GEt a badge

Everyone who comes on the ecological pilgrimage gets a badge, although I haven’t designed them yet, expect them to look like one of these ace badges from the jacket of Mr. Tim Olden. Thanks Tim.

Jack Taylor for two

It needs a lot of work before it can ride to the lake district and back, but its mine now! I pick up this ebay buy on saturday from Coventry. Notice the rear downtube and how it bends to make the wheelbase a bit tighter…nice. I’ve been perving on Jack Taylor tandems all week… Tandem Delight!

*Jack Taylor Cycles was the framebuilding collaboration between the 3 Taylor brothers, Jack, Norman and Ken of Stockton-On-Tees, England. A range of frames for touring and racing was produced under the marque from 1936-2001

An Ecological Pilgrimage: To leave in August!

I am doing an ecological pilgrimage through Britain via bicycle, visiting various sites and individuals affecting the environment. During a three-week 1000+  mile ride around the UK, participants will be invited to join me on any leg of the journey to reflect upon performance and ritual as an environmental act - each participant receives a badge for every leg completed! At each location, myself and participants will ask the people involved in the ecological site to tell a story about the environment, and participants will be encouraged to tell stories and myths of their own.

Email me at Stevenlevon(at)gmail(dot)com if you’d like to participate in some way.

At Orthodox Conference in Amiens

The bookstore sold various and sundry Orthodox things. The conference was centered around ecology and how the environment is essential to religious/spiritual life. I filmed and interviewed various theologians, philosophers and lay people. Not speaking French was a problem. See some photos on Flickr. Films will come soon.

Power of 8

A poster for The Power of 8 to put in cafe’s and low key places…it won’t be my crap handwriting though.

The Power of 8

This is part of the graphics err branding… I’m developing for Anab Jain’s collaborative project about the future. The envelope delivered will be to neighbours and sent around to bring people onto the project. If you want to know more go to http://powerof8.org.uk/. Get involved.

Technocracy

“Curious as the contention may seem, it is not arbitrary to relate the genesis of technocracy to theology, since the development of technical skill in the West is not just a phenomenon of rapid scientific progress, but at the same time the concrete expression of a particular attitude to the world: an attitude which sums up all stages of the religious development of Western man” (Man and the Environment, Keselopoulos)

Ideas relating to land use and abuse can be traced to protestant roots (but I think this is just one worldview to blame). Keselopoulos also says that the environmental problem is not just a scientific one, but a spiritual one. He quotes, St Maximus the Confessor who “maintained that the whole world, comprising visible and invisible, is a man; and again that man, compose of soul and body , is a world…”  This idea of Macroanthropos is not dissimilar to Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis that the world is an organism. Maximus says that this organism is actually an image of man/god.

The Most Refexive Work Ever (DVD Is OUT!)

I didn’t know what a reflexive documentary was when I was making this. Now I know it’s something that I won’t do every year.

Questioning My Priest (one of them)

Religion at its heart deals with the the real and the irreal not unlike art, and it has the same pathways as art including ritual, transcendence, community, and strange hats. Who is imitating who, and does it matter? The term ‘irreal’ smacks of Western philosophical concepts that are foreign to Orthodox tradition. In Orthodox teaching, only God is absolutely real. ‘Religion’ and ‘art’ stem from the same instinct that expresses the ultimate reality through symbols. This instinct is born in the soul, where the action of the spirit, or nous, that speaks with God is manifested on a personal level. Art does so subjectively, ‘religion’ (that is, faith and theology, its articulated shape) objectively. 

I’m back on the Internet!

An email from to bluehost:

“Because of the problem that your account caused we are unable to restore your account.  Your account is scheduled to be deleted April 9, 2009.” What did I do?!