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Young New Yorkers, Street Artists, and Keeping Teens Out of Jail

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The Street Art community donates time and art to a program that keeps teens out of jail in New York. An annual auction overflows with work by today’s Street Artists.



With the precision indicative of her architect training Rachel Barnard describes the art/criminal justice project for youth that she founded five years ago – which keeps growing thanks to artists’ help, community involvement, and an evermore engaged criminal justice system.


“Alternative Diversion,” she calls it, this court-mandated art program that prosecutors can offer to New York teens as a sentencing option instead of incarceration or doing community service.


“What we’re talking about here are 16 and 17 year-olds in Brooklyn who have been arrested for things like jumping the (subway) turnstyle or having a small amount of marijuana on them or petty larceny,” Barnard explains in a new video for YNY.



“Say you get a misdemeanor record at 16,” she says, “What that means is that you’re less likely to get employment, even though you are more likely to be poor and need employment more than most other 16 year-olds.”


Each year the programs called Young New Yorkers (YNY), which Barnard founded, work directly with these youth to redirect their route in life, to provide guidance, foster self-analyzation and to set productive goals for the future.



To some observers it may sound ironic that Street Artists, many of whom have done illegal artworks on walls throughout New York City, are the principal artists pool who are donating their time and talent here to the fundraising auction in lower Manhattan.


With high profile names like Shepard Fairey, Daze, Dan Witz, the Guerrilla Girls and Kara Walker on this years list of artists donating to the auction, the program boasts a cross section of established and emerging Street Artists, graffiti artists, culture jammers and truth tellers who heartily support this program that since 2012 has given more than 400 city youth a second chance.



But then we think more about the history and psychological/anthropological makeup of the Street Art scene and it makes perfect sense: What segment of the arts community has such a rich history of activism, self-directed industry, challenging the norms of society, using public space for intervention – and a penchant for consciousness-raising?


Even after 50 plus years of youth culture in love with graffiti and Street Art these artists and their practice are seen as outside the proper curriculum of many universities with art programs and museums have arduous internal debates about supporting exhibitions that are dedicated to Street Art and graffiti specifically.



This is precisely the kind of marginalized movement/ subculture that has necessarily thrived often with little encouragement or funding – overcoming the barriers to success that more institutionally recognized art movements don’t encounter. In fact, many have gone to jail for what they do.


Uniquely, Young New Yorkers continues to build its partnerships with artists, teachers, lawyers, volunteers and several agencies within the criminal justice system, including criminal and community courts, the District Attorney’s Office and the Legal Aid Society. The program’s art shows mounted by graduates are frequently attended by members of the justice system as well and art becomes a facilitator of strengthened community ties.



BSA has supported YNY every year since its first auction benefit and this year is no exception. Please go to Paddle 8 to see the items for sale or better yet, go to the auction in person. We stopped by while they were hanging the show yesterday and we were able to take a few shots for you to see what’s up for grabs.








Young New Yorkers Silent Art Auction Honoring Actor and Activist Michael K. Williams


Wednesday, May 10, 2017
548 West 28th Street
New York, NY
6:00 VIP hour with Michael K. Williams (Star and Super Star Tickets)
7:00–10:00 party (Regular tickets)


More information at YoungNewYorkers.org http://www.youngnewyorkers.org/





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A version of this article is also posted on Brooklyn Street Art here.


Read all posts by Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo on The Huffington Post HERE.


See new photos and read scintillating interviews every day on BrooklynStreetArt.com


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See our TUMBLR page

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Nicki Minaj Is Paying Off Fans' Student Debt On Twitter

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The New York Times once called Nicki Minaj “a walking exaggeration, outsize in sound, personality and look.” This week, Minaj proved that sentiment true by making waves with an unprovoked Twitter-spree of philanthropy.


Minaj was promoting a contest on Twitter when a young fan dropped a tweet asking for help with their student debt. Unexpectedly, Minaj responded minutes later and asked the student for proof of their enrollment. As soon as she received it, Minaj made good on her promise.


It didn’t take long for a flood of struggling students to come to the rapper asking for help. Minaj promised to support over thirty fans by paying for tuition, loans, and school supplies (just look at her feed). Her total donations amounted to $30,000, and she’s not done yet.


She promised to make it rain again soon. So if you’re struggling with student debt, you better turn on Twitter notifications for Minaj’s account.


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Forget Texting, Can We Start Writing Love Letters Again?

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This post was brought to you by Thought Catalog and Quote Catalog.


By Jenn Ficarra


An embarrassing hobby my friends and I have, mostly to pass time, is to watch wedding videos on YouTube. Yes, you read that correctly, we watch wedding videos of people whom we don’t know. Mostly, we enjoy watching for décor, dress, location, etc. All of the elements we might one day mine for our own weddings. But there’s one element in particular I watch for and am more often than not disappointed by: the letters the brides and grooms write to each other.


Love letters are an art form. There is nothing more beautiful than a well-written love letter. And there is a reason why Carrie Bradshaw was so interested in the love letters of great men – because even though these men were busy ruling countries, writing books, winning wars they still took time, valuable time, to sit down and express their emotions to their beloved.


There used to be a time when letters were the only form of communication. You couldn’t just say a quick “I love you” via a text or phone call. No, life was precious, life was different, and you never knew if the person you loved would die tomorrow. Letters took time to get delivered and because they took time, they wouldn’t waste a letter on something as small as “I love you.” Instead, they wrote eloquent, emotional texts to the ones they loved to ensure them of their love. Sometimes, it was hard to express just how much they were adored but by putting their pen to paper they were going to try to tell them.


It’s time to bring back the art of the love letter. A wedding is quite literally a declaration of a couple’s love for one another and yet their words fail. These letters are… bland, boring, and sometimes they’re even typed. How much of an uncultured swine must you be to type a love letter? You can type a draft of a love letter and then transcribe it over but under no circumstances should a love letter ever be typed and sent.


We’ve forgotten how to express love via means other than technology.


We’ve lost the art of love, the very core of what it means to tell someone you love them. A love letter isn’t just a letter – it’s a sign that throughout everything and despite it all you still matter to someone. You matter enough for them to agonize over what to say to you via their own hand. I honestly believe that a letter’s raison d’etre is to express love.


You can’t keep a box of old “I love you” text messages. But you can keep a box of old love letters. I bet that anyone would say they’d prefer a letter of love over a text message of love. With a letter, if you make a mistake you have to start again. There’s no backspace with a pen. You have to mean what you say and say what you mean. There’s a heartfelt conviction behind a love letter that doesn’t seem to exist anymore in the world of technology. Sometimes it’s not about being quick with words, it’s about meaning them.


So next time you go to type a declaration of admiration or love, remember these words of love by Beethoven and consider writing them instead:


‘Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved, Be calm – love me – today – yesterday – what tearful longings for you – you – you – my life – my all – farewell. Oh continue to love me – never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved. Ever thine. Ever mine. Ever ours.’


We should never, under any circumstances, underestimate the power of a love letter.


Like this post? You might also like Seeds Planted in Concrete by Bianca Sparacino.

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Radical Storytelling Through Virtual Reality At The Define American Film Festival

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“Movies are the most powerful empathy machine in all the arts. When I go to a great movie I can live somebody else’s life for a while. I can walk in somebody else’s shoes. I can see what it feels like to be a member of a different gender, a different race, a different economic class, to live in a different time, to have a different belief.


This is a liberalizing influence on me. It gives me a broader mind. It helps me to join my family of men and women on this planet. It helps me to identify with them, so I’m not just stuck being myself, day after day.


The great movies enlarge us, they civilize us, they make us more decent people.” ― Roger Ebert



At Define American, we believe that sharing our stories is the first step toward empathy, and that empathy is the first step toward positive cultural change. Right now, we need to share our stories more than ever. It will be radical cultural resistance through art and expression that will help heal the fissures that are expanding with the change in our country’s demographic makeup.


Our second annual Define American Film Festival (#DAFF), taking place at the Harvey B. Gantt for African American Arts + Culture, this Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Charlotte North Carolina, is based on that philosophy. We’ll be sharing stories like “Dolores,” “White People” and “Forbidden: Undocumented and Queer in Rural America” that illuminate the intersectionality of issues ranging from immigration to race to LGBTQ and women’s rights. None of these issues exist in a vacuum. They overlap, intersect and clash in ways that, without the unifying salve of a shared story, will continue to separate us from one another.


We have seen, firsthand, the power that a well-told story can have to change someone’s perspective and open minds. After all, what could be more powerful than seeing the the world through the eyes of another?


Luckily, as technology advances, it brings us more opportunities to connect through story. That’s why at this year’s DAFF, we have partnered with RYOT (owned by AOL/HuffPost) to embrace a new, powerful storytelling medium: virtual reality.


VR is an invaluable tool for those of us in the social impact entertainment space because it quite literally places you inside someone else’s world, often in an environment that you may never otherwise have a chance to experience.


At DAFF, we’ll be sharing three extraordinary VR experiences:


Welcome to Aleppo: One does not flee from their home, unless their home looks like this. For three minutes, stand on the streets of Aleppo, Syria, a city that has been at the center of a civil war for four years. Collected by RYOT’s World Editor, Christian Stephen, this is the first 360 virtual reality footage gathered from inside a war zone. Hear the shots of snipers echo through the streets and see what life remains in this shell of a city.





For My Son: In immersive VR, RYOT and the award-winning filmmakers behind Salam Neighbor have joined forces with UN OCHA to tell the story of a young Syrian restarting his life in Amman, Jordan. Through a heartfelt letter from father to son, challenge the misconception that refugees are a burden and experience the refugee journey from the bombed out buildings of Aleppo to the historical sites of Jordan.





The Crossing: RYOT and HuffPost present “The Crossing,” a virtual reality film and immersive reporting series hosted by Susan Sarandon chronicling the refugee crisis as it unfolds in Greece. The shores of the Mediterranean see thousands of refugees every day who arrive on small boats, evidence for which is seen everywhere in massive piles of discarded life vests. Most of the arrivals are fleeing from Syria and Afghanistan in search of safety, economic stability, and a better life.





Festival attendees will be able to step into other worlds, and we are pleased to be inviting local Charlotte public school students to attend and experience it for themselves.


DAFF is our own act of cultural intervention and resistance. We’re excited to be able to continue our media and culture work with VR: an incredibly powerful tool that can be used by the film world, social justice worlds and educators to expose new realities and open hearts and minds.


DAFF Virtual Reality Schedule:


Thursday, May 11: 6:00 PM - 6:45 PM


Friday, May 12 1:45 PM - 2:15 PM


7:00 PM - 7:45 PM


Saturday, May 13 12:30 PM - 12:45 PM


6:00 PM - 7:45 PM


For more information on DAFF, including the full festival schedule, visit: https://defineamerican.com/filmfest/.


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Sex, Drugs And Feminism: For Brazil’s Female Funk Singers, The Personal Is Political

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Image 20170314 10731 1hqa1vm


 


Deize Tigrona at the 2016 Back2Black music festival. CC BY-SA


 


 


Adriana Facina, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro


At first sight, there is seemingly nothing feminist about Carioca funk, the electronic dance music coming out of Rio de Janeiro’s poor favelas. Nearly all the songs sung by women are of the sexually explicit, sometimes violent funk putaria variety – hardly empowering. The Conversation


At least, that’s what I thought when I began my post-doctoral research into the genre in 2008. From my white, middle-class perspective, the salacious lyrics were an expression of machismo, borne of Brazil’s patriarchal society. I understood this type of music, along with the artists’ suggestive performance styles and outfits, as objectification of women that further subjected them to male power.


I couldn’t have been more off base. In truth, by singing frankly about sex and life on the streets in the first person, Rio’s female funk singers are bringing the rough realities of the city’s toughest neighbourhoods to mainstream audiences and emboldening a new generation of young female artists.



Favela funk


I was at my first participant-observation session, attending a favela dance party, when I spotted the samba school rehearsal yard full of sound equipment. A woman’s voice blasted in my ears.


It was the group Gaiola das Popozudas, and the lead singer, Valesca, was wailing to the deep beat of the electronic drum: Come on love/beat on my case with your dick on my face.


I thought: it’s not by chance that this is the first sound I’m hearing on my very first day of fieldwork. There is something I have to learn from these women, certain personal certainties I need to deconstruct.





Valesca Popuzuda is the first Brazilian funk artist to publicly call herself a feminist.


CC BY-SA




A product of Brazil’s African diaspora, funk music (which bears little resemblance to the more globally familiar George Clinton variety) began to appear in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1990s, with original lyrics written in Portuguese. Over the past decade, artists have taken to adapting foreign songs with invented new lyrics, rather than translating the original songs.


With the dawn of songwriting contests at funk parties, young fans became MCs, penning lyrics that talked about the slums where they’d grown up and declared their love for partying and for other pastimes available to poor black youth in Rio de Janeiro.


Back then, there were few women on the stage. When they did perform, female artists, such as the 1990s idol MC Cacau, often sang about love.


An important exception was MC Dandara, a black woman from the streets who saw breakout success with her politicised Rap de Benedita. This old-school rap centred on Benedita da Silva, a black favela resident who was elected to Congress as a Workers’ Party representative, only to be treated with massive prejudice by the mainstream press.







MC Dandara.



Even Dandara’s stage name was deeply political: Dandara was a warrior woman who was one of the leaders of Brazil’s Quilombo dos Palmares runaway slave settlement, which in the 18th century grew into an abolitionist organisation.


By the turn of the 21st century, male dominance of funk was being challenged as more and more female MCs came onto the scene. The pioneer MC Deize Tigrona, who hailed from one of Rio’s best-known and most dangerous favelas, City of God, was a housemaid when she first made her name singing funk.


Her songs are erotic but jocular. One of Deize’s first hits was Injeção, in which a shot she gets at the doctor’s office becomes a ribald reference to anal sex (the refrain: It stings, but I can take it).


Around the same time in the early 2000s, another City of God resident found fame by singing about sex and pleasure from a woman’s standpoint. Tati Quebra Barraco was black, like Deize, and she challenged prevailing Brazilian beauty standards singing, I’m ugly, but I’m in style/I can pay a motel for a guy.


Funk goes feminist


Affirming fame, money and power, Tati became one of the most successful women in funk. Together, she and Deize ushered in what later became known as feminist funk, influencing a generation of budding female artists in the favelas.



Soon, the artist Valesca Popozuda became the first funk performer to publicly call herself a feminist. Valesca, who is white, picked the stage name Popozuda, which refers to a woman with a big behind (a physical trait much appreciated in Brazil).


Since leaving her band, Gaiola das Popozudas, to launch a solo career, Valesca has become known for explicit lyrics that outline what she likes to do in bed – and not just with men, either.


With songs that evince support for LGBTQ people, among other marginalised communities, her defence of female autonomy is clearly political. In Sou Gay (I’m Gay), Valesca sings, I sweated, I kissed, I enjoyed, I came/I’m bi, I’m free, I’m tri, I’m gay.






 


The video for ‘I’m Gay’ by Valesca Popuzuda.


 


Valesca has become an icon of grassroots feminism for speaking out against prejudice of all stripes. On other tracks, she has spotlighted issues important to working-class and poor women in Rio de Janeiro.


Larguei Meu Marido, for example, tells the tale of a woman who leaves her abusive husband and finds that he suddenly wants her back now that she’s cheating on him (as he used to do to her). Live on stage, when Valesca calls herself a slut, the ladies in the crowd go wild.


Following in the footsteps of these pioneering artists, today many female funk artists sing about an ever-widening variety of topics. The industry still has gender issues, though. Women may have broken through as stage talent, but they are still scarce as funk DJs, entrepreneurs and producers. Men run things behind the scenes.


That will surely change, too. Nothing is impossible for these Brazilian women who, immersed in a deeply patriarchal society ruled by conservative Christian values, found the voice to scream to the world: This pussy is mine!, translating into the language of funk the core feminist slogan: my body, my choice.


Adriana Facina, Anthropology Professor, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro


This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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This 14-Year-Old’s Poem Breaks Apart The Wage Gap

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Right now, women face a wage gap in every single state. For those of you who don’t know what that means it’s simple: women are paid on average 79 cents on the dollar for doing the same job as a man. And the wage gap isn’t a symptom of women being less educated. Women with doctoral degrees are paid less than men with master’s degrees, and women with master’s degrees are paid less than men with bachelor’s degrees.


But the wage gap doesn’t just exist across gender. The racial wage gap in America has not changed in thirty five years. New data from the Pew Research Center analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics cites that black men earned 73% of white men’s hourly earnings in 2015 — the exact percentage they earned in 1980. So how do we fix this?


Well luckily we can turn to the wisdom of a 14-year-old. That’s right, Owen Pallenberg wrote another poem for us. This time the incredible young man is left to wonder why we’re not doing anything about the wage gap in America.


When we asked Owen why he wrote the poem he said, “I decided to write about the issue of the gender and race Wage Gap in our country because it is a very serious problem that has been recently overlooked due to the issues with President Trump, Syria, Health Care, and in honor of Mother’s Day and the first annual 50/50 day.”


Presented in full. We give you “79 Cents” by Owen Pallenberg:


A woman makes on average 79 cents to the man’s buck,


So the woman makes less because of her chromosome’s luck.


This problem in our nation needs to end,


Because yes, a woman makes less...I know it’s hard to comprehend.


Minimum wage in California is $10.50 for a man,


More like $8.92 for a woman, making it hard to create a viable financial plan.


People claim that this gap is just a myth,


But it’s a proven fact that they’re losing out on more than one fifth.


The gap just gets worse for married women, women of color, and even mothers,


Ridiculous, I know. Shouldn’t we all get paid the same as one another?


Why are women blamed for things they can’t control,


Once men and women are equal, we will finally reach our ultimate goal.


Just take a look at the US Women’s National Soccer Team,


They earn about 25% of what the men make, which is really quite extreme,


Even though the women generate more revenue and won the World Cup,


They get paid much less to lace them up.


Black women make 63 cents to the man’s buck,


And Latina women earn only 54 cents, so I guess they’re just out of luck.


Deniers of these stats are obviously citing the alternative facts,


Because it is quite clear that women receive a sales, property, income, and “woman” tax.

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Time Lapse: Your Relationship With Your Mother

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You study the photograph and find yourself surprised that this is your mother’s midriff, that these are her coppery legs. Somehow that bombshell seamlessly transformed into the sensible Mom who went to work at 3 a.m. without complaint if the hospital called her in, and who always returned smelling of antiseptic soap. How did the one become the other? you wonder, studying her image, not realizing, at first, that her story is your story, and that your story is the story of the two of you. 



You always wanted to choose her earrings for her in the early years, selecting the long dangly ones with faux bling, which she usually declined. But she did let you accompany her into the curtained booth when she voted Clinton for president. She was the type who maneuvered her boat-sized Volvo to the side of the road and kept it there, wordless, till you fastened your seatbelt, and who offhandedly admitted, before you’d cracked double digits, that she had done coke (“It was the sixties... and seventies”). And when bedtime came, as she tucked you under the floral polyester duvet while a moon shard hung outside the window, she used to sing, off-key but just right, so that you felt gravity inside your tiny chest wall, All I ask of you / is forever to remember me / as loving you.


Just a few years later, though, everything she did seemed to vex you. Especially that time in a shop dressing room when she cheerfully inquired, “Have you noticed that you’re starting to develop breasts?” Which plunged you into the kind of pink-cheeked pubescent embarrassment that some people characterize as “I literally died,” though you know what they mean. This phase goes on for a while. In your estimation Mom is about as pleasant as the sometimes itchiness in your vagina (which Mom herself helps you out with, supplying some sort of cream).


Then there is a nearly imperceptible shift, like a swirl of not-hot air on a late-August evening, and Mom is no longer a figure of contempt. She’s just a figure. Kind of irrelevant. We’ll call this phase “high school.” 


Somewhere down the line, life drops a bomb. In this case it’s after you’ve attempted college and then said screw college and instead you’re carrying a backpack around a foreign country: your Dad dies suddenly of a heart attack. Mom: a widow. You rush home.


“I can’t believe it,” she says, over and over, her slight frame hunched at the bathroom counter where she had been trying to floss her teeth. Short clumps of greying hair cling to her damp forehead, for she had clipped off her long tresses some time ago.


You feel that nothing will ever be OK again. You weep with your cheek pressed into the musty carpet of your childhood room. You vomit your fear: that Mom will be eaten by lonesomeness.


You’re wrong, though. You couldn’t have known it then, with lint stuck to your face, as she cried in the bathroom with a string of floss in her hand, but that’s not how the story goes.


You make another stab at college, and while you’re still testing the hollow echo of your new bedroom, looking appraisingly at the bare walls, Mom, clad in secondhand pants, is busy tucking a mattress pad over the corners of your pill-blue industrial mattress, she holds a sheet at its corners and snaps her wrists to shake out the folds. You stand and watch, and feel a nameless tug. When it’s time for her to go and leave you here, you face one another — and you notice that she’s healthy again. She’d gotten badly thin after Dad died, but now she goes to a weight-lifting class at the Y. Get it, Mom.


A few years later you hate her. She has decided to sell the house. It doesn’t occur to you to trust her next move the way she trusts yours. Though maybe this is just the ordinary imbalance of the mother/daughter bond: she poured herself into you, and you were sparing in what you gave back. 


One day you find that you’re an adult. No horns or fanfare, it just happens. Sometimes you’re the first one to your job, unlocking the deadbolt in the damp fog of 8:30. You’ve settled not far from Mom, who lives in a ranch where she gardens and has lots of time on her hands. She’s always trying to make plans with you. “I can come to you,” she says. “Lunch? Or dinner? Will you go with me to the bulb show?”


“Let me get back to you,” you say, irked, because you’re trying to have your life, here.


One afternoon you walk into her kitchen — you’ve agreed to come see her garden — and you’re caught off guard: she’s old. Now entirely grey, she’s wearing a pair of unisex glasses. She looks strangely like your uncle. Stranger still, she doesn’t mind. She seems to like it. She wears boxy jeans and a T-shirt that says, “ASK ME ABOUT THE Y.” You yourself are wearing tight denim shorts that show off your copper legs. (Though this year you found your first grey hair. You thought to yourself, This isn’t supposed to happen. Then you pooped, and went to bed.)


Mom has recently taken up pot smoking. One evening, not long ago, she phoned you, high as the top shelf, and told you that she’d discovered which was the most habit-forming drug of all. It wasn’t reefer, though.


“The desire to feel like a special person,” she said, “has always been my drug of choice.” Which first confused and then surprised and then enlightened you. Then you booked this date to come see her.


She leads you out to the garden. She seems to have a dozen bird feeders out here and there are nuthatches and goldfinches flitting around. She shows you a slice of velvety moss as if she’s a child who’s discovered the common dandelion. Then you stand together in silence, and you get that feeling.


This time, the feeling will send you looking for that old photo. When you find it you will study the image, surprised that this is your mother, that she has become someone else, and that you have become — her.


Mattea Kramer writes cultural commentary and blogs at This Life After Loss. Follow her on Twitter.

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News Roundup for May 18, 2017

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Well, the world’s on fire.


1. Roger Ailes, founder of FOX news, is dead at 77 years old. Skirts at FOX News will be worn at half mast today. More here.


2. Here’s how right-wing news sites cover President Trump’s scandals. Spoiler: they live in a very different world from ours. More Here.


3. Alex Jones has settled his bizarre defamation suit with Chobani yogurt. Looks like that’s a victory for the globalist agenda. More here.


4. Chris Cornell, lead singer of Audioslave and Soundgarden, was found dead just hours after playing a concert in Detroit. Take the time to celebrate his music today. More here.


5. Here’s a video of George W. Bush stumbling into a live broadcast of a baseball game. More here.

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Apparently Captain America's A Nazi Now?

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Captain America has been compromised after seventy years of protecting American ideals of freedom, justice and equality. That’s right, as part of Marvel’s newest comic book event series, “Secret Empire” the star spangled hero has become a Nazi.


According to the new storyline, Captain America is (and always has been) an agent of Hydra. Hydra is basically a fictional terrorist group and the Marvel Universe’s stand in for Nazi’s. They’re oppressive fascists who believe in forcing the hand of the planet to establish a totalitarian new world order.


Fans of Captain America have been understandably upset about this dramatic reveal. Most commonly, comic book fans have taken up the issue with the writer behind the series, Nick Spencer. Spencer, a longtime Marvel Comics writer, has defended the storyline but has also been feeding trolls with a negative attitude.


No matter your opinion on the superhero’s change of allegiance, the storyline has brought Marvel a lot of negative press. Many fans understand that Cap’s turn to evil will only be temporary but most are left wondering if he’ll ever be the same.


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As Global Policy Moves To Expand Digital Rights, U.S Faces Crucial Fight Over Equal Access To The Internet

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By: Karin Deutsch Karlekar and Christopher Hamlin


In 2013, inventor of the internet Tim Berners Lee reflected, “When you make something universal … it can be used for good things or nasty things … we just have to make sure it's not undercut by any large companies or governments trying to use it and get total control.” In what seemed like a momentary delay of his prediction—and a win for internet freedom advocates—in late April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied the telecommunications industry’s request for an appeal of a 2016 decision that upheld the net neutrality regulatory framework. In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had reclassified the internet as a utility much like regular phone service (where, for instance, the phone company can’t block a call because they don’t like the caller). This allowed for stronger enforcement of existing net neutrality rules that prevent internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T from arbitrarily price-gouging or discriminating against legal content, users, or platforms by slowing or preventing access to them. The landmark ruling is now under threat as the FCC—under its newly appointed chair, former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai—took an important vote on May 18 to weaken federal oversight of ISPs by no longer applying the Title II “common carrier” classification of the Communications Act to ISPs.


This proposed fast-track roll-back of the 2015 protections represents the latest move by the new administration to strip consumer internet access and privacy protections adopted in the Obama years, which included preventing ISPs from selling your browsing history without permission and expanding broadband subsidies for the poor. Pai’s adamant predisposition against a more enforceable framework for net neutrality is concerning, and he may have violated a legal statute by taking an FCC policy position before allowing a public comment period.


Despite the traditional U.S. role as an advocate for individual freedoms around the world, the FCC’s reversal on this issue is also at odds with modern global attitudes and governance on the right to unrestricted, affordable digital access. A 2014 CIGI-Ipsos survey of 23,376 internet users from 24 countries found that 83 percent of them believe that affordable access to the internet should be a basic human right. In 2016, this evolving consensus was enshrined by the United Nations Human Rights Council as a non-binding resolution, which denounced “measures to intentionally prevent or disrupt access to or dissemination of information online” as a human rights violation, given that “the same rights people have offline must also be protected online.” This includes the right to freedom of expression under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.


Governments across the developing and developed world have already begun to codify this concept domestically or to invest in projects that operationalize it. Germany, Costa Rica, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, and Spain have all had some form of legal right to broadband access for years. That says nothing of the multitude of nations with laws to protect net neutrality, including the European Union. Most recently, in March, the Indian state of Kerala declared that access to the internet is a basic human right, promising to provide free access to all its citizens. This promise is increasingly easier to make as privately funded projects such as Google’s Project Loon partner with governments to provide affordable, universal internet access to its citizens through the use of high altitude balloons. At the same time, Facebook’s Free Basics application has brought free internet to 25 million people across the world.


However, last February, India’s telecom regulator banned the free Facebook application over concerns that it undermined net neutrality by favoring certain services over others. Along this vein, it is interesting to consider that China consistently outpaces democratic India in providing its citizens internet access, yet it also consistently ranks as one of the most oppressive on internet freedom indexes. This begs the questions: Can internet access truly be considered a fundamental right—affording the respective essential benefits to be labeled as such—if it means sacrificing uncensored access to all legal content? And what constitutes a healthy regulatory relationship between the governments and ISPs that determine that balance?


Chairman Pai contends, alongside ISP giants, that regulating the telecommunications industry like a utility makes it less attractive to investment, resulting in telecom cutbacks on the capital expenditure that bridges the digital divide by allowing them to build out infrastructure to low income and rural neighborhoods. Addressing this reasoning, industry leaders of the Internet Association, including Facebook, Google, and Amazon, have instead underscored net neutrality’s importance to the competition and innovation of their industry. They have also pointed to evidence that shows many ISPs have actually expanded their investment in network infrastructure build-out and innovative technologies like fiber optics, while those that decreased investment had been undergoing major restructuring deals. Perhaps it should also come as no surprise then that last month more than 800 tech start-ups made the case to Chairman Pai that gutting the legal framework preventing service discrimination impedes not only consumer choice, but also their ability to “start a business, immediately reach a worldwide customer base, and disrupt an entire industry” through the unfettered marketplace of ideas.


This echoes arguments of free expression advocates, including PEN America, who believe Americans stand to lose essential capabilities for free expression and critical information sharing. Having taken part in the large-scale 2014 advocacy campaigns that persuaded the FCC to reclassify net neutrality protections in the first place, PEN America is concerned that telecom giants may once again receive the discretionary legal power to scrutinize information in their networks and discriminate against the delivery of certain content or its creators. Equally concerning is the potential creation of “pay-to-play” slow and fast lanes, in which only those willing to pay a premium to have their content reach its audience will enjoy that unrestricted right. The right to know, to free expression, and to association are core freedoms that are put in jeopardy through the creation of this power dynamic. It has the potential to establish a system of privatized censorship that restricts the flow of free thought necessary to the work of the writers and readers that PEN represents.


Over the past half decade, the internet has become such an internationally recognized foundation for expression, as well as political and commercial interaction, that it has broached the realm of essential “public commodities” such as water, electricity, or telephone service. Allowing private industry to selectively inhibit citizens’ ability to use that commodity is detrimental to standards of living in many modern societies, and moderate government regulation may therefore be inherently necessary to protect its citizens’ democratized access to it. The current administration can stay on the path of newly established international norms—and even rise to lead their continued modernization—or inch closer to the trend of authoritarian governments of crafting policy frameworks that serve to limit access. As the FCC vote represents the first step in this anti-democratic process, we reiterate the call not to reverse the gains made in ensuring equal access to this essential means of communication and interaction.

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No, Authors Should Not Be Constrained By Gender Or Race In The Characters They Create

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This was the BBC.com headline:


Spy Author Anthony Horowitz ‘Warned Off’ Creating Black Character:



Author Anthony Horowitz says he was “warned off” including a black character in his new book because it was “inappropriate” for a white writer. The creator of the Alex Rider teenage spy novels says an editor told him it could be considered “patronising” ... Horowitz, who has written 10 novels featuring teenage spy Alex Rider, said there was a “chain of thought” in America that it was “inappropriate” for white writers to try to create black characters, something which he described as “dangerous territory”.



Dangerous territory, indeed.


What are we to make of this? Is an author limited to only writing characters within their race? What about gender? Religion? Age? Ethnicity? Sexual orientation? Where do the boundaries stop?


The old adage, “write what you know,” is a thesis that implies a writer should limit their imagination to the parameters of their own life and experience. But does that maxim still hold true today? Certainly in these times of viral accessibility, contact, research, knowledge, and interaction with people, places, and things far outside our own proximity is as every-day as 24/7 updates from the farthest corners of the globe. Our ability, consequently, to gain perspective sufficient enough to write outside one’s own “house” is not only doable, but, perhaps, universal and insightful, presuming one does it well.


But is it “patronizing”? Are we, as writers, simply not allowed to write outside, say, our culture, regardless of how well we might do it? Has society become so compartmentalized, so hypersensitive, politically correct, and wary of triggering repercussion, resentment, or misinterpretation that reaching beyond our own skin ― literally and figuratively – has become verboten to us as creative artists?


Interesting questions, these; particularly when you consider that men have been writing about women since time immemorial without particular societal concern that they couldn’t possibly know, couldn’t authentically muster, the requisite experiential perspective. It was a given that they could get the job done; accepted without debate. Yet the specificity, the sensitive and unique nature of being female, could be considered as disparate from the male experience as being black is to a white person, but that hasn’t stopped male authors, from Vladimir Nabokov to Wally Lamb, from creating their women of note.


Which is fair. Because the explicit job of an author is to climb inside the experience of LIFE, real or imagined, to tell compelling stories that reflect the incalculable diversity of detail, nuance, thought, and emotion of any variety of people, places, and things. And the creative mind can find and translate authenticity whether writing about Martians, coquettish teens, dogs who play poker, or characters who exactly mirror the author‘s gender or race.


I’ve had my own experience with this interesting conundrum: my last novel, Hysterical Love, was told through the first-person point-of-view of a thirty-three-year-old man, and it goes without saying: I’m not one of those. Yet I felt completely capable of infusing my story with authenticity by relying on my skills of observation, as well as my experiential knowledge as the sister of five men, the mother of a son, the wife of a man; my years on the road with rock bands, and the immersive research of being a close friend to many, many men throughout my life. I’ve been told I pulled it off, even by the men who’ve read it, so my conviction proved out.


But is the divide between cultures, races, wider than that of gender diversity? Does a white writer delegitimize their prose by including black characters? Is the reverse true?


I don’t think so. I think it depends on the writer, the quality of their work; the depth and sensitivity of their depictions. Those are my initial responses. But I also understand the question:


About two years ago I had an article up at HuffPost titled, “No, White People Will Never Understand the Black Experience,” a piece that became a flashpoint for much conversation on the topic of race. It was written in response to events of the time, particularly the egregious injustice of Sandra Bland’s arrest and subsequent (and inexplicable) jailhouse death, and the cacophony that arose amongst, amidst, and between parties on both sides of the racial divide as a result. My own thesis, my perspective on the tangible limitations we each have in perceiving and assessing the realities of life outside ourselves, is made clear by the title alone. But while there’s obviously much more to that debate, here and now we’re discussing the issue as it relates to the job of being an author and I have some specific thoughts on that.


Inspired by the many responses and conversations that ensued after the aforementioned article, as well as others written on the topic of racial conflict, bias, and injustice, I took one of the stories referenced, about an interracial couple’s experiences with police profiling, and developed it into a character-driven novel called A NICE WHITE GIRL, a title that reflects commentary made within some of the conversations I had.


This “sociopolitical love story” is told through the intertwining points-of-view of a black man and white woman dealing not only with pushback to their new and evolving relationship, but the ratcheting impact of police profiling that ultimately leads to a life-altering arrest. It’s a story that’s human, gut-wrenching, and honest, built on the foundation of my own experiences in a long-term interracial relationship earlier in my life, as well as journalistic research and interviews, personal interactions, even friendships with members of the black community. Given a commitment to creating the characters outside my demographic as authentically and sensitively as I possibly could, without watering them down or pandering to political correctness, I believe I served both my story and its cultural demands well. Did I?


Every author relies on, taps into; mines the wealth of thought, opinion, perspective, and acculturation of their own unique life experience. Certainly that’s true. But as artists, as observers and chroniclers of life by way of prose, we go beyond that pool of reference. We reach out, we expand; we explore plot lines and include characters that stretch our imagination, that dig deep into worlds, events and experiences, imagined or real, that can pull us onto less traveled roads that might demand the challenge of research, of specific observation, even outside consultation. We take these extra steps, even for fiction, because we want to infuse our work with inherent realness. Particularly when writing characters outside our culture. That was certainly the demand I faced when embarking upon this latest novel.


But I am a white woman who’s written a book with a black male character, inclusive of his mother, his sister, and various friends. I’ve depicted their family life, their interactions, relationships, thoughts and feelings. Do I not have the creative right to do that? Will I be seen as patronizing, insensitive, off base, and inappropriate? Will this make my book too controversial for representation, for publishing, for sale? Will it garner derision and disdain from members of the black community? Even members of the white community who may resent the harshness with which I depict some of the police?


I don’t know. Maybe. But it was a story I felt passionate about, compelled to write; that took the many debated aspects and elements discussed in my articles and put them into fictional form, with imagined characters who embodied and borrowed from people I knew, from conversations I’d had, from ideas, agendas, politics, and passions that had been conveyed to me by real people expressing essential and sometimes controversial perspectives. I was determined to honor them by candidly, honestly, and without apology, telling the story.


But perhaps, as Anthony Horowitz was told, I’m entering territory that is off-limits, that puts me at odds with those who might frame me as presumptuous and patronizing. “A nice white girl” who’s stepped outside of culturally acceptable boundaries.


I hope not, because I, like Mr. Horowitz, see that as “dangerous territory.”


Just as brilliant male authors have gorgeously written female protagonists; as female novelists have conjured male characters ringing with truth; as writers of one ethnicity have honestly depicted another; as fabulists have invented entire worlds of imagined wonders, authors must be limited by... NOTHING. Not a thing. They must be free to create without fear of cultural naysaying, societal judgment, threat of reprisal, or the discomfort of crossing cultural boundaries.


The only mandate to which they’re obligated is GOOD WRITING. Writing with wit and clarity. Honesty. Authenticity. Sensitivity and depth. Engaging prose, compelling plots, and visceral emotion. And, if need be, if determined helpful, the use of “sensitivity readers” who can ascertain if the writer got the cultural references right.


But just as Idris Elba could certainly make magic as James Bond, as Anthony Horowitz could create an intriguing black spy for his books; as I can write characters both male and of a culture outside my own, so must every author of merit and worth be allowed to view the entire panoply of life as fuel for their imagination. Anything else is antithetical to the mission of art... and stymying art serves no one. Not the writer, not the reader, not the myriad members of our diverse world hungry for stories that reflect their lives. Art is imagining; creating, mirroring, and provoking... all of which can and must be achieved by artists free to explore without the limiting effect of creative and cultural boundaries.


Photo by Anete Lusina @ Unsplash


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Follow Lorraine Devon Wilke on Facebook, Twitter and Amazon. Details and links to her blog, photography, books, and music can be found at www.LorraineDevonWilke.com.

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Evan Pricco Curates 'What In The World' At Urban Nation In Berlin

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A new exhibition in Berlin’s neighborhood of Schöneberg epitomizes one of the central schisms that has vibrated through Street Art and graffiti for years: the question of where to draw boundaries between these two scenes.


Each may have been born in the margins of society but are now evermore commingled. Debates aside, everyone agrees that once in the gallery space, street become fine art after all. “The graffiti and Street Art movements – they have all these tentacles and they can be non-linear,” Evan says as we walk down a subterranean parking ramp to see a low, long outdoor mural by Sweden’s EKTA; an abstract series of roughly square patches that closely emulate the sewn panels he has suspended from the ceiling inside the gallery.


As Editor-in-Chief of the San Francisco based art magazine Juxtapoz and curator of this “What in the World” show at Urban Nation’s project space, Evan Pricco is well aware of the landmines that can explode when one is negotiating the terminologies and practices of sundry sub-cultural art manifestations that have bubbled to the surface in the last decades and which now often melt with one another inextricably.


“The graffiti and Street Art movements – they have all these tentacles and they can be non-linear,” Evan says as we walk down a subterranean parking ramp to see a low, long outdoor mural by Sweden’s EKTA; an abstract series of roughly square patches that closely emulate the sewn panels he has suspended from the ceiling inside the gallery.



Speaking of the tentacles, he continues, “It can be starting points to end points – it can be end points to starting points. There are all of these different cultures that grew out of that 1970s-80s set of counter-culture art movements.


“I think the people that I really wanted in this show are kind of on the periphery of that. They clearly dip their toe into those movements, are clearly influenced by them. Their practice doesn’t necessarily fit in with what is going on in Street Art and graffiti but also its informed by it.”


To introduce a new crop of artists to Urban Nation that haven’t been shown here yet, Pricco choses some of Europes street/mural/conceptual artists who emphasize color and mood, an expansionist approach that he welcomes at the magazine as well. Not surprisingly, the range reflects some of the same interests you’ll find flipping through the influential art publication; old school graffiti, commercial illustration, comic book history, abstract fine art, political art, some lowbrow, some conceptual. There is even Grotesk’s newsstand, the actual one that he designed and constructed with Juxtapoz that sat in Times Square in October 2015.



Primarily from Europe and raised in the hothouse of the 1990s epic graffiti scenes that enthralled youth in many EU big cities, this group of 7 artists each has moved their practice forward – which may lose them some street cred and gather new audiences.


Included are Berlin’s Daan Botlek, Sweden’s EKTA, Ermsy from France, Erosie from the Netherlands, Hyuro from Spain, Serge Lowrider from Switzerland and Zio Ziegler from the US. If you speak to any of them, you may find the commonality is the freedom they actively give themselves to pursue an autonomous artistic route not easily categorized.



Lowrider is clearly in love with the letter-form, as is the graffiti tradition, but he steers sharply toward the calligraphic practices of crisp sign-painting and inverting the pleasantly banal messaging of advertising from an earlier era. Perhaps the tight line work overlaps with tattoo and skater culture, two creative brethren frequently in the mix in graffiti and Street Art scenes.


Hyuro uses a figurative symbolism heavy with metaphor and a color palette that is too understated for the flashy graphics that many associate with today’s mural festivals, yet she’s built a dedicated following among Street Art fans who admire her poke-you-in-the-eye activist streak. Daan Botleks’ figures wander and cavort amidst an abstractedly shaped world calling to mind the shading of early graffiti and the volumizing pointillism of Seurat after some wine.



Painter Jeroen Erosie emphatically will tell you that he was in love with graffiti when he first did it on the streets as a teenager – and for many years afterwards. But he says he ultimately bristled at a scene that had once symbolized freedom to him but had become too rigid and even oppressive in its rules about how aesthetics should be practiced by people – if they were to earn respect within the clan.


At Saturday nights opening along Bülowstrasse with the front doors open to the busy street and with the sound of the elevated train swooshing by overhead, Erosie explained with a gleeful certainty his process of deconstruction that led him to this point. “I removed one of the pillars of graffiti from my work and I liked the result, the change. So I started to remove more pillars, one by one,” he says, describing the evolution that transformed his letter forms and colors into these simplified and bold bi-color icons that may call to mind Matisse’s cut outs more than graffiti bubble-tags, but you’ll easily draw the correlation if you try.



The Project M series of exhibitions over the past three years with Urban Nation, of which this is the 12th, have featured curators and artists from many backgrounds, disciplines, and geographies as well. The myriad styles shown have included sculpture, stencil, wheat paste, collage, calligraphy, illustration, screen-printing, decoupage, aerosol, oil painting, and even acrylic brush. It has been a carefully guided selection of graffiti/Street Art/urban art/fine art across the 12 shows; all presented respectfully cheek to jowl, side by side – happily for some, uncomfortably for others.


The ultimate success of the Project M series, initiated by UN Artistic Director Yasha Young, is evident in just how far open it has flung the doors of expectation to the museum itself. When the house opens in four months it will be a reflection to some extent 140 or so artists who pushed open those doors with variety of styles emblematic of this moment - converging into something called Urban Contemporary.



“What in the World” indeed: this show is in perfect alignment with the others in its wanton plumbing of the genres.


“I was trying to find people that are not part of the regular circuit – and I don’t mean that in a negative way but I mean there is kind of a regular circuit of muralism and Street Art right now – but I was looking for people who are really sort of on that periphery,” Pricco says. “Also because they are coming from these different parts of Europe, which to me sort of represents Juxtpoz’ reach, and they all kind of know each other but they’ve never really met – they all kind of bounce off of each other.”



Brooklyn Street Art: This grouping sounds anathema to the loyalty that is often demanded by these scenes – particularly the various graffiti scenes in cities around the world. You are describing an artistic practice that has a sort of casual relationship to that scene.


Evan Pricco: Right. And I think all of these artists have these graffiti histories but they weren’t completely satisfied with that kind of moniker or label. So it is slightly expanding out now. And then there’s something about them that makes me think of crafts, especially with Serge who is more of a sign-painter. I felt that all of these people approached their work in a way that felt very craft-oriented to me, and I really appreciated that. That’s kind of what I wanted to show too.



Brooklyn Street Art: Each of these artists appears to have a certain familiarity with the art world that is outside a more strict definition of street culture – graffiti and Street Art and their tributaries. Would you say that you could see a certain development of personal style in this collection of primarily European artists that might be due to exposure to formal art history or other cultural influences?


Evan Pricco: Good question, and that could be the case for a few of the artists in the show, but I think the characteristics of each artist in the show is more of a result of the world getting smaller and influences and boundaries just blurring. You can see it Ermsy’s pop-culture mash-ups, or Erosie’s exploration of lettering and color; it’s not really about one place anymore but a larger dialogue of how far the work reaches now than ever before.


Erosie and I were having this conversation this morning about this, this idea of access and influences being so widespread. And that is exactly what I wanted to do. “What In the World” is sort of a nod to not really having to have boundaries, or a proper definition, but a feeling that something is happening. Its not Street Art, its not graffiti, but its this new wave that is looking out, looking in, and finding new avenues to share and make work.



Brooklyn Street Art: From comic books to politics to activism to abstract to sign painting, this show spans the Hi-Low terrain that Juxtapoz often seeks to embrace in many ways. Is it difficult to find common threads or narratives when countenancing such variety?


Evan Pricco: We have been so fortunate with the magazine that we have been able to expand the content in the last few years, and the threads are starting to connect solely based on the idea that the creative life is what you make of it. There may not be a direct connection between Serge Lowrider and Mark Ryden, but there is a connection in the idea of craftsmanship and skill and how one goes about applying that skill in the art world. That is always wanted I wanted to help bring to Juxtapoz – this idea that variety in the art world is healthy and finds its own connections just in the fact that it exists and is being made.



Brooklyn Street Art: Many of these names are not household names, though some have ardent fans within more narrow channels of influence. What role does a curator play by introducing these artworks/artists to a new audience and what connections would you like a viewer to make?


Evan Pricco: First and foremost, these are some of my absolute favorite artists making work right now. I do have the advantage of traveling a lot and meeting different people and seeing their process, but I really wanted to bring together a group that I hadn’t personally met but admired and communicated with from afar.



I was thinking about this when I walked by Hyuro’s wall this morning. Her work is incredibly strong, and it has this really fascinating way of being a story and narrative from wall to wall while remaining fresh and really site-specific. Her work here just blew me away; its so subtle, has this really unique almost anonymous quality to it, but has a ton of thought and heart in it.


Really it would be great if the audience sees this and finds her other work, and starts seeing this really beautiful story emerging, these powerful political, social and economic commentaries. So really, I want that. I want this to be a gateway of looking at work and artists and then jumping into their really fantastically complex careers.



Brooklyn Street Art: Urban Nation has invited curators from around the world and Berlin during these 12 “Project M” shows, each with a take on what “art in the streets” is, how it has evolved, and how it is affecting contemporary art. What makes this show stand out?


Evan Pricco: I really do think what makes it stand out is that it represents all the things Juxtapoz stands for; Opening up an audience to something new and different. I think there is an aesthetic that the Project M shows have had, which I like, but I didn’t want to repeat what everyone had done before.


This is most definitely a Juxtapoz show; I mean our damned Newsstand that Grotesk designed is right in the middle of the space. But that is like this “representation” of the print mag, and all the walls around it are the avenues the magazine can take you; sign painting, textiles, graffiti, abstraction, conceptual art, murals, comics, politics. … So maybe in that way, the fact that the magazine is 23 years old and has covered such a big history of Lowbrow, Graffiti and other forms of art, this is a nice encapsulation of the next wave and generation.






“What In the World: The Juxtapoz Edition” presented by Urban Nation will be on display through June 2017. 


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Scottish Ballet's New Take On A Streetcar Named Desire

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Like a moth to the flame, Blanche DuBois, opens the show as a curious creature drawn to a single light bulb; a stunning piece of imagery for a stunning ballet. “This vibrant adaptation by Scottish Ballet of the classic Tennessee Williams tale, A Streetcar Named Desire, brings the heat and music of New Orleans straight to The Music Center. The definitive Pulitzer Prize-winning drama is transformed into a powerful and emotional ballet that not only excites, but further enhances the story’s suspenseful take on lust, desire and betrayal that can only be conveyed by the honesty of dance.  In collaboration with director Nancy Meckler and choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, the production explores the boundaries of narrative ballet through a range of dance styles. Accompanied by a specially commissioned jazz-inspired score by Peter Salem that accentuates the sensuality of the dancers, Scottish Ballet’s  A Streetcar Named Desire is a one-of-a-kind take on an American classic.”


In this beautiful and dynamic production, Scottish Ballet pushes the limits and takes audiences on an emotional and chilling journey through the life of Blanche DuBois. “Our storytelling, unlike Williams' play, begins by relating the story of Blanche DuBois while she is growing up in America’s Deep South. The year is 1935, and the lifestyle of the landed gentry is in steep decline. Blanche is a beautiful young girl with her life ahead of her”. Her life drifts in and out of ecstasy and turmoil. Finding out that her husband had been having an affair with another man resulting in him committing suicide and leaving home after the death of most of her family traveling to the sex-crazed; jazz filled streets of New Orleans night life scene. After being run out of town for seducing a young boy, she finds comfort in her only living relative, Stella who has taken up with Stanley Kowalski, an aggressive bad boy we know so well because of Marlon Brando.


The dancers of this company are stellar performers. According to an interview with Neckler Meckler, the dancers also went through some acting training to give voice the characters of Tennessee William’s play without words. It is truly a company of beautiful dancers that are quite focused and passionate about their art and conveying a story. Eve Mutso(Blanche) and Sophie Laplane(Stella) stole the show with pure energy and heart-wrenching performances.



Scottish Ballet is Scotland’s national dance company. The esteemed company has built its reputation on strong bold work and vast touring. It regularly presents at premier theatres and events such as Sadler’s Wells and Edinburgh International Festival, as well as leading venues and festivals abroad including Europe, Asia and North America. Scottish Ballet continues to build on its heritage as a bold, adventurous company with ambitious creative programmes and touring, working with groundbreaking choreographers such as Ivgi & Greben, Bryan Arias, David Dawson and Crystal Pite.”





Make sure to check out The Music Center website for upcoming performances!

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Teen Vogue Is Evolving Thanks To Elaine Welteroth

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You may have noticed that Teen Vogue is getting political. At first, this may seem surprising. But to those who have been following the changes at the magazine, it was inevitable. Teen Vogue was recently taken over by a new editor-in-chief committed to making the publication more inclusive and aware of the world we live in. The new E.I.C, Elaine Welteroth, has created an editorial vision that’s expanded and prioritized its coverage of politics, feminism, identity, and activism as it relates to Teen Vogue’s audience.


This has caused a huge shift for the publication. Teen Vogue’s website has increased by 6.5 million unique visitors since last year when the magazine’s leadership pivoted. Welteroth is just the second person of color at a Conde Nasté subsidiary to hold a E.I.C position, and has more than risen to the challenge.


Diversity is a key component of her editorial strategy. Young readers are hungry for content that reflects a broad range of experiences, which is something Welteroth undoubtedly built upon from her time on Teen Vogue’s YouTube page hosting a show called “3 Steps To.


The new E.I.C may be the youngest in Conde Nasté’s history, but she’s proven that “serious” topics like religion, business, and politics should not be reserved strictly for older generations.


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Director John Scheinfeld On The Spiritual Journey Of Jazz Icon John Coltrane

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In this week’s episode of “Scheer Intelligence” Robert Scheer speaks with documentarian John Scheinfeld about his latest film, “Chasing Trane” about jazz icon John Coltrane. The two also discuss Scheinfeld’s earlier film, “The U.S. vs. John Lennon,” and Lennon’s political activism during the Vietnam War.


The conversation begins with a look at the parallels between Lennon and Coltrane. Noting that the two music legends “overlapped in time,” Scheer tells Scheinfeld: “What you capture in both stories is a search for integrity and rebellion.”


After delving into Lennon’s political activism during and after the Vietnam War, the two discuss Coltrane’s legacy. Scheinfeld notes that Coltrane was a “practice nut” who would practice “hours and hours every day.”


“Yes, jazz exists today, but it’s not the same thing,” Scheer says.


Scheinfeld explains Coltrane’s background and musical process, and the two agree that his music defied any genre.


“He seemed to always be learning and seeking the truth,” Scheinfeld says. “I didn’t want to make a jazz film. In fact, I think the word ‘jazz’ appears in ‘Chasing Trane’ maybe five times. This is a journey film ... it’s a portrait of this remarkable artist.”


Listen to the full conversation and listen to past editions of “Scheer Intelligence” here.


— Adapted from Truthdig.com

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Federal Arts Institutions Need Full Funding and Strong Leaders

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By James Tager, Manager for Free Expression Programs at PEN America


For artists, writers, and scholars across the country, the recent release of President Trump’s full budget proposal has been met with a now-familiar sense of dismay. The proposed budget would completely gut the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Institute of Museum and Library Studies (IMLS), and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB); in short, it takes an axe to our country’s foremost artistic and cultural institutions. But we had seen this coming a long time before: the Trump Administration had indicated its intent to defund these institutions even before entering office.



Arts and culture advocates have taken some solace in commentators’ declarations that this proposed budget won’t make it through Congress. The day the budget was released, The New York Times stated that the President’s party has greeted the budget with “open hesitation or outright hostility,” while CNN declared that the defunding of the NEA and the CPB were part of a set of “political landmines” for Republicans in Congress. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said “the only good news” about the budget proposal is that it is “likely to be roundly rejected by members of both parties here in the Senate.” And it is also worth noting that the recently-passed 2017 Consolidated Appropriations Act, for federal spending until September 2017, actually retains or even increases spending for the NEA, NEH, CPB and IMLS.


With these reports, arts and culture advocates might breathe a sigh of relief, believing that our arts and cultural institutions will be saved from political interference. That would be a mistake.


It bears repeating that that organizations like the NEA are not “safe” from the chopping block until Congress actually passes a bill declaring it so. But even if these institutions are not defunded, there are two ways that Congress and the Trump administration can tear down federal funding for the arts and humanities in the next several months.


Firstly, Congress could “save” our cultural institutions while still reducing their funding. President Trump’s proposal for complete defunding could give cover to Congress to reduce the funding of these organizations while still claiming to be defenders of arts and culture by arguing they saved our institutions from an even worse fate.


This has happened before: In 1981, President Reagan backed away from eliminating the NEA after a special task force including actor and staunch conservative Charlton Heston urged him against it. But Congress went on to reduce the NEA’s budget by approximately 10%. In the 90s, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich led a charge against the NEA, the NEH, the CPB, and the National Institute of Museum Services (the IMLS’s predecessor). This effort failed, but Gingrich was successful in eliminating NEA grants to individual artists with a few remaining exceptions, and slashing the NEA and NEH’s budget by almost 40% each. In 2011, the Republican Study Committee proposed ending the NEA and NEH.  That same year, the Obama administration proposed cuts to both agencies, leading to decreases in both budgets over the next three years.


In other words, previous attacks on federal support for the arts, humanities, and public news have been unsuccessful in shutting this support down fully, but they have been successful in chipping away at the edifices of our cultural institutions. We run the same risk today: the NEA and other institutions can be “saved” from the chopping block and still end up having their funding cut. We need to urge not only for continued funding to these important institutions, but for full funding.


Current funding for these organizations—under the 2017 Consolidated Appropriations Act—is an approximate 150 million for the NEA and NEH, 445 million for the CPB (as well as an additional 50 million to replace the public broadcasting interconnection system), and 230 million for the IMLS. Advocates have been arguing that these budgets could use additional increase; Umbrella groups like the Americans for the Arts, for example, have called for Congress to increase the NEA’s budget to $155 million. The Trump Administration’s attempt to destroy these institutions should not dissuade us from arguing that they should be strengthened; on the contrary, it gives impetus for us to re-double our efforts.


But reduced funding is not the only way that institutions like the NEA can be weakened. They can also be sabotaged and weakened from the inside if President Trump appoints new leadership through poor leadership.


We’ve already seen the Trump Administration use this tactic. Scott Pruitt, a lawyer who made his name suing the Environmental Protection Agency, is now in charge of the EPA. Rick Perry, who once advocated abolishing the Department of Energy entirely, is now in charge of the DOE. Betsy DeVos, who believes that private alternatives hold more promise than public education, is Secretary of Education.


The heads of three of these agencies—the NEA, the NEH, the IMLS—are all appointed by the President. They serve four year terms, meaning Trump will have the opportunity to appoint their replacements over the next four years. Similarly, the President appoints all Directors on the Board of the CPB, some of whom have terms ending in 2018. However, President Trump’s first opportunity to change up the leadership of our federal cultural institutions is already before him: On May 22, the day before Trump’s budget proposal was revealed, the head of the NEH, Dr. William Adams, resigned.


President Trump, if he wants to weaken the organization from the inside, could attempt to appoint a new NEH head who does not believe in federal support for the humanities. Trump would have an uncomfortably long list of candidates, given how influential conservative outlets have consistently attacked the NEH for decades. An NEH head who does not value the idea of federal support for the humanities, or an IMLS head who believe that libraries and museums should be privatized, or a CPB head who believes that local radio stations should be left to fend for themselves, would be a disaster.


All these positions may be appointed by the President, but they require confirmation by the Senate. President Trump may propose the replacement head of the NEH soon, and we must watch carefully. An NEH appointee who does not have a demonstrated track record of commitment to the humanities should be seen as a giant, waving red flag. And all of us who value arts and culture need to ensure that the Senate feels the same way.

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Being Convinced We're Always Right Is Our Next National Emergency

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It’s no secret that we’ve reached the apex of the the age of entitlement. Social media and political polarization have pushed people on either side of the spectrum to dig in their heels and refuse the other side. We’ve come to value being right more than being humble. It’s not about the pursuit of knowledge anymore. No, it’s the pursuit of self-validation.


There have already been numerous articles on how self-fulfilling bubbles eventually lead to a crisis in knowledge. These bubbles emerge as a result of people filtering their social media of any information that disagrees with their values. Instead of consuming a healthy diet of opposing viewpoints, we become an ouroboros consuming our own tail just to feel better about ourselves.


American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt believes this confirmation bias on the internet is our next national emergency. In this new video from The RSA, Haidt cautions that this influx of self-fulfilling information can only be combatted by teaching humility and acceptance in grade schools. By creating a more organic understanding and consumption of information on both sides we become a more tolerant and accepting society that can push forward into the future.


Or, you know, we don’t and we’re all doomed to die thinking we’re right.

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What's The Link Between Creativity and Depression?

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The relationship between depression and creativity is often romanticized as the key to creating good art. It’s been called the dark side of creativity, or the key to genius. There’s hundreds of think pieces online about how depression can supercharge your creative endeavors, but do those think pieces actually hold any weight?


The short answer is yes but it’s complicated. It’s one of the world’s most common mental disorders and creative types are proven to be the group most affected by this disorder.


Psych2Go’s new video breaks down the relationship between creativity and depression. By citing many different studies on depression, the video highlights the nature of the very complicated relationship. Many studies suggest that creative people are more exposed to the causal effects of depression while others suggest that depression causes creativity.


It’s hard to find a streamlined relationship between creativity and depression. The truth is that the two things are so inherently tied to one another that it’s impossible to determine cause and effect, although they do seem (at least on the surface) incredibly related.


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10 Buzzworthy Books From Memoirists And Essayists

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Originally published on Kirkus. For more from Kirkus, click here.



You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir by Sherman Alexie


“Despite some repetition, this is a powerful, brutally honest memoir about a mother and the son who loved her.” The story of the popular Native American author’s difficult upbringing. Read full book review.



Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002) by David Sedaris


“A surprisingly poignant portrait of the artist as a young to middle-aged man.” Raw glimpses of the humorist’s personal life as he clambered from starving artist to household name. Read full book review.



Memory’s Last Breath: Field Notes on My Dementia by Gerda Saunders


“A courageous, richly textured, and unsparing memoir.” A former gender studies professor’s memoir about living and remembering her life in the face of dementia. Read full book review.



Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History by Camille T. Dungy


“Forthright, entertaining, often potent essays that successfully intertwine personal history and historical context regarding black and white in America.” A poet explores her experiences as a mother, teacher, black woman, and “conscientious outsider.” Read full book review.



We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.: Essays by Samantha Irby


“Personal embarrassment provides plenty of material for in-print or online entertainment.” A blogger (Bitches Gotta Eat) has to laugh to keep from crying—or maybe killing somebody—in this collection of essays from the black, full-figured female perspective. Read full book review.



To the New Owners: A Memoir of Martha's Vineyard by Madeleine Blais


“If not quite as funny as billed, there remains much gentle humor and a certain elegiac sweetness that more than compensates—that, and a touching coda.” A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author gives a familial face to the mystique of Martha's Vineyard in this unfailingly charming reminiscence of summers spent on the island. Read full book review.



Ruthless River: Love and Survival by Raft on the Amazon's Relentless Madre de Dios by Holly Conklin FitzGerald


“FitzGerald overcomes her book's few flaws to produce an absorbing tale of survival, love, and the generosity of people who helped save their lives.” The account of a transformational South American odyssey that tested the author and her husband to the limit. Read full book review.



Watching Porn: And Other Confessions from an Adult Entertainment Journalist by Lynsey G.


“An intelligent, provocative, and indulgent insider’s view of the contemporary porn industry.” An accidental porn journalist reflects on her role mining the sex and politics of the adult film industry. Read full book review.



Shark Drunk: The Art of Catching a Large Shark from a Tiny Rubber Dinghy in a Big Ocean by Morten Strøksnes, translated by Tiina Nunnally


“Whether the author is opining on mass extinctions, the importance of plankton, the history of lighthouses, or the epicurean treat of boiled cod tongues, readers will happily devour this smorgasbord of delights.” Accomplished Norwegian historian, journalist, and photographer Strøksnes invites readers into the fantastical ocean environment of his quest to capture a Greenland shark. Read full book review.



All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches From the U.S. Borderlands by Stephanie Elizondo Griest


“In this well-conceived book, the author demonstrates unforgettably that national borders constitute much more than lines on a map.” An exploration of the borderlands that deftly mixes memoir, groundbreaking sociology, deep reporting, and compelling writing. Read full book review.

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'Brighter Days Are Coming' At St. Petersburg Street Art Museum

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This spring, a hundred years since the Russian Revolution, a new Street Art inspired exhibition in St. Petersburg may reflect the ambivalence that competing storylines produce in the re-telling of history. A hundred years since the workers movement displaced the Czar and his family following three hundred years of power, the streets don’t look like they will return to the Bloody Sunday of hundreds of workers lying on the pavement, but a certain unruly violence can be sensed in the performances and artworks nonetheless.



“Brighter Days Are Coming”, co-curated by Andrey Zaitsev, the director of Street Art Museum and Yasha Young, director of the Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art in Berlin, brings the voices of 60 current artists with roots in the Street Art/ graffiti practice to discuss that specific revolution or the theme of revolution itself. Largely from Russia and using everything from aerosol to concrete to bricks to bones to smoke, it would appear that the effects of 1917 are even now difficult to resolve.


The Street Art scene is familiar with the schizophrenia of identity and the loosely tossed labels that never exactly fit. Multiple participants and categories of art-in-the-street now apply – perhaps reflective of the multiple individual stations one can occupy in society: citizen/ loyalist/ worker/ owner/ globalist/ revolutionary/ consumer. Awash in the borderless Internet of everything and nothing, it is often the youngest adults for whom Street Art appeals and has currency, an imperfect authenticity you can engage with. Ironically, there may be a way to accommodate these ubiquitous monuments of Lenin and other static heroes in your periphery as you walk by them playing with Pokémon on your digital device. One way is to make them your own.



Clicking “Like” Won’t Do It


There is a struggle today to discern the cultural weight and meaning of visual culture because hierarchies have been flattened and distance is seemingly elastic in our digital experience. Iconic Lenin may mistakenly be reduced to icon Lenin, a simplified button on one’s phone. The digital space can create a sense of intimacy with strangers and yet an odd distance when considering actual lives of peasants, or the fight of the workers, or the struggle of artists for that matter.


One sure way to appreciate art is to see it in person, to contemplate while gazing on the expanse of an enormous mural or trudging across the grounds of this plastics factory/ Street Art Museum on the outskirts the former Petrograd – one that was begun by twenty-somethings in love with global Street Art and is heavily populated with them.





Indeed a low-budget looking satirical promotional video for the exhibition posted on the Street Art Museum Instagram page appears as a mocking half-hearted celebration by costumed Russian Millenials and Gen Z’s dancing around a smiley icon cake whose dynamite candle suddenly explodes in a bit of stock video of a fiery Armageddon.


What is the future or past we’re celebrating? Does anyone know? Thanks to the explosion the video feels humorously heavy in the foreboding sarcasm department. Maybe it is just an insider reference to a favorite movie scene or video game. There ARE, after all, three  curious Pokémon characters at the kitchen table. The official poster features the cheerful sunshine-yellow Pokémon with lipstick and a full-mouthed smile. Somehow it has more credibility than any human figure, smiling and terrifically positive that the future is bright.



Walking Inside and Out


The fourth such large exhibition in this suburban factory campus and its open outside space since the museum received official accreditation in 2012, this season at The Street Art Museum features 60 or so artists from 12 countries who look to the events 1917 for inspiration. As organizers note on the museum website, the topic is being addressed with retrospective shows this year by great museums worldwide including The MOMA in New York, Tate Modern in London, the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, and the Tretyakov Gallery in Russia.


“The main object is the heritage of the Russian avant-garde, whose world-spanning and messianic spirit had a serious effect on the development of contemporary art,” explains the site. For practitioners and fans of the graffiti and Street Art scenes that have evolved in cities globally during the last 50 years, one revolution or another is never far from their mind at all. At the epicenter of history here in Shosse Revolutsii, the Street Art Museum is an appropriate place to at least contemplate the subject.


Large scale installations on walls throughout the compound are complemented by sculptures in open spaces; some of them interactive, others static, still others are reproductions of historic and recognizable figures. Most commanding would be the Lenin. Most remarkable would be the reproduction of The Hermitage.



The recreating of The Winter Palace façade is a guilty delight, one of the 6 buildings of The actual Hermitage that holds the world’s largest collection of paintings only kilometers from here. A world icon of the revolution since being stormed in the fall of 1917, the massive aquatic (or French) blue facsimile of the façade in this museum courtyard provides a haunted, riveting, and admittedly comedic context for everything that passes by it, behind it, before it.



Individual Interpretations of “Revolution”


Elsewhere Lisbon based Street Artist Bordalo II has brought his practice of creating an endangered animal with local garbage for his installation of the famous Russian Snow Leopard – an animal now critically endangered, with its numbers estimated by some as 100 or less. One may wonder, certainly these artists do, what animal species will still be here in 2117.



Russian artist Dima Rebus watercolor painted one of his character’s faces on the bottoms of 340 oil barrels by hand as a nod to the mobs of people who gathered together to form the the uprisings of the revolution. He says he has plans to disperse the mob wall, to vanish it at the end of the exhibition, painting each person out one by one with spray paint. Entitled “Life Goes On” the artist says, “Revolutions happen and pass, but life goes on.”



The Italian illustration-style Street Artist name Millo painted one of his imaginary highrise milieus where a giant child is at play in the center of an urban setting. The revolution here is the represented by the ripples of waves passing literally through the character, he says. On social media he describes it this way, “Each planet follows its orbit and all of them are the personification of the revolutions lived by the main figure. The message I want give is to find your personal revolution. When something is getting over is the exact moment to find the strength to revolution”.




French Street Artist Kazy Usclef (above and below) normally draws influences from Futurism and Suprematism so his connection to the Russian avant-garde is a short distance. He also isn’t afraid to touch upon current political sore spots.


In “Rebel Sex Love Resistance,” the two entwined figures are female and one is wearing a balaclava, features that together are perhaps subtle references to the activist art music group named Pussy Riot, famously contentious and Anti-Putin.



Performance, Panels, Debates


During its opening days the exhibition featured ongoing performances by contemporary artists and independent theater troupes, turning the courtyard into a stage and the “Hermitage” into a set.



Lead by curator and theater director Danil Vache, costumed performers appear to take inspiration from specific historical events and themes of radical change, societal rupture, militarism, and the uprising of poor and working class to claim power. Inside and onstage, live performances of poetry, speeches, and music were featured throughout the week.



Additionally there were a few panel discussions and forums like “Simulacrums of Revolution,” where moderating curator/ theatrical producer Mihail Oger spoke in conversation before an audience with guests like American graffiti/Street Art photographer Martha Cooper, Ukrainian artist Pasha Kas; Russian graffiti writer and contemporary artist Maxim Ima, graffiti/public artist Anton Polsky (known as Make), and Urban Nation (UN) Cultural Manager Denis Leo Hegic. Hegic, who spoke before images of the Berlin Wall during his presentation, tells us about his and the UN’s involvement with the exhibition.



BSA: The title of the exhibition is sort of a satiric, sunny reference to a happy future – “Brighter Days Are Coming”, yet it is cast directly under the shadow of the hardship and conflicted relationship Russian’s and all of us have with the past. How did you see the exhibition responding to this dichotomy?


Denis Leo Hegic: The title of the forum “Simulacrums of Revolution” is actually a good supplement to the title of the exhibition itself, since the idea was not to define revolution or to claim revolutionary DNA, but to reflect on what is the “Representation” of revolution on various levels and in our own understanding, in historical, scientific definitions and in the artistic representation.



Hegic points to the age old practice by humans of the falsification of historical events to form a narrative. He also points to “fake winter palace or the fake museum” and compares it to the famous painting “The Storm on the Winter Palais” by Pawel Petrowitsch Sokolow-Skalja as examples of re-writing history. You can almost anticipate that Hegic will transition readily into the topic of “fake news” or “propaganda,” but he takes another damning route instead.


“We can draw parallels to the fakeness of our own representation today – with our own “curated” Instagram accounts, or the millions of selfies we make from flattering angles – this seems to be a considerable part of our daily thought and activities. This is where I see the direct link to the representational powers of every revolution in our own present time.”



He also disagrees with how we characterized the title of the exhibition, “Brighter Days Are Coming.”


“The title should not necessarily be understood as a satiric one,” he explains. “Brighter days are always about to come. The light will inevitably win over the darkness and human optimism will remain a motor that keeps our evolution process in motion. Ironically, our evolution itself might bring our extinction too - but under the assertion ‘Brighter Days Are Coming’ we do continue to live and to hope.”



Pulling Back the Curtain


The museum itself, stationed on the campus of an operating plastics factory and under the directorship of the son of the owner, highlights some of the conundrums of featuring autonomous global public art movements in a time and place where official state messages speak more to loyalty than revolution. For many critics, Street Art belongs in the street, so the very existence of this institution is a non-starter.


Finally it is notable that St. Petersburg itself has very little of what you may call an “organic” Street Art scene – and one does not see Fascist or AntiFa post-Soviet graffiti furiously scrawled here. This appears to be comfortable protected space for debate about theory and history not easily identified by a graffitied or muralled exterior.




But these are only a few of the multiple ironies at play in the organized chaos of today, where the German Goethe Institute and Berlin’s Urban Nation Museum of Urban Contemporary Art are partnering with the St Petersburg Street Art Museum to launch a show commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. For those who do not know at that time Russia and Germany were engaged together with Austria in a brutal and bloody war that killed three million people.


For the sixty or so artists and performers participating inside these factory walls you may also wonder how or if their work has been affected by the work of this Revolutionary era’s giants in literature, ballet, painting, music and movies — people like Serge Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Eisenstein, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Kazimir Malevich. Each of these names became as closely identified with their disciplines as the politically, socially, anthropologically tumultuous eras they worked within.



As in every era, today technological revolutions are affecting all people regardless of nationality or national politics.


The Iranian Street Art duo who currently live in Brooklyn, Icy & Sot, steer clear of the politics of nations in their installation by building a wall – itself overlaid with political overtones – but here it is intended as a metaphor for protecting privacy. By bricking up the periphery of a bathtub, the brothers contemplate “No Privacy”, an occurrence enabled by our complicity (and obliviousness) to being tracked and followed by strangers via our smart phones.





“The bathtub and shower are everyone’s private place,” they tell us. “In this installation, even though we built a wall around the tub there is still no privacy because there is a smart phone playing music nearby, enabling some entity to always watch or listen to you.”


A Final Word


By focusing this large exhibition at its original epicenter organizers are bound to strike nerves and inflame passions and, although Russians don’t appear to be exactly celebrating the centennial, the opinions about who deserves blame and credit for the events that unfolded are all over the map. Which is why, perhaps, curators looked far for new takes on the topic.


“First and foremost this exhibition was meant as a representation of a broad international scene,” says Denis Leo Hegic as he talks again about the perspectives artists here bring to the topic of revolution. “The artists curated by the UN were all coming from different countries, bringing different ideas of portrayal and embodiment of revolutionary experience. The starting point of this revolution in 1917 did not stop at national boarders and claimed to be an international or even global movement.”


“Similar this is probably the most direct, democratic and largest global art movement today so the choice to bring international guests, with their own historic and different national backgrounds and their individual talents and approaches to creation – these were the most valuable contributions to the exhibition and the audience.”


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Our sincerest thanks to Martha Cooper for sharing these photographs with BSA readers! We really appreciate all that she does and who she is to so many.


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The final attack of the Red Guard to the Winter Palace from the movie October by Sergey Ezeinstein







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