Have No Fear the Community Avengers are Here! As the right wing mob mobilizes to shut down democratic debate on health care reform; as Van Jones is forced from the White House through distortions of the truth and plays on racial and political fears; as the recession deepens – the masked marauders known as the …
Category Archives: Research Notebook
Where's Conservative Art? Crunchy Con
Asking our question (kind of) from the other side of the aisle. See especially the comments section. Where’s Conservative Art?
In Response (from naylandblake.net)
A friend wrote me a letter and after thinking about it for a while I decided that I wanted to respond to it here. He consented graciously to me reprinting it:hi Nayland, I hope you’re enjoying your travels. Can you answer me this? How do I keep the faith when everyone tells me my work …
SFMOMA | OPEN SPACE » No More Posters! Let’s See Action!
My specific point here is that it’s time for activist design to go further than simple commentary. Not that commentary can’t provoke change or discourse, but in an age where anyone with a laptop, a wireless connection, and a Facebook account can procure the figurative equivalent of 100 people all wielding bullhorns at a protest …
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Politcal Communications Strategy
Interesting blog piece from the Huffington Post from a political communications strategist about How To Win: Ill Communication: President Obama’s Misguided Health Care Strategy, by Ben Wyskida
Andrew Boyd
“I think there is something affirming of our humanity in culture – in the community building side of things. A connective tissue, quilting all of us together and creating meaning as you strive for these outcomes. That is different from operational politics – when you’re just trying to do turn out or get numbers or …
Politics of Surrealism
Some interesting tidbits from The Politics of Surrealism by Helena Lewis (NY: Paragon House, 1988) ” tried to link together two revolutions: that of the mind, by liberating the unconscious, and the social and economic revolution of the masses. The Surrealists always maintained that one of the most important ways to undermine capitalism is to …
Art and Revolution – The MIT Press
As hopeful as it is incisive, Art and Revolution encourages a new generation of artists and thinkers to refuse to participate in the tired prescriptions of marketplace and authority and instead create radical new methods of engagement. Raunig develops an indispensable, contemporary conception of political change—a conception that transcends the outmoded formulations of insurrection and …
Anti-Smoking Ads: pain, suffering and dismemberment works.
Anti-smoking ads historically highlight one blunt fact: smoking kills. But the World Lung Foundation has analyzed the effectiveness of ads around the world targeting various cultures and discovered it’s not that simple. Sandra Mullin, senior vice president at Communications for the World Lung Foundation, says the most effective ads highlight the pain, suffering and dismemberment …
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Is "professionalization" in art equal to success?
I caught a link on We Make Money Not Art to this Artworld Salon article that contemplated the criticism of an increasingly professionalized art world. The article questions, “What’s wrong with professionalization?” after citing examples of back-handed comments towards the MFA and PhD in the arts. The questions it raises are: does “professionalization” make artists …
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Power needs culture
from Terry Eagleton’s new book: Reason, Faith and Revolution (Yale: 2009) p. 150 “Culture is what beds power down, interweaving it with our lived experience and thus tightening its grip upon us. An authority which fails to do this will loom up as too abstract and aloof, and thus fail to secure its citizens’ unqualified …
Tom Robbins on success
“plans are one thing and fate another. when they coincide, success results. yet, success musn’t be considered the absolute. it is questionable, for that matter, whether success is an adequate response to life. success can eliminate as many options as failure.” -Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (thanks Liz Filardi)
James Balog, art and journalism
Listening to James Balog I realized there is another point on our spectrum; journalism. At another point is the “political expressionist” and then, somewhere else, is the political artist (which maybe we need a more descriptive name). Balog brings back reports, takes photos, and shows images of climate change. Most of the affect on power …
Gihan Perera: Internal Efficacy
Gihan Perera: Grounding our Inner Leadership Spirit & Sustainability Profile “In so much of my political work, the benchmark of that was external. It was intellectual, and I mentally related it to my impact on objective conditions. However, so much of what I felt about my larger purpose was so non-related to those benchmarks. What …
From howtowin.org:
"Entertainment- Education and Social Change"
“Entertainment- Education and Social Change” M.J. Papa, et al, Journal of Communication, 50, 2000, pp. 31-55 This seems to be the ur article for most recent research in this field. Again, what’s useful here is that these folks are taking efficacy seriously, relating it to culture, and are looking for demonstrable effects. entertainment-education
Do It!
The Pink Fairies – Do It (1971) Listen to this song and you can’t help but be reminded. You can’t succeed if you don’t do it. Don’t think about it, don’t talk about it, don’t write about it, you just gotta do it. Pointless comedy after the jump…
The Efficacy of Soap Operas
“Increase in Calls to the CDC National STD and AIDS Hotline Following AIDS-Related Episodes in a Soap Opera” by May. G. Kennedy, Ann O’Leary, Vicki Beck, Katrina Pollard, and Penny Simpson An article tracking material audience response to the inclusion of AIDS related themes in a soap opera. Now if art ever had a national …
“But Does it Work?” discussion at Elizabeth Foundation
But Does it Work? Art, Activism and the Interventionist’s Gesture Tuesday, February 24, 6:30 pm A Conversation between Joseph DeLappe, Stephen Duncombe, and Steve Lambert Artists/activists Joseph DeLappe and Steve Lambert join writer/activist/media scholar Stephen Duncombe to discuss what happens when artists interfere with existing structures of media in order to manipulate and use them …
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On The Media: The Science of Media Relations
Being a brilliant scientist doesn’t always translate into being a good talking head on television or even a good source for a science reporter. So the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program at Stanford University was created to give scientists a better understanding of how to deal with the media. Program director Pam Matson explains what goes …
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