Daily Bruin – Page 201

New ways of seeing the sea: Installations invoke emotions of environmental change

Erin Cooney recorded herself grieving over climate change.

The video is paired with sounds of insects and other animal life in a Puerto Rican rainforest, which fade out over time to represent the fauna diminishing since the 1970s.

The graduate student’s installation is part of UCLA’s department of design media arts exhibition, “I Need the Sea Because It Teaches Me.” The solo show will take place Tuesday after a panel discussion on the discourse art provides on climate change. Cooney said her exhibition, titled after a line in poet Pablo Neruda’s “The Sea,” intends to help viewers reflect on the natural world through her personal reactions to the changes occurring.

“I think it’s important to have an emotional response to the truth of climate change,” she said. “It’s an attempt to make emotional space for feeling the catastrophe.”

One of the pieces in Cooney’s exhibition is a close-up video of her own face called “Grieve With Me.” She said the shot captures her tearful response to an article she read about the dwindling insect and animal populations in El Yunque, a Puerto Rican national forest. The study suggested that the forest’s invertebrate biomass has decreased to about a fourth or less of figures recorded in 1976.

web.ae.needthesea.picB.LMan.jpg — Erin Cooney’s exhibition is intended to help viewers reflect on the natural world through reactions that are emotional rather than political. The solo show features videos of her own face and self-narrated tracks that aim to document her personal response to climate change and wildlife loss. (Lauren Man/Daily Bruin)

Marc Mannheimer, an artist and professor at Northern Essex Community College, gave Cooney a solo show in 2016 and said her choice to include footage of herself is part of an ongoing trend in her work that deals with capturing the individual’s response to their environment. Reacting to the topic of climate change through grieving helps make the topic personal rather than political, he said.

“(Cooney’s) work has always been intellectual and this is very intellectual, but also I think it’s more guttural. She’s not doing this as an editorializing of the concept,” he said. “She’s showing herself being emotionally affected by it.”

Another installation called “The Waves” incorporates projections of waves on two walls and four LCD monitors arranged in a square with the screens facing outward. As viewers walk around the monitors, Cooney said they will hear four separate narrations, each corresponding to one screen.

Cooney said each of the self-narrated tracks captures a different emotional tonality in response to the idea of the oceans’ independence from people; it continues on regardless of human interference. She said the narrations represent her own four conflicting feelings after coming to such a realization – awe-inspired, sad, scared and angry. Though each narration uses the same words, she said her vocal intonation and facial expressions change across audio tracks.

“(The waves are) going on whether you’re there or not to see them,” she said. “All four of these people – this fractured person – are speaking their story together at once.”

Another piece on display, “Clair de Lune,” involves a view of the moon from under the ocean waves. Translating to “moonlight” in English, the piece also incorporates audio from French composer Claude Debussy’s “Claire de Lune,” to which the piece owes its name. Cooney said she worked with graduate student Daniel Bayot to run the song through software, applying a wave filter to it. The sounds are distorted and the tempo rises and falls in an emulation of currents, she said.

“Clair de Lune” is a conceptual take on the ocean without any human presence involved, Cooney said. The camera angle captures the ocean’s viewpoint. She said the shots work in conjunction with the music’s wavering tempo to speculate about the ocean’s calm nature when humans are not around to witness it.

The piece is part of an overall exhibition that Victoria Vesna, a member of the panel and a design media arts professor at UCLA, said deals with the topic of climate change through a gut response rather than solely through statistics or information. It is part of an artistic trend she said involves engaging viewers through emotional appeals, but also giving them avenues to study the topic in-depth in other ways – through a panel, for instance.

“It’s a nice, poetic space but you engage the discussion on a deeper level from different points of view,” Vesna said.

Vesna, the director of the UCLA Art|Sci Center, said more artists are beginning to create emotional pieces in response to scientific data. She said she even created a virtual reality piece about plankton, scaling them to the size of whales, in response to the effects microplastics have on the creatures. The size helps viewers realize the intricacies of plankton and encourage an emotional response, she said, while further information about the organisms can be found on the project’s website.

Climate change and other topics of public discourse are important to address through art, Cooney said. Art can directly discuss topics like climate change, such as in “Grieve With Me,” or it can put people into different perspectives to view topics through different eyes, like in “Clair de Lune,” she said.

“We have to change our relationship to the natural world. We can’t keep going seeing it as purely an extractive resource for our personal use,” Cooney said. “It’s important to create work that urges viewers to reframe that relationship (between themselves and the environment).”

Budding Los Angeles: Intersection of cannabis and educational institutions may soon normalize usage

This post was updated March 5 at 3:09 p.m.

Thirty years ago, buying cannabis was difficult, expensive and illegal. Buying cannabis in 2019 is somewhere between picking up a prescription from a pharmacy and buying beer from a liquor store. Join columnist John Tudhope each week as he visits cannabis companies in Los Angeles and discusses the budding industry.

I would imagine that the majority of conversations at UCLA regarding cannabis center around how to buy it and where to consume it.

But that’s changing.

Student groups on campus are eyeing the booming industry for jobs, creating events focused on social equity and engineering creative solutions to connect other students with cannabis business owners. Three distinct groups on campus – Cannaclub at UCLA, Cannabis Law Association and Cannabis Business Association – offer opportunities in the industry for undergraduate, law school and business school students. Meanwhile, UCLA’s own Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior is home to the UCLA Cannabis Research Initiative – a coalition of researchers focused on cannabis and its broader impacts in society. All of these groups are focused on one thing: objectivity in the gravely misconceived topic that is cannabis.

After decades of criminalization, stigma and fear surrounding cannabis, it will take spaces such as established universities and research centers to provide reliable, fact-based information about the potential benefits – and dangers – of consuming cannabis. For students, the easiest way to access this information and enter the world of cannabis is through one of UCLA’s cannabis clubs.

The undergraduate cannabis networking club, Cannaclub, hosts a variety of events. These include panel discussions on representation in the industry, as well as more straightforward seminars about business, responsible consumption and local LA cannabis law.

Cannaclub hosted an event Wednesday called “Being Black in Cannabis,” bringing four black business owners to campus. The event focused on entrepreneurship and social equity, featuring an extended dialogue about the issues black people have historically faced within the context of cannabis, as well as the issues and opportunities they have in the new legal industry.

The panelists pointed out the unfortunate fact that while black and brown communities have endured the worst of the war on drugs, they often have the least access to participate in the new legal industry. Whitney Beatty, one of the featured guests, a board member of Supernova Woman and CEO of Apothecarry, said black women get about $40,000 in venture capital funding for every $1,500,000 that white men get.

Just last quarter, Cannaclub also hosted a “Women in Cannabis” panel. Cannaclub co-founder Maha Haq, a fifth-year sociology and mathematics student, said a goal of organizing such events is to spark dialogue about the issues marginalized groups face in cannabis. Haq said promoting the cannabis industry is important to her, especially in a traditionally alcohol-oriented environment. She believes cannabis has the ability to displace alcohol as the preeminent recreational drug for college students.

“Cannabis is becoming more accepted among college students,” she said. “It’s not always about beer pong, and it’s not always about wanting to get drunk.”

While beer pong is undoubtedly fun, I agree with Haq. I see more and more people willing to try cannabis, and many people favoring weed over alcohol to unwind. Living in a neighborhood where puddles of vomit are commonplace – and stumbling freshmen even more so – I believe an alternative option for some weekend fun is essential for the UCLA community.

Meanwhile, the Cannabis Business Association and the Cannabis Law Association primarily serve the students in graduate programs, discussing topics specific to business and law, respectively. UCLA recently co-hosted a law panel that aimed to introduce cannabis law to curious students.

Jonathan Dolgin, a graduate law student and CLA founder, said the event primarily served law students who were new to cannabis, and allowed for a realistic discussion surrounding the exponential growth of the cannabis industry, detailing the role attorneys are going to play in the process. Dolgin said law students interested in cannabis law are preparing themselves to service these businesses in the same way they would with any other industry.

As someone who has worked in multiple law firms, it is a little ironic to see people like Dolgin in an extremely conservative industry interested in something as historically countercultural as cannabis. The only way I’d ever go back to working in a law firm is if they allow me to smoke a doobie on the job – unlikely. That being said, it is exciting for me to see cannabis enter conservative spaces, continuing to bring people together as it always has.

It seems to me that UCLA’s fast-growing cannabis community is centered on objectivity, taking special care to hear all voices involved in the conversation. While the future is always unpredictable, I believe the rise in the popularity of cannabis will continue steadily. I believe cannabis is objectively less harmful than alcohol, has massive therapeutic potential and will create billions of dollars in economic growth. UCLA should capitalize on and promote these benefits.

After two solid months of delving into the industry and seeing the entrepreneurial wave that is legal cannabis, I have a few final observations. First: There is money to be made. Second: Not everyone is going to succeed. And third: Being a student at UCLA puts one in the best possible position to thrive in the industry – don’t miss your chance.

Students delve into campus trash to shape sculptures about sustainability

One man’s trash is another Bruin’s treasure – the proof is in campus sculptures fashioned from old T-shirts, dental floss and mason jars.

On Monday, students in the design media arts class “Word + Image” presented their artwork made entirely out of trash found on campus. Rebeca Mendez, the course’s instructor, said the class focused on using art to address issues surrounding anthropogenic climate change. The projects – displayed in front of the Broad Art Center – furthered awareness of the world’s excess waste and are inspired by the Zero Waste by 2020 initiative at UCLA, she said.

“The insanity of the overconsumerism that we have as a species, as humans, and specifically in the first world, that we can make so much trash – our earth cannot sustain any more,” Mendez said.

To plan their sculptures, Mendez said the students went “waste-mining.” Some students wore safety gear while they sifted through a day’s worth of trash from Powell Library, while others utilized their own waste, she said. Their finds, which included plastic cutlery and bags, often directly influenced the message about climate change they tried to convey, Mendez said. If a student used a large amount of e-waste and shredded paper, Mendez said they could create a sculpture or use lettering to convey a message about the excess waste they found. The goal was to have the students pick a message and use the material they found to portray it, she said.

“(Trash) can only be recycled one or two times before it ends up back in the landfill; we’re really slowing down the process of it going to the landfill,” Mendez said. “The most overarching message is to … refuse items that cannot be repurposed and reused.”

The students were instructed not to generate additional waste – every aspect of their project had to come from campus trash, said graduate student and the course’s teaching assistant, Zeynep Abes. To hold their sculptures together, many students used thread made out of repurposed dental floss, Abes said.

“It was very much about repurposing all kinds of objects and waste to make the sculptures, so they’re made completely out of waste; students have created these compelling and meaningful messages out of them,” Abes said.

Students used junk to spell out their intended message in some of the sculptures, Abes said. Fourth-year design media arts student Mina Malloy said she utilized typography to inspire viewers to reuse single-use items. Her work featured mason jars and letters she made out of plastic cups wrapped in fabric. Combined, the letters spelled out a Japanese phrase meaning “too good to waste.” By connecting the individual pieces with single-use plastic products, Malloy said she hopes her piece led people to think critically about using such items.

Additionally, Malloy said the trash from the sculptures will continue to be repurposed on a larger stage after the works’ initial showing. Some of the students’ pieces were selected by Mendez to be displayed in the upcoming “Junk Battle!” exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Malloy said. But after that, it is the artist’s decision whether they want to keep their pieces or not – if they choose to dismantle the works, the trash will end up back where it began, she said.

“We’re making sculptures … but at the same time, it’s still trash and it will eventually end up in a landfill, so it’s not like we’re really making a difference in that sense, besides raising awareness,” Malloy said.

Simply making art out of trash is not going to fully achieve UCLA’s goal of eliminating waste by 2020, Malloy said. But by refurbishing garbage in unconventional and artistic ways, the students’ projects pointed to the reality of waste production and the abundant opportunities to repurpose items, she said.

“The idea that we’re trying to show is a lot of things that get trashed, or a lot of things that people consider waste, is not waste at all,” Abes said. “It’s just trying to educate them on different ways of sustainable living.”

Mardi Gras event brings culture, traditions of New Orleans to UCLA

UCLA’s Fowler Museum incorporated beaded jewelry, masquerade masks and a second line parade in their Mardi Gras festivities.

On Sunday, attendees of “Celebrating Mardi Gras,” observed a concert by the New Orleans Traditional Jazz Band. The group performed songs traditional to Mardi Gras while also discussing the history of the holiday and its association with New Orleans, said band leader and saxophonist Hilarion Domingue. Attendees later had the chance to create traditional Mardi Gras decorations like masks and jewelry.

“Blues is the grandparent of all the music we (play),” Domingue said. “(Africans) brought over rhythm and self-expression, the Europeans brought over harmony.”

The band is composed of performers from California as well as some from New Orleans like himself, Domingue said. They perform traditional New Orleans songs and blues music at parades, funerals and other special occasions. The eight band members wore black tuxedos and white hats for their set, tapping their feet and swaying their bodies on stage. The ensemble took breaks between songs for Domingue to discuss the history of Mardi Gras, the first American celebration of which occurred in Mobile in colonial French Louisiana in 1703.

About one hour into the performance, audience members jolted up from their seats and formed a second line alongside the band which played “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The parade made its way through the aisles of the auditorium, the dancing and cheering crowd following behind closely.

After leading the audience in the procession, the band departed and the arts and crafts portion of the event began. Children attendees crafted necklaces consisting of purple, green and gold colored beads. The colors each have symbolism within the context of Mardi Gras, said the Fowler Museum’s assistant director of education Allison Clark – purple for justice, green for faith and gold for power. Children decorated full-face masks as well as eye masks with colored markers, crayons and glitter glue.

Domingue had earlier touched upon the history of the masks, saying members of secret society clubs historically wore them during Mardi Gras events to hide their identities in public. Secret societies were like a fraternity or sorority, he said, for each had undisclosed features, like their own private handshake.

Social clubs were a prominent part of Mardi Gras culture. The Fowler’s current exhibition, “New Orleans Second Line Parades: Photographs by Pableaux Johnson” shows photographs of African-American social club members participating in a second line in New Orleans, Clark said.

Clark said she’s observed children’s ability to get involved with second line parades by dancing with the crowd or getting dressed up in feathered fans and parasols. The event incorporated children in their arts and crafts program, Clark said, because she wanted them to use their abilities to make artwork to love and be proud about.

“When you look at the photos, you can see a variety of people participating in a second line parade … including children,” Clark said. “We always encourage participants in our family program to look at the artworks presented in the exhibition (so) they can find inspiration in those images.”

Audience member Sonya Brooks, a graduate education student at UCLA, said she attended the event to learn more about her Creole heritage. Mardi Gras symbolizes freedom and celebration, and Brooks said she came to the event to see the band’s appreciation of the holiday.

“Both of my parents are Creole and they are from Louisiana,” Brooks said. “(The event) is just a wonderful example of music and culture that’s here that a lot of people don’t know about. … I am so happy to see that culture being exemplified now.”

Gallery: Hanoolim celebrates 100 years of Korean Independence

UCLA’s Korean cultural awareness group sold traditional Korean dishes and put on various performances Friday, on the 100th anniversary of Korean independence from Japanese occupation.

Right-wing media outlet releases misleading video of students signing petition

A self-described libertarian media outlet released a video Feb. 23 claiming UCLA students believe in putting supporters of President Donald Trump in concentration camps.

Liberty Hangout, which has a right-leaning political bias and mixed factual reporting, according to Media Bias/Fact Check, filmed UCLA students without their consent and concluded from featured responses that UCLA students support mandatory re-education of conservatives. Media Bias/Fact Check is an independent media organization which aims to inform the public about media bias and misleading reporting.

The video, which depicts “Gun Girl” Kaitlin Bennett trying to convince students to sign a petition entitled “Students for the re-education and involuntary internment of conservatives,” has been circulated on far-right outlets like InfoWars.

Liberty Hangout did not respond to request for comment.

Matt Barreto, a political science professor at UCLA, said he thinks nothing about the video is objective or appropriate.

“They are admittedly a right-wing conspiracy propaganda machine, and they should be treated as such,” Barreto said.

Tim Groeling, a communications professor at UCLA, said he thinks journalists should follow ethical rules during interviews but added he does not consider Liberty Hangout or Infowars to be journalistic organizations.

“These people are clearly advocates,” Groeling said. “This happens on all sides of the ideological spectrum, where people are not trying to find some unbiased version of the truth.”

While the petition header used the phrase “re-education and involuntary internment of conservatives,” Bennett can be heard in the video describing the fake initiative in different terms. She refers to it as “a camp for people to come to learn about feminist ideals” and a proposal to have “conservatives on this campus to have to take re-education courses and sensitivity training.”

Groeling said it is common practice for such media organizations to misrepresent the viewpoints of a large group by drawing attention to the most extreme opinions within the group.

“It’s common to try to find people in these (videos) to tar a big group by finding some wacky examples,” Groeling said.

Groeling added he was concerned, however, that a student government official signed Bennett’s petition.

“They have succeeded in this video in taking it from a hatchet job to something that’s actually more scandalous,” he said.

Jamie Kennerk, who was featured in the video and is the Undergraduate Students Association Council external vice president, said she feels the video does not portray her interaction with Bennett fairly.

She added she felt it was her responsibility as a student government official to interact with students who approach her with any idea.

“When you’re talking to someone out on Bruin Walk, you’re primed in a different way than you are when reading a story with a kind of gotcha headline,” Kennerk said.

When asked if she wanted to put Trump supporters in concentration camps, Kennerk said she did not.

“Absolutely no, I do not support that,” Kennerk said.

Barreto said he thinks Liberty Hangout intentionally aimed to mislead people.

“She is cherry-picking very limited clips to include, we don’t have any idea of the full range of answers given,” Barreto said.

Groeling said he thinks the Liberty Hangout interviewers misrepresented their identities, did not fairly sample their interviews and did not disclose to people they were being recorded.

“In such situations, you would almost always ask for raw tape, the stuff you left on the copy room floor,” Groeling said.

Bruins bounce back against Bears, defeat them in first conference game of season

The Bruins snapped their two-game losing skid.

No. 4 UCLA women’s water polo (17-3, 1-0 MPSF) opened conference play with a 9-7 win over No. 3 California (10-3, 0-1).

Last week, the Bruins and Golden Bears squared off at the Barbara Kalbus Invitational. Cal got the 7-6 win in overtime to take third place in the tournament.

“We have a choice of how we want to react when teams do certain things, and that’s been a little bit of a problem over the course of the season,” said coach Adam Wright. “There are times where we let teams dictate how we go about playing.”

In that game, the Bears busted out to a 4-0 lead to start the game, but on Sunday, the Bruins returned the favor.

On the first possession of the game for UCLA, sophomore attacker Lexi Liebowitz found an opening on the inside to freshman center Ava Johnson, who put away the first goal of the game.

The Bruins jumped out to a 2-0 lead before the end of the opening frame when freshman attacker Bella Baia went with the off-speed shot to float it just past the reach of Cal goalkeeper Madison Tagg.

“I think our balance, our attack and our structure was much better (on Sunday),” Wright said. “You were seeing us finishing on one end and covering on the other and not giving up easy goals, so that was a huge positive what the girls did this week and how they trained this week.”

UCLA extended its lead to five goals with redshirt senior attacker Grace Reego and senior defenders Kelsey Blacker and Rachel Whitelegge each picking up goals in the second quarter.

“I think our energy was pretty low at the start of the first game against Cal, so we just looked to stay composed and have a balanced energy the entire game (on Sunday),” said junior attacker Bronte Halligan. “We tried to not go on an emotional roller coaster like we’ve done in the past and we just tried to stay focused, and we really did a good job doing that.”

UCLA shut out Cal for more than 11 minutes of action before center Kitty Lynn Joustra scored from 2 meters out to get the Bears on the board.

A long outlet pass from senior goalkeeper Carlee Kapana to the front court led to a penalty shot and a chance to regain the five goal lead for the Bruins. Halligan took the shot and aimed bottom-left, but was stopped by Tagg to keep the lead at 5-1 going into the half.

In the second half, Cal outscored UCLA 6-4 and pulled within one goal four different times.

The Bears took back control in the third frame, scoring three unanswered goals to make it a 5-4 game. Out of a timeout, junior attacker Maddie Musselman struck the back of the net from the perimeter for her first goal of the match in the final minute of the quarter.

The Bears pulled within one three more times in the fourth, but the Bruins countered with goals of their own to avoid losing the lead.

In the final minute, freshman attacker Val Ayala put in the last goal of the game on a power-play opportunity assisted by Halligan to secure a UCLA win in its conference opener.

“This game was a lot of what we expected,” Baia said. “We studied a lot of film this week and a lot of it was what we saw last week. We wanted to start with a lot of energy and a lot of player movement because we knew that it would help us later on in the game and it did.”