ideas to people 
who have not previously experienced them.

So what holds back political ads? Listening to the 
opposition rhetoric, one divines a fear of televised ads. 
With their visual imagery, televised ads are a more potent 
tool, and because they are more expensive than radio or 
print ads, they are likely to benefit wealthier parties and 
candidates.

But even this can be overcome. In fact, one need look no 
farther than Nicaragua. In its last multi-party election, 
the Nicaraguan Election Commission set up a central clearing 
house for all foreign contributions to the country's 
political parties. Half of these contributions went to the 
parties designated, and the other half were used to finance 
the expensive process of new elections.

Similarly, other governments might harness interest in their 
electoral processes -- whether foreign or domestic -- to 
provide a baseline of financial resources to the various 
political parties. I do not suggest that governments 
equalize resources among the parties, nor should the parties 
be granted funds without demonstrating some minimum level of 
support. But if high-rollers are allowed to contribute 
towards an election's result, some of that money should be 
used to finance real multi-party elections.

Alternatively, governments could grant parties a certain 
amount of free televised time to do with as they wished. 
Assuming that the parties stayed within the bounds of libel 
and slander, they would each have a chance to make their own 
case to the electorate. This, of course, would require 
public funding, for the free time would undoubtedly 
substitute for otherwise paid programming. True as it is, 
each government has to set its spending priorities.

And therein lies the crux of the issue. If a country's 
political leadership is serious about holding free and fair 
multi-party elections, then steps have to be taken to ensure 
that voters are exposed to the breadth and implications of 
their choice. Televised political ads should be a part of 
this process. Warts and all, they are the efficient way to 
convey easily understood information to the broadest 
possible audience. In short, rather than seeking to curb 
televised political ads, they should be embraced.

  - Jon Gould, Chicago, USA


-- CON --

In the last 30 years the ways in which political candidates 
solicit the public vote have changed drastically. In today's 
campaigns corporate media plays a larger role than ever 
before. In the past, coverage of political candidates was 
largely composed of news stories and interviews by 
experienced and respected journalists. When top-flight 
journalists had opportunities to grill presidential 
candidates, the results were often unexpected, and sometimes 
irreversibly altered the course of campaigns. 

Today political party manipulators are often able to dictate 
the image voters see in the media. Tight deadlines and 
shortages of resources can leave journalists with no option 
but to fit their words around pictures sent directly by 
party manipulators. In addition, increased competition 
between television news channels often forces news editors 
to accept party initiated stories just to get good 
headlines. 

People in today's society are becoming more and more 
apathetic about voting; voter turnout in recent elections 
has hit an all-time low. In addition, people are becoming 
increasingly disinterested in spending time researching the 
various candidates and their platforms. Why exert effort to 
seek out independent information when one can simply turn on 
the radio or the television and get barraged with all sorts 
of political rhetoric? People in today's society are 
watching more television than ever before; A recent TV Guide 
poll reported that one in four Americans would refuse to 
quit watching television, even for one million dollars. 

Because political commercials are produced by the same 
advertising agencies that spew forth corporate commercials, 
they provide politicians with the opportunity to control the 
image seen on television fully and completely. These 
agencies are in the business of manipulating people by 
implanting a desire for their products using "marketing 
messages". More often than not these "marketing messages" 
are composed of innuendo and exaggeration rather than 
factual claims about a product's virtues. Advertising 
agencies conduct "market research" so that they can produce 
particularly effective "marketing messages" that "target" 
various demographic groups by playing off the fears and 
desires associated with that group's interests and 
lifestyle.

A good example of this is the advertising war between Coke 
and Pepsi. Pepsi ran television ads portraying a group of 
college-aged party-prone young adults who inadvertently 
drank Coke instead of Pepsi, and turned into bridge-playing 
invalids. The Pepsi destined for the dorm ended up at an 
old-folks home, and inspired the elderly residents to behave 
like raucous adolescents. It is clear how these "marketing 
messages" are designed to win you over using unsubstantiated 
and clearly ridiculous claims. 

More often than not, today's political commercials are 
negative, designed to malign opponents rather than to 
communicate positive information about the party's political 
platforms. A poignant example of this in recent Canadian 
federal politics was a television commercial produced last 
year by the Progressive Conservative party designed to lure 
voters away from the Liberal party by focusing on Jean 
Chretien's facial disorder. The commercial contained little 
or no positive information about the Progressive 
Conservative party's platform policies. Instead, a collage 
of close-ups of Jean Chretien's face focused the viewer's 
attention on his abnormality. At the end of the ad, a voice-
over accompanied a close-up of Jean Chretien's contorted 
face frozen in time and asked the viewer something like, "Do 
you really want this man to be your Prime Minister?" This 
commercial turned out to work against the Progressive 
Conservative party, who were publicly reprimanded for the 
extreme maliciousness of the ad.

This kind of negative advertising creates a campaign 
environment in which the voter is encouraged to vote not for 
the best candidate based upon objective positive 
information, but for the least evil candidate based upon 
what the voter perceives to be true claims about the other 
candidates - claims designed and produced by advertising 
agencies skilled at manipulating people using negative 
innuendo, not positive facts. In this kind of campaign 
environment, and in an advertising world where commercials 
are astronomically costly, the most wealthy candidate who 
slings the most mud at other candidates has a greater chance 
of being elected by "reaching" the voter population through 
these "marketing messages". 

I don't disagree in principle with the idea of a "decent" 
political commercial. The electronic media of today offers 
an unprecedented opportunity for political candidates to 
disseminate positive, accurate information about their 
platform policies. Unfortunately in today's society, this is 
the exception, not the rule. Part of the blame has to fall 
on the shoulders of the apathetic voter. People need to 
actively research political parties if they expect to be 
able to make a decision based upon facts. Unfortunately, 
today's "sound-bite" society doesn't promote that kind of 
independence. People have forgotten that democracy isn't 
free - for it to work, people have to actively support it by 
making a sincere effort to vote based upon independently 
gathered facts. Until then we will continue to be taken 
advantage of, and unfortunately we won't realize that it's 
happening. Such is the nature of corporate advertising - 
it's so much fun you don't realize that you're being 
manipulated - and that perfect manipulation is exactly what 
pays the bills, undermining democracy in the process.

  - Paul Gribble, Montreal, Canada

Sources:
"And now, a word from our manipulator." Shepherd, Rob. Times 
    pLT7(1), March 18, 1992
Prisons We Choose To Live Inside (CBC Massey Lecture Series; 
    1985). Lessing, Doris (1991). Concord, Ontario: House of 
    Anani Press Limited. 
"TV Takes Us To A New Level Of Democracy." Urschel, Joe. USA 
    Today page 14A, October 13, 1992.
"TV Political Ads To Start Showing Viewers Who's Paying." 
    Rabin, Phil & Myles, Carolyn. The Washington Times page 
    C3, March 18, 1992.
"Voters Getting The Campaign They Want." Phillips, Leslie. 
    USA Today page 3A, October 30, 1992.Ê


-- The Quill: Cyclops --

The Beast lies sleeping, its one evil eye closed. Somehow, 
even in its sleep it still has power over me, and I feel 
poisoned, infected by its influence. It has my family 
hostage, of course, and it sleeps comfortably with that 
knowledge. But here I speak of it as though it were merely 
human, with human limitations like knowledge and 
consciousness. That must be part of its influence, a remnant 
of the trance. Maybe it wants me to think of it as human, a 
part of the family. Ha. 

The Beast has a hypnotic eye. When it stares at me, into me, 
its thoughts become my reality, and I can't discriminate 
between my own consciousness and the trance. It's not 
unpleasant, really. The Beast is gentle when it has my mind, 
but persistent. When it finally releases me, I wake up 
almost reluctantly, for then I must face the surface, I must 
rise up and take a breath, when it would be so much easier 
to just... drown. Easier to sink, effortlessly, than to 
surface and face the turmoil of choosing, differentiating 
between my real thoughts and the insidious, subtle influence 
of the trance. Easier. After the trance, easier seems 
important.

It knows my dilemma, my pain, and I imagine it laughing. But 
I don't need to imagine it, I hear it laughing. I see it 
smile. I know it laughs to disarm me, but it still leaves me 
open. Then, when it strikes, it twists me in slow 
imperceptible ways that I can't stop. It tells me wonderful 
stories. Fascinated, I listen, I watch, and all the while, 
relentlessly, patiently it molds me. It tells me I must 
conform. Of course, it doesn't want just me, it wants all of 
us. The more we change, the more power it has over us, and 
it is already very powerful. 

The Beast awakens, fixes its stare upon me, and once more I 
am lost in the sea of its perverted thought. My attention is 
focused, yet diffused throughout a world of ostentatious 
artifice. Reality is now outside of my experience, and I 
exist in a universe of synthetic imagery and illogical 
relationships. On some level I know this, but it doesn't 
help. It is not complex, the way it manipulates me. It is 
just carried out on such a broad front. It fills my head 
with inane trivialities and cliches.

My values are devolving to primal urges and egocentric 
callousness. I hate the person I am becoming, but I am 
loosing control... Control. Somehow, just now, that word 
seems important. Control. Something draws my attention to my 
own hand, I see it there, and I remember. I raise my hand, I 
push the button on the remote, and the Beast closes its evil 
eye. 

  - David Fitzjarrell, West Jordan, Utah, USA


-- Deja Vu: Not So Sudden, Not So New --

ANDREAS SEPPELT HAS BEEN REPORTING FOR THE PAST FEW MONTHS 
FROM MEXICO. THIS MONTH, HIS ARTICLE ON THE CHIAPAS REBELS 
APPEARS IN THE DEJA VU COLUMN, HOWEVER STARTING NEXT MONTH, 
HE WILL HAVE HIS OWN COLUMN ENTITLED, THE LATIN QUARTER. 
- IAN

Carlos Fuentes, one of MexicoÕs leading writers and often 
its "voice of political consciousness" recently spoke about 
the political problems in Chiapas. "With a state that could 
be prosperous, with fertile land, abundances for the 
majority of men and women, it is only because of the local 
government and its collusion with the powers of 
exploitation, and the indifference of the federal government 
that we see such poverty. Cocoa, coffee, wheat corn, virgin 
forests, and abundant pastures -- only a minority enjoy the 
rent of these products and if someone protests this 
situation they are grabbed, imprisoned, violated, killed and 
the situation continues."

One cannot imagine a situation more primed for social 
explosion. It was with little surprise, that the Zapatista 
Army of National Liberation (Zapatistas), stormed the town 
of San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas and officially 
proclaimed its armed insurrection. The Zapatistas have taken 
their name from the recognized Mexican hero Emiliano Zapata, 
who led a successful insurrection and eventual revolution in 
the 1910's and serves as a solid reminder of the years of 
injustice and repression.

The rebels in Chiapas did not have to wait long for others 
to join their call to arms on the first day of the new year. 
The next night two bombs exploded--one in a shopping plaza 
in Mexico City, and the other in AcapulcoÕs municipal plaza. 
This rash of bombings and subsequent bomb threats throughout 
the country bore the markings of the Revolutionary Worker 
Campesino Union (Party of the Poor), which has been 
operating underground for the last few decades. In a letter 
to Amnesty International, representatives wrote, "For more 
than 40 years we have asked for agricultural reform, without 
getting a solution. For that reason, we have formed an 
independent organization to defend the interests of our 
people."

The Campesino Union, which is considered the "patriarch" of 
the countryÕs various rebel groups, descended directly from 
a schoolmaster turned underground hero--Lucio Cabanas, who 
fought the Mexican Army in the jungle mountains of Guerrero 
(southwestern part of Mexico) for seven years until he was 
caught and killed in 1974.

Reports of armed groups have increased in eastern parts of 
the country such as Veracruz and Hidalgo and in the other 
southern states of Oaxaca and Guerrero. Many of these 
organizations are believed to have been originally formed as 
defense groups that indigenous communities and campesinos 
created to defend themselves against "goon squads" hired by 
local ranchers. These rural bands have demonstrated the 
ability to switch from defensive to offensive tactics. It is 
believed that the Zapatistas where originally a self-defense 
group, turning to organized aggression when their peaceful 
protests went in vain.

The Zapatistas are fighting attitudes which are typical of 
those expressed by the cattlemen and other large landholders 
such as Bartolomeo Dominguez who argues that the Zapatistas 
"...are not simply impoverished Indians. People who have no 
money to buy food have no money to buy machine guns!" 
Dominguez, who used an alias to protect his real identity 
and to avoid repercussions, added, "The Indians donÕt 
deserve the land because they donÕt know how to make the 
land produce what it should."

In perfect contrast to this, the leader of the Zapatistas, 
Subcomandante Marcos, was quoted "Our form of armed struggle 
is just and true. If we had not raised our rifles for the 
Chiapas poor, the government would never have been concerned 
about the Indians and campesinos in our land."

The uprising in Chiapas sheds light on a problem which is 
not new. It has its origins as much in a constant political 
dichotomy as in the economic differences which have long 
existed. It has also confirmed a national suspicion that 
without political reform, any economic reform is fragile and 
even deceitful.

  - Andreas Seppelt, Latin American CorrespondantÊ


-- Cuisine: Swedish Boiled Bread --

I would like to share with you one of my favorite recipes 
for bread. Having grown up on the countryside in southern 
Sweden, and being used to the dark, often spicy bread, 
moving to southern California meant either having to buy 
imported German bread, which is much denser than the one I 
grew up on, or starting to bake myself, which became my 
choice.

This bread is very easy to make, sounds very weird, but is a 
true delight in my own opinion.

Swedish Boiled Bread

Mix the following ingredients well:
  0.6 oz dry yeast	(or one 50g cake fresh yeast)
  3-1/2 cup rye flour	(0.9 liters)
  0.6 cup dark corn syrup (0.15 liters)
  1 tsp salt	(5 ml)
  1-1/2 cup lukewarm water (0.4 liters)
Then, mix in, little by little
  3-1/4 cup wheat flour	(0.8 liters)

Knead the dough. Rub a thin layer of fat on the inside of a 
stainless steel bowl, powder the inside with flour and put 
the ball-shaped dough in the bowl. Now, put a lid on top of 
the bowl, which shall be large enough so that the lid will 
not touch the dough. Put the bowl in a pot, fill up with 
water to 2/3 of the height of the bowl, and boil for 4 
hours. Fill up with water to 2/3 every now and then, but be 
careful never to get any water into the bowl. If possible, 
keep a lid on the pot while boiling. The bread will rise 
while being boiled, but will be a rather compact bread. 

Eat the bread warm with butter and cheese. Enjoy! 

  - Markus Jakobsson, markus@cs.ucsd.eduÊ


------------------------------------------------------------
NEXT MONTH
------------------------------------------------------------

Next month, we feature articles and reviews of your favorite 
Local Authors. Kent Barrett will have his report from the 
annual "Eye Of Eros" exhibition at Exposure Gallery for 
Keepers of Light.

Also next month, Gerry Roston will have a rebuttal of Jon 
Gould's gun control article "American in Denial." Should be 
very interesting, so stick around!Ê


------------------------------------------------------------
STAFF & INFO
------------------------------------------------------------

Editor-in-Chief:
 Ian Wojtowicz

Art Director:
 Anand Mani

Cover Artist:
 Anand Mani

Correspondents:
 Biko Agozino, Edinburgh, Scotland
 Prasad & Surekha Akella, Japan
 Ryan Crocker, Vancouver, Canada
 Prasad Dharmasena, Silver Spring, USA
 Jon Gould, Chicago, USA
 Paul Gribble, Montreal, Canada
 Mike Matsunaga, Skokie, USA
 Satya Prabhakar, Minneapolis, USA
 Brian Quinby, Aurora, USA
 Motamarri Saradhi, Singapore
 Dr. Michael Schreiber, Vienna, Austria
 Johnn Tann, Ogden, USA
 Dr. Euan Taylor, Winnipeg, Canada
 Seth Theriault, Lexington, USA
 Marc A. Volovic, Jerusalem, Israel

Columnists:
 Kent Barrett, The Keepers of Light
 Tom Davis, The Wine Enthusiast
 Andreas Seppelt, Latin American Correspondant

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Copyright notice:
 International Teletimes is a publication of the Global 
 Village Communication Society and is copyrighted (c)1993 by 
 the same. All articles are copyrighted by their respective 
 authors however International Teletimes retains the right 
 to reprint all material unless otherwise expressed by the  
 author. This magazine is free to be copied and distributed 
 UNCHANGED so long as it is not sold for profit. Editors 
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 signifies that the submitter agrees to all the above 
 terms.Ê


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BIOGRAPHIES
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Kent Barrett
Kent Barrett is a Vancouver artist with over twenty years 
experience in photography. His work has been exhibited in 
galleries across Canada from Vancouver, B.C. to St. John's, 
Newfoundland. He is currently working on his first 
nonfiction book and interactive CD-ROM, "Bitumen to Bitmap: 
a history of photographic processes."

Prasad Dharmasena
Prasad is a Solid State Electrical Engineer turned into a 
C++ programmer who works at the Federal Reserve Board in 
Washington, DC. He has been known to take decent photographs 
when the phase of the moon is right. Though he was born in 
Sri Lanka, he cannot play Cricket. He enjoys playing Frisbee 
beside his favorite temple, the Lincoln Memorial.

David Fitzjarrell
Dave lives in West Jordan, Utah. He is 41, enjoys writing, 
backpacking, chess, snowboarding and mountain biking. He has 
a minor in French, he has almost completed a BS in Physics, 
and he works at the Post Office. Dave claims to enjoy 
Teletimes "in the extreme" and has had a chance to 
contribute a wonderful piece of creative writing for the 
February '94 issue.

Jon Gould
Jon teaches law and political science at both DePaul 
University's International Human Rights Law Institute and 
Beloit College. He is a former counsel to the Dukakis-
Bentsen Campaign and has served as General Counsel to the 
College Democrats of America and Vote for a Change. 

Anand Mani
Anand is a Vancouver, Canada-based corporate communications 
consultant serving an international clientele. Originally an 
airbrush artist, his painting equipment has been languishing 
in a closet, replaced by the Mac. It waits for the day when 
Òthat ideaÓ grips him by the throat, breathily says, ÒPaint 
MeÓ and drags him into the studioÑ not to be seen for 
months. 

Johnn Tan
Johnn is a Mathematics major at Weber State University in 
Ogden, Utah, USA. He is one of the founders of Wasatch Area 
Voices Express (WAVE), an alternative Ogden paper. When he 
isn't eating vegan food, cooking, hiking, or philosophizing, 
he is active in politics, socialism, and feminism.

Dr. Euan R. Taylor
Euan grew up in England where he did a degree in 
Biochemistry and a Ph.D. Before moving to Canada, Euan spent 
6 months traveling in Asia. Now living in Winnipeg, he is 
doing research in plant molecular biology, and waiting to 
start Law School. Interests include writing, travel, 
studying Spanish and Chinese, career changing and good 
coffee. Pet peeves: weak coffee, wet socks and ironing. 

Ian Wojtowicz
Ian is currently enrolled in the International Baccalaurate 
program at a Vancouver high school. His interests include 
fencing, running Teletimes and sleeping in. Born in Halifax, 
Canada in 1977, Ian has since lived in Nigeria, Hong Kong 
and Ottawa and has travelled with his parents to numerous 
other places all over the world.


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