When we launched the ViewChange Online Film Contest we encouraged entries of all genres – and we got them! One of the most creative – and certainly the catchiest – entry was Peter Jansen’s “Trash is Cash,” which won the contest’s “Sustainability” award.

Peter Jansen has worked as art director and production designer in film and TV for 25 years. He now lives and works in Kenya, finding creative ways to combat poverty in the slums of Nairobi. There, Jansen discovered a group of motivated youth who use hip-hop music to call attention to an important issue in the city—recycling. Jansen writes in the Huffington Post about the youth group Walfame (the Kings) and the goal they are trying to achieve through hip-hop:

Jansen created the music video “Trash is Cash” to highlight the positive, transformative powers of the music and activism. Watch the talents of these hip-hop stars below:

Read Peter Jansen’s complete article in the Huffington Post.

This post covers a lot of territory: electronica, performance art and hip hop!
Lim Geong was the first person I absolutely knew I wanted to interview when I went to Taiwan, because his work is right up there with the best electronica, and it always retains a strong Asian flavor.  His story is unusual too, in that he started out with huge success as a pop singing star, and rejected that role to, as he says, "go from the front of the stage to behind the scenes."  He has since scored many movies, and even appeared as an actor in quite a few. To me, he's practically a metaphor for what Taiwan has gone through: he expressed the freedom from martial law when he sang his big 1990 hit "Marching Forward" and then followed his star reaching out to the rest of Asia and the world, with music of the digital age.

On the other hand, the gentle acoustic venture "A Moving Sound" is the baby of Scott Prairie and Yun-Ya Hsieh, aka Mia. Mia studied interdisciplinary arts with Meredith Monk in the USA where she met Scott, and together they have  brought the rather Western concept of performance art to the island, bringing dance, theater, music and plenty of audience participation together.

Hip-hop is of course no stranger to Taiwan, but Kou Chou Ching are the pre-eminent conscious rap band there. I first learned about them through their wonderful video "Black Heart", a computer-generated animation based on Chinese puppet theater (still a high art in Taiwan) and flavored with both classical and traditional sounds. But the song is an indictment of amok capitalism that creates the black-hearted businessman, who in turn sends poisonous products into the marketplace. Kou Chou Ching is gradually tuning in Taiwanese youth to the need for more engagement with their world.