September 2008
"Sustainable" Art Show in RI
Posted September 30, 2008 by meredith_stern in Posters
The print show, "Sustainable" will hang in the AS220 gallery in Providence Rhode Island (115 Empire Street in downtown) for the month of November. The show will consist of prints by the Just Seeds/ Visual Resistance Cooperative and more than thirty Rhode Island artists who responded to an open call. Check out information online at as220.org.
The internet makes it so easy to have an opinion
Posted September 29, 2008 by k_c_
I'm still impressed with how useful the internet is for parodies of every situation. Here's one I learned about today Buy my shitpile
Guillermo Gómez-Peña (and me)
Posted September 29, 2008 by bec_young in Events
This weekend, writer and performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña and his troupe were in Detroit. I joined perhaps fifty other people for a fairly intimate interactive performance of Gómez-Peña's Mapa Corpo at the Detroit Institute of Arts. This is the the first time I've been to one of his performances, but I'm told that it's par for the course that the event was visual overwhelming and emotionally challenging. I was forewarned by one of the maintenance guys at the museum that the Mapa Corpo was a naked woman's body stuck with acupuncture needles with many, many tiny flags of the U.S. and Britain (and one or two of Israel), which the audience was invited to help pull out at the end. He wasn't too impressed, but most of the audience seemed entranced by the visual and mental connections. The performance also involved video, music, poetry, and other simulations, rituals, and installations on the subjects of identity, power, and immigration. The event had the feeling of a dangerous but necessary ritual that we all somehow survived, together. This fall, Gómez-Peña's troup will be in San Francisco, Albequerque, Toronto, Alaska, and Arizona. Check his website for more specific information.
On a totally different note, I've just returned from a voyage to Buenos Aires to seek information for a project that I hope to do next year about art collectives in Argentina. Especially considering I was only there for two weeks, I learned about an amazing amount of artistic, radical, and collective projects, and had the opportunity to meet with people from a few of those projects. I'll be writing about some of the projects that I learned about in the coming weeks. Here I am in the Museo Municipal de Arte Hispanoamericano before the guard yelled at someone else for taking pictures inside the museum.
Naomi Klein on the Greatest American Economic Swindle
Posted September 27, 2008 by k_c_ in In the News
Check out the entries and resources on Naomi Klein's website The Shock Doctrine to put some of the recent economic issues in perspective. There's a bunch of good pieces & links under Disaster Capitalism in Action.
It gets more interesting everyday.
More personally, I left last Thursday's demonstration without the usual malaise and disenfranchisement of NYC protest. A couple hundred folks gathered with a variety of slogans on hand-made signs, in supposedly one of over 200 demonstrations in a dozen states.
The crowd shouted "You Broke it, You Bought it" and "The Bailout is Bullshit" among other chants expressing the rage against such a backwards policy. Some photos of the protest can be seen on NYC Indymedia, and on LetsgetridofNY, and Alternet, or on video at NY Mag among many other places online.
Miss Rockaway Benefit in NYC Tonight
Posted September 26, 2008 by k_c_ in Events
Tonight the Miss Rockaway Armada is having a benefit show in Brooklyn.
Why?-Since the termination of the Miss Rockaway Armada in St. Louis last summer, former crew members have been collaborating on new creative projects that have grown out of the energy of the Mississippi river. After an installation at MassMOCA last April, the crew was invited to create an installation in Amsterdam for Program Heartland. Now we need the cash to get there and buy materials!
Get out and listen to:
DARK DARK DARK
The Gamut
Vampire Hands
U.S. Girls
Trillions of Gallons of Gas
Brownbird Rudy Relic
Tunes upstairs to shake the rest of you: DJ DIRTY FINGER;
live silkscreening to make you look good while doing it;
cheap tacos & beer.[SURREAL ESTATE]
15 Thames St. | East Williamsburg, Brooklyn
L-Morgan | 9pm |$5-$7 Suggested | All Ages
Groundswell Panel Discussion at Brooklyn Museum
Posted September 25, 2008 by k_c_ in Events
The mural group that VR folks worked with last summer on the "Not One More Death"
mural, will be holding a handful of panels and events, starting this weekend, at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Groundswell Community Mural Project Voices Her'd
Saturday, September 27, 2-4 p.m.
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
4th Floor, Brooklyn Museum of Art
200 Eastern Parkway
Young women from the Voices Her'd program, part of Groundswell Community Mural Project, speak about the mural they created in Brooklyn this past summer that addresses the life of women in the military.
As the war in Iraq continues in its fifth year, youth in NYC schools continue to come under pressure to enlist by military recruiters. To address the pressure that teens face and to get the facts out about life for women in the military, a group of young Brooklyn women, who are part of Groundswell's Voices Her'd program, interviewed veterans, researched the statistics and this summer created a powerful work of public art. The three-story mural, entitled 'Informed, Empowered', is located on 23rd Street and 3rd Ave in Sunset Park and is visible from the BQE.
Youth muralist Elizabeth Maroney states that, "Our mural is a creative tool that we are using to capture the attention of New Yorkers, and is intended to present that women and teens have a variety of options for their future aside from joining the military." Elizabeth will present on the panel at the Brooklyn Museum along with fellow team members Erica Gil, Sophia Dang and artist Katie Yamasaki. Completed in August, 'Informed, Empowered' received extensive coverage in the New York Times and features in the Village Voice, Park Slope Courier and on New York 1 News.
Groundswell is a New York based nonprofit organization dedicated to using art as a tool for social change by bringing together professional artists, community organizations, and youth to collaboratively create over 100 public art projects in communities across NYC. Over the last 12 years Groundswell has developed complex partnerships with community-based and educational institutions, serving thousands of youth and community members with whom we have worked to visually transform New York's urban landscape.
Protest Wall Street, 9/25
Posted September 24, 2008 by k_c_ in Events
When poor and homeless people ask the government for help, they're
told that low-income housing and living wage jobs are not a government
priority because this country is built on "personal responsibility"
and people need to "make better decisions."When giant banking corporations are on the brink of total collapse
because they have made a systematic series of bad business decisions -
because they can - the government gives them a trillion dollars. The
Administration even wants to include multi-million dollar "golden
parachutes" for the corporate executives who MADE those bad decisions.When a homeless mother and her children seek shelter from the City and
are they turned away because "they have other housing resources" but
have to sleep in the emergency room at Lincoln Hospital because they
really don't, the City and the media paint her as abusing the system
and their tough stance is spun as encouraging self-sufficiency.Where is the "personal responsibility" for the rich? Why is democracy
and freedom confused with the free market when we talk about the poor
but the rich get State sponsored corporate bail outs and tax breaks?Why is it that when WE demand health care, education, housing, and
real jobs, the government is too cash-strapped to help out - but
they've got trillions of dollars for unjust wars and corporate
communism?On Thursday, September 25, at 4pm, Picture the Homeless will be
joining a giant protest in the Financial District alongside what we
hope to be the thousands of you reading this, against the trillion
dollar buyout of the banking barons. Meet us in the plaza at the
southern end of Bowling Green Park, which is the small triangular park
that has the Wall Street bull at the northern tip.
When: 4pm – ? Thursday, September 25.
Where: Southern end of Bowling Green Park, in the plaza area
What to bring: Banners, noisemakers, signs, leaflets, etc.
Why: To say we won't pay for the Wall Street bailout
Who: Everyone
Hope to see you there!
http://september252008.wordpress.com/
Vote No Bailout!
Posted September 23, 2008 by k_c_ in In the News
If you like to harass elected officials or think that they may represent your interests get over to Vote No Bailout! and send your representative a message!
Justseeds at this Weekends Baltimore Book Festival
Posted September 23, 2008 by k_c_ in Events
Justseeds members Eric Ruin and Kevin Caplicki will be tabling at the Baltimore Book Festival, this weekend.
September 26-28, 2008
11-7pm
Mount Vernon Place
600 Block N Charles St
Baltimore, MD
There is an incredible schedule of events in every category of literature. On top of a ton of authors like Dr. Cornel West, Naomi Wolf, Amy Goodman, and Seth Tobocman, our own Eric Ruin will be presenting!
Erik Ruin, Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority
Sept 27, 2-3pm
Radical Bookfair PavilionThere has always been a close relationship between aesthetics and politics in anti-authoritarian social movements. And those movements have in turn influenced many of the last century's most important art movements, including cubism, Dada, post-impressionism, abstract expressionism, surrealism, Fluxus, Situationism, and punk. Erik Ruin, author, artist, and member of the JustSeeds collective discusses the relationship between aesthetics and politics, with examples drawn from France, Indonesia, Chicago, Denmark, and even Baltimore!
There's also a handful of other stuff happening in the Radical Bookfair Pavilion, check the schedule for info!
What happened here...
Posted September 21, 2008 by molly_fair in Inspiration
In recent years many of the projects I've worked on have involved the creation of signs, and in the case of the ghost bike project- signs and a corresponding map to mark the location of each ghost bike and the person it honors. I was deeply affected a few years ago when I learned of a rape map that was created by a woman in 2004 in response to several rapes in the Williamsburg and Greenpoint sections of Brooklyn. The project evolved into NYC SafeStreets, which includes a map of locations where the rapes had taken place, and also provides a resource section, along with a list of businesses that have agreed to be safe havens and provide assistance if one is in danger, indicated by a poster with a yellow whistle which is taped to the window. Other resources such as a list of car services and police precint locations, sexual assault hotlines, and know-your-rights info.
A while back I started making stencils of the famous image of Janet Leigh screaming in the shower in the movie Psycho. I was drawn to this image for many reasons- one being that it has a lot of notoriety in pop culture as a scene where you can't really turn your head away from the violence- but at the same time it is really exaggerated and undermines the reality that assault against women whether harassment on the street by strangers, or violence done by someone you know is commonplace and normalized.
One night I spraypainted the stencil in Bushwick with Kristine. It was kind of a girl's night out. Walking around in the dark doing illegal activity has it's own danger involved, but it's always in the back of my mind that I am a target for violence. I never intended to spraypaint the stencil in specific locations where known instances of sexual assault had occurred, but we were walking around in a pretty desolate area with no safe places for cover. When I walked back to the spots I'd gone to in the daylight I found the image expressed a message that was lurking around in my subconscious- I was marking my territory and I wanted to travel these streets safely. I am always on guard but I am not helpless.
The other day my friend sent me this link from ANIMAL- it's a sign that was put up in Bushwick.
A woman was raped by a stranger on this block. Please protect your friends, lover, sister, daughter, mother, grandmother, niece, cousin, neighbor, the woman hear call for help late one night. 1 in 6 women in the his country have been victims of rape or attempted rape. This needs to stop happening
TIm Wise on Privilege
Posted September 19, 2008 by k_c_ in Inspiration
This is your nation on White Privilege
By Tim Wise
For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll “kick their fuckin' ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.
White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”
White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.
White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.
White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.
White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.
White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”
To read the entire piece and comments go to The Red Room
Making an impression on 55,000sq ft in 24hours
Posted September 19, 2008 by k_c_ in Justseeds/Member Projects
Chris Stain was asked to provide a backdrop for Creative Time's upcoming convergence of "Democracy in America" at the Park Ave Armory in NYC. Chris asked me to help him build a 40'x16' wall in the the largest unobstructed indoor space in NYC. With the help of another friend, Nick, we belted out the wall and mural that hopefully makes an impression on everyone that comes. Check it out at the opening
Sunday, Sept 21, 2-10pm
643 Park Ave, btn 66th/67th St
or at the scheduled programs during the week.
Also dont forget to head over to Exit Art Saturday, Sept 20th, for Josh and Dara's Sign's of Change exhibit.
Dennis Mcnett Show opens Friday Sept 19th
Posted September 18, 2008 by k_c_ in Events
Dennis Mcnett's exhibit "The Old Horned Deity" will open this
Friday, Sept 19th, 7pm
at The Stanton Chapter
176 Stanton St. NYC
Dennis is a really incredible printmaker and an all around nice guy. I'll be upstate setting up our Justseeds print show, so I won't be at the opening. I definitely intend to check it out!
I Never Get Any Credit
Posted September 18, 2008 by roger_peet in In the News
Well, the economic collapse that we've all been talking about for years is finally upon us. Sheaves of massive investment banks are falling before the scythe of insolvency, unfulfilled debt obligations, and obscure financial practices. It's sort of stunning to watch.
At the root of the current crisis is credit. The population of the USA spent a goodly portion of the 1990's taking out loans to buy houses, and then putting those houses up as collateral to take out more loans to spend on gimcracks and geegaws. Americans, as is their wont, overspent themselves and ended up in trouble, unable to meet the loan repayment schedules on any of the mortgages they held on their various properties and toys etcetera. Nothing so dramatic in and of itself.
The problem was that cabals of financiers, in the rarefied atmosphere of pure capitalism, had done strange things with those mortgages and loans. They had bundled them together and sold them to each other, as investment properties, hoping to scoop in the profit from the mass of people who were scheduled to be paying off their loans for the next twenty years, with substantial interest into the bargain. Other occult financial trickery had suddenly taken center stage, and like kids watching a magician on the midway, everyone wanted in on the action.
The upshot is that almost all of the most massive financial institutions in the USA ended up acting like penny-ante shell game pushers, shuffling the coin from cup to cup, guess where it is and win big! BIG!
The magic, however has worn off. In the immortal words: Keg's dust, Party's over, Cops are here.
The people who took out all those loans are unable to pay them back. They're defaulting at record rates, in a great throwing up of hands. That means there's no money coming in. And the artificially inflated value of those loans, buoyed by myriad bets and counter-bets on their expected performance, is collapsing back on itself. That's why they call it a bubble. The economy is over-extended and has sprung a leak.
What's particularly impressive in this situation is the degree to which HUGE financial institutions are being hit. Many of the largest institutions of their kind have all been playing the naughty game with the arcane symbols out behind the gym, and now demons have rent the fabric of reality that enveloped their little game and are pursuing them with every intent of eating their souls. AIG, the largest insurer in the USA. Lehman Brothers, one of the world's largest investment banks. Merrill Lynch. Bear Stearns. Fannie and Freddie. Big names.
Really big names! Names written in the sky in letters of pink neon, with a little cocktail glass next to them!
And the reverberations are going out around the world. Britains largest mortgage lender, HBOS, is going down. Banks are failing in Japan and Russia, and probably in Kyrgyzstan too. The slide looks like it's going to continue for a good while yet, as housing prices drop back to a more realistic level and and the fake money leaks out of the world economic system back into the ether. Snap! It disappears. Money is extraordinary in the way it mutates to respond to human manipulation. It takes strange, incomprehensible forms, an arcane language that only the priest-scientists can read. We wait with bated breath for them to pronounce an augury of good or evil from the entrails they're digging through. For all we know, our souls may be lost too.
Signs of Change opens Saturday!!!
Posted September 17, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
Dara Greenwald and I have spent a good chunk of the last 2 years putting together this large-scale exhibition of the art and culture of social movements. With over 600 posters, 100 photos, hundreds of other pieces of ephemera, and 50 films and videos from over 40 countries, Signs of Change is likely the biggest project I've ever been involved in!
If you are in or around New York City, please come celebrate the opening with us on Saturday night!!!
SIGNS OF CHANGE: SOCIAL MOVEMENT CULTURES 1960s TO NOW
at Exit Art, 475 10th Ave, NY, NY, September 20 - December 6, 2008
1. Opening/About: Saturday September 20, 7-10pm
2. Symposium: Thursday September 25, 6pm-10pm
3. Film/Video Weekend: October 11-13
4. Weekly Video Screenings (Tue-Thurs 3:30, Fri-Sat 5:30) and Live Screen Printing
5. Provo: October 24, 6pm
6. Lenders, Support, Thanks, & Credits
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. The opening will include live screen printing and a visit by the Tactical Ice Cream Unit.
ABOUT: In Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now, hundreds of posters, photographs, moving images, audio clips, and ephemera bring to life over forty years of activism, political protest, and campaigns for social justice. Curated by Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee as part of Exit Art's Curatorial Incubator, this important and timely exhibition surveys the creative work of dozens of international social movements.
Organized thematically, the exhibition presents the creative outpourings of social movements, such as those for Civil Rights and Black Power in the United States; democracy in China; anti-apartheid in Africa; squatting in Europe; environmental activism and women's rights internationally; and the global AIDS crisis, as well as uprisings and protests, such as those for indigenous control of lands; against airport construction in Japan; and student and worker revolution in France. The exhibition also explores the development of powerful counter-cultures that evolve beyond traditional politics and create distinct aesthetics, life-styles, and social organization.
Although histories of political groups and counter-cultures have been written, and political and activist shows have been held, this exhibition is a groundbreaking attempt to chronicle the artistic and cultural production of these movements. Signs of Change offers a chance to see relatively unknown or rarely seen works, and is intended to not only provide a historical framework for contemporary activism, but also to serve as an inspiration for the present and the future.
During the exhibition, there will be ongoing screenprinting workshops with guest artists and activists in collaboration with the Lower East Side Printshop as well as the following programs and events.
Exit Art is located at 475 Tenth Avenue, corner of 36th Street. Exit Art is open each Tuesday through Thursday, 10 am – 6 pm; Friday, 10 am – 8 pm; Saturday, noon – 8 pm. Closed Sunday and Monday. There is a suggested donation of $5.
For more information please call 212-966-7745 or check out http://www.exitart.org/site/pub/exhibition_programs/signs_of_change/index.html
Has anyone asked...?
Posted September 15, 2008 by k_c_ in Inspiration
Does capitalism work?
I need someone to explain this crisis to me, cos I can't seem to figure out who gains with this most recent economic calamity. Anyone?
Justseeds Print Show Opens Friday the 19th, Warwick, NY
Posted September 15, 2008 by k_c_ in Justseeds/Member Projects
I grew up in a small town in the lower Hudson Valley. Aside from the small crew of skaters and punks that I hung out with, there was very little "alternative" culture and even less radical politics. I'm super stoked to be bringing the Justseeds Cooperative's artwork to a cafe, run by some friends from high school, in Warwick, NY. It feels good to bring something back to where I used to feel the most sense of "place".
The show will open 7pm, September 19th
at the
Tuscan Café
5 South St .
Warwick, NY 10990
We are hoping to have some live music from Laura Stevenson during the opening. Come check us out if you're in Orange County, NY.
SuckaPants deals with proprietary issues
Posted September 12, 2008 by k_c_
I was just reviewing Tod Seelie's blog SuckaPants and read his thoughts and difficulty with image theft on the internet:
I don't typically use this blog for personal rants, but I'm going to break that rule. The wonderful world of the internet and flickr has given rise to a huge amount of readily available images. As online self-publishing grows, so does the need for content, such as snazzy imagery. Most people have come to the understanding that if you are going to lift someone's image, and not ask permission, you provide a credit and a link to the creator. This avoids pissing off the person you are "borrowing" from by promoting them, and in most people's minds doesn't constitute stealing if you provide credit.However, then there are apparent jerks like Jamie O'Shea who not only repeatedly use people's images without credit, but will actually go to the effort to capture a non-downloadable image and then crop out someone's watermark to remove the credit put there by the artist (in this case, mine). That's not just being careless or lazy, that's actually making a conscious effort to obscure the artist's identity from their work. That's stealing. Of course if people didn't steal images, who would need to put their name on their photo in the first place? One would think that as the previous editor of Juxtapoz he would have a bit more respect for artists. Especially if this person said something like, "Everything is artist driven. I work as a liaison and advocate for artists in corporate culture."
Between this sort of crap and the looming Orphan Works bill, I am really wondering about continuing to put so much of my work out in the public realm. Once someone grabs an unmarked image off of a website and posts it to their own without credit, and then someone grabs it off of that site and posts it to a forum somewhere, etc... it's too late. Toss in the loss of the original file name due to blog-hosting renaming procedure and the image quickly becomes an orphan. So even if an interested party did want to license the image (and not just automatically claim to have already made a "reasonably diligent search" before using it without permission) it really does become difficult at this point to track down the origin. And as a friend of mine put it to me while we were talking about making a living as an artist and selling prints: "Why would I buy one of your photographs when I can get them for free on your site?" Good question.
I have asked Mr. O'Shea several times (sorta nicely) that the image be removed from his site, no response. Comments left by friends have been moderated into limbo. So I offer this to the court of public opinion: Is it okay to remove a watermark from an image you grabbed without requesting permission and then use it on your website?
It's ok to rant Tod!
Swoon released on Paper Monster
Posted September 12, 2008 by k_c_ in Justseeds/Member Projects
Swoon has released a print over at Paper Monster
To celebrate the launch of Swoon's fleet of ships on the Hudson river...All proceeds from this print will go to help those involved in the traveling exhibition "Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea"This print the "Switchback Sisters", an edition of 106, is a reduction of the centerpiece of the Swoon installation that is currently at the Deitch space in Long Island City. The last two performances of the Swimming cities of the Switchback Sea will take place Friday Sept 12th and 13th in Long Island City, each starting at 8pm.
Taring Padi / Justseeds / ASARO art opening!
Posted September 11, 2008 by icky in Events
This Friday September 12, Justseeds is part of a one night art show at Liberty Hall in Portland. This show should be good, the walls will be filled with the block prints and stencils of ASARO, Taring Padi, and Justseeds artists. This show is part of the opening of Portland Grassroots Media Camp.
ASARO is:
Assembly of Revolutionary Artists of Oaxaca: ASARO is a collective of young artists who came together during the widespread popular movement in response to political turmoil in Oaxaca. They have dedicated themselves to making accessible popular art, plastering the walls of Oaxaca’s capital city with prints, posters, graffiti and stencils that reflect the demands and vision of the popular movement.
TARING PADI: Taring Padi, translated as Fangs of Rice, is self-described as an “independent non-profit cultural community based on the concept of peoples’ culture.” Squatting an abandoned art school campus, they arose in the midst of major social uprising and political reformation in Indonesia in 1998 when the corrupt dictator President Surharto was forced out of office.
Art of Democracy
Posted September 11, 2008 by meredith_stern in Artwork Needed
The New York Society of Etchers is currently organizing THE ART OF DEMOCRACY exhibition of political and socially relevant prints as one of the National Coalition co-organizers for presentation this fall. The show is hung from November 3 - 14, 2008 at the National Arts Club in New York , New York.
http://nysetchers.org/events_081103_aod_ny.htm
http://www.artofdemocracy.org/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/art-of-democracy/
When Street Art Really Enters the Gallery-Brasil
Posted September 11, 2008 by k_c_ in In the News
AbandonView tipped us off to an action that happened in Brasil on September 6th.
No dia 06-09-08, um grupo de 30 Pixadores invadiu a Galeria Choque Cultural em protesto à comercialização, institucionalização e Domesticação da Cultura de Rua, por parte dos galeristas e do Poder Público.
On 06-09-08, a group of 30 Pixadores invaded the Galeria Choque Cultural (Cultural Shock Gallery) in protest to the marketing, and institutionalization of Culture of Domesticação Street, from the gallery and the Public Power. In addition to the physical dependencies of the gallery, about twenty works exposed there were also victims of the attack and a work of the artist Speto was damaged. The owners of the Shock were doing an exhibition in London.
Only armed with translation sites online, I've enjoyed reading Ataque à Choque Cultural and the various threads on the Choque Flickr page. There seems to be a large discussion about the commodification of Pixacao and graffiti. While translation sites are super limited and I'm not familiar with the "players" involved it seems to have captured people's thoughts more than NYC's splasher actions.
Lots of comments on the Flickr thread discuss the gallery's function in the art market, many of them supportive of this role. Also represented is the fundamental sentiment that it belongs on the street, which is why, I assume, these grafiteros went to town inside the gallery. Other comments raised larger issues with commercialization, eef
pena que o protesto contra a 'comercialização, institucionalização e domesticação da cultura de rua' tenha focado em galeristas e não publicitários, marcas de tênis, roupa de grife, festivais, refrigerantes, e outros que fazem a tal 'cultura de rua' virar modismo, commodities, sinônimo de produto pseudo moderninho.
"unfortunate that the protest against 'marketing, institutionalization and domestication of the culture of street' has focused on galleries and not advertising, brands of shoes, clothes, grife, festivals, soft drinks, and others who make such a 'culture of street' fashion, turn commodities, synonymous with pseudo moderninho(?) product"
From RRAURL "According to the Folha de S. Paulo, the action was organized - by email- by Rafael Guedes Augustaitiz (Rafael Pixobomb), the same artist who in July this year had been expelled from the Faculty of Fine Arts (SP) for having done a similar action on the premises of the course"
With slogans that proclaimed "Open your eyes and see the inevitable mark of history", the action at the Faculty sounds very performance like and attempted to awaken the viewers to the exclusivity and economic realities of the institutions. The recent action called "ATTACK PART 2 : A CAMINHO DA REVOLUÇÃO 2008" in the flyer, seen to the right, appears to have a similar intent.
I'm inspired and totally interested by these actions and would am stoked if anyone has more info or contacts about this.
The update on the rraurl.com site states:
Tuesday 09/set the owners of shock came with a representation in the 14th Police District of Sao Paulo (Pines) against the group of pixadores. Low Ribeiro, one of the owners, made a bulletin of occurrence and in their testimony stated that the loss of the gallery was something between $ 10,000 and $ 15,000. Rafael Guedes Augustaitiz is taken as a major contributor.
Hardbred out of Pittsburgh
Posted September 8, 2008 by shaun in Inspirations
Pittsburgh-based artist Bill Yund has just launched an online collection of his drawings and stories about child labor, "Hardbred". I was first turned on to Bill's work through his full-page illustrations of regional Pennsylvania labor struggles like the Battle of Homestead (1892) and the little-known Allegheny Cotton Mill Strikes (1848). The "Kids@Work - then and now" series is based on actual accounts of young, exploited labor. Yund's illustrations are bold and poignant, and it's great to see them collected online. The website has PDF's available of the "Kids" series in a booklet form as a teaching aid, and powerpoint versions are available as well.
New illustration collective kicks off in Detroit
Posted September 6, 2008 by bec_young in Justseeds/Member Projects
Because a girl can never be in too many art collectives, I recently started an illustration collective called Spiderspun with two fellow artists in Detroit. The adorable and amazing drawings of Stacey Malasky and Megan Diviney, which have populated many a show flyer around these parts, have earned the admiration of out-of-town bands and music fans for years; now they will be put to a different use. Stacey's passion to become a free-lance illustrator started the whole thing, which included a whole lot of joyful meetings over breakfast and field trips to bookstores to discover new and interesting illustrators. Stacey's blog has daily uploads of daily-life Detroit drawings and hilarious rants, and she currently is in a show organized by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The show, called Edibles, which runs Sept. 6th until Oct. 3, 2008, at 306 South State street in Ann Arbor, is about the storytelling power of food.
New York Screening of Dos Americas: The Reconstruction of New Orleans
Posted September 5, 2008 by molly_fair in Film
The film Dos Americas: The Reconstruction of New Orleans by Upheaval Productions focuses on the experience of the Latino community, one that seems to be overlooked unsurprisingly in the media and unfortunately by activist communities as well. This is not to be missed.
Post-Katrina reconstruction is still in progress throughout the Gulf Coast, with much of the City of New Orleans still in ruins. This documentary focuses on those rebuilding this city through interviews with some of the estimated 100,000 Latino migrant laborers who have converged in this area over the past two and a half years. Despite terrible working conditions, massive fraud, a housing crisis, severe harassment by law enforcement, and very limited resources, New Orleans’ Latino community has mushroomed since the storm and is establishing an infrastructure proportional to its size.Take a look at how this community is organizing to defend itself against numerous injustices and the attempts to bridge the gap between themselves as new residents and the pre-Katrina population, all within the extremely unique and tragic context of post-Katrina New Orleans.
Presentado en inglés y español.
9/7 @7pm- Make the Road by Walking
301 Grove St, Brooklyn, NY
9/8 @7pm- Bluestockings
172 Allen St Btw Stanton & Rivington, New York, NY
Swoon's Swimming CIties of the Switchback Sea Opens Sunday
Posted September 5, 2008 by k_c_ in Justseeds/Member Projects
Swoon's second solo exhibit with the Deitch Projects will open this Sunday, September 7, 6-10pm. At 4-40 44th Drive, Long Island City
In the early evening on Sunday, September 7th, seven hand made boats, or more precisely, seven floating sculptures by Swoon, will dock in front of Deitch Studios on the East River in Long Island City. Their arrival at Deitch Studios will be the final stop on a three-week journey down the Hudson River and around the tip of Manhattan. The seven boats, built by Swoon and her friends from scrap wood and other discarded materials, began their sail down the Hudson River on August 15th in Troy, New York, stopping along the way for musical and theatrical performances. Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea is a two-part exhibition merging Swoon’s recent portraits, found objects of urban decay and a floating sculptural city. One part of the exhibition is on the water. The other is in the gallery.
The Swimming Cities is designed and organized by printmaker and installation artist Swoon. Collaborators include playwright Lisa D’Amour, the band Dark Dark Dark and circus composer Sxip Shirey. Propulsion systems brought by John Rinaldi and Kinetic Steam Works. Boat design and carpentry created in close collaboration with Jeff Stark, Iris Lasson, and with guidance from The Floating Neutrinos.
Paper Politics Cortland opens 9/09
Posted September 4, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
The Paper Politics show I've organized and have been touring around is heading for a couple dates in Upstate New York. The show is an international collection of over 175 handmade political prints by as many artists. Almost the entire Justseeds crew is represented, as well as tons of other awesome printmakers! If you are in or around central upstate NY, check it out!!!!
Paper Politics
Dowd Fine Art Gallery
September 9th-November 6th, 2008
Opening Reception: September 9th 4:30-7:30pm
Artists’ talk:
Paper Politics - Josh MacPhee: October 28th, time TBA
All exhibitions and events are free and open to the Public.
Dissident Art, Montreal
Posted September 4, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
This just in from friends in Montreal:
DISSIDENT ART
September 5 - 28, 2008
Opening: Friday, Sept. 5, 5 - 9 PM
55 Notre-Dame West (Metro Place D'Armes)
Diana Arce, Mathieu Beauséjour, Caro Caron, Howard Chackowicz, Kathryn
Delaney, Ronen Eidelman, Freda Guttman, Gord Hill, Dayna McLeod, Jesse
Purcell, Michael Rakowitz, The Shining Mantis, Jackie Sumell / Herman
Wallace, Rick Trembles, Tania Willard
The Art + Anarchy Montreal 2008 collective is pleased to invite you to the
opening of a new exhibition in Montreal, Dissident Art, on September 5th
from 5 pm - 9 pm at 55 Notre-Dame West (in Old Montreal, metro Place
d'Armes). The vernissage will feature performances by Diana Arce (Berlin),
showcasing her political speech karaoke Politaoke in Montreal for this first
time, and The Shining Mantis (New York), engaging in a spontanteous
chalk-on-black-wall drawing war between the collective's two members.
Returning after the success of the Art + Anarchy exhibition in 2007, which
saw 230 local and international artists exhibit their work, this year's
exhibition represents a more curated turn with fifteen artists. From Caro
Caron's (Montreal) excellent artistic musings on the gentrification of
Montreal's artist neighbourhoods to the pairing up of artist Jackie Sumell
(Brooklyn) and Herman Wallace, a Black Panther member whose life sentence is
currently up for review, the exhibition offers variety in concept, style and
contribution to the meaning of dissidence in art. In addition to the fifteen
chosen artists, the exhibition will be offering a room in which unsolicited
artists are invited to come hang their own political work.
Eating Apes
Posted September 2, 2008 by roger_peet in In the News
Hello, fellow apes. I'm here today to tell you about your relatives. I'm referring to the other three African species of Great Ape, namely the gorilla, the chimpanzee and the bonobo. They're all going extinct. Isn't that interesting? Would you like to know why? It's unpleasant. Actually, I'll go so far as to say that it is catastrophically fucked up in so many ways that a blog entry really does not suffice to catalog the horror. I'll assist the presentation of this information by including some photographs by illustrious Swiss wildlife photographer Karl Ammann. These photographs have been widely seen in other parts of the world, not so much in the USA.
Karl is the protagonist of a book by Dale Peterson entitled Eating Apes, published by the University of California Press. Reading it is one of the most wrenching experiences possible, and has the potential to wreak havoc on the mind of anyone who is thinking critically about the state of the world. Its subject is bushmeat.
Bushmeat can be defined as wild animals hunted by humans for the purposes of eating, as opposed to those hunted for fashion, medicine, public safety, or fun. Eating Apes is principally concerned with the eating of apes. Our three closest animal relatives, residents of the tropical forests of sub-Saharan Africa, will soon be gone because of it.
Peterson describes how Karl, a hotelier by trade in his youth, became a wildlife photographer and how this shift of career brought him into contact with the bushmeat business. Travelling around the region of the Congo river basin, he found hunters and markets and traders doing a brisk business in cuts of ape meat, along with other rainforest meat products too numerous to be mentioned here. Although it's true that the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa have been eating these animals for centuries, certain recent developments have led to a catastrophic upswing in the amount of meat being taken from the forest. It's at this point that we all become complicit.
Logging interests, principally from Europe, open roads into the heart of the forest. Hunters follow the logging operations and penetrate deeply into the newly-accessible patches of jungle to provide meat for the hordes of migrant timber-cutters and machinery operators and their families. That's one way. Another way involves mining.
The high tech industries on which so much of the world now relies for communication and business infrastructure receive certain vital elements from mines in the jungles of the two Congos. Preeminent among these elements is coltan, also known as columbite-tantalite, and its associated minerals like cassiterite, wolframite, etc. These minerals are used to manufacture capacitors for cellular phones, personal computers, and video game systems, among other things. Miners clear the forest and hack at the earth, living terrible lives of squalor and poverty and violence. Their takes are routinely hijacked by groups of armed men from the various militias and armies that infest the region. In fact, one could make a pretty good case that the recent African World War that killed hundreds of thousands of people and involved the militaries of at least ten nations, was driven in part by the desire to control the flow of these minerals and the giant heaps of profit that can be wrung from them. The mineral supply flowing from the region has become so integral to aspects of our global economy that the release of the Playstation 2 in the 90's was delayed because of a crunch in the tantalum supply.
Another Opportunist Takes advantage of Katrina Anniversary
Posted September 2, 2008 by k_c_ in Inspiration
While Republicans tried to take advantage of the potential destruction by Hurricane Gustav, and the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, stencil artist Banksy visited New Orleans to paint his own pointed messages. It appeared like the GOP, and the current administration, wanted to seem caring and prepared for Gustav's believed force, with photo-ops and "promises" of support. Thankfully for the Gulf Coast residents the storm caused no severe damage, and the Bush has to live with his poll ratings.
More popular than ever, Banksy commemorated the 3 year anniversary with jabs at military "security" and the "Grey Ghost", with other pieces that celebrated New Orleans culture and Second lines
.
Again using his cleverness and wit to raise some poignant and necessary issues.
Like why, 3 years later, hasn't the necessary infrastructure been created to protect ALL its citizens from another storm?
Photos courtesy of Dingler1109
Thanks to NOLA Rising for raising consciousness of whats goin on!
Overspray #8 out now
Posted September 2, 2008 by k_c_ in Books & Zines
Overspray number 8 is now available through their store, or in whatever lucky little place you hope to find it! (Many independent bookstores and Barnes & Noble carry it)
Overspray is the world's first and only 100% international street art magazine. Created and run by artists, Overspray and all it's satellites exist to document and further urban culture in all it's facets. Our ultimate goal is to inspire and provide tools to anyone who feels it necessary to create art, and sustain the community through bringing it together.
Solidarity with Mpls Anti-Capitalists
Posted September 1, 2008 by jmacphee in In the News
Here's a poster I designed for the RNC Anti-Capitalist bloc. Find out more about their activities here.
They Live
Posted September 1, 2008 by molly_fair in Film
at BAM, Wednesday, Sept. 3
I gotta say that They Live is one of my favorite movies and I'm not gonna miss my chance to see it on the big screen. I mean come on- an entertaining critique of capitalism starring "Rowdy" Roddy Piper of the WWF as our fearless blue collar hero leading the rev- what could be better? Also it has one of the most drawn-out, ridiculous fist fight scenes ever.
Part science fiction thriller and part black comedy, the film echoed contemporary fears of a declining economy, within a culture of greed and conspicuous consumption common among Americans in the 1980s. In They Live, the ruling class within the monied elite are in fact aliens managing human social affairs through the use of subliminal media advertising and the control of economic opportunity.
Art Imitates Life
Posted September 1, 2008 by k_c_ in Inspiration
Someone finally decided to do a street poster based on American Apparel's Dov Charney. Most folks can identify the intriguing and sexual advertisements of American Apparel, yet probably didn't know that there have been accusations of sexual assault against him(just throw his name into a search engine) You probably get that from the posters, or not.
Over at AnimalNewYork.com there's a slew of posts of the previous posters that are worth checking out.
Anyhow, for you ethical shoppers there's plenty of other "socialist" t-shirt factory experiments, try No-Sweat or follow these simple guidelines
Regarding Design
Posted September 1, 2008 by jmacphee in Justseeds/Member Projects
There's a nice entry about Chris Stain and Justseeds over at the Regarding Design blog.
Kristine Virsis at Reading Frenzy, Portland, OR
Posted September 1, 2008 by k_c_ in Events
Justseeds member Kristine VIrsis is having an art show:
Thursday, Sept 4th at
Reading Frenzy
921 SW Oak St
Portland, OR
She'll be in attendance with new work and old work, and prints are cheap as always. From Reading Frenzy's site:
We're pleased to present a talented artist and printmaker all the way from New York City at Reading Frenzy this month! Kristine Virsis is a member of the Justseeds/Visual Resistance Artists' Cooperative, a group of artists and activists involved in socially engaged political printmaking.Kristine's silkscreen prints, which begin their lives as intricate paper cuts and stencils, deal with the personal end of the political spectrum -- creativity, self-sufficiency, strength, play, nostalgia and the freedom that a wheel or two can afford you, as well as depression, isolation and resiliency.
Virsis' handpulled prints are produced in large or unlimited editions, in order to keep them affordable.
