For those not fortunate enough to remember watching The State, it was a brilliant comedy show often surreal or scatalogicaly political. This skit rolls with a black comedy to match the best Monty Python, and gets the viewer with a brujtally funny depiction of Eastern Europe after the Iron Curtain fell. No doubt, the Soviet …
Author Archives: The Center for Artistic Activism
I met the Walrus
In 1970, a fourteen year old boy named Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Montreal room during their “peace in.” The following animated short, I Met the Walrus, is based on a recording of their conversations. It was nominated for an Oscar for “best animated short” at the 2008 Academy Awards, and …
Get Your War On: Terrorist Watch List
This is a new video from 23/6.com a political-ish comedy site. The video is about a serious issue, but treats it in a comical-ish way. Which is a fine strategy if done well, but I there’s just not quite enough substance here. All you really get from the video is that there’s a terrorist watch …
Kurt Vonnegut Interview Mashup
I read Timequake (one of Vonnegut’s last books) recently and was surprised to see how often it related to the How to Win project. The novel isn’t about any one theme, but ideas of art and affecting change are woven throughout. Vonnegut seems to be reflecting on how his literature has connected with his politics. …
E Waste
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.
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 …
San Francisco to vote on naming sewer after George Bush
Is this art? Is it activistm? Certainly, the power elite are not shaking in their boots over such stunts, but this just viscerally seems right. via: the Independet By Guy Adams in Los Angeles Friday, 27 June 2008 San Francisco Public Utilities Commission The plant that could be renamed the George W Bush Sewage Plant …
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Game Culture
Play is one of the earliest and most important activities of mammals; helping adolescents learn the skills they need to survive. Games take the free play of the animal kingdom and apply rules and constraints, which have the ability to teach and develop the values and beliefs of a culture. The chess queen developed as …
Home Invasion as Art
For the past four years, Critical Art Ensemble’s Steve Kurtz has been a martyr in the world of activist art, the victim of overzealous FBI investigatory impropriety. The case against him was utterly absurd, Kafka-esque even. Thankfully,though, the judge saw reason this month and his case was finally dismissed. Now, he has an exhibit entitled …
How George Carlin Changed Comedy
via: Time When the culture began to change in the late 1960s — when the old one-liner comics on the Ed Sullivan Show were looking pretty tired and irrelevant to a younger generation experimenting with drugs and protesting the War in Vietnam — George Carlin was the most important stand-up comedian in America. By the …
Photographer Documents Secret Satellites — All 189 of Them
BERKELEY, California — For most people, photographing something that isn’t there might be tough. Not so for Trevor Paglen. His shots of 189 secret spy satellites are the subject of a new exhibit — despite the fact that, officially speaking, the satellites don’t exist. The Other Night Sky, on display at the University of California …
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John Pilger – Freedom Next Time
This is great speech by journalist John Pilger on the powers and dangers of corporate media. I think what’s most interesting about it is that he breaks from the Left/Right dialectic that plagues social change movements and takes liberalism to task for some of its crimes. The liberal Clinton administration increased the size of the …
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