The winning entry for the environment category in this year’s Media that Matters Film Festival was a short animated film about the dangers of electronic waste. And what consumers can do to help the problem. I’m not sure if I find it effective or annoying. You decide.
Monthly Archives: July 2008
Artists are Now Taking the Lead the Politicians Have Failed to Give (2007)
Madeleine Bunting
“Artists are Now Taking the Lead the Politicians Have Failed to Give”
The Live Art Almanac
Live Art UK, 2008 pp. 51-53
Originally published in the Guardian, 21 May 2007
“Artists now get lumbered with expectations that in other cultures might fall to shamans, preachers or prophets – or once fell to politicians.
What inflates these expectations of artists is a frustrated desire for change, and an equally profound sense of confusion as to how to effect change. Over the last decade art has scored some striking triumphs on this score: Marc Quinn’s statue of Alison Lapper pregnant in Trafalgar Square arguably did more to challenge images of disability and beauty than the most carefully crafted anti-discrimination legislation. [Antony Gormley’s] The Angel of the North’s aspirational optimism helped overturn the reputation derived from two decades of industrial decline and demoralization. Our understanding of how art can bring about certain key aspects of change has increased: it can transform reality by inspiring the imagination. At the same time, our disillusionment with the capacity of the political process to change behavior has deepened.
Art can never do the messy business of politics – the negotiation and compromise. But politicians are now grappling with a new politics about how to change the way people behave in their private lives: how they eat, travel, shop, exercise, drink. And art can open minds in a way that our politics is singularly failing to do.” (p.52)
[Note: Bunting is an art critic (?) who writes for the Guardian newspaper]
Letter from Oaxaca (2006)
Guilermo Gómez-Peña
“Letter from Oaxaca: Performing the Flames”
The Live Art Almanac
Live Art UK, 2008 pp. 47-50
Originally published as an e-mail, August 20, 2006
“Opening day arrived, and while we we were setting up in the Museum, 50,000 citizens had gatherd outside to support the teachers. The sound of their loudspeakers intertwined with the sound of our rehearsal. It was extremely humbling and many times during the day I was stricken with doubts. Should we cancel the performance. Was it appropriate for the show to go on? But I quashed my doubts. At 7:30 pm, just as the demonstration ended, we opened the museum doors, and to our surprise, hundreds of people began to storm in. A perplexed museum employee sat to me, ‘Maestro, why would all these people (over a thousand citizens) come to experience weird performance art and experimental video n such a day?’ Precisely, I thought.
There couldn’t have been a better time for us to be there. It is precisely in times of acute crisis that cultural institutions become sanctuaries for freedom of the imagination, that the function of art becomes clarified. The wide-eyed audience, which included many of the victims of the conflict, couldn’t have been more playful or more interested in our bizarre imagery and actions. Art clearly brought them to another place, a parallel reality where symbols, metaphors and rituals attempted to make sense out of the political maelstrom we were all experiencing.” (p.49)
[Note: in 2006 the teachers of Oaxaca Mexico went on strike, their protest led to larger ones which called for the removal of the regional Governor. The Mexican police and armed paramilitaries responded violently, killing a number of citizens (along with my friend Brad Will). ]
“Proximity to Politics” 3 Book Review
Originally Written for Boot Print Volume #2 (St. Louis, USA)
Proximity to Politics:
A Review of Three Recent Published Dialogues on Contemporary Art and Activism
By Daniel Tucker
In an attempt to broadly survey the current terrain of contemporary art in relationship to politics, I am turning to three invaluable new resources published in the last year.
There are three important conversations that have been recorded in the last year and published in book form that I will focus on in order to shed some light on the current challenges and concerns facing contemporary artists who are concerned with commenting on and participating in politics. They are:
“Subversive Multiples: A Conversation between contemporary printmakers” by Meredith Stern with responses by Icky A., Morgan F.P Andrews, Courtney Dailey, Josh MacPhee, Colin Matthes, Roger Peet, Erik Ruin, Nicole Shulman, Miriam Klein Stahl, Shaun Slifer, Chris Stain, Swoon, Pete Yahnke, and Bec Young.
Featured in “Realizing The Impossible: Art Against Authority” edited by Josh MacPhee and Erik Reuland (AK Press 2007)
“War Culture” with Doug Ashford Moderating a conversation between Gregg Bordowitz, Paul Chan, Peter Eleey, Deborah Grant, K8 Hardy, Sharon Hayes, Emily Jacir, Ronak Kapadia, Steve Kurtz, Julian LaVerdiere, John Menick, Helen Molesworth, Anne Pasternak, Ben Rodriguez-Cubenas, Ralph Rugoff and Nato Thompson. Published as the final of 3 conversations in “Who Cares” (Creative Time Books 2006).
And for some historical context:
“Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D) Interview” by Brett Bloom with PAD/D members Gregory Sholette, Janet Koenig, Jerry Kearns, and Barbara Moore. Published in “Group Work: A book of information and dialogs about creativity and collaboration in groups” by Temporary Services (Printed Matter, Inc. 2007).
The Changing Face of the U.S. Consumer
via: Ad Age
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The marketing community, already dealing with a slumping economy and an increasingly consumer-controlled media marketplace, must confront another new reality: The face of the American consumer is changing dramatically.
It’s not news that the nation is aging, but the fact that the average U.S. head of household is just six months shy of 50 is a startling statistic.
Also factor in that regional demographics are diverging more than ever before. The young, multicultural West bears little resemblance to the old, largely white Northeast, where many communities are nearly childless. And that’s to say nothing of the rapid and economically vital influx of immigrants.
To examine what these demographic shifts mean for brand marketing, let’s take a look at some of the most prominent trends.
The first challenge of climate crisis is…
The most fundamental reality at the present time is that the human species has over shot the capacity of the planet to sustain it. Both in terms of human numbers and in terms of the impact these human beings have on the planet. This is a very challenging situation and the first challenge is really understanding at and accepting it. Because unless we understand the extent to which we’ve already damaged the planet, the extent to which climate change is already irreversible, then whatever we do to cope with environmental issues will have no real long term effect.
- John Grey
"People Are Strange": a night of multimedia performance and projections
Marisa Olsen’s upcoming show is about “an active artist’s earliest creative efforts and they
provide evidence of an obsession with music, genre, psychology, and personal narrative that shines through in her more recent artworks.” It is an exhibition to celebrate the release of her book, Poems I Wrote While Listening to the Doors, 1992-1994 (Before I found the internet).
Olsen’s latest work makes a couple success-establishing gestures: the artist publishes a book, and the artist illuminates early creative endeavors in an exhibitionist fashion. The implication of success is multifaceted. First, the artist’s current work has achieved a level of polish so that the contrast between early days and current work is illuminating. Second, her work is successful enough to warrant public attention to the early stuff. The funny part is that it isn’t a pretentious or aggressive move because the content is so utterly embarrassing.
As the press release states, “The evening will continue Olson’s ongoing interest in public humiliation and the aesthetics of failure, from which she believes we can learn more, politically and personally, than from success.” Olsen’s retrospective glance into her teen years is humorous, nostalgic, and almost universal to teenage Doors fans. Perhaps another aspect of success is the ability to publicly and gracefully embrace early fledglings.
We Ask Your Attention (1938)
British Surrealist Group (1938)
We Ask Your Attention
From a pamphlet issued by the British Surrealist Group, designed by Henry Moore, London,1938
(reprinted in Art and Social Change, Will Bradley and Charles Esche, eds., London: Tate, 2007, pp. 110-114)
[From a pamphlet arguing for intervention in the Spanish Civil War, but has larger ramifications I think…]
“If only in self-defense we must END ALL FORMS OF NON-INTERVENTION, INTERVENE IN THE FIELD OF POITICS, INTERVENE IN THE FIELD OF IMAGINATION.
THE REVOLUTION which we can bring about must have as its object the DEVELOPMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS and the WIDER SATISFACTION OF DESIRE.” [113
[Nice link between the field of politics (material: supply the Republican side with arms and support) and intervening in the “field of imagination.” Also note the bohemian call for “wider satisfaction of desire.” ]
Art and Propaganda (1924)
William Pickens (1924)
Art and Propaganda
Extract from The Messenger, New York, April 1924
(reprinted in Art and Social Change, Will Bradley and Charles Esche, eds., London: Tate, 2007, pp. 74-75)
[A remarkably succinct and articulate explanation and defense of propaganda in art]
It begins:
“What we are going to say now will make us a Philistine to some ‘artists’, and to all of the near-artists. But a little thinking will do even an artist some good.” [74]
[Could be our intro as well]
“Art and Propaganda always do exist side by side; for in fact propaganda is the subsoil out of which all art has grown – religious, ethical, racial or class propaganda. But (and here’s what the near-artists stumble over) it is the function of art to conceal the propaganda as to make it more palatable to the average recipient, while yet not destroying its effect.” [74]
“And were not all Italian art, and most of the music of the world, done in the cause of religion? The art element will outlast the propaganda element, of course; for if a thing is a good work of art, it will still be a good work of art after the propaganda cause has passed.” [74]
“There is plenty of propaganda without art, but at least mighty little worthy art without propaganda – for propaganda is the raison d’etre of the greatest arts.” [74]
And the conclusion:
“We have no quarrel with a purpose. If it is tastily done up in the proper dress of art” [75]
[The point: Art has always conveyed a way of seeing, usually religious sometimes political, it is naïve to think otherwise. Good art, however, is not recognizable as propaganda and exists after the message has passed – implying it has other qualities as well]