Weaving together diverse musical traditions that span oceans, Montreal-based composer and musician Sam Shalabi offers a distinctive sound, rooted in contemporary musical experimentation but also inspired by the popular orchestras that took a cultural center stage in Egypt in the late 1960s.

Impressive in scope, Land of Kush, the latest music ensemble project orchestrated by Shalabi, explores new musical boundaries while combining artistic practice from the Middle East and North America.

As headlines of war often shape mainstream media coverage on the Middle East in the West, Shalabi’s music presents an artistic front embodying a complex and interconnected relationship between cultures, rooted in creative ties that influence the identity of both societies.

Amassing together over thirty musicians, drawn from varied artistic traditions and playing over two dozen different instruments, Shalabi has united an incredible musical ensemble in Land of Kush.

Rendering Cairo’s opera house

“In the past ten years my interest in working with big musical groups was really parked by learning about the large orchestras of Egypt, a lightning rod for what was going on culturally in the Middle East at the time,” outlines Shalabi. “Those concerts at the Cairo Opera House were like town halls, and were very open to cross-cultural influences, so they are a really good model.”

Although strongly tied to both Montreal and the Middle East, Shalabi’s work openly celebrates and builds on cultural traditions rooted firmly in Egypt.

Extending back to Egypt during the Nasser era, Shalabi’s contemporary work offers a current take on the dynamic arts scene in Egypt decades ago, an artistic period that continues to influence cultural expression across the Middle East. Clearly inspired by figures like guitarist Omar Khorshid, who introduced improvisations on the electric guitar to Umm Kulthum’s legendary concerts in Cairo, it is an incredible history that Shalabi builds upon today in Montreal.

“Land of Kush is my version of Arabic music,” outlines Shalabi, “some would say my work isn’t really Arabic music, but spending time in Cairo actually emboldened me, because simply there is so much music in Cairo that people would dismiss as being not Arabic, but in fact it is Arabic music created by Egyptians in Egypt.”

“Sometimes people have a static version of what Arabic culture is that is stuck in history,” continues Shalabi, “but in reality culture is organic and always evolving across the world.”

Certainly concerts at the Cairo Opera House decades ago presented cutting edge contemporary music from the era, experimentations on traditional Middle Eastern music, mixing in jazz saxophone or electric guitar into Arabic ballads. Today artists build on this incredible cultural history in unexpected and inspiring ways throughout the world.

Artists working in the region, like celebrated composer and musician Ziad Rahbani in Lebanon, certainly have taken inspiration from the vivid musical experimentation found in the orchestras of Egypt decades ago, developing new directions on the notes played along the Nile.

Cultural space opened at the marathon Cairo concerts continue to move musicians across the world, illustrating a spirit of openness seldom found in formulaic pop melodies that dominate corporate radio waves, from North America and the Middle East.

Literary compositions

Beyond the orchestras of Egypt, the first release from Shalabi’s mass ensemble Land of Kush is named after Against the Day, a 2006 novel by mysterious American author Thomas Pynchon.

“A thematic thread in the Pynchon book is electromagnetism, which basically becomes a character, shaping the narrative arc,” explains Shalabi, “in all of Pynchon’s books the technology, the science, the zeitgeist of the era is central, things like light becomes narrative material, this type of thinking structured the compositions on Against the Day.”

Jumping between continents in conversation Shalabi moves to consider that Pynchon’s literary techniques, often focusing on social atmosphere or phenomenon to build storylines, can be compared to traditional methods of musical composition in the Middle East. Clearly Shalabi’s cultural references are across the map.

“In the older ways of learning Arabic music and also Indian music, one would associate music with poetry, with color, all sorts of phenomena that have nothing directly to do with learning music or an instrument, totally different than a classical conservatory today,” says Shalabi. “Certainly there are similarities between Pynchon’s literary style and these traditions in Arabic music. The narrative in Against the Day is developed through things like light or electromagnetism, so the book as material for the Land of Kush project made sense.”

Literary works are often paramount to Shalabi’s music, as previous compositions have been inspired by thinkers such as the celebrated philosopher-sociologist Walter Benjamin. An active attempt to guide composition by profound text is clearly central to Shalabi’s creative process.

Cairo and Benjamin’s state of emergency

Woven into Shalabi’s work is an active consideration of the complex relations between cultures, manifested in both the arts and turbulent political currents shaping our world.

“Clearly political events occurring in the Arab world are fundamentally connected to events occurring here in North America,” explains Sam Shalabi. “One person in Cairo described America as ‘the eye of the hurricane.’ There is a sense in Cairo that this [North America] is the only place in the world where the population doesn’t have this immediate sense of what Walter Benjamin called ‘a state of emergency’, a notion of emergency that one feels if you are aware politically and culturally.”

“In Egypt, people are always living in a state of emergency, because they are living under a dictatorship that is intimately connected to Israel and the U.S.,” says Shalabi, “in Egypt people are more hopeful but also more fearful, as this ‘state of emergency’ is in their face.”

Successive trips between Montreal and Cairo, home to familial roots, certainly have had a profound influence on Shalabi’s creative thinking and in discussions on time in Egypt Shalabi speaks on experiences lived in Cairo with grassroots social activists.

“In fact, the first people I met in Egypt were social activists, which was an excellent way to become oriented in Cairo. In terms of developing a sense of the political landscape of Egypt, they were probably the best guides, as they were very open and thoughtful people, while also passionate about the work that they were doing to change Egyptian society.”

Composing across continents

Eid, an album released in 2006, was largely written and conceived in Cairo, marking Shalabi’s first studio recording directly rooted in trans-continental travel, a dynamic album featuring gorgeous solo oud improvisations and composition collaborations with singers such as the late Lhasa de Sela.

“Thematically, Eid was informed by an effort to see how North America looked from the Middle East or Egypt,” explains Shalabi, “both from my own perspective but [also from those] of Egyptians in Cairo – trying to develop a sense or an understanding about Cairo’s thoughts on a place like North America politically, culturally and socially”

Certainly Shalabi’s work is internationalist, outlining in artistic practice that in contrast to current conflicts shaped by colonial borderlines, cultural creation is a global process, seriously influenced by localities but also shaped by our increasingly global identities.

In 2002 Osama was released, an autobiographical album titled after Shalabi’s given first name, sparking critical acclaim. Osama reflected on the political turbulence globally stemming from 9/11, communicating reflections from a creative mind shaped by currents from the river Nile in Egypt, to the river Saint-Laurent in Montreal.

“All I can say is that the album was done under a cloud of anger, joy, sadness and an involuntary absurdity,” outlines Shalabi in notes on the album. “Hopefully it says something, though, about ‘arabophobia in a post 9-11 world’ in an informative, entertaining and rockin’ kind of way.”

Today Shalabi has flipped 9/11 reflections into an active cross-cultural artistic practice, via the critically acclaimed Land of Kush ensemble, currently completing a second album at the Hotel 2 Tango studios in Montreal. Certainly Shalabi is a critically important alternative composer in North America to follow.

It is a profound musical curiosity that is immediately apparent in Shalabi’s unique compositions, which also reflect experiences of diasporas from the Middle East in North America. Extending beyond static definitions of cultural identity into blurry but fascinating territory, Shalabi’s music breaks down borders, presenting an internationalist spirit that is important to consider in a world increasingly torn between fictitious borderlines.

For more information on Sam Shalabi and Land of Kush visit Constellation Records at cstrecords.com.

Images: Radwan Moumneh and Herb Greenslade.

Having been lucky enough to hear Emory Douglas speak about his role as Minister of Culture for the revolutionary Black Panther Party last year, it’s not difficult to see how he inspired a generation through his work and art.

His ‘militant-chic’ graphic art which featured on the covers of the Black Panther Newspaper and as posters reflected the tumultuous period between the late 60s until the party was disbanded in the 1980s. Over the past few years, Emory’s work has been exhibited in a number of galleries including Museum of Modern Art in Los Angeles and the 2008 Biennale of Sydney and has appeared in numerous publications including Art in America and PRINT Magazine.

On September 11, a unique ‘multi-artform’ event, Tongues on Fire, inspired by the Black Panthers and Douglas will be coming to London’s Barbican Centre. Featuring members of The Roots, Living Colour and the Last Poets and directed by legendary tenor saxophonist David Murray, the event is sure to be a memorable experience.

Image: Revolution in Our Lifetime. Credit: Emory Douglas. Detail of poster from The Black
Panther, November 8, 1969, Detail, Offset lithograph, 20-1/4 x 14″, Collection of Alden
and Mary Kimbrough, Los Angeles, © Emory Douglas (Source)

This week’s Friday Film Pick is a short doc by filmmaker Nirah Elyza Shirazipour. In her own words, the doc is: “A brief chronicle of the last 60 years of Bedouin life in the Naqab. How the state of Israel is striving to sedentarize this historically nomadic indigenous population by uprooting them from their culture and community.

Through the denial of basic resource allocation, house demolitions, land appropriation and strategic exposure to industrial pollution, the Bedouin of the Naqab are subject to myriad social and environmental injustices that most minority populations face within Apartheid Israel and Occupied Palestine.”

Shirazipour’s other documentaries (co-directed with Jessica Habie) include the excellent Art and Apathy and sister film Beyond Blue and Gray.

Just two weeks following the resignation of Jane Danzo, Chair of BC Arts Council, the Government reorganized its funding to provide an additional $7 million to the BC Arts Council, increasing the council’s budget to just over $16 million for this fiscal year.

Following BCs devestating series of arts cuts, Danzo felt it was necessary to resign from her position “in order to have a voice,” and it appears she was heard.

“In my opinion, the work of the BC Arts Council Board, has not been supported by government on a number of different levels,” expressed Danzo in her resignation letter.

The restoration of funding comes after more than a year of intense criticism and action from the BC arts community calling for a restoration of funding to 2008/09 levels. Despite council recommendations the provincial government originally put that funding towards an Arts Legacy Fund (written about by Tyler Morgenstern a few weeks ago).

“It seems that the arts communities efforts have been heard since the first cuts were announced,” said Amir Ali Alibhai, executive director of the Alliance for Arts and Culture in an interview with the Vancouver Sun.

“We will have to wait and see the details are on all of this to really be able to assess it. But on the surface, it certainly is good news. Congratulations to the ministry and to the government for making this change.”

In the media release send out yesterday, the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts assured that “The government respects and values a strong independent council and is committed to ensuring this independence is maintained and enjoys the confidence of the arts community.”

Photo: Jane Danzo, former chair of BC Arts Council (source).

Taking part in one of Berlin’s most popular cultural events, A Long Night of Museums, the Chilean arts collective Los Casagrande dropped 100,000 poems from the sky onto the Lustgarten to celebrate poetry and condemn acts of war.

The unusual ‘Poetry Rain’ project was launched in 2001 by the group with the aim to make poetry more accessible to the public and to protest acts of war. Since its launch, Casagrande has ‘bombed’ Santiago de Chile (2001), Dubrovnik (2002), Guernica (2004) and Warsaw (2009) — all cities that have suffered aerial strikes in the past.

The Guardian writes: “Organisers say that just as wartime bombings were intended to ‘break the morale’ of the inhabitants of a city, so the poetry bombing ‘builds’ a new city by giving new meaning to events of her tragic past and therefore presenting the city in a whole new original way.”

Eighty German and Chilean poets contributed to the Berlin event including: Ann Cotten, Karin Fellner, Nora Gomringer, Andrea Heuser, Orsolya Kalász, Björn Kuhligk, Marion Poschmann, Arne Rautenberg, Monika Rinck, Hendrik Rost, Ulrike Almut Sandig, Tom Schulz, Thien Tran, Anja Utler, Jan Wagner, Ron Winkler and Uljana Wolf, whose poems can be found at lyrikline.org.

A group of Israeli actors, directors and playwrights have signed a letter to the management of six Israeli theatres announcing their refusal to participate in stage productions in a new performing arts centre in a West Bank settlement. The signatories have asked theatre managers to restrict their activity to stages within the internationally accepted 1967 borders.

More than 60 have joined the protest over plans by Israel’s national theatre, the Habima, and other leading companies to stage performances in Ariel, a settlement 12 miles inside the West Bank. The letter, to Israel’s culture minister, Limor Livnat, says the new centre for performing arts in Ariel, which is due to open in November after 20 years in construction, would “strengthen the settlement enterprise”.

“We want to express our dismay with the intention of the theatres’ managements to perform in the new auditorium in Ariel and hereby declare that we will refuse to perform in the city, as in any other settlement.” Israel’s theatre companies should “pursue their prolific activity inside the sovereign territory of the state of Israel within the boundaries of the Green Line”. (The Guardian)

After news of actors’ protest became public, hundreds have gathered at Tel Aviv’s Habima Theatre in support of the boycott. The sentiment of those opposed to performing in the new centre were eloquently summarized by actor Yousef Swaid, who explained his position to Israeli television: “Settlers and settlements are not something that entertain me, and I don’t want to entertain them.”

Return to El Salvador is an intimate documentary that tells—mainly through candid interview—the story of the individuals and communities effected by El Salvador’s brutal civil war that ended nearly two decades ago. While a little heavy-handed on narration (which isn’t to say Martin Sheen’s usual talented presentation of context isn’t well-executed, but that there is too much explaining/describing as we see things on the screen) the film is beautifully shot and a commitment and compassion shines through in every scene.

The film picks through the complicated layers of geo-politics, resistance, and torn communities to piece together an important (and overlooked in the West) story from America’s so-called “back yard.” Art Threat had a chance to chat with director Jamie Moffett during the usual juggling act that occurs after an indy doc is completed and its makers seek out an audience.

Art Threat: What gave you the idea or inspired you to make Return to El Salvador (RTE)?

Jamie Moffett: Honestly, it was a big accident. I was in final prep for my first feature, The Ordinary Radicals when I invited my former professor Betsy Morgan to advise on the release of film. She used her time as director of  a PBS documentary, El Salvador: Portraits of a Revolution as an example to advise me on the directorial process. I started asking her questions on the film and the content. I did more research. I came up with answers that lead me to more questions, and 18 months, and $100,000 later, here we are.

The film really delves into the relationship between the personal and the political. Can you speak to this theme?

One key example as to where the personal and political meet is with the story of murdered anti-mining activist Marcelo Rivera. His story is a poignant example of the effects of the global consumer economy on the individual. His fight to save his homeland, and keep his water safe to drink cost him and others their lives at the hands of forces thousands of miles away. International corporate structures can destabilize regions in ways as powerful as earthquakes or hurricanes.

What are your connections to Latin America, and how did the film process change your relationship to El Salvador and the region in general?

18 months ago I couldn’t have placed El Salvador with any accuracy on a map. But in tireless research, and being infinitely curious, the content of the film not only granted me insight in to the Salvadoran heritage, but also into my own. In reading John F. Kennedy’s book, A Nation of Immigrants, I learned how the American forebearers of my Irish heritage were treated as less than equal, and referred to as “those dirty Irish taking our jobs.” In 1844, an Irish Catholic church in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia was burned down due to Anti-Irish/Anti-Immigrant sentiment. To watch on TV and read in the news the same insults hurled at my ancestors now used one hundred and fifty years later, I have trouble understanding how easily we forget our own history.

Your documentary is indeed a historical document, one that reminds me of Howard Zinn’s work – any links or connections?

Certainly. Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky are two of many authors I’ve studied in the production of this work. Return to El Salvador as a historical document captures the history of a people being erased from American schoolbooks. The Texas Schoolboard of Education voted to remove Catholic martyr Archbishop Oscar Romero from the history books. Without understanding the story of Monsignor Romero, it’s more difficult to understand the interplay between U.S. and Salvadoran politics and policies.

What was the biggest challenge in making this film?

In hindsight, self-producing a feature film narrated by Martin Sheen in the worst economy since the Great Depression was a challenge I almost didn’t overcome. I can confidently say that without support from hundreds of people also committed to this story and its subjects this film wouldn’t have happened.

On the subject of support, how can people see it?

The film will be in select theatres in select cities through North and Central America. The DVD is available on Amazon right now, and we’re working on grassroots screenings with Cinema Politica for 2011.

Anything you’d like to add?

I know more than ever before that history is not written in stone. It can be altered or removed by people with ulterior motives. In traditions similar to oral traditions before us it’s critical that we continually remember and re-remember our stories, not only for ourselves but for those who have yet to hear them.

In the wake of the recent racist attack on a Muslim cab driver in NYC, I’m particularly interested in the public reaction to the latest project by Tehran-born, Big Apple-based artist Amir Baradaran. For one week beginning September 9, Baradaran will debut Transient, a series of 40-second video installations infiltrating New York’s taxicabs.

Taking over regular Taxi TV programming in 6,300 vehicles, Transient “seeks to capture, challenge and transform the everyday modalities of NYC cab rides.” The video interruption is comprised of shots of a driver’s gaze into the rear-view mirror, or alternatively through the plexiglass partition. While the videos take the separation between driver and passenger as a point of departure, “it was not my intention to make a humanist statement,” says Baradaran, “but rather to create a space of introspection.”

And why infiltrate taxis, and not, say, buses, the subway, or another form of public transportation? “The yellow taxicab presents a striking paradox: the car itself is one of the most visible icons of NYC, while its drivers, many of whom are minorities, seem invisible,” explains a news release. “Recent media reports have inundated commuters with articles portraying taxicab drivers as an ‘other’ class, erroneously intimating that some three-quarters of all drivers actively prey on their fare. Even though these reports have since been reassessed and somewhat retracted, they have created a climate of distrust. Baradaran’s reactive installations emerged from this context.”

While the project, which will reach an estimated 1.5 million passengers by the time it concludes on September 15, can’t remove the physical wall between the driver and their customer, it may poke holes in psychological barrier that keeps passengers from empathizing with those who chauffeur them about the city.

Glenn Beck helped cement his reputation as a misinformed art critic today during his massive right-wing “Restoring Honour” rally, which was disturbingly organized on the anniversary — and in the exact location — of Martin Luther King’s historic “Dream” speech.

Perched in front of 300,000 monochromatic faces, Beck gave an architecture lesson concerning the design of the Washington Monument. The story is retold beautifully by L.A. Times art critic Christopher Knight, who goes on to explain the ironic hilarity of Beck’s latest folly.

Pointing to the place about 150 feet up the Egyptian-style obelisk, where the color of the stone suddenly changes, Beck gravely exhorted the crowd to note the “scar” on the founding president’s memorial. It happened, he said, when construction was halted for the national trauma of the Civil War — the apparent implication being that Saturday’s rally would perform some necessary plastic surgery on race-related social divisions splitting the country.

Well, close but no cigar. In fact the “scar” predates the Civil War. [...]

When building ceased [due to a lack of funds], a private group of political activists grabbed the project’s reins — but they promptly made a huge mess of things. When Pope Pius IX donated a building stone from the Temple of Concord in Rome for the restarted Washington Monument project, the [anti-Catholic] activists had it destroyed. Through in-fighting, ideological division and bursts of election-related violence, the group fell apart after two years. The shoddy work they had done on the monument had to be removed. Hence the “scar” we see today.

So the architectural imperfection Glenn Beck employed as he riled up his army of sectarian religious fanatics was, in fact, the mark of colossal failure by a group of sectarian religious fanatics. An inconvenient truth, no doubt, for the home-schooled art critic, so Beck just did what Beck knows best, and create an alternative history that fits his disturbing narrative.

Photo by Gage Skidmore.

Stephen Harper said last week that he was “concerned” about Homegrown, a play running at this year’s Summerworks theatre festival in Toronto. Homegrown apparently takes a sympathetic view on one of the ‘Toronto 18’ would-be terrorists who were foiled by Canadian authorities in 2006.

Summerworks, like many artistic endeavors across Canada, receives federal funding. This year, Ottawa gave the festival $35,000. There are over 40 performances at this year’s festival, which means that Homegrown probably received somewhere in the range of $875 from the federal government.

Granted, the concern is probably not just about the money; it’s a principles thing, I guess. Why, one might ask, would Canadian taxpayers support a play that asks us to sympathize with a man who was apparently going to try to blow up federal buildings and kill Canadians?

David Akin, who reported on the story for the Sun, followed up with a commentary piece in which he wrote:

Some might think it’s a battle about government censorship of the arts in Canada. Perhaps. But I think it’s about something even more fundamental: A culture war between Conservatives and the left that was a major theme in the last general election and will almost certainly be a dominant theme in the next one.

Ah, the culture war. The thing about a Canadian culture war is that it’s probably less about a battle between conservatives and liberals per se (although that’s part of it) than it is more an exercise in continually defining our national identity.

And it’s not just about elections, either. These little flashpoints where the federal Tories push back against elements of Canadian culture, are definitely in some ways about appealing to a certain potential voter base. But just as much, there is an intention to shift the parameters of cultural debate in general, so that gradually, the discussion begins in a different place than it did before. In a way, a ‘war’ would be easily recognizable as such. This technique is a bit more subversive.

Rather than cultural conversations immediately recognizing that any material or topic can be on the table, suddenly, there are questions about the material potentially limiting funding. That’s a weird place to be, quite frankly. It’s automatically very stifling, and encourages self-censorship. And it means that art is immediately less challenging to the status quo, which in turn is damaging to society in general. If we’re less able to challenge our ideas and ourselves, then we’re in trouble.

Again, from Akin’s commentary:

You’ll remember that just before the last election, the Tories cancelled funding of an artists’ development program because, in the words of the government source who explained the decision to me, the program’s grant recipients included “a general radical,” “a left-wing and anti-globalization think-tank” and a rock band — Holy F[uck!] — that uses an expletive as part of its name.

The Tories, my source told me, would be damned before money “went to groups that would raise the eyebrows of any typical Canadian.”

If that sounds fishy, it’s because it is. The Tory line of defense is a familiar one – we saw it last month with the debate over the census: supposing ideologically-charged issues onto the population that probably never even considered there to be a problem in the first place.

When we talk about a culture war, it implies that there’s a culture at stake. If that’s true (and it is), we need to be aware of what we’re fighting for. Here’s a hint: it’s not votes.

Originally published to Yesterday’s Weirdness.

Back in February of 2008, I attended a concert with a good friend of mine. For a relatively casual afternoon affair, all the stops were pulled out. Headlining the show was then-quintessential Canadian songstress Feist, supported by the complete Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. The party was hosted by Ben Mulroney, and played host to all the goofy Olympic mascots: Quatchi, Miga, Sumi and Gordon Campbell.

It was the starting point for the events of what VANOC called the Cultural Olympiad — a two-year running program of dance, music, theatre, music and installation art that showcased for the world the diversity and creativity of BC’s artistic community. Two years to the day after Feist wowed the crowd at the Orpheum, the 2010 Winter Olympic Games were officially opened at BC Place. On display was some of the finest culture BC and Canada had to offer. The centrepiece of the opening ceremonies was BC’s own Shane Koyczan, whose impassioned spoken word piece brought damn near everyone to their feet. Our Olympics were to celebrate our creative prowess as much as our athletic grit.

But running alongside this celebration of BC arts was the spectre of massive financial cutbacks. Before the games even opened, the BC Liberals projected a 90% cut to provincial arts spending provided through the BC Arts Council for the 2010 budget (for what is still one of the best articles on this scheme, read this piece by Mark Leiren-Young of The Tyee). When the March 2nd Budget Lockup announcement rolled around, these cuts had been scaled back to 50%, a devastating blow to an arts sector that already received the least per capita funding of any Canadian province, at a mere $9.67.

So in the words of Leiren-Young, we filled our Olympics with culture, then slashed that same culture to within an inch of its life. Ever since the Liberal cuts have been introduced, community arts groups, particularly outside of major urban centres where significant corporate sponsorship simply doesn’t exist, have been folding at an alarming rate. Even fallback funding for cultural infrastructure, traditionally provided by gaming revenues, has been drastically undercut by the provincial government, which has diverted the vast majority of these revenues back into general operational funding. As Stop BC Arts Cuts says, “this is not just poor policy, it’s a breach of the social contract in which gambling was legalized only if it supported community charities.”

In the wake of established arts organizations like the Victoria Fringe Festival failing to qualify for once-assured gaming and funding grants, and a number of community culture groups closing their doors, the BC Liberals found themselves under tremendous pressure from the arts community to explain themselves and provide some logic to the seemingly arbitrary and ill-conceived cuts.

Here’s the solution they dreamed up: In the same March budget that devastated arts institutions across the province with 50% cuts to existing culture spending, the Liberals also included a strange provision of $10 million in new arts spending. On the surface, there isn’t much sense to cutting if you’re just going to introduce new spending, unless that new funding is serving some purpose for the folks who introduce it. As it turns out, this is precisely what has happened. It was announced this week that the vast majority of this $10 million — the so-called arts legacy fund — has been ear-marked by the Liberals to fund BC Spirit Festival Days: a multi-community series of festivals that, as Faith Dusevic of the Golden Star reports, will be largely geared towards celebrating the first anniversary of the Winter Olympic Games. Communities around the province are invited to apply for funding, which is then granted proportionate to the size of the town, and administered directly by the Liberal government; not by the aforementioned BC Council for the Arts, which has traditionally operated at a safe arm’s reach distance from the government itself.

As it stands, even without the Spirit Festivals, the Olympics for many are a sad monument to the Liberal penchant for paying lip service to the cultural sector, while knowingly “eviscerating” it, in the words of Spencer Chandra Hebert, the MLA who discovered that the Spirit Festivals would receive much of the $10 million in new arts spending. When we look back on Koyczan’s thundering performance at the opening ceremony, it seems to have lost its luster, not for being flawed itself, but because it appears nothing more than misleading political blustering used to buy off a struggling arts community. To promise new arts funding on the condition that it is used to celebrate the very event that constantly reminds us of the wholesale gutting of our cultural sector is the worst kind of insult.

Bill Usher of Kicking Horse Culture, referring to Golden’s plan to apply for Spirit Festival funding, even in his support of it, reminds us of the subtle sting of the program: “When the Olympics ended our funding disappeared so this comes at a really nice time, it’s new support.”

Spirit Festivals ensure that the Liberal government becomes a powerful arbiter of what culture is deemed “worthy” in BC, and run a dangerous risk of becoming little more than a campaign platform for the Libs. Especially, since the festivals are set to be rolled out over the next three years, in anticipation of the next provincial election.

But outside of economic and political arguments, the real slap in the face comes from the arrogance of the Spirit Festival scheme. The government has slashed the arts community in half — then spoon-fed back a shadow of its previous funding in such a way that creative control is ripped from the hands of artists themselves. They are now expected to act as mouth pieces championing a legacy of debt, excess, and political misdirection — and we’re expected not to notice.

Originally published in Beyond Robson

South African visual artist Nicholas Hlobo creates large sculptural works that are expansive masses which at once feel oozey, voluptuous and highly structured. The contrast of femininity and masculinity is created by his use of dissimilar materials such as rubber inner tubes, ribbon, organza, lace and found objects.

Hlobo has accumulated an impressive portfolio since graduating from Wits Technikon in 2002. Born in Cape Town in 1975, he is now based in Johannesburg and is represented by Michael Stevenson Gallery.

“Through my works I attempt to create conversations that explore certain issues within my culture as a South African,” says Hlobo of his work in his Artist Statement. “The conversations become a way of questioning people’s perceptions around issues of masculinity, gender, race and ethnicity.”

Hlobo draws on his Xhosa heritage in his work, using the language to title each of his pieces and exhibitions and draws inspiration from his own relationship to the culture (other notable Xhosa men include Nelson Mandela).

Currently, Hlobo’s work can be seen as part of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art 2009 Touring Exhibition showing in six locations across South Africa, including Grahamstown, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Bloemfontein, Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Umtshotsho, as the newest sculptural installation is known, is a term referring to a traditional party for young people, and the exhibition looks at the rituals accompanying the transition from youth to adulthood in Xhosa culture. Unlike previous exhibitions, Umtshotsho is bathed in a faint pink light. Michael Stevenson Gallery, in its review of the work describes this newest exhibition as such:

“In a darkened room the central installation, Izithunzi (meaning ‘shadows’), comprises a gathering of eight figures resembling jellyfish, pumpkins or ghosts. Some are freestanding, others suspended or seated on a sofa. Constructed primarily from rubber inner tubing, the figures are individuated with details of lace, organza and ribbons – Hlobo’s signature materials. Casting a red glow on the group – and perhaps a playful warning – a table lamp is reupholstered with rubber and titled Kubomvu – ‘beware’.”

In 2006 Hlobo was awarded the Tollman Award, given each year to an exceptionally promising young artist. ArtThrob , South Africa’s leading contemporary visual arts publication, reported Hlobo saying that “Winning the Tollman Award has been the most significant moment in my career. It made me realise the importance of my being an artist in this country – suddenly someone celebrated my contribution into the South African culture.”

Judging from his prolific creative mind and the ways he expresses his relationship to his heritage and culture it’s no doubt that Hlobo’s work will continue to be celebrated as significant stories of South African culture.

This weekend Vancouver’s Under the Volcano Festival of Art and Social Change, held annually at Cates Park in North Vancouver, will celebrate its 20th anniversary and, in the same event, wrap up their long running festival dedicated to celebrating the arts and social activism.

Speaking of the festival to the Westender (which gives a lot of background and context, a good read), the festival’s artistic director Meegan Maultsaid explained: “The most important thing, as a festival, is that we support social activism, that we stand in solidarity with movements and community groups that are fighting and struggling and agitating for change. I don’t think that aspect has been a struggle for us. I think we’ve been able to maintain the popularity of our festival and have it continue to grow while not really participating in corporate culture.”

The festival is organized by a core of 6 people who work year round and do it all unpaid. The team does it ‘as a labour of love’ because they support the work of local activists, community groups, and individuals struggling to find social justice.

“After 20 years of celebrating music, social activism and community, UTV has decided to close this chapter of our history by making our 20th anniversary our final event,” it explains on their website. “We have organized in solidarity with local and global social justice movements and have staunchly supported marginalized peoples struggles. We have survived and thrived and now it’s time to say goodbye. As a non-profit society and collective, we will remain committed to social activism and will continue to organize events in our communities. We cannot emphasize enough the gratitude we feel towards all of our allies and supporters. Much Respect! Your heart is a muscle the size of your fist, keep loving, keep fighting”.

The organizing team has put together an impressive 20th anniversary lineup, and acts on the main stage this year include:

Delhi2Dublin: bhangra-Celtic-electronica mash-up
Naomi Klein and Arthur Manual: Discussion with the award-winning journalist and author alongside indigenous activist Manuel, moderated by journalist Avi Lewis
Veda Hille: One of Vancouver’s most distinctive voices
Declan de Barra: one of Ireland’s most haunting singers
Pluskratch 20 years in 40 minutes: DJ set sampling 20 years worth of UTV artists.

For full details visit the Under the Volcano website.

Last year, Under the Volcano took a financial hit thanks to the rain Vancouverites are all too familiar with. Although it typically broke even, its savings were wiped after seeing a 50% decrease in attendance – down from 4,000 annually. According to the Vancouver Sun the by-donation festival is choosing to sing its swan song in part due to the cut to arts organization funding. Only the city and District of North Vancouver have remained core contributors, with other revenue coming from tickets sold by donation at a recommended price of $10-$20.

In an interview with the Georgia Straight, artistic director Meegan Maultsaid remained positive about their efforts to combine social activism and art. “Twenty years is a long time to keep a non corporate, volunteer-run festival going,” she said. “It’s not a death, it’s a rebirth. We’re going to keep our society going. We’re certainly going to do other activism and arts events as a brand.”

With a myriad of problems facing the planet and humanity, it’s ripe time for some political super heroes to come to the rescue. Enter Super Amigos, a disparate group of politically-committed activists in Mexico who dress up in classic wrestling costumes and fight for the environment, for gay rights and more. Super Amigos the documentary never really grew the legs it needed to be seen as much as it could have when it came out in 2007, but lucky for us, Hot Docs has made it available at their free streaming online site. Here’s the Hot Docs synopsis:

Director Arturo Pérez Torres returns to his hometown to show that superheroes do exist. In Mexico City, five real-life “social wrestlers” have capitalized on the popularity of Mexico’s larger than life Lucha Libre wrestlers to fight for social justice rather than trophies. Wearing custom masks, costumes and capes like the wrestlers who inspired them, these anonymous grassroots superheroes protect their metropolis against injustice. Super Animal challenges bullfighters to leave the bulls alone and fight him instead. After a savage beating kills his boyfriend, Super Gay becomes a champion of gay rights, fighting rampant homophobia. Ecologista Universal battles environmental destruction of every kind, all on foot. Super Barrio is the defender of poor tenants, helping them resist evictions by slumlords cashing in on gentrification. With a mixture of live action, comic book-style animation and a surf guitar soundtrack inspired equally by mariachi music and Batman, Super Amigos shows that with a little imagination, a good heart and the right mask, anyone can activate their communities to triumph over evil. In Spanish with English subtitles – Official Selection, 2007 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.

Click this link, press play, and enjoy!

The first official visit by UK Prime Minister Cameron to the White House on July 20, 2010 was watched closely by political pundits around the world. They both wore blue ties during their meeting — did this signify unity on foreign affairs? Was their body language cold or comfortable? Did they walk in stride? During their visit the media analyzed every move, but it was the traditional gift exchange that took the world by storm.

President Obama presented the Prime Minister with a signed lithograph by the famed American pop artist Ed Rucha. In exchange, the Prime Minister presented Obama with a graffiti canvas painted by UK tagger-turned-street artist Eine. With this simple gift, Cameron had instantly challenged conventions and redefined the boundaries of contemporary art.

The media have since described Cameron’s gift as an ‘eyebrow-raising gift of hoodie art’ whilst others have referred to the exchange as a ‘refinement and sophistication of transatlantic relations’  and having ‘established new heights of greatness in meaningful diplomatic gift-giving.’  But more than anything, the exchange has reignited the classic debate: is it art?

The success of prolific street artists such as Banksy and Os Gemos have catapulted street art into the spotlight in recent years resulting in evening art auctions and exhibits in prestigious galleries including the Tate Modern.

For years, seen as only vandalism, the scene has now been set to re-evaluate graffiti’s merit as an art form. But while the art world has been able to reflect upon this difficult aesthetic question, government authorities have been slower to change.

In London, local councils still differ on the best way to tackle graffiti on their streets. Some works deemed by certain councils to be ‘art’ are protected or painstakingly repainted while the other ‘not-art’ graffiti is quickly buffed away and the ‘vandals’ prosecuted. And by no means has there been a uniform approach to addressing the crime vs. art debate.

In 2008, President Obama set a precedent by endorsing the iconic posters painted by street artist Shepard Fairey despite Fairey’s criminal past as a graffiti artist. The painting, Hope, has since been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. and Fairey’s career has been forever altered. Some would argue the same can now be said for Eine, the humble, soft-spoken artist originally from Sidcup, UK.

Eine (real name Ben Flynn), began tagging trains and buildings in East London when he was only 14. Over the years while working at an insurance firm by day and painting graffiti by night, he has built up an impressive rap sheet of arrests for criminal damage. Eine, now 39 and a married father of three, works as an artist full-time.

Greatly respected in the street art community, Eine is known not only for his colourful letters written on store shutters, but also for being an expert printmaker and the artist responsible for the majority of Banksy’s screenprints produced at the gallery POW. However, two weeks ago Eine’s fame was still largely confined to the free murals painted on the back streets of Hackney. Today, his now infamous canvas Twenty First Century City hangs in the White House.

Eine is already being hailed as the next Banksy, but the accolades haven’t yet sunk in. Art Threat had a chance to catch up with Eine to discuss his work, the week that has forever changed his life — and what it all means for the future of street art.

Art Threat: You started out as a ‘proper’ graffiti artist with tags and trains and everything else.

EINE: Yeah.

So how did you make that transition? I know a lot of your peers who exhibit in galleries never did that and just started off as artists. They didn’t have to make a transition.

Beecause they were all designers in college. I think it just got to the point in my career where I’d been arrested so many times and I’d had fine upon fine, and community service after community service. And the last time I got caught I had a massive fine and the maximum amount of community service you could get. So I was pretty confident that the next time that I got caught the judge would have no other decision but to send me to prison, and I didn’t want to go to prison for graffiti. But I didn’t want to stop painting. I mean painting is something that I really, really enjoy.

So street art was beginning to happen, people like Banksy and Shepard Fairey were doing stuff. They weren’t popular, they were still completely underground but because I was in the graffiti world I was aware of them. And street art is much more kind of user friendly. A kind of happier, kind of nicer version of graffiti–well in some respects. And there is a lot less risk involved in doing street art than there is doing graffiti because with the kind of art you’re doing, people assume you have permission to do it, especially now a days. So the risk element is a lot less. So yeah, I started doing street art and stopped doing graffiti.

So do you still do tags?

Nah, I haven’t tagged anything in a long time (laughs).

The Telegraph wrote last week that you’re one of the lucky few who have made the “credibility-damaging transition” from the street to the galleries. That’s one of the big questions isn’t it, that the transition from the street to the galleries, or street to street art makes you somehow not a real artist.

Yeah. Well it’s down to the individual and what they’re comfortable with. I always considered myself to be a graffiti writer, and I’ve painted lots of graffiti. And now I consider myself to be a street artist. And as a street artist I strongly believe that you should have stuff painted in the street. People should be able to walk around — I paint a lot in east London — but wherever that artist lives or paints, people should be able to walk around the area and see stuff in the street by that artist.

The canvases, screen prints and the gallery shows that I do are a way to make money so I can continue to live as an artist. Obviously the stuff I paint in the street I never get paid to do, and most of the time I supply the paint and I supply the materials. So it costs me a lot of money to paint the stuff I put on the street and I have to survive. So my way of surviving is doing gallery shows and making screen prints and selling canvases.

On top of that I’m also an artist, and have an interest in art, and I have an interest in artistic techniques and different media. So I enjoy sitting in my studio and painting paintings and the paintings I produce present a different set of challenges than the stuff I paint on the street. So it’s another side to the things that I do.

So you prefer one over the other or are they just different?

I prefer painting in the street, but I enjoy painting canvases. I enjoy the challenge involved in painting stuff on canvas and trying to get a feeling for what I do on the street onto a canvas. But you know it’s difficult. What makes street art so exciting is that it appears overnight or over the weekend — out of the blue.

You’re walking to work, and it’s the same journey every day. And you turn the corner one day and there’s something new, there’s something that wasn’t there before. It might be a stencil of a rat holding a placard, or one of my shutters, or it could be a poster. And then it’s there for a couple of weeks or a year and then it gets painted over and it’s gone. And you know, you don’t have to go to a gallery, you don’t have to go to a museum to see it and it’s free for anyone to enjoy. I like that about street art.

So how do you feel about people trying to buy the walls that art gets painted on, or ripping a poster down and saving it or selling it?

You know, it happens. It’s part of the world that we live in. People watch me and if I put something on the street and because of different reasons it’s valuable, someone will nick it. If you leave the window open of your car, someone will stick their hand through and nick your stereo. It’s kind of the same thing. But you know the people who do it probably don’t even consider it stealing.

Yeah, it happens. But it’s the world we live in, you know?

I had a shutter. I think one of the first shutters I did on Kingsland Road, on an abandoned shop. It stayed there for a good couple of years and then someone bought the shop and fixed it up. And as they were doing the shop up they ripped down the old shutter with my painting on it and threw it in a skip. Then some enterprising young man dragged it out of the skip, put it on EBay and sold it for 1500 pounds. And lots of people asked me ‘how do you feel about it?’ And I was like ‘well, I don’t want to encourage the stealing and selling of my street stuff, but it was in a skip and it was going to get thrown away’. You know, someone’s earned 1500 pounds out of it. Good luck to ‘em!

So, who or what influences you and is there anyone that you’re dying to work with?

Uhh. I wouldn’t say…hmm… ESPO–Steve Powers. American. He does lots of word-based art and I think me and him could do an interesting show together. Mike Giant, also an American guy. I wouldn’t say he’s a massive influence on me, but he has an amazing skill and an amazing style and I enjoy seeing his stuff. But, I don’t know. It’s not something I’ve really thought so much about. Oh, but Keith Haring was a definitively a big influence on me growing up and seeing graffiti. And Andy Warhol has been a massive influence on me and every artist, but I can’t collaborate with them.

So what has it been like growing up in the heyday of UK street art and what has it been like being one of those prolific few who has shaped the scene?

It’s weird because I’ve always just done what I wanted to do, and I’ve never really considered myself to be someone who has helped the scene evolve or shaped the scene.

I’ve always had a really big passion for graffiti and street art, and part of the reason graffiti writers do what they do is because they want to get their name up in as many places as they possibly can. I still have that kind belief in street art. So I’ve always been one of the most prolific graffiti writers or street artists that kind of did that stuff — so I guess I must have done something. But it’s not really something that I’ve thought about.

Is there a hierarchy? You’re obviously on the inside of one of the top circles in London. With the New York scene in the 70s and 80s you’d mentor the younger guys. I’m just wondering if it works in the same way here.

Hmm. No, not really that I’m really aware of. I moved out of London a few years ago, but there’s a group of friends who I paint with every now and then. We’re all street artists but I don’t think we look at each other and think ‘oh he’s better than me’ because we’ve all be doing it for long enough to develop our own styles. We don’t really look at one person’s style and go ‘oh he’s better’. But sometimes someone comes up with an idea and you think ‘Arrrrg! I wish I thought of that!’

Who’s in that group?

There’s a guy called Pure Evil, and D*Face is in it, yeah just a few street artists. I’m sure there are others that I can’t think of.

I know the Poll Tax Riots influenced a number of you guys including Pure Evil and James Cauty. I was just wondering what your view of the event was and why it’s such a big deal in your community?

Yeah. It’s a big deal because, well, it was a massive deal at the time. And also the fact that there are so many really good, really powerful and really strong images of it out there, and we’re all old enough to have been alive when it happened and when it kicked off. We remember it and remember how angry and how passionate people were. And now there’s no poll tax, so in a way the people won, to a degree. So, it was a massive deal and it is very well documented. A lot of what we do is taking old images or other peoples’ images and re-appropriating them or using them in what we do.

Have there been any other events that have influenced you? I mean your work hasn’t previously been that political, but in recent years it has been. Like your Cork Street Series?

Yeah, the Cork Street stuff was a bit more political and the stuff I did in the L.A. show turned into something more political. The original idea behind it [the L.A. show] was that I wanted to do a set of paintings that were about old London and how London had grown and had turned into the city that it is. And just researching that, there were lots of old images that I found that were all based around protests and demonstrations and whilst looking through those images what I found really interesting were people who were going out and who did something and who stood for something and put themselves on the line.

The people that were photographed waving the banners or wrestling with the police were the people who actually made a difference, but you don’t actually know who any of these people were. They were just normal members of society who had a really massive passion about what they believed in and they got up and they did something about it. Like the Women of Greenham Common, and the Anti-NF and BNP riots in Lewisham and South London.

So basically the people in the photographs that I was looking at, you had no idea who they were. A lot of the photographs were from old press cuttings and books from that year, news events of 1985 or whatever. But there were no names of people. I love the fact that it was all about these random people who had a really powerful, passionate drive, and who got up and did something. And that was what my series of pictures for the LA show turned into. And because they’re all protests and riots, and then I combined that imagery with powerful words behind the black and white press shots, they kind of turned into political paintings. But they weren’t so much political as more of a celebration of the unnamed person. (Laughing) Sorry, it’s hard for an artist to explain their work.

That’s alright. So, do you consider yourself a political artist then?

No, no. I don’t really consider myself a political artist. I think the art that I make I’d like it to be a celebration. It is trying to be positive rather than negative; it’s trying to put a smile on peoples’ faces. The stuff I paint on the street, it’s there to make improvements, to make the area look better. Obviously what’s gone on in the last week or so has made me look at what I’m doing and question what I’m doing.

In a strange way, I think I spent so many years being destructive and not caring about what I painted and not caring about what I did. And now I’ve grown up and mellowed and matured and in some way, I’m kind of trying to make amends for that; trying to make things look better and more enjoyable and more fun.

I painted the entire alphabet on down the street — Middlesex Street — which is just up by Liverpool St. Station in London, and I got an email from a guy that lives there that said: ‘Ben, I’m just writing to you to say thank you so much. I’ve lived on Middlesex Street for three years and it’s never looked so vibrant and so happy and so much fun; the whole time I’ve lived here. You’ve turned a really boring, grey street to something fun and exciting. So, thank you very much’.

Wow, that must have been amazing.

Yeah, it’s a really nice thing for someone to write, and it’s not what I consciously set out to do. But that is I guess what’s happening when I get to paint a lot in a small area–almost like I’m doing home improvements on a large scale. (Laughs.)

So I could ask you a thousand more questions, but let’s talk about what everyone wants to talk about. Can you tell me how the last week has been for you?

It’s been a very surreal roller coaster of media madness.

I got a phone call last Friday from Anya Hindmarch telling me that ‘Samantha Cameron was a fan, and that David Cameron was looking for a piece of art to give to the most powerful man in the world — think America!’ She didn’t mention his name. And I was like ‘Wow, yeah. I think I’d be interested in this.’ And she said ‘is it alright if I pass your number to Downing Street and get someone to give you a call?’ I was like ‘Yeah! Totally fine!’

So about twenty minutes later I got a call from Downing Street and they explained to me what was going to happen. Again, they didn’t mention the name Obama but they made it quite obvious that it was going to be him. This was Friday, so we spent the weekend emailing them over images of paintings that I had available. They needed to take the painting out with them to Washington on Monday so I had like two days. There wasn’t actually time to paint something new, so they had to take something that I already had.

So I emailed them images of some pictures but they hummed and hawed, but then on Sunday afternoon I remembered that I had a painting in a gallery in Brighton called Twenty First Century City. I emailed them a picture of that over, and within five minutes they came back and said ‘we all really love it, can we have that one?’ And I said ‘Yeah, cool!’

What’s the meaning behind that one?

I did a few paintings that were about places; longer phrases than I normally write. I normally write short phrases or individual words, but these were bigger paintings. I can’t remember exactly why, but at the time I was thinking about cities and places. And I think I’d recently watched Blade Runner or a film like that and I was playing around with the word ‘metropolis’ and thinking of the science fiction and futuristic imagery that that word conjured up for me. But it wasn’t long enough to go with the other pieces I was doing and it wasn’t long enough to go on the canvas I was painting. I wanted all the canvases to be quite similar in the layout of letters in the words. So I was just trying to find a longer phrase that conjured up the same kind of imagery as ‘metropolis’ and I came up with ‘twenty first century city’. And yeah, so I painted it and it went off to a show in New York and no one bought it, and it came back to England and went up in a gallery in London and no one bought it, and it went up in the White House eventually! (Laughs.)

And look who’s laughing now!

Yeah, and now everyone wants to buy it!

So how do you feel about the fact that it’s actually hanging somewhere in the White House?

Yeah, it actually is hanging up there. I got a message from someone at Downing Street saying ‘just to let you know the painting is on the wall in the White House.’

That’s incredible, that must be such a strange feeling.

Yeah, it is. The whole thing has been totally surreal. As an artist I want people to enjoy my art, I want it to hang up on somebody’s wall and it to be looked at and enjoyed. And to have one of my paintings hanging up in the White House is a pretty mad thing. There can’t be that many living artists that have got a painting hanging up in there. So in that respect it’s better than having a painting in the Tate, you know?

Definitely. You know, the headline in the The Evening Standard today was “Is Ben Eine the Next Banksy?”

(Laughs. A lot.)

How you feel about that?

It’s weird because there’s massive amounts of interest in me at the moment. But is it like a five minute flash in the pan, or are people going to take me seriously? Will it last?

I’m hoping that this will be a good thing for my career in the long term. I’m not interested in doubling the prices of all the work I’ve got available and cashing in on this and making a quick buck. I’m going to try to make this a positive thing for me in the long term. I’d like to be making paintings in 20 years time and I’d like this to be a thing that helps me for the rest of my career rather than just milk it for the next six months.

Going back to that headline, are you and Banksy still mates? Are you still doing his screen prints?

I haven’t seen him in a while. We’ve both busy doing our own stuff. And I used to do all — well, a lot of the screen prints for the company Pictures on Walls that produced Jamie Hewlett stuff, Banksy stuff, Paul Insect stuff. But it got to a point in my career, well my art career, where I just didn’t have time to do that. I needed to concentrate on my stuff and spend less time doing other people’s stuff. I haven’t done any screen prints of other people’s stuff for quite a while.

Are you two going to have a laugh about this?

I haven’t spoken to Bansky since this kicked off, but I imagine he’s laughing somewhere. He’s one of the few people I know who will have any idea about the media commotion surrounding me at the moment… So yeah, he’ll be laughing somewhere.

Do you think this experience will influence the work you produce?

Yeah, I think maybe it could. Obviously off the back of this, a lot more people have now heard of me. A lot of people who are into art but not necessarily into street art have heard of me. Potentially more collectors and buyers and definitely galleries who don’t necessarily work with street artists but work with contemporary artists have now heard of me and are maybe considering working with me in the future.

So yeah, there’s a lot of people that are looking at my work so I think I’m going to have to be aware of that and think about it a little more seriously. I think in the past I’ve thought that my work was going to street art fans and it was being geared up towards people who enjoy and like street art and it has reflected my work on the street. And I think that now that there’s a wider audience, I think maybe my work will grow, not necessarily mature, but it will reflect the wider audiences that can see it.

Do you think this experience will change the way street art is perceived more generally in the UK? Do you think it might influence the government, or affect legislation, or the criminality that is associated with street art?

I doubt it will affect the law. I think the law is probably quite right. If you commit a crime and it’s criminal damage you should get punished for it. If there’s graffiti in places that it shouldn’t be, it should probably be cleaned off.

But I think it’s going to make it more mainstream — not that it wasn’t mainstream anyway. I’m now more mainstream, more acceptable, less shocking, and maybe now I’ll get a phone call from Hackney Council or Tower Hamlets Council asking me to come and improve their borough or something.

Yeah, well it’s funny; when I forwarded my friend the first article I read about this happening he said ‘wow, graffiti’s not cool anymore’.

(Laughs.)

Yeah, he said ‘it (street art) was pretty cool until Cameron thought it was cool’.

(Still laughing.) Yeah, well I mean the painting wasn’t done for Cameron. If the painting was going to wind up in Cameron’s house then I don’t think they would have approached me directly. They probably would have bought the painting from a gallery. I think because the painting was going to Obama, that’s why they approached me. And I definitely said ‘yes’ because it was going to wind up with Obama. I think Obama is quite understanding, and probably has a bit of an understanding about street art, and I think he probably liked it a bit. So the fact that it was going to wind up there, and I was pretty sure that he was actually going to look at it, open it and enjoy it was one of the reasons why I said ‘yes’. So it’s Obama that’s cool, not Cameron.

But, you know from the Prime Minister’s point of view, it’s a pretty brave thing to do. It could have really turned round and kicked him in the ass, this story. You know, ‘David Cameron endorsing criminal graffiti vandal?’ (Laughs.)

(Laughing.) Well there’s been some of that too.

Yeah, but you know, there could have been a lot of that.

Circle Face by Ashley Macomber

Let’s face it – “sustainability” is a ruined word. How many times do we suppose BP used it (and will, O Lord, in the future) explaining its green integrity to the world? The Sea Shepherd Society has a different approach: law enforcement as provided for in the United Nations World Charter for Nature.

The Sea Shepherd Society’s tactics are controversial – tree spiking, sinking whaling vessels (without loss of life; unlike the sinking of GreenPeace’s Rainbow Warrior by the French government that killed photographer Fernando Pereira), sinking drift nets, bombing whalers with custard, directly charging whalers and tuna fishers, putting its boats and crews between whales and industrial harpoons. But its modis operandi is consistent: monkey wrench the illegal destruction of nature.

In most instances of high seas piracy – piracy, that is, in the sense of unrestricted and unaccountable harvesting on the open oceans to the point of extinction – the Sea Shepherd Society is the only agency acting directly against the perpetrators of the wholesale slaughter of marine life. It is considered in some quarters to be a mature response to an economic system that refuses to police itself and to discipline its urges for short term reward and pleasure.

This Saturday July 31, the Riverside Municipal Auditorium in Riverside, California is hosting the See No Evil Art Auction in support of the Sea Shepherd Society’s busy agenda. There is a long list of donating artists, and music by ‘the crystal method’ and DJ Diabetic.

6 pm at the Corner of Mission Inn and Lemon in Riverside,3485 Mission Inn Ave, Riverside, CA 92501-3304.

For those who cannot make it to California for the thrill of rubbing shoulders with the glitterati of radical sustainability, check out the Sea Shepherd’s online store. You can even order the a Sea Shepherd VISA Platinum Rewards Card!! shop till you drop and help enforce the UN World Charter for Nature.

Enter and Exit (2001)

According to the New York Times, despite his being detained, the Chinese government has yet to admit they even have Yuren in their custody.

Last winter Yuren joined other artists in their opposition to urban development in the neighbourhood of Beijing that housed their studios, District 8. The development plan subsequently allowed the seizure of their studios by authorities. Their highly visible protest went past Tiananmen Square, a particularly sensitive region of the city in connection with public demonstrations of dissent.

The Daily Telegraph (one of the UKs largest daily newspapers, owned by real estate billionaires David and Frederick Barclay) reported that the current arrest came about after Yuren – whose studio had been relocated – attended at a local police station to complain about problems with his landlord. After a fractious interaction with the police, he was beaten and detained.

The brutal police response may be linked to the activist histories of Yuren and some of the other artists involved in the original protest against the development plan, many of whom have signed Charter 08, a manifesto demanding a variety of political changes in China including an independent legal system, freedom of association and the elimination of one-party rule. Charter 8 is not so popular with the current administration.

Yuren’s work has been widely appreciated as an element of the most innovative art being produced in China today. In the Imperial Criminal (2001) series, for example, Yuren displays twelve passport-like blue tinted photographs with fluorescent brands stamped on their foreheads to indicate ancient/modern crimes – the brand is exposed when placed under ultra-violet light. In The Sparks Program (10,000 Years Art Exhibition, Oct 2005), seven labourers strike a pile of flint in a dark space for three hours with metal batons, producing a heavy knocking sound with flying sparks – a commentary on the situation of peasant construction workers in Beijing’s real estate boom. And in connection with his resistance to land development, he transformed White Box Museum of Art into a large demolition site. According to ML Art Source (a Beijing-based promotional website for contemporary Chinese art with the self-stated goal of serving as “a platform that will bridge the art to the people and the people to the art”) the controversial nature of Yuren’s installation at the White Box has ensured that there is little information available about it.

It may be that this story is being reported in such high profile mainstream media sites because of his wife Karen Patterson’s Canadian citizenship. For more information and to keep up to date you can follow Karen Patterson’s twitter feed @KPinChina.

There is something very seriously rotten in the State when the Government can decide to abolish the Film Council to save £15m a year at the same time that the head of BP is said to be about to take a severance package of approaching the same amount. The disparity is all the more striking when you register that while BP is writing off more than £20 billion to pay for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Film Council has been responsible for allocating a mere £160m of Lottery funding to more than 900 films which have entertained over 200 million people and helped to generate over £700 million at the box office worldwide, or almost £5 for every £1 of Lottery money thus invested.

Part of a raft of cost-cutting measures at the DCMS involving the merger, abolition or streamlining of 55 cultural organizations ranging from advisory bodies on libraries and museums to historic wrecks and ships, the move has angered a lot of people: a petition set up as soon as the news came out garnered 1000 signatures within two hours, as well as a couple of Twitter streams. [Latest: 3739 signatures.]

Anyone familiar with my opinions on the Film Council knows that I’ve been critical of its modus operandi, but I can only agree with Ken Loach when he calls the announcement an ideological move, explaining that ‘The UK Film Council was essentially the equivalent of a research and development department. In cutting it, it is destructive to our emerging young talent. There is no other organisation that could invest in the future as it did.’

It’s well worth quoting some of the choice Twitter comments:
Fourth Flight: Let’s brace ourselves for attack on the bfi and the BBC. Yes, these and the UKFC, all are flawed but all are essential.
Michael Hirst: The Tories are scum. So not only will there be no jobs, poor welfare and no police, we’re not going have films either?
Peter A Rae: Surely cancelling the Pope’s visit would save enough for a 1-year reprieve?
Nick Donaldson: Why not cancel Trident instead! Would save a shit load more money.
Matt Copson: Why? What is the benefit in destroying one of the UK’s finest outlets for creativity?
labellaraquella What is the saving on axing the ukfc? What is the point of it? Its like trying to pay back your mortgage by not going to blockbusters
Daniel Sheppard OMG! Tories need to get real! The 2 most important things in my life are school and films… Why are they destined to fuck both of them up?

In short, for not much money at all, the Film Council has promoted a digital screen network of 240 screens across the country; this includes giving rural audiences the opportunity to enjoy a modern digital cinema experience (including live opera, theatre and sport satellite events beamed across the UK). It provides support for over 200 film societies and independent regional film venues, as well as UK film festivals like Edinburgh, the London Film Festival and the Sheffield Documentary Film Festival; and has given over 20,000 young people the opportunity to get involved in filmmaking.

The UK film industry has a turnover of £6.8 billion. It contributes a total of over £4.5 billion a year to UK GDP, returns more than £1.2 billion to the Exchequer and supports a total of 100,000 jobs directly and indirectly. The UK box office has grown by 62% since the UK Film Council was created (in 2009 it reached record levels of £944 million), with British films accounting for 23% of all UK cinema takings over the ten years to 2009.

Recent figures show that in 2009 cinema admissions rose to 174 million, the highest figure for seven years; British films and talent won 36 major film awards, 17% of the total available; inward investment reached a record £753 million, up 111% on 2008; and UK film exports exceeded £1.3 billion, 92% higher than in 2001. (Details here)

But the arguments are not just economic. Even The Daily Telegraph’s David Gritten points out that ‘Without subsidy of some kind, our film culture will be completely overrun by Hollywood, and our sense of ourselves as a nation will be diminished, however subtly, by the absence of distinctly British films.’ But this is of nothing to a government which believes in sacrificing everything to the fickle gods of the money market, despite the arguments of the best economists, such as Krugman and Stiglitz and Blanchflower, that trying to cut the national deficit now risks the hope of recovery—bourgeois economists, never mind Marx, who long ago warned of the hostility of capitalism to art.

Of course many of the films the Film Council has supported are far from distinctly British and contribute little to any self-respecting sense of film culture, but that’s not the point. The politicians may be scared that the country will be bankrupted on their watch, and are therefore not prepared to face down finance capital, but imposing cuts like these—without consultation or considering alternatives—demonstrates only that it is they themselves who are morally and ideologically bankrupt already. In light of which it is time to say loud and clear that what gives value and meaning to life and society is not money but creativity, imagination and playfulness (and love, of course) outside and beyond the market, and these attacks on society’s cultural capacities are unconscionable.

We are told that the DCMS will do further work over the summer to finalise the details and timing of the changes proposed. It will also look at its other ‘arm’s length’ bodies and explore further opportunities to improve accountability and efficiency. As a charity, the British Film Institute was not within the scope of this review, and the Government says it is committed to its long term future, but it will now consider how to build a more direct relationship between the BFI and Government.

We are warned. This is an anti-Keynesian government, and it was Keynes who in helping to create the Arts Council in the 1940s, defined the ‘arm’s length’ principle: that government should not administer such affairs directly, in order to be free of any possible charge of partisan interference or political patronage, but should delegate responsibility to special agencies, of the kind nowadays called quangos (quasi-autonomous non-government organisation).

It’s ironic, really, since not so long ago I reported on the last government’s plans for a merger between the BFI and the Film Council to which I was totally opposed. I never imagined that the plan would fall by the wayside because a new government would come along and decide to get rid of the latter.

[Pictured above: Still from the UK Film Council's hilarious and politically punchy 2009 film In the Loop]

It’s summertime and therefore I’ve been in programming mode. After watching dozens and dozens of docs (and a few fiction), I thought I’d pass along some great summer flicks to cool off with, while ratcheting up the politico-meter at the same time.

GASLAND: Part banjo-anthem, part agit-prop, part road-trip and oh yes, part burning faucets. This well-researched and extremely creative exposé on America’s natural gas extraction industry is most famous for an early clip released on the web by the film’s director, Josh Fox, of water coming out of an American couple’s home so contaminated it bursts into flames when a lighter is ignited near the water. There are scores of disturbing scenes like this in GASLAND, but perhaps the film’s biggest strength is Fox’s willingness to explore creatively. It is clear he is not a seasoned filmmaker (much of the camerawork attests to this observation) yet he has constructed a compelling, entertaining, funny and disturbing feature documentary that neither preaches nor shies away from the alarming problems it reveals. More here and trailer below.

MARWENCOL: This festival favourite (pictured at top of post) is a fabulous portrait of a man beaten so severely by rednecks (for daring to discuss his habit of cross-dressing in an upstate New York bar) that he suffers brain damage and retreats to the space of his backyard, away from society and into his own creative universe. Jeff Malberg’s sensitive portrait of Mark Hogencamp and the WWII world he builds—and photographs—is compelling, moving and revealing. Hogencamp’s strategy of coping with trauma through creativity is actually a source of optimism in an otherwise dark and depressing tale of intolerance and ignorance. The WWII era town and multiple narratives created by Hogencamp in his backyard are fascinating in their detail and melancholic in the way they reveal his suffering. More on the film and Hogencamp’s photography here.

Still from Disfigured

DISFIGURED: This overlooked American indy fiction is a well-written and excellently acted feature film from Cinema Libre Studio. The director, Glenn Gers, made this film about women and weight because: “I’m not a woman and I don’t have an eating disorder, but the issues of appearance, control, isolation, and our complicated relationships to our own bodies seem universal to me. They are also sadly under-explored or horribly twisted in almost every form of media.” He goes on to say that he especially knows about these issues because his wife, who he finds to be “beautiful, graceful and stylish” is also “according to popular culture – fat.”

Some may scoff that a man made a film about eating disorders, women and weight, but I think they will change their minds after seeing Disfigured. Gers and his talented cast have made a great film on a shoestring budget (a process hilariously described in Gers’s testimonial on the film’s site) about the complicated terrain of body image, self esteem, societal norms, acceptance, community, relationships and beauty. The plot follows Lydia (Deidra Edwards) who is “fat,” and Darcy (Staci Lawrence), a recovering anorexic, as they form a shaky alliance after Darcy is rejected from a “Fat Acceptance Group” and Lydia quits out of solidarity/protest. Their struggle with weight and navigating a society whose popular culture dictates that neither of them are anywhere close to the norm, is an emotional, funny, and warm narrative that everyone, man or woman, fat or thin, tall or short and everything in between, should watch. More here.

Still from Metropia

METROPIA: This brilliantly animated fiction from Tarik Saleh follows Roger (Vincent Gallo), the classic anti-hero, as he slouches through a dystopic 2024 setting where one company controls transportation, media and personal hair products. In this dark and distant future all of Europe is connected by one massive matrix of an underground subway system and dotted by a population of toiling emotionless workers. Roger, who’s impotent relationship with his girlfriend sets him off in a daydream meandering to track down the girl on the shampoo bottle, begins hearing voices in his head and eventually discovers the underground train system isn’t the only vast matrix of control beyond his control – and it all connects back to the shampoo…A skillfully rendered Swedish sci-fi whose makers wisely chose a kind of animation that looks part photographic, part real, and part painting. The canvass is so incredibly rich, you may have to watch it twice to get all of the Orwellian tale that plays out on the ground.

In this RSA Animate, radical social theorist David Harvey asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible, just, and humane? “Any sensible person right now would join an anti-Capitalist organization.” – The poignant words of Harvey on the unsustainable and inequitable nature of capitalism are brought to life by RSA‘s very cool animation. Enjoy and have a great weekend.

Pamela Anderson is in Montreal to host a gala event for Just for Laughs and had planned on unveiling her new PETA advert/poster as well. It turns out the city of Montreal thinks the poster is sexist and is prohibiting its going up. You can judge for yourself (above), but it all begs the question on who decides what is appropriate and how they decide what is and isn’t in our public sphere. It seems that when it’s a poster for selling phones, lingerie, shoes, or beer, apparently scantily clad women get the green light. When it’s a poster promoting People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, it’s just dirty and wrong. Thoughts?

Graffiti artist Blu strikes a chord in his home country with a new giant mural in Grottaglie, Italy, famous for its olive trees, ancient ceramic tradition and new, ever-expanding waste dumps. As the artist’s contribution to FAME Fest, a yearly event inviting top urban artists to create street and gallery works, Blu chose to highlight the town’s growing problem with his work É Pronta la Torta (The Cake is Ready).

“Southern Italy is in real deep shit with the trash business. Grottaglie did not need the dump at all and people in town were not given any warning before it was already being built. Guess how come? Now we have trash coming from very far away and the dump seems to get bigger and bigger, there already are three huge lots full of trash and trucks get here daily from Northern Europe to deliver more shit.

This piece comes at the very right moment, considering that there are workers digging another huge hole in the ground near the dump. There are reasons to believe that they are going to create a fourth lot and again, our formidable town councilors are not telling anything to their own people. How morbid is this?” – FAME Fest founder Angelo Milano

Visit this site for additional images and info about Blu’s mural, and check out the award winning film Gomorrah to get a glimpse of the severity and situation surrounding Southern Italy’s toxic dumping problem.

Dennis, Massachusetts (40 minutes from Woods Hole) resident David MacGuire organizes screenings of Al-Qaeda training videos that help to rally the community against non-Muslims in a vicious orgy of pro-terrorism, hatred and violence.

The above statement is pure fabrication. I don’t know MacGuire personally, and don’t know (or care) what he does in his free time. But I do know that he is prone to constructing a fictitious reality about a documentary group I am connected with in Woods Hole called Cinema Politica. MacGuire’s recent opinion piece in the Cape Cod Times is a propagandistic piece of fear-mongering that has unfortunately entered the public sphere with the unfortunate headline “Cinema Politica promotes anti-Semitism and hatred.” His opinion piece was published days after an editorial by the newspaper entitled, “Resume the film series,” in response to the recent decision by the Woods Hole Community Association to revoke Cinema Politica Woods Hole’s privileges to show films, based on complaints from community members after a screening of the documentary Occupation 101.

As an editor at Art Threat, a blog about the politics of art, I thought this space was an apt one in which to respond as the founder and programmer of Cinema Politica.

MacGuire, whom I’m told by local organizers has never been seen in attendance at a Woods Hole Cinema Politica screening, writes:

For over a year and a half now, Cinema Politica has been screening slanted, anti-Sem-tic [sic], pro-terror films funded by Arab nationalist and Muslim groups and, in several cases, by the government of Saudi Arabia. The only things eye-opening about these films are the strongly anti-American and blatantly anti-Semitic themes. These films have helped create a community bound together by hatred.

Since joining the Cinema Politica Network in November 2008, CPWH has had 57 screenings. The documentaries have focused on the following issues: sharks, prohibition, farming, copyright, global warming, Burma, Iceland, Vandana Shiva, Wangari Maathai, war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, water, the tar sands in Alberta, homelessness, Haiti, Coca-Cola, globalization, China, malls, American Indians, philosophy, sugarcane labour, the gay Muslim diaspora, community gardens, corn, Brazil, Cuba, oil, sustainable buildings, GMOs, feminism in Liberia, poverty, Mardi Gras and labour exploitation, the Minute Men and immigration, Bolivia, Tanzania and art therapy.

Of the 57+ documentaries screened, five have focused on Palestine/Israel. That’s less than one in ten screenings. Those five documentaries are: Gaza Strip (by award-winning American filmmaker James Longley, about the daily life of children in Gaza); Territories (by Canadian filmmaker Mary Ellen Davis, about internationally renowned Canadian Magnum photographer Larry Towell, who ventures to the Middle East to photograph people and the landscape); Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: US Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (by American educators and media makers Sut Jhally and Bathsheba Ratzkoff, about representations of the ongoing conflict in US mainstream media); Leila Khaled: Hijacker (by Swedish filmmaker Lina Makboul, about the infamous female Palestinian hijacker whom Makboul tracks down and critically interrogates for her actions); and finally Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority (by American brothers Sufyan Omeish and Abdallah Omeish, the Beverly Hills Film Festival Golden Palm winner looks at the historical root causes of the conflict).

Not one of these films—and none of the films in the Cinema Politica library for that matter—are “pro-terror,” “anti-Semitic,” or funded by the government of Saudi Arabia. As anyone can find out for themselves, these films were all made by Westerners and were self-funded or received financing from bureaucracies like the Swedish Film Institute. And if MacGuire and other alarmists took the time to watch these films, they would see that they are not racist or anti-Israeli, but films expressing critical analysis of Israel’s illegal occupation of another sovereign state’s lands and the concomitant human rights violations that continue to this day against the Palestinian people.

But those are facts, and therefore are of little to no use to MacGuire and those who seek to move the public’s attention away from the facts of occupation and colonization and toward fictional stories of terrorism and hatred. Indeed, a “community of hatred” as he puts it.

These are the subtle and nuanced ways in which propaganda works. A stew of ignorance, fear and lies leads to censorship and the repression of “other truths.” Yes these films are biased – they’re documentaries, and we’ve come to expect that from the genre! But as opinionated pieces of audio-visual storytelling, they are critical interventions into a public sphere saturated with corporate and mainstream media that seldom if ever report fairly and accurately on the conflict. These documentaries provide some balance to a skewed mediascape where pro-Israeli narratives flourish and where racist and reductive depictions of Palestinians abound.

Sadly, unlike the corporate and mainstream media, these films reach a small percentage of people, and censoring their screenings to Woods Hole residents who make up their own minds and attend screenings of their own volition is another point scored for the side of oppression.

Critical responses to propaganda take up more space, as this piece is doing now, and that’s what makes opinion pieces like MacGuire’s and others who have made up similar nonsense about Cinema Politica (and other critical arts) so insidious: anybody can write a short inflammatory (and defamatory) bit of scribble and have it published, so long as they repeat the words terrorism and anti-Semitic enough times. But at the end of the day it is all complete fabrication – lies built on top of lies, born out of complete and utter ignorance fuelled by ideology or a completely ill-informed worldview.

Why is it that of the other 52 documentaries Woods Hole Cinema Politica screened, of which many were very controversial and certainly biased, never an alarm has sounded from the public?

The answer, sadly, is that decades of representation of this conflict in mainstream media and therefore Western culture has created a situation where critical analysis of the illegal occupation and political solidarity with the oppressed is vilified and twisted into “Anti-Semitism.” And who wants to be an Anti-Semite?

Racism is a real issue that is done a disservice by people who actually deploy racism in order to decry racism (a fallacy that indicates the level of vehemence and detestation at play). Here’s another passage from MacGuire:

Anybody with a knowledge of history knows these films are little more than twisted lies designed to alienate Americans from a friendly, democratic nation and to alter our perceptions of a loathsome, evil culture that degrades women and forces them to wear bags over their heads, like the helpless captives they truly are.

An “evil culture.” The only evil here is the manipulation of truth into a monstrous propaganda that serves to silence critical voices and make those working toward peace and equality into fictional terrorists and racists.

There is racism at play here, and it is certainly not in the Cinema Politica films, nor in the group working tirelessly to screen them.

[Photo at top taken by Larry Towell, courtesy peripheria.ca ]

Activist and actor Sean Penn talks with Democracy Now‘s Amy Goodman about the situation in Haiti, and on his role as an Emergency Tent Camp Manager of 55,000 people. The characteristically no bullshit artist compares the behind-the-scenes management of the camp to being on a movie set, only with “stakes that are a lot higher.” He also has some deserved criticism for the international community of aid-pledgers, aid organizations, governments, and the corporate media. We’re sharing this clip because Haiti has largely vanished from mainstream news headlines and, Penn is an artist and a political one at that. For more info on the non-profit Penn co-founded, visit the J/P Haitian Relief Organization’s site.

This July 11th marks the 20-year anniversary of the injustice against the Mohawk
people of Kanehsatake, known in the media as the “Oka Crisis”. The stand off between
Mohawks and social justice advocates against the Quebec police, and the Canadian Army
was over the city of Oka’s desire to expand a 9 hole golf course. This expansion was to
go into the Mohawk’s sacred land. Including a burial ground.

To respectfully acknowledge this 20-year old conflict at Kanehsatake, and the ongoing
struggle that the First Nations of Canada have everyday, the Friday Film Pick is Acts of
Defiance by Alex MacLeod. This feature-length documentary focuses on the Mohawk
community in Kahnawake (also in Quebec) during the events of the summer of 1990.
The film reflects on the relationship between Canada and its First Nations at a particular
time in history.

(Also check out our previous Friday Film Pick, Alanis Obomsawin’s classic Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance.)

This historical event shed international shame on the Canadian government’s intolerance
to the rights of Aboriginal people, but also became a message of First Nations’ solidarity
to fight for their land and their culture. And as Jessica Yee points out in her Rabble.ca
article, the Canadian government seems to be celebrating its own history of human rights violations at the G20 in Toronto. Let’s the hope that we can take a lesson learned from the Mohawks at Kanehsatake and persist for our voices to be heard against these recent atrocities.

It’s hard to be in Canada and blog about something other than the G20 riots and the gross treatment of citizens on the streets of Toronto this past Sunday, which Ezra addressed so fabulously in his post “The G20 summer blockbuster”. But here I am, talking instead about something affiliated with North America’s other contentious issue of the day – the oil spill.

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/secretagentarthur

Monday night saw a party of protesters outside Tate Britain, calling on the gallery to cut its ties to one of its large funding partners: BP.

As reported by the Guardian, “A group of artists under the name The Good Crude Britannia voiced concerns about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill,” and demonstrated outside of a launch party meant to display new art by Fiona Banner and to celebrate 20 years of BP support.

Jane Trowell, of environmental arts campaign group Platform, is reported saying “BP is trying to repair its tarnished reputation and buy our approval by associating itself with culturally important institutions like Tate. We hope that, as happened with the tobacco industry, it will soon come to be seen as socially unacceptable for cultural institutions to accept funding from big oil.”

For those unfamiliar with it (as I was, before spotting a tweet from @galleryatsui of Vancouver early today), Tate Britain is just one of a family of four galleries located in the UK that are responsible for the national collections of British art and of international art from 1900.

Tate is a substantial organization, with galleries in Millbank, London, Liverpool, and St Ives, and a huge web presence. While Tate is funded as a Non-Departmental Public Body by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, it generates over 60 percent of its income from non-governmental sources.

And according to Guardian writer Jonathan Jones, those non-governmental sources of funding don’t appear to be impacting the content of what Tate offers.

“In all the years I’ve been seeing exhibitions at Tate’s galleries, I have never once encountered anything that could conceivably have been construed as an advertisement for this or any other corporation, or for capital itself. Very much the opposite,” Says Jones, in an article written early on Tuesday.

Which, as someone who has been an Operations Manager for a non profit struggling to find money to allow us to meet our mission, brings me to the question:

If corporations are able and willing to donate to cultural causes and avoid attempts to exercise authority over content, should we just relax a little and be grateful for their contribution? Or, perhaps, take it specifically with the caveat that if they ever do try to exercise control over content that ties be broken and the non-profit make exorbitant cuts to programs and staff (as would likely become necessary without all that extra funding).

After all,
1. Not taking the money won’t close the gaping wound in the Gulf of Mexico
2. I highly doubt they’re concerned about making a profit just so that they can donate to Tate, so it’s not like Tate is influencing their decisions on expansion and drilling.
3. The alternative could be BP executives using that money to buy their thankless children Aston Martin’s in one of every colour, which really benefits no one.

But maybe that’s just the practical part of me speaking, the part that isn’t interested in throwing buckets of oil on the front of a gallery that contributes to its community…

The Art of Oppression (and surveillance, as seen in the video above)

That the hundreds (at last count 900+) of G20 protesters (and random civilians) held in pens at a detention centre in Toronto also happen to be extras in a former movie studio should come as no surprise to those who took part in this summer’s biggest blockbuster hit. This production note is but one piece of a larger spectacle of fascism recently carried out in the streets of Toronto.

While tens of thousands of us peacefully marched and did so as representatives of every strata of diverse Canadian society, we witnessed the most cynical, unprovoked and violent police and state actions rarely—if ever—seen at such scale in this country. Walking down one of the main Toronto arteries yesterday as the march got under way, I was horrified to see an elderly man beaten by six riot police. Several friends—mostly organizers of civil society groups and independent mediamakers—have been arrested and many have been beaten and have had their personal belongings searched, including cell phones (still others had all their pictures and video deleted or destroyed). In the detention centre, reports are emerging of sexual harassment and the segregation of queer activists and countless abuses of the Geneva Convention.

Standing on College street watching a procession of dozens of dark-tinted vans go by full with riot police, we watched as a man walked toward us calmly and was violently seized and dragged away by ten riot police, a scene reminiscent of so many Hollywood horror films.

Waiting yesterday for our buses to leave for Montreal—far outside the downtown melee—we were photographed by undercover police and police accomplices (see photo below and video in this post). Indy media centres where our friends have been tirelessly covering the protests have been raided, other spaces where activists merely found shelter were violently raided too, between 2AM and 4AM. We have dozens of friends—none of who participated in any form of violence—who are incarcerated or missing.

Yet these instances of brutal state oppression, a kind of fascism captured with hundreds of cameras, have been grossly elided by reductive images of smashed Starbucks windows, a man carrying a hammer, a swiftly moving group of black-clad activists and a burning police car on endless loop. It is a carefully orchestrated (mis)representation of dissent accompanied by lazy, complicit or ignorant journalist’s narration that repeats the key words “anarchy,” “mob,” and “senseless violence.”

This spectacle of civil-society-gone-wrong is a fine-tuned production that credits the city of Toronto, the provincial and federal governments, the police and corporate and national media who have eagerly worked together to serve up the Canadian public with a narrative that is so far from reality it is indeed a fine work of fiction.

The lasting picture, the dominant and enduring index of what was overwhelmingly a peaceful demonstration against the illegitimate, unaccountable and non-transparent elite G20 group, is that of marauders, a city in chaos and dissent as articulated in acts of mindless violence. And this mainstream hit costs a bundle.

Two leading characters of the production - police photographing and fingering us as we left Toronto in buses

Discrediting Dissent with tax dollars

The 1.5 billion dollar summer blockbuster has been paid for by taxpayers and has the best channels of distribution – ensuring no Canadian set of eyeballs or ears is left unaffected by the dramatic tale of wanton destruction, devoid as it is of political will.

It is no surprise then, to hear that the police cars that were set afire were left on purpose by the police themselves, to eke out some real action from protesters. After all, every dramatic narrative needs a dramatic image to provide a theatrical arc in the storyline. The burning police cars are indeed burned into the Canadian psyche – a powerful and enduring signifier of lawlessness and terror.

Yesterday, we happened upon a gentleman sitting in a bar feverishly finessing some stills from the G20 Blockbuster. He told us he was a photographer for the right-wing and pro-business (and pro-G20) Canadian newspaper the National Post. As I looked over his shoulder and complimented him on his skillful rendering of the burning police car, I asked if he intended to report on the other 99% of the day’s demonstrations – the ones that included grandmothers, lawyers, doctors, organized labour, women’s rights groups, Human Rights advocates, First Nations’ groups, artists, teachers, and more. “Maybe,” he replied, “but this is a powerful image.”

And so every blockbuster needs a good promotional poster, and the state, the police apparatus and the mainstream media has found theirs, or some would say, manufactured their own. The burning police car is a soon-to-be iconic image for one of the largest and most diverse civil society manifestations in the history of Toronto.

The vilification and de-legitimizing of activists in this country has reached a crescendo at the G20 protests and the state has scored big in its production of power and oppression. With an army of actors (some 20,000 well-paid police and even more secret agents), tens of thousands of extras in the role of peaceful demonstrators, a starring cast of black-clad “anarchists,” along with explosions, fires, helicopters, mountain bikes, rubber bullets, tear gas and other real props, the fascist production, “G20 Protest Turns Ugly,” has been a spectacle of unparallelled artistry, technology and careful orchestration.

But for those looking for the non-fiction version of this blockbuster, you need to turn off the despicable CBC coverage [note: it did get better since posting this] and other mainstream media and look for the under-funded indy versions of this tale – the ones that do not enjoy the massive distribution the Hollywood-style production enjoys, but serve up something much more real, much more diverse, and much more interested in revealing the machinations of oppression.

Peace. The Last Ten years have been hard to watch. Your violence is not necessary. We want the world to know that we come in peace to free a people. Those are real people on our televisions. We just want our people to be equal and free. The same free that ain’t free. Gaza we are with you.

After the world moved in opposition to the Israeli military attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla we offer this song, Dear Ocean, in remembrance of those killed on the Mavi Marmara and in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza facing the extreme edge of the Israeli apartheid. Today, we are offering this song to the world, please download and spread the word; however, we do also strongly encourage you to donate to the Free Gaza Movement. For donation information please visit: freegaza.org.

Wahid,
Yassin Alsalman and Stefan Christoff

Download Dear Ocean

Dear Ocean

Vocals — Yassin Alsalman (the Narcicyst)
Piano — Stefan Christoff

Dear Ocean,

Today I saw a mothers’ wail swim through you and the sound got lost in your waves.
Yesterday, I saw a boat sail to you and she was blocked on her way….
I asked you once why you were…, as we polluted you will crude Earth blood,
on a rude search, dug holes in you with machine bullets…or so the plug goes…
and when we felt the ravine pull us, they placed a wall in between us to you couldn’t stream fullest.

Damned.

Do we not see what these oil spills are?
Earth is bleeding on to us.
How one child cannot see over the hill,
or climb peace because the peak is too close to the kill to speak love?
Democratic rights, or so to speak of…

Summits of my brothers in robes give me no hope.
My forefathers turn in their linen chefens, before we bore horror on our infant children…
In Gaza, the olive trees have begun talking so,
we now greet the rocks we throw.
Al Salamu Alaikum.
Alaikum il Haram oo dem shababna si3irna, gharam 3eedaykoom.

Thibni bil sama oo arja3lak tilqa, akhaleeq liqtat halaqat television gabil ma
tithroobak jalta….

Innalilla….

Ultra high density sound bombs versus our songs.
We Roll with a flotilla of words that cannot be stopped…
As our decibels level and knock on your blockade
Screaming Palestine Is Real.

A Mass on international humanitarians is not Hamas.
Hamas is not an international humanitarian mass.
Don’t spin that in your cycle because the truth is a stain on your flags.
Hang yourselves with your ties.
Mix a little bit of blood in our wine.
Products that we buy in lines box us in a your crime.
Dollars Revolve around the numbers of our time.

Cameras, I see you.
You’ve damaged my people.
When the savage die we will be the rabid type.
Arab oo Yoohood.
How does an American soldier taunting an Arabic grown up
have less hits that a puppy thrown over a crack in our boulder
Makes me question our own love.

Where are we?
Think of our children, we are already dying.
What will be the next generation?
Or one trying to get free.

You will not stop us.
One day we will break this pattern, it is lessened in your math. but it was mentioned in the past.
Destined in the path.
You will crush your own fingers in your grasp.

I guess so. And so the test goes. Let Go. Let’s Grow.

Yassin Alsalman known as the Narcicyst is a celebrated hip-hop artist and writer.

Image: Matthew Cassel / justimage.org.

What do you get when you mix a postindustrial urban mess with a group of artists who want to make it better? In Windsor, the answer is Broken City Lab, a post-avant-garde art project whose object is the city itself and the social relations necessary to transform urban blight into community and prosperity.

Broken City Lab (BCL) is the brainchild of artists Justin Langlois and Danielle Sabelli that quickly attracted the interests of a handful of other artists – Josh Babcock, Michelle Soulliere, Cristina Naccarato, and Rosina Riccardo. The idea was to find a new way – other than protest, that is – to use art for social change. What they came up with is a fascinating series of public interventions rooted in art practices intended to energize and mobilize local interest in reimagining Windsor’s future.

“I wasn’t convinced that protest was a valid model for generating change,” explained Langlois. “Broken City Lab became our way of trying to understand how locality is shaped both officially and unofficially by a city, its histories, its infrastructures, and its communities.”

At the core of transformation lies the bedeviling complexity of communication. Art – as opposed to activism, or public policy, or even managerial concerns – offered interesting and new ways of thinking about how to create dialogue and share ideas.

“Things like housing development and job training are important in their own right,” says Babstock, “but can fail if the people affected don’t have a say in what is developed. We do not claim superiority over these other methods but try to accomplish what they cannot by suggesting a direction rather than a solution.”

No solution?

To political ears, “no solution” must sound at least a little like crazy talk. But locals have warmed to the ideas and approaches of BCL. “Most people we speak with tend to attach to the notion that we care about Windsor’s future and are inspired by this. We’ve received a fair amount of press coverage over the last year and we’d like to think that this coverage can translate into other people in the community feeling engaged to change their surroundings by taking ownership of them.”

One of the group’s creative strengths may be the way it negotiates personal practices and public interest. Their interest is in both, so that alongside their growing visibility and presence in Windsor’s public conversations, as artists they also retain and cultivate personal creative responses to local contexts.

“It’s important to note” Langlois and Babstock both explained, “that while we certainly work within the community, and while we’ve established a certain level of publicly-visible practice, the projects we take on are a response to the things we see in our city that we would like to address. We work to understand the role we can play in taking some responsibility to shaping the place in which we live, and through this, we often realize opportunities to work within the wider community.”

The personal may be political, but in Windsor, the personal becomes political when artists pony up to the table of civic and social responsibility for their share in shaping Windsor’s future.

One of the BCL’s projects is Sites of Apology/Sites of Hope, a living memory work that tries to reimagine urban space and place through remembrance and hope. “The Sites of Apology/Sites of Hope project basically gathered a group of community members in a room to brainstorm what they consider to be the places in Windsor for which we need to apologize and the places in Windsor for which we can retain some hope for their place in the city’s future,” says Babstock.

The community identified over 50 sites that will eventually make up the terrestrial backbone for a walking tour and mapping intervention designed to link past failure with hope through reimagining the present and futures of the spaces and places that make up the communities where people live.

Another intervention is 100 Ways to Save the City, a (quite literally) re-inscription of city space in an attempt to stimulate public imagination and encourage public participation in conversations about how to transform Windsor’s streetscapes. Intentionally incomplete messages (such as “Vacant storefronts are a good ___________” and I would organize ____________ for one night in the city”) were projected using laser-projectors onto buildings and surfaces throughout the city. Residents were encouraged to share their responses through text messaging and Twitter. BCL collated responses and shared them with a wider public.

Their goal, says Langlois, is as much about their own learning, maybe even more so, than about effecting some kind of direct and measurable response to their work. “Attempting to assess the way communities respond suggests that we only engage in these projects to provoke a response, but we’re much more interested in this as research – a way to understand the limits and potentials for changing the ways we interact with (and by extension, change) the places where we live.”

Their projects often emerge from things the artists see and experience as they move through and live in the Windsor area. Sometimes it is a direct response, sometimes more abstract. “Our ideas come from experiences such as riding the bus and seeing outdated advertisements and wondering if we could replace those advertisements with something else. Other times these experiences are much less tangible, and the projects come out of conversations about these experiences and are shaped by the process of uncovering underlying concerns embedded in those conversations.”

A key element of BCL methodology seems to emerge in the transformative links between artistic response and public conversations. It is, in a way, a manifestation of an old problem for Western philosophers: how to reconcile subjective experience with universal (or in this case, social) truths. BCL is very concerned with how problems are defined and who gets to define them. Which aspects of an issue, for example, will be determined by BCL and which through community participation? Creative public intervention often straddles the tension between form and content.

“Depending on the project, participation from the wider community can have a large impact on the direction of the project — in these instances, we attempt to define certain variables, while leaving others open for contribution from others, though we mostly have the presentation of that contribution in mind (a projection, a series of images, a list, a path).”

And within this tension, both processes – contributions and presentations – must encounter the weird and wonderful world where art meets politics. These distinct epistemological approaches can often be entirely dissimilar, if not contradictory. Art’s pleasure in ambiguity, for example, as compared to the often urgent political need for certainty would suggest a difficult mix. But BCL finds it a liberating juxtaposition – freeing public dialogue from the constrains of bureaucracy, for example – and that it is these complications that Langlois thinks gives the BCL project such potential.

On a practical level, the group takes advantage of online communication to achieve many of its goals and objectives. “The website is a vitally important part of our practice as it provides the opportunity for us to not only document our process, but also to locate it within a variety of other sources from other blogs, artists, designers, architects, etc. It also allows for a level of dialogue that we simply can’t get in other ways. In terms of web traffic, we get between 12000 and 15000 visitors a month.”

As for longer term goals, the group has no shortage of project ideas. “Our next big project this summer will be the Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation, where we’ll be renting out some vacant storefronts in downtown Windsor and inviting artists, writers, designers, architects, entrepreneurs, librarians, among others, to do something with a space that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to that could transform the space, and in turn, transform the way that the city and the community thinks about these vacant spaces. The residencies will attempt to intervene with the everyday realities of skyrocketing vacancy rates, failing economic strategies, and a population of people who are continually losing hope for their city.”

Anna Sarkissian and Ameesha Joshi are emerging filmmakers from Montreal, Quebec, currently making a documentary in India “on a shoestring budget” about women boxers called With this Ring. The synopsis from the film’s site:

Winning four world titles is not enough to get noticed in India, just ask 27 year-old boxing champion Mary Kom. She could have been a household name by now if she had chosen to pursue a more “ladylike” sport like tennis or field hockey. Instead, she is fighting against centuries of tradition in a country that expects women to be sweet and docile. With cropped hair, defined shoulders and a mean left hook, she is anything but your typical Indian girl.

With This Ring lets you step into the ring with members of the Indian Women’s National Boxing Team. From their villages to the podium, these girls quickly rise to the top of their game. At the 4th World Women’s Boxing Competition in 2006, the Indian team makes a clean sweep, winning eight medals and the Championship Team title. They officially become the best women’s boxing team in the world. And the most under-appreciated.

Art Threat recently fired off a few questions to this dynamic duo. Their responses, with images, and a sneak peak video of the film are below.

Art Threat: What is this project about and how did you get the idea?

Anna Sarkissian: Since 2006, we’ve been on the trail of the Indian women’s senior national boxing team. They’re some of the top boxers in the world, with multiple world champions in their midst. Ameesha originally found out that there were women boxing in India after seeing their images at a World Press Photo Exhibit. With her Indian heritage (she’s Gujarati), she was really curious to find out how these women were able to pursue boxing when they are expected to marry and have kids by the age of 20. The social pressure to be a dutiful daughter, wife, and mother, is intense. When she found out they were some of the top boxers in the world, she knew there was a story to tell. We talked about going to India, and upon finding out that there would be a boxing world championship in New Delhi for the first and possibly last time, we knew we couldn’t pass up this opportunity. So in November, we booked last minute flights and headed to India. We had no funding, no equipment of our own. We basically begged and borrowed and did whatever was necessary to get ourselves there. It was well worth it and we were able to witness history in the making; India won four world championship titles and was crowned best team in the world.

Essentially, we’re looking at the women behind the gloves. We’re interested in their personal stories, finding out how they have overcome struggles in order to pursue boxing, which can be their ticket out of poverty. Successful athletes are often rewarded with a cushy government job, meaning they would be set for life. Many girls on the team are able to support their entire families with their earnings. As you can imagine, many of them come from small, conservative villages where boxing is misunderstood. Yet once they start winning medals internationally and earning their own money, their families become more accepting.

One of their parents’ primary concerns is that boxing will disfigure their faces, and they won’t be able to marry. It may sound trivial to us to have a cut or scar on your face, but marriage is a pivotal rite of passage in India. Some of the boxers are 25 or 26 years old and still haven’t married. Society views them as old maids. They’ve given up on some of them. You can imagine their relief to find out that Ameesha and I (we’re 37 and 27) aren’t married. We formed some common ground on that front.

People have a lot of preconceived notions about these boxers, who train to “hit other women in the head” three times a day, six days a week, 11 months a year. Even here, when we show our footage, people are startled by their appearance: short hair, defined shoulders, men’s jeans. People will come up to them on the street, asking, “Are you a boy or a girl?” just to rattle them. They laugh it off. They go about their business inside the walls of the training camp, focusing on boxing. They are marginalized by society, in many ways, but they keep training. They ignore the snide remarks and stares because they have their sights set on the next world championship, the Asian Games, and the Olympics.

Publicly, most people said they supported women’s boxing. We would ask people on the street, “what if your mother wanted to try boxing?” They told us they would encourage her to do so. But others were more candid, saying it was degrading for women to wear tracksuits and other cheap clothing when they should be in saris. Others said they would prefer for women to focus on “womanly pursuits” like weaving or pottery. One man said he wouldn’t let his wife box because she would put him in the hospital.

The site seems a little different than a standard doc film site, what is the plan for the website?

AS: We hope to make people part of the process as the film comes together. Since we’ve been sharing the production experience with an audience on our CitizenShift blog since 2006, we felt that we wanted to continue to have the same kind of relationship during the post-production. We’ve been very candid about the challenges and problems we’ve had in making this film. In a sense, we feel like we have nothing to hide. We would like our online presence to be a warts and all portrayal of the way that With This Ring was made. It feels strange to talk about ourselves in the third person while promoting our film, so we keep things intimate. It’s just the two of us working on this in our free time, there’s no huge bureaucratic production house shaping our words. We want it to feel genuine. Since this is a personal project for both of us, we wanted others to join us on the meandering journey, wherever it goes.

We hope to post more clips as we get deeper into the post-production process and of course we’ll save some nuggets for the actual film. Apparently, there’s this thing called social media that we’re supposed to be utilizing to promote our film. We don’t know the first thing about tweeting but we’re open to the idea.

What’s the best story/moment you have from filming? And the worst?

AS: We’ve been lucky in the sense that we’ve had many wonderful moments. Our film was made on a non-existent budget and we had unbelievable support from the families of the boxers, coaches, and even complete strangers. In India, they have a saying that the “guest is like a god.” You really feel that. We enjoyed more delicious meals at people’s homes than either of us could have imagined. It’s also not customary for two women to travel alone in India, so people were quite nervous about us gallivanting around the country by ourselves. They really went out of their way to ensure that we were taken care of and welcomed us wholeheartedly. That’s really what I’ll always remember about India.

The worst? Upon arriving in India back in 2006, the coaches told us we were welcome to shoot the team – for the day. Somehow, there was some miscommunication and the team didn’t understand that we were coming to India for two months expressly to document their lives. That was a minor roadblock, to say the least. We spent a few weeks waiting outside their training hall, hoping to speak to them. Eventually, we gained the trust of the coaches and the athletes and developed a good relationship with them. Since 2006, we have met up with them in Ontario when they came for a training camp in 2008, spent 10 weeks with them at the training camps in India in summer 2008, travelled to China with them for the world championships in November 2008, and returned to India in December 2008 for a final visit. At this point, we’ve finished shooting and we’re starting editing.

Filmmaker Ameesha Joshi

Ameesha Joshi: One of the best moments was the first day we arrived at the boxing camp in India in the summer of 2008, 2 years after our first visit.  Since then Mary Kom, one of our main characters and currently the  world`s best boxer,  had left the boxing scene for two years after having twin boys. We had no idea if she planned on returning to the sport, so it was absolutely a surprise to discover she had and arrived at the boxing camp the exact same day we did to begin production. 

Mary was determined to win her 4th gold medal at the next Championships, which she did!  But the best part of her returning was her arrival with a baby in each arm. We got to witness her juggling an extensive training workout while taking care of her two babies.  She was often up all night from them crying, but always got up at the crack of dawn with all the other boxers for a grueling workout and their workouts occurred three times a day, 6 days a week.  It was impressive to say the least.

There are many of the smaller moments I remember fondly, like getting caught in the rain during an outdoor boxing competition in monsoon season. Sometimes the rain would come down like a waterfall without any prior warning of a drizzle.  The chaos that ensued was rather comical, everyone was screaming through the downpour, racing to get inside, many scrambled and crouched underneath the ring for cover.  It was seconds before you got completely soaked so you had to move fast.   Then there was us huddling under our ridiculously large golf umbrella Anna had brought from home, it ended up being one of the most valuable items we packed that summer, no question it saved our equipment.  The boxers ended up continuing the competition indoors, with a makeshift ring, using their backpacks to mark the edges.  They  always made the best of any situation and there most common response to any hitch or hurdle were always the words ‘ no problem!’ 

One of the worst times was the whole process in getting special permission to visit the north eastern state of Manipur where Mary Kom lives in 2006.  We bought our plane tickets before realizing that non-resident Indians need special permission to visit.  The ordeal to get the paper work approved was long and arduous, involving long lineups over many days.  We kept pushing back our plane ticket to Manipur without knowing if we would even receive permission in time.  We  had non-refundable plane tickets back to Canada, and with next to no budget, our schedule was fixed so it was quite stressful,  but in the end we did managed to get the permission, and only because a kind Manipuri family we befriended in Delhi pulled some strings at the last minute. 

Then there was the moment we arrived in Manipur to find out Mary had just left for Mumbai for a last minute engagement.  We were more than relieved to learn she would return three days before we would leave Manipur, and she did everything to shower us with incredible Manipuri hospitality during those precious days.

Your previous short (Anna’s) was an experimental documentary, will this one be as well? And what do you feel are the problems/limitations with more conventional documentary?

AS: It’s a tough business and I can appreciate how incredibly difficult it is to make a good film. I think documentaries are often lumped together as being “badly made” by other filmmakers, with shaky camera, choppy editing and so on. In some cases, people are so focused on the message that any trace of art disappears. Personally, I think Powerpoint is a great visual tool for conveying facts and information – but I don’t want to see pie-charts at the movies. I’m certainly not a master filmmaker, but looking back at some of the NFB box sets from the glory years, I think we’ve lost touch with the art of documentary. They were true technical masters who had a great sense of storytelling. My dream would to be able to combine those two elements in a film (or die trying).

The filmmakers with the boxing team

I’m not sure that our finished product will be television-friendly. We’re wrestling with aesthetic decisions now, trying to maintain our vision without losing our audience. Ameesha and I certainly have a vision for the film that is not entirely conventional. We like long takes, wide shots, slow motion, slow pacing – letting your eye roam around the frame. At the same time, we want our film to be accessible because the stories are important to us.

AJ: In addition to Anna`s comment about our film being accessible is the consideration of audience reactions from different cultures.  Although we can’t predict what the majority will think, we at least understand the audience in Canada better than in India, where we hope the film will be widely viewed. It’s very important for us to give these boxers the media attention they need.  But in India, where Bollywood is the popular film format, I really do wonder whether the general population will enjoy our artistic approach.  I can only hope.

Anything you’d like to add?

AS: A lot! Not sure what else you’d like to know that isn’t on our website…But here’s a description of our two main characters.

AJ: Women`s boxing will be featured as an Olympic sport for the first time at the 2012 Games in London.  Having a chance to compete at the Olympics is the ultimate dream for most athletes. All hopes are on Mary Kom, but no question there are other boxers on their team that have the potential to strike gold and make history.   We were in India during the last summer Olympics  and witnessed how the three Indians who won a medal were splashed throughout the media.  I can only imagine that this display of pride would make a significant difference in changing the social taboos surrounding women`s boxing in India.

Stuffed is an album best consumed as though each track is a painting on the wall of a gallery.

Released on June 8, this chaotic audio collage comes to your ears compliments of gITar, a creative duo made of two Evansville, Indiana natives; Ellipse Elkshow and I Cut People.

The two childhood friends have used their home town as inspiration for their audio exploration of North American culture. Their town was, perhaps, an easy target: home to major polluters, factories, cancer statistics, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and fast food creations.

Stuffed’s short tracks range in length from 57 seconds to two and a half minutes, and are a bizarre barrage of the sound clips you’ve been passively absorbing your entire life. Carefully woven together along common themes, each piece stands alone as a stew of music, news, television, movies, commercials, and video game audio snippets. Using every day verbiage, they have created little examinations of what we’re being fed by the media on a continual basis.

Perhaps the most frightening thing about listening to this album is the likelihood that you’ll recognize a large per centage of the audio clips, regardless of your aptitude for useless pop culture knowledge. You’ll be treated to everything from music from Saved by the Bell and the original Legend of Zelda to “news” on Paris Hilton‘s imprisonment.

In order to appreciate this album for what it is – art, not music or story or anything remotely soothing – take the time to absorb each track like you would a piece of visual art. Sit or stand quietly and ‘look’ at one track at a time. Contemplate it. Move on to the next one.

If you don’t absorb it this way, the chaotic cacophony of audio clips will just give you a headache.

Take an art show comprised entirely of works found in the trash, a soapbox derby, countless bands, guerilla theatre interventions, conceptual art pieces, picnics in strange places, video screenings and parades and you get a pretty interesting festival. Remove participation fees, unethical sponsorships, a heavy corporate presence and any form of censorship and replace those negatives with an inclusive community-based approach to the arts and you get the International Infringement Festival.

Created in Montreal in the summer of 2004 and thrown together in just a few months, the festival has managed to survive long enough to enter its seventh year and spread to various communities around the world as varied as Bordeaux, France and Ottawa, sometimes planting roots and continuing. This year, there are four stops on the Infringement circuit: Brooklyn, which already happened in May; Montreal, which gets underway in late June; Hamilton (for the first time) in early July; and Buffalo in the end of July and early August.

“When I first conceptualized this festival it was as a culture-jam against the now-trademarked Fringe Festival,” says Donovan King, still an active infringer in Montreal, “I had no idea whether it would be a one-off or if it would take on a life of its own. I am pleased to see that it has, which means there is a need for this type of critical arts event.”

In its birthplace, the festival is gearing up for another event. This year the fest will feature a Dumpster Dive Art Drive where found objects are turned into works of art while wine is served from a brown paper bag in an alley, a series of picnics in unusual places, the now-infamous street theatre experiment Car Stories (whose getting kicked out of the Fringe prompted the creation of the Infringement) and more traditional indoor music and theatre shows inside established and not-so-established makeshift venues.

While giving various artists a platform to express themselves politically or just plain perform and have a good time regardless of their notoriety or economic capacity, the Montreal fest also has a culture-jamming cell that carries out direct guerilla theatre interventions. In the early years, most of this theatrical critique was directed at the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe and their policy of charging artists, though since 2007, the cell has focused more on other targets like the corporate spam which is sadly now a regular part of the St-Laurent street fair:

This is all possible thanks to the time generously donated by volunteer organizers and a bit of financial support from ethical companies. The festival has very strict criteria as to what types of businesses can and can’t sponsor the event. Those criteria along rules that you can’t charge artists to participate, that you must be run democratically, that artists keep 100% of their box office and that you should try and seek out critical artists with something to say are the only regulations Infringement organizers or would-be Infringement organizers have to follow.

The rest, including the length of the festival, the number of artists that perform, the types of venues provided (if any) and the tone and theme of the event are decided locally based on what the local community needs. The Buffalo Infringement, for example, has a different approach to the hands-on intervention politics practiced by some in the Montreal festival.

“Political issues are tackled by the artist not the fest,” says Jason Klinger, a visual artist and one of the fest’s organizers, “we provide the soapbox, pun intended.”

The pun refers to a soapbox derby open to all artists which the BIF is trying for the first time this year. It is one of what promises to be around 1000 individual performances, up from last year’s rough total of 600.

Many of those acts, if history shows anything, are bound to be politically progressive in nature or at the very least quite unique. I still remember Subversive Theatre’s version of The Exception and the Rule in 2007, staged as a moving street theatre piece and in particular the part where the show had to dodge two other Infringement acts happening in the streets at the same time. The following year, someone named Nobody ran for president at the festival. Nobodys is now the name of one of their more grassroots venues. They’ve also hosted fire shows in the park since 2005.

This year’s slate includes returning infringers The Blood Thirsty Vegans and Anal Pudding, local noteable Eric Starchild and quite a few up-and-coming or unknown artists. Like in Montreal, the Buffalo Infringement has seen its fair share of first-time performers.

Spread out over the Allentown and Elmwood Village neighborhoods, Buffalo is hands-down the largest stop on this year’s Infringement circuit. In what was once a city of millionaires, local independent artists are now breathing new life into a community hit hard economically when the steel industry left town a few decades ago. It is them who welcomed the Infringement with open arms when Subversive’s Kurt Schneiderman first brought it to town in 2005 and it is them who continue to nurture the fest.

“I think there are a lot more artist per capita,” says Long Island native Curt Rotterdam, another Buffalo organizer and infringer since 2006, of his adopted home, “some people left. Artists stayed. Buffalo has a certain charm, maybe it’s the water.”

Klinger adds: “it’s supported because the arts community is very DIY here and they enjoy that about the fest. After all we are the city of good neighbours.”
Just a quick bike ride across the border and down the road a bit from Buffalo, Gary St-Laurent is busy booking bands for Hamilton’s first-ever Infringement to be held this July. While music is generally a large part of any Infringement Festival, in Hamilton, it accounts for the vast majority of performances.

“The Hammer’s a musical oasis and the fest reflects this reality,” says St-Laurent, “so far, only three acts are not musical: Car Stories from Montreal, a dance troupe from Oakville and an Improv comedy troupe from here.”

St-Laurent, also a co-founder of the Infringement in Montreal along with conceptualizer King and the author of this post, plans to bring some musical acts from his former home to town including Ashtray Heart, K-Man and the 45′s, Richard Lahmy and E.J. Brule. They will join local infringers and maybe some talent from Buffalo as well at the roughly 200-capacity This Ain’t Hollywood, an up-and-coming venue that will serve as the epicenter of the festival.

That doesn’t mean it’s the only place where people will be infringing. As luck would have it, the first Friday of the fest coincides with the wildly successful Art Crawl which features vernissages, buskers and a soapbox for political rants. St-Laurent plans for the festival to be a big part of this, much like how the annual College Street Block Party is part of the Infringement in Buffalo.

Integrating with the community and collaborating with other like-minded groups and events is a core part of many an Infringement festival. Rather than employ a top-down approach of festivals having to operate a certain way across the board, each local group of Infringement organizers, provided they adhere to the mandate, are free to tailor their fest to the needs of their community.

Instead of running eleven days or even a weekend, the second-annual Brooklyn Infringement Festival decided to hold a one night only event this past May, which featured local bands and drew about 500 people.

“In a place like Brooklyn there is so much art and music, so many scenes it is impossible to keep up with what everyone is doing,” says Brooklyn Infringement organizer Steve Ferrara, who also performed in a musical capacity, “having said that, Infringement Brooklyn fits right in with Brooklyn’s artists. It is under the radar. We don’t dump all kinds of money into advertisement and PR, it is all word of mouth. Despite this fact, the festival was filled past capacity this year.”

Indeed, the Infringement seems right for just about any community. It is infinitely mutable as long as its basic principles are respected and regardless of the content of any particular festival, just holding one is a political statement in and of itself. Or, as Ferrara puts it:

“Infringement stands for mom and pop art. How can I not love that.”

For more on the 2010 Infringement circuit or to find out how you can start a festival in your community, please visit infringementfestival.com.

Jason C. McLean is a cofounder of the Infringement Festival, and can be found at jasoncmclean.com.

The protests rocking Greece have reached the cultural industries. Workers from Greece’s Ministry of Culture took over the Acropolis twice last month in protest over severe cuts to cultural funding. As part of the “austerity measures” being imposed on Greece as a result of recent economic turmoil, there have been deep cuts to the national cultural budget. More than 40 museums and ancient sites have been closed. The workers were demanding over a year’s worth of back pay and the creation of permanent jobs rather than contract work.

In other news from Athens, two of the largest labour unions in Greece ADEDY and GSEE, marched on Saturday to protest against planned pension system reform. About 2000 protesters braved heavy rains in front of the parliament building, holding banners and chanting slogans against the reform and other austerity measures the government has introduced to overcome the country’s debt crisis.

And yesterday, a crowd of 3,000 marched through Athens to demonstrate gay pride and protest against discrimination. “We’re everywhere” read one banner at the parade. The country approved civil unions in 2008, but the gay community has been seeking the approval of full gay marriages.

For more coverage check out The Art Newspaper.

Alt-rock icons The Pixies have cancelled their first-ever concert in Israel.

“We’d like to extend our deepest apologies to the fans, but events beyond all our control have conspired against us,” said the band in a statement released by concert promoters. “We can only hope for better days, in which we will finally present the long-awaited visit of the Pixies in Israel.”

While the band gave no official reason for the cancellation, concert organizers said their decision was directly linked to Israel’s deadly raid on a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid destined for Gaza last week.

The Pixies were slated to headline the Pic.Nic festival in Tel Aviv. Activist organizations such as Boycott! have been calling on The Pixies to cancel their appearance in the festival. According to the BBC, other acts have also pulled out of the event, including Placebo and Gorillaz.

Quick to play the victim card was concert promoter Shuki Weiss, who sent out his own release claiming Israel was a target of “cultural terrorism,” and that the government should step in and stop it. “I am full of both sorrow and pain in light of the fact that our repeated attempts to present quality acts and festivals in Israel have increasingly been falling victim to what I can only describe as a form of cultural terrorism which is targeting Israel and the arts worldwide.”

Several high-profile artists have cancelled concerts in recent months over Israel’s occupation of Palestine, including Carlos Santana, Gil Scott-Heron, and Elvis Costello.

Image by Evan K.

With the upcoming G8/20 meeting in Toronto around the corner and folks mobilizing in Toronto and all across Canada and the US, we thought we’d bring this incendiary political music video from AnarKidChris to your attention for this week’s second (and bonus) Friday Film Pick. Enjoy.

The Interview is the final Work for All film in our series! A short animation by director Claire Blanchet, and written by Jean Hervé Désiré and Tetchena Bellange is about the subtle and not-so-subtle discriminations that occur during a job interview. And we finish off these 10 weeks of anti-racism films with a short about hurdle #1 for visible-minority job seekers.

The Story

A highly qualified man of Arab descent walks into an interview at a telecommunications company. His interviewer, a Caucasian male, greets him. Inspired by the formula often used in television shows like The Office for awkward comic effect, Claire Blanchet puts two people of different backgrounds into a situation together. She uses colourful and expressive sequences to show the two men’s thoughts. These fill the screen in a whimsical but powerful way.

Both interviewer and interviewee are sizing each other up, thinking one thing while saying another and making hostile assumptions based on skin colour and ethnicity. Claire cleverly addresses the sameness of these two men, by designing them to look exactly the same – the only discernable physical difference is the colour of each man’s skin. She gives them both a haunting design, with one eye just a dark oval – a visual metaphor for the men looking inward to their own prejudices.

Systemic Racism

The Interview addresses one of the main problems the Work For All films tackle – that qualified applicants are kept out of the system because of assumptions about the quality of their work based on where they come from or what they look like. Fostering diversity in the workplace needs to be considered standard business practice.

Co-writer of this short animation, and the director of Doctors Without Residency, Tetchena Bellange discusses why she needs to make films about racism, and how films on the subject will help change the perception of visible minorities and level the playing field for all job seekers in Canada.

In The Interview, the applicant speaks his mind, and the interviewer realizes that he has not given a fair assessment. How do employers learn to fairly judge a prospective employee? Can these skills be taught? We hope that these the Work For All films raise awareness and that employers across Canada will make more rigorous efforts to represent the multiculturalism of this country in their workplaces.

Greenpeace UK is hosting a competition to redesign British Petroleum’s logo. Entries are due by June 28th; the winning design will be used as part of their international campaign against the oil company.

A few years ago, BP rebranded themselves as ‘beyond petroleum’. And yet BP is pursuing ‘unconventional oil’ – the Canadian tar sands and deepwater drilling, despite the massive environmental damage that’s being caused by their business.

That’s why we want you to rebrand them. Your brief is to create a logo for BP which shows that the company is not ‘beyond petroleum’ – they’re up to their necks in tar sands and deepwater drilling. – Greenpeace UK

The image above shows 2 logo designs already submitted. You can check out the rest on Greenpeace UK’s flickr stream. For more information and downloadable BP logos in “easy-to-edit formats,” visit the org’s “behind the logo” page.

(Thanks to Treehugger for the original announcement about this competition.)

Bas: Beyond the Red Light is a gorgeous, moving and remarkable Canadian documentary about former sex-trafficked girls at a recovery centre in India who take up dance to express themselves, heal and to tell their story. Or, from the site, it is about “13 young girls sold into Mumbai’s infamous network of gated brothels confront the inner and outer perils of life after rescue and reveal the very human story inside the big business of child trafficking.” The film recently won the Colin Low Award for most innovative Canadian documentary at DOXA in Vancouver, and will undoubtedly win more prizes as it makes the festival circuit. Wendy Champagne, the documentary’s director, took a moment out to speak to us before heading off with the film to Australia recently.

Art Threat: How did you find out about this program in India and what was it that inspired you to make a film about it?

Wendy Champagne: I was in Nepal researching a print story in international adoption and I met Geeta, the character at the centre of the film. She had just returned by train from India bringing six Nepali girls who she helped rescue from the brothels in Mumbai. She was a four foot ten warrior, complex, conflicted and just 18 at the time. Her story compelled me to take the leap and embark on the deeper process of documentary storytelling.

The film is very poetic and non-formulaic. In particular, there are many scenes throughout that allow the audience time to breathe: to reflect and think about these incredible girls, their stories, their struggles and their ambition and desire to transform. The film also remarkably and refreshingly focuses on the girls, and totally avoids interacting with the North American instructor brought in to teach them dance. By doing this it avoids the saviour narrative that so many western docs seem to trap themselves in. Can you talk about these aspects of the film and the process of envisioning the narrative, as well as your thoughts on making docs that fall outside the purview of the talking head-b-roll formation?

Thank you, it is not an approach for the faint-hearted I can tell you. We, myself and editor Hubert Hayaud, began with a commitment to have the girls tell their own stories. And you are right, it was risky with Nancy, who was so magnetic on tape and connected with the girls so well. We had to really stay aware of the “saviour” trap. Making a documentary is a great learning curve, the subject continually teaches, the girls always seemed to ask for our purest intentions. We also purposefully took our fingers away from the controls. The story and the issue is full of ambiguities and this had to be reflected in our treatment of the subject which of course makes it tougher to create a dynamic narrative. Personally I am very interested in making films like good novels where you create a sketch and the audience has to fill in the gaps. I don’t know if we always achieved that but that is what I am aiming for a director, to create a strong and lyric narrative that demands audience engagement.

The girls seem fairly open and honest when they talk with the filmmakers. Can you talk about the process of access, of gaining their trust, and of the politics of representation: the responsibility of the filmmaker to fairly and justly show oppressed characters without exploiting them (which you did for sure)?

Over the course of three and half years I made six visits to India and Nepal, some longer than others and in between times I called the Rescue Foundation to see how they were doing. I worked with the same translator, Anjana Rawal, a Nepali journalist and we became “aunties” to the girls. We stayed with them in the dorms, spent a lot of time with them before we did the interviews you see in the film – they happened closer to the end of that process.

Sometimes I  wished it were possible to take an objective/traditional documentary position and  have the stories unfold in front of me, but I am not sure I am capable of that. This film had the aim of creating a relationship between the girls and the audience, to make an issue personal. After so long with the girls I was part of their family and I had a responsibility to be true to that, so there is mutual respect that grows that makes it impossible  to be ambiguous. I  had  gained their trust and could not abuse that. I am still bound to that and in a way that is what makes the whole process personally valuable and very Indian also. I now am part of their lives, that can’t be broken.  About exploitation, it is the eternal question for a “principled” person and certainly for documentarians. It is a tricky path to navigate and I think that one has to get away from ideals and into realities to address it effectively, otherwise it is just talk. Documentary filmmakers are very priviledged people, we gain access into other people’s lives and, in my opinion, there is an ethical commitment that comes with that priviledge and for me that extends beyond the “great scoop”. I omitted  potentially explosive and sensational scenes I captured over the course of shooting  because of that.

What did the girls think of the film? Did you go back to India and screen it with them first? Did they have feedback, or was the final cut shown to them? Will it be shown around India?

No, this is a great sadness. I will get back to India late this year and show the girls. India does not have a market for films like this, in fact there is still a very small audience for documentary. The Indian government does not like films/books that highlight the dark side of life in India and Indians generally like to watch happy film. The dance video [which the girls' dance troupe eventually produce for their message] is a kind of homage to Bollywood and it  may work on Indian TV, as a kind of PSI and the girls will benefit directly from that, as all funds will go to them.

How do you think political documentary, and your film in particular, can contribute to progressive social change? Many argue that information isn’t enough – that audiences will go home and do little to nothing about the issues they’ve just seen projected on a screen. Others (like myself) argue that a good film will inspire audiences into more concrete and committed action. What are your thoughts on this? (and how can people really get involved?)

You  have to trust that; that you can make a difference, If there is no audience there is no point, in my opinion. I want to create those relationships and emotional experience that make it hard for people to be complacent, distant from what is happening in our world. We are here together and as a journalist and filmmaker that what drives me, to tell great stories with compassion and love. It is that internal engagement that will really create lasting change, I think.

Lastly, the film just won an award at Vancouver, congratulations! What is the future for this documentary? Where can people see it? Any upcoming projects?

I just heard tonight, while waiting for my flight to Australia here in LAX that it will be shown at Cinema Parallele during Grand prix week – June 11 to 16th and the DVD launch will be in September. The award has given it a bit of momentum, I am happy to say.  So I want to help it get out to communities. I know people respond to this story and I want it to be seen and heard. I feel those girls deserve that. In Vancouver the Georgia Straight put a picture form the film on the cover nd titled it “Girl Power” – that’s a great message indeed.

Today The Globe and Mail declared a return to the public tenets of journalism in which it would cease to “regurgitate corporate copy” or “pander to the elite.” Instead, the press release stated, the newspaper would “reflect the diversity of the public it serves” and would make real, concerted efforts to “report on environmental issues, local stories, and focus on social justice rather than stories dealing with celebrity fluff, corporate greenwashing and uncritical, unrestrained economic progress.” Readers across Canada have reacted by actually buying the paper instead of searching for news with real diverse perspectives online and elsewhere.

Of course, we all know the above statement is absolute hogwash. Just like we knew it had to be the Yes Men when Harper supposedly announced Canada’s about-face during December’s climate change talks in Copenhagen. Or that an avaricious and malicious corporation like Dow was reversing its position on its own mistakes, and was—GASP!—admitting its role in ruining the lives of thousands of Indians and compensating its victims for the Bhopal disaster. But the right-wing editorial team at The Globe and Mail aren’t in on the joke.

In a recent editorial that is so outrageous the commentary itself could be a ruse, The Globe likens the Yes Men’s public relations shenanigans to the devaluing of currency by fake money. Apparently, fakery can ruin an otherwise prestigious and respectable system of truth-telling.

There are two problems with this ridiculous assessment of the world’s most notorious progressive political pranksters. Let us leave aside for the moment the sad conclusion that the Globe’s editorial is merely the pathetic gasps of a groaning, creaking dinosaur whose dead-tree elitism appeals to a diminishing minority. More astonishing is that The Globe really seems to think that it is part of a tradition of journalism immune from “bogus” information.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Globe and Mail, like most mainstream news outlets, answers to advertisers and is (and must be) responsive to the powerful corporations who pay the bills. Pick up an issue of The Globe and look for reportage on corporate crime, on the true environmental costs of consumerism, on the ecological disaster that threatens our future while the perpetrators enjoy full-page ads extolling their “green solutions.” It’s not there, and its absence is not an accident.

Aside from issues of greenwashing and content that favours commercial sustainers, the paper is a champion of sleight of hand by omission. Look for voices that advocate progressive perspectives on immigration. On racism. On social justice activism and the global movement against the economic and corporate elite. On alternative, sustainable living. On First Nations struggles and stories of determination. On political art. On women’s equality. On Canadian-American imperialism. The list goes on.

Sure one can pick through the thicket of fluff pieces on commercial culture, celebrity “news,” violent crime, sports, and stock market pornography and find some stories that touch on the above issues, but you may want to pack a lunch because it will be a long day of searching the archives.

The truth of the matter is that The Globe has always represented the views of a slim minority of wealthy, pro-business elite, and has evened out coverage for that group with watery uncritical coverage that appeals to some imaginary mass, undoubtedly constructed by marketing firms working directly with the paper’s advertisers. Talk about fakery.

The second problem with The Globe’s outlandish position on the Yes Men is that they really don’t get what the rest of us do: the Yes Men are social provocateurs. They orchestrate media stunts to bring critical perspectives on an issue to the forefront.

In a recent issue of The Atlantic, Google’s main news guru, Krishna Bharat, reflected on poring over daily news feeds from the world’s mainstream press: “Why is it that a thousand people come up with approximately the same reading of matters? Why couldn’t there be five readings? And meanwhile use that energy to observe something else, equally important, that is currently being neglected.”

Bharat was amazed that with so many things going on all over the world, endless important stories, he was finding all the mainstream news agencies reporting on the same thing, whether it was Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, or the evils of Iran or North Korea. All this to say, there was very little diversity. The Globe is part of this monolithic soup, and the Yes Men draw attention to this fact and compel news-providers like the Globe to broaden and diversify coverage.

At a time when corporate news — including the Globe and Mail — was doing straight-up descriptive reporting of the climate change “talks” in December (as in what members of the elite were there, what was on the agenda, what were the goals, etc, etc) the Yes Men ruptured the commercial media’s wall of uncritical coverage.

The story of their hijinx — an elborate stunt that issued fake statements and doctored video about Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision to end his unbridled support for dirty oil extraction in Alberta’s tar sands and to begin countering climate change — circled the globe and embarrassed the Conservative government. Discerning citizens knew almost immediately that it was a hoax.

And we loved it, because it forced the world to pay attention to one of the most important issues facing public policymakers today, and it compelled commercial media to do their job: serve the public with diverse and critical reportage. And let’s face it, if The Globe isn’t checking its facts, that’s not the Yes Men’s problem. How many other press releases do we suppose The Globe publishes without any follow up?

It’s really too bad The Globe and Mail doesn’t get it. Instead of rising to the challenge of the Yes Men, they have chosen the path of the whining, whimpering dinosaur whose imminent extinction will be hastened by an alienated readership desperate for news that serves the public interest — not those of advertisers, industry and the elite.

For Angela is a short film about a young mother and her daughter’s everyday experiences of prejudice and racism in their hometown of Winnipeg. This film is based on a true story and is the ninth film in our ten week Hate Racism? Watch these Films campaign.

On what starts out as a regular day waiting for the bus with her daughter Angela, Rhonda is harassed by some teenage boys. These youths look at the two as they sit calmly at the stop, and grasping at every stereotype against Aboriginal people in the book, they begin to chant and taunt the young family.

Rhonda, who is disturbed by this atrocious display from the three angry teenagers quietly asks them to stop. This only causes the abuse to escalate once they’re all on the bus. Fellow passengers look the other way.

This short but powerful film tells a simple story of what it feels like to be discriminated against. The main characters are insulted, ostracised, made “to feel like garbage” and shamed over their own culture. And in the final act of the film, Rhonda confronts one of the boys who has said so many damaging things, to teach him that there is a very human consequence to his hateful actions.

For Angela shows the lasting feeling of worthlessness referred to in every Work For All film.

In our recent release, The Colour of Beauty, we saw how non-white models feel devalued by the fashion industry. In Doctors without Residency, we saw how doctors from foreign countries feel they are not given a fair chance to practice medicine in Canada.

For Angela is great for teaching children that racial slurs have a lasting effect. The film has been used in schools as a discussion piece.

Aisling Chin-Yee is a producer with the NFB’s Work For All project and an occasional contributor to Art Threat.

This week’s film pick came as a submission, and we love it. The film is well-shot, excellently-edited and features music from the fantastic DAM. Targeted Citizen (available for streaming at Vimeo in Arabic and Hebrew versions as well) is a short documentary that looks at the state of equality inside Israel, a country defined as the “Jewish State,” but a state nonetheless with many non-Jews. As one character says: “While we are physically present our rights are absent.”

Description from the filmmakers:

The film “Targeted Citizen” (15 minutes), produced by filmmaker Rachel Leah Jones for Adalah, surveys discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel. With the participation of experts Dr. Yousef Jabareen of the Technion and Dr. Khaled Abu Asbeh of the Van Leer Institute, as well as Adalah attorneys Sawsan Zaher, Abeer Baker and Hassan Jabareen, inequality in land and housing, employment, education and civil and political rights are eloquently addressed. These interviews are reinforced by the contrasting informality of on-the-street conversations conducted by Palestinian comic duo Shammas-Nahas and punctuated by the hard-hitting rhymes of Palestinian rap trio DAM. The film’s theme song “Targeted Citizen,” written and recorded by DAM especially for Adalah, tells it like it is without missing a beat.

If you enjoyed this, you should also check out Slingshot Hip Hop which features DAM throughout.

Jerm IX and Vegas just want to see more public street art in Vancouver. In the tradition of the world’s greatest graffiti artists, these two prolific tricksters have one big goal — to fill up sad, blank spaces in our city with thoughtful (and sometimes controversial) words and art. True to their word, Jerm and Vegas have spent a great deal of their free time pasting, hammering and spraying various eye-catching statements and graphics on every neglected space they can find.

Most recently, the artists have collaborated to bring their art-based dialogues to one of the most public spaces of all — the Skytrain — in a campaign aptly entitled V-TARP (Vancouver Transit Adspace Re-Appropriation Project). With over 35 installations already applied on Skytrain ads across the city, you may have noticed something a little different during your daily subconscious ad-scanning routines. Imagine this: next to one of those endless, ingratiating McDonald’s ads, a smaller ad-sized block of text that declares “I’M NOT LOVIN’ IT.” If this makes you pause and think, it has done its job.

On a sunny, humid afternoon about a week ago, I sat down with the artists themselves at W2 to discuss their opinions on the status of the guerrilla/street art scene in today’s Vancouver. Somehow, I felt they just might know a thing or two about the topic.

Is street art thriving here, I wondered? It seems like there are some truly beautiful mainstream/legal pieces being funded (such as the Paint Your Faith wall in that formerly-depressing empty lot on East Hastings) as well as some innovative (but less legal) installations inexplicably being erected at random locations. But what do these isolated examples say about the overall passion of local guerrilla/street artists here, about their motivations, about their experience and talent? It was time to ask the experts — especially because both Jerm IX and Vegas grew as fledgling street artists in cities other than Vancouver. So, how do we match up in comparison?

“The scene here is healthy,” Jerm IX responded after a pause. “However, it’s not thriving. The whole reason we are doing V-TARP is to try to inspire more people to use public spaces in this city more for art and their thoughts. There’s just not enough people doing it here yet — and the most talented artists don’t hit the streets that often — they are more into the gallery worlds… they’ve decided to spend their time making money, not decorating. For me, I’m out here doing it six days a week — I thrive on it — it’s my life. But I wish there was more.”

To read the rest and see some great photos, please visit Beyond Robson.

Interesting, isn’t it, how women tend to get short shrift in recorded history.  Who knew that the eminent John Grierson, considered by many to be the godfather of documentary, had two sisters, Ruby and Marion, who were documentary directors in their own right?  What of Charlotte Zwerin, long-time collaborator with the Maysles brothers and the other “fathers of verité” like Drew, Leacock and Pennebaker on such landmark documentaries as Salesman and Gimme Shelter?  And who has heard of verité documentaries like Geri Ashur’s Janie’s Janie and Madeline Anderson’s I Am Somebody that came out around that same time?  It makes one wonder: what makes a documentary mainstream and celebrated and who is doing the deciding?

Heading south of the U.S. border you realize other countries had their pioneering documentary women directors as well, like Venezuela’s Margot Benacerraf, whose documentary, Araya, shared the 1959 Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Critic’s Award with the more celebrated Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima, mon amour.  From Colombia there is Marta Rodríquez’ (Chiracles, 1972) who inspired generations of documentary filmmakers when she returned home after studying with Jean Rouch in Paris and has continued to direct, releasing Soraya: Amor no es Olvido in 2006.

Debra Zimmerman, executive director of Women Make Movies (Pictured above is a still from a WMM documentary, The Sari Soldiers, by Julie Bridgham) has championed, promoted and distributed films made by women from all over the world for twenty-seven years. She says that at a recent awards ceremony she attended she found it extraordinary to hear everyone talking about how much easier it is for women directing documentary than it is in fiction.  Given that women documentary directors are still dogged by a continuing misperception that women’s subjects are “niche” or “too soft,” a predominance of white male programmers and jurors at festivals and the tendency of the big bucks to still go to male filmmakers, she found it a rather facile analysis of the situation.

In recent years, some progressive countries have enshrined gender equality in their official filmmaking policies.  In 2005 Sweden passed Bill 2005/06:3 stipulating that women must comprise 40% of the scriptwriters, directors and producers receiving funding within the next five years.  The Spanish parliament passed a law in 2006 saying that : “all things being equal, if a submitted proposal is written or directed by a woman, it will take precedence over one presented by a man. ”

We had our moment in Canada back in 1974 when the National Film Board of Canada set up the world’s first “permanent” (dismantled in 1996) state-funded women’s film unit, called Studio D. Terre Nash, for one, feels lucky she had the unflagging support of the Studio and its head, Kathleen Shannon, to get her short documentary If You Love This Planet made.  Given its U.S. Department of Justice designation as “foreign political propaganda” things were a bit dicey for a while.  But, luckily validation came in the form of the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject in 1982.

Getting those high profile awards is one of the issues Debra Zimmerman, is grappling with: “I was really, really appalled to realize this year at Sundance, which is a particularly woman friendly festival, that there’s still a majority of white males winning the awards.” With a preponderance of documentaries with “male subjects” being selected, can it be simply that guys make better films – or is it that the typical male subject choice and male narrative arc, often involving ambition and adventure – are just more obvious choices?

The bottom line is that male directors get the backing to create higher end feature documentaries (think:  Touching the Void or Man on Wire) that come with the bigger marketing dollars, ending up in the high profile festivals and thus we women of the documentary world find ourselves butting up against the same “celluloid ceiling” as our fiction sisters.

Jennifer Baichwal (Manufactured Landscapes, Act of God), one of the handful of Canadian women documentary directors with an international profile thinks that we risk distorting things by examining the issue of documentary directors through the lens of gender.  She says:  “It’s fascinating to hear anything other than the main party line (i.e. middle-aged white male perspective).  But I don’t want to turn that into a caricature.  It’s not like there’s some kind of conspiracy, it’s just a default.”

My friend and fellow director Helene Klodawsky (No More Tears Sister, Malls R Us) talks about it as the “inside forces” and the “outside forces” with which women directors have to deal – the inside forces being what falls within our personal sphere of influence: questions of confidence and self-promotion, relationships with family and partners, time management issues.  As one woman I spoke with hypothesized:  not many male directors think too long and hard about whether to have a baby or make a film.

Act of God director Jennifer Baichwal

It’s impressive, the work being done by women like Elena Fortes, director of the travelling Mexican documentary festival Ambulante and Patricia Torres San Martín, researcher/co-ordinator of the thirteen-part documentary series on Latin American women directors called Opera Feminea, to promote women’s work outside Latin America.

It’s thanks to Ambulante that here in Montreal, thousands of kilometers north, I saw work by some of the current Mexican women documentary filmmakers – films like: Lucía Gajá’s deeply disturbing account of Rosa Jiménez’ U.S. trial in Mi Vida Dentro, Natalia Almada’s beautifully crafted El General and Christiane Burkhard’s very moving Trazando Aleida.  This year Ambulante, based in Mexico City, played in about twenty-five cities across Mexico and beyond.

When I write Elena asking about the present situation there she answers, “In Mexico we definitely have a number of female directors, most of them making documentaries, who have been working in film for several decades, so it’s not a recent trend. However, it is a pretty sexist society, as you may imagine, so it is a fact that access to the film industry for women has been much more difficult than for men.“

She raises an interesting point that I’m assuming is more of a blatant issue in Latin culture – the pointy head of sexism – until I speak with Patty White, an academic working on a global assessment of women and cinema.  She says,  “There’s an erroneous assumption now that we’re post-feminist in North America and there’s plenty of women filmmakers so there’s no need to address the situation any further.”  Complicating matters is the fact that there’s nobody really keeping tabs on all this, which makes it hard to create a statistical snapshot of where women documentary directors are at in 2010.

In Québec where I live and work, there is a group of sixty-three women directors called Réalisatrices Équitables (RÉ) advocating for equality for women in film financing.  Until they came along in 2007 and began analyzing institutional film funding figures everyone had assumed that women directors were doing just fine. RÉ’s main focus is on the dire situation for women directing fiction, but a study they issued in 2008 showed that between 2002 and 2007 women received a meagre 10% of the almost billion dollars distributed by the Canadian Television Fund, then our biggest funding body.

Across Canada almost two-thirds of the membership of the Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC) is comprised of women.  In these dire times of dysfunctional free market economies, ratings obsessed media and broken distribution models, it means that women documentary directors, already in such a compromised position, will bear the brunt of the downturn in demand and production.

Volumes have been written on the political and economic impact on film culture in Latin American countries. With so many complex and different histories it’s impossible to make generalizations about the current situation for women documentary directors there. While the New Latin American Cinema during the 60s and 70s influenced the evolution of both fiction and non-fiction across much of that continent, there is a great cultural divide between countries that have enacted film legislation and the rest.

My Country My Country director Lauar Poitras

Last week I had a late night phone call with Sonia Goldenberg (El Pais de los Saxos) in Lima, Peru.  She laughed at my astonishment that there has never been a Ministry of Culture in the Peruvian government. Sonia worked recently with one of today’s documentary icons, fellow Peruvian Heddy Honigmann, on her sublime feature documentary Oblivion, which serves as poetic on-screen testimony to the resilience of the Peruvian working class.  She tells me that with government funding for about three documentary films a year available in Peru, it’s difficult enough to be a documentary filmmaker whatever your sex.

At the other end of the spectrum I learn from Ricardo Respero, director of the Colombian Documentary Association, that their Minister of Culture is a woman as are the heads of the Colombian Film Commission, the Colombian Film Fund and the Ministry of Communication.  A law enacted since 1997 declaring cinema a national patrimony has created conditions under which their film industry has been able to thrive, meaning good news for women documentary directors too.

A common thread running through many Latin American countries, particularly those struggling with a lack of government funding, volatile political situations and general economic deprivation are video activists and film collectives.  In Nicaragua there is Puntos de Encuentro; in Chile, the Grupo Chaski; in Bolivia, the Grupo Ukamau; Cinemestizo in Columbia and in Mexico, CineMujer and Telemanita, amongst others.  It’s an interesting correlation with the women’s New York film collectives of the 70s, which was how many women got started making documentaries.  Back then, as it is now, it’s about social and political activism and empowerment.

It makes me think of something Joan Churchill had said on our phone call:  “I think all women are political filmmakers.”  I hadn’t ever really thought of it like that but let’s face it, documentary is a notoriously underpaid, overly demanding job and men tend to go for the more lucrative ones.

A cinematographer and director (Asylum, Aileen Wuornos:  Life and Death of a Serial Killer) Joan has worked alongside names like Peter Watkins, Nick Broomfield and the “fathers of verité.”  She’s catching up on sleep after doing a marathon 8-day shoot on Paul Haggis’s re-make of “We Are the World” for a Haitian relief effort when I call her up. “It’s less about the recognition and climbing over other people to get ahead for most women.  I think they tend to make films about issues that they’re really passionate about and it’s not so much about making money,” she tells me.

“We’re interested in different things – absolutely, we have a totally different take on things from men, it’s in everything we do – we’re nurturing people, we bring up children and we’re not testosterone driven,” Joan adds, “I’ve always felt it was an advantage to be a woman when shooting because you’re not considered a threat. You can get your foot in the door, you can get access that a guy wouldn’t get and people get emotional with you when they might not be so inclined to do so with a guy.”

The year My Country, My Country was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, its director, Laura Poitras, admitted to me that she couldn’t have spent nine months shooting in Iraq if she hadn’t been a woman:  “I just wouldn’t have gotten the same kind of access if I had been a guy in Baghdad because of the way the gender divisions work in these cultures.”

When I catch up recently with her in New York Laura’s still in her Sundance bubble from the launch of her new feature documentary, The Oath, where she received the Excellence in Cinematography award with her co-cinematographer, Kirsten Johnson.  She, like all the women directors I talk to name women who have been instrumental in helping them get to where they are. I picture us all standing on the shoulders of each other, trying our damndest to crack through that resilient celluloid ceiling.

A woman, Nancy Hamilton, won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature back in 1955 and we have won fifteen of them since then.  By that tally women directing documentary are faring much better than their fiction sisters who only this year, with Kathryn Bigelow’s resounding victory, have finally been granted access to the Hollywood boys’ club.  But it’s troubling that we still live in a time when women directors are reluctant to acknowledge “gender distinctions” or use the word “feminist” or need to tell male narratives rather than their own in order to be celebrated, because if film, whether documentary or fiction, is a mirror of who and what we are, then the current image is very distorted.

For those haven’t had the pleasure, let me introduce Pinky: the cutest radical kitty journalist west of the Appalachia’s. Indeed, you have to experience the Pinky Show to appreciate its subversive charm. Imagine a children’s cartoon with dialogue vetted by your favourite political theorists, with a sense of humour, and enough cheekiness … well, enough cheekiness to maybe make a change.

The Pinky Show is the animated political project of two creators from California who, for the purposes of this article, asked to be referred to by their animated character names: Pinky and Bunny. It is an online endeavor that offers up documentary cartoons on a host of political issues.

The show is narrated by Pinky, said animated kitty journalist, and the style is simple, compelling and interminably cute. The analysis is astute and rendered in a way suitable for young and old alike. For anyone interested in education, it is a veritable feast of audiovisual materials aimed at challenging many of the one-sided dominant social and political myths and ideologies circulating in North American public culture.

They see their work as part of the larger project of ending of American imperialism. Says ‘Pinky’: “Probably our biggest long term goal, fantasy, whatever is the dissolution of U.S. Empire. So we try to choose topics that all together will help people think about the moral arguments that would be necessary to achieving that kind of political objective.” A Herculean task, it might seem, for a little cartoon cat. But through their online distribution efforts, the Pinky Show is attracting an ever growing audience around the world.

A quick glance through their archive gives a sense of the political territory this creative group has staked out for itself: Hawaii’s illegal appropriation by the United States; the dangers to imagination and intelligence posed by public education; the role of world’s fairs in the colonization of the global south; the American occupation of Iraq; a kitty treatise on class, power and agency; creepy children’s toys; GMO’s; new forms of apartheid; illegal immigration. There isn’t much they shy away from.

“Sometimes the connection [between shows] is obvious,” explained ‘Pinky’. “For example we have episodes about how the U.S. seized Hawaii, or about the illegality of the Iraq War under international law, things like that. Other times we talk about really basic things like “Be kind to animals”. Or, hey, we need to do a critique of schooling. To us all of these kinds of topics are related because we cannot move towards a better society without being ethically and analytically grounded.”

The animation is deceptively simple. One of my favourite episodes – not least because when I watched it I was battling an ant infestation in my home – is the appeal by ant #14C from Pinky’s ant farm. The ant escapes the farm, mounts a podium, and reads an appeal and manifesto about why ants are worthy of life. There is an economy of style that works. It’s what the creators call “space to think”.

“We like something that looks simple is because we want to make something that allows people space to think. Sometimes when things are very beautiful or visually complex it’s easy to get lost in that. It’s similar to why the pace and rhythm of our videos are pretty slow, at least in comparison to more entertaining things out there. We want a quiet, focused format.”

‘Bunny’ explained that the paired down style was also due in part to funding constaints. “We don’t have enough money, time, technique or desire to make something fancy. An elaborate production process means it’d take us even longer to produce new episodes, and we’re trying to cover more material, not less.” More resources, says ‘Pinky’, would allow them to introduce more sophistication to their animation.

The creative duo behind the Pinky Show say they started the project mostly for themselves. They wanted a way to turn studying and learning into a full-time project because, says ‘Pinky’, “doing it just some of the time didn’t seem like it’d be enough to truly, deeply look into things.”

‘Bunny’ concurs. “I remember when we first started talking about creating The Pinky Show, it was in terms of an educational t.v. show with puppets. The idea was [for a show] intended for adults who were, say, finished with school but somehow stuck in their learning, feeling like they weren’t really learning anything new anymore. And I don’t mean learning about Julia Roberts on the Gossip Channel or whatever. We are more concerned with how U.S. society is organized in a way that’s hurtful to millions or billions of people and the whole planet in general.”

Their project links pedagogy with activism and a desire to bring into wider circulation discussions about legitimation, hegemony, power structures, and settler colonialism. Many of their productions address complicated emotional and intellectual terrain. Another of my favourites – Scary School Nightmare – combines Pinky animation with words from Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society. It is haunting rendering of Illich’s critique of public education.

Because of its unusual narrative and visual style, the Pinky Show is exploring modes of truth-telling that are largely unavailable to traditional media. The Pinky team rejects, for instance, any notion of objectivity as a guiding principle. And yet they bring to their efforts a traditional journalistic concern for the quality of information that makes up their programming. “We are very, very careful to make sure that every single thing we put in our videos is 100% defensible. We go over pretty much each and every word we use in our videos to make sure that we can back up what we’re saying, either in terms of facts or in terms of a sound moral argument,” explained Pinky.

“We are not interested in dedicating 50% of our program time to exploring things from ‘other perspectives’. Dominant perspectives already enjoy a near-monopoly of thought in all the broadcast t.v. news shows, they dominate all other realms of popular culture, they fill the pages of history books in the classrooms. That’s neither fair or balanced. Fair would be if all the t.v. shows and all that educational media presented the public with the full spectrum of perspectives that exist out there, which of course also includes counter-hegemonic perspectives and histories. Well, that’s not happening and it’s an enormous obstacle to mobilizing support for social change. So we’re definitely coming at things from a downside-up direction and we are 100% committed to that, no apologies.”

The Pinky Show’s unique visual style also draws from the world of art, or at least its creators do. Indeed, it is an ‘artful’ kind of journalism, well suited to new media audiences whose distinctions between entertainment, art and news are increasingly blurred. “Obviously we use many conventions and strategies that we’ve stolen from the visual arts,” says Bunny. “But I don’t think that makes me identify as an artist. The way I think about it is that I’m always looking for any kind of tools to help us get our message out there.”

‘Pinky’ concurs. “Yeah, when people put us in the art category I don’t mind at all. I don’t identify as an artist in an occupational sense. But I’m fine with people putting our work in the visual arts category simply because the contemporary art scene is filled with such an enormous range of strategies and practices, and I can easily see how our work will probably have many similarities with stuff a lot of artists are doing out there. Probably the things I absorbed in terms of looking at the political dimension of artistic practices has found its way into the way we work now, but it’s not something I’m consciously trying to develop as a way to make a political statements through art.”

The Pinky Show looks ready-made for the classroom, and indeed the show has a following among teachers. “We get a lot of feedback from all kinds of educators,” says ‘Bunny’, “university professors, education departments at museums, high school teachers, home schoolers, etc. Our videos and printed stuff are also used a lot in non-classroom settings like teach-ins, reading circles, community workshops… basically a lot of grassroots-type education.”

“We’ve also received a lot of e-mails and letters from people to use The Pinky Show as the basis of a kind of self-education thing, almost like a hobby,” adds ‘Pinky’. “They watch our videos and then use our reference lists as a point of departure for their own research. I think that’s interesting. We also work directly with a small circle of educators – mostly higher education people, scattered throughout various universities, mostly in the U.S., and some old-school activists and media activists. When we need guidance or feedback we’re pretty quick to just call someone with 20 or 50 years experience with a thing and ask them for advice or information.”

There is much that the Pinky team has accomplished, but despite its popularity among teachers and growing audiences, the Pinky Show struggles to pay the bills. It is, I was told, a constant battle to keep the project afloat. “If people find our work useful,” says ‘Bunny’, “they can support our project by making a donation, fundraise for us, or buying a Pinky Show t-shirt, an art print, something like that.

“Tens of thousands of people download our videos from our website every month but hardly anybody makes a donation. We have tons of fans but hardly any supporters. We want to give away digital information for free because we think that this kind of information should be available to anyone who’s willing to think about it. Unfortunately we need money to keep these things available and also to make new stuff. We need food, shelter, and equipment in order to keep working. I hope people reading this decide to support us because we have a huge pile of really good, important projects that we want to bring to completion.”

So there it is.

Check out the Pinky Show website and if you like what you see help them out.

“We would like to make an attempt to see if human beings, U.S. people in particular, are capable at this point in history to clean up the mess they’ve created,” says Bunny. “We’re nobodies, but we have to do our little part to move things along in that direction. The Pinky Show is what we can do.”

As the Tate Modern celebrated its 10th Anniversary, art activists from the group Liberate Tate released balloons carrying oil-soaked fake birds and dead fish in protest of the museums ties to British Petroleum. With the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico reaching its 1 month point today and still gushing, this action couldn’t have more appropriate timing.

Liberate Tate distributed a communiqué throughout the museum during the opening promising addition actions to ‘free art from oil’ until the Tate ends its ties with BP. The group stated, “Every time we step inside the museum Tate makes us complicit with acts that are harming people and creating environmental destruction and climate change, acts that will one day seem as archaic as the slave trade. We call on Tate to become a responsible, ethical and truly sustainable organisation for the 21st century and drop its sponsorship by oil companies. As a public institution the Tate’s Trustees, chaired as they are by an ex-CEO of BP, must abandon its association with BP. All visitors to the Tate must be able to enjoy great art with a clear conscience about the impact of the museum on society and the environment.”

According to Indymedia UK, “the Tate staff [had] burst some of the oil bubble-like black balloons by climbing onto a high gantry, but many remained out of reach and the rotting fish and sea birds hovered above the evening’s celebrations headlined by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. Rumours circulated that Tate would commission a marksman to shoot the remaining balloons down from the top of the former power station.”

For more information on Liberate Tate, visit Art Not Oil, follow them here, or contact them to get involved.

Last week the filmmakers of the documentary CRUDE—a film that looks at the nefarious activities of Chevron in Ecuador and the ensuing court case around the company’s misdeeds—were told by a US court that their footage (600 hours of it) must be handed over to Chevron’s lawyers to possibly be used against the very people the filmmakers sought to help with the film in the first place. This unprecedented decision could have profound ramifications for documentary filmmakers, and completely elides the notion of “journalistic integrity” afforded to those working in the news media. Art Threat received this communiqué from the filmmakers this morning:

CRUDE Filmmakers Subpoenaed by Chevron.  Join the fight for the First Amendment rights of the makers of CRUDE and documentary filmmakers everywhere!

As many of you may have seen in the press, the makers of CRUDE were recently served with subpoenas by Chevron, in an effort to gain access to the nearly 600 hours of raw footage accumulated during the making of the film.  Our attorneys filed a response, stating that our footage is protected by the journalist’s privilege and forcing us to hand it over to a third party (either Chevron, the plaintiffs’ lawyers, or anyone else) is a violation of our First Amendment rights. A hearing was held on Friday, April 30th in New York.  But on Thursday, May 6th, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ruled in Chevron’s favor.

We are appealing this decision, as we feel it is a violation of our First Amendment rights and could have a seriously chilling effect on documentary filmmakers and journalists everywhere. We appreciate the incredible outpouring of support from people in the documentary community and allies all over the world, and we hope that this extremely troubling situation will conclude in our favor, but we need your help to put up the fight.

Defending ourselves against Chevron, the third largest corporation in America, is extraordinarily costly. We have set up a Kickstarter page as a way for our supporters to help us raise funds for our defense against Chevron and stand up in favor of the future of documentary filmmaking and investigative journalism.

Please donate whatever you can and pass this email and Kickstarter link on to others who may be interested in supporting the cause. On the Kickstarter page, we are offering signed CRUDE DVDs and posters as well as CRUDE American Apparel T-shirts as small tokens of thanks for your generous support.

In addition to the substantial amount of personal funds Joe Berlinger has already put toward this case, we have set our public funding goal at $20,000 (a small fraction of the total cost) by the end of June.  With your pledge, you can play an active role and make a very real difference in what has quite rapidly spiraled into an historic battle for the freedom of the press, the protection of journalists, and the foundation of documentary film. For more articles on the case, please visit the CRUDE Blog.

Thank you.
-Joe Berlinger & Team CRUDE

“It is a matter of instinct and conscience,” writes internationally celebrated singer-songwriter Elvis Costello in an open letter reflecting on a landmark decision by Costello to cancel planned performances in Israel this summer.

Around the world in recent months a wave of high-profile artists are publicly expressing support for the Palestinian struggle for liberation and in opposition to Israeli apartheid policies against the Palestinian people. Artists globally are responding to the 2005 appeal from Palestinian civil society for a comprehensive campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel rooted in a similar campaign internationally that targeted the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Artists United Against Apartheid formed in 1985 and mobilized key cultural figures around the world in opposition to the racist apartheid policies in South Africa. Sun City was a hit track around the world featuring artists such as Gil Scott-Heron, Miles Davis and Bruce Springsteen who proclaimed their resistance to apartheid in South Africa by refusing to play at a gambling resort in a bantustan, a nominally independent area supposedly ruled by black Africans, in the middle of an impoverished rural homeland, in striking contrast to the whites-only wealthy areas in Johannesburg.

Elvis Costello

In Montreal 500 artists announced their support towards the global boycott campaign this past winter, including celebrated Quebec-based artists such as singer-songwriter Richard Desjardins, author Rawi Hage and the late Lhasa de Sela.

A similar movement is emerging today in solidarity with Palestine, given the segregation of the Palestinian people in Israeli militarily occupied territories ruled under Israeli military law in the West Bank or the besieged Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip cut-off from the world by a joint Egyptian and Israeli siege.

Costello’s key decision will certainly fuel the growing artistic movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people, a cultural movement that is growing in tandem to growing international solidarity movement with Palestine that has grown in major ways since the Israeli bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip in January 2009 which killed over 1400 Palestinians, the majority civilians and leaving thousands wounded.

“Then there are occasions when merely having your name added to a concert schedule may be interpreted as a political act that resonates more than anything that might be sung and it may be assumed that one has no mind for the suffering of the innocent,” writes Costello in the moving public letter announcing the cancelation of the concerts in Israel.

Decades later Costello’s anti-colonial anthem Oliver’s Army resonates more strongly than ever.

Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based writer activist and artist who works with Tadamon! and regularly contributes to Art Threat. You can find him at twitter.com/spirodon.

Photos: sonofwalrus / gdcgraphics.

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