Arts

“BP Out Of Opera” Calls On Cultural Institutions To Reject Oil Money

May 22, 2014 Creative Resistance, www.creativeresistance.org Resist! Arts, Creative Resistance, Oil

On May 20, 2014, BP Out of Opera performed a ‘flash dance’ just before the screening of a BP-sponsored performance of the Royal Opera House’s La Traviata. The group objects to BP sponsorship of the arts, joining a growing chorus of artists, actors and dancers who are acting out to bring attention to the oil money that is seeping into the art world as BP and other big oil companies attempt to greenwash their image by funding cultural events. A troupe of dancers took center stage at an outdoor screening before the opera began. In a video of the dancers performance,the opera’s boldly lettered “BP Big Screens” banner provides the backdrop behind the dancers. The three minute piece uses movement to communicate a power struggle between citizens and two characters representing BP who are adorned in BP logo-shawls. This flashy logo, with its rings of green and yellow diamonds, has provided much opportunity to costumers in this movement. Nice of BP to create such a pretty design for artists to riff on. In the case of this latest performance the logo-decorated costume piece ended up at the center of a tug-of-war between artists and security guards. At the end of the routine the dancers do finally succeed in pulling the BP shawls off the villains then throw the costumes on the ground and begin to stomp. At this point an opera security guard seems to mistake the company logo for a sacred symbol and he snatches the piece of costume off the ground. The dancers succeed in liberating their personal property and end the show to audience applause.

Chilean Artist Sets Fire To $500m Worth Of Student Debt Papers

May 19, 2014 Huffington Post UK, www.huffingtonpost.co.uk Resist! Arts, Chile, Debt, Student Activism

A heap of ashes is allegedly all that remains of $500 million in “pagarés” — or debt papers — stolen and burned by a Chilean activist. A video by Francisco Tapia, aka “Papas Fritas,” went viral this week in which he confessed to burning the legal papers certifying debt owed by Universidad del Mar students and had thus liberated the students from their debt obligations. “It’s over, it’s finished,” Tapia said in his impassioned five minute video, the Santiago Time reported. “You don’t have to pay another peso [of your student loan debt]. We have to lose our fear, our fear of being thought of as criminals because we’re poor. I am just like you, living a shitty life, and I live it day by day — this is my act of love for you.” The university is still collecting on its student loans, but not without great difficulty. The destruction of the documents occurred during a “toma” — student takeover — of the campus and means the embattled university owners must now individually sue each of its students to assure debt payment — a very costly, time-consuming process, the paper reported. Tens of thousands of students flooded the streets of Chile last year, demanding education reform. Now, it seems, tensions are escalating once again.

Protest At Museum To End Oil Company Funding

May 19, 2014 Creative Resistance, www.creativeresistance.org Resist! Arts, Creative Resistance, Oil, pollution

2011, Artists from art activist group Liberate Tate staged a performance in the Tate Britain on the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers and spilled 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over 87 days. A naked member of the group had an oil-like substance poured over him by silent figures dressed in black and wearing veils, and lay in a fetal position on the floor in the middle of the exhibition Single Form. Dedicated to the human body, Single Form is one of a series of ‘BP British Art Displays’ staged throughout the galleries of Tate Britain. Liberate Tate is a network dedicated to taking creative disobedience against Tate until it drops its oil company funding. The network was founded during a workshop in January 2010 on art and activism, commissioned by Tate. When Tate curators tried to censor the workshop from making interventions against Tate sponsors, even though none had been planned, the incensed participants decided to continue their work together beyond the workshop and set up Liberate Tate.

Grace Lee Boggs, Danny Glover Object To Film Screening

May 14, 2014 Ali Abunimah, www.electronicintifada.net Resist! Arts, Detroit, Israel, Palestine

Philosopher and activist Grace Lee Boggs and actor and activist Danny Glover have denounced the inclusion of the film American Revolutionary: the Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs in a government-sponsored Israeli film festival this week. “We stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine, and support their call for cultural and academic boycott of Israel,” they say in a statement sent to The Electronic Intifada, co-signed with ten other individuals involved with the award-winning documentary that focuses on the life and work of the 98-year-old Boggs. “As people featured in the film … we were shocked to find the film slated to be screened at the DocAviv festival in Israel on May 13th and 15th. This was scheduled without our knowledge,” the statement notes. The authors of the statement say they asked for the film to be withdrawn but “festival organizers and film producers informed us that this was not possible and they would move forward with the screening, over our objections.” “This film uplifts the life work and legacy of Grace Lee Boggs. She has explicitly stated her support of the boycott and believes this screening is in direct contradiction to her legacy and ongoing work as a revolutionary.”

Chris Hedges: The Power of Imagination

May 13, 2014 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Create! Arts, Capitalism, Spirituality

Those in the premodern world who hoarded possessions and refused to redistribute supplies and food, who turned their backs on the weak and the sick, who lived exclusively for hedonism and their own power, were despised. Those in modern society who are shunned as odd, neurotic or eccentric, who are disconnected from the prosaic world of objective phenomena and fact, would have been valued in premodern cultures for their ability to see what others could not see. Dreams and visions—considered ways to connect with the wisdom of ancestors—were integral to existence in distant times. Property was communal then. Status was conferred by personal heroism and providing for the weak and the indigent. And economic exchanges carried the potential for malice, hatred and evil: When wampum was exchanged by Native Americans the transaction had to include “medicine” that protected each party against “spiritual infection.” Only this premodern ethic can save us as we enter a future of economic uncertainty and endure the catastrophe of climate change. Social and economic life will again have to be communal. The lusts of capitalism will have to be tamed or destroyed. And there will have to be a recovery of reverence for the sacred, the bedrock of premodern society, so we can see each other and the earth not as objects to exploit but as living beings to be revered and protected. This means inculcating a very different vision of human society.

Let The Albany Bulb Be Free!

May 7, 2014 Tatiana Makovkin, www.creativeresistance.org Create! Arts, Commons, Creative Resistance, Homelessness

The Albany Bulb is an overgrown landfill on the Western edge of the East Bay, in the San Francisco Bay Area. “The Bulb” juts into the SF Bay, surrounded on 3 sides by water. It is a green growing wildland of naturalized plants, animals and people. And it’s an organically created citizens’ gallery of outsider art featuring giant sculptural forms and colorfully painted concrete and rocks. Friends of mine have lived there, in handmade huts built from recycled materials. They were Food Not Bombs activists, musicians, and people who sought an alternative to the inhumanity of capitalist society. Now the East Bay Regional Park district (EBRPD) is moving in to sanitize the area. Residents are being harassed and evicted, art is being removed and trees cut down. Many activists and artists have lived storied lives that embue us with appreciation for the fringe-places, the edge-dwellers, the communities that thrive among the ruins and the refuse, society’s throw-away treasures. We love to find these “diamonds in the rough”, and we work and polish until the beauty shines.

Documented: A Film By An Undocumented American

May 5, 2014 Jose Antonio Vargas, www.defineamerican.com Educate! Arts, Immigrant Rights

I have spent the past two years working a feature film. What began as a documentary on the undocumented immigrant experience in America evolved into a chronicle of my life, as the more universal I tried to make it, the more personal it became. Documented, the end result, world premiered this past June at the AFI Docs Film Festival in Washington, DC. Indiewire named it "a film to watch for." Tonight, in San Francisco, CA, Define American is co-hosting the west coast premiere of Documented with FWD.us, the immigration reform initiative led by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. It's an event I hope will elevate the conversation about immigration to another level, as technology, business, and political leaders join us and begin asking themselves the questions we've been asking through our campaign. Stay tuned for more screenings this fall.

Corporate Contractors Dance For New Energy Project

May 2, 2014 Staff, www.yeslab.org Resist! Arts, Energy, Environment, Solar, Wind

"Benedict Waterman"—a crazy-haired, bespectacled official supposedly from the U.S. Department of Energy—announces a revolutionary new energy plan to convert the U.S. power grid to entirely renewable sources by the year 2030, and give ownership of the new power-generation facilities to those on whose land they're built—from Native American nations (thus serving as reparations for genocide) to anyone who puts a solar panel on his or her roof. The plan, based on a number of sources including Stanford's Solutions Project (FAQ here), would produce nearly 8 million jobs; save $530 billion per year in health-care costs alone; result in much lower eventual fuel costs and greater price stability; and provide much greater energy security. It would also reduce the risk of the climate change effects that are projected to cost the US at least $2 trillion per year by 2100 if nothing is done to address it.

Neil Young On Climate Change, Cowboy Indian Alliance

April 29, 2014 Emerson Urry, www.environews.tv Resist! Arts, Environment, Keystone XL, Protest

It’s a world issue. We’re engaged everywhere that there’s oil, everywhere that there is CO2 abuse. If we don’t change this, we’re not going to have a good place for our children or for our grandchildren or for their grandchildren to live. All of the scientific studies including studies from the United Nations special council that they put together have said this. They all agree with this. The science is with this universally. There is very little disagreement on this issue. We can’t go ahead and keep doing these destructive things to Mother Earth and allow the climate change to happen, which will destroy our way of life. Actually, carbon abuse is un-American. It destroys American business. It lowers the bottom line. Coca Cola just complained that they lost 20 percent of their bottom line because of climate change, and that’s an issue. That was on the front page of “the New York Times.” Coca Cola and 18 other major companies who are blaming climate change for their loss of revenue.

New Book On Pete Seeger’s Experience Of The McCarthy Era

April 29, 2014 Edward Renehan, www.prlog.org Educate! Arts, Protest

When Pete Seeger died at age 94 this past January, widespread media coverage included discussion of his trials and tribulations during the McCarthy era when he, like so many other entertainers and artists, was persecuted, subjected to gross indignities, and ultimately prosecuted for Contempt of Congress during the myriad anti-Communist witch hunts of that time. Pete Seeger vs. The Un-Americans: A Tale of the Blacklist, reveals never before known aspects of Seeger's experience during those dark days, including the backstory to his prosecution for Contempt (orchestrated by, of all people, Robert Kennedy). The tale is one of great personal honor and commitment to principle. As Bob Dylan has commented in a most under-stated way: "Pete [was] blacklisted during the McCarthy era and had a hard time, but he never stopped." Eleanor Roosevelt wrote admiringly: "Pete Seeger, the folksinger … lives not far from me near Beacon, NY, and is loved by many people, young and old, who have enjoyed his music. … He has refused to take the Fifth Amendment because he felt that could be construed as an admission of guilt, and chose instead to invoke the freedoms of the First Amendment. His case is now in the higher courts."

Remembering The Truth About The Vietnam War

April 29, 2014 Bruce Gagnon, www.space4peace.blogspot.com Educate! Arts, Wars and Militarism

I returned home to Maine this morning on the train from New York City. Fellow Maine Veterans for Peace (VFP) member Doug Rawlings and I were up early at our respective home stays to get to Penn Station for the 7:00 am train to Boston. We had loads of time on the four-hour ride back to Boston and then another two-hour bus ride to Portland to review the remarkable trip. We got to the Judson Memorial Church yesterday at 1:00 pm to help set things up for the national VFP event called Full Disclosure: An Honest Commemoration of the American War in Vietnam that would run from 5:00-9:00 pm and drew over 200 people. We helped hang banners in the huge church hall, put chairs out, and set up literature and food tables. National VFP board member Tarak Kauff and his partner Ellen Davidson were the lead organizers and it was a pleasure to support their good work. The photo above (taken by Ellen Davidson) is of a New York City artist who did a remarkable art performance piece for three full hours during the program.

Artist Paints Tipi For National Museum Of American Indian

April 26, 2014 DC Media Group www.dcmediagroup.us Create! Arts, Keystone XL

Artist Steve Tamayo, a Native American of the Sicangu tribe, painted life into a tipi on the National Mall over three days. The tipi will be given to the National Museum of the American Indian in a ceremony on Saturday, April 26th. Tamayo described the tipi as an embodiment of Native American culture. The tipi art depicts the Earth and heavens with images symbolizing the cycle of life. Simple icons of water, land, animals, and sky narrate the lives of Native Americans on the prairie. Through bright colors and traditional shapes, the complex is made simple and the mundane, significant. As many as fifty volunteers, including children as young as five, helped Tamayo paint the images he designed and laid out. At the top of the tipi is a depiction of the heavens, the sun and stars. The Big Dipper is the provider of water to the Earth. At the base are the oceans, lakes and rivers, where blue water begins the cycle of life.

Kenya: Artivists Versus The State

April 18, 2014 Alnoor Ladha, www.aljazeera.com Strategize! Arts, Creative Resistance, Finance and the Economy, Poverty

Cross-posted at CreativeResistance.org. Against this calamitous backdrop, we are starting to see hope in the country’s next generation of campaigners, organisers and even artists. These new hybrid cultural activists have been dubbed “artivists” and are continuing the struggles of their predecessors with a new approach. The author MK Assante describes the artivist as someone who “uses her artistic talents to fight and struggle against injustice and oppression by any medium necessary”. For two weeks in February, I had the privilege of joining almost 200 activists, organisers and artivists in a Nairobi community centre (unnamed for security reasons) for an Artivism Lab.

Tonight! ‘HoneyBeeLujah’ Campaign Launches In Times Square

April 17, 2014 Blake Zidell, target="_blank" >www.popularresistance.org Organize! Arts, Environment, GMOs, Pesticides

Reverend Billy & The Stop Shopping Choir, who first rose to international attention for their music-based challenge to consumerism, have turned their attention to big corporations’ role in climate disruption. They take up the plight of the Honey Bee in their new campaign, HoneyBeeLujah!, which launches with an hour-long action this Thursday, April 17, in Times Square. The event will begin in front of the U.S. Armed Forces Times Square Recruiting Station at6pm with the Reverend delivering the Choir’s new manifesto. Then the activist-performers, adorned and accompanied by hundreds of Honey Bees handmade by Savitri D. and the Choir, will move throughout what Reverend Billy calls the “Stonehenge of Logos” at New York’s most famous intersection.

Carry It On Tour: Anne Feeney and Evan Greer

April 15, 2014 Anne Feeney and Evan Greer, www.creativeresistance.org Organize! Arts, Creative Resistance

The Carry it On Tour features Anne’s bottomless backpack of hellraising songs, given new energy by Evan’s skillful accompaniment on a veritable arsenal of acoustic instruments. Greer’s catchy and original folk-punk anthems shine with the addition of Anne’s soaring harmony vocals. The two have been touring together for more than a decade — since Evan was just a teenager — and their dynamic stage performance, which ranges from hilarious to serious, will instantly and permanently change the opinion of anyone who has ever thought that political music has to be boring. Based in Pittsburgh, PA, Anne Feeney is the granddaughter of an intrepid mineworkers’ organizer, who also used music to carry the message of solidarity to working people. Evan Greer is an LGBTQ parent, organizer, and multi-instrumentalist who writes fearless and dangerously catchy original songs that inspire hope and incite resistance.

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