Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

David Choe the 36 year old American painter, muralist, graffiti artist and graphic novelist of Korean descent, having achieved success with his “dirty style” figure paintings comprising raw, frenetic works which combine themes of desire, degradation, and exaltation; has been the subject of an article on The Daily Beast by Lizzie Crocker titled ‘Facebook Artist David Choe Launches New Gig With Porn Star Asa Akira’. Crocker states “A year after David Choe became the most surprising multimillionaire to emerge from Facebook’s IPO, the bad-boy graffiti artist is making the publicity rounds with a new pornographic podcast featuring porn star Asa Akira. …Tits, ass, and goblins. Bare-chested chicks straddling hellhounds. Perverse imagery has long permeated graffiti artist David Choe’s work, including the infamous murals he spray-painted at Facebook’s first headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. The company’s then president, Sean Parker, allegedly told Choe to “go crazy and draw as many giant ‘cocks’” on the walls as he wanted. Choe was paid for the job in Facebook stock, which was valued at $200 million when the social media behemoth went public last February. …A year later, Choe is opening up about his new gig with porn star Asa Akira: DVDASA … The first two episodes of DVDASA feature comedian Yoshi Obayashi as a special guest, though Choe hopes to lure actors, rap artists, and other “legitimate people” into the podcast studio… He claims he created the podcast as a forum to voice personal transgressions and divulge bizarre fetishes and fantasies. “When you talk about everything openly, it’s hell on your personal relationships,” he says. “It’s weird, because it feels good and yet it’s also really self-destructive. But [Asa and I] have already figured out that we’re self-destructive people anyway, so it’s like, fuck it.”

Inspired by Lizzie Crocker, The Daily Beast ow.ly/hYBSx Image source Facebook ow.ly/hYBS8

Corban Walker the 45 year old Irish Sculptor has been profiled by Blake Gopnik in an article published in The Daily Beast titled ‘Sculptor Corban Walker Explores Size And Scale’. Gopnik states “Corban Walker has something every artist needs: a critic trap, stretched taut across the ground floor of his studio in Brooklyn. A barrier of steel wires runs the width of Walker’s front room, from about chest height to the level of a tall man’s head; in a moment of distraction, this critic almost got his face egg-sliced. Walker, however, doesn’t have to worry about his own safety, because the bottom wire is set at what he calls “Corbanscale”—it barely grazes the top of his head as he passes back and forth underneath. …Walker was born with achondroplasia, the major cause of dwarfism. He is four feet tall. “The core of what I’ve been doing over the last 20 years is about this: my measure and the rule laid out for the average individual,” he says. And his art is about how that “rule” doesn’t fit him. He says that the wire piece, called “Latitude,” is possibly the most confrontational of his works about stature: “You could grate yourself [on it]—but I can’t.” But just about everything he’s made is a nod to his height, or at least to the number four, which describes it. A work in progress in his studio is a latticework cube made of plastic orange rods, designed so that there’s one natural viewpoint at Walker’s eye level and another at a more “standard” level—the confrontation of “Latitude” seeming to yield, in this piece, to conciliation.”

Inspired by Blake Gopnik ow.ly/fKd9N image source Facebook ow.ly/fKd98

A democracy where people not dollars matter (May 19th 2012)

Joseph Eugene Stiglitz the 69 year old American economist and professor has published an article on The Daily Beast titled “The 99 Percent Wakes Up” pointing out  that “Inequality isn’t only plaguing America—the Arab Spring flowered because international capitalism is broken.” In the article Stiglitz states “…I met with protesters in Madrid’s Retiro Park, at Zuccotti Park in New York, and in [Tahrir Square] Cairo… The protesters have been criticized for not having an agenda, but such criticism misses the point of protest movements. They are an expression of frustration with the electoral process. They are an alarm. …they are asking for a great deal: for a democracy where people, not dollars, matter; and for a market economy that delivers on what it is supposed to do. The two demands are related: unfettered markets do not work well, as we have seen. For markets to work the way markets are supposed to work, there has to be appropriate government regulation. But for that to occur, we have to have a democracy that reflects the general interests, not the special interests. We may have the best government that money can buy, but that won’t be good enough.

Inspired by The Daily Beast http://ow.ly/aS6rW image source http://ow.ly/aS6zP

I think we could create a run on a bank (May 1st 2012)

Michael Lewis the 51 year old USA non-fiction author and financial journalist has published an article on The Daily Beast interviewing himself ‘about how to make the Occupy Wall Street movement better – His strategy: boycott the banks!’ In the article Lewis states, “The big complaint about the movement is that it doesn’t know what it wants. If someone put you in charge of the movement, what would you have it do? I’m not certain that they’re wrong to be as woolly-minded about their goals as they seem to be. By not being too explicit about what they want, they attract anyone who is upset about anything. But if I were in charge I would probably reorganize the movement around a single, achievable goal: a financial boycott of the six “ too big to fail ” Wall Street firms: Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo. We would encourage people who had deposits in these firms to withdraw them, and put them in smaller, not “too big to fail” banks. We would stigmatize anyone who invested, in any way, in any of these banks. I’d try to organize college students to protest on campuses. Their first goal would be to force the university endowments to divest themselves of shares in these banks.”

Inspired by The Daily Beast http://ow.ly/awNlr image source Justin Hoch http://ow.ly/awNjr