Currently at the printer (dieKeure), and early next week distribution (Bruil & Van de Staaij) starts and subscribers can start to expect the next issue of Volume on Storytelling in their mailboxes:

This past year numerous dramas have competed for our attention: sub-prime mortgages, banking meltdown, bailout, stimulus, pandemic, bankruptcy. The all-consuming effort to follow these events seldom leaves a moment to contemplate the explanations themselves. What is the stated dilemma, context or motive for any one of these problems? And most importantly, how does a problem’s formulation determine its proposed solution? Volume 20 is dedicated to the art of storytelling. It presents the storylines of current events and architecture to show that while the truth is important, so is the ability of fiction to elevate fact. Perhaps the best way to understand our era is through narratives that distort, pervert and animate reality?

From next week on be on the lookout for an issue bringing old and new narratives evoking strangely familiar feelings.

On Friday June 5th, 2009 Al Manakh’s series of international Debates on Tour took place at the ADACH Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale of Art. For this occasion architect Rem Koolhaas and curator of the ADACH Pavilion Catherine David engaged in a conversation with Ole Bouman on the curiosities and conditions that has drawn their practice and vision to the Gulf cities such as Abu Dhabi. In this, they discussed the specific urban conditions of cities in the region, and how these influence and are determined by the social/economic make-up and cultural manifestations of the city itself. Also discussed is how exposure to these circumstances has influenced the practice and personal perspective of these two internationally acclaimed cultural producers.

Comments and questions from audience members – such as Mishaal Al Gergawi (of the Dubai Culture & Arts Authority) and Kaiwan Mehta (Mumbai based architect and particpant in the ADACH exhibition) – supplemented the discussion with further insight to the relationship between the cultural ambition and political will, as well as the relationship between cultural frameworks and the actual urban plan of a city.

Author: Volume

Environmental regulations are generally based on compensation principles: you’re allowed to pollute the air or the water, but not beyond a certain level set by the regulation. If you want to pollute more, you can always buy extra pollution quotas. Environmental protection came always after ‘human development’ priorities.

But in places like Ecuador, as in the rest of Latin America, human development has always shown its dark sides

The country, which contains every South American ecosystem within its borders, which include the Galapagos Islands, has had disastrous collisions with multi-national companies. Many, from banana companies to natural gas extractors, have exploited its natural resources and left little but pollution and poverty in their wake.

Now it is in the grip of a bitter lawsuit against US oil giant Chevron, formerly Texaco, over its alleged dumping of billions of gallons of crude oil and toxic waste waters into the Amazonian jungle over two decades.

It is described as the Amazonian Chernobyl, and 30,000 local people claim that up to 18m tonnes of oil was dumped into unlined pits over two decades, in defiance of international guidelines, and contaminating groundwater over an area of some 1,700 hectares (4,200 acres) and leading to a plethora of serious health problems for anyone living in the area. Chevron has denied the allegations. In April, a court-appointed expert announced in a report that, should Chevron lose, it would have to pay up to $16bn (£8.9bn) in damages.

The new constitution of Ecuador, ratified last week by a large popular majority, goes beyond the traditional ‘sustainable developmentalist’ paradigm, recognizing inalienable rights to nature (Title II, Chapter VII, Art. 1):

Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.

Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.

This can be seen as the first attempt to codify an ecocentric point of view in giuridical tools. The consequences of this shift are still to be observed. For sure, it will be more difficult in future for foreign multinational companies to exploit Ecuador’s national resources and human labor, as the consitution set strict principles against the commodification of water resources, on food sovreignity and for the protection of indigenous people.

[Via: Culture Monkey]