BART arrests journalists, denies media access to protest

Bart police are catching heat again for yet another public relations gaffe, this time at the protest on Thursday at Powell Street Bart Station where they arrested professional and student journalists along with protestors, and forced all other media to leave the station, thus denying media direct access.

From Golden Gate Express: San Francisco Chronicle reporter Vivian Ho was handcuffed and led away by BART police during the Sept. 8 "no fare" protest organized by No Justice No BART. Photo by Brittney Barsotti.

By chance I happened to take the metro downtown Thursday to pick up art supplies, arriving at Powell St. Station minutes before police began to shut it down.

What I observed was troubling in terms of freedom of speech, assembly, and press.  Furthermore, the way in which Bart PD spokespeople have since publicly represented police conduct conflicts with what I and others, including professional journalists, actually observed.

Oakland’s Museum of Children’s Art censors “A Child’s View from Gaza”

[Update 10/3/11:  The exhibit opened at an alternate venue, a minute’s walk from MOCHA.

Thursday, September 29, 10:00am – Wednesday, November 30, 5:00pm

NEW VENUE! 917 Washington Street in Oakland

The exhibit will be open to the public

September 30-November 27

Fridays: 10am-3pm

Saturdays and Sundays: 12pm-6pm

More Info: http://www.mecaforpeace.org/events/oakland-ca-childs-view-gaza-exhibit]

Oakland's MOCHA denies Bay Area audiences the opportunity to view Palestinian children’s art

Liberate the Tate

While doing some light summer reading of the highly recommended A User’s Guide to Demanding the Impossible (by the London-based collective The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, aka Labofii, pub. Dec. 2010), we discovered an extended, ongoing intervention campaign intended to liberate the Tate Museum from its sponsorship by British Petroleum.

For those interested in socially engaged art and performance, watch and learn!

Labofii were commissioned by the Tate Modern to give workshops on art and activism, but after being told by curators that no interventions could be made against the museum’s sponsors (i.e. BP), Labofii inspired workshop participants to form a collective to liberate the Tate from the oil barons:  “months later the collective made global headlines when it poured hundreds of litres of black molasses inside and outside the museum, during its party celebrating 20 yrs of BP sponsorship, held whilst oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico (pp. 18-19).”

The collective that was formed calls itself Liberate Tate.  Titled “Licence to Spill“, the intervention shown above and in complete report below took place in June of 2010.  [Make sure to watch the following clip to see what took place inside of the Tate Modern--not to be missed!]

The above was just one of a series of brilliant unsanctioned art interventions by this group and others that have taken place at the Tate Modern, Tate Britain, British Museum, and National Portrait Gallery, starting last summer.

In September 2010, an oil painting intervention in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall: