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.

Creative Activism: FREE Online Course

via the Yes Men

Calling all activists and knowledge-seekers! Check out this free online course from the Coventry School of Art… fb.me/1FwUl5bYz—
The Yes Men (@theyesmen) October 21, 2012

CREATIVE ACTIVISM: an open class for media creators and change makers

From their site:

This class will explore the potentials of creative media activism through encouraging ‘live’ creative interventions and participation in cultural, political and social debates.

Throughout the 10 week class we will be exploring how media activists and campaigners have used their media knowledge, connections and skills to ask difficult questions, provoke debate and raise awareness of important issues and problems in their local, national and international communities. We will be putting up a number of lectures, tasks, podcasts and other resources online to help you.

It is an activity-led class where participants will be choosing an issue that is important to them and working on a series of real and situated tasks that will aim to provide them with a number of and skills and abilities.

By being run as an open community it will enable participants to constructively critique, learn from, build on and collaborate with each other to produce a body of work that will, hopefully, make a practical and positive impact on the issue the students are addressing.

If you are interested in getting involved, or just want to stay up to date with the work of this class, please join us here or post comments using the #creativact hashtag. We look forward to hearing from you.

Starting in January 2013

Tortilla Subversion at Asian Art Museum

Eat, Pray, Take:  Tortilla screen-printed with Hoisin Sauce at the Asian Art Museum’s Matcha event last Thursday.  Click to enlarge.  (Photo: Terrance Graven)

A week ago (7/26/12), one of our founding members served as special guest artist of The Great Tortilla Conspiracy, at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco’s monthly Thursday evening Matcha event.

This month’s Matcha was the culmination of a year-long “unofficial residency” project at the museum by artist Imin Yeh called SpaceBi.  For this event, Yeh invited more than two dozen APA and local artists to participate, which is unprecedented in that it is close to two dozen more than are typically invited by the museum. (Action-packed event Program here)

The Great Tortilla Conspiracy was among those invited, and the Conspiracy in turn invited me as their special guest.  Museum management was reportedly “thrilled” to learn of my participation.

UC Student Art Action protests corporate privatization of public education

Art intervention at Bancroft and Telegraph, one of the main entrances to the UC Berkeley campus

(UPDATED 6/22/12:  1) Center for Artistic Activism’s Actipedia site; 2) Radio Interview)

On Tuesday, May 8, in the midst of final exam week, a group of female students performed a public art action at UC Berkeley to call attention to the UC Regents’ privatization of what was once the premier public university in the country.

Support the Sproul 13: Call the DA’s office April 9-11

From Resistance Social:

*please call, and please distribute this email widely. put it on
blogs, facebook, etc*

On April 9th – 11th, we’re calling District Attorney Nancy O’Malley and asking that she drop the charges on the Sproul 13. Please join us!  It only takes a few minutes…

Ace Museum all in for the 1%: Videos from the Unknown Artists

More from the Unknown Artists: (previous posts 1, 2)

If you have a personal experience with Douglas Chrismas, Ace Gallery or Ace Museum, we encourage you to visit ArtLeaks (http://art-leaks.org/) and to leave your story.

Petition on Change.org: http://www.change.org/petitions/ace-museum-all-in-for-the-1

We are the Unknown Artists.
We expose economic interests.
We increase transparency.
We aim for the distribution of wealth and information.
We will not be censored.
We will not be stopped.
Fuck authorship, fix the system!

Unknown Artists of the 99%: Call to Action to fix broken system

Via Unknown Artists:

Greetings Artist,

We are the Unknown Artists.  We are asking for your help in fixing the broken gallery system that allows artists to be routinely ripped off and taken advantage of.  The system that allows gallery owners to make millions while using unpaid interns.  A system where artists are afraid ask for a contract and then worry that they will never be paid if their work sells.

Tate à Tate interventionist audio tour of Tate museums

Platform, Liberate Tate and Art Not Oil present a site-specific sound artwork themed around the issue of BP sponsorship of Tate.

Tate á Tate is created by Ansuman Biswas (Tate Britain), Isa Suarez, Mae Martin and Mark McGowan (Tate Boat) and Phil England and Jim Welton (Tate Modern).

Tate à Tate website

Download the three-part audio tour and go to Tate Britain, Tate Boat and Tate Modern to participate in this interventionist sound artwork – or listen at home.

The site includes a How-To Guide and Workshops and Actions as well as an Introduction to oil sponsorship of the arts, with a link to the open publication Culture Beyond Oil.

FAQs

UC student protesters barred from UC property

Daily Cal: "Students and community members protest the stay away order issued to a number of protesters." (Photo: Kevin Foote/Senior Staff, Daily Cal)

UPDATED 3/21/12 (see below)

At the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, four students have been barred from going anywhere except to class or work.

Via Daily Cal

A judge issued stay-away orders Monday against four Occupy Cal protesters who were involved in the Nov. 9 demonstrations, barring them from setting foot on UC Berkeley property.

The defendants are not only barred from the Berkeley campus, but all UC property throughout the state of California.

Via KTVU2

At the request of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, Superior Court Judge Paul Seeman issued orders which require that the protesters stay away 100 yards from all UC property, except for when they go to and from class and work…

“The problems with the stay away order are that it’s very vague. UC property – does that include UC hospitals? Does that include UC housing? We have some defendants that live in UC Housing,” said Jeff Wozniak, an attorney for one of the protesters.

Note that the faculty member who was arraigned on Friday for similar charges was not given the same stay-away order.

No expiration date was given for the stay-away order, which came as a result of misdemeanor charges of “resisting arrest” and “blocking the sidewalk” after being bludgeoned by UC police on November 9 last year.

Short-timer Birgeneau: "I sincerely apologize..." but I won't do anything about the charges.

The Sorry but Silent Chancellor Birgeneau

Despite a petition signed by hundreds of faculty members calling on Chancellor Birgeneau to condemn the criminal charges and request that they be dropped, he has been unwilling to do so.

Instead, he simply passed on the petition to the DA, to whom it was not addressed, and in his silence has passively aligned himself with the ongoing prosecution.

Listen to Birgeneau’s November apology here

“I consider academic excellence, social equity, public service and free speech to be at the very foundation of who we are as an institution. These are the values that attracted me to UC Berkeley, and they must be preserved.”

UPDATE 3/21/12:  A total of 8 UC Berkeley students and alumni have been issued stay-away orders (Daily Cal).  Of the 13 charged, our remain to be arraigned.  So far, all of those charged have been issued stay-away orders, except the faculty member.

By and for Unknown Artists: “Whitney Boycott”

For all “emerging” artists who aspire to feed at the trough:

[embedded video]

Don’t let your desire for recognition allow for the continuation of a broken, harmful system.

We are the Unknown Artists.
We expose economic interests.
We increase transparency.
We aim for the distribution of wealth and information.
We will not be censored.
We will not be stopped.
FUCK AUTHORSHIP, FIX THE SYSTEM!