Art Creates Change: The Kym Pruesse Speaker Series at OCADU
This February, Toronto’s OCAD University offers the Kym Pruesse speaker series titled Art Creates Change. Susan Buck-Morss and Wafaa Bilal (previously seen on Groundswell) will each speak in the first half of the month, on February 3rd and 10th respectively. Below is more information about each event.
Susan Buck-Morss:
“Inheriting Culture: History in a Communist Mode”
Thursday, February 3, 7 p.m.
Susan Buck-Morss is Professor of Political Philosophy and Social Theory in the Department of Government, and a member of the graduate fields of German Studies and History of Art at Cornell University. Her training is in Continental Theory, specifically, German Critical Philosophy and the Frankfurt School. She is currently researching and lecturing on politics and religion, theories of sovereignty, legitimacy and faith, and economies of political vision. Buck-Morss’s talk is the conclusion of a cycle of three lectures on this theme, presented at the University of Toronto, Ryerson University and OCAD University, and is held in conjunction with the exhibition Adel Abdessemed: The Future of Décor, on until February 13 in Onsite [at] OCADU gallery.
Wafaa Bilal
Thursday, February 10, 7 p.m.
The Chicago Tribune named Iraqi born Wafaa Bilal Artist of the Year in 2008 and called his dynamic installation, Domestic Tension, “one of the sharpest works of political art to be seen in a long time.” Through his varied art practices of installation, photography and performance, and utilizing the interactivity of the Internet, “re-skinned” video games, or body tattoos, Wafaa Bilal provokes and challenges audiences to consider the absences that result from war and contemporary violence. His works are incisive and chilling, conceptually driven, and at the same time playful and full of mourning. Wafaa Bilal is Assistant Professor of Art at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Both events take place in the OCAD University auditorium, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto.
Since November 15, 2010, Voina members Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolaev have been held in pretrial detention. Their arrest in Moscow, following the anti-corruption protest seen in the video below, was made by Russia’s anti-extremism police under the pretext of hooliganism. In the months that have followed, Voina has been busy.
“Our action “The Palace Revolution” was a symbolic reform of the police which in today’s Russia is wallowing in corruption and lawlessness, systematically violating human rights and freedoms,” Voina member Natalie Sokol tells Hyperallergic.
Members of the radical art collective (including those who are imprisoned) have been giving interviews, attracting mainstream media attention from the Guardian and the BBC. Meanwhile, protests have been organized in support and an international effort to free the arrested has sprung up. Another Russian protest group, DSPA, showed solidarity by affixing a marble plaque commemorating Voina’s imprisonment to the outside of the jail. Perhaps most famously, the renown street artist Banksy pledged the proceeds from a Pictures on Walls auction - £80,000 – to Voina’s defense fund.
Following their not guilty plea, Voina members await sentencing and hearings. Photo courtesy of Vladimir Telegin.
Voina has entered a not guilty plea, and bail has been set at 2 million rubles ($66,000) – conveniently, half of the funds Banksy donated – per member. However, the St. Petersburg court refused to grant their release when bail conditions were met, “citing a lack of information about the person providing the money,” according to the Moscow Times. As a result, the court also extended both artists’ stay in jail until February 24th, 2011. No trial date has been set, and, now three months after the arrests, allegations are beginning to fly that law enforcement is dragging its feet. ANIMAL has footage of the bail hearings along with an English translation.
LA Raw leads the Funeral Procession of Free Artistic Expression, image by Liana Aghajanian
As promised, LA Raw confronted Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Museum, with charges of censorship by marching their Funeral Procession of Free Artistic Expression through downtown Los Angeles. Clough presented the keynote address to the Los Angeles Town Hall meeting in the Biltmore Hotel yesterday morning, and about forty protesters gathered outside to process for the hour before Clough spoke. LA Raw was joined by the Center for the Study of Political Graphics to express their rancor over the Smithsonian’s decision to remove David Wojnarowicz’s “A Fire in My Belly” video from their recent exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.
Wojnarowicz’s image of Jesus Christ in “A Fire in My Belly” adorned to a white crucifix led the way. Image by LA Raw
The march was led by a person holding a crucifix adorned with the still image of Jesus Christ from Wojnarowicz’s video, the same image that made the video the object of the Smithsonian’s censorship. Following closely behind was a coffin draped in a cloth with the image of the back of an American one dollar bill, a reference to the recent censorship experienced by Blu at LA MOCA.
LA Raw’s account of Clough’s speech holds that much of the talk and many of the questions that followed were focused on the censorship issue, though ultimately he offered a defense of his actions at the Smithsonian.
Flooding in Australia made possible a canoe trip through a Brisbane McDonald’s, a catastrophe much like the one envisioned by the Danish art collective Superflex. Watch the Superflex first below, then the real life version (which is sardonically set to the Chipmunks song Fish Heads).
On the heels of the LA MOCA whitewashing catastrophe that saw Blu’s mural erased, rides a new protest art group known as LA Raw. The group surfaced in the days after news of Deitch and Blu’s skirmish made headlines, with a modus operandi that seemed a direct response to the censorship of Blu’s anti-war message. An e-mail sent to Groundswell last week tipped us off about a second action around that issue, the distribution of Deitch-brand condoms in front of LA’s Fowler Museum, which had LA Raw members telling attendees “Don’t Be Blu, Practice Safe Art”.
“Don’t Be Blu, Practice Safe Art” – LA Raw’s Deitch-brand Condoms
LA Raw’s choice of the Fowler was intentional; the museum was hosting a panel discussion titled “How Does Street Art Humanize Cities?” that evening, and among the panelists were Patrick Polk, co-curator of MOCA’s forthcoming street art exhibition, Aaron Rose, street artist Retna, and artist and curator Man One. Hyperallergic reports that the erasure of Blu’s mural wasn’t once mentioned during the panel discussion, although LA Raw managed to get Deitch condoms into the hands of 80% of attendees.
Now, LA Raw is making good on their promise made in an interview with Artinfo, and has announced that the Smithsonian is the target of their next intervention. Tomorrow’s Funeral Procession for Freedom of Expression will focus on the removal of David Wojnarowicz’s 1987 video, “A Fire in My Belly,” from a critically acclaimed exhibition about gay-themed portraiture. The procession will take place at the Biltmore Hotel, where Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Museum will be giving his first post-censorship appearance. Clough has most recently defended his decision to have Wojnarowicz’s work removed. Within an hour, his defense was circulating the internet, which will no doubt fuel LA Raw’s protest tomorrow.
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