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All created an atmosphere of despair (December 2 2012) All created an atmosphere of despair (December 2 2012)

Muhammad Abdul Bari the 59 year old British Bangladeshian secondary school teacher has published an article on Aljazeera titled ‘Israel’s scorched earth policy in Gaza could prove fatal’ discussing how the US and other western governments have failed to publicly criticise Israel for its iron-fist policy on Palestine. Bari states “Beyond Gaza, the situation in historic Palestine is not much different. Israeli land grabbing, illegal settlements and ethnic cleansing in occupied territories, forced removal of families from their homes, the increasing refugee problems, massive unemployment, daily humiliation of Palestinian people in the crossings, the erection of the “apartheid wall” – have all created an atmosphere of despair. As in its 2009 operation, Israel is trying to match its overwhelming military might with its superior media outreach in the western world. As a result, and due to what seems to be America’s depressingly unquestioned support for Israel, many in the West buy in to the Israeli narrative claiming Hamas as a “terrorist” organisation. Sadly, people have a short memory. They forget that Hamas, for all its flaws, formed the legitimate Palestinian government after winning an internationally-accepted election in 2006. The fear of being accused as anti-Semitic has inhibited many in the West from publicly criticising Israel’s historic injustice to the Palestinians. Some try to be ambivalent; in order to prove their neutrality, the only thing they do is offer some advice to Israeli and Palestinian politicians to sort out the mess on the negation table. However, an overwhelming majority of people in the Muslim world and many in Asia, Africa and Latin America consider Israel a Pariah state, supported by the world’s sole superpower, the United States. Many consider Israel as a Goliath when it comes to the Palestinian people.”

 

Inspired by Aljazeera ow.ly/fuNhQ image source Facebook ow.ly/fuNMd

We struggle every day against our obstacles (November 11 2012) We struggle every day against our obstacles (November 11 2012)

Mohammed Matter ‘Abu Yazan’ the Palestinian political activist, writer and a member of Gaza Youth Breaks out movement, writes “My story is marked by violence, persecution, arrests, abuse and resistance.” Matter has published an article on Aljazeera stating “It has been almost two years now since we wrote our manifesto. We called it a manifesto, but in reality, I’m not sure what it was. Was it a manifesto, or was it a cry for help? Perhaps, an accusation, or even perhaps a demand to the world and to ourselves; a demand for change from the outside and from within. It was before the uprisings began around us, and they have been roaring the last two years in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Bahrain. But we had felt like shouting in the dark, and while this raging had brought light into the darkness of the dictatorships around us, the night around us has not thinned even a bit. No, if anything, it has only become darker. … We struggle every day against our obstacles and for our dreams, and you can see that in all the amazing creativity coming out of Gaza, in our art, poems, writing, videos and songs, you can hear it and meet us in the talks we give all over the world. Yes, we wrote a manifesto, and maybe that was just the bright and loud outcry of the beginning of a journey, whose path is hard and tiring, thorny and also often very quiet and dark. But it is always there. So two years later, we say: We will be free. We will live. We will have peace. And we are always out there, fighting our daily struggle, full of the resistance we inherited from a long struggle for Palestine. We live and write and say and sing silent or loud manifestos every day. Just listen to us.”

 

Inspired by Aljazeera ow.ly/eUhfO image source Facebook ow.ly/eUhc9

Yisroel Dovid Weiss the 55 year old US Haredi rabbi, activist and spokesman for a branch of Neturei Karta, an anti-Zionist group, has been interviewed on Aljazeera explaining why Zionism and Judaism are not the same, “This is against the will of the Almighty and this is not what it means to be a Jew.” Weiss is renowned for his stance against the legitimacy of the Jewish state and occupation of Palestine. Weiss is quoted as stating, “The Zionists use the Holocaust issue to their benefit. We, Jews who perished in the Holocaust, do not use it to advance our interests. We stress that there are hundreds of thousands Jews around the world who identify with our opposition to the Zionist ideology and who feel that Zionism is not Jewish, but a political agenda…What we want is not a withdrawal to the ’67 borders, but to everything included in it, so the country can go back to the Palestinians and we could live with them…” On the issue of Iran Weiss has stated that Ahmadinejad is not an enemy of the Jews, but is a “God-fearing man [who] respects the Jewish people and he protects them in Iran”.

 

Inspired by Aljazeera http://ow.ly/9FxJN image source Rense http://ow.ly/9FxT8

Michael C Hudson the US Professor of Government and International Relations, and currently serving as the Director of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore, states “For an unforgettable ‘Groundhog Day’ experience, there is nothing better than a trip to Palestine and Israel.  We’ve experienced multiple revolutions over the past six decades in information technologies, social mores and political upheavals. The Soviet empire collapsed, democracy advanced around the globe, Asia began to rise and the West began to decline. It is all quite disorienting. But one thing remains constant: The Arab-Israeli conflict. It just grinds on and on. For those of us who have been studying it professionally, there is something oddly reassuring about that. For most others not directly involved, it has just become boring. Too bad, because, like a smoldering peat fire, the Palestine problem helps keep the entire Middle East on the boil… the US is out to lunch as far as this matter is concerned … the Obama administration appears resigned to “muddling through” even though its fecklessness feeds America’s many other problems across the region.”

Inspired by Michael Hudson http://ow.ly/7OEPm image source Georgetown Uni http://ow.ly/7OEF2

My work is about iconic people, places and events of our day.  Recorded visually through daily compilations of manipulated digital images, posted online and disseminated via online media and social networks. The works are diaristic in nature that metaphorically record a spectators experience of the contemporary digital age.  The resulting work intentionally has a painterly aesthetic acknowledging my historical painting practice.

Adapting Pop Arts notion of mass media imagery into a context of the contemporary digital age, the work draws on a myriad points of reference. Utilizing fractured images to provide an allusion to the digital noise pounding away daily into our sub consciousness.  The work diverges from the traditional Pop Art notion of a pronounced repetition of a consumer icon, instead this work focuses on the deluge of contemporary digital content. The compilation of the fragmented imagery is vividly distractive, not unlike cable surfing or a jaunt through Times Square.

The work is premised on the basis that Pop art in its beginnings, freeze-framed what consumers of popular culture experienced into iconic visual abstractions. With the advent of the techno age, visual information circulates in such quantities, so rapidly and exponentially, that to comprehend a fraction of it all becomes a kind of production process in itself.  Hence this work considers fragmented elements of Pop Culture through an artistic and conceptual exploration of specific people and events of the day.

The works are presented as individual pieces printed with Archival-Inks on 308g Cottonrag-paper, along with A3 sized bound monthly editions, and monthly looped video compilations.
www.ianbunn.com

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