Why So White: Tony Awards

An infographic of the appalling lack of diversity in the Tony Awards over the past 31 years.

Would it look much different for the visual art world? (Hint: just take a look at ‘The Asian’s’ ongoing Proximities show, which explores the question “What is Asia?” through the eyes of a white male curator and an almost entirely white roster of artists.)

White domination of the theater world

From: Where’s the Diversity? The Tony Awards Looks in the Mirror

Keep in mind that racial diversity is not the same as racial justice.  Diversity only means variety, not equity, and while beneficial, integration is not sufficient to produce fairness.  Diversity can be a tool for advancing equity, but equity (fairness, justice, agency) is the goal.

Racial equity can only be achieved through a conscious critical examination of “choice points” to prevent replication of implicit bias and the status quo, to no longer exclude key stakeholders, overlook barriers to access, and fail to consider key inequities around race, gender, income and elsewhere.

Empire & Ellison at ‘The Asian’

Passed by the Asian Art Museum the other day, where the Terracotta Warriors show is making way for this summer’s banner exhibition of imperialist japanophile Larry Ellison’s art collection, opening later this month.

Impressed with their gutsy guerrilla marketing! And the, ahem, “citizen spell-check.”

Totally Biased: Anything to say to a White Guy?

Via Colorlines:  W. Kamau Bell hits the streets of NY to ask folks, “Is there anything you have to say to a white guy?”

Watch Kamau on his new second season of “Totally Biased” on FX, Thu 11pm.

Cultural Hijack: Rethinking Intervention

Wish we could attend this CONTRAvention in London this week:  (from their website)

Cultural Hijack, London

Exhibition – Live-programme – CONTRAvention

Image Archive – Reading Room

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Rethinking Intervention

Cultural Hijack presents a survey of provocative interventions which have inserted themselves into the world, demanding our attention, interrupting everyday life, hijacking, trespassing, agitating and teasing. Often unannounced and usually anonymous, these works have appropriated media channels, hacked into live TV and radio broadcasts, detourned billboards, re-appropriated street furniture, subverted signs, monuments and civic architectures, exposed corporations and tax loopholes, and revealed the absurdities of bureaucratic behaviours.

Zevs (FR), Ztohoven (CZ), Krzysztof Wodiczko (PL), Matthias Wermke & Mischa Leinkauf (DE), Voina (RU), Upper Space (UK), Gregory Sholette (US), Michael Rakowitz (US), Platform (UK), Ben Parry (UK) & Peter McCaughey (IE), Tatzu Nishi (JP), Renzo Martens (NL), Knit the City (UK), Peter Kennard (UK), Laura Keeble (UK), Allan Kaprow (US), John Jordan (UK), Tushar Joag (IN), International Peripatetic Sculptors Society (UK+), Space Hijackers (UK), Paul Harfleet (UK), EPOS 257 (CZ), Electronic Disturbance Theater (US), Nina Edge (UK), Alan Dunn (UK), Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (UK+), Paolo Cirio (IT), Leah Borromeo & Dr. D (UK), BGL (CA) 

The exhibition positions itself at the intersection between art, politics and social justice in an historical moment, as we witness a rising tide of global resistance to neoliberal capitalism through an expanding ‘movement of movements’, from Zapatismo to the Arab Spring, from alternative G8 summits to Occupy Wall Street. In the shadows of this moment, artists are joining in the writing of alternative histories, the reclamation of our rights to the city and the unfinished project of the revolution of everyday life.

In attempting to house these ideas together in an institution, we are mindful of the Architectural Association as an influential zone, where the physical future of Architecture and Urbanism is significantly shaped. We propose that the dissemination of the ideas and practices gathered for Cultural Hijack, might similarly shape the possibilities for us to occupy as yet unimagined futures, where user-generated cities and systems, that support individual and collective empowerment, become more prevalent.

Do small acts of resistance and creative disruption, build muscle that encourages an appetite for real alternatives to neoliberal capitalism or do they end point and sate such an appetite? And what of ‘commissioned resistance’, is it implicitly flawed, sponsored by the system it seeks to critique, or can it, despite its origins, have impact?

These questions & more, as well as yours, will be picked over in the CONTRAvention: 24^th - 26^th April 2013.

It’s in the Culture: “Why I’d Hate to Be Asian” video

Via Colorlines

Just a reminder for those of you who believe we live in a post-racial color-blind society.

“Why I’d Hate to Be Asian” video, by Indiana student Samuel Hendrickson (click to view at Colorlines)

The Indiana student sparked widespread outrage this week when he posted a video listing all the reasons he wouldn’t want to be Asian.

“Most Asians look alike,” Hendrickson says in the video. “I don’t want to look like everyone else.” The video also includes dumb remarks like “If I was an Asian man, chances are I’d probably be with an Asian woman and guess what? I don’t find Asian women attractive. Kill me.”

Hendrickson’s initial apology, after the video went viral:

“Well, I’m hated by the entire Asian race apparently over a joke #bummer.”

Full story and video at Colorlines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Museum pulls art critical of anti-immigrant policy

Click to view the art at PoliticAlabamaDesign.com

Via HuffPost:

Edward Noriega, a professor of Art and Design at Troy University in Alabama, had his artwork pulled from an exhibit earlier this month from Talladega’s Heritage Hall Museum because the directors objected to the content.

One piece featured stacked Ajax cans relabeled as an “ethnic cleanser” called “Ala, with HB 56,” a reference to the immigration crackdown passed by the Alabama legislature in 2011. Another piece shows an image of the Virgin Mary holding a dustpan and a broom in an empty office, over the title “Señora de la Limpieza,” or “Our Cleaning Lady.” An ashtray reads “Feed Me Get Out.”

But the kicker appears to have been a red square overlaid with a white swastika and the the abbreviation HB 56. The tips of the swastikas read “Presbyterian indifference, Baptist indifference, Catholic indifference, Methodist indifference.” [Full story here]

 

Racism Still Exists: Billboard Series in Brooklyn

Via Colorlines (Jamilah King):

Billboards are everywhere in New York City. They’re on subway trains and in stations, and on top of and inside taxis. But few, if any, have been anything like a series of anonymous billboards that have popped up on bus shelters in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. They’re not selling anything but a declaration: that racism still exists… (Read more)

RISE (Racism Still Exists) project statement:

Although public commentary describes the United States as “post-racial”, racism continues to exert a very real and pervasive influence on institutional policies and processes, interpersonal interactions, neighborhood infrastructure, socioeconomic opportunities, media imagery, and more. RISE is a project designed to illuminate some of the ways in which racism operates in this country.

Note that while the authorship of this impactful billboard/poster series remains anonymous, the billboards themselves are officially sanctioned through the private advertising company contracted by the New York Metropolitan Agency (i.e. these are paid for; this is is not guerrilla billboard liberation).