Wired has published an interview with Trevor Paglen, photographer and "experimental geographer", whose most recent work features a collection of 189 photos of officially non-existent spy satellites.

In taking these photos, Paglen is trying to draw a metaphorical connection between modern government secrecy and the doctrine of the Catholic Church in Galileo's time.

"What would it mean to find these secret moons in orbit around the earth in the same way that Galileo found these moons that shouldn't exist in orbit around Jupiter?" Paglen says.

Image: Trevor Paglen, Lacrosse/Onyx IV Near Alfirk (USA 152, 48 x 60 inches, C-Print, 2008

Previously on Art Threat:
Follow spies in the skies with Terminal Air

It’s not often that you visit a major civic gallery and come away amazed, disturbed and politically provoked. Rebecca Belmore’s current exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery does exactly that and more. It is a remarkable retrospective for an artist deeply engaged in some of the most defining and difficult politics of our time.

Belmore’s practice encompasses sculpture/installation, performance, video and photography. The exhibition includes video documentation of five of Bellmore’s performances, and the much talked about video installation Fountain (2005), which is projected on a wall of falling water in a darkened room. The exhibition also includes some of her sculpture work and components from her performances. There is so much to see in this collection and all of it so very good.

Belmore’s art is an embodied practice, and as an aboriginal woman, her body is a complicated site where colonial, cultural and resistant tensions are inscribed on a daily basis. Wild (2001-2008) is a four-post bed with a red satin bedcover woven from beaver pelts and (black) human hair. The bed was created for an exhibition in The Grange, a colonial building that served as the original location of the Art Gallery of Ontario. Belmore sleeps in the bed unannounced. Nearby, hangs the disturbing Fringe (2008), a near life-size backlit photograph of a woman, naked but for a white sheet over her hips, lying on her side facing away from the viewer. On her back is a huge transversal wound starting at her right shoulder and ending below her left hip. The wound is sewn together, and hanging from the stitches are the beginnings of beadwork, small red beads decorating threads hanging from the grotesquely damaged skin.

(more on the exhibition...)

February 12th is a date permanently etched in my brain and should be on the collective memory of North America. On this date, nearly one month ago, eighth grader Lawrence King was shot in the head by fellow fourteen year old student Brandon David McInerney in the middle of a class lab. King, an incredibly courageous openly queer fifteen year old, had asked McInerney to be his valentine. He was murdered for being queer and it is a story that the media in America had nearly ignored until Ellen Degeneres gave her sombre monologue on the incident on her show just over a week ago.

Degeneres told her audience that being gay does not make you a second class citizen, that neither King nor herself were second class citizens. And, barely able to control her emotions, she warned of a culture that sends the message if you’re gay you’ll be murdered.

Studio XX is accepting submissions for its residency and co-production programs. Project selection is made and announced at the end of April each year. Residencies are open to Quebecois and Canadian women. They are intended to offer an environment where artists can conceptualize and develop contemporary networked practices.

Residencies are eight weeks in length and include a $750 artist's fee, 45 hours of technical support ($1125 value), access to the Studio's equipment ($3335 rental value), the possibility to participate in certain group workshops ($200-300 value), and distinct working space for the artist and her instructor.

For more information about Residencies and co-production visit the Studio XX website.

The 8th Biennale of Champ Libre will take place in the Quartier International de Montreal (QIM) from September 24–28, 2008. The theme for the biennale event is Forêt/Forest.

Artists, curators, architects, and lecturers are reminded that the deadline to present an artistic project to Champ Libre for this event is the 10th of March 2008.

Individuals or organizations working in fields related to art, architecture, new technologies or the public space are invited to submit applications for a partnership project with Champ Libre by March 10, 2008.

For more information and the subscription form, visit the Champ Libre website.

Animal righters PETA staged a public political performance protesting the slaughter of pigs (yes the alliteration continues) for Mothers Day in Covent Gardens, London today.

I was going to pilfer the image of the performance from enemy-cum-friend-to-the-stars celebrity gossiper Perez Hilton, but his version contains his signature chicken scratch commentary over the photo, with a nipple whited out and the word MOO! scrawled near the performers mouth. Unsurprisingly the lean and fit Hilton doesn't like the sight of a little fat on the body - as this does not fit with the slim and vapid imagery of stardom. I guess political performance just can't quite gel with fabuland...

For more photos, visit PR Photos.

Since 2004, the annual NYC Grassroots Media Conferences feature workshops, skills-sharing, dialogue, debate and strategizing sessions about media making, media policy and how to use media to forward social justice campaigns.

Hunter College, 68th Street and Lexington Ave | Entrance via West Building | Hours: 9am-6pm

Check out the full day's schedule here.

For information on how to register to attend, click here to visit the main conference website.

Admission:
$20 advance; $30 day of
$15 students/seniors; $25 day of
$5 youth discount (18 & under)

Nearly two years after this incredible, indispensable, 230 page book was released in paperback I have finally got my muckraking hands on it. Milton Glaser and Mirko Ilic's The Design of Dissent is a phenomenal repository of political poster art (and more) that I've now realized is an essential addition to any shelf, coffee table, library, or revolutionary basement on the planet.

The book is visually stunning - a keen eye for layout, mixed with a healthy dose of breathing space and exceptional curatorial decision-making make for 200+ pages of explosive and provocative political art.

Divided into sections that range from "Ex-Yugoslavia" to "Food" to "U.S. Presidential Election" this offering from Rockport Publishers is one of the best books illustrating the collusion/confusion of politics and art that I have seen.

The images are part historical testament, part marginalized voice, and part pop culture intervention. Together they make up a book that is an essential for anyone interested in political art, dissent, democracy, and the spirit of creative visual production to pry open the closed spaces of culture and community.

The school of visual arts in NY has also created a site highlighting some 100 of the political posters curated by Glasher, you can view it here.

The Canadian government is getting set to pass the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DCMA) into law. But most Canadians have never heard of the DCMA, let alone considered its implications for artists, educators and personal freedoms. Let's face it, copyright law is a confusing nest of fine print about rights and restrictions that give most non-lawyers a giant headache.

The puppet masters at dotboom have produced a somewhat hilarious Rant Puppet video to help Canadians make some sense of the copyright confusion. In a charming froggish way, the video introduces some of the critical issues being addressed in the DCMA.

For more information about getting involved in the campaign to stop the DCMA, check out the Campaign for Democratic Media and Michael Geist's website.

It's time to clear out the mailbags and feedreaders before heading out to a hockey game.

• Philadelphia artist Daniel Heyman is exhibiting watercolours and dry point etchings made during interviews with prisoners of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. The works recount their stories of abuse at the hands of American forces. (Via Signal Fire.)
• We Make Money Not Art reviews Hyper-Border: The Contemporary US-Mexico Border and Its Future by Fernando Romero. Armed with a provocative design and smart infographics galore, Hyper-border "provides the most nuanced portrait yet of this dynamic region."
• Speaking of infographics, HistoryShots produces beautiful prints of informational graphics, telling stories like the race to the moon, the history of France, and the internet country codes of the world.