Propagandists take heed. Start Soma is currently accepting submissions for Propaganda III, a political poster art show that will tour the world over the next year. Breaking convention in both concept and content, the show eschews curation and censorship, displaying posters to the left, right and centre of the political spectrum side by side.
Propaganda III will open in San Francisco on July 4, 2007 at the Start Soma Gallery, and will gradually make its way to a diversity of galleries and community spaces across the globe. The exhibit will finally come to rest in the archives of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, the largest collection of its kind in the United States with over 50,000 posters.
Start Soma has created an online gallery of those posters they have already received, and will continue adding to it up until the July 1 submission deadline. For more information visit Start Soma's website.
Posted by Rob Maguire on April 11, 2007 in
THE SWISS FEDERAL OFFICE OF PUBLIC HEALTH | Love Life Stop Aids |
A fresh yellow street sign silently instructs Toronto's pedestrians to demonstrate a respect that has long been absent from sidewalk's of Canada's largest city. Homeless sleeping: QUIET, reads the metallic notice, freshly bolted to a downtown lamppost.
The creative genius of Ontario College of Art and Design student Mark Daye, this sign is one of many he designed and erected in downtown Toronto, subverting official signage to draw attention to the city's homelessness crisis. The others sport similar messages: "Homeless warming grate. Please keep clear." "Please have change ready for the homeless." "Homelessness has nothing to do with lack of shelter."
In an interview with the Toronto Star, Daye explained his rationale behind the project. "I started thinking about the way sign systems work. There's official signage. There's advertising. So I thought, what would happen if I used official-looking signage, but I put an unofficial message in it?"
Simple, subtle, effective--just enough to draw the ire of government officials. Lacking both a sense of humor and compassion, the City of Toronto has been feverishly removing the unapproved messages in a bid to cleanse the city of any subversive signage.
"You can't do that," city spokesperson Brad Ross told the Star. "We have an encroachment bylaw, so we've been removing them as we come across them. The signs that the city (has) are way-finding and also letting people know what the restrictions are with respect to parking and stopping and turning and those kinds of things. They're strictly for motorists to understand what the bylaws are on the roads." By this rationale city workers should parade around town removing billboards for cologne and car dealerships.
Although Daye's signs will not last long on the streets of Hogtown, they are already being immortalized online. For more photos of the signs, follow these links: [1], [2].
(Photo: Toronto Star)
Posted by Rob Maguire on April 8, 2007 in
Tired of drowning in the semiotic soup of racist and sexist advertising imagery? The folks at Geek Graffiti have created a printable cold sore that anyone can download and, ahem, place lovingly onto the corporate face of beauty.
Large outdoor advertising is a trespass of public space, and it monopolizes the authoring of public messages into the hands of a few large companies. Interventions like this allow the public in on the game, and lets the advertisers know what we think of their messages.
To print out culture jam cold sores and for more info go here.
Posted by Michael Lithgow on March 28, 2007 in
UNKNOWN | Fish sewer grate |
Designs of the time 2007 (Dott 07) is a year-long initiative of several community-based projects, exhibitions and events that take place in North East England concerned with sustainability, accessibility, and social inclusion. Did I mention design? From Dott 07:
Dott 07 projects set out to improve six aspects of daily life in practical ways. They deal with health issues, food, school, energy, tourism, and travel.
Inspired by the question, ‘Who designs your life?’, Dott 07 focuses on grass roots community projects; but there are also projects involving more than seventy schools, plus exhibitions and events in museums, galleries and rural sites. All events explore how design can benefit our lives in meaningful ways.
The year culminates in a twelve day Festival in NewcastleGateshead in October 2007. The Dott 07 Festival will bring together the results of projects and enable all the people involved to share experiences. The Festival will be an opportunity not only to celebrate their achievements but, more importantly, for many more people to find out how to do similar projects for themselves.
The six main community projects are: Urban Farming, Low Carb Lane, DaSH (Design and Sexual Health), Move Me, OurNewSchool, and Alzheimer 100.
For more information on this innovating initiative, visit the Dott 07 site.
Posted by Ezra Winton on March 28, 2007 in
%20copie.jpg "Frederic Levy from Artivistic 2005")
Multi-multi political art conference ARTIVISTIC 2007 will take place in Montreal, Quebec between October 25th and 27th, and with the new political shift to the ultra-right in the province following last night's election results, the theme "(un)Occupied Spaces" couldn't be more appropriate. From Artivistic organizers:
We are infiltrating all levels of society. Artists, activists, academics, architects, bureaucrats, the homeless, anarchists, first nations, immigrants, doctors, geeks, lawyers, teachers, witches, philosophers, clowns. Artivistic does not only provide a platform for political artists and artistic activists, but partakes in the very movements that work for change. In the pursuit of temporary moments of pleasure, we move towards freedom, for resistance is perpetual and oppression, ever-changing.
With the growing dominance of profit-based and/or fear-based initiatives in all spheres of life which negate the human(and non-human) value globally, we feel that it is critical to elaborate new and open strategies of expression that allow the flourishing of multivarious communities.
FULL STORY + COMMENTS
Posted by Ezra Winton on March 27, 2007 in
Billing itself as "the world's first guerrilla public service announcement", These Come From Trees is a sticker campaign to remind those predisposed to wastefulness (that would be most of us) that paper, after all, comes from trees.
The idea is simple. Get a roll of stickers, slap them on paper towel dispensers and other similar gadgets, and sit back and watch as people are eerily compelled to conserve.
The stickers themselves were created as a "random act of designess", proving that there are indeed good folks out there in the blogosphere (Michelle Malkin notwithstanding).
Posted by Rob Maguire on March 26, 2007 in
As a not-so-subtle reminder to the West that their nuclear program is here to stay, Iran recently released their new 50,000 rial banknote, complete with the nuclear insignia of electrons dancing around their atomic counterpart. [banknote detail]
Conceived in response to inflation, and, one would suppose, American hypocrisy, the new bill is worth about US$5.50, more than twice as much as Iran's previously most valuable banknote.
How will the West respond to this monetary reminder that Iran is a sovereign state? Surmising as to Britain's response, Stuart Jeffries of The Guardian perhaps has the most honest suggestion: "The new Adam Smith £20 note must be pulped immediately and replaced with one emblazoned with a Trident nuclear missile hovering over Tehran."
Now if only politicians spoke so candidly.
Posted by Rob Maguire on March 26, 2007 in
This weekend I was one of a small group of fortunate people who attended the Governor General Awards in Visual and Media Arts at Rideau Hall in Canada's capital city of Ottawa. It is without doubt one of the strangest spaces I have inhabited. The evening started off in an ornate and expansive room with thirty foot vaulted ceilings, large chandeliers, a string quartet, and chairs arranged for the guests to view the award ceremony. The GG, her husband, and the eight award winners sat on modest plush chairs facing the audience, and each award was presented by the winner's nominator, followed by short acceptance speeches, and two addresses from their excellencies. I had real trouble with the whole "your excellency" lingo, and fumbled a bit when I first met the GG, who was elegant, charming, and almost unnaturally attentive considering how many people were constantly approaching her throughout the night.
Michaëlle Jean has had some big shoes to fill after Canada's last GG, Adrienne Clarkson, gave the title some real meaning by committing so heavily to boost, support, and connect the arts and cultural communities in Canada. The new GG seems to be doing a great job, and if personal impressions are anything to go off, I'd say that Canada's new GG will be supportive of political art too. In fact, politics were definitely present at the awards ceremony, whether it was in the description of some of the more political artists life work such as Daphne Odjig, or whether it was jabs by speakers directed at the much-deserving Harper aministration - Canada's very own arts-bashing Bush.
FULL STORY + COMMENTS
Posted by Ezra Winton on March 25, 2007 in
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