Monday, February 12, 2007

Do elephants read a book sometimes ?

In Tokyo, the largest city in the world with 28 million inhabitants, there are many people having a very good income.
They like to shop and for this there are the Roppongi Hills in Tokyo, a shopping centre so exquisite, so luxurious, so extravagant, one must see it to believe it.
Forget about shopping in Paris, London, Munich and New York. The products are the same. Rolex watches. Gucci bags. Swarovski crystal. DeBeers diamonds. But the architectural environment, the super service, the perfectness of the experience, the high style, Roppongi Hills in Tokyo is the place to shop.
Bring a platinum credit card for the occasion because although it is the ultimate in shopping, it is also extremely expensive.

In this incredible situation we must mention that in Roppongi Hills is also a movie theatre and a museum.
The movie theatre is not having much allure, somewhere hidden in a corner, but the beautiful Mori Art Museum is on one of the highest floors of the 54-storey Mori Tower.
Obviously the name “Mori” comes from the real estate developer responsible for Roppongi Hills: Mori Minoru.

Although this Roppongi Hills is all very impressing it is not intimidating this observer.
There is more in this world than things to buy and to own.
From that position an observation was made.

In the movie theatre of Roppongi Hills one of the films showing was “An inconvenient truth” made by Davis Guggenheim featuring Al Gore.
This is a very important film because it makes clear how deep we are in trouble in our relationship of human beings with the environment.
At the same time, 54 floors higher, an exhibition was presented in the Mori Art Museum of the Canadian photographer Gregory Colbert.
A very good exhibition. Very professionally. High quality. But also very, very wrong.
Colbert is showing images of people with animals. He is not manipulating the images with a computer but obviously animal trainers were involved. It is all completely staged. Often ridiculously like a boy reading a book to an elephant. What it all makes so despicable is the suggestion these images bring us: that it all is more than OK between us and the animals.
It is a show which makes people feel wonderful when they get out but it is based on an untrue and false representation of reality.
Colbert, sponsored by Rolex, lullabies people to sleep and without any feelings of guilt they can continue on their shopping spree.
This in case they didn’t go and see “An inconvenient truth”.
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To learn more about “An inconvenient truth”, click on:
http://www.climatecrisis.net/

To get informed about the work of Gregory Colbert, click on:
http://www.ashesandsnow.org/

To learn more in case planning to shop at Roppongi Hills, click on:
http://www.roppongihills.com/en/

For a platinum credit card, click on
http://www.creditcards.com/credit-cards/chase-platinum-credit-card.php

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