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. …
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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 …
via: Miscellaneous Projects 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 …
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 …
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 …
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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) “If only in self-defense we must END ALL FORMS OF NON-INTERVENTION, INTERVENE IN THE FIELD OF …
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) 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 …
Komfut (1919) Programme Declaration Iskusstvo Kommuny (Art of the Commune) No. 8, Petrograd, 26 January 1919 (reprinted in Art and Social Change, Will Bradley and Charles Esche, eds., London: Tate, 2007, pp. 68) “ A communist regime demands a communist consciousness. All forms of life. Morality, philosophy and art must be re-created according to communist …
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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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 …
This mythology of the lone genius, isolated from society, and relieved of social responsibility, is summed up for me in these comments by the painter Georg Baselitz: “The artist is not responsible to anyone. His social role is asocial; his only responsibility consists in an attitude to the work he does. There is no communication …
Gran Fury talks to Douglas Crimp – Interview ArtForum, April, 2003 DOUGLAS CRIMP: One of your members, Mark Simpson, is no longer with us. Perhaps we can officially dedicate our remarks here to his memory. When did Mark die? TOM KALIN: Mark died of AIDS on November 10, 1996. DC: Okay, let’s begin with a …
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 to Win” is a work in progress by Stephen Duncombe, an academic, and Steve Lambert, an artist. We are both long-time political activists and both of us believe that using art and culture to transform the world is a good idea. But we are both haunted by the same question: How do we gauge the success of our projects? Hell, how do we even think about success when our goal is utopia?
This site is a place to explore this and related questions. It is an evolving repository for our research. While far from a finished product, we’re offering it as an open window into our process.
Richard Huelsenbeck (1920) En Avant Dada: A History of Dadaism From En Avant Dada: Eine Geschichte des Dadaismus, 1920 (reprinted in Art and Social Change, Will Bradley and Charles Esche, eds., London: Tate, 2007, pp. 61-68) From the First German Dadaist Manifesto, written by Huelsenbeck: “Art in its execution and direction is dependent on the …
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William Morris (1891) “The Socialist Ideal: Art” New Review, January 1891 (reprinted in Art and Social Change, Will Bradley and Charles Esche, eds., London: Tate, 2007, pp. 47-52) “…I assert that socialism is an all-embracing theory of life, and that as it has an ethic and a religion of its own, so also it has …
In all honesty I don’t know Woods’ work well. Just finished this interview and he has a reputation for making radical work that changes perceptions. Some excerpts: “It wasn’t about cleaning up the mess or fixing the damage; it was more about a transformation in the society and the politics and the economics thorough architecture… …
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 …
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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