When you go to the website for Berlin’s 7th Biennale, you encounter a stream of changing photographs from occupy and protest movements from around the world — Venezia, Toronto, Florence, Malacky, Athens and on and on. It is emblematic of curator Artur Zmijewski’s approach the largest art exhibition in Germany, which opened on April 27.
In the forward to Forget Fear, the accompanying publication of the Berlin’s 7th Biennale, Zmijewski explains that “Art needs to be reinvented, but not as some crafty option to aesthecize human problems of the impoverished majority. What we need is more art that offers its tools, time and resources to solve the economic problems of the impoverished majority. For the actual limit to the possibilities of left-meaning art is effective engagement with material issues: unemployment, impoverishment, poverty.”
Zmijewski wants to transform the art of impotence and individualist survival, which is how he describes contemporary art markets and the institutionalized art world of galleries and curatorial careers, into art that is “genuinely transformative and formative”, art that “practices politics”, and art that is “real action in the real world and [that bids] a final farewell to the illusion of artistic immunity”.
Over the coming weeks, Art Threat will be profiling some of the artists and their contributions to the 7th Berlin Biennale (which runs until July 1), and some of the events that will be happening in Berlin in the coming months. In today’s report, quick look at two upcoming events: a workshop for using art in political protest, and a performance installation that features interviews with 16 economists, historians, thinkers from around the world speaking on viable economic alternatives to capitalism.
Al Jazeera’s Artscape presents a wonderful short documentary on Abeer Soliman, an Egyptian storyteller and performance artist whose work changed after the uprising.
Nairobi graffiti by artists Uhuru B, Swift, Smokilah and Bankslave
Kenyan graffiti artists are painting the walls of Nairobi with reminders of government corruption. Executions are up in the Middle East – in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Yemen – as governments there continue their efforts to quell political turmoil. Malaysia is introducing a minimum wage for the first time, and experts warn that the fight against antibiotic resistant strains of tuberculosis has been lost.
Thousands of indigenous farmers marched in Guatemala City demanding land reform. Cambodian filmmaker Thet Sambath is being harassed and intimidated for claims made in his latest documentary that the Killing Fields were a result of Khmer Rouge party infighting. The Spanish Government has announced large-scale oil drilling near the Canary Islands. The costs of the London 2012 Olympics are now estimated at 450% higher than when the bid was won (including security costs to exceed $1 billion). Click to continue »
This is the first in a new (ir)regular installment summing up last week’s news headlines using a ‘remix’ style — a quirky restless glance into the wreckless feckless immediate past. (Inspired by Harpers Magazine’s ‘Scientific Summary’.)
Aerial photo of tsunami debris from Japan
US peacekeeping forces joined with Congolese army troops to attack rebel militants hiding in the northern Congo, including remnant’s of Joseph Kony’s Lords Resistance Army. Ethiopia sent troops into Eritrea. A Goldman Sachs insider says his former employer refers to its clients as “muppets”, and the European court of human rights has declared ‘kettling’ as the “least intrusive and most effective” tactic available to police against protesters.
The Hungarian president compared EU demands for deficit control to Soviet-era tyranny. IKEA in France is spying on the private lives of unhappy customers, and the Nobel prize winning president of Liberia defended the criminalization of homosexuality with the quip: “We like ourselves just the way we are”. One-fifth of young Canadians and Brits admitted taking mystery powders to get high. Click to continue »
This chart shows how the editors 'understand how each writer's article functionalizes distrust/trust of institutionality in relationship to how much mediation they understand is useful in reflecting on the complexity of culture.'
The eighth issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest has just been released in print. While the contents have been available online for a while, it’s definitely worth your while to drop a few bucks on the paper portrayal of this political periodical.
As Occupy Wall Street enters a new phase, this issue of JOAAP reflects the utility of a multiplicity of approaches to political issues. From their opening editorial:
A multiplicity of tactics is sometimes used to pragmatically cover for unsolvable differences in what is to be considered as appropriate action within a single protest. We do not use it as a cover though, instead we suggest (as many others have) that it is rich layers of often antagonistic relationships within generally broad trends that make a movement more successful, not less.
Read more about the Journal or order your copy at joaap.org.
Montreal artists are invited to join the growing collaboration of the Occupy Arts Committee, a gathering of artists from all disciplines who want to support Occupy Montreal with creative practice.
According to organizers, this meeting will be a creation workshop to start imagining, painting & drawing … Artists are encouraged to bring material, art supplies, paint & brushes, etc…. and to think YELLOW.
March 17, 2012 Café l’Artère, 7000 ave. Du Parc (métro Parc). 14h / 2pm
During the 1940s Groucho would often write about topics related to World War II while remaining, for the most part, non-political. At home, however, most discussions with his friends involved world events and politics. Groucho teased Morrie Ryskind about his incessant campaigning for Wendell Willkie in the 1940 presidential race, but he did vote for Willkie, stating that electing Franklin Roosevelt to a third term would set an unhealthy precedent. Four years later Groucho would support FDR, feeling that changing presidents with the country at war would be unwise.
Groucho first threw his hat into the political ring in 1932. The Four Marx Brothers were candidates for vice-president on the Will Rogers presidential ticket in a studio publicity stunt. “What This Country Needs” was written as the Marx Brothers were wrapping up the filming of Go West. Groucho’s letters from this period suggest that Arthur Sheekman made some contribution to “What This Country Needs.” Groucho included a considerably shortened and retitled version of the article in Memoirs of a Mangy Lover in 1963.
Project Lowlives is seeking artists for a global online live presentation of artistic work in support the Occupy movement. Lowlives: Occupy! will take place on March 3, 2012.
From the website:
The Occupy protests, and the myriad of perspectives and experiences related to this unique moment, will be amplified, explored, and experimented with, through Low Lives’ internet-based creative platform. Low Lives: Occupy! recognizes the powerful opportunity that is the presentation of performances from around the world, and invites artists to open eyes and minds by presenting a radical re-imagining of possible ways of existing and relating.
The optimism in David Gauntlett’s Making is Connecting (published by the fantastic UK outlet polity) is difficult to escape. Much like the plethora of networks, groups, clubs and civil society manifestations he describes, the book is largely held together with positive attitudes about culture and communication combined with a philosophy that triumphs creativity over consumption.
In that he forms a very accessible and sound argument centered on creating and sharing as the cornerstones to individual happiness and healthy community in a society saturated with messages imploring and coercing us to do the exact opposite, Gauntlett’s work is deeply political.
Gestalten has published a new book about art and politics — Art & Agenda: Political Art and Activism, edited by R. Klanten, M. Hübner, A. Bieber, P. Alonzo, G. Jansenby.
This full-colour coffee table treat introduces, explores and has contributions from more than 100 artists whose work is pushing political and artistic boundaries including Ai Weiwei, YesMen, William Kentridge, Voina Group, Swoon, Elmgreen & Dragset, Fernando Bryce, Gregor Schneider, Hank Willis Thomas, Jennifer Karady, Jota Castro, Marina Abramovic, Maurizio Cattelan, Milica Tomic, Paul McCarthy, Santiago Sierra, and Zhang Huan.
A sneak preview on the Gelstalten website suggests that this is a beautiful and remarkable collection of activist art.
I don’t have my copy yet, but it’s definitely on my list.
Contributors
Stefan Christoff, Colin Horgan, Julia Pyper
Michelle Siobhan Reid, Valerie Cardinal, Race Capet
Laurence Miall, Terry Fairman, Tyler Morgenstern
The eighth issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest has just been released in print. While the contents have been 
