Alternatives International

ART THREAT !!!

Ezra Winton — 2010-10-02T03:58:25Z

A NYC poster campaign that invites people to voice their opinions on Park51 aka Ground Zero Mosque aka Cordoba Center in writing; Hamdulillah, a stunning new music video from hip hop artist The Narcicyst; and a conversation with filmmaker Rémy Huberdeau in this month's Art Threat!

Posters invite your thoughts on “Ground Zero Mosque”
by Hrag Vartanian

It's impossible to escape the heated rhetoric around Park51 in lower Manhattan. The proposed community center for some of the city's Muslim population has been called everything from the Ground Zero Mosque, which is the preferred term of the right wing media, to labels more appealing to the left, such as the Cordoba Center — though the developer prefers to call it Park51.

No matter your political preference, the fact is you probably have an opinion about the issue... read more...

Deep-tissue work: A conversation with filmmaker Rémy Huberdeau
by Ezra Winton

I first saw Au pays des esprits / Home of the Buffalo in the cramped top floor office space of The Dominion in Montreal. It was my first time eating an entire meal made from food found in dumpsters and the first time I encountered Rémy Huberdeau's work. Both were experiences that confronted and provoked me in ways that I hadn't expected, and both were incredibly pleasurable encounters... read more...

Music video by The Narcicyst features faces from 12 cities
by Rob Maguire

Iraqi hip hop artist The Narcicyst has released a new video for his single Hamdulillah, and it is simply stunning.

Directed and edited by Ridwan Adhami, and featuring Palestinian singer Shadia Mansour, the video is a beautiful montage of initimate portraits of people from a dozen different cities across the globe... read more...

Narcicyst photo courtesy of flickr/ Josselin Lioust

ART THREAT !!!

Ezra Winton — 2010-09-02T05:35:26Z

A Conversation with Return to El Salvador director Jamie Moffett; Video installation infiltrates 6000 NYC taxis; Artist Profile: Nicholas Hlobo

A Conversation with Return to El Salvador director Jamie Moffett

by EZRA WINTON

Return to El Salvador is an intimate documentary that tells—mainly through candid interview—the story of the individuals and communities effected by El Salvador's brutal civil war that ended nearly two decades ago. While a little heavy-handed on narration (which isn't to say Martin Sheen's usual talented presentation of context isn't well-executed, but that there is too much explaining/describing as we see things on the screen) the film is beautifully shot and a commitment and compassion shines through in every scene.

The film picks through the complicated layers of geo-politics, resistance, and torn communities to piece together an important (and overlooked in the West) story from America's so-called “back yard.” Art Threat had a chance to chat with director Jamie Moffett during the usual juggling act that occurs after an indy doc is completed and its makers seek out an audience. Read more...

Video installation infiltrates 6000 NYC taxis

by ROB MAGUIRE

In the wake of the recent racist attack on a Muslim cab driver in NYC, I'm particularly interested in the public reaction to the latest project by Tehran-born, Big Apple-based artist Amir Baradaran. For one week beginning September 9, Baradaran will debut Transient, a series of 40-second video installations infiltrating New York's taxicabs. Read more...

Artist Profile: Nicholas Hlobo

by AMANDA MCCUAIG

South African visual artist Nicholas Hlobo creates large sculptural works that are expansive masses which at once feel oozey, voluptuous and highly structured. The contrast of femininity and masculinity is created by his use of dissimilar materials such as rubber inner tubes, ribbon, organza, lace and found objects.

Hlobo has accumulated an impressive portfolio since graduating from Wits Technikon in 2002. Born in Cape Town in 1975, he is now based in Johannesburg and is represented by Michael Stevenson Gallery.

“Through my works I attempt to create conversations that explore certain issues within my culture as a South African,” says Hlobo of his work in his Artist Statement. “The conversations become a way of questioning people's perceptions around issues of masculinity, gender, race and ethnicity.” Read more...

Art Threat is a leading media outlet devoted solely to political art and cultural policy.

ART THREAT !!!

Ezra Winton — 2010-08-02T16:20:05Z

It's summertime and therefore I've been in programming mode. After watching dozens and dozens of docs (and a few fiction), I thought I'd pass along some great summer flicks to cool off with, while ratcheting up the politico-meter at the same time.

GASLAND: Part banjo-anthem, part agit-prop, part road-trip and oh yes, part burning faucets. This well-researched and extremely creative exposé on America's natural gas extraction industry is most famous for an early clip released on the web by the film's director, Josh Fox, of water coming out of an American couple's home so contaminated it bursts into flames when a lighter is ignited near the water. There are scores of disturbing scenes like this in GASLAND, but perhaps the film's biggest strength is Fox's willingness to explore creatively. It is clear he is not a seasoned filmmaker (much of the camerawork attests to this observation) yet he has constructed a compelling, entertaining, funny and disturbing feature documentary that neither preaches nor shies away from the alarming problems it reveals.

Visit the site for more...
Watch the trailer here...

MARWENCOL: This festival favourite (pictured at top of post) is a fabulous portrait of a man beaten so severely by rednecks (for daring to discuss his habit of cross-dressing in an upstate New York bar) that he suffers brain damage and retreats to the space of his backyard, away from society and into his own creative universe. Jeff Malberg's sensitive portrait of Mark Hogencamp and the WWII world he builds—and photographs—is compelling, moving and revealing. Hogencamp's strategy of coping with trauma through creativity is actually a source of optimism in an otherwise dark and depressing tale of intolerance and ignorance. The WWII era town and multiple narratives created by Hogencamp in his backyard are fascinating in their detail and melancholic in the way they reveal his suffering. More on the film and Hogencamp's photography here.

Visit the site for more...

DISFIGURED: This overlooked American indy fiction is a well-written and excellently acted feature film from Cinema Libre Studio. The director, Glenn Gers, made this film about women and weight because: “I'm not a woman and I don't have an eating disorder, but the issues of appearance, control, isolation, and our complicated relationships to our own bodies seem universal to me. They are also sadly under-explored or horribly twisted in almost every form of media.” He goes on to say that he especially knows about these issues because his wife, who he finds to be “beautiful, graceful and stylish” is also “according to popular culture – fat.”

Some may scoff that a man made a film about eating disorders, women and weight, but I think they will change their minds after seeing Disfigured. Gers and his talented cast have made a great film on a shoestring budget (a process hilariously described in Gers's testimonial on the film's site) about the complicated terrain of body image, self esteem, societal norms, acceptance, community, relationships and beauty. The plot follows Lydia (Deidra Edwards) who is “fat,” and Darcy (Staci Lawrence), a recovering anorexic, as they form a shaky alliance after Darcy is rejected from a “Fat Acceptance Group” and Lydia quits out of solidarity/protest. Their struggle with weight and navigating a society whose popular culture dictates that neither of them are anywhere close to the norm, is an emotional, funny, and warm narrative that everyone, man or woman, fat or thin, tall or short and everything in between, should watch.

Visit the site for more...

METROPIA: This brilliantly animated fiction from Tarik Saleh follows Roger (Vincent Gallo), the classic anti-hero, as he slouches through a dystopic 2024 setting where one company controls transportation, media and personal hair products. In this dark and distant future all of Europe is connected by one massive matrix of an underground subway system and dotted by a population of toiling emotionless workers. Roger, who's impotent relationship with his girlfriend sets him off in a daydream meandering to track down the girl on the shampoo bottle, begins hearing voices in his head and eventually discovers the underground train system isn't the only vast matrix of control beyond his control – and it all connects back to the shampoo…

A skillfully rendered Swedish sci-fi whose makers wisely chose a kind of animation that looks part photographic, part real, and part painting. The canvass is so incredibly rich, you may have to watch it twice to get all of the Orwellian tale that plays out on the ground.

Watch the trailer here...

Art Threat is a leading media outlet devoted solely to political art and cultural policy.

ART THREAT !!!

Ezra Winton — 2010-07-01T19:02:51Z

Here are this month's top stories from Art Threat...

The G20 summer blockbuster
by Ezra Winton

That the hundreds (at last count 900+) of G20 protesters (and random civilians) held in pens at a detention centre in Toronto also happen to be extras in a former movie studio should come as no surprise to those who took part in this summer's biggest blockbuster hit. This production note is but one piece of a larger spectacle of fascism recently carried out in the streets of Toronto... Standing on College street watching a procession of dozens of dark-tinted vans go by full with riot police, we watched as a man walked toward us calmly and was violently seized and dragged away by ten riot police, a scene reminiscent of so many Hollywood films... Read more...

Mobilizing social imagination: Broken City Lab's reconstruction of Windsor
by Michael Lithgow

What do you get when you mix a postindustrial urban mess with a group of artists who want to make it better? In Windsor, the answer is Broken City Lab, a post-avant-garde art project whose object is the city itself and the social relations necessary to transform urban blight into community and prosperity... The idea was to find a new way – other than protest, that is – to use art for social change... Read more...

Greenpeace UK hosts rebrand BP design competition
by Leslie Dreyer

Greenpeace UK is hosting a competition to redesign British Petroleum's logo. Entries are due by June 28th; the winning design will be used as part of their international campaign against the oil company... Read more...

Art Threat is a leading media outlet devoted solely to political art and cultural policy.

ART THREAT!!

Ezra Winton — 2010-06-02T17:53:59Z

Here are this month's top stories from Art Threat...

Elvis Costello cancels shows in Israel

“It is a matter of instinct and conscience,” writes internationally celebrated singer-songwriter Elvis Costello in an open letter reflecting on a landmark decision by Costello to cancel planned performances in Israel this summer.

Around the world in recent months a wave of high-profile artists are publicly expressing support for the Palestinian struggle for liberation and in opposition to Israeli apartheid policies against the Palestinian people. Artists globally are responding to the 2005 appeal from Palestinian civil society for a comprehensive campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel rooted in a similar campaign internationally that targeted the apartheid regime in South Africa. Click here to read on...

500 Years of Resistance comic book documents indigenous struggle

The artistic style of Gord Hill is one of a man less obsessed with art than that of a man who desperately needs you to understand the weight of stories which must be told. A self proclaimed warrior and member of the Kwakwaka'wakw Nation , Hill has spent a lifetime defending his people and his territory, telling stories through art, writing, carving, and activism. His latest project, The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book is a documentation of the fighting spirit and ongoing resistance of the indigenous people of both North and South America. Click here to read on...

The water agenda: an interview with filmmaker Liz Marshall

There has been sudden explosion in documentaries looking at the problems and politics of water. Films like Water Life, Blue Gold, Thirst, Flow, The Water Frontand others have focused their attention towards a contemporary issue facing the whole planet: access to clean water and water sustainability. Liz Marshall's new documentary Water on the Table focuses in even closer, following water rights advocate Maude Barlow as she tirelessly fights, lobbies, talks, and debates her way toward a future where the world will secure accessible, clean and sustainable water resources for all. This is an urgent issue, as urgent as fossil fuels, and thinking otherwise is to dream in the plenitude of the west. Water is running out. Water is being privatized, commodified, bottled and packaged like cream cheese and water is being fought over. Many are already desperately going without and many are sketching out policies that will spell a future of water-as-commodity. Click here to read on...

Giant plastic six-pack rings strangle public sculptures

Last week giant plastic six-pack rings strangled public sculptures around Vancouver. Initiated by the Plastic Pollution Coalition and developed by Vancouver-based ad agency Rethink, this stunt presented downtown commuters with visual protests against the mass consumption of single-use plastic. Click here to read on...

An Art-Changing World: Stories from Art Threat

Ezra Winton — 2010-04-01T23:12:30Z

Myself and the other editors at Art Threat, a media outlet devoted solely to political art and cultural policy, are very excited to be collaborating with Alternatives. Each month I will, with the help of the other Art Threat editors, select a handful of our stories from the past month to be republished in the Alternatives newsletter.

In keeping with the mandate of Alternatives, stories that touch on international solidarity and communication, human rights, progressive politics, and public space will be selected. Of course these stories will also have everything to do with art and culture, the focus of Art Threat.

For the inaugural collaboration we've selected stories that reveal the possibilities for progressive change when art intersects with politics and public space (both virtual and on-the-ground). The first piece (short text and a video interview) looks at one of the many interventions made during the past olympics in Vancouver, linking the problem of homelessness to the shrinking public space during the games. The second piece reviews a new political video game that intricately weaves narratives around the deaths of inmates at Guantanamo, in particular that of Boubacar Bah, who died while in custody in 2007.

This is of course a short sample of the many posts at artthreat.net that bring together art, culture and world politics. From film reviews about the Alberta Tar Sands [link: http://artthreat.net/2009/11/h2oil-shannon-walsh-interview/] and the fight for Iceland's environment [link: http://artthreat.net/2010/01/documentary-dreamland/] to creative public space interventions in Windsor [link: http://artthreat.net/2010/03/broken-city-lab/] to documenting ethnic cleansing in the Serengeti [link: http://artthreat.net/2010/03/a-place-without-people/], there is no shortage of interesting critical stories that Alternatives supporters can find at our site.
We hope this collaboration of our two organizations continues for as long as this world needs changing.

Art Garden on East Hastings: a refuge for the imagination
by Michael Lithgow
Link: http://artthreat.net/2010/02/art-garden-east-hastings/

Art confounds so many of the problematics that come with the politics of power and poverty. Take the Hastings Folk Garden, for example. You can't find it through the Cultural Olympiad. There are no Tourism BC pamphlets that tell you how to get there. You find it by walking around in Canada's poorest neighbourhood, the Downtown East Side (DTES). In its own very quiet way, it defies the Olympic corporatization of public space and corresponding rendering of this beset community only in terms of a problem to be fixed.

The Downtown East Side is a neighbourhood that was not invited to the Olympic buffet — at least its residents weren't. As the poorest community in Canada, the Olympic games are largely an unaffordable party that views their neighbourhood as a potential “public relations embarrassment” rather than vibrant albeit troubled home.

What was once an empty lot among the ruin of storefronts along the East Hastings corridor (a few steps from Insite, North America's only safe injection site), is now a community garden owned by the Portland Hotel Society. And for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, the garden has been filled with art to create a little urban oasis with found objects and recycled materials.
The garden was created over the last 300 days largely by DTES resident Jim — who was unavailable to be interviewed on the day that I visited. I spoke briefly with Dominique, one of the artists who helped to make the art garden happen.

Video game puts you undercover in America's Homeland Guantanamos
by Leslie Dreyer
Link: http://artthreat.net/2010/02/homeland-guantanamo-game/

In solidarity with the detainees currently on hunger strike to protest inhumane conditions at the Los Fresnos immigration jail (Port Isabel, TX), I'm highlighting Homeland Guantanamos. Much more than an educational online game, this project documents actual detainees' stories and the abuses they endured while in detention. Approximately 300,000 immigrants both legal and illegal are being detained in the U.S., many without conviction of any crime. This non-linear storytelling/investigative project invites players to discover what's really happening on the inside.

The game's assignment: go undercover by working as a prison guard and find the truth about what happened to Boubacar Bah, an immigrant from Ghinea who died while in ICE custody May 30, 2007. Free Range Studios built the virtual facility to match the Elizabeth Detention Center (run by the private company Corrections Corporation of America) where Bah was detained and designed the story around the actual events and people involved. While exploring each room, I found clues to help solve the case including embedded video interviews with Bah's friends and family, his fellow detainees and their families. The video and written evidence reveal human rights abuses that mimic those committed at Guantanamo and other U.S. secret prisons.
Partnering with Free Range Studios, the international human rights organization Breakthrough used this project to launch a national engagement campaign. Included on the site are innumerable ways to take action, a memorial wall for the 87 immigrants who've died while in detention and a searchable U.S. map that locates local Gitmos by zip code. The article that triggered this project along with the recently released video What Really Happened to Boubacar Bah can both be found here. Spreading, creating or participating in projects as informative and comprehensive as this encourages the beginning of the end of real homeland Guantanamos.