Artivizm

Can art get under our skin?

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Thu, 04 Dec 2014 19:46:00 +0000

In despair and grief over what these recent tragedies mean for our society, I hold out hope that the most creative responses can somehow cut through the idiocy that passes for most of the mainstream media coverage and the racism and hate and ignorance and fear that seems to be flooding the interwebs these days.

First of all, check out #Alivewhileblack and then #crimingwhilewhite on twitter. Reading the two feeds back to back is undeniable evidence of privilege and as good as the most eloquent response of writers and pundits.

Unfortunately, no one who really needs to will watch Spike Lee's edit of the Eric Garner video with scenes from Do The Right Thing. That's too bad, because it's chilling and difficult to watch, but also impossible to watch it and not see that this is just cold-blooded murder.

I hope many more will see the street art response in Ferguson:

That's the work of 29 year old street artist, Damon Davis. Read about his inspiration here.

Finally, let's remember that when Martin Luther King was assassinated, he was planning the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C. King wanted to shut down the nation’s capital in the spring of 1968 through massive civil disobedience until the government agreed to abolish poverty. King saw the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike as the beginning of a nonviolent revolution that would redistribute income. He may have been non-violent, his resistance strategy was designed to make oppression impossible to ignore or avoid. Some believe his murder was part of conspiracy designed to stop him before he could realize his vision.

So let's up the game with the protests and die-ins and general civil disobedience. Resist.

The image below is by Chip Thomas.

Stop the Drones! Anti-drone art and activism.

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Thu, 28 Nov 2013 02:46:00 +0000

Rug of Drones, Installation by Abdullan M.I. Syed

Finding a way to organize politically against the covert and illegal terrorist drone attacks seems impossible, but there are many glimmers of hope over the last year. First, there is a growing national anti-drone network and the recent CODEPINK No Drone Summit, in the US, but more interesting are recent events in Pakistan. The Washington Post is reporting today that Pakistan political parties are "outing" high ranking CIA officials as a form of protest against drone attacks and a Pakistani cricket-star-turned-political-leader has organized protest blockades of NATO supply lines that are attracting thousands of Pakistanis.

The protestors maintain that drone attacks violate Pakistani sovereignty and are only deepening anti-American sentiment and strengthening the Taliban.

Malala Yousafzai agrees and last month used her audience with President Obama to tell him that "drone attacks are fueling terrorism." and suggests that support for education for young Pakistanis might do a lot more to stop anti-American violence. The brave young anti-taliban activist elaborates in an interview here. Despite the Malala's pleas, Washington still doesn't seem to be listening. Incredibly, only 5 members of congress showed up to hear the stirring first hand testimony of this Pakistani family.

Artists are also protesting. AlJazeera recently profiled a new generation of Pakistani artists who are creatively expressing the effects of violence and drone attacks on the fabric of their culture. And Mother Jones interviewed another Pakistani artist, Mahwish Chishty, who re-imagined drones as folk art.

The anti-drone art movement in Pakistan is echoed in the West. An exhibit this past summer at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC (a stone's throw from the White House) by James Brindle attempted to expose an American audience to the feeling of being overshadowed by drones, or at least to make the normally unseen seen. Brindle sees himself as an activist and said "“I’m concerned about the state of the world. There’s no illusions that words and politics and speeches about clean wars and minimizing collateral damages is anything but hot air,” See his interview with the BBC here. Brindle also maintains the "Dronestagram" Instagram feed of google earth images of drone-bombed sites.

James Brindle's installation, "Drone Shadow" Istanbul 2012

Instagram seems friendlier to drone activism than Apple. The "Drone +" iphone app which sends push notifications when a drone strike occurs has been rejected by Apple three times because it "contained content that many audiences would find objectionable." Creator Josh Begley still maintains the popular twitter account @dronestream tweeting every drone strike and its body count. Twitter is also home to the US Drone War Department, a more satirical take on the drone war. A more graphic representation of the drone body count can be seen here, just in case you have friends that need convincing of exactly how dramatically the Obama administration has ramped up this particular form of terrorism.

Spontaneous Artivizm in Istanbul

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 21:39:00 +0000

From Syrian artist/photographer Khaled Akil's balcony in Istanbul last night. All of Istanbul flashing their lights and banging pots and pans in solidarity. To learn more and take action, go to Amnesty International's page on Turkey solidarity and learn what you can do to support the Turkish demand for freedom and democracy.

Akil knows more than most how precarious basic human rights and the freedom of expression are, having fled his beloved home city of Aleppo less than a year ago. He talks about the pain of leaving his country behind in chaos here.

Blu vs Drones

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Fri, 10 May 2013 23:35:00 +0000

" Blu recently finished two murals in Niscemi, Italy, where residents are protesting the US Navy’s installation of communications satellites which will be integral to controlling the next generation of military drones.

The above piece is one of my favorites from Blu in quite a while. The drones slowly transform into crosses at a graveyard, and the multitudes of Niscemi stand up and resist against the military monster. Besides the ethical concerns about drones, residents are also worried about the electromagnetic waves that the communications satellites will emit. Check out the No MUOS website for more information about the protests." --from Vandalog

Photography Artivizm and Solidarity with Supermax Prisoners.

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Thu, 09 May 2013 03:55:00 +0000

Melvin Haywood, pictured above, spent eight years in solitary confinement at Tamms supermax until the Prisoner Review Board granted him parole from prison. Though the Department of Corrections held him in isolation for eight years, as a “C#,”one of the 270 Illinois prisoners floating in the system with indeterminate sentences, the notoriously tough parole board determined that he did not need to be in prison at all.

The Daily Beast and Creative Time Reports cover the inspiring story of arts activism and solidarity with supermax prisoners in solitary confinement. The Tamms supermax prison in Illinois is one of the most notorious in the nation, condemned by Amnesty International for inhumane practices that led to high rates of attempted prisoner suicides and self mutilation.

In response, a group of artists known as the Tamms Poetry Committee came together to educate the public about the atrocities committed there and also to provide the prisoners with human connection and interaction in the form of poems and holiday cards. One of the artists' initiatives was "photo requests from solitary." Prisoners on solitary would request photos and professional photographers would then shoot the request and send the photo back. The gallery of prisoners requests is surprising and poignant.

For “Photo Requests from Solitary” the men in Tamms were invited to request a photograph of anything in the world, real or imagined. The resulting requests were touching and often surprising. They included: the sacred mosque in Mecca, comic book heroes locked in epic battle, Egyptian artifacts, Tamms Year Ten volunteers and a brown and white horse rearing in weather cold enough to see his breath. Willie Sterling III asked for a photograph of a vigil at Bald Knob Cross on top of a hill in southern Illinois to pray for his deliverance from Tamms and to be granted parole. Tamms Year Ten caravanned down to the cross, held a litany of song and prayer and celebrated with a dinner. The next day, we drove family members to visit loved ones at the prison. Sterling was transferred from Tamms, and on July 27, 2012, he was paroled after 36 years in prison. Photo by Rachel Herman, May 6, 2011.

Occupy Billboards

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Tue, 07 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

See the beautiful description of this action by the clever folks at the California Department of Corrections. According to the Just Seeds blog:

Founded in 1994, the CDC is a private correctional facility that protects the public through the secure management, discipline and rehabilitation of California's advertising. The department was initiated by individuals who felt that public correctional facilities were insufficiently managing the state's most criminal elements and that effective care and treatment would improve under the supervision of a private institution.

For more information on the department’s operations and programs, contact the CDC Office of Communications at cdc@revolutionist.com.

On the Third Anniversary of the Gulf Spill, the Fight is Far from Over.

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 16:03:00 +0000

Human Cost, Tate Britain Performance – First anniversary of the Gulf of Mexico disaster from You and I Films on Vimeo.

Cartagena Street Art

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 15:41:00 +0000

The Afronauts, it's not about Zambia, it's about us.

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 19:14:00 +0000

A few blog posts describing the artivistic aspects of Christia de Middel's highly acclaimed photography book, The Afronauts. : here and here.

The Last Supper

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 17:33:00 +0000

An Oregon artist humanizes death row and shares the stories of the condemned with 500 cobalt-blue paint fired plates, now showing in Corvallis Oregon. She calls it "a window into the soul in an hour of crisis" and an examination of the strange rituals attached to both to the acts of execution and of preparing and sharing food.

Texas; Sept. 21, 2011: Two chicken-fried steaks, one pound of barbecued meat, a triple-patty bacon cheeseburger, a meat-lover’s pizza, three fajitas, an omelet, a bowl of okra, one pint of Blue Bell Ice Cream, some peanut-butter fudge with crushed peanuts and three root beers (after inmate didn’t eat any of this meal, Texas ends final meal request option).

Julie Green

"The Kiss" in Syrian ruins

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 16:43:00 +0000


"El beso" de Klimt entre los escombros de la guerra de Siria. El autor, Tammam Azzam. Tammam Azzam, after "The Kiss," on Syrian ruins

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 17:48:00 +0000

Zurich protest against the banks.

Just Seeds Infiltrates Fort Hood Army Base

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:43:00 +0000

Just Seeds prints for sale at Ft. Hood's PX. Courtesy of IVAW member.

Before I die. . . .

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 04:02:00 +0000

Artist Candy Chang's intensely engaging and intimate projects bring communities together in the common expression of shared hopes and dreams.

Parezco ilegal?

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 03:54:00 +0000

Parezco ilegal?
A new piece by Jetsonorama in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Mean and Stingy Amazon Exposed

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Thu, 24 May 2012 07:58:00 +0000

Nice bit of Artivizm in downtown Seattle the other night. On the walls of the Seattle Art Museum on the eve of Amazon's shareholder meeting. It comes on the heels of this embarrassing revelation about Bezos'/Amazon's corporate selfishness. The gist:

Amazon needs to pay its fair share of taxes.

Amazon paid an effective federal income tax rate of 2.6% in 2011--dramatically lower than the 35% rate set in law.
Amazon avoided paying millions in taxes by taking advantage of an outlandish loophole that gives them a $1 tax deduction for every $1 in stock options they give to executives.

Amazon needs to treat all their workers with respect.

Amazon's giant warehouse in Allentown, Pennsylvania was exposed last year for nightmarish working conditions, including indoor temperatures that rose above 100 degrees in the summer.
The company's initial response was not to increase ventilation or install air conditioning. Instead, they just stationed paramedics outside.

Amazon needs to cut ties with ALEC.

Amazon was a "Director Level" sponsor of ALEC in 2011.
ALEC has become notorious for its support of Stand Your Ground laws, as well as efforts to create tax loopholes, undermine workers rights, and make it harder for young people & people of color to vote.
While major corporations like McDonald's and Kraft have publicly dropped support for ALEC, Amazon has refused to do so.

Learn more at http://workingwa.org

Occu-Pie

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:51:00 +0000

Occupy DC

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 02:51:00 +0000

West Coast Port Shutdown 12-12-11

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 21:58:00 +0000

Heritage Park, Olympia, WA

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 21:56:00 +0000

Trans-Pacific Artivist Solidarity

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 21:02:00 +0000

Another fabulous project from the inspired and passionate folks at Just Seeds, this time to bring attention to the environmental and humanitarian devastation inflicted from liquefied natural gas exploitation on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. Three Portland-based Just Seeds members (Alec Dunn, Roger Peet and Pete Yahnke) teamed up with Indonesian political art collective, Taring Padi to create a twinned set of two large-scale block prints depicting the poison effects of liquefied natural gas exploration and mining in Java and the destruction of farms and natural habitats that would result from the construction of the Palomar natural gas pipeline across the Cascade Mountains in Oregon.

The two prints are touring both the US and Indonesia and serve as the spark to raise awareness and foster solidarity. This image is from a recent Taring Padi protest organized at the site of the Sidoarjo mud-flow, an environmental and social disaster area in North Java. The desolate area in the background is the result of a blowout of a natural-gas well.

Proving activism and solidarity can pay off, LNG cancelled plans for their proposed pipeline through the fragile Oregon ecosystems.

Tonight in Portland, you can see the prints up close at the exhibit's closing (7pm, at the Fresh Pot on NE Mississippi). You'll hear about the threats still posed by LNG development plans and see a presentation by Roger about the project. If you miss that, catch up with the project or buy small silkscreen versions of the prints at the project blog here.

No Touching Ground

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 21:23:00 +0000

I love it when the virtual breadcrumb trails I follow around the web intersect with the real ones found on the streets. Such is the case with No Touching Ground, my new favorite Seattle street artist. Although Seattle is awash in stickers and graffiti, just a small handful of artists practice large scale unsanctioned public works.

I'd seen some of NTG's work around Seattle and liked it without knowing the origins (NTG doesn't sign his pieces), then via some serendipitous facebook posts and some more web sleuthing, discovered that the same guy who was putting owls on highway overpasses and wolves on utility boxes was responsible for the large hand-colored John T. Williams mural on Capitol Hill. Recently, I had the opportunity to talk to NTG about his upcoming show at 4Culture. On a quintessentially Seattle rainy evening, we sat in a typically hipster Capitol Hill cafe and talked about Seattle activism, street art and fishing.

NTG has spent much of his life on two famous sounds, Prince William and Puget. When he first came to Seattle to live, he made his home in artist lofts in one of the grittier parts of the city. A recent BFA graduate, he concentrated mostly on oil painting, but was increasingly affected by his new urban environment and at the same time wanted to release his art from the confines of gallery walls. Those impulses gave rise to his first street art. The sense of alienation he felt is echoed in his wheatpastes, creatures of the wilderness surprised to be surrounded by so much concrete.

To keep himself from getting too tethered to the city or secluded in the rarefied bubble of an artist's life, NTG spends his summers working as a professional commercial fisherman during the Alaska salmon run. In a flannel pattern jacket and dark gray Fidel cap, he blends seamlessly into the PNW coffeehouse crowd, his secret street artist identity hinted at only by some wheatpaste and paint stains on the frayed edges of his long sleeve shirt cuffs.

NTG's Wheatpaste

When I ask if his work is political, he responds, "Whenever you put something up in an unsanctioned public place, it's going to be political by nature." The John T Williams mural came partly out of a sense of responsibility to community. "I would want someone to do a memorial for me if I were shot by the police," he says. We talk about the similarities between the small band of dedicated street artists and the tiny number of committed political activists, lamenting the anemic response to the miscarriage of justice in the Williams case. People don't want to leave their comfort zone to go out and protest or push the limits, he says, they don't think it concerns them. He spent 3 days listening to testimony at the inquest.

Overunder's mural, underneath the wheatpaste

His work continues to be inspired by contemporary events and themes of social justice like the collabortive piece he recently completed in Brooklyn with Overunder. As the elements take their toll on NTG's wheatpaste, Overunder's mural will be progressively revealed underneath.

NTG with NKO and photographer Dan Hawkins, are part of the The New Mystics. Their 4Culture show opening April 7th is part representation/part reproduction of a large scale installation piece the three artists created in an abandoned peanut butter factory in the industrial SODO area of Seattle.

At the time NTG was working on the installation, he was going through a transition himself, having just been laid off as an art teacher. The title of the show, 'tomb' and the subject of his work reflect the idea of transformation and loss, grieving the old, but also making space for what's to come. The crosses are from photographs taken from an old Native cemetery in Alaska, then wheatpasted to palettes and scattered around the abandoned building that was destined to be destroyed in a dramatic fire just a few months later. Now the site is being championed by the Mayor as a permanent city-sanctioned homeless encampment. After the 4Culture exhibit, the artists plan to take the reproductions of the old factory walls back to the site and photograph the reproduction of the installation in its place of origin, completing the circle.

photo by Dan Hawkins

Keep an eye on the streets and the skies for No Touching Ground's future work in Seattle, and look for his narrative street and conceptual art to keep responding to contemporary social justice concerns and expand the conversation about outsiders, underdogs and alien environments.

Lest we worry. . . .

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 22:33:00 +0000

about the radiation reaching our shores, it's good to be reminded that we've been raining down radiation from nuclear explosions for over 50 years now.

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project's "Trinity" test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan's nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea's two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).

Closer to home, Kim Stringfellow created "The Hanford Project" as an art installation and permanent website documenting the history of radioactive contamination to the environment, workers and nearby residents over the 40-some years The Hanford Nuclear Reservation operated, producing plutonium for the US nuclear arsenal during the cold war. Plutonium from Hanford was used in the first nuclear test explosion at Trinity and in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Today, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States.

From the April 2011 Harper's Index:

Radioactive animal droppings found in 2009 near the Hanford nuclear site in Washington : 33

Inspired Artivizm on Seattle Streets

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 17:52:00 +0000

Someone brilliantly replaced the front page of the Seattle Times with this satire last week in several downtown boxes. Sadly, the fake isn't much more shocking than the real pages of the Seattle Police Officer's Guild newsletter. In recent articles, officers have freely expressed their racist tendencies. Others, including the message from the president of the police union, defensively bristle against any scrutiny of the recent spate of police brutality and the underlying attitudes that seem to perpetuate it, one officer even calls it a "jihad" against police.

The Design of Dissent

noreply@blogger.com (wj) — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 07:26:00 +0000

Egypt April 6 graphic

Serbian Otpor logo

A recent mention in the New York Times about ties between Egypt's uprising and the Serbian Youth Movement, Otpor, which helped topple Milosevic; along with a facebook note by friend and photojournalist Kael Alford led me on the trail of this stylized fist. You'll find it repeated on banners of protesters and resistors from Serbia to Iran to Zimbabwe and now Egypt. Recently I heard a friend say, "art can turn a cause into a movement." I'm not sure I'd credit art alone, but certainly art, or in this case, graphic design, can give the movement a unified identity and a sense of common cause.

The US press has given a lot of play to a previously obscure American academic, Gene Sharp, who seems to have helped inspire to these brave dissidents and a host of others across Eastern Europe and Asia. I tend to agree with Stephan Gowans' analysis here, Sharp's ideas are the culmination of a long history of non-violent resistence including Gandhi, Martin Luther King and others. Some of his organizing advice is even reminiscent of Rules for Radicals. The idea that one 82 year old American white guy is the major mobilizing impetus for millions of Egyptians is just another form of colonialist thinking (one that Sharp himself rejects, to his credit.)

Sharp, unlike Gandhi and King, is not driven by passion for a political cause. In recent interviews, he has been careful to eschew his "lefty, pacifist" past which included a jail stint for refusing conscription during the Korean War. He is more of a pragmatist these days, promoting non-violence simply because it is the most efficient way to bring about regime change. This focus on the means to the end, along with the fact that he seems to be quite cozy with the US Military (evidently DARPA funded his first book) and the consistency of the fist logo across the many movements he's inspired has led some to conclude that there's a CIA common thread. I guess I wouldn't be too upset to find that some of my tax dollars were helping to train the masses in non-violent organizing techniques designed to topple oppressive dictators--compared to, say, Star Wars missile defense, assassination attempts on Castro, and abstinence-only education. I do wish I knew who was behind the fist design though.

back to Egypt

And some more good raised fists (I don't think the CIA had anything to do with these):

from Cuba

IWW Poster, 1917

Tommie Smith and John Carlos' black power protest salute at the 1968 Olympics