Art 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 reading

Art 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 reading

Art 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 reading

Art 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 reading

Art 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 reading