Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

Jason Lazarus the 37 year old American artist, curator, writer, and Assistant Adjunct Professor has been interviewed by Julia Halperin for Blouin Artinfo in an article titled ‘26 Questions for Semiotically Inclined Photo and OWS Sign Artist’. In the article Lazarus states “The documentation of OWS created more questions than answers — the disparate messages on protest signs resisted clear, linear, or congealing narratives that traditional media rely on to produce content. Re-creating the signs, collaboratively, with the public, allowed a way to not only produce those messages documented widely across time and space en masse, but the process of creating them literally slowed down readings of the phenomenon, producing an experience of heightened awareness of the productive (unresolved) questions that linger in OWS’s wake as well as to the economy of protest (materials, aesthetics, scale, textual play/innuendo/multiple layers of meaning). The project is a kind of reverse-photography, imaging 3D sculptures from flattened images demands a careful, multiple-layered, and active reading. …The project … frames a collective process of becoming where our strain of late capitalism is openly and visibly questioned and criticized as incompatible with our current iteration of democracy. Meanwhile, the capital in the system, like water, continues to fill in the gaps with unending resilience and infinite flexibility. … it’s important to me that the project started as re-created signs that actually occupied public space as part of Occupy USF Tampa, and they have since traveled to alternative exhibition spaces on their way to a museum. They will make their way back to alternative venues and street as well. Political art is optimal when it’s most liquid, able to travel through contexts and paradigms. I’m interested in how this project will change as its referents become distant with time.”

Inspired by Julia Halperin, Blouin Artinfo ow.ly/jAq2p Image source Twitter ow.ly/jAq0S

Jodi Dean the 44 year old American International lecturer having written widely about politics and culture with activist interests include digital media, post-structuralism, neoliberalism, psychoanalysis, and the OCCUPY movement. Dean has published an article in The Guardian titled ‘Occupy and UK Uncut: the evolution of activism’ claiming the challenge these movements face is how to grow without becoming instruments of the systems they contest. Dean states “Earlier this month, Occupy Our Homes engaged in anti-foreclosure actions across the United States. In Atlanta and Minneapolis, activists helped families occupy vacant bank-owned homes. In Sacramento and Detroit, groups protected residents from eviction. In Philadelphia, Chicago, and St Louis, demonstrators protested against foreclosure. Thousands took part in these actions, yet coverage was restricted to local media outlets. Why did the protests get so little attention? Declining public interest in Occupy doesn’t account for it. Occupy Sandy, a relief effort organised by Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters to assist the victims of the hurricane, was covered. …Occupy Sandy’s mutual aid connected the hurricane to a critique of capitalism for failing to provide infrastructures adequate to the needs of an urban population in a changing climate. It has used its access to the community as an opportunity for consciousness-raising. Similarly, UK Uncut links its attack on Starbucks and Google with a larger analysis of the connections between profits for corporations and cuts for people. It channels anger at corporations’ failure into an exposition of the deeper unfairness of the system itself. Both movements are embedding themselves deeper into society. Instead of jumping from issue to issue or rising up only to sink back down, they are building solidarity. They’re organising for a longer struggle, finding ways to create spaces for debate within a broader commitment to collective, egalitarian solutions.”

Inspired by The Guardian ow.ly/gwUNH image source lareviewofbooks ow.ly/gwULb

Terri Ciccone the American founder and editor of ContrappostoArt.com a street art enthusiast blog, has released an article on Blouin Artinfo titled ‘A Prognosis of Street Artist EKG’s Irregular Heartbeat’. Ciccone states “If you keep your eyes open, you can actually see a pulse of New York City everywhere. And I don’t mean “pulse” the way news anchors refer to it … I mean a beat, an ever streaming murmur, a recorded, monitored, living pulse. I mean street artist EKG’s orange heart beat running throughout the city. EKG’s tag, or “html link” as he sometimes thinks of it, is that recognizable blip on a machine that reminds us we’re alive. …More than 2,000 of these orange oil stick lines run along the bottom of walls like mice, and sneak through our feet as they slither down streets, go in and out of doors, run underground and live on beams holding up our subway stations, seeming to trail off into infinity. …And there’s a lot more to EKG’s tag specifically. The idea of symbol recognition is one that’s made a lot of people a lot of money, and one that is very relevant to our time. Think about the difference between the Nike symbol and the Occupy Wall Street tag, OWS. Both are highly recognizable but hold very different meanings. … EKG’s tag is not just another word scribbled in marker on the wall of the C train. It’s a creative reminder of who we are, where we live, and what kind of power our living, breathing bodies and minds can have.”

Inspired by Blouin Artinfo ow.ly/dP7rt image source Facebook ow.ly/dP8dY

“getting money out of politics” his top goal (April 5th 2012)

Michael Francis Moore the 57 year old US filmmaker, social critic and activist has published an article calling out for the occupy movement to take political action from within the political system. Moore states “Here’s what we don’t do: don’t turn Occupy Wall Street into another bureaucratic, top-down organization. That will certainly kill it. Baby boomers who grew up working within traditional organizations need to calm down and not shoehorn this movement into the old paradigm of “Let’s elect people to office and then lobby them to pass good laws!” Let Occupy take its natural course. The candidates for office that we need are in this movement. (Are you one of them? Why not? Someone has to do it, and it would be better if it was you!) The laws that must be enacted to make this a more just nation will come in due time. And not ten years from now; some of this will happen this year. The leading candidate for Congress from my hometown of Flint, Michigan, has already taken a pledge to make “getting money out of politics” his top goal once in office. Others have joined him. We need to vote for them and then hold them to it.”

Inspired by Michael Moore http://ow.ly/9MLc0 image source David Shankbone http://ow.ly/9MM8H

Concentration of wealth a central issue (November 28th)

Frances Fox Piven the 78 year old US sociologist and political scientist has published an article on Aljazeera supportive of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Piven states “… (OWS) movement has already made the concentration of wealth at the top of this society a central issue in US politics … By making Wall Street its symbolic target and branding itself as a movement of the 99 per cent, OWS has redirected public attention to the issue of extreme inequality, which it has recast as, essentially, a moral problem … Economic policy, including tax cuts for the rich, subsidies and government protection … was shrouded in clouds of propaganda  … Now, in what seems like no time at all, the fog has lifted and the topic on the table everywhere seems to be the morality of contemporary financial capitalism.

Inspired by Frances Fox Piven http://ow.ly/7zk0v image source moonbattery http://ow.ly/7zk5U