Espacio Aglutinador outside

Espacio Aglutinador was founded in 1994 by Sandra Ceballos and Ezequiel Suárez.  The title means a space that helps people and events come together ( a root word here is gluten) . It is the oldest ongoing independent art space in Cuba that is entirely independent of the government.  Because it is a private home, events cannot be interfered with by the police.

The initial impulse for creating an art space was the censoring of an exhibition by  Ezequiel  Suárez called The Bauhaus Front in which the artist painted images on cardboard of various prominent people holding  signs that declared for example “ The Museum of Fine Arts is shit.”  It was an act of defiance against the official art venues in Havana. This Dada spirit of the Bauhaus inspired many multimedia events and exhibitions in Espacio.

The spirit of defiance and revolution against expected actions persisted inside this intimate space, even as outside the strange fluctuations of oppressions, contradictions, and successes abroad for Cuban artists continued.The social interaction is intense and powerful.

From the beginning, major critics Orlando Hernandez, Gerardo Mosquera, and Eugenio Valdes Figueroa, to name only three, have been writing catalogs and articles about the Espacio.

Espacio Aglutinador has created more than 90 events in collaboration with various artists and collectives.  Many of these artists are now famous, and often the work they showed in this space was fundamental to their later fame or brought them out of eclipse.

The main principle is that it is a space that welcomes everyone, it is democratic, including young and old, trained and untrained, famous and undiscovered, living and dead.  “It is a cultural space, nor a boutique, nor a foundation. It does not intend to be elitist or avangardist, populist or backward looking. … It is not a project, nor is it a beautiful idea on paper. ..Aglutinador is an event… The possibilities for error are infinite.” The artists that were shown there in the 1990s were chosen by Sandra Ceballos and Ezequiel Suárez. Some of them had been neglected, some had been censored, some were simply artists that they admired including US based Ana Mendieta and Coco Fusco.

Angel Delgado Untitled 1997 (soap, funnel, paint wood shavings)

One example is Angel Delgado who was actually put in prison because he did a performance piece in an exhibition called “The Sculptural Object” in which he defecated in one of the galleries on a copy of the Communist newspaper Granma. He was put in prison for six months: he took everything he had used while in prison in a wooden box, including 102 drawings and stories and sculptures of soap, drawings on hankerchiefs  (techniques learned from other prisoners),  and opened it for the first time for an exhibition at the Espacio Aglutinador in 1996. Orlando Hernandez wrote asking for his pardon:  “ I see in your exhibition not only a harrowing testimony to your sadness,  of your revulsion,  . . . but also our own shamelessness, our weakness, and guilt.” The postscript to this work is discussed on this blog, in which the writer declares that Delgado has made a successful career from this work inpsired by prisoners media, without ever taking up there cause himself.

Tania Bruguera Cabeza Abajo (Head Down) 1996

Another artist who had an installation there was Tania Bruguera. Her performance piece Cabeza Abajo in late 1996 included 20 participants who lay on the floor tied up. The artist as a ghost like figure walks over them, suggesting oppression, the experience of collective death, a ritual landscape full of sacrificed ideals.

By 2000, as the Cuban art scene was rapidly changing, Eugenio Valdes Figueroa  wrote  “ in the midst of the tensions provoked by censorship on the Island,  Aglutinador offers a space for projects that have little possibility to satisfy the commercial  trends stimulated by the demand for Cuban art from the outside. . .  Amidst the proliferation of easily saleable formulas . . . and banal themes . . . “ it was an institution that spoke to forbidden themes and mined the uncertainties of local themes. (Espacio Aglutinador 1994 – 2004,un lugar de emergencia, p  62). Starting in 2003, a second phase of Espacio began that was even more revolutionary, without curators, without any restrictions.

Curators Go Home

One example was the exhibition “Curators Go Home” which included the piece on censorship by Celia/Yunior and friends described in my previous blog.  That piece can still be seen in the Espacio Aglutinador drawn on the wall behind the work of other artists.

Espacio Aglutinador outside

Sandra Ceballos in front of her early painting Absolut Ray

Sandra Ceballos, the ongoing director of Espacio Aglutinador, is a radical both in her life and in her art. She attended the Academia de San Alejandro in the early 1980s, a productive period of Cuban art, but she herself was defiant and feisty of art school norms and was expelled for behaving as an existentialist, not a worker.

But she went back and graduated, but chose not to attend the Istituto Superior de  Arte (ISA). In the early 1990s she received a prestigious prize for her art and was given a one person show, but she chose once again to be defiant and showed radical feminist body art.

Sandra Ceballos Untitled 1996

She has said that her ongoing radical activities and art have barred her from showing at any government sponsored spaces, and the one work by her in the National Museum is not on display.

Sandra Cebellos Untitled 1996

Sandra Ceballos

She has worked in series, one series was focused on the fragility of human existence, the limits of our mortality in a hospital environment, another series is about the fanaticism of ideology using Fidel’s speeches as a point of departure which she wrote down frantically as though demented. Her discussion of her work and her space are on this excellent video interview.  In one amusing comment she describes the space as a send up of the pomposity and seriousness of the Museum of Fine Arts in Havana. In her small house, the art is shown in the kitchen, in the garden, even in the bathroom, as well as the tiny living room.

Two other examples of radical artists who showed in Espacio Aglutinador  are Colette Rodriguez and Carlos Garaicoa. Rodriguez’s work was described as hyperrealist and the catalog that accompanied her exhibition had a triangle of what people thought was pot attached to it.

Colette Rodriguez catalog

Carlos Garaicoa Inside Havana 1995 detail

Carlos Garaicoa created a series of conceptual diptychs of crumbling Havana buildings paired with austere pyramids, invoking the Tower of Babel in his title. Such an analogy was particularly apt for the strange contradictory environment of Havana, full of principles in the air, and disappointment on the ground.

Ceballos continues to sponsor radical art collaboration and events at Espacio Aglutinador. It is an incredibly important place for Cuban art as both a concept of absolute artistic freedom in the Dada tradition, and as a space that celebrates a spirit of collaboration and mutual support even as the forces of capitalism drive artists toward pursuit of individual monetary success and compromise.

The history of Cuban art and Cuba is frought with deep contradictions, strange slogans, rapid reversals from freedom to oppression, unpredictable promotions, and commodification of its own story, but the Cuban artists that I met continue to produce thoughtful work which successfully brings together art and critique with intelligence and subtlety.

Taller de Grafica Experimental

Taller Grafica general view

Art in Cuba December 2011

Gerardo Mosquera: “For the third world “primitive” is not a matter of resuscitating pre capitalist solutions which correspond to a state when internal evolution was interrupted by Eurocentric expansion of capitalism. It is a matter of making Western art in the (Third World) way and for the “(Third World) benefit. ”

( as quoted in Louis Camnitzer, New Art in Cuba, 2004.

While little that I saw in Cuba was referring to the primitive, an important fact in itself, this wonderful quote by a foremost Cuban art critic, suggests the complexity of the art in Cuba. I met with about thirty artists and was able to witness the vast differences of accessibility to international connections, money, and materials. They ranged from individual artists based in beautiful homes to artists working collectively and collaboratively and getting by on four jobs. They were all highly trained in the government supported art schools, the high school Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro and the Istituto Superior del Arte.

Taller Grafica balcony with linoleum footprints

On the first day we met a young graphic artist at the Taller de Grafica Experimental named  Alejandro Sainz Alfonso. I bought a print from him: a Greek warrior  carrying a paper airplane on his shoulders. That seemed like a great introduction to the unpredictable week ahead. The Taller was founded in 1962 and 150 artists have passed through it over the years. Today it has about 20 – 30 members.  The printmaking is traditional media:  woodblocks, linoleum, lithography, etching.

Most of the artists I am going to write about do not have websites. Access to the internet is limited in Cuba. Think about how that changes your view of the world. Artists who have married foreigners have more access, mobility and possibilities to create websites. They seem to also have more money. One example is Reinaldo Ortega Sardiñas who is married to a Spanish wife and recently returned from two years in Spain. His work is sculpture, multimedia installation. He gave me a CD of his work (in itself an indication of resources) and told me (in English) that he does have access to the internet. His work involves some impressively expensive materials and his multimedia installations are large scale but provocative, as are his photographs.

Reinaldo Ortega Sardinas Juan from Destellos No Permeables 2011

I was struck by the photographic series, images of people entrapped by what appears to be a net made of plastic at first sight until you discover that it is made of knives or scissors.  His multimedia installation was accompanied by a dance performance by the group Danz Abierta, also with funding from abroad and an enormously creative family. Danz Albierta are even on You Tube: they have performed in NYC at Jacob’s Pillow. The performance that we saw, Mal Son ( bad song – a reference to the traditional Cuban Son music),  was intense:  dancers abruptly walking around  three short walls of a small space, with loud repetitive music– it was claustrophobic, and entrapped, like the large photographs by Sardiñas. On the back wall were filmed images of the dancers repeatedly climbing stairs.  The version performed in the US was very different, as seen on these You Tube videoes: the stage was larger, so the feeling of claustrophobia was less.

Celia/Yunior Dienteperro

For me the most provocative artists that  I met were the collaborative pair Celia /Yunior, as they are known (Celia González and Yunior Aguiar). These artists work with contemporary Cuban social structures, regulations, and boundaries as they are rapidly changing. This image is from a piece filmed in a formerly elegant swimming pool, now surrounded by jagged chunks of concrete and completely unmaintained. The two artists brought some blow up rafts and floated around as if it was a luxurious place to be. Their work frequently turns on the contradictions of public and private realities.

Celia/Yunior Bojeo/ Coasting 2006-07

One of their works, Bojeo, (Coasting), 2006 – 2008 involved a grant to go to Trinidad and Tobago where they played at being tourists with tourist cliché photographs, as they called Cuban hotels to inquire about their facilities.  The law at that time was that  Cuban residents could not stay in their own tourist hotels unless they had a foreign residence permit. So as they went around the beautiful beaches in Trinidad and Tobago, the sound track is a series of phone calls to resorts in Cuba as  learned about all of the incredible eco resorts in Cuba, but in the end they were told they could not stay at any of the hotels in Cuba. The law has since changed, but the atmosphere toward Cubans in tourist hotels is still uncomfortable. For example, they are often asked for identity cards for no reason, or they are made to feel unwelcome. The piece beautifully captures both the beauty and the clichés of the Caribbean tourist life, the amazing resources that Cuba has as an ecotourism destination, and an example of the arbitrary oppression of Cuban citizens.

Another piece by Celia/Yunior called Habana 15 segundos (Havana 15 seconds) is simply recording the replacement of a Soviet era air conditioner with a Chinese one. At the moment of exchange we see through the hole in the wall to the street outside. The exchange was meant to provide more energy efficient cooling, but of course the basic reality didn’t change much.

A provocative work that Celia/ Yunior created in collaboration with a group of friends is En Medio de Qué as part of an exhibition called Curators Go Home 2008.  Their collaborators are Javier Castro, Luis Gárciga, Renier Quer and  Grethell Rasúa. They invited friends to write on a wall about when they had been censored, either partially or completely, as well as who was the person or institution that censored them. The result was a picture of constantly changing, serendipitous censorship, dispersed information that could not be predictably mapped or even verified. The fluidity of the relationships between artists, institutions, curators, and the “system” in Cuba is its primary characteristic.

Celia/Yunior EN MEDIO DE QUÉ 2008

The piece became more intense when it emerged that someone from the US Interest Office had been invited to the exhibition, and the Cuban government ended by accusing the artists of being “traitors of the motherland,” a shocking experience for them. They were able to successfully defend themselves against the charge. The work exposed both the convoluted character of censorship procedures, and the ever present threat of an oppressive regime that took any exposure seriously.

This piece was created in an independent space, El Espacio Aglutinador, run by Sandra Ceballos, with various collaborators since 1994. The space is in her private home, which means that what she does cannot be censored or stopped. I will talk more about her work and space in the next installment.

“Private” home until just a month ago was not quite an accurate term, as Cubans were not allowed to sell their homes, only trade them for equivalent value. They could will them when they died. Recently though the law has changed to allow Cubans to sell their homes. Since no one has any capital to do that, one can’t help but wonder if the multinational banks are circling for new prey for their mortgages. We shall see. Up until the law was changed, though, the only piece of land that a Cuban citizen could legally own was their cemetery plot. So Celia/Yunior made a piece about that in  Reserve in 2010  by digging out Celia’s back yard with an area of the same size and projecting onto it the words “Derecho Perpetuo.

Celia/Yunior Reserva 2010

The title refers to the fact that in Cuba if you own land you have a perpetual right to it, but if you don’t develop it, it reverts to the State. Of course you will always have the right to your grave! When you are dead all your rights are permanent.

Waiting for Amtrak: the author in Penn Station, NYC

This blog marks my exciting experiences with  the early stages of the Occupy movement,  before the police in the service of the oligarchy started using pepper spray and obliteration tactics. You can see I look really happy here.  I was on the road lecturing on my book and I was able to visit five Occupy sites, each one has a different personality. Accidentally,  I missed the mass marches, and arrived at odd times of days, spending time talking to small groups of always extremely diverse individuals.   The spirit of the movement is certainly about conversation among people, among people in public, something that is unheard of in the U.S. for a long time. Although I am an ongoing activist, the amount of conversation I have had in all the Occupy sites with complete strangers from all walks of life,  is thrilling. That is one of the core signficant aspects of the movement. We are all so insulated in our corners of the world with our work, our families, our busy lives. Suddenly, “#Occupy ” allows us to break out of it and share common concerns.

We are joined together, we respect each other. The people united they cannot be defeated!

Seattle Occupy and AntiWar

The second experience for me was to feel the synergy among different causes. I have written already about Seattle and its intersections with various rallies that took place while the group was based in Westlake Park in downtown Seattle: anti war, anti police brutality, abolish Columbus Day, no genetically modified foods, and the list goes on.

In Des Moines Iowa I was there before and after a big march, the

Rainy Monday Morning Des Moines Occupy

people were friendly, and informed  about all sorts of different issues, from economic justice to lesbian and gay rights. They told me on a Monday morning, that most of them were at work.

Drummers at OWS

In NYC the energy center of the movement, I was overwhelmed by the  thrilling intersections of so many different people, their statements, their poetry, art, politics: support for political prisoners at the General Assembly, Tibet, brutality and illegal detention in Colombia, libraries, old, young, school children doing a project for social studies, the energies are many, stoic, resistant, calm, angry, it is an “Occupy” not an occupation an elderly black gentleman reminded me when I asked for directions in downtown NYC.

Pedal Power at OWS

Knitting for the Occupiers

SYNERGY

I am constantly amazed that people think that the Occupy movement has no demands. The demands are many and clear. I picked up the manifesto in NYC and it is a sweeping statement about all the ills perpetrated by corporations.  That is the right target and the right message, all messages, anti war, detention of immigrants, black sites, environment, all come to the same problem, the corporations  spending money for immoral purposes, making bombs, private prisons, surveillance.

So the conversations were real conversations.

Northhampton Mass Occupy

In Northhampton, Mass, there was not one, not two, but three different actions going on in the center of this small town, an Occupy, an anti war demonstration that has been there for years, and political signs for the upcoming election ( this was November 5).  The anti war protestors were at the center, the Occupy in a park not so visible, but there were anti war people included. Both included people of various ages, older, younger, children. And the Anti War people were handing out flyers about Occupy activities.

Hartford Conn Nov 8

In Hartford, in the middle of a sunny Tuesday morning, I dragged my suitcase up a muddy hill when I was changing buses, and talked with the people who were awake. They had just had a big march, but they were there and I cheered them on and was happy to meet them.

As a journalist and art critic, I have photographed as many signs as possible, recording the people’s poetry pouring out on these signs. In Seattle they were short and to the point, in NYC there were really long long essays on signs!

We also know that all the Occupy Sites have libraries. I have donated my book Art and Politics Now, Cultural Activism in a Time of Crisis to three of them.

#Occupy Wall Street

Statue participating in Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street Nov 2 9PM

Joshua Boulet Occupy Wall Street

This is a video of the poet Michael O’Brian reciting his amazing poems at OWS, Occupy Wall Street. It  has good footage giving a sense of the diversity of the activities going on there.   I have more photographs on my artandpoliticsnow flckr photostream and videos on my artandpoliticsnow YouTube channel:Drumming at Zuccotti Park NYC with other protestors

The videos include the flags waving, the sense of so many different people standing up for what they believe in.

Even the statues!

I didn’t photograph a union ironworker whose sign said he was employed and angry. When I talked to him he said he was actually lucky becuase he had work, but he was still pissed off.

This is a general shot of the encampment. And below is the work of Joshua Boulet, an artist drawing sketches at OWS. I really like his work. Buy some of it at his website.

So poets, musicians then and now, visual artists, and everybodyas a writer, artist, poet.  That is another signficance. Making signs is bringing out the creativity of every person and demonstrating the words and images are available as tools in changing the world.

As the Occupy movement is entering its new phase in mid November, it is important to hold on to the joyful connection and energy as well as the anger and discontent that is fueling this nationwide ongoing protest against the invasion of corporations into government. Here is a live stream to NYC.

Dorli Rainey

One of the most succinct statements of where the country is going was made by Dorli Rainey interviewed on Democracy Now after she was pepper sprayed on November 15.

She said in response to the Mayor’s apology to her

“ We spoke very briefly, and I told him that he is not in charge of what is going on, that our politicians really have lost control, and this sort of brutality is now endemic all over the United States and is being controlled by Homeland Security, by the FBI, and by the military against the war on terrorism. And it has nothing to do any longer with what individual mayors may want or not want to do.” This was reiterated in Oakland when bloggers pointed out that it was the retail oligarcy in downtown Oakland that put pressure on the Mayor there to eliminate the protestors.

The current horrifying sight of police in paramilitary gear spraying, beating up and arresting peaceful unarmed protestors is evidence of the fear that this movement has put in the elite. My image of the day is that all the police will suddenly realize that they are, indeed, also part of the 99 percent and take off all that gear and join us. The live stream today showed a police captain holding a sign ” police stop being mercenaries for the wealthy” !

I wonder if the copy of my book Art and Politics Now, Cultural Activism in a Time of Crisis that I donated to #Occupy Wall Street was trashed when the camp was destroyed or it was among the books that survived. In any case my spirit is there with the demonstrators

Sopheap Pich in front of part of his installation Compound

Sopheap Pich’s installation Compound at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle is an oasis of peaceful structures that can evoke anything from bombs ( according to the artist) to fish traps, chicken coops, cages, high rises or fantasy playscapes (I thought of children crawling underneath and through these light weight structures.)

There is a lot of information about the  Sopheap Pich on the website of  Tyler Rollins because Sopheap is having a simultaneous one person show there. It features Morning Glory made of the same rattan and wire  as Compound. Morning Glories for the artist refer to a survival food in Cambodia during his childhood, when the Khmer Rouge controlled Cambodia.

Morning Glory courtesy of Tyler Rollins Fine Art

He escaped with his family to a refugee camp in 1979 and then to Massachusetts  in 1984. The story of the escape of many refugees with experiences in common with him is the subject of an astonishing play by Mark Jenkins, Red Earth Gold Gate Shadow Sky. The play is directed by Victor Pappas with all the actors Asian Americans, most of them Cambodian born and many who endured similar traumas as those presented in the play. There will be more performances next weekend at High Point Community Center in South Seattle.

The cast of Red Earth Gold Gate, Shadow Sky

The play is a reading and pantomine that includes Cambodian singing ( by a pop star in Cambodia) and Cambodian dancing ( by two young people), as a play within a play, performed at a refugee camp. The play begins with the American bombing of Cambodia (remember that in the winter of 1970) and it follows the disruption of one agricultural family to the city, back to the country side, taken by the Khmer Rouge in 1974, forced to produce food they could not eat for the Khmer Rouge, escape into the jungle, bare survival, escape to refugee camp in Thailand, several years of terrible treatment, sponsorship to US, placed in ghettoes here, gangs, difficulties ( Part II will treat the forced return of some of these people as a result of the new immigration laws, there is a photographic exhibition about some of them after they return to Cambodia that is devastating).  The period has been presented in the 1984  film by Dith Pran,  The Killing Fields and there are also books  with memories of other survivors. This production is a collaboration with Don Fels, Seattle based visual artist, Sopheap Pich who has created “visual framing” for the project, and others.

Sopheap Pich concept of repeated imprisonment

Sopheap Pich Model for set design of Red Earth...

Sopheap had many of these same experiences: like  so many other Cambodians he went through repeated traumas. In 2003 he returned voluntarily to Cambodia. He  found his current medium, the material that comes from his childhood as the son of rice farmers, the traps of fishing and of other agricultural implements.

It is a cheap material, he harvests the wood himself. His sculptures are made from the trees, split , boiled and shaped, the wood is made into a mesh with  fishing wire meticulously wound at hundreds of intersections – the wire made from metal recycled from left over war materials that were carted to Vietnam and then brought back as resusable materials. This detritus of war was the foundation of construction material until recently.

But now Cambodia is having a huge and ecologically destructive development surge, particularly around the capitol. Sopheap’s studio was on a lake, a cabin on stilts. The entire lake  is being destroyed for development, shown in a few photographs that accompany the sculpture.

Sopheap Pich Compound

“Compound” can be a prison or a fantasy city. It is  built out of the cheapest material, it can be an allegory of the new Cambodian economy, the new cities being built as most Cambodians still live on a dollar a day. They are a compound and an imprisonment, as well as a dream and a fantasy.  They invite you to enter but prevent you from doing so.

Sopheap has rearranged the bomb like shapes to be towers of this city, in previous installations they rested underneath the city. Bombs into towers, war into development, but development built on air with the work of the peasant. These simple structures suggest all of this, even as the artist has declared that they are abstract. He spoke of creating a peaceful environment in his studio, an oasis of calm with his team of workers as they build the rattan with its intersections connected by wire.

detail

Calm and peace. Coming out of the traumas of his past. It makes a lot of sense. In his previous work ( see the website above for his other work) he created organs, body parts out of rattan, he made reference to the war traumas more directly in his statements. Now he has moved to a less specific expresssion, and he specifically stated that he was not a political artist, no doubt coached by the international art scene that being “political” is not an accepatable concept. But abstract, allegorical, metaphorical though his work is, it is deeply political as well.

Peace is a political concept.

As part of the events in Seattle, Boreth Ly, a brilliant Cambodian academic based in Santa Cruz, discussed Sopheap’s work as well as that of other contemporary Cambodian artists, You Khin, Chakra Oeur, Sarith Peou, Aragna Ker and Seckon Leang with the theme of the trauma of memory and displacement, “home” and identity. Unfortuantely the nightmares of the past are still visited on the present, not only in their dreams, but also in present day Cambodia which is being destroyed by development. Cambodian American Aragna Ker’s image of a Superman Zarathustra provides one way forward!

Aragna Ker Supermanzarathustra

Tomur Atagök Plastic Paradise or Don't Soil, right half 1987

The exhibition “Dream and Reality” at the Istanbul Modern Museum provides an overview of modern and contemporary women artists from Turkey. Since women constitute many of the leading artists in Turkey, the exhibition is a valuable survey of modern and contemporary art beginning in the early twentieth century and continuing to the present.

Jointly curated by Levent Çalikoğlu Chief Curator at the Istanbul Modern, Fatmagül Berktay, Zeynep Inankur and Burcu Pelvanoğlul, the exhibition offers an opportunity to look at an important chapter of contemporary art history.

The title of the exhibition is based on the title of a novel co authored by Fatma Aliye and Ahmet Mithat. But Fatma was initially identified on the cover only as “a woman.” Fatma was also the author of an 1891 essay on Muslim Women (Nisvan-ı Islam) defending women’s rights. Although women in the late Ottoman era ( note mainly urban, upper class women)were actively promoting women’s rights, this famous first female novelist (the novel was a  ”Western” genre and new to Turkish writers at this point) was unnamed on the cover of the book. The position of women in the late 19th and early 20th, right before the Republic, is important to pinpoint as privileged freedom within the limitations of traditional Ottoman customs and Sharia law.  ( read Reina Lewis Rethinking Orientalism for one  account of some of these negotiations.)

Educational reform in the Ottoman society led to a demand for the rights of women. The first essay in the excellent catalog for this exhibition by Fatmagül Berktay outlines the relationships of women and society in the Ottoman era and early Republic. They published magazines and newspapers, and participated in meetings and charity organizations. There were by the end of the nineteenth century 40 women’s magazines and 300 books that examined the relationships of men and women. They also began to struggle for their rights. After 1908 “they began to force the limits of Sharia law and go out into the public space, to expand the means of education and to earn the right to work in the public sector, in short to bring down the walls  that separated them from society.” ( p. 33) A University of Women was opened in 1914; a  School of Fine Arts for Girls in the same year, although the first art school for girls had opened as early as 1864.  Men and women studied  together by 1921 even before the  founding the Turkish Republic.

An interesting omission from the new catalog that appears in the pioneering exhibition by Tomur Atagök Cumhuriyet’ten günümüze kadın sanatçılar (Women Artists from the Republic to the Present Day) (1993) as part of the Women in Anatolia Series in honor of the 75^th anniversary of the Republic, is that women’s equality in modern Turkey can be traced back much further to the nomadic cultures of Anatolia. More specifically, as Atagök summarizes women “played a central role in economic life in rural Anatolia” and produced much of the embroidery, dressmaking, carpet weaving and other handcrafts. (p.12) The tradition of sequestering women during the Ottoman years actually was an inheritance of  Byzantine culture.  But the “new woman” of the early Republic was still part of an oppressive, patriarchal society.

Today, as one country after another in the Middle East is throwing over dictators, the spread of Islamist ideas is rapid. Knowing how women resisted Sharia in Turkey at the turn of the twentieth century might be of use today as the new Libyan government immediately declared that it wants to institute Sharia, and Iraq has stepped back to the dark ages in its treatment of women.  Afghanistan women outside Kabul are still wearing burkas as we saw in the PBS series Women, War and Peace .

Mihri Müşfik self portrait

“Hayal ve Hakikat”  begins with benchmark historical artists, among whom the most famous is Mihri Müşfık,(1886-1950?) the first significant women oil painter in Turkey (oil painting, like the novel, was a “western” import, see Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red) .  In the painting  Mihri Hanim documents her assertive attitude, as well as her negotiation with the rules of the veil. Her dark veil is completely transparent. Mihri Hanım  together with Müfide Kadri (1890 – 1912) led the way for women as part of the artistic culture of the late Ottoman society. There is a detailed discussion in the catalog by Burcu Pelvanoğlu of these early years. Many of Mihri’s students became prominent professional artists such as Fahrelnissa Zeid and  her sister, Aliye Berger included in both the exhibition of women artists and in the main display in the Istanbul Modern. Sadly Mihri Hanim herself died in poverty far from home.

Fahrelnissa Zeid

Hale Asaf Self Portrait 1920s

Hale Asaf, Mihri Hanim’s niece is also a major figure in the early period.  More modernist, and cubist, she represents the next era of oil painting in Turkey. But the really spectacular painting in this exhibition from the mid twentieth century is by Aliye Burger, Sun Rising, 1954 that embraces expressionist colors in a stunningly near abstract composition.

Aliye Berger Sun Rising 1953

Canan Beykal Mihri's Column 1993

Jumping to the late twentieth century, Canan Beykal honors Mihri Hanim in her piece Mihri Hanim’s Column,1993 a small doll sculpture that reinvokes the artists self portrait in three dimensions. It inhabits the gallery, imbuing the present with the past.

Tomur Atagök Plastic Paradise or Don't Soil, 1987 left side

Tomur Atagök’s own painting and installations are an important connection from the latetwentieth century to the present. In the work in this exhibition, Plastic Paradise, or Don’t Soil,(1987) ( see beginning of blog) she works on steel panels with an expressionist style dominated by shades of pink and red. Her theme at this time was the contradictions of society for women: as the women on the right are enjoying themselves, a man with a knife threatens them. But her work also addresses environmental concerns about the planet in both the title and the suggestion of the empty landscape on the left.  Atagök mixes popular culture with expressionist references to political events.

Füsun Onur Untitled 1993

Füsun Onur also spans the late twentieth century to the present with spare conceptual art that is both playful and full of threat, as in Untitled, 1993, a chained up chair with her name on the seat.  The chair is a symbol of power, property and social status ( catalog p. 130), she undercuts their function with the chain ( or in other works soft gauzy fabrics).

Cahide Before and After

Nur Kocak has used a pop art aesthetic paired with photo realism  to make searing comments on some of the  ironies of women’s position in Turkish society.  In this work she is addressing the impact of fame on Turkey’s first female director Cahide Sonku during the 1930s.

A few pioneering artists began to show conceptual art in the late 1970s. Starting in the 1980s and particularly in the 1990s, the Turkish contemporary art scene has flourished. Of the 74 artists in the exhibition,  50 of them are still active, born in every decade of the twentieth century from the 1930s to the 1980s.  Ahu Antman’s essay in the exhibition catalog analyzes the relationships between these artists and larger trends, particularly feminism, in twentieth and twenty-first century art. She touches on the emphasis on empowering women in the Republic, but primarily she examines the ways in which these artists explore a wide range of contemporary approaches to media, subject matter and content, much of it explicitly relating to women in society.

Gülsün Karamustafa Post Position detail quilt

Among the artists shown, the selection of the particular art work does not always stand as an indicator of the artist’s primary contribution to contemporary Turkish art. Gülsün Karamustafa’s Postposition, (1995) five quilts found in a bazaar and framed with gold gilt fabric, are an indicator of the contradictions of kitsch taste and the conservative ideology of those who buy it, only indirectly suggests that artist’s position as a major contemporary artist. Her work encompasses many themes, migration, orientalism, prostitution, women in popular culture, and much more.

Hale Tenger School of Sikimden Assa Kasimpasa 1990

The work of Hale Tenger is a crucial early installation by the artist in which she evokes potential violence in society with a great vat of red colored liquid and dozens of swords suspended above. It is not a feminist work, but it addresses the threat of violence which includes women. “The School of Sikimden Aşşa Kasımpaşa (I don’t give a fuck anymore)” 1990, was prompted by a letter bomb that killed a female professor and other acts of violence. Tenger addresses social issues, but cannot be considered a feminist artist; she does not focus on women specifically.

Inci Eviner FLuxes of Girls on Europe 2010

Among benchmark artists is Inci Eviner who has always gone her own way in terms of materials and content.  Her current medium is video, but eccentrically.  Fluxes of Girls in Europe. ((2010) superimposes videos of almost 70 moving female bodies on a satellite image of Europe. The women are small scale, although large on the map of Europe. They are accompanied by a text with words that describe their actions, “tear,” “stab” (catalog p.159).  These women seem to be trying to break free, but failing to do so.

Many of these artists have been prominent for decades. They adopt a wide range of media and subjects, suggesting the real depth of art by women in Turkey. For example, aside from those mentioned, there are several generations of conceptual art (Ayşe Erkman, Canan Beykal, Azade Köker, Gul Ilgaz, Nancy Atakan) , social activism (Nil Yalter, Esra Ersen, Selda Asal, Ipek Duben), references to folk art or history (Selma Gürbüz, Handan Börüteçene), classical art (Candeğer Furtun,) environmental issues ( Neriman Polat, Elif Çelebi, Canan Tolon), and a combination of several of these ( Aydan Murtezaoğlu).

Nilbar Güreş Undressing 2006

I will focus on a few artists with whom I was not as familiar. Şükran Moral’s provocative video Bordello, 1997, in which the artist herself plays a prostitute, is a wonderful challenge to traditional attitudes . It was actually performed in a brothel on which she hung the sign “Museum of Modern Art” and held a sign declaring that she was “for sale.” ( catalog 174). Nilbar Güreş’ video Undressing (2006) was a delightful send up of the veiling controversy in Turkey and elsewhere, as well as a compelling social commentary. The artist began entirely covered, and step by step took off one head covering after another, each one identified with a name of a specific person, but each one also representing a different social or cultural identity in Turkey. Her work underscores the oversimplifications with which this issue is often defined. Another pair of videos by Aslı Sungu’s Just Like Mother, Just Like Father (2006) also spoke about attitudes to women and what they wear, but here in the context of parental approval, as the artist kept changing between outfits that reflected different identities.

Kezban Arca Batibeki Cage Projects 2 2002 - 2005

Kezban Arca Batıbeki’s installation from her Cage Projects 2 Kitsch Room Project: “Where To?” was rich with meticulous details that accumulated into a reference to the same urban migration culture that Gülsün comments on.

Güneş Terkol desire Passed by Band 2010

Güneş Terkol sews images that address identity through dress as well . Gözde Ilkin accumulates, also mainly working with fabric, a serendipitous collection of objects from everyday life.   Ilkin is part of a collective called Atılkunst which created an audio tour of the exhibition which brings us back to the beginning of the story in the early twentieth century.

The exhibition with its excellent catalog essays documents the major role that these artists play in contemporary art in Turkey. Many of them are not politically affiliated with feminism per se, but, as suggested in this brief discussion, many of them address topics that engage social issues that concern women.  Of course, with any exhibition of this type, there is always a question of why this group was chosen, and other well-known artists ( like Suzy Hug-Levy and Şirin Iskit, just to name two) were omitted. On the whole though, the exhibition is a major contribution to literature on contemporary art in Turkey.

One of the biggest ironies of the exhibition though was the introduction by Emine Erdoğan, the wife of the Prime Minister and the juxtaposition of her attire-  elegant, but extremely conservative, with a thorough head covering with the ultra chic and contemporary Oya Eczacıbaşı the wife of the director of the  Eczacıbaşı foundation.

Emine Erdoğan

Emine receiving the exhibition catalog Oya Eczacıbaşı is on the right

Abolish Columbus Day

Today on Columbus Day Indigenous groups turned out at the Occupy Seattle site to demand the abolishment of Columbus Day, there were dances, drumming, songs, and a few speeches. They were also in support of Occupy Seattle on the other side of Westlake.

Those folks were having group meetings about media, peace and justice, and “demands” . Strategizing the way forward. I hope some of them were listening to the speeches especially by Jamal who mentioned the Hopi prediction that  those who live in villages of stone will wake up to find them gone. We are waiting for the day. The indigenous have a long view. They see the land as permanently occupied already. So it is a logical connection for them to join up with the Occupy Seattle movement. There was a big discussion about whether to change the name to Decolonize Seattle/Occupy Seattle, the vote was to leave the name the same. Indigenous peoples have played a prominent role in the Occupy Seattle demonstrations over the weeks. Probably more so than in other Occupy places. That has given the Occupy Seattle an historical perspective on the theme of exploitation since the land of downtown Seattle was historically Duwamish, a tribe that hasn’t even been recognized. In this region we have dozens of tribes that are beginning to do better as a result of revenues from casinos and the annual canoe journeys. The first provides new monies, the second build culture and community.

Seattle is Already Occupied

Black Bear

Indigenous Women

Istanbul Biennial Opening with nearby mosque behind the party

Istanbul Biennial Opening Party Looking toward Antrepo 3 venue

The 12^th Istanbul Biennial, curated by Jens Hoffman and Adriana Pedrosa offered art that created intersections of aesthetics and politics, both historically and in contemporary art.  The curators chose to distance the exhibition from  immediate political reality, but the same issues such as pursuit of oil in the Middle East, government oppression and loss of human rights, have been with us for decades.  The geo political framework of the exhibition spans most of the twentieth century and the early 21^st century. One of the earlier bodies of work is by Tina Modotti, an ardent communist who supported workers’ revolutions in Mexico in the 1920s. She is represented by photographs in the scale, but  not the context of her original work: it often appeared on the cover of New Masses.  Martha Rosler’s  Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful  series on the Vietnam War ( rather than her Iraq series of 2004), underscores that obliviousness to the atrocities of war has not changed.

Julieta Aranda There Has Been a Miscalculation

The curators chose to call this biennial Untitled (12^th Istanbul Biennial) in homage to Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957 – 1996), whom they celebrate for his ability to “infuse” the elegance of post Minimalism with political statements.  The early 1990s was of course the height of the AIDS  crisis and many artists were rejecting the abstruse for direct political statements. In this Biennial works by Gonzalez-Torres create a point of departure for group shows (although his works are only referenced in the catalog):  Untitled(Abstraction), Untitled (History), Untitled (Ross), Untitled (Death by Gun), Untitled (Passport).  Surrounding these group shows were over fifty solo shows by artists who connected to the adjacent theme show. The design of the exhibition by architect Ryue Nishizawa  enhanced this sense of satellites revolving around a central galaxy, with individual gallery spaces defined by corrugated metal walls for each solo artist, But the installation was  also a maze.

Ryue Nishizawa Installation model

This was an intentional act on the part of the curators and the architect: they referred to it as echoing the experience of walking the streets of Istanbul. The result was a sense that we could make our own show. We were free to ignore, or return, there were empty spaces between the gallery spaces, there were rooms that led us nowhere or back in a circle.

The first solo show that I encountered, Cultural Diplomacy: An Art We Neglect by Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck and Media Farzin made clear the curators’ intentions and perspectives. It consisted of a contexualization of early 1940s modernism, most specifically the 1943 mobiles of Alexander Calder which he himself described in terms of “cosmic nuclear gases.”

Alessandro Balteo Yazbek and Media Farzin Cultural Diplomacy (detail)

The artists recreate the work, and also alter the original in a photograph by writing on the abstract shapes the names of world leaders who at that time were juggling for influence: Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, Truman, Churchill,  etc.. They also provide contextual events in 1943 such as the beginning of the Manhattan Project.

Contextualized Calder

The rest of the gallery is filled with other examples that contexualize modernist art with other historical benchmarks and the simultaneous U.S. pursuit of oil and “cultural diplomacy” in the Middle East such as excerpts from Longines Chronoscope of the early 1950s, with experts expounding in much the same way that they do today, diagrams of the oil fields on Iran and Iraq from the Cheney Energy Task Force( whose shapes reminded the artists of a Calder mobile), and  a 2006 article by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker “The Iran Plans.” Nothing has changed in the US perspectives, but as Z magazine stated recently “As the  Arab Spring continues to challenge dictators, demolish old structures and ponder road maps for a better future, the U.S. remains committed to its failed policies, misconceptions, and selfish interests.” (Ramzy Baroud, “U.S.-Arab Disconnect: Revolutions Restate Region’s Priorities,”) October 2011

Clara Ianni Abstract Work/Labor

The group exhibition Untitled (Abstraction) was the least provocative in terms of art and politics. Historic figures like Lygia Clark and Lygia Pape were juxtaposed to recent artists who frequently did riffs on familiar works such as the shovel ready -made by Duchamp. Clara Ianni’s Trabalho Abstrato (Abstract Work/Labor, 2010 was a shovel with a square hole cut into it, thus rendering it useless and a play on the Marx idea of “abstract labor.”

Adriano Varejao Wall detail

Adriana Varejao transformed  abstract slashes inspired by Lucio Fontana  into a depiction of literal wounds.

Dora Maurer untitled

But among the solo shows affiliated with the abstract section , the work of Dora Maurer, an Hungarian artist who began to  create conceptual art in the early 1970s in the midst of oppression and communism, again provides the contradiction of context and production that can be so provocative. Her subtle conceptual pieces were  an active protest against the world in which she was living ( she is still a major contemporary artist in Hungary.)

The Untitled (Death by Gun) group show swung between absolutely literal representations to historical images that did not gain by their loss of context. Some artists recreated intense experiences of the past, as in the video work by Edgardo Aragon who hired his young cousins to re-enact  rituals, games and killings that actually happened in his family when they were involved with organized crime.   Mat Collishaw’s giant photograph of a bullet wound was so confrontational  that it became sexual and abstract. This installation included iconic historic images like “Matthew Brady’s” ( done by various members of his studio)photographs of the Civil War. It juxtaposed the photograph by Eddie Adams of a street execution of a Viet Cong fighter with the equally well- known image of Chris Burden being shot as an art performance. What does this tell us? That the art world is effete, or that this shooting was part of the pervasive gun culture of this time that continues to the present.

Kris Martin Obussen

Even the contemporary work had historical references:  Kris Martin’s Obussen II, used huge ornately decorated howitzer shells from World War I, and Kristen Morgin’s The Third Of May, reenacted the famous Goya using clay models of Pinocchio and Mickey Mouse as victims of the firing squad.

Kristen Morgin The Third of May

Are the curators avoiding the realities of death by gun in the present?   With the choice of Ali Younis with his hundreds of toy  soldiers,

Ala Younis The Soldiers

or Eylem Aladogan’s gun stack that morphs into feathers,

Eylem Aladogan Listen to your soul my blood is singing iron triggers that could be released

they opted for the literal, but it feels like a mannerist literal. Even more literal and yet more than that are the photographs of Letiizia Battaglia done while she was working as a photojournalist in Sicily in the mid 1970s: the dead victims of Mafia hit men are unmediated and blunt.  There  is a direct connection between these Mafiosi murders and  the targeted murders coming from camera phones in Afghanistan and Iraq or the unphotographed murder of unarmed “enemies”  like Osama Bin Laden and Anwar al-Alwaki by drones.

Situated between the stark dialectic of Untitled (Abstraction) and Untitled (Death by Gun), lie the three other group shows:  Untitled (Passport) Untitled (History) and Untitled (Ross) –the third name refers to Gonzalez-Torres’ lover who died of AIDS. This section addressed themes of love, identity and sexuality and was the most historically focused and least provocative in terms of contemporary choices of work.

Passport Gallery with Antonio Diaz Freedom Territory on Floor

Untitled (Passport) lent  itself to more subtle negotiations between aesthetics and politics.  Several artists included resonant passports: Sue Williamson’s For Thirty Years Next to His Heart (1990) was a passbook for black South Africans; two Palestinian artists Dor Guez and Baha Boukhari referred to the constantly changing status of Palestinians.

Baha Boukhari My Father's Palestinian Nationality

Rula Halawani Intimacy 2004

Rula Halawani’s Intimacy, are close up images  of people’s hands  as they get out their documents at a checkpoint  at the Qalandia checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah ( Halawani’s black and white photographs in the “history” gallery juxtaposes contemporary ruins to historic photographs of villages in Palestine.)

Rula Halawani Presence and Impressions 2009

Aydan Murteazoglu Blackboard

Untitled  (History) included Aydan Murtezaoglu’s well known work referencing Ataturk’s teaching Turks the Roman alphabet in the late 1920s as part of his language reform, as well as many works that utilized archives, books, and other documents to underscore the incompleteness and arbitrariness of what is included in history.

Some seemed a bit pedantic, others more compelling such as PAGES reconstituted a shredded letter from an American diplomat at the Iranian embassy just before the student take over. Volupsa Jarpa Library of No History based on declassified CIA documents referrng to Chile between 1968 – 1991 was mainly an unreadable aesthetic.

Voluspa Jarpa No History's Library Santiago 2010

There was again an emphasis on the aesthetics of the printed page, the redacted printed page, the shredded book, the book turned into artwork.

Altogether the exhibition was elegant and provocative, as with all biennials, there were artists included that were astonishingly weak,. The unusual choice to emphasize historical work to such a great extent, as well as an obvious predominance of Palestinian artists (The Ford Foundation provided funding to include Arab artists) and an almost absence of American artists ( a cut in the US budget?) also points to other hidden political agendas that are not even mentioned in the exhibition, but which certainly framed it.

Taysir Batniji Watchtowers 2008

I had some favorite pieces including Taysir Batniji’s Watchtowers, Israeli guard towers in Palestine that directly quote the industrial imagery of Bernd and Hilla Becher  in Germany, but with obvious differences: these photographs were taken by a surrogate photographer in a hurry, they are illegal images, and they are not derelict at all.

Rosangelo Renno’s  Immemorial also invokes modernism in its grid structure, but that impersonal geometry is abruptly interrupted by the faces of young men in a series of photographs that Renno found in archives: they are young men who died building Brasilia.

Underlying tragedy is more indirectly invoked in the Camilo Yanez  video  of the National Stadium in Santiago, site of both heroic  and horrific events . We see rolled up cubes of grass and crumbling seats  as the history of the place disappears.   Simryn Gill’s series My Own Private Anghor, also documents  the collapse of modernism in hauntingly post minimalist photographs of abandoned window panes in empty unfinished houses in Kuala Lumpur. Abraham Cruz Villegas collection of political posters from various intense events in Mexican history and Elizabeth Catlett ( who is still working, but whose aesthetic was shaped in the 1930’s and 1940’s) also look backward to a time when artists directly engaged events.

Abraham Cruz Villegas collection of Revolutionary Posters

While continuity with the present can be argued throughout this exhibition, its emphasis on both the literal and the abstractions of historical modernism, particularly conceptual and minimalist structures created a strange dynamic between the current burning state of the planet and the place of art in that discourse. Artists can engage directly with what is happening now, but in choosing this historical and aesthetic route, these curators suggest that the examples that have withstood the test of time can speak to us almost more directly, than a piece responding to the immediate event.

And, indeed, this split of the literal and the abstract is actually where we are now. On the one hand, drone warfare replaces human beings on the ground. The computer screen replaces the equipment in the field, the concept of war itself has become abstracted into perpetual war on terror. The defined wars of the past, with their titles, places, historical beginning and end, are definitely a relic of the black side of modernism. Today we have permanent war, word play, no social participation in the idea of sacrifice for a war, all of it making for a permanent abstract background to our daily lives, a background that many people don’t even bother to acknowledge as the single biggest fact of our contemporary world. This biennial is a bit like that: it includes a lot of abstraction that is post minimal framed with political discourses, but in the end, the world of politics is background to the elegance of the works, and is often even invisible.  On the other hand, we have the extremely literal and specific protests occurring around the world by masses of people who have nothing more to lose.

Homayoum Askari Sirizi "They(masses) absorb all the electricity of the social and political and neutralize it" (After Baudrillard)

This exhibition offers a new variant on the theme of art and politics. Some critics and the curators themselves are saying that it is a reaction to the more specific art and politics of the last three Istanbul Biennials. They are trying to move the equation closer to aesthetics, which in their definition is late modernism.

That may explain the pervasive sadness that I felt. For in reaching for modernist aesthetics, they are reaching for a lost cause, a failed project, a twentieth century dream. Today, we need something entirely different, and that is actually being formed on social media, with mass connections of disenfranchised and economically bankrupted youth, workers, unionists and with protests like those in Wisconsin or in New York City.  Occupy Wall Street protests against the dictatorship of the corporations; protests in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East are against ruthless political dictators often backed by the US. So against the abstraction of drones and warfare we have the physical messy, open, people based  multi media, multi issue protest against oppression and the economic systems of exploitation and war that drive it. That is the contemporary dialectic of art and politics. Where it leads us is still to be discovered.

Occupy Wall Street in Seattle

Occupy Wall Street in Seattle October 4, 2011

Wael Shawky Cabaret Crusades The Horror Show File 201o

This is the beginning of my analysis of the Istanbul Biennial which has the title “untitled” based on the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, who titled his work “Untitled” then added a parenthesis with a particular reference. In the Istanbul Biennial 2011, the curators made five group shows with the following references untitled(abstraction), untitled(Ross), untitled (history) untitled (passport), untitled (guns). The overall theme was the possibility of undermining the distance of modernism with political contexts. The range of political content went from extremely literal to absolutely abstract. Indeed the exhibition is a veritable encylopedia of different ways of examing the possible relationships of art and politics. I will write more about the specific art work in the next entry.

For now, the overall effect was that of a lot of historical art that was modernist, paired with contemporary artists recontextualizing historical modernism, or reinventing it. There were very few artists from the U.S., and none of the usual familiar names except Martha Rosler ( but the curators chose to show her earlier Vietnam series, rather than her recent series on the Iraq war.

For now, I will comment on the image above as indicative of the “new world order” ( how antiquated that idea is, and yet, there is indeed a new world order, and the US is not at the center of it). This Egyptian artist is using 200 year old marionettes to tell the story of the Crusades from the Arab perspective in a video of a marionette show. The video was in Arabic with Turkish subtitles. No English. That was exciting in itself. The narrative centered around the brutality of the Crusaders.It was riveting.

More to come on specific works.

Elizabeth Colborne Lumber Mills of Puget Sound

Seattle art historian David Martin’s exhibition at the Whatcom  Museum is a perfect partner to the late summer days we are experiencing. We can empathize both with Colborne’s early delight in the forests of the Northwest, her close up drawings, paintings, and prints, as well as her later work which suggests the devastation that those great forests invited. As in the image above, she always maintains a distance, and does not incorporate any critical comment. She only presents the fact of the lumber mill in Bellingham with amazing technical desterity. The wood blocks with multiplesubtle colors demonstrate her command of thmedium. But more than that, she has suggested both the beauty and the tragedy of the Northwest forests. Another work of 1933 Cedar Blocks

as well as this one

 

Cedar Logs for Shingles

show us the consumption of the resource in which the Northwest was so richly endowed.

Colborne’s early work is an example of late nineteenth centurychildren’s book illustrationsa genre full of detail, delicate color and a sweetness that has disappeared from children’s books almost entirely. I have recently been reading an early illustrated version of Raggedy Ann to my grandchildren and the illustrations are a wonder to behold, compared to later editions of the same work which are highly simplified.

Colborne also did paintings that suggest her deep immersion in the woods, she seems to be standing in the very midst of the forest as she painted these works. We enjoy standing there with her.

Finally, as an end of summer image, I give you this clam digger, an image of people in an activity which I saw out of the train window on the way to the museum.

Elizabeth Colborne Clam Diggers 1900

The Sister Peaks of the Cascades 1925

That gave me a satisfying sense of continuity with the past.

Of course it also reminded me that this was the era of those depressing images of the native peoples of the Northwest that are on many of ourferry boats, the dispossessed native peoples on the shore harvesting the bounty of the Northwest in the midst of their new poverty.

Natives in the early 1900s

Backbone launch of inflated sculpture

The Backbone Campaign has completed another Summer Action Camp which culminated in the launch of this sculpture powered by helium balloons and kayaks and floated on Lake Washington in full view of the Paul Allen helicopter port off Mercer Island. The launch of the “mooning” sculpture was accompanied by a second banner declaring the disparity between the top one percent and the rest of us

Getting these banners in the air was not easy. Making these banners at the Action Camp on Vashon was fun, but it helped to be with experts.

First we figured out what we were going to say. Then we projected giant letters ( 8 feet high) onto Tyco fabric painted orange, then we cut it out and sewed it onto a netting. The giant pant sculpture required a lot of sewing on an industrial sewing machine and two huge inflated balloons to hold it up.

Even with a lot of help and skill and knowledge, the project was subject to the whims of nature, as currents and winds, gravity and heat, all created unexpected events. But the protest came off! It concluded with songs, speeches, chants and dances ( The bare ass review).

Backbone Bare Ass Review protesting greed

But the camp lasted for eight days and during that time there was both skills taught like kayaking and tree climbing, as well as protest art making and in depth programs presented by groups like Vida Urbana who are actively protesting evictions of both owners and tenants in Boston

Vida Urbana use the sword and shield to protest evictions in Boston

These highly effective organizers give advice to people who have received eviction notices letting them know what their rights are and what the procedure is. They also show up at auctions of houses and heckle buyers.

The United Workers group are calling publicly exposing the abuses of day laborers in Baltimore. They also have brilliant strategies and tactics and are realizing a lot of success in getting better wages for exploited hourly workers who can’t belong to unions. The stories of exploitation among stores on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in national chain restaurants like Cheesecake Factory, Hooters, Pier 9 and Phillips Sea Food are mind boggling. ESPN Disney shut down with one week warning. Unitedworkers.org  organized a protest to demonstrate that developers were getting all the money from taxpayers.

This chart demonstrates that respect for human rights, sustainable practices and public benefits are intersecting actions that lead to a better situation for everyone.  These intersections can replace the current top down, divide and conquer approach of corporate developers

In the evening I did a presentation about my book Art and Politics Now, Cultural Activism in a Time of Crisis as well, showing these political activists how effectively artists use art in so many different ways to address political issues. This is my current focus, supported by funding from the Puffin Foundation.  See the rest of my website to learn more.

And that was only part of the program for one day! Anyone that attended the whole camp had an intense education in tactics, strategies, and techniques for activism. There were people who had traveled from all over the country to carry ideas back to their own campaigns. That is the idea of “Localize This!” the name of the action camp.

And speaking of organizing, on August 29 in Pioneer Square there was a protest of the Tar Sands with a march to President Obama’s office to ask him not to approve the Keystone pipeline.

Here are some pictures from that event.

Tar Sands Protest Banner going from Seattle to DC

I first heard about Tar Sands at last years Backbone Action Camp and did a blog about it then. Do really educate yourself on it read Tar Sands by Andrew Nikiforuk. But try to find a protest right after you read it or you will be really down in the dumps. He covers every aspect of the ecological disaster, human disaster, planet disaster.

Last summer at the Backbone Camp we heard from courageous young activists who were planning on blocking the giant trucks from driving from Lewiston to Alberta. Apparently they had a hundred people lying in the road in Moscow Idaho to continue that protest last week. All across the country people are furious and protesting. Here is a video about the Megaload arriving in Idaho on scenic Highway 12.

Greed must be stopped. The rape of the planet must be stopped. If not we will be stopped by nature. Tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, nuclear spills, oil spills, take your pick. The planet will win in the end. What kind of a future are we giving our grandchildren.