Albumn review, “Campfires on the Moon”, by Michael Nenonen. Rodney DeCroo’s latest album, “Campfires on the Moon,” reveals hidden faces. I’ll say more about that in a moment. “Campfires”, released by Tonic Records, is DeCroo’s seventh album (eighth if you count his 2012 spoken word album “Allegheny”, and you probably should).
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Art Threat: Daniel Higgs at Café Oto: A refuge of cultural integrity
In the mosh pit of global corporate excess that claims so much of London (UK) circa 2014, Café Oto is an oasis of cultural intelligence and inspiration. I popped in last night to check out Daniel Higgs and Michael Zerang, and I wasn’t disappointed. Daniel Higgs (formerly of Lungfish) is
Continue readingArt Threat: Art Seen: Place Olympe de Gouges, Paris, artist unknown
Place Olympe de Gouges, Paris, artist unknown At a small 5 cornered cross-roads on the eastern fringe of the Marais in Paris (3e), Place Olympe de Gouges attracts little attention. Five tiny streets converge around a small brick circle with a solitary tree and a small plaque. Olympe de Gouges
Continue readingArt Threat: Canadian gov’t approves filming immigration raid, deportation process for reality TV
The Canadian government has approved what appears to be the crass exploitation of human suffering for entertainment. In a new low, Safety Minister Vic Toews approved the filming of an immigration enforcement raid at an East Vancouver construction site for a reality TV show. In the raid, workers were arrested
Continue readingArt Threat: Create this revolution! Call for engaged art
From the Gallery 101 press release: CALL FOR ARTISTS SUBMISSIONS Deadline: March 6, 2013 Gallery 101, (G101), invites Emerging and Established Artists who are interested in participating in an exhibition of activist based artwork — video, painting, drawing, print, photography, sculpture, and performance. Create this Revolution! Get up and
Continue readingArt Threat: Blown Up: Gaming and War
Let’s face it: shooting stuff is fun – in video, that is; but it can also be ethically complicated. Gallery 101’s current exhibition Blown Up: Gaming and War, brings to the conventions of video gaming the complexities of art, activism and critical commentary. I am not exactly a typical gamer
Continue readingArt Threat: Qatari poet jailed for life for poem celebrating Arab Spring
Qatar is home to the international news network Al Jazeera, including Al Jazeera English whose coverage of the middle-east and international news in general has garnered increasing respect from Western audiences. It is a cruel irony indeed that the government that funds such journalistic integrity also restricts freedom of speech in such a violent and reactionary manner.
Continue readingArt Threat: Do grassroots archives have a future? – Exhibition from archive of activist histories
About 30 people gathered in Toronto last night to discuss what many hope will grow into a movement for archiving grassroots histories. The public meeting was organized by Ulli Diemer of the Connexions Archive as a way to bring like-minded activists and scholars together to find strategies for preserving the heritage of social movements and marginalized communities in Toronto and across Canada. (Check out #Connexions for the twitter feed from the event.)
Continue readingArt Threat: The DNA of a public space: The place, history and activism of a public square – Artists invite Montreals to share 9 day cultural festival
This is an event for everyone intended to give the homeless and other Montrealers the opportunity to get involved as on-site volunteers and participants in “an incomparable atmosphere of mutual aid and social solidarity made possible by support from the artistic and business communities as well as the institutional sector and community-based organizations.”
Continue readingArt Threat: Skyfall a great romp but a gender bust … not to mention the faint aroma of homophobia
The thing is, I like these films — for the gorgeous cityscapes of great metropolises (London, Beijing and Macau), for the eerie and yet fascinatingly glimpses into the slick and opulent interiors where the ultra-rich live and play, for the beautiful cars (the 1965 Aston Martin DB5), even for the craggy medieval landscape of Scotland where Bond finally retreats for his emphatically low-tech final showdown with Javier Bardem. I am a sucker for Bond’s supernatural fighting and survival skills. It all works for me. But that’s why the obvious gender stupidity and not so obvious homophobic taint are so irksome. There is intelligence at work in this script, and talent in the filmmaking, so why the vacuum of intelligence on this score? Why, like Bond’s suits and cars, do the gender and sexual politics have to be so thoroughly rooted in the 1960s?
Continue readingArt Threat: Funding drive for award-winning public art – ATSA asks for public support
One of the most remarkable public art collectives in Canada needs your support. ATSA (the collective name for artists Annie Roy and Pierre Allard) have created some of the most striking public art interventions. They have won numerous international awards.* Last year, the federal government cut their funding. They need
Continue readingArt Threat: Root sculptures celebrate local activists – Pierre Leichner’s Grassroots Project
Pierre Leichner uses grass to make sculptures — for The Grassroots Project, in the shape of faces of community workers and activists from Vancouver’s East Side. The living sculptures, pictured above, are beautiful and haunting. “The Grassroots Project” was featured at Britannia Community Centre (Vancouver). I recently caught up to
Continue readingArt Threat: Call for participation – Convergence 2012: The geo/body politics of emancipation
The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics Graduate Student Initiative is inviting graduate students from the humanities, arts, and social sciences to come together to discuss contemporary notions of emancipation, liberation, revolution, occupation, geopolitics, “artivism,” and militant research, and to consider the lived tensions of these concepts in bodies, knowledge,
Continue readingArt Threat: VOINA calls for activist art, Berlin Biennale – Deadline for outsider exhibition July 1
The Russian activist political art collective Voina Group, is inviting artists to participate in the 7th Berlin Biennale. Rejecting what they describe as “limitation in age, education, nationality, political views etc. for participants of the Biennale”, Voina wants history to decide what is great art. The group will mount an
Continue readingArt Threat: 7th Berlin Binennale highlights political art – Curator Artus Zmijewski creates exhibition of activist art
When you go to the website for Berlin’s 7th Binennale, you encounter a stream of changing photographs from occupy and protest movements from around the world — Venezia, Toronto, Florence, Malacky, Athens and on and on. It is emblematic of curator Artur Zmijewski’s approach the largest art exhibition in Germany,
Continue readingArt Threat: Art for social justice: 12 remarkable women – Roots to Resistance project shares stories of courage
Natalia Estemirova Twelve women. Twelve stories of political courage. Twelve portraits. The Roots to Resistance project is spreading word about the groundbreaking work of twelve women who have dedicated their lives to fighting for social justice. Artist Denise Beaudet is creating portraits of 12 remarkable activists. Postcards of these images
Continue readingArt Threat: Storytelling in post-Mubarak Egypt – Al Jazeera short-doc on performance artist Abeer Soliman
Al Jazeera’s Artscape presents a wonderful short documentary on Abeer Soliman, an Egyptian storyteller and performance artist whose work changed after the uprising.
Continue readingArt Threat: Improvising statehood at the Berlin Biennale – Khaled Jarrar issues postage stamp for State of Palestine
It is a postage stamp for a nation that exists somewhere between memory’s twilight, international conflict and the aurora of hope. Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar has designed a postage stamp for Palestine for the Berlin Biennale (which opens April 27). The stamp pictures the Palestinian Sun Bird and the words
Continue readingArt Threat: Happy birthday, Samuel Beckett!
Samuel Beckett, line drawing by Guillermo Contreras The brilliant Irish playwright, novelist and poet would have been 106, today. Known widely for his absurdist plays and novels, Beckett received the Nobel prize for literature in 1969. Later in life, he wrote for radio and television. He is remembered today for
Continue readingArt Threat: Call for participation – Resistance Strategies – Digital book looking for proposals on Mayan resistance
The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics is calling for contributions for a “digital book” to focus on historical and contemporary Mayan strategies of resistance and their impact on the work of artists and activists in Mexico and beyond. The publication will be edited by Diana Taylor and developed using
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