People's History!
Wisconsin Wonders
Posted August 24, 2010 by pete in Inspirations
I recently spent some quality time in northern Wisconsin. The best way to spend a summer day in Wisconsin is at a cabin on a lake. Luckily my uncle has a little cabin on a lake just east of Phillips Wisconsin (about 6 hours north of Milwaukee). Aside from swimming, fishing, canoeing and various other outdoor activities this area is home to a very special place, that is Fred Smith's Concrete Park. Smith was a logger in the early 1900's, and later built a bar (which only served Rhinelander Beer!). In his 50's Fred decided to start creating some concrete sculptures which honored the people of his area. In all he constructed over 200 concrete sculptures which he inlaid with pieces of glass. His themes ran from Native Americans, Loggers, Farmers, Beer Drinkers and other people of the North Woods. Smith was truly a visionary artist, he had no intention of selling his work, and simply felt that this was something he needed to do and people needed to see. In the 70's the Kohler Foundation acquired the Concrete park and has been maintaining it since. If you find yourself anywhere near, do yourself a favor and pay a visit, it's amazing. Also at the gift shop you can pick up a 40pg book about the park with great quotes from Smith explaining his work and a T-Shirt screenprinted by the local high school art class honoring the park. I now own both!
"We Agree: A Crisis In Common" Opening!
Posted August 5, 2010 by roger_peet in Art exhibits/shows
Portland! Come out tomorrow evening, Thursday August 5th, to the SEA Change Gallery, downtown in the Everett Station Lofts, for the Opening of "We Agree: A Crisis in Common". Two giant blockprints about the impact of the natural gas industry on both sides of the Pacific: One made by the Portland-based members of Justseeds, and the other by renowned Indonesian printmaking cooperative Taring Padi! The prints are huge and dense and awesome, and the gallery is packed to the rafters with other work by Roger Peet, Alec "Icky" Dunn, Pete Yahnke, and members of Taring Padi. For more information on the project, navigate here
SEA Change Gallery
625 NW Everett Street
Gallery #110
Portland, OR
Opening at 5pm, refreshments will be available to those with quick feet and swift lifting elbows!
Interview with Anarchist Street Artists in Russia by Freya Powell
Posted July 6, 2010 by dara_g in People's History!
An Interview about the project: The Museum of Political History of Which No One Speaks (In Memory of Stas and Nastya) conducted by Freya Powell
A while back we posted about a public art project in St Petersburg Russia. Freya Powell conducted this interview in March 2010 via email with artists in St Petersburg Russia who knew about this project. This is its first publication.
Ain't Goin' Home Soon-Opens Today
Posted May 8, 2010 by k_c_ in Art exhibits/shows
Here's some flicks that I took of Chris Stain & Leon Reid IV, before I jumped on the bus for NYC. The installation opens today, Saturday, May 8th. The deets on my post from yesterday.
Ain't Goin' Home Soon
Posted May 7, 2010 by k_c_ in Art exhibits/shows
Chris Stain & Leon Reid IV have been working on Ain't Goin' Home Soon an installation that will open tomorrow at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore, MD.
Saturday, May 8, 7-9pm
Creative Alliance at The Patterson
3134 Eastern Ave
Baltimore, MD
As every schoolchild knows, John Henry was a giant of a man, who wielded a 20 pound hammer as though it were nothing, and won an epic contest against a steam engine, only to die on the spot. Henry was a slave, or former slave, and the battle that cost him his life is said to have taken place in Talcott, West Virginia on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. Built from found materials by Leon Reid IV, a statue of John Henry towers over this Main Gallery installation, amidst Hoovertown shacks made of wooden pallets and railroad ties made of cardboard. Giant stenciled murals by Chris Stain form a backdrop melding WPA-era social realism and urban graffiti, expanding on the themes of John Henry’s story—struggle and pride, race and dislocation in the face of technological and economic change. In this way, their installation serves as an ideal introduction to Urban/Appalachia, Creative Alliance’s series examining the long and complicated relationship between Baltimore and Appalachia, from past generations seeking work in city steel mills, to a generation today shipped to prisons in the mountains.
Drawing All the Time: Week 23
Posted March 17, 2010 by colin_matthes in Inspiration
Mary Kelly Here is a drawing in celebration of Mary Kelly, the Irish nurse and mother of 4 who decommissioned a US war plane with an axe while it was illegally refueling on its way to Iraq. I do not like the drawing a whole lot, but Mary Kelly is an inspiration. Read more below.
Mary Kelly's Statement
Slideshow/Discussion in Providence Postponed...
Posted February 10, 2010 by shaun in People's History!
Hey folks, the talk I was going to do tonight at AS220 in Providence has been postponed to Friday, from 5-6:30, due to pending snow that has everyone freaking out. Please come by if you're in Providence!
"I Brake For Historical Markers"
5-6:30pm, Friday, February 12
Pittsburgh-based artist Shaun Slifer will present a slideshow and discussion of problematic and progressive historical monuments and plaques with an eye towards remembering the often-buried stories of struggles for social justice. Slifer will discuss the Howling Mob Society's 2007 guerilla historical marker series commemorating the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.
Slideshow/Discussion this Wednesday @ AS220 in Providence
Posted February 6, 2010 by shaun in People's History!
If you're in Providence, Rhode Island this week, please come by AS220 on Wednesday the 10th and participate in the discussion and slideshow I'm putting on! It's free to the public and starts at 6pm at the AS220 performance space on Empire Street:
"I Brake For Historical Markers"
6-8:30pm, Wednesday, February 10
Pittsburgh-based artist Shaun Slifer will present a slideshow and discussion of problematic and progressive historical monuments and plaques with an eye towards remembering the often-buried stories of struggles for social justice. Slifer will discuss the Howling Mob Society's 2007 guerilla historical marker series commemorating the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.
Howard Zinn's speech on the necessary rebellion of the archivist
Posted February 1, 2010 by molly_fair in Inspirations
Right now I am in library school, training to be an archivist, so I'm posting this speech that Howard Zinn made about the archivist profession which has really inspired me. Lately the idea of taking a political position within the profession is something that I have been thinking about a lot. I have been doing a lot of research on archives that operate within the realm of the creative commons or partnerships between institutions and communities to preserve collective histories in the effort to encourage people to have ownership and document their ways of life. It is pretty obvious that those in power control access to information, and knowledge is increasingly commodified and privatized.
It is necessary to consider who has access to information in our society, and who controls it. Archivists are told that they must remain professionally neutral, but doing so is inherently taking a political stance. Archivists should not be complicit with institutional powers whose policy it is to restrict access to knowledge and information. Preservation of materials in archives or other institutions like libraries and museums is often privileged over access, and result in exclusionary policies.
It is necessary to examine the biases in our society that reveal why some collective histories are preserved and valued and others have not been collected. It is apparent in many circumstances that artifacts that are held sacred to communities have been taken unjustly, and are displayed and made public in ways that perpetuate imperialism and misrepresentation.
Professionals in information fields may choose to view them as purely scientific or technical, without acknowledging the prejudices and dominant power structures of our society that have shaped and are ingrained in the systems of knowledge organization. In the library field this is reflected in the organization of the Dewey Decimal System or the Library of Congress and their coinciding terminologies and how they have changed over time to be more, ahem, politically correct. Check out activist-librarian Sandford Berman if you are interested in this.
Those in the archivist profession should fight for open access to information, and to protect and make accessible materials documenting the histories of people that have traditionally been silenced and marginalized. I think Zinn's speech is just as relevant today as it is when he presented it and it was published in the 1970s. We still live in an age of information secrecy and repression, and corporate ownership. Simultaneously the Internet has made it possible for people to spread information on a massive scale whether it is classified documents or a bootlegged movie. Ignoring intellectual property rights may be viewed as an act of rebellion, even though the average person may not consciously think about the act of file sharing as a form of resistance. The degree to which archivists participate in acts of resistance is something I wish to explore further.
And now on to Zinn's speech...
SECRECY, ARCHIVES, AND THE PUBLIC INTERESTHOWARD ZINN
Let me work my way in from the great circle of the world to us at the center by discussing, in turn, three things: the social role of the professional in modern times; the scholar in the United States today; and the archivist here and now.
I will start by quoting from a document-an insidious move to gain rapport with archivists, some might say, except that the document is a bit off the beaten track in archival work (a fact we might ponder later). It is the transcript of a trial that took place in Chicago in the fall of 1969, called affectionately "the Conspiracy Trial." I
refer to it because the transcript occasionally touches on the problem of the professional person-whether a lawyer, historian, or archivist-and the relation between professing one's craft and professing one's humanity. On October 15, 1969, the day of the national Moratorium to protest the war in Vietnam, defense attorney William Kunstler wore a black armband in court to signify his support of the Moratorium and his protest against the war. The government's lawyer, Thomas
Foran, called this to the attention of the judge, saying: "Your Honor, that's outrageous. This man is a mouthpiece. Look at him, wearing a band like his clients, your Honor."
Solidarity Forever!: Notes from the Winter Wonderland
Posted January 15, 2010 by dylan_miner in People's History!
Postcard image from Learning to Labor, Remembering to Resist. Solo exhibition at University Gallery, Saginaw Valley State University (February-March 2010).
Note: to coincide with the release of my new Celebrate People’s History Poster, I have written the following blog, which discusses, in a round about fashion, the meaning of the print and the impact Michigan has on my creative process. I hope you are not too bored…
Celebrate! Celebrate? The Politics and Tactics of Visualizing a People’s History
Posted December 13, 2009 by nicolas_lampert in Justseeds & Member Projects
“Celebrate! Celebrate?” features four different poster series that visualize various people’s history and invites the viewer to contemplate the politics and the tactics of graphically celebrating people and events from the past. Significantly, how do these images operate? Do the images affirm our struggles, inspire, teach, and critique? Do they simplify history and rob struggles of their complexities? Do they accomplish both? The show invites these questions, varied opinions, historical context, and more.
Where: Mess Hall, 6932 North Glenwood Avenue, Chicago, IL, Morse CTA Red Line Train Stop
When: Now through January during Mess Hall events. Check Mess Hall website for times when Mess Hall is open. People's history talk and critique of graphics to take place in mid January. Time tba
Viva Mercedes Sosa
Posted October 4, 2009 by molly_fair in Inspirations
Legendary Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa of the Nueva Canción (new song) movement died today. Her poetic and political lyrics were a true inspiration to the social movements against the dictatorships and military regimes in Latin America. I was introduced to her music only a few years ago, and wish I had seen her play when she was in NYC. Here is one of my favorite songs Cuando Tenga la Tierra performed live in Managua in 1983:
The People Suck
Posted September 9, 2009 by roger_peet in Inspiration
The world is over.
A goat with its throat slashed may buck against its bonds, but the blood will drain out and it will die. A gentle hand might give it a pill to ease the suffering. Like the goat, we've swallowed the pill, and so it comes to this. Buy an efficient lightbulb. Drive a "hybrid" car. We have eaten the host that was laid on our tongue, the host embossed "HOPE". We've supped from the poisoned chalice to wash it down.
Our sad flapping jaws will keep on hurking out positive affirmations like trained seals clapping for the ringmaster. Our prating of determination and principled struggle and positivity of all sorts sounds now as do the grunts of a dental patient turned loose to the street with a toothless gape and gums full of anaesthetic. For it's Hope that has killed us these many long years, and it will continue to kill us, though it will seem like famine, and it will seem like war. It's hope that strangles the life of the earth, hope that fills the land and water with poison, the hope that something might be better for our children, and the hope that our pestilential children might somehow impossibly behave other than humans have ever done. Hope places around our necks the thin, piano-wire garrotte of sustainability, and chuckles in syncopation with our breathless gasps. Hope throttles us with our efforts to bring "justice" and "peace", to fight "oppression", for we stand in the shadow of one hundred thousand years of world-rending growth and ecological annihilation and proclaim that without darkness, we would never have been able to understand the properties of light.
EveryBody! Visual Resistance in Feminist Health Movements, 1969-2009
Posted September 8, 2009 by shaun in Art exhibits/shows
“Our feelings will lead us to our theory, our theory to our action, our feelings about that action to new theory and then to new action.”- Kathie Sarachild of Redstockings Radical Feminist group, presented at the First National Women’s Liberation Conference, Chicago, November 27, 1968
Curated by our cohort Bonnie Fortune, and including Justseeds artists Favianna Rodriguez and Meredith Stern as well as Pittsburgher Hyla Willis (subRosa), "EveryBody!" opens this Friday at I Space Gallery in Chicago. For address, hours, images, and more info on the show including links to artists and organizations involved, head over to Bonnie's site!
Exhibit runs until October 10.
Happy Pride NYC!
Posted June 25, 2009 by molly_fair in People's History!
Celebrate your queerness and nerd out at the New York Public Library with this rad exhibit:
1969: The Year of Gay Liberation
June 1, 2009 through June 30, 2009
Stokes Gallery (Third Floor)
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, NY
The year 1969 was a flashpoint in the history of LGBT civil rights struggles, marking a paradigmatic shift in the ways that gays and lesbians saw themselves and fought for their full inclusion within American society. In the wake of the Stonewall Riots on June 28 of that year, gays and lesbians in New York City radicalized in an unprecedented way, founding activist groups—Gay Liberation Front, the Radicalesbians, Gay Activists Alliance, and Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries—that created a new vision: Gay Liberation. This exhibition charts the emergence of this new vision through photographs and original documents that show the evolution of Gay Liberation in New York City from the Stonewall Riots to the first LGBT pride march—Christopher Street Liberation Day 1970.
From the NYPL archives Diana Davies photographs, 1965-1978, Demonstration at City Hall, New York City, in support of gay rights bill "Intro 475," 1973 April, left to right: Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, Barbara Deming, and Kady Vandeurs
