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Art

Architects Build Society’s Cage On National Mall In Bold Statement On Racial Strife

A group of five designers at the internationally known SmithGroup Architecture firm set up a metallic cubic structure on the National Mall to frame the struggle of Black Lives in America. The public display titled “Society’s Cage” is a 14 foot cube pavilion timed for the 57th anniversary of the March On Washington and is made from the hidden components of sky scrapers. It depicts an architect’s visualization of ongoing racial inequality in the United States and asks the question, “What is the value of Black life in America?” The cube is constructed from 484 vertical rusted conduit pipes attached to a large metal plate, supported by four large metal supports on a pavilion, resembling a cage. One in four bars are connected to the floor, representing the rate Blacks will be incarcerated. A four-part, 8 minute, 46 second music composition, the same time length of time of George Floyd’s tragic murder, sets the mood.

Street Artists Rise To The Occasion

The massive protests in Los Angeles in response to the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and so many others organized through the Black Lives Matter movement generated an outpouring of engaging and provocative visual artworks. Open-air installations, murals, posters, “street art” works, and similar efforts abound, many in my Venice/Mar Vista neighborhood where I regularly jog. I participated in many of those protests and saw some of these efforts personally. Cumulatively, these, and similar works throughout the United States and the world, have added to the burgeoning tradition of political art—a movement that has inspired social activists for centuries.

How Artists Are Exploring Radical Economies

There are many proposals for radical economies from progressive economists, activists and think tanks. Artists are increasingly joining these debates with speculative proposals and unconventional methodologies. I will explore three art projects here that approach the economies of caring labor, agricultural and social production on farms, and forests, with an artistic spin. Driven by artistic curiosity but not shying away from addressing systemic issues, these projects help us open the scope of our discussions by engaging with diverse social actors. The ReUnion network is a design prototype for a socio-economic ecosystem that helps people organize bottom-up social support through long-term P2P (peer to peer) care agreements.

How New Creative Actions Are Fueling Chile’s Uprising

In response to repression by Chilean police, decentralized performances — sparked by small artist collectives — are replacing traditional barricades. On the surface, things have calmed down in Chile, after the initial weeks of massive demonstrations that began on Oct. 18, and brought the military back into the streets almost three decades after the fall of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. But the country is far from calm. While new repressive tactics are being used to keep stubborn protesters away from the now legendary Dignity Square, the Chilean people.

No Music For ICE! Musicians: Pull your Music From Amazon This Holiday Season

In an escalation of our NoMusicForICE campaign, we just issued takedown notices to pull our music from Amazon’s digital platform, and you can too. We’re calling on musicians & labels who oppose ICE’s human rights abuses to join us during the holiday season. Read on for why, and how, you can join us in a collective digital takedown, in solidarity with groups fighting Amazon’s support of ICE nationwide. Mass takedowns will begin on Black Friday and continue throughout Amazon’s all-important holiday shopping season.

Concert For Assange Outside UK Home Office Demands “No Extradition!”

Hundreds gathered outside the UK Home Office in central London last night for a concert in support of imprisoned WikiLeaks founder and multi-award-winning journalist Julian Assange. Rap artist M.I.A. performed and was joined by Assange’s father John Shipton and fashion icon Vivienne Westwood. The event was organised by Don’t Extradite Assange, a newly formed campaign group that works closely with Assange’s legal team. Longstanding supporters of Assange were joined by fans of M.I.A. and fellow rap-artist Lowkey.

Michael Brown’s Death Continues To Be A Catalyst For Change

Michael Brown Sr. lies stock-still on his back on the floor of an art studio in St. Louis as an artist layers papier-mache on his arms, chest, and torso. Brown Sr. is a stand-in, the model for a life-size replica that St. Louis artist Dail Chambers is creating to represent Michael Brown Jr. — his deceased son. In the days and weeks that followed, other artists added their own interpretations to the cast, and community leaders, family, friends, and activists affixed messages of remembrance, of hope, as well as photos and tributes to Brown Jr. “Although everybody else has left since your death, we are still here fighting,” one 16-year-old girl wrote. The final exhibit, called “As I See You,” will be part of a memorial Aug. 9–11 for Brown Jr., five years after a police officer took the 18-year-old’s life in Ferguson, Missouri.

The Artist As Prophet

Where is America headed? As the question is endlessly argued, especially during the presidential campaign, potential answers tend to inhabit political realms. However, Chris Hedges, suggests that we also look elsewhere in seeking answers: to our artists. The artist, if true to his or her vocation, recovers the past and explains the present. The artist is the true chronicler of who we were and where we came from. Culture, in times of distress, is not a luxury but a life raft.

Whitewashing American History The WPA Mural Controversy In San Francisco

There has a been a controversy percolating the last couple of years over protests against the 13-panel “Life of Washington” murals painted in 1936 by Works Progress Administration (WPA) artist Victor Arnautoff that are on display at George Washington High School in San Francisco. These murals dared to challenge the patriotic stereotype of Washington, instead portraying him as a slaveholder and military commander overseeing the genocide of American Indians. This radical artist was in many ways far ahead of his time, seeking to portray the brutal reality of U.S. history not the myth ensconced in school textbooks and the national anthem by the ruling class.

139 Scholars Implore SF School Board Not To Destroy Historic George Washington Mural

A Federal Art Project mural cycle of thirteen panels devised and painted by Victor Arnautoff in 1936 in a San Francisco high school portrays George Washington as a slave owner and as the author of Native-American genocide. It is an important work of art, produced for all Americans under the auspices of a federal government seeking to ensure the survival of art during the Great Depression. Its meaning and commitments are not in dispute. It exposes and denounces in pictorial form the U.S. history of racism and colonialism. The only viewers who should feel unsafe before this mural are racists.

BP Portrait Award Protests

Entrances to National Portrait Gallery blocked by performance activists, preventing guests from entering the gallery. A group of thirty artists, performers and activists arrived at the National Portrait Gallery to disrupt the announcement ceremony of the BP Portrait Award this week. While some of the group linked arms in doorways and chained themselves to gates to prevent party guests from entering the building, others handed out a fake awards programme that challenged BP’s long-standing sponsorship of the award.

Afrofuturism, Indigenous People And Intersectional Spaces: These Jackson Artists Hope Their Creations Inspire A Community

Empty spray paint cans lie on the pavement, paint rollers and brushes with vibrant colors resting at his feet, Kwame Braxton, a 29-year-old artist and Jackson native, takes a moment to look at his nearly completed mural. Wearing paint splattered clothes, Braxton analyzes his approach in appropriately conveying the meaning of his piece. “What is inside of you, you can create, and what you create is also inside of you,” Braxton said of his piece covering part of the Center for Community Production building near downtown Jackson.

Arts Organizing Lifts Oakland Teachers Strike

Surrounded by a hundred teachers and supporters painting banners, screen printing fabric picket flags, and learning strike songs, Oakland teachers union president Keith Brown held a press conference announced that Oakland teachers would hold a strike vote. Every square inch of the union hall offices and parking garage was filled with people making art and singing strike songs. This is one key part of how Oakland teachers built momentum and got ready to strike. The victorious Los Angeles teachers strike last month held a similar pre-strike arts mobilization. Teacher and union arts organizer Joe Brusky says, “the art created for L.A. played a major role in winning a victory.”

OPEN: Multimedia Artist Robin Bell Envisions Inclusive Society

Washington, DC — Multimedia artist and filmmaker Robin Bell premiered a moving lights and projection exhibition of what an open and transparent society should be at the Corcoran School of Arts and Design at George Washington University. ‘OPEN: an installation by Robert Bell’, uses light and projection to celebrate transparency, belonging, and accessibility with a social commentary about closed thought, exclusion, erasure, and authoritarianism. Bell is known nationally for his works and guerilla light projections of social commentary on well-known venues in Washington, DC, New York, and Los Angeles.

Trump, World War I And The Lessons Of Poetry

In plain English: How sweet and honorable it is to die for one’s country: death pursues the man who flees, spares not the hamstrings or cowardly backs of battle-shy youths. Poets are all too human, and some of them are moral and political imbeciles. Some poets, however, are so deeply troubled by their times that that they both extend and challenge the culture they inherit. There were at least a dozen fine English poets during World War One, and some of them died in trenches and on battlefields. Rupert Brooke, known as much for his beauty as his talent at that time, did not die in battle but on his way to battle. Virginia Woolf thought he had some sterling personal qualities.
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