Tag Archives: political

Hank Willis Thomas on Black Male Identity

Re-blogging from photoandimaging.net

“What Is Common to All of Us?” Redefining Black Male Identity
by Hank Willis Thomas
Creative Time Reports.

Drawing from his collaborative transmedia project “Question Bridge: Black Males,” the artist Hank Willis Thomas examines the racial context of the 2012 killing of Jordan Davis as the man who shot the 17-year-old Florida resident, Michael Dunn, is retried for murder.

Screenshot from “Question Bridge: Black Males,” a collaborative transmedia project of Chris Johnson, Hank Willis Thomas, Bayeté Ross Smith and Kamal Sinclair.

Every person has a “day of infamy” in his or her life. For the parents of Jordan Davis, that day was November 23, 2012. For the parents of Trayvon Martin, it was February 26, 2012. For the parents of Michael Brown, it was August 9, 2014. For me, it was February 2, 2000—a Tuesday. That was the day I lost Songha Thomas Willis, my cousin, roommate, best friend and, for all intents and purposes, big brother. He was shot dead in front of dozens of people during a robbery in which he did not resist. [read more]

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{Proud to say that Hank was a alumnus of Photography & Imaging and a student in my senior projects class.}

Yes Lab: Operation Second Thanks

Our heroes at the Yes Lab strike again calling for renewable energy:

Yes Men at Dept of Homeland Security

To a dance-ready crowd of security and defense contractors at the Homeland Security Congress in Washington, one “Benedict Waterman”—a crazy-haired, bespectacled official supposedly from the U.S. Department of Energy—announces a revolutionary new energy plan to convert the U.S. power grid to entirely renewable sources by the year 2030, and give ownership of the new power-generation facilities to those on whose land they’re built—from Native American nations (thus serving as reparations for genocide) to anyone who puts a solar panel on his or her roof. (See full press release here.)

The plan, “Waterman” announces, will give us independence from the fossil fuel companies who are leading us to ruin, and will additionally create millions of jobs, eventually save half a trillion per year on health care costs, result in lower energy costs and greater price stability, and—bonus!—give our civilization a chance of surviving well into the future. (One such plan is described in some detail here.) [read more]

Link to interview on the Democracy Now site

PAD/D Archive of Political Art

 Highlights From the PAD/D Archive.

The PAD/D archive is comprised of over 2,700 items, split into two sections: Regular files made up of documents, flyers, photographs and slides, and large flat files for posters, prints, and stencils.

Highlights From the PAD/D Archive

Aside from material related directly to PAD/D, countless files are dedicated to socially conscious arts organizations active between 1979–1990. Alongside familiar names such as the Guerrilla Girls, Group Material, Gran Fury, and the Art Workers Coalition (AWC), one will discover a myriad of lesser known collectives such as Angry Arts and Carnival Knowledge. Were it not for the efforts of PAD/D, the histories of many of these groups would have gone undocumented. The archive was formally donated to MoMA in 1994 by PAD/D members Barbara Moore and Mimi Smith. The photographs below represent a tiny portion of the archive. [see photo essay on highlights from the collection]

Read the second article about PAD/D on Hyperallergic

Subversive Desires – Hannah Hoch

I’ve been thinking a lot about collage later and it’s relation to our remix culture. and today came across this article about one of my favorite aritsts, Hannah Hoch

Subversive Desires –  on Hannah Hoch retrospective in London by Isabel Stevens
via Aperture Foundation blog

In the early twentieth century, photo and text snippets could be found everywhere, from film posters and political propaganda to magazine covers and artworks. Dadaists were most taken with intervening with photography specifically: photomontage was the closest thing to visual anarchy and in their eyes, the perfect tool for satire and social commentary. With so many artists mocking society with scissors and scalpels, what makes the photo scraps of German artist Hannah Höch so radical, even now, ninety-odd years later? read more

 Link to Whitechapel exhibition with more information on Hoch.

Review in the Guardian. 

Youth in Iran: Inside and Out

Youth in Iran: Inside and Out.

Great Lens Blog featuring the work of Iranian photographer Hossein Fatemi. He offers a very different view of Iran.

“The photographer Hossein Fatemi explores the contrast between how young Iranians present themselves in public and in private, when they are beyond the watchful eye of the Islamic republic’s authorities. ”  Read more…”

Link to his An Iranian Journey  on Panos Pictures.

Who Really Owns Your Photos in Social Media?

Who Really Owns Your Photos in Social Media?
Mediashift | PBS

.A recent U.S. court decision clarified that media organizations cannot assume that photos shared via Twitter are rights-free, to be used as though they were in the public domain.

In the case of Agence France-Presse (AFP) v. Morel, U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan ruled in favor of freelance photographer Daniel Morel. Her judgment: Both AFP and the Washington Post had infringed on Morel’s copyright. READ MORE

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei is the one of the most important and controversial artists working in China today. As I write this, his whereabouts unknown after being taken into custody by Chinese Authorities as he boarded a plane to go to Hong Kong on April 3. From a post on ARTINFO

[online petition organized by Guggenheim Museum calling for his release] 

Who is Ai Weiwei? According to Chinese authorities, he is a dissident to be watched, one whose inflammatory blog needed to be silenced. But to others, the Chinese conceptual artist, architect, photographer, and curator — loathed and loved for his human rights activism — is the courageous voice needed in today’s repressive China. read more

***Must watch video interview in the Guardian on the eve of his show at the Tate Modern in March 2010. Video: Ai Weiwei – ‘Life is never guaranteed to be safe’ 

Excerpt from the film Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry by Alison Klayman

Read Profile on Ai Weiwei in The New Yorker, May 24, 2010

TED talk film by Ai Weiwei

Tate Modern protest calls for release of missing Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei. Pictures of sunflower seeds bearing names of 50 of the detained or ‘disappeared’ laid on grass outside gallery.

more Links from the Guardian