political art & cultural policy
An interview with Israel vs. Israel's director Terje Carlsson
Isreal vs. Israel is a very disturbing documentary. As a programmer I’ve seen my share of films on Palestine/Israel but this one gets under your skin in a different way. Indeed, few other films have focused on the fanatical, violent and often mentally unstable culture of settlers in Israel. Israel vs. Israel, a Swedish production that came out in 2010, zeros in on this culture and a handful of brave Israeli activists who struggle against it alongside the Palestinians.
Speak in Images embarks on a national participatory photo project
This is you receiving an invitation. An invitation to participate in a project just recently born in Vancouver called Speak in Images / Parler en Images. An invitation to speak up in a tiny but effective way about what issues matter to you in the Canadian federal election in a time when we are being bombarded with promises and propaganda about our finances, our families, and our future.
A conversation with Irwin Oostindie
Irwin Oostindie is Executive Director of W2, a community media and arts space in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Am Johal: W2 is one of the newest arts organizations in the city. It was one of the real hubs of activity during the 2010 Olympics. How has W2 been impacted by the cuts to arts? How do you view the Olympic funding for the arts — was the $40 million for the opening and closing ceremonies worth it?
Irwin Oostindie: W2 was criticized by a few for receiving 2010 arts funding, but as a new project with no core public funding to stand on we were vulnerable. Some of our critics already received core public funding and were of the opinion that Olympic funding was different. But we disagreed, considering all taxpayer’s money as the people’s money irregardless of what sign or logo or acknowledgement you need to stand beside. We did work that we were proud of, and the work was not compromised. We were at a moment in our organisational development (our W2 Woodward’s media centre was a year behind schedule) and we were delivering a very ambitious 13,000 sq ft W2 Culture & Media House that could have sunk our organisation. These were circumstances that led us to view the debate with a wider lens.
If you’ve been wondering how Wafaa Bilal — the artist whom we told you back in December had a camera installed in the back of his head — has been doing, the Globe and Mail recently posted a fantastic article about the artist as Cyborg in which his brave artistic experiment is featured.
The Globe reports that Bilal is currently wearing the camera around his neck because he has developed an infection at the site of one of the three steel posts that hold the device. Bilal’s project continues despite the recent difficulty, continuing to explore the loss of privacy in a high-tech age and also the idea of freedom through transparency.
A conversation with comics journalist Joe Sacco — part two
This is the second half of a two-part interview with comics journalist Joe Sacco. We spent an hour with the award-winning writer and illustrator discussing his approach to comics and journalism, the relationship between comics and education, and how he copes with war and tragedy, among other fascinating topics. Click here to read part one before reading the rest of the conversation below.
Art Threat: I want to talk about process on a practical level. How long does it take you on average to complete one of those pages in your books? Where do you work? Do you show it to anyone else before you send it into the publisher?
Joe Sacco: I work at home. I kind of dedicated a room, a bedroom to work in. I mean, it’s nothing but desks and books and all that stuff. And it takes about two days to do a page.
That’s from beginning to end?
Beginning to end. And normally I’m working on two pages at a time, so in five days I’ll get two pages done. But you know sometimes it’s more and sometimes it’s less. The thing about drawing, what I found over time, is I can pretty much accurately tell myself, I have this many pages to draw, it’s going to take this many weeks or months.
A conversation with comics journalist Joe Sacco — part one
As a kid I developed a quiet obsession for Archie comics. No car trip, camping outing or family reunion was complete without my stack of thick dog-eared volumes, containing in their small borders the multiple-page narratives that now seem so dull.
This early development of bad taste thankfully morphed into membership in a book club and the subsequent devouring of several books per month during my junior high years. Aside from the odd Mad magazine perusal, I had abandoned my old companion the comic book, even misplaced my coveted collection that numbered in the hundreds. Boxes full of dusty Archies may still be languishing in solitude in some random attic somewhere in British Columbia.
It wasn’t until years later, in adulthood, that I discovered “graphic novels” — long form storytelling through comics. Blissfully unaware of the dork-factor, I sunk into tales of fantasy, sci-fi, and medieval adventures with gusto, borrowing books by the anxious mitt-full from my Star Wars-obsessed friend Cam.
A conversation with spokesperson Priti Devi
The Freedom to Create organization was established in 2006 “to harness the power of art and culture to build more prosperous societies.” In 2008 the organization began the Freedom to Create Prize, which further builds on their mission to support and spread art with a social mission. This year’s Award Ceremony will be held at the Saleh El Din Citadel in Cairo, this upcoming Friday, November 26, and will be hosted by international actor and UN Goodwill Ambassador Amr Waked and US television presenter Femi Oke.
This year, though only in its third year, more than 1,200 artists submitted to win the prize. You can browse through many of the artists using a map on their media page. Of those, a handful were chosen for the shortlist in three categories: Main Prize, Youth Prize, and Imprisoned Artist Prize.
A conversation with Sweet Crude director Sandy Cioffi
Sweet Crude is the best documentary on a social resistance movement that I have ever seen. While The Weather Underground is a close runner-up, Sweet Crude stands high above the rest as a powerful, incredibly well-made film that picks through the multiple layers of a movement’s history, its divisions, failures, triumphs, tactics, and philosophies. The movement comprises the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta and their decades-long resistance to Shell in the region.
The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) and other people of the Niger delta area are the focus of Sweet Crude, a film that could have easily been another David vs. Goliath legal battle narrative in the tradition of Bananas, The Coca-Cola Case, and Crude. But director Sandy Cioffi was less interested in Western lawyers and more interested in the diverse, politically involved and extremely articulate individuals who make up the human front against Shell’s environmentally devastating practices in Ogoniland.
The film tells the long struggle of MOSOP and other activists, from the early 80s on. During that time people have organized actions against Shell, a foreign company that has extracted oil from the region for over 20 years earning billions in profit, but has not helped the people of the region lift out of poverty, nor managed to safeguard the environment in the process. Oil contamination is rampant. Gas flares light up the sky constantly, polluting the air and endangering citizens in proximity. The fight against the rapacious actions of Shell came to a head on May 21, 1994, when four Ogoni chiefs including Ken Saro-Wiwa were murdered.
A conversation with Anthony Freda
Anthony Freda’s illustrations may be familiar to you. They’ve shown up in Time and The New Yorker, in the Rolling Stone and Esquire and Playboy, and more ‘serious’ publications like Business Week and The New York Times. His work at once speaks to contemporary issues of America at war, problems of patriotism, and harkens to earlier decades in which we’ve struggled with the same issues. His work is immediately accessible to any kind of viewer, even those who may not want to consider the deeper messaging. Being the art dork I am I wanted to know first about why he chose to speak to issues this way, and then about why he chose those issues in particular.
Amanda: Let’s start by talking about the physical objects, what media do you use to make these illustrations and what draws you to them?
But mistakes labour policy for multiculturalism
What follows is an account of what German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a group of young Christian Democratic party members on Monday. The verbatim excerpt below (in italics) is revealing.
In the interests of entertainment, I have recreated Merkel’s comments as a dialogue with a fictitious, pesky and well informed attendee at a fundraising event. Imagine the two of them meeting in a large room filled with well-dressed socialites, Chancellor Merkel moving slowly through the crowd with her handlers and encountering rather unintentionally this bespectacled and nebbish character — indeed, a party pooper — whom she tries to evade and does, eventually, successfully slip away from after a very brief exchange.
Chancellor Merkel: In Frankfurt am Main, two out of three children under the age of five have an immigrant background. We are a country which at the beginning of the 60s actually brought guest workers to Germany.
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