radiofree.asia

Category: Business

  • Leading grain traders ‘sourcing soy beans from Brazilian farm linked to abuse’

    Bunge and Cargill, behind more than 30% of soy exports to EU and UK, accused of exposing suppliers to link with indigenous rights violations

    Two of the world’s biggest grain traders are sourcing soy from a Brazilian farm linked to abuses of indigenous rights and land, a report from the environmental group Earthsight claims

    Earthsight named the companies as Bunge and Cargill and said they sourced soy produced on a farm located on ancestral land of the Kaiowá indigenous group.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • HAL to open office in Malaysia; Defence PSU eyes at South East Asian market

    HAL had submitted a proposal to the Malaysian defence ministry in October of 2021 for supply of 18 FLIT LCAs

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Common charger for all electronic devices: Govt to meet industry stakeholders

    The sector-specific associations, industry bodies CII and FICCI and representatives from IIT Delhi and IIT BHU will be part of the meeting

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Artists Wretched Flowers on not being afraid to embrace your true interests

    Your work seems very place-specific to me, because it involves harvesting and foraging plants from your home. Can you begin by describing this place, painting a picture of where your work gets made?

    Loney Abrams: Sure. It’s changed a lot throughout our practice. Wretched Flowers began when we were living in Brooklyn, so the whole inspiration for it was through going for walks around our studio, which was in East New York. Walking around and noticing how much biodiversity was literally growing through the cracks of the sidewalk, that’s where it really started. But we moved from New York to Connecticut in March 2020. Now, where we work is completely different. What used to be an exhilarating, if not also illegal experience (foraging) in New York, whereas here, there’s no risk at all. It’s only ever very peaceful, very tranquil, almost meditative.

    Johnny Stanish: Well, the risk now is we’re getting into more poisonous situations – different risks. Poison ivy, ticks, it’s become a different thing that we have to look out for with foraging.

    Loney: So we’re just deep, thick in brush. There’s one place in particular that is mostly a hunting area. It’s called a Multiple Use Area, which basically just means hunters can go there. But they periodically mow down this meadow, which makes it prime grassland for wildlife. It’s just tons of wildflowers, tons of everything that we’re interested in. So we’ll go there. And it’s very beautiful. We bring our dog. She runs around.

    Johnny: It’s almost like if you could picture Duck Hunter on Nintendo, where there’s the fields and the birds fly out. It’s sort of like that.

    Working as a team, are there specific roles that each of you take on in the project or is there a lot of overlap? Can you tell me a bit about how your collaborative process works?

    Johnny: Yeah. So it took us a little while because collaboration is a very learned experience. It isn’t something that’s easy just to jump into. It took us years to figure out our visual language. But once we did figure it out, we always recommend, when you’re doing a collaboration, lay out what you’re not good at and lay out what you are good at. And then use that collaboration to pull from everyone’s strengths. And so, Loney does a lot more of the deep dive research-based, more of the writing on our Instagram, and I take over the production side of things and maybe think about creating new objects or things like that. And then we meet in the middle and just rip it out.

    Loney: Yeah, all the ideas, like all the planning and conceptualizing is a conversation, and then, [Johnny is] in the studio more. I’m more foraging and writing, but there is a lot of overlap.

    Are you a couple?

    Loney: Yeah, we’re married.

    Do you have advice for collaborating with your romantic partner or your spouse?

    Johnny: I think one of the important things that we’ve learned is that it’s important to take the time not always collaborating and not always making art and just maybe work on our own separate endeavors that aren’t collaborative, that just are maybe for our mental health or something like that.

    Loney: That’s a really good one. I think it’s really easy when you’re working together and living together and creating together, your identities become dangerously close together. And so, having another creative outlet that is completely independent, like we both make music completely independently just for ourselves, not for anybody else. Having things that are completely separate is crucial so that you can still go back to your own creative self and find some difference at some point.

    Are there any specific ways that you think working on Wretched Flowers has changed you as a person, like your sense of self or identity?

    Johnny: I think one thing that it’s made me personally do is stop caring about the art world as much. It’s made me be able to walk out the back door of the art world and just leave it behind and just focus on Wretched and focus on making things that are more accessible for everyone to participate in, and look at making art in a whole different way than we were before.

    Did both of you have a strong sense of native plants before starting to do Wretched flowers?

    Loney: No.

    Because I would imagine it would change your way of looking at space if you develop this acuity toward foraging.

    Johnny: Yeah, we almost literally tripped over a watermelon growing in a parking lot in Brooklyn. And it was one of those things that opened our eyes up to be like, ‘Oh shit, there’s way more interesting things that are just happening around us. And we’re so focused just being in this studio, concentrating on one thing, that we just forgot that both of us love nature.’ I grew up on a ranch in Montana and [Loney] grew up going to farms and just loving that kind of thing. I hate to say, we tripped and fell and we’re like, ‘oh, whoa, what the hell we’ve been doing just thinking about these stupid objects when plants are just so interesting and so cool?’ We could never make something as interesting as that. So why not collaborate with nature instead of trying to push it away from us?’

    Loney: Yeah, there’s something called plant blindness, which is basically, we evolved to be able to scan our horizon really quickly and isolate moments of danger, like if there’s a lion running at us to eat us or whatever it is, our brains evolved to quickly gloss over plants. And so, it’s very easy to just look at the landscape and just be like, ‘oh, plants.’

    Johnny: Just blur.

    Loney: But I think once we started this project and started foraging and just going out and starting to identify different plants, an entire new world opened up to us because that blindness started to disappear. And we were able to really see our environment made up of many, many layers of species living together. Being able to see ecological systems has been really beneficial, not just in having a richer experience of our physical environment. But also, in learning ecology, you also learn how to see society as part of that ecology and understand that everything is a system, everything operates within a structure. There are no single individual bad apples, or good apples that are creating change. It’s communities, whether it’s communities of Queen Anne’s Lace that are competing with chicory that are collaborating with-

    Johnny: –what’s going on underground.

    Loney: –with mycelium under the soil versus whether it’s–

    Johnny: -an invasive rosebush trying to take over.

    Loney: So I think just having that perspective of, we are part of ecology, we are collaborators with our own environment, and taking that into our foraging practice too, and saying, ‘okay, it’s not just about cutting flowers and taking things home.

    Johnny: –take, take, take.

    Loney: It’s about looking at this community of species: how are we actors within this living community of plants and animals, and how do our actions contribute to their wellbeing or not? More specifically, we’ll often target invasive species before they go to seed so that their removal actually helps their little ecosystem, or we’ll harvest native beneficial plants after they’ve reproduced and gone to seed so that we’re not inhibiting their spread, things like that.

    Do you both believe in plant sentience?

    Loney: I think a trap that a lot of people fall into is trying to anthropomorphize other species. When we think of intelligence, we think of our own intelligence and we try to look for clues in other species to be like, ‘that looks like us. Therefore, it’s intelligent.’

    Johnny: [Plants have] a different type of intelligence that we don’t really understand.

    Loney: Since we moved here, we went from having the norm of a 9 to 5 kind of work schedule, weekends mean Saturday/Sunday, seven days in a week. And now we’re on a different kind of time scale that depends much more on weather, much more on what the plants are doing, and what the deer are doing and what all of these other species are doing, where they are in their life cycles, where they are in the season, what’s happening with the weather. And that structures our daily activities.

    And so, in that way, there is always a give and take. It’s not a communication where I’m like, ‘Hey, little plant. How was your night last night? Did you get a good night’s rest?’ It’s more like, ‘Oh, okay, you’re now at this stage of growth. This is what you might need from me.’ It’s more of that kind of conversation, but I do think that plants are able to have their own ways of feeling and thinking and understanding and knowing.

    Johnny: It’s just different.

    Loney: Yeah, it’s just different than we can know. And so, I think they can be sentient. It’s just, we need a new vocabulary for it, I think.

    What are some of the challenges of having a project like this that exists in a lot of different worlds – because you’re in the art world, doing installations, but then you’re in event design and weddings and you’re also selling commercial objects. How is it to run a business that’s navigating all these different spheres?

    Loney: Honestly, it makes no sense in business terms. I think what we’re realizing is that the business was an art experiment to start with, to see if we could just do what we were doing as artists, but find a new model where we weren’t relying on galleries and very wealthy collectors as our only way of supporting ourselves, which also limited who are audience and participants and collectors could be. So we wanted to expand it and make it much more accessible to people.. But I understand now why businesses are so niche. They only sell razors, right? They’re just really good at making razor blades. But for us, first and foremost, we’re artists. And not only are we artists, we’re artists that get kind of bored easily if we’re doing the same thing over and over. So for us, it’s just necessary that we have all of these different projects and directions because it’s what keeps us excited and what keeps us having fresh ideas. But not every aspect is making money –

    Johnny: –financially responsible.

    Loney: Yeah. It’s not really just a straightforward business in the sense that every action we take is towards the end of making profit. It’s very far from that. But at the same time, I think it’s helpful for us to talk about it as a business and also to destigmatize art being a business, because realistically, any artist that’s trying to be an artist is a business. And I almost feel like it’s taboo to talk about that sometimes or artists are looked down on for being–

    Johnny: Business people.

    But it also seems like there are some ways that you have an anticapitalist ethos baked into the project. I’m curious about the ethics of choosing to work with foraged materials and plant materials, it seems clear that’s part of it when you talk about accessibility.

    Johnny: Yeah. And I think also, the reason Wretched hasn’t grown into a bigger capitalist business is, we want to make sure that our ethics are correct when we are hiring people to help us, they’re getting paid reasonably and all those things. It’s tricky.

    Loney: Foraging allows us to not participate in the conventional flower industry, which is big agriculture. It’s similar to our food. I think a lot of people already understand the benefits of organic produce versus conventional, or locally grown produce versus grown overseas, or small farms versus big Ag, things like that. So our way of sort of not participating in that and making sure that all of the plant material is hyper local, is seasonal, is grown without pesticides, and is sustainably harvested, is by foraging. Being really intentional with what we forage, not only with which species do we forage, but what part of their life cycles do we forage them in? And something that we appreciate too about foraging is it’s not scalable in the sense that agriculture is. You cannot become a huge company when you’re relying on foraging. You have to stay within the balance that your environment allows.

    Johnny: And that’s an anticapitalist approach. It’s not being, ‘I’m going to just suck all these resources and make as much money as possible.’

    Loney: We’re seeing what is available to us and making the best out of that, and not searching for anything outside those limitations.

    What’s a bit of advice that you wish you could tell your younger self?

    Johnny: Art isn’t that important. It’s not changing the world.

    Loney: Yeah. I would tell myself to really pursue my interests, even if I didn’t think they fit in with the kind of story I was telling about myself. I always thought of myself as an artsy person, but I majored in sociology and environmental science in undergrad and felt like that was at odds with the lifestyle that I wanted for myself. And so, I kind of pursued my life as an artist and then, only much later on, realized that I could combine all of these interests into art.

    I think a lot of people when they’re starting off as artists, they only really think of more of the formal aspects of making art. Any interest that you have, even if it’s binge watching reality TV, that can become fodder for a really interesting art practice if you allow yourself to fully get nerdy about why you’re interested in the things you’re interested in and how to use your art to make those things interesting to other people.

    And then also, I think with what Johnny was saying is, art’s not that important. So many artists have an impulse to make art because they’re creative and they want to create. And your next step is, oh, then I want to be a professional artist in the art world, without fully understanding what the art world is. Most people finally get to the realization that the art world is, in a lot of ways, very toxic, very unjust, not conducive to actual creativity fundamentally. And then, it’s almost too late. You’re in too deep. So I don’t know how to turn that into advice exactly other than to say, just because you like making art and are creative, there may be ways to utilize that creativity that doesn’t involve entering the art world.

    Wretched Flowers Recommend:

    “Castles of Clay” (1978) documentary by directed Joan and Alan Root and narrated by Orson Welles.

    The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (2015) book by Anna Tsing

    Sinkhole Compilation video on Youtube

    Medieval Herbal Manuscripts

    “The Private Life of Plants” (1995) BBC tv show by David Attenborough

    This post was originally published on The Creative Independent.

  • Elon Musk sells nearly $7 billion worth of Tesla shares: document

    Musk sold some 7.9 million shares between August 5 and 9 according to filings published on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website

  • Filmmaker Miranda Bailey on not being afraid to pursue your ideas

    You’re an actor, a director, and a producer. How did the transition between different roles happen? Was it a smooth transition or did you become a filmmaker or a producer because you felt that there was something missing in the projects you were working on as an actor?

    It’s a little of everything. When I was eight years old, my dad took me to a film set where his friend was working with Walter Matthau, and I just knew that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I didn’t know what that meant, but as a young woman, it kind of only meant being an actress at that time. So, I assumed that I wanted to be an actress, so I took acting classes and did plays.

    In high school, I wrote, directed and starred in a play. Then, I went to a college to study acting. While I was there, I was also directing and writing. I remember the staff asking me to pick one position. There were a couple of guys that were actor/director combined, or writer/director combined, but they didn’t have to pick one. So, I essentially was like, “No, I’m not picking one. I’ll get enough credits to do everything, even if it has to be more than the guys that they’re dual majors were different.”

    After graduating I moved to LA, I was acting in a bunch of stuff that, while the parts might be good, I didn’t think the material was necessarily great. So, I decided I wanted to produce material that was good and maybe act in some of the smaller roles. Then I found this niche of producing because I have an organized personality. I also got pregnant, so that was what you could do if you still wanted to make movies. That’s how I became a producer.

    About directing, I guess I always was directing beforehand, but I didn’t really realize it until I did my first documentary, which was called Greenlit, but it was supposed to just be a little behind the scenes video. I had been doing the EPKs myself to save money. I was doing an EPK in the behind the scenes video of greening of the film The River Why. It was so disastrous that it was hilarious and was its own movie. I submitted it to SXSW and it got in and premiered there. When you’re a director premiering a movie, as opposed to a producer, you get treated a lot better. I decided that directing was something I was going to focus on because I like being treated better than just basically an assistant/babysitter as a producer.

    You have worked with so many films as a producer. You were the executive producer for Noah Baumbach’s, The Squid and the Whale. You worked with Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl, and also with Swiss Army Man. These films are all really different from one another. What motivates you to get involved with a project? How do you choose the projects you want to work with?

    It’s interesting because it is the filmmakers. There’s also James Gunn’s Super before he went on to Guardians of the Galaxy. As I look back now almost all of the directors that were not my business partner for a long time, those people went on to become really great directors on their own. The projects were picked because they had their own unique voice. I really admire that. You can really feel that when you read something fresh, or you meet someone in the room, you can really tell if they’re going to be able to bring it to the table. That was a skill that I had to hone. I had it there when I did The Squid and the Whale, but I was still young. I was still a girl at a time where I didn’t trust my own decisions. By the time I did Super, I was starting to trust my own decisions. When I did The Diary of a Teenage Girl, I realized that I should just trust myself and go with the movies that I like.

    What do you think helped you to trust more in yourself and follow your gut and your experience?

    I think, inherently, it’s growing up and aging. There’s that, but also, as women, we always used to try to over-prepare and always want to listen to the voice of the man who is producing with us. Whether it was a partner that I had or whoever. It’s like, “Oh well, they must know more than me because I’ve been taught in society that they do.”

    It really took The Diary of a Teenage Girl for me to remember and realize that I don’t need a man, and that I can make my own decisions, and that they can be good decisions. I think that’s about something like hitting your late thirties and then into your forties where you come into your own as a person, as a woman anyway. Over the last three years or four years, in particular, I felt not so alone as more and more women are helping and supporting each other. I know that not everyone was like that, it wasn’t a normal thing, and I think it’s getting more normal now. We’re now able to team up, which I like because that’s more of the kind of person I’ve always been.

    In this business it’s so important to build relationships and have a community and, again, being able to build a team, as you said. Did you have a mentor that helped you navigate the industry?

    No, I had the opposite. I had pushback from anyone I asked for help. That’s why I made a promise to myself that I would always encourage and help as many women as I could, and I would always share my contacts, and my relationships, and my agents, and my managers because I found the people that hoarded them or were afraid to lose them weren’t the kind of people I want to be.

    Why do you think people did not help you? Is this like a sense of competition, or that there are not so many opportunities?

    Yes, it is, but I think that we’ve evolved, maybe even as a society. We’re moving, not to get all woo-woo, but we’re moving into a different age now. I think it was a survivalist mentality, and if you’re an actor, which I was for the beginning, there’s only one job for the 40 actors that are in the room. No one wants to add their friends to their agents’ list of competitions. I don’t have that problem. I refer people to my agents all the time. I know that I’m unique, and I know that everyone else is unique, but not everyone knows that about themselves.

    It seems that you had to find your own voice that makes you unique, but also you had to work within the industry guidelines.

    Yeah. For example, Shonda Rhimes had a huge influence on my life. Before her work, actors, especially women, had to fit into a mold, a specific mold of a type. We were not allowed to be ourselves. We were not allowed to be individuals bringing our own personality to the characters. We had to fit into whatever these small-minded mindsets of what women were allowed to be were.

    Then, Shonda came in and she just broke through, and allowed actors and actresses particularly, of all races and sizes and ages to come in and have meaningful dramatic roles with character arcs. She, in my opinion, completely changed the way I think actors can realize their own uniqueness as an asset as opposed to, “Oh, I got to get skinnier, or I got to stay younger, or I got to be blonder, or I got to be taller,” or whatever.

    You created a website called the CherryPicks, which highlights film reviews and original stories from female-identifying and non-binary writers. This project started before Me Too, Time’s Up, and the Harvey Weinstein stories broke. This conversation about the importance of representation in front and behind the camera was already happening.

    Yes, those conversations were happening, but you were not able to really get much movement on it because, at the end of the day, the consumer who buys the tickets is the one who drives the market. If the consumer is listening to critics, then whatever the critics say they should spend their money on is what the studios are going to make. If the critics are overwhelmingly Caucasian males, then you can bet we’re going to be seeing a lot more films like Ford v Ferrari. That said, I love Ford v Ferrari, don’t get me wrong. But we’re going to be seeing a lot more of films like Top Gun and not too many films like The Farewell. I just had this realization that in order for real change to happen, then the consumers have to buy it. In order for them to buy it, then they have to be told that it’s worth their money and that we have to open up those gatekeepers, which are the critics, and have more women and more people of color, and particularly more women of color being critics.

    I noticed the guidelines at the time to be a critic and add up to the score of Rotten Tomatoes were very narrow. Most of the time, women or people of color, and particularly women of color, were not able to get those jobs at The New York Times or The LA Times and stuff like that. Also, the number of years they were required to have been writing for, some published in a professional paper, and they hadn’t opened up to blogs yet or more online publications. They hadn’t adapted themselves yet. So, I decided to start the CherryPicks to open up those guidelines for women and women of color and start adding in more online stuff.

    In these past few weeks, as a producer, where I’ve had a couple of productions that I was working on shutdown so we’ve been able to have these great Instagram live interviews on our CherryPicks account. We’re having actors or actresses giving us their favorite quarantine movies. It’s really growing at a pace that’s a bit overwhelming, but it’s a lot of fun, I have to say, working with a bunch of ladies and writing content and working with female writers and women of color, to write stories about the entertainment business. It’s really quite fun.

    What do you think are some obstacles that get in the way of creativity or being creative?

    Oh, that’s easy. Fear. I think we have natural instincts of being afraid of rejection. I recommend that it’s okay. See the fear, allow it to happen, but do not let it stop you because you have to be willing to fail and you have to be willing to suck and you have to be willing to take chances. In order to survive the obstacles and grow as a creative person, you have to be able to be okay that nothing is perfect because nothing is ever as good as it can be. Just let it go and make it. Everyone has an idea, but it’s the people who execute the ideas that grow and get the rewards.

    Have you ever abandoned a project? Is it okay to walk away from a situation or a project you’re not comfortable with?

    Of course, but just don’t do it because you’re too afraid. I’ve found that the projects that I’ve walked away from are related to the other personalities involved. Life is too short to work with people who are disrespectful or narcissistic.

    Now that everybody’s staying and working from home, have you been able to set some boundaries?

    I can’t. It’s impossible for me. I’m working, because being a mom is work as well, and being a wife is also work, so I’m always working, but I am enjoying the time I’m spending with my family. Just the fact that I get to sit here with one of my cats and see my kids going up and down. I have to say, me being at home since I normally travel so much, has just been lovely.

    Miranda Bailey Recommends:

    I got this new exercise thing called The Chirp, which is this little tiny like circle that you can roll your back out on. I found that, since I’m hunched over on my computer a lot, my back has been sore, and so I’ve been rolling it out on this thing called the Chirp and It’s very helpful.

    I’m rewatching Mad Men from the beginning, and I have to say it’s definitely different from the new Me Too movement point of view.

    Signing up for the CherryPicks newsletter because every Friday we send out a newsletter with what to see and what to skip that’s streaming, and also our live IG events that we’re having with lots of great TV stars right now.

    This post was originally published on The Creative Independent.

  • Cabinet approves 1.64L-crore plan to revive BSNL

    The government is also approving sovereign guarantee bond issuance for the cash-crunched BSNL to repay its bank loans

  • Rupee falls to all-time low of 80.05 against US dollar

    The rupee opened on a weaker note on Tuesday morning weighed down by outflows and high oil prices

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Label founder Caleb Braaten on keeping your creativity intact while running a business

    For a time, all your label’s releases shared a general visual template. It created a uniformity. That classic Sacred Bones triangle and ouroboros haven’t been on as many of your artists’ album covers lately. Can you talk about how that reflects a shift in creative philosophies among you and your artists?

    The classic Sacred Bones template was really important to the label in the very beginning. I still think it’s incredibly effective, and I always encourage people to use it, especially when it’s a new signing, because it signals to people that this is something to pay attention to, and that was the whole point when starting the label.

    Creating this template came from working at record stores for many years and seeing how well that kind of thing works. When you walk into a store and you see a record on the wall, on impulse, you’re like, … “Oh, I don’t know that one. I’ll check it out,” and that was the thinking behind the template. But it got to the point where many of our artists don’t need that anymore and can stand on their own. It’s now more of a choice than something we enforce.

    When you talk about it as a choice, it makes me wonder, have you ever heard from artists that including the logo and branding helps them with the creative aspects of putting together the artwork?

    I always try to encourage people to get creative with the template, to really try and make it part of the design. My favorites are the records that Institute designed with that in mind. Crystal Stilts did one that was really interesting. There’s a new Thou record coming out later this year that made the template part of the art. Those are the most successful versions of that idea.

    As a label head, you’re collaborating with everybody else who works at the label, and you’re collaborating with the artists, and you’ve talked about only signing artists that you personally connect with so that you’re basically working with friends. How do you know someone will be such a good collaborator that they become family? How do you build trust and safety with them?

    Just like any relationship, you can’t guarantee that things are going to go smoothly. Just like any relationship, if you treat it with love, kindness, and understanding, you can overcome some dark moments.

    We’re happy to be involved as much as the artist wants to be, but we like to step aside and let their process happen. Our involvement comes after the fact. It’s really about trying to take this thing that has been created and plant it and see it grow, and that’s where there needs to be a lot of trust from the artist. They really need to trust us. Being honest and open, and all of the things that make any relationship work, are equally important in a relationship with an artist.

    Some of what you said also made me think about the intersection between running a label as a business and as a creative endeavor. If you have any thoughts on that, I’d love to hear them.

    It is a business, too. I mean, it has to be. We have a staff who pays their rent every month, and…it’s important that we make money, because we live in a capitalist society and everyone needs to do that. But I think that if we are doing our jobs right, both as a label and an artist making good art we are able to make money. After doing this for 15 years, I think we’ve created enough of a community and gained the trust of music listeners to be successful if we’re doing our job right.

    You’ve previously said that most of the time, you do 50/50 splits with artists, and the goal is for artists to survive off their music without having other jobs. Can you talk about the value of being able to focus solely on one’s creative practice, both for you as a label head and for your musicians?

    Being able to do art full-time gives you a level of confidence that maybe isn’t always the case when you’re still hustling and working a bunch of different jobs. I think that confidence is such a huge part of any success. If you believe that something is amazing, then it’s likely that everyone else will.

    What does success mean to you?

    Success is being happy with what you’ve done or what you’ve made. Any other definition doesn’t make sense to me. There’s so much weight on making money, and I don’t think that’s a form of success.

    The biggest success for me is when we’re able to help an artist make a living. When an artist is able to make art full-time, to me, that’s success, for sure. That’s the goal, to help lift artists up and give them a platform to do what we believe they can do.

    Your work puts you close to art all the time, but I suppose you could argue that running a label is not itself art, or maybe you could argue that it is. I’m wondering where you fall on this.

    There are a lot of creative aspects [to running] a label. There’s the creative aspect of, what bands do you work with and how they interact with each other on an aesthetic level for the audience. I think there’s an art to that for sure. I think A&R is a real art. Marketing is an art. It’s a very creative process. It’s just a different form of creativity.

    I’m curious how you balance your creative needs as a label head with the need to make money.

    I have a lot of fun making merch, and all the branding stuff for the label is really fun for me, and that’s a big creative outlet for me personally. I really enjoy figuring out ways to make cool products for the records, interesting ways to present the music, and interesting events for bands to play. Things of that nature are creatively rewarding for me.

    Do you have any guiding philosophies behind that, beyond just the ouroboros and the triangle and the branding?

    It’s all about making sure that every little aspect of the finished record is good, really paying attention to the details, making sure the finish on the jacket itself is the right finish for the art, making sure the hype sticker looks good. All those things are really important.

    Reissues are a big part of the Sacred Bones story, and the fact that your reissues are primarily from filmmakers like David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, and John Carpenter—whom you could argue are an order of magnitude better-known than even the most prominent Sacred Bones musician—is interesting to me. I’m wondering how working with legends like these helps you refine or expand the creative practice of running the label.

    Those experiences have been super important to the growth of the label. Just being associated with artists of that magnitude carries a lot of weight. When people are thinking about working with us, sometimes, they go like, “Wow, David Lynch works with them. They must be pretty good.” I do think it’s really opened some doors for us, and it’s just been a dream for me. These are people that I grew up admiring.

    How have you applied the lessons you’ve learned from working alongside these established figures to working with smaller or newer artists, or even lesser-known veterans?

    Oftentimes, working with a newer artist can be more difficult than working with a seasoned person who has just done it. The seasoned person has done it all, and they know how it goes, and they’re not really fussed about much. As long as it’s getting done, everything is good, whereas with a newer artist, you have to be much more patient, because this is all brand new to them. Every little thing is new. It’s like anything else. You’re learning something for the first time, so it’s scary. You don’t know if you’re making the right decisions. Once you’ve done it a bunch of times, it’s easier.

    I would love to hear more about what it’s like to collaborate with somebody like Lynch or Jarmusch or John Carpenter with whom you can be very hands-off.

    For the most part, those guys do the work, they turn it in, and they’re very collaborative on certain aspects. John is very open when it comes to artwork. For the most part, we handle all that stuff in-house and present him with options, and he’s usually quite easy. He’s mostly just interested in making the music, whereas someone like David Lynch really wants to have his touch on everything. He does it all, and we’re there just to support and help him out in whatever way we can. With Sqürl and the Jarmusch projects, it’s somewhere in between. He’s super collaborative. There’s a new record in the works, and we’ve been suggesting the collaborators and producers.

    I feel like Sacred Bones is the only label that would put out an album by a baby still inside the womb. How does turning your love for music into a business you own and manage let you pursue unorthodox creative endeavors like that?

    That is absolutely a direct benefit of having run a record label and created a platform where people can just experiment. Some things work, and some things don’t work, and it’s okay. It’s cool to be in a position where you can just take chances and let your collaborators run a little wild.

    With musicians, if they put out an album people don’t like, it could end their career or at least slow down their momentum, but with a label, I suppose that’s not necessarily true.

    Definitely, and I think about that a lot, and I feel really grateful. As a label, you can take chances and put out things that don’t hit the way that you want them to, and you get more chances to do that. It’s much harder for artists to do that. Especially with the press machine and all of that, it can be hard.

    You have a cult audience, in a way. Do you find your audience discoursing about what you’re releasing in a way that people discourse about a musician’s latest album or latest single?

    I don’t know. In my dreams, I suppose, sure. There are people who…have their Reddit chats or whatever talking about it, but I’m not sure. I don’t search that out. I hope that people are able to see the amount of effort and love that we put into running the record label and get as excited about it as we do. That’s the dream.

    Caleb Braaten Recommend:

    Go to the Movies! It’s increasingly harder and harder to spend two hours (or so) with no distractions. So, see a movie. Get a snack. Don’t look at your phone. It’s wonderful.

    New Jack Swing. There’s a lot of 90s revivalists out there currently and I think they are reviving the wrong era. Okay so technically this is late 80’s – early 90’s… but it’s sounds so good right now. Listen to Bobby Brown’s “On Our Own” from the Ghostbusters II soundtrack.

    Go visit the trees. They have a lot of wisdom to share.

    Take a deep dive into something that isn’t your work.

    Remember, it’s just a joke.

    This post was originally published on The Creative Independent.

  • Two new IndiGo aircrafts to have Recaro Seat BL3710

    The low-cost airline will be the first to feature the bestselling economy class seat in the Indian sub-continent

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Ciao Roma, but it’s soggy pasta for the limping kangaroo

    The carrier has hiked fares and dropped travel agent commissions, as airport and online booking chaos – including flight delays and cancellations – erodes its reputation.

    This post was originally published on Michael West.

  • Highest 28% GST on luxury, sin goods to continue: Revenue Secy

    The GST Council has set up a Group of Ministers (GoM), under Karnataka CM Basavaraj Bommai, to suggest rationalisation in tax rates and more

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • If anybody objects to the mobile marriage of Telstra and TPG … Optus, “Yes!”

    Mobile phone towers
    The Labor government has yet to say how it’ll “fix” the NBN, while the other telco giants are variously courting and badgering the ACCC about the use of mobile spectrum. It’s the game that never ends in the land of Australian telecommunications, reports Kim Wingerei.

    This post was originally published on Michael West.

  • GST Council yet to decide on extending compensation

    A final decision is likely to be taken at the next meeting of the council in the first week of August

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • GST Council removes tax exemptions on some items

    States clamour for more revenue share

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Business tycoon Pallonji Mistry dies at 93

    Mistry is the largest individual shareholder in the Tata Group with a 18.4 per cent holding in the conglomerate

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Fiji’s new investment law leads to ‘confusion and risk’, say lawyers

    By Luke Nacei in Suva

    Foreign investors could be sent to jail in Fiji for breaking a new investment law, says the prominent Suva law firm Munro Leys.

    The company said the “vague and unsatisfactory” new Investment Act could create greater uncertainty for foreign investors.

    In a legal alert to its clients, Munro Leys lawyers also said aspects of the new law could do “more harm than help” and “poor legal drafting leaves us more confused and slightly alarmed”.

    It said serious investors relied on the laws of their target country to give them certainty and transparency.

    “The Investment Act, unfortunately, does the opposite. In place of transparency, there is significant potential for confusion and frustration,” the legal firm said.

    Munro Leys criticises some of the wording of the new law as “vague and almost impossible to legally pin down”.

    “If we don’t know who a ‘foreign investor’ is and when they are investing, it is impossible to know which rules apply,” the legal alert said.

    New regulations criticised
    The firm’s alert also criticised new regulations which required foreign investors to bring into Fiji their total investment amount within three months of “incorporation” and said an investor could be prosecuted for failing to do so.

    “The penalty for the offence, for an individual, is a fine not exceeding $10,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years or both. Bodies corporate can be fined up to $50,000.

    “To make matters worse, it’s not clear to whom this three-month rule applies. From a plain reading of the regulations, it applies only to those foreign investors investing in restrictive activities,” the legal advice said.

    “However, the authorities appear to have expressed the view that it applies to all foreign investors.

    “It is difficult to see the government prosecuting a foreign investor which does not bring in its money on time. But criminalising delay may create other issues for investors going to the legality of their investment and double down on the uncertainty that has already been created.”

    Criticising Section 7 of the Act, Munro Leys said that an investor was required to send an investment proposal to the government for consent to invest in certain “critical sectors” but it was not clear what those sectors were.

    “No one knows what the proposal should say, what criteria the minister will apply in his/her decision and how long the minister will take to approve it.

    Other problems
    “It seems that the government intends for regulations to be made to decide what sectors need ministerial approval. [But] with about a month to go before the new law comes into effect, there are no regulations.

    “The problems are not confined to new investors.

    “Existing investors, including those who complied with the old Foreign Investment Act, are not immune.

    “They may now need to apply for permission to make new investments. Some companies who were not previous “foreign investors” may find they are now in that category (and vice versa).”

    The Act will come into effect from August.

    Questions sent to Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation (FCEF) and Fiji Chamber of Commerce and Industry remained unanswered.

    Luke Nacei is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Rooing the day: Qantas passengers and crew taken for a ride by the board

    Qantas, Alan Joyce, Qantas directors
    The Qantas board is offering staff an $87m bribe as it slashes real wages and conditions. As ever, shareholders and Qantas fat cats get the cream, writes Michael Sainsbury.

    This post was originally published on Michael West.

  • Matariki falls during a quiet retail season – but NZ businesses should be wary of cashing in

    ANALYSIS: By Mike Lee, University of Auckland

    Aotearoa New Zealand will enjoy a new official public holiday on June 24, with the country marking Matariki — the start of the Māori New Year. But with it comes the temptation for businesses to use the day to drive sales.

    Some Māori have already expressed concern that businesses were positioning themselves to market Matariki as a shopping event.

    On the back of those concerns, Skye Kimura, chief executive of Māori cultural marketing and communications agency Tātou, launched a campaign called “Matariki is not for sale”.

    “No one wants to see a Matariki Big Mac,” she argued.

    But those trying to defend Matariki from mass commercialisation could be fighting a difficult battle.

    Few public holidays, either in New Zealand and elsewhere, have been immune to commercial interests. In the United States, for example, businesses are facing criticism for attempting to make money from Juneteenth, a holiday to celebrate the emancipation of slaves.

    Human tendency to mark the change
    One of the difficulties facing critics of the commercialisation of public holidays is that they may be fighting deep habits born out of capitalism and human nature.

    A lot of our special occasions are structured around various parts of the year and changes in the pattern of life. The earliest pagan rituals were about the change in seasons and to mark what was different from one period of life to the next.

    From a social and possibly evolutionary perspective, we are already primed to do something different from our day-to-day activities to mark the significant changes we see around us.

    When we have these seasonal celebrations, it doesn’t take much of a nudge for retailers to say, hey, people are looking to mark the change and shopping is a really good way to enact that transition between two phases — an “out with old, in with the new” message.

    Light display telling the story of Matariki.
    New Zealand’s new public holiday celebrates the New Year in the Māori lunar calendar. Image: Guo Lei/Getty Images

    Shopping to celebrate is what we do
    Each year is already punctuated with several cultural celebrations that have, over time, become shopping events. The most classic example is the commercialisation of Christmas.

    Even though there is the Christian tradition of the three wise men giving gifts at the birth of Christ, establishing the ritual of gift giving, the three months leading up to December 25 have become about sales and opportunities to spend.

    Easter, Valentine’s Day, Queen’s Birthday weekend and even Labour Day have all become sales events for retailers.

    Matariki also lands in a quiet time of the year for retail — right in the middle of winter and between the big shopping weekends of Queen’s Birthday and Labour Day.

    Potential for blowback against retailers
    But when businesses commercialise anything there is always the question of whether they have the legitimacy to do so, or whether they’re bastardising the event for commercial gain.

    There is the potential for significant blowback for businesses looking to cash in on Matariki. And they only need to look at Anzac Day as an example of commemoration that remains off limits to blatant commercialisation.

    Yes, it’s fine to sell poppies or to have a donation box at your point of sale. It’s even okay to advertise with a “thank you for your service” banner. But if a business tries obviously to make money on the back of Anzac Day, people start to get a little upset.

    That doesn’t mean businesses don’t try to get around public sentiment. Every year there is an element of “Anzac washing”, where companies try to make it look like they’re supportive of veterans, even if they have otherwise done nothing to support former and current military personnel.

    It is likely that how we handle Anzac Day will provide a baseline for critics assessing businesses that try to use Matariki as a way to drive sales.

    Businesses could be judged by whether or not they have Matariki sales, or whether there is some sort of attempt to “Matariki-wash” their other commercial offerings.

    Christmas themed gifts for sale.
    Christmas is the classic example of the commercialisation of cultural tradition. Image: Rizek Abdeljawad/Getty Images

    Businesses should tread carefully
    It is an area full of potential landmines, with little clear benefit at this stage.

    Not only is there the commercialisation of a public holiday, which some people find annoying already, but there’s also the debate about cultural appropriation versus cultural appreciation.

    Companies need to realise the potential for blowback and controversy is multiplied above other, more established public holidays. There are those who are annoyed about another public holiday adding labour costs for businesses. And there even are those objecting to the supposed “wokeness” of celebrating Matariki.

    At a bare minimum, then, businesses determined to use Matariki as part of their sales pitch need to understand what the celebration is really about and its significance within the community.

    It will be interesting to see if any are willing to risk the minefield for the sake of sales that come from an extra three-day weekend, or whether they’ll wait and see what happens to those who take the risk first.The Conversation

    Dr Mike Lee is associate professor of marketing, University of Auckland. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Ocean view property with carpark views? Exciting ASX float a tough sell, then there’s title

    Giuseppi Porcelli, Lakeba, Bricklet
    A Maserati-driving entrepreneur and his exciting new property play have reeled in Stockland and Mirvac, and a posse of media and investment bankers, but is all as it seems? Michael West checks out the proposal to float Bricklet on the sharemarket.

    This post was originally published on Michael West.

  • Young people go to European court to stop treaty that aids fossil fuel investors

    Five claimants aged 17-31 want their governments to exit the energy charter treaty, which compensates oil and gas firms

    Young victims of the climate crisis will on Tuesday launch legal action at Europe’s top human rights court against an energy treaty that protects fossil fuel investors.

    Five people, aged between 17 and 31, who have experienced devastating floods, forest fires and hurricanes are bringing a case to the European court of human rights, where they will argue that their governments’ membership of the little-known energy charter treaty (ECT) is a dangerous obstacle to action on the climate crisis. It is the first time that the Strasbourg court will be asked to consider the treaty, a secretive investor court system that enables fossil fuel companies to sue governments for lost profits.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The great Sydney University grant swindle

    Sydney University Business School
    Australia’s universities have been corporatised and compromised, and business schools are at the vanguard of academic capture. Jeanne Ryckmans investigates the case of the five-star travelling former professor. 

    This post was originally published on Michael West.

  • Minimum 10-15% increase in airfares must: SpiceJet CMD

    In his statement on Thursday, Ajay Singh said that the ATF prices have increased by more than 120 per cent since June 2021

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Switzerland bans most Vanuatu visa free entry over ‘golden threat’

    RNZ Pacific

    Switzerland will not allow visa-free entry for Vanuatu citizens whose passports were issued on or after May 25, 2015.

    The ban will stay in place until February 3, 2023.

    This follows a decision in March by the European Union’s Council to partially call off the visa waiver agreement with Vanuatu.

    The EU had concerns that Vanuatu’s investor citizenship programmes, known as “Golden passports”, is a threat to the EU countries.

    Switzerland’s Federal Department of Justice and Police, which works alongside the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration, stated that those with passports issued before May 25, 2015, are not affected by the decision.

    Both the EU and Swiss authorities said Vanuatu has been granting passports to foreigners without proper security clearance, and this may represent a risk to public order and internal security.

    In March, when the EU Council published its decision to suspend the visa-free travel agreement with Vanuatu, it highlighted that in many cases, authorities in Vanuatu had granted citizenship to applicants who were listed in Interpol databases.

    The council also claimed applications were quickly processed without security checks, and those who obtained Vanuatu golden passports were not obliged to be physically present in Vanuatu.

    The EU has also urged its member states operating golden passports to stop the practice, calling the schemes “objectionable ethically, legally and economically”.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The capitalisation and secrecy of the menstrual industry

    Cash Flow: The Businesses of Menstruation, by UK-based academic Dr Camilla Mørk Røstvik, delves into how much we know about the menstrual industry – its surprisingly patriarchal business model, how it has amplified menstrual taboos and adapted to change. BroadAgenda editor, Ginger Gorman, put some questions to Camilla. 

    In a nutshell, what is your book “Cash Flow” about?

    The menstrual product industry has played a large role in shaping the last hundred years of menstrual culture, from technological innovation to creative advertising, education in classrooms and as employers of thousands in factories around the world. How much do we know about this sector and how has it changed in later decades? What constitutes ‘the industry’, who works in it, and how is it adapting to the current menstrual equity movement?

    Cash Flow provides a new academic study of the menstrual corporate landscape that links its twentieth-century origins to the current ‘menstrual moment’. Drawing on a range of previously unexplored archival materials and interviews with industry insiders, each chapter examines one key company and brand: Saba in Norway, Essity in Sweden, Tambrands in the Soviet Union, Procter & Gamble in Britain and Europe, Kimberly-Clark in North America, and start-ups Clue and Thinx. By engaging with these corporate collections, the book highlights how the industry has survived as its consumers continually change.

    Cash Flow- The businesses of menstruation

    Cash Flow: The businesses of menstruation (cover image) 

    If we think back in history, periods have been subject to all kinds of strange myths and taboos around the globe (and in some cultures, this is still the case). Why do you think this is? How does feminism, patriarchy and capitalism fit in here?

    There are many complex reasons, including menstruation’s association with dirt, femininity, and reproductive cycles – all of which have been stigmatised in some cultures.

    Other scholars have written about this, recently Dr Josefin Petterson in Menstrual dirt – An exploration of contemporary menstrual hygiene practices in Sweden (2022).

    Since my book covers the industry, I can add that the Western corporations who produce menstrual products are really good at both capitalising on these myths and taboos (about menstruation being unclean and that menstrual blood should not be seen for instance), while also attempting to challenge other taboos (about buying menstrual products or talking about menstrual cups for instance).

    Recently I went looking for stock photos for an article about period poverty. And I was shocked at how sanitised and cliched the photos were. In the context of your book, how would you respond to this?

    For menstrual scholars and activists, illustrating our work has been challenging because of the continued taboo against showing menstrual visually, especially blood. Therefore, most work is illustrated by products – thus reinforcing the industry’s hold on the visual culture of this bodily event, and even acting as product placement.

    However, this is changing. I would recommend that everyone check out the open access free stock photo gallery Vulvani, a great NGO that has created free, creative and bold images of menstruation. (Editor’s note: Thanks Camilla for recommending this site! We got the feature image from there.)

    I use these in a lot of my work, alongside the existing archival material that exists from for example Wellcome Trust Collections and the Schlesinger Library at Harvard. And, of course, the work of artists like Judy Chicago, Bee Hughes, Jay Critchley and others challenge the visual gap with menstrual art!

    A classic example of the kind of stock image BroadAgenda editor Ginger found when she searched "menstruation." The stock image caption was listed as: "Hygienic white female pad." Source: Shutterstock

    A classic example of the kind of sanitised and unrealistic stock image BroadAgenda editor Ginger found when she searched under “menstruation.” The stock image caption was listed as: “Hygienic white female pad.” Source: Shutterstock

    How has the menstrual “industry” shaped the past hundred years of menstrual culture across society…everything from innovation, advertising, and even education in classrooms?

    The industry has changed menstrual culture by commercialising it from around 1920 onwards (more or less one hundred years, although earlier patents and products did exist). The shift from homemade solution to store-bought purchasing, however, is neither all good or a great evil.

    Many people were happy to start buying products and stop making/washing their own. It freed up time. For others, the additional cost – what we call period poverty today – was a challenge. Since we are talking about such a huge percentage of humanity, it’s difficult to generalise.

    In my book, I offer some lenses through which to see the industry through. Namely, as a Western-dominated system (the first key corporations all came from what we might consider the global north), that has subsequently exported both products and Western ideas about menstruation to the rest of the world.

    This includes the insistence of purchasing products, keeping bloodstains invisible, normalising euphemisms and advertising, and focus on negative aspects, for example premenstrual syndrome or PMS.

    Another lens is the industry as a massive employer throughout the world, historically mostly of women. As such we can see it as a core part of modern capitalism and labour history.

    A final lens to explore the industry with is its role as educator. The education it has given through the decades is not always of good quality, but they have at times stepped in when no-one else did. As such, the industry remains complicated and kept under surveillance of its own users: menstruators are both users, critics and moderators of this industry and its technologies.

    Dr Camilla Mørk Røstvik

    Dr Camilla Mørk Røstvik believes it’s important to examine the menstruation industry, in order to create more transparent systems for scholars and consumers. Picture: Supplied

    Things are currently changing. How? And how is the industry responding? 

    Menstrual issues are on the agenda due to the work of activists in many countries. They put the spotlight on period poverty, menstrual health, menstrual education, pain and disease related to the cycle, period positivity (in the words of Chella Quint) and menstrual rights.

    This has been amplified by the industry, which has both appropriated and spotlighted these messages in advertising since about 2015.

    But the industry also has a much longer history of trying to engage with menstrual activism, seen as far back as in the start of its work when core messaging revolved around liberating women from this ‘curse’ and inconvenience.

    From you view is this increased visibility of menstruation a move towards social equity, or simply and increased business opportunity to sell new products?

    Probably both, and historically this has also happened.

    You suggest the industry is secretive and unexamined. Please unpick this for us.

    Like any corporation that is still operating, the core brands in this space do not let independent scholars in (with some exceptions).

    This is not unique to this industry, but happens here too.

    It’s perhaps a bit more important in this industry, since there is a lack of trust between some consumers and brands. The TSS (toxic shock syndrome) issue lingers on, and the #MyAlwaysExperience debate a few years back is a reminder that it still happens. And also because the industry collectively fronts a message about being a good friend to its consumers.

    You forensically look at a number of specific menstrual brands. Why is it important to see this as a corporate business that makes money?

    Hopefully, it is part of creating a more transparent systems where scholars and consumers understand more about the industry. The industry’s own market research (paywalled and very expensive) documents every little detail about the consumer, so I think it’s only right that the consumer and scholar document the industry’s history.

    • Dr Camilla Mørk Røstvik is Lecturer in Modern & Contemporary Art History at Aberdeen. She specialises in 20th and 21st century visual culture, with a longstanding research interest in the history, cultures, and art of menstruation. Her interests include feminist art history and art projects, environmental humanities, medical humanities, feminist Science & Technology Studies, and Norwegian/Sámi art histories.

     

    Please note: The stock image at top came from Vulvani.

     

    The post The capitalisation and secrecy of the menstrual industry appeared first on BroadAgenda.

    This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.

  • Qantas Smiles: shareholders and executives grin, customers and staff grit their teeth

    Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce
    While Qantas services sank and 9,000 lost their jobs, chief executive Alan Joyce engineered the biggest transfer from the public money to a corporation in Australia’s history. This was the non-bailout bailout. Time for a rethink on corporate welfare, writes Michael West. 

    This post was originally published on Michael West.

  • RBI hikes key rate by 0.5 per cent as it tries to tame inflation

    This latest increase in the key rate follows a surprise 40-bps repo rate hike on May 4

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • RBI hikes policy repo rate by 50 bps, raises inflation forecast to 6.7 per cent

    This is the second hike in the policy repo rate since the being of the current financial year

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Bond yield spikes to 7.5 per cent for first time in three years

    The rate setting panel has begun its three deliberations on Monday with the outcome being announced on Wednesday

    This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.

  • Patchy Connections: NBN Co rivals on the rise, Elon Musk and Amazon too, as debt mounts

    The previous Government spent an additional $12 billion on the National Broadband Network (NBN) compared to the original plan, with little to show for it, while much of Australia still struggles with slow Internet connections.

    This post was originally published on Michael West.