Call it the Week of the Heroine (or Hero): we posted about Dulce Pinzón’s celebration of the immigrant worker, John Emerson commented on those national heroes supported by anarchist or socialist infrastructures – namely, your local firefighters – and Superman and Batman are to join forces with their Islamic counterparts.
The Wa replaced ads in Marseilles with resumes, commenting on public space, street art, and the economy, and in Virginia, runners took to the streets for a global warming themed Critical Run.
Brian Droitcour rekindled the conversation on Networked Equality at Rhizome, and Sebastian Haunss is amassing a gallery of Global Justice Movement posters, to which we added our work.
Tiny Eyebeam is now taking applications for residencies via Twitter. You get $50 and 2 days to complete a micro-project.
We survived Art Hate Week.
The PostNatural Organism of the Month at the Center for PostNatural History is American Chestnut Tree, and it is indicative of the organization’s modus operandi. The Chestnut underwent genetic modification at the SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry program to resist the blight plaguing its species. Since the Chestnut is an iconic American tree, the pressure was on for scientists to cater to public perceptions, which resulted in the use of less-controversial genes for this early GMO. Culture, nature and biotechnology played equal roles in the development of the American Chestnut, and this interplay is the Center’s focus.
PostNatural refers to living organisms that have been altered through processes such as selective breeding or genetic engineering.
Most recently, ExitArt hosted two of the Center’s traveling exhibitions – Transgenic Organisms of New York State and Strategies in Genetic Copy Prevention – during the Corpus Extremus (LIFE+) exhibition, curated by Boryana Rossa.
Strategies in Genetic Copy Prevention (pictured above) offers an historical perspective on human inhibition of reproductive systems. Modern techniques of prohibiting new life are highlighted, whereas in Transgenic Organisms of New York State (below), the focus is on altering life. Each of the organisms in the exhibit have been altered or engineered for a human purpose, a hybridization of culture and biology.
Online, the Center offers a timeline of GMOs permitted for field tests in the United States between 1987 and 2008. Based on data collected by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and organized by Virginia Tech’s Information Systems for Biotechnology, the timeline makes the permitting and experimenting processes transparent.
Tactical media artist Paolo Cirio, whose past work includes Google Will Eat Itself, presents the Open Society Structures tryptic as a framework for “direct, participative and processual democracy,” literally mapping elements of a society and flows of power for future use.
It includes a basic taxonomy of social, economic and political concepts relevant to the creation of a perfect society, showing the direction of dependencies, feedback interactions, and the relative significance of qualities and activities.
The Yes Men’s latest action, coordinated to promote the release of their film, targets Dow Chemical, the corporation responsible for cleanup of the world’s largest industrial accident, at Bhopal.
B’eau-Pal, a satirical designer brand of bottled water, is pumped from a well where 25 years of slow-leaching toxins from the fallout have poisoned whole generations, directly due to Dow’s negligence.
The Bhopal Medical Appeal and top London creative design firm Kennedy Monk collaborated with the Yes Men on the effort (detailed in the video below) which is aimed as much at forcing Dow’s hand as calling attention to their attempts to greenwash their image.
This fall, follow-up actions are planned, and they are seeking collaborators, particularly in New York, who can contribute financially, sew, swim, get arrested, or pretty much anything else.
Dulce Pinzón’s Catwoman is Minerva Valencia from Puebla, who works as a nanny in New York and sends back $400 per week.
Heroism was elevated in the national consciousness to new levels after 9/11, and themes of self-sacrifice were made all the more important in the media, as police, fire fighters, and (after the attack) members of the military gave life and labor over to their service. Dulce Pinzón’s Superheroes gives immigrant workers in New York City the same limelight, for their toils in “less spectacular” settings.
The Mexican immigrant worker in New York is a perfect example of the hero who has gone unnoticed. It is common for a Mexican worker in New York to work extraordinary hours in extreme conditions for very low wages which are saved at great cost and sacrifice and sent to families and communities in Mexico who rely on them to survive. . . The principal objective of this series is to pay homage to these brave and determined men and women that somehow manage, without the help of any supernatural power, to withstand extreme conditions of labor in order to help their families and communities survive and prosper.
Twenty color photographs document the immigrants in their workplaces, dressed in the garb of a popular American or Mexican superhero(ine). Their name, and hometown, are published alongside the number of years they’ve lived in NYC, and how much money they send back to Mexico weekly.
Pinzón’s work is currently on display at the Cervantes Institute. [es]
Subscribe via RSS
Facebook
Twitter