In an interesting twist on embedded journalism, artist Richard Johnson is living amongst Canadian troops in Kandahar drawing daily illustrations for the National Post. Johnson is the graphics director for Canada's right-wing newspaper, and has been blogging about his experiences on the Post's website since late May, with several entries and drawings making the crossover to the printed world.
Bonus: Scrolling to the bottom of the page will reveal a collection of nude drawings Johnson sketched while preparing for his assignment, which somehow snuck past the Post's morality police.
"This girl could really strike a pose and hold it," Johnson comments. "The drawings are good and pretty to look at, but I am still not capturing features as accurately and quickly as I will need to. Still, I don't expect to see a lot of this in Kandahar."
Via Drawn.
Posted by Rob Maguire on June 26, 2007 in
DAN WITZ | Killroy Variations | "During World War II, the saying "Kilroy Was Here!" began to appear as graffiti at home and wherever the American military traveled abroad. Eventually the saying, and the cartoon character that often accompanied it, came to represent America's worldwide presence."
MARK JENKINS | Street Installation
Artist Nancy Hiss has been writing the names of occupation troops who have died in Iraq on the streets of Portland. From her site: "The names will thread their way through the fabric of Portland OR. Only last names will be listed to honor the sacrifice of individuals & their families. As you reflect on these names also remember the hundreds of thousands of nameless Iraqis and others who have been scared by this war."
Posted by Rob Maguire on June 11, 2007 in
PROPAGANDA III is calling for submissions for their 2008 world tour. They want political posters of any kind – right, left, liberal, anarchist, rhinoceros, ecofeminist, animal liberationist, vegan, Marxist, Neoliberal, Dadaist, anti-civ, Etc. The curators state that there will be no censorship of any kind.
PROPAGANDA III will open July 4, 2007 at Start Soma Gallery in San Francisco.
Submission deadline July 1, 2007. To view submission guidelines or for information about hosting the show once it goes on the road, go here.
Posted by Michael Lithgow on June 8, 2007 in
OXFAM | G8 Big Heads | Oxfam activists posing as the G8 leaders revel in a game of high stakes poker over the future of Africa. Photo: Craig Owen / Oxfam.
The Pirate Party wants to reform copyright law. They are starting by running in the September Swedish elections -- First, they take Stockholm, then they take Berlin! And, hopefully, everywhere else where democratically elected representatives can rewrite the pernicious cancer of over-expanding copyright laws. There are parallel initiatives in several European Union member states and in North America.
The Pirate Party has three items on the agenda: Reform copyright. Abolish the patent system. Respect the right to privacy. And there is also the Pirate Party U.S. that has added net neutrality to the campaign.
Reforming copyright means finding a way to return copyright laws to a useful but non-culturally lethal state. All non-commercial copying should be free including file sharing and p2p networking. Copyright monopolies should be limited to 5 years, and there should be a complete ban on DRM (digital rights management) technologies and contract clauses that restrict consumers’ legal rights in this area.
Abolishing the patent system means completely re-writing patent laws that encourage pharmaceutical companies to risk human lives for market share and profit margins. The Pirate Party has an innovative alternative that would have governments more actively involved in research. In a nutshell, if 20% of what is currently spent on drugs in European Union public health systems was spent on research, there would be more money being spent on drug research than is being spent now by the private sector. Without patents, the price of pharmaceuticals generally falls by two-thirds, so the public money spent is more than made up for -- check out the Pirate Party’s more detailed explanation.
And finally, the Pirate Party wants to roll back the invasive levels of state surveillance ushered in by governmental paranoia since September 11.
Check out the Pirate Party’s Declaration of Principles and website for more info.
Posted by Michael Lithgow on June 7, 2007 in
JACQUELYN BOND | Wake Up America
Where do the evolutionaries stand on issues of public concern? Thanks to Norm Magnusson and a whole whack of aluminum and acrylic, the answer to this question and a host of others is now in plain sight. Drawing on the historical markers that have traditionally pointed out a careful selection of people and events that have shaped history, Magnusson has created a series of signs reflecting the faces and places of today. By posting the concerns of contemporary individuals who "on this site stood", the artist unexpectedly draws our attention to the social and political controversies of the present.
A new set of markers has been created especially for an upcoming exhibition by the Aldrich Contempoary Art Museum, who will install Magnusson's signs along Main Street in Ridgefield, Connecticut from June 24 to August 12. One of these signs reads as follows: On this site stood Jane Kino, whose white male coworkers earn 39% more than she does for doing the same job. And another: On this site stood Ian Wikno. Joined the army reserve to pay for college, sent to Iraq March 2005, has not yet returned.
Magnusson firmly believes that signage has the power to shape ideas. "Historical markers are an inherently interesting vehicle for socially pointed thoughts. The types of people who stop to read them are collectively defined more by their curiosity about the world around them than they are by any shared ideological leanings, which makes them a perfect audience for a carefully-crafted message."
For more information, visit the website of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum,
Posted by Rob Maguire on May 28, 2007 in
ED JANZEN | Araphat | "In a world often paralyzed by infantile political discourse, Andy Warhol’s famous multiple-screen print technique, with its candy-coloured American pop vocabulary, can offer us a Western but atypical lens through which to seek new understandings between cultures. We owe it to our world and ourselves to break past ritualized polemic, to search more broadly whenever we consider famous or important personalities of the past. In this series the late Palestinian president, Yasir Arafat, surely one of the most recognizable, iconic faces of the twentieth century, raises his fingers in the victory symbol as he exits a polling booth."
| Games |
