Art, Photos and Panels Tonight
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
Among other things, the Colombo Art Biennale starts this week. They’ve converted the warehouse near Park Street Mews to galleries and they’re showing stuff from Jagath Weerasinghe, Alex Stewart, and others, including stuff all around town. Tonight, Thursday it is, Dominic Sansoni is showing a series of photos from Udappu. If you recall, that’s the place with firewalking where I burnt my feet. I got some decent photos just hanging around, but he was right in the middle of the action and has some great ones. I highly recommend it, it’s at Barefoot tonight at 7:30, and I’d assume it starts on time.
Perera Hussein publishers, er, publish this list of cultural happenings about town. I’ve been meaning to highlight it but felt the moment was a bit inopportune what with the war. I say not that the war is over, there’s still an incredible amount of work to do, but life also does need to return to normal. The scene in Colombo has died down a lot but it’s slowly happening again. There are a few new restaurants, most notably Harpo’s Park Street Mews. There are also ongoing events as listed in this PDF. I personally am very interested on the lecture on Ravana and Ramayana in Sri Lanka.
Walk into a place and nobody even smile at you. Unless you know somebody. Walk into anywhere as a generic customer and people behind the counter just ignore you. I’m in Laugfs in a sarong, trying to get some razors. Nobody there and three people at the registers, but nobody even looks up. I need to open the case but the employees just continue their conversation, forcing me to interrupt. Looking peeved, guy unlocks the case and goes back to his chat. Same thing everywhere. Service staff either follows you around like a thief or ignores you like a leper.
Life in Colombo goes on admists bombs and assorted detruitis, and that’s a good thing. I certainly feel shit about all the displaced in Muttur and the families of the LTTE terror victims but Sri Lanka is a fun place and I don’t think it’s right to let that go. There was a year before the checkpoints and all where everything was just daisies and you could see how fun the town was. There is literally something happening every night and my vow not to drink on weekdays has been changed to ‘don’t drink on Mondays’. Even that is tough, err. Anyways, I’ve been taking more photos than writing so here are a few things I went to and the photos. It’s also a list of the upcoming stuff of which I know.
One small group has finally produced something fashionable out of the tsunami. A cooperative of tsunami-affected seamstresses in Polhena made the MonkBag – now launched in Monaco, London, and Los Angeles and available locally at Barefoot and the Lighthouse Hotel. All the profits go back to the women’s pockets, and the bag is raising awareness of a creative Sri Lanka. One of the groups behind this production is Suba Ude (subaud.blogspot.com), which operates in Matara, Ampara, Kalutara, Colombo, LA and cyberspace. They ‘provide physical, creative and emotional projects for displaced persons living in welfare camps in Sri Lanka. We focus on psychosocial needs beyond food, shelter and medicine.’ I spoke with Stephanie Bleyer about Suba Ude and what’s going on in the field.
After 9-11, Dubya encouraged Americans to go shopping. In the same way, it’s about time for Sri Lankans to take a vacation. Tourism took a serious hit but, hotels big and small bounced back fast. They are ready for tourists so, um, go. Now, more than ever, tourism helps the local people who are trying to stand on their own two feet. The people that took it right in the paycheck are the hotel staff – waiters, cooks, etc. At most Sri Lankan hotels the 10% service charge you pay is divided among the staff. This often makes up more than half of their income. No guests, no check. The situation is even worse for small operators. To quote Maya Zen (savethatanswer.blogspot.com) – “Even the auto driver who drove me back home yesterday was a victim of the tsunami, his tourist business was washed away, uninsured” These people don’t need bottled water or tents, they just need to get back to work…
Revised: This is an article on IT Education for Deshan’s Student Times. I’m not sure what his policy is on pre-press posting, but this is read by like 4 Sri Lankans I’m not related to, probably Harsha, Nalaka, and Chanuka. Plus I think that online content is a better advertiser for offline stuff than anything else. But not really my decision. As a carrot I will ceremonially beat down www.srilanka.com for plagiarizing D’s shit. He can be assured that Chanuka, Nalaka, and Harsha will never go there again. The article is about some homework kids in IT Classes can do on the Net to self-teach.
