Last week the award-winning documentary filmmaker and activist Anand Patwardhan, along with Ratna Pathak Shah, Sudhakar Suradkar and Prakash Reddy launched a defence fund for Kabir Kala Manch, a cultural performance group that had been spreading awareness in India on many issues including women’s rights, caste oppression and development inequality.
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Art 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: 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: Sonic solidarity for Ziba Kazemi – An interview with Iranian artist Shahrzad Arshadi
Portrait of artist Shahrzad Arshadi by Thien V (Montreal, March 2012). It Is Only Sound That Remains is a sound theatre performance by artist Shahrzad Arshadi, meditating on the life and death of Ziba Kazemi, also known as Zahra Kazemi. The story of Kazemi’s 2003 death in Iran, the ensuing
Continue readingArt Threat: Ai Wei Wei installs live webcams in home – Artists winks at Chinese authorities with a Big Brother flourish
Artist Ai Wei Wei has installed live webcams in his home so that authorities – and worried supporters – can keep track of his day-to-day whereabouts and welfare. Feeling hemmed in by increasingly invasive state surveillance – being followed day-to-day, round-the-clock surveillance on his home, searches of his studio, phone
Continue readingArt Threat: Big Bang Big Boom: Animated graffiti – An endlessly fascinating warning against the temptation of war
BIG BANG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo. For those who haven’t seen it, Big Bang Big Boom (2010) is yet another fabulous animated graffiti parable from the blublu art collective. Their work is endlessly fascinating — animated creatures sliding seamlessly from walls,
Continue readingArt Threat: Animals in the Hen House – Interview with Our Hen House executive director, Jasmin Singer
Back in January I posted an article highlighting a video about Sue Coe’s art that was produced by Our Hen House, a “Multimedia hub for people who want to change the world for animals.” Jasmin Singer, one of the founders of Our Hen House, immediately stood out as someone who
Continue readingArt Threat: Artists invited to join Occupy Arts Committee – 3rd gathering in Montreal set for March 17
Bryant Park, Manhattan. Photo by Eric Walton Montreal artists are invited to join the growing collaboration of the Occupy Arts Committee, a gathering of artists from all disciplines who want to support Occupy Montreal with creative practice. According to organizers, this meeting will be a creation workshop to start imagining,
Continue readingArt Threat: Occupy Museums challenges Armory Show – Artists invited to join free art exchange at Piers 92 / 94 in NYC
New York’s prestigious Armory Show opens on March 8th at Piers 92 & 94 in New York. The Armory Show was created in 1913 amid the challenges and excitement of early 20th century avant-garde art and artists intent on denouncing the status quo. Today, the Armory Show is the status
Continue readingPerformance Tonight!
the regina mom is pumped for a performance at the Vertigo Reading Series tonight in Regina. She’s edited this poem and will slip it into the mix because she has to try out the change and thinks it will fit into her love-themed, genre-hopping set list. trm‘s favourite guitar
Continue readingArt Threat: Crowd sourcing a little curatorial control – National Gallery of Canada invites young artists to submit art & public to judge
"Beat Nation" at Grunt Gallery, Vancouver Calling young (aged 16-19) Canadian political artists. Here’s a chance to get your work noticed, publicized and into the National Gallery of Canada (NGC). The NGC has announced its second annual So You Want to Be an Artist contest. It’s a cheezey title, but
Continue readingArt Threat: Call for artists in support of ‘Occupy’ movement – Online, international platform for performances, installations, actions in real time
Project Lowlives is seeking artists for a global online live presentation of artistic work in support the Occupy movement. Lowlives: Occupy! will take place on March 3, 2012. From the website: The Occupy protests, and the myriad of perspectives and experiences related to this unique moment, will be amplified, explored,
Continue readingArt Threat: Artists remember homeless man killed by Montreal police
On a cold winter day in Montreal this past Friday, January 6, police bullets took the life of Farshad Mohammadi, a Kurdish refugee from Iran who arrived in Canada seeking security and protection. Farshad was inside the métro seeking warmth, homeless in a city and country that failed to provide
Continue readingArt Threat: Looking for the Political at Art Basel
The politics at Art Basel, one of the largest contemporary art exhibitions in the US, may be hard to find, but they’re there for those who know where to look. On December 4th Karen Rosenberg wrote an article in the New York Times (entitled “Art Basel: Business Over Activism”) highlighting
Continue readingArt Threat: Networked Shock Art: Voina in the News – Analysis of political interventions of Russian art collective
For the last year Vorotnikov and Nikolaev have been waging a legal battle with Russian authorities for their freedom. While these challenges facing Voina have been well documented on Art Threat, Free Voina, and other alternative media sources, another battle is being fought: against state, art world, and dominant media
Continue readingArt Threat: VOINA member arrested, whereabouts unknown – Russian art collective faces ongoing harrassment
Leonid Nikolaev's arrest, December 4, 2011 Yesterday, founding member of the Russian art collective VOINA, Leonid Nikolaev, was abducted by Russian police and his whereabouts are unknown. Nikolaev was attending a rally against election fraud in St. Petersburg when he was grabbed by police along with other protesters and taken
Continue readingArt Threat: Us and Them – Dialogue meets theatre in this look at how we create "the other" and build bridges
Footage flickers from the Vancouver Stanley Cup riots. It looks like everyone is angry and no one knows why. Green and blue jersey wearing rioters cover the backdrop of the stage of the Cultch as six actors lurch, kick, destroy, and vent frustration that we all suspect has very little to do with hockey. It […]
Continue readingArt Threat: Russian artists VOINA detained, harassed – Russian police pose as German journalists
MOSCOW — Yesterday, members of the Russian artist collective VOINA were arrested without charges by Russian police posing as German television journalists. Natalia Sokol and her two-year old son were detained overnight at a Moscow police station and later released. The same night, plainclothes agents tried to break into VOINA member Leonid Nikolayev’s apartment and […]
Continue readingArt Threat: Occupy Montreal & Toronto — Videos from the Media-Coop – More videos of the growing movement North of the 49th
And here are some artfully assembled videos from ‘occupy’ movements in Canada. Enjoy these, too. More media, testimony, photos and coverage can be found at the Media Coop.
Continue readingArt Threat: Althea Thauberger’s photo mural speaks of Vancouver’s darkness
Thauberger in Afghanistan (Photo: Sharon MacKay) It would be nearly impossible to accuse Vancouver artist Althea Thauberger of being weak or fearful; in fact she is quite the opposite. Not only does she happily invite controversy and criticism, but she willingly flew to Kandahar, Afghanistan as a part of the Canadian War Artist program while […]
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