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R VOLUME 15, ISSUE 11
NOVEMBER 7, 2013
Duke’s radio celebrates 30 years WXDU brings blast from the past to Coffeehouse, pg. 6
David Degner Photojournalist comes to Duke, pg. 4
M.I.A. Matangi album review, pg. 3
chelSea pieroni
ess recess editor’s recess note r ss recess
R recess editors Goddess of...
An artist wears his work in place of wounds. Here then is a glimpse of the sores of my generation. That’s the introduction to Patti Smith’s 1994 collection of poetry and prose. A lot has happened in the past week and a half. Lou reed passed away, and we wondered anxiously about the future of music, and art. Separately, on a personal level, I struggled with the sharp realization that life can—and will, in the most jarring, burning way possible—change in an instant. I let my roommate chop my hair off and did some other impulsive, life’stough-and-I’m-20 things. Mostly, I turned to Patti Smith. I turned to her words and voice: live performances, albums, interviews; her commencement speech for Pratt Institute’s class of 2010; her eulogies for robert Mapplethorpe, Lou reed, Virginia Woolf; her “advice to the young, or how to be a human being.” I’m working on a tell-all letter to her now. A couple of years ago, I was listening almost exclusively to Patti Smith’s staggering, unstoppable, punk-poetry piece “Babelogue.” I was 17, impressionable and stunned by her fierce rawness and openness. A few months later, I started
Lauren Feilich.....................................................................................raging (for now) Jamie Kessler.......................................................................................trashy dramas MC Bousquette.................................................beer-soaked synth and scratched vinyl Megan Rise................................................................................................mediocrity Kathy Zhou......................................................................................................all y’all
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Eliza Bray..............................................................................................all that glitters Minshu Deng...................................................................................................hanger
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2 | THURSDAY, novembeR 7, 2013
carrying a signed copy of “Just Kids” with me everywhere. I dreamed of the Chelsea Hotel and the life of an established artist, consisting only of a mattress, an enormous window, an easel and the love of my life. Smith is a force. She’s an artist to the bone. Yet her purity of intent, her lifeaffirming vulnerability and her faith in the people—in the young—are what keep us inspired. We think apprehensively about the future of art. Smith disagrees. It has never been easier to reach such a broad audience. We decide what we think is good in accordance with our tastes, and as we grow, we cultivate our own aesthetic. We self-publish novels, distribute virtual chapbooks and record our own songs. We respond to things, and if we’re lucky, we respond with a moment of creative impulse. It has never been easier to feel something so strongly, and so surely, that you have no choice but to express it and to share in that intention. It has also never been easier to feel so discouraged and lost by your work: that it isn’t a real work of art, you aren’t a real artist and besides, everyone recycles the same material and technique, everyone shares in the same trite influences and wisdoms. The world doesn’t need another mediocre poet, painter, dancer. It’s too exhausting to bring artistry to everything we do. We’ll never be good enough to afford to navigate today’s world as an artist, let alone do what Patti Smith did in the ‘70s. She herself said that New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. So we make the safe decision to focus ourselves toward something else, when really, we’ve only abandoned our cre-
ative impulses. Smith understands the frantic need to create, and she also understands those long periods of anxious futility. But again (and thank goodness, too), she disagreed. We’re all still figuring it out, and what power we actually have, but the people still do have the power more than ever. And I think right now, we’re going through this painful sort of adolescence. What do we do with…our world? Who are we? But it also makes it exciting. All the young people right now, the new generations, they’re pioneers in a new time. So, I say, stay strong. We think apprehensively about our own futures. We have a vision, or a dream of a vision, and we have good intentions. But there are distractions. There’s heartbreak. There’s change, and there will be times when we fade away or halt to an abrupt stop altogether. Yet we continue to create, for ourselves or for others, and we remain devoted to our work because we want to—because we need to. Through all aspects of our selves, and the most wrenching moments of our lives, our artistry beats with the same desperate, unyielding conviction. That’s heartening. That’s thrilling. And do you know what I found after several decades of life?...We achieve our goal. We become a level of ourselves. And then we want to go further, and we make new mistakes, and we have new hardships. But we prevail. We are human. We are alive. We have blood. Thank you for everything, Patti Smith. (Expect a letter, and maybe a drawing or two, soon.) —Kathy Zhou
The Chronicle
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as an intro to the rest of the album and M.I.A. herself: “I’m ice cream and you’re sorbet…they got guns but it points the wrong way.” ‘Y.A.L.A.’ looms as a peripherally spiritual dance hit bearing two meanings (“let’s go” in Arabic, but also M.I.A.’s response to Special To The chronicle ‘YOLO’—You Always Live Again). The rhythm-heavy cut seesaws M.I.A. between a techno-trumpet sample and Matangi an explosive bass that ignites on M.I.A.’s Interscope command (“Bombs go off when I enter the building”), and a stripped-down verse by Andrew Karim schematic leaves the heavy lifting to the caTHE CHrONICLE pable beat. Simple doesn’t mean shallow, Titled after M.I.A.’s birth name, “Matan- though, since Maya trickles in anti-war and gi” sheds thrashing neon light on what has pro-mommy shout outs that are as trite as been lacking in the hard-to-name avant- you might expect in a song like this, but garde pop sound M.I.A. and her producers her self-awareness snickers at your wouldhelped popularize. This record’s release be eye roll. comes after a three-year hiatus following ‘Warriors’ steadily builds from an om 2010’s “/\/\ /\ Y /\” and the “Vicki Leekx” mantra to an electronic autobiography, mixtape. It has been in the works for a except M.I.A. dodges the trope of slapwhile (remember when the ‘Bad Girls’ ping mellow rap beats onto sad memories video ruffled some anti-racist feathers on by making this cut about owning—as opthe internet?), with M.I.A. tweeting teasers posed to disavowing—her rise to success. and steadily releasing hits since Nov. 2011. For Maya, owning a rough past sounds like “I’m so tangy, people call me Matangi… elegant narrative shortcuts (“Guess I came Goddess of word, b****es I’mma keep from the sticks and moved to the bricks”) it bangin’.” The opening broadcast to foregrounded by a volatile percussion that M.I.A.’s ‘Bring the Noize,’ tells us what’s falls into the cut’s machinic exit. ‘Warriors’ up, starting with a jerky techno sample that is far from a sappily triumphant dance balrushes into a torrent of intricate verses. The lad; it’s more ‘this is what happened, now song is a battle among bouncy electronic let’s dance about it,’ and maybe a little drums that cradle Maya’s bouncier stanzas, ‘turn the volume down and I’ll break you,’ at least until the chorus drowns both in a but always steeped in a sense of play that detonation of skittering bass. dilutes abrasiveness. A combo of clappy percussion and reJulian Assange—of Wikileaks fame— frain samples supports M.I.A.’s chanting helped produce ‘atTENTion,’ a trance of over 40 country names at random in break from the record’s majority of heavier the title track’s first sequence. The chants cuts, by providing Maya with over 4,000 lead into a subdued manifesto that serves words containing “tent” for lyrical inspira-
THURSDAY, novembeR 7, 2013 | 3
Community, students, artists paint mural
MUSIC
JennY WilliaMS
Featured above is the mural funded by Duke’s Humanities Writ Large Grant.
by Anna Koelsch recently, collaborators painted a mural, depicting two hands reaching toward each other and a young Latino person, on the side of Torero’s Mexican restaurant in downtown Durham. The mural is phase two of a project called Two-Way Bridges, funded by Duke’s Humanities Writ Large grant. “This project specifically aims to bring Duke students and faculty and the local
community together through the art of mural painting, to highlight the contributions and importance of Latinos in our community, and to produce a piece of highly visible public art that can be enjoyed by all,” said Jenny Snead Williams, executive director of Duke’s program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South. Students, community members and visiting artists from the Dominican republic collaborated with local artist Cornelio Campos to create the mural.
tion. “He doesn’t get a writing credit,” she told the BBC, “but he gets a thank you.” While the song itself is nothing to write home about, how’s Julian Assange for a collab? The opening to ‘Come Walk With Me’ might have accompanied the end credits of a John Hughes film, but choppy electronic saxophone and drums interrupt the harmony to recapture M.I.A.’s club DNA. The
cut upholds its sonic and lyrical sweetness despite a controlled leakage of hype beats, offering another sugary intermission in between an onslaught of intense dance songs. “Matangi” is one of M.I.A.’s strongest records, bringing to her pseudo-genre what “Yeezus” brought to rap, only this time with less cocaine and a more manageable dosage of self-aggrandizement: she’s not God, just the Hindu goddess of music.
THE CHrONICLE
Duke University Chapel
Organ Recitals 2013-14 HERBERT BUFFINGTON Sunday, November 10, 2013 5:00 p.m. Duke Chapel Free admission Herbert Buffington (Trinity ‘80) returns
collEgE night EvEry thursday
to his alma mater as part of the “Alumni Series” in a recital on the Aeolian organ. Recognized for his ability as an improvisateur, he won Second Prize in
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the American Guild of Organists National Competition in Organ Improvisation in 2010. A recent review praised his improvisation as a “fascinating solo organ fantasy . . . a tour de force” (Kansas City Star). His program will offer works by Mendelssohn, Franck, Reger, and Tournemire—plus an improvisation on submitted themes.
Organ Recitals 2013-14
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The Chronicle
Photojournalist discusses M David Degner witnesses, documents societal turning points
On Nov. 13, Degner will discuss safety issues and mobility throughout the Middle East as part of the CIS’s artist talk series on globalization. by Sid Gopinath The Chronicle
As a photojournalist in Egypt during the Arab Spring revolutions, David Degner has photographed some of the most influential events of this century. One of the few photographers to have access to the Middle East—including Libya and Syria—during the revolutions, Degner photographed for several publications, from “Time” to “The Wall Street Journal.” He will be at Duke on Nov. 12 and 13 to give talks at the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) and the Center for International Studies (CIS). Despite the romantic-sounding nature of his last few years, Degner had a long journey to reach his current position. “It was a very circuitous route to get here,” Degner admitted. Graduating from Western Kentucky University with a double major in photojournalism and philosophy, he interned at the “St. Petersburg Times” after college. Using the money he saved from working, Degner packed his bags and went to China a few months before the Olympics to cover the Uyghur
people, the often-persecuted ethnic group of Chinese Muslims. “I was an absolute failure at being a journalist there,” Degner said. “I had no deadlines. I had complete freedom to talk to people whenever I wanted and to explore this huge region. I was eventually
kicked out a month before the Olympics, so that ended my China expedition.” As Degner describes it, his life seems to have consisted of doing small photography jobs until his next big “adventure.” After China, Degner worked as a wedding photographer, saving up enough money to
David Degner
“I’m trying to show something more than the normal violence and blood in the street,” Degner explained.
go to Egypt. Because he was working on a small budget, cost became very important in deciding where he went. In China, the cost of food was around $1 a day, allowing Degner to stay for a long period of time. “One of the reasons I came to Egypt is because it is so cheap
David Degner
to live here,” he said. “I came about six months before the revolution. I was just doing my thing for six months. Then, the revolution started and, all of a sudden, photographers were in demand.” Because Degner was truly in the right place at the right time, he was able to move around the
David Degner
“I came [to Egypt] about six months before the revolution. I was just doing my thing for six months. Then, the revolution started and, all of a sudden, photographers were in demand,” said Degner.
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THURSDAY, november 7, 2013 | 5
Middle Eastern revolutions region freely, capturing moments that no other photojournalist could. “I’m trying to show something more than the normal violence and blood in the street,” he explained. “Although there is plenty of that too in my portfolio, sadly.” Even though his work has been featured in several major publications, Degner is still a freelancer. With that sort of title, jobs can be hard to come by. “As a freelancer, there’s always the question of why someone hasn’t called me in the last week or if someone is going to call me within the next week,” he said. “You never actually know if you’re doing well or not. An assignment comes and goes or a personal project comes and goes, and you’re back to square one.” Alex Harris, professor of public policy and documentary studies at Duke, sees Degner’s position as a positive. “In most cases, he’s working as a freelancer. He may be assigned a subject, but no one can tell you how to approach a particular subject or take a photograph in the way he does,” said Harris. Fortunately for Duke, Degner’s career as a freelancer has allowed him the freedom
to give talks at the university. The key organizer in bringing Degner to Duke was Anna Kipervaser, a candidate for Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts. She met Degner while searching for a videographer to film in Cairo for her current project. “It’s been a really good working relationship,” Kipervaser said of Degner. “He just does a really good job and happens to be where he needs to be.” Kipervaser introduced her classmates and professor, Harris, to Degner’s work, citing him as an influence. Everyone was instantly enamored, according to Kipervaser. Harris and Kipervaser then contacted Degner to come to Duke and speak at a series of events, which sparked interest from more departments. The two main events that involve Degner are at CDS and CIS. On Nov. 12, Degner will be at CDS for a “pre-talk reception” to “show that he’s human,” as Kipervaser described. The talk will follow Degner’s progression as a photographer through the Arab Spring and the upheavals that followed. On Nov. 13, he will discuss safety issues and mobility throughout the Middle East as part of
the CIS’s artist talk series on globalization. “We do hope that, because the two events are different, all people will want to participate in both,” said Kipervaser. Indeed, Degner’s wealth of experience and unique viewpoint on life should allow for many stimulating conversations with Duke faculty and students. Harris hopes that Degner’s visit will bring a human face to the conflicts in the Middle East. “Bringing him here is one
way of humanizing the issues that he reports on,” Harris said. “Someone like David helps us to take the more dramatic images that are branded in our minds and come up with stories behind them.” Degner’s passion for his work was made clear when he explained his willingness to travel the world on a low budget and regularly put himself in dangerous situations. “What else are you going to do?” Degner asked. “Sit in an
office all day? Be a dentist? There are great dentists out there who love doing that, but I don’t think I would’ve been happy as a dentist. You’ve just got to line up all the pieces and hope it softens the fall a little!” Degner will speak at the Center for Documentary Studies on Tuesday, Nov. 12, and at the Center for International Studies on Wednesday, Nov. 13. For more details, visit http://cdsporch.org/ archives/20535.
David Degner
On Nov. 12, Degner will be at CDS for a talk that will follow Degner’s progression as a photographer through the Arab Spring and the upheavals that followed.
David Degner
“Bringing [Denger] here is one way of humanizing the issues that he reports on,” Public Policy and Documentary Studies professor Alex Harris said. “Someone like David helps us to take the more dramatic images that are branded in our minds and come up with stories behind them.”
6 | THURSDAY, novembeR 7, 2013
The Chronicle
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WXDU celebrates 30th anniversary by Elizabeth Djinis THE CHrONICLE
WXDU will celebrate its thirtieth anniversary Saturday night at the Duke Coffeehouse. The event is expected to turn out an audience of about 200 people, with 150 already registered online for tickets. A handful of tickets remain to be given out on air. Students coordinating the event worked to reunite bands from the Triangle area that have frequented the airwaves over WXDU’s lifetime. The concert aims to reflect the station’s combined community and student presence. Staff advisor Brian Crews noted that the celebration will most likely appeal mainly to those involved with the station’s past. “The thirtieth anniversary show probably resonates more with the community because a lot of the bands don’t exist anymore and weren’t in existence since students have been here,” Crews said. “Much like homecoming, it resonates with alumni and older people, but still there’s a student component… it’s a similar vibe.” General manager Jake Cunnane, a senior, noted that the station has been a witness to the many changes the Triangle music scene has experienced in the past thirty years. “In the nineties, Chapel Hill and this area was kind of a nexus for a certain kind of indie rock. Now we’ve got really big indies located in Durham,” Cunnane said. “So there’s punk, there’s more roots and psychedelic stuff, but the turnover is constant.” In addition to musical talent, Cunnane said the station has been instru-
mental in nurturing student initiative. He called the station an “educational institution,” noting that it embraces the chance to expose students to a world of which they may not otherwise be aware. Cunnane identified himself as a student who entered Duke with little understanding of the independent music scene. “When I first got involved, there were only a few undergrad DJs. Now I know people...it’s been awesome to watch that network spring up, especially because it includes community members. It’s not just like a little Duke bubble,” Cunnane said. This partnership between community and students is vital to WXDU’s mission, Crews said. This connection is evident
in Crews’s involvement as a DJ. He mentioned this opportunity as one of the reasons he came to the University––the hands-on involvement appealed to him. Events coordinator Sharrin Manor, a sophomore, said the selection of bands for Saturday’s event reflects the station’s collaborative environment. Many of the reunited bands are comprised of former DJs and Duke students who have returned to the Triangle area either to live or simply to attend this event. Manor added that the selection of the Coffeehouse as the venue is very deliberate. The eatery has served as a venue for many of the featured bands’ concerts, making it a musical homecoming of sorts.
“The last time Jet rink or Pine State played at the Duke Coffeehouse was 10 years ago, and they almost burned it down—they set a bathtub on fire,” Manor said. “The bands have notoriously been Coffeehouse bands.” Ultimately, said Cunnane, the event is about celebrating the station’s long history and involvement with the community. He hopes it will both expose students to something they may not have known about before and commemorate a station that has a lot of meaning to those who are aware or involved. “It’s an event that happens on campus, but it does have this really strong sense of history and this strong sense of connection to Durham,” Cunnane said.
chelSea pieroni
Loud Rock Music Director Stephen Conrad, pictured above, curates a show commemorating WXDU’s top 100 releases in 1992.
The Chronicle
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THURSDAY, november 7, 2013 | 7
Recess interviews designer Nick Jones
Q & A
by Jordyn Gracey The Chronicle
This Friday, Nov. 8, at noon in the Levine Science Research Center, the Computer Science department will host Nick Jones, a freelance user experience designer who creates websites and interfaces. Jones is also Art Director for the local advertiser, McKinney. Recess writer Jordyn Gracey spoke with Nick Jones at McKinney’s offices at the American Tobacco Campus. Recess: Since you will be speaking a little about Hollywood interactions [on Friday], can you talk about the ones that you’ve worked on?
Nick Jones: I lucked out. I went to school and got a certificate in 3-D animation. But I didn’t have any interest in moving to Los Angeles. The idea of doing 3-D animation anywhere else in 1999 or 2000—well, there were no jobs doing that, or at least I didn’t know of any. So I lucked out and got a job making websites for A-list celebrities [such as] John Travolta [and] Denzel Washington. There were hundreds we were slated to do around the time that the dot-com bubble burst. It was the early days of Flash. [The websites] were animated and they had music and were totally over the top and ridiculous. Having done those websites got me an interview at a lot of different places. I ended up working at an ad agency for a while, but I never stopped freelancing. Prometheus is when I really started to get into the interfaces that we are going to be using. They [wanted me to] do a website for this android [and] one of the parts of the website was for this device which is an iPad and I’m like, “OK, we’re 80 years in the future and we’ve got an android that looks like a human. Our technology is that advanced, yet we’re still going to be using iPads?” No. We’re not. We’re going to be using some crazy thing that none of us can even think of. Just getting a taste of that fantasy
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world where you can just make it up made me realize that in [2002] when “Minority Report” came out was the first time I’d ever seen these floating interfaces. R: It’s pretty canonical now. NJ: Yeah, it is. Every interface designer has watched that thing in slow motion and knows how that works. Somebody set a high bar for what an interface could be at some point in the future. We’ve all, as interface designers who were probably kids when that came out, thought, “Man, wouldn’t that be cool if that was real.” We all have this shared understanding of what the future is going to look like because we’ve seen it in the movies. I haven’t done any interfaces in movies, but it’s a place I want to start to play, especially because you’ve got all this data and all this cool stuff happening in almost real time on the web. Then you’ve got these interfaces [that] are all done in post-production. They’re all fake. They just get to dream up whatever they want. And that needs to keep happening or we’ll just be dealing with what’s possible. R: Given that technology and what people expect of their technology is evolving, how do you get to know your users and stay current with what their requirements are? NJ: By being a user, mostly. I spent most of my career creating things in a vacuum, designing things and then creating them in Flash, animating them and getting them to a point where I really liked [them] but not showing anybody. Now I stick things in front of people constantly as I work on them. I’ve tried to get away from the idea that there’s any magic to what it is I’m doing. Nothing needs to be hidden. It’s okay to show people something ugly and let them use it, and even let them own it a little bit. Because they’ll make a suggestion, and even if it’s something I’ve thought of before, when they see [the change in there] the next time, they own that with me. They’ve made a contribution. R: Do you want to do some shameless self-promotion and talk about McKinney and your work there? NJ: I came to McKinney in 2009. I was freelancing, just sort of sitting in my basement do-
Special To The chronicle
Nick Jones, pictured above, is a freelance user experience designer.
ing a lot of fun stuff with no interest in going into an advertising agency for sure. I came and visited, and they were building this digital team and their digital capability, and I felt like I could contribute there. I had a skill they didn’t have in house yet. The advertising world is funny. McKinney is sort of an anomaly. It’s not the slimy, manipulative advertising agency that you think of when you think of an ad man. I have learned how to work for a brand; not just to make something pretty, not to make something that’s fun to use, but to understand a brand and understand that what we need to do is tell their story. I’ve been a part of telling McKinney’s story— that’s been a big part of my role there. Much of the work I’ve done there hasn’t been client work. I’ve done McKinney’s website and [work for] Urban Ministries. [That’s] the homeless shelter in downtown Durham. We did an online game called “SPENT.” With everything that I’ve done, [even] stuff with movies, SPENT has been the one thing that I look at and say, “I’m going to be proud of that one forever.” We’re doing another project for [Urban] Ministries right now. I’m hopeful that when we launch it I’ll feel it has really helped real people who needed help. Not that it helped some rich guy get richer. I think that’s a big part of what my talk will be about; technology is capable of so much that we don’t use it for. How do we, as interface people and keepers of the data, make something meaningful to people?
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The Chronicle
Environment Film Fest. comes to Durham by Katie Fernelius The Chronicle
These films feature places around the world, from a film on elephants being introduced to the wild in Thailand to an explorer who climbs Mount Kenya.The environmental movement is often understood in terms of global proportions, from climate change to rising sea levels. However, in order for the environmental movement to be successful, it must communicate local impacts. On the heels of the Duke Arts Festival on Sustainability, this sentiment was put to action as Duke artists shared compelling personal stories about their relationship to the environment. Similarly, the Wild & Scenic Film Festival will unite the global and the local this Thursday, Nov. 8, at the Durham Arts Council by bringing personal stories about communities from around the world to the PSI Theater of Durham.
The festival is part of a larger campaign originating in Nevada City, California where filmmakers, activists, innovators and adventurers gather to discuss and galvanize environmental activism. From there, the festival tours the country in order to promote its message and make the films accessible to more audiences. Although the Wild & Scenic Film Festival is in its twelfth year nationally, this is only its third year in Durham. “It was first brought to Durham in 2011 when a group in the Nicholas School wanted to educate people about environmental issues and raise money for the Environmental Internship Fund,” said Taylor Tully, a masters student at the Nicholas School and the lead coordinator of the festival. “The festival continues to be fully volunteer-led and the fund has been able to provide support to students who do environmental advocacy work in not-for-profit organizations.” As in past years, the proceeds from the festival will
Special to the chronicle
The festival will feature four films: “Wild Things,” “Carbon for Wild,” “The Water Tower” and “Return to the Forest.”
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help fund student projects through the Environmental Internship Fund. This year, the festival has introduced a silent auction that will include items and services from local businesses. One of the main supporters of the festival includes Great Outdoor Provisions, which has not only sponsored the festival but has assisted in building it into a larger event in Durham. “Great Outdoor Provision Company is a locally owned shop that has enjoyed serving North Carolina customers for over 40 years and one of the most fun parts of our jobs is getting to learn about some of the meaningful organizations that exist in our backyard, like the Environmental Internship Fund from Duke’s Nicholas School for the Environment,” said Chad Pickens of Great Outdoor Provision Company. “This program has made a big difference in the lives of Duke grad students and the communities they serve, and we at Great Outdoor Provision Company wanted to help bring the critically acclaimed Wild and Scenic Film Festival to this area in order to support this program.” This year’s festival will feature four films: “Wild Things” from Daniel Hinerfeld, Molly O’Brien and Lisa Whiteman, “Carbon for Water” from Evan Ambramson and Carmen Elsa Lopez Abramson, “The Water Tower” from Pete McBridge and “Return to the Forest” from Patricia Sims and Michael Clark. “These films feature places around the world, from a film on elephants being introduced to the wild in Thailand to an explorer who climbs Mount Kenya in search of a water god to carnivores in North America,” said Tully. “It will be inspiring for Durham audiences to see environmental advocates having a profound effect throughout the world.” Tully shared a particularly moving story from last year in which a local Durham resident came up to the organizers of the festival and admitted that he now wanted to quit his job and change his life because the films inspired him to meaningfully lead a sustainable life and engage in environmental justice. “Science, especially environmental science, is largely driven by facts and numbers, but the personal aspect is often lost behind those numbers,” said Tully. “It is important to convey these environmental issues in arts and media, so people can actually see these concepts in relation to their own lives.” Pickens related a personal moment of epiphany from last year’s festival when he watched a profile of two Girl Scouts who had been working to remove palm oil from their organization’s cookies because the harvesting of it threatened orangutan habitats. As a result, Pickens’s purchasing habits were changed in regards to Girl Scout cookies. Stories like Pickens’s and Tully’s are a reminder of the ability of film to provoke thought and change. “Wild and Scenic films really do a great job of reminding folks about the power and majesty of nature, as well as the importance of community,” said Pickens. “While the settings for these films are scattered around the globe, the lessons learned are just as relevant here in our own community.” This Thursday, Nov. 8, the Duke community can attend the Wild & Scenic Film Festival at the Durham Arts Council in the PSI Theater from 5:30 p.m. until 10 p.m. Tickets are $10. For further information visit http://wildandscenic. wordpress.com/.