desperation video online

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Art and the A-Bomb - William A. Brown

Art and the A-Bomb is a video t proposal to build nine colossal sculptures in Washington D.C. These sculptures are based on photographs taken from the Manhattan Project, the massive governmental effort that led to the development of nuclear weapons. The point of this video is that we need a big science solution to the problem of clean and cheap energy. We’ve spent more on the war in Iraq than we did, in adjusted dollars, on the Manhattan Project.

These sculptures are designed to remind the political class we can solve problems without resorting to a hundred year war and the abrogation of the constitution.

Bush Battles Christ - Diran Lyons

This video is protected as an instance of
***FAIR USE***
Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107

As part of the Political Remix Video genre, George W Bush Battles Jesus Christ is a video that intends to lay clearly on the table the duplicitous ethical platform of the right. I'm currently developing a polemical text that draws upon Nietzsche's deconstruction of truth and lie, and this video propels the overall discussion.

A Performance by History's Actors - Robert T. Pannell

My work addresses issues of history, society, politics, identity and truth. Most often this is achieved by manipulating historical images or infusing their modes of representation with my own ideas and imagery…What is Truth? How can we be sure events, especially historical events, happened as recorded? How authoritative are historical visual documents? Can history be molded from the present? These are some of the questions I ask myself and my audience.
(From http://www.rtpannell.com)

For more information on the censoring/covering of Pablo Picasso's painting, Guernica, at the UN in 2003 just before the start of the iraq war, see: http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/03/02/07_Guernica.html

A Rebus: All Good - Diran Lyons

The "All Good" video was something that occurred to me over the course of a slowly developing friendship between the man depicted in the video and me in 2007. His name is Wayne, from Tampa FL…a soft spoken person, of few words. But of those few words, the most frequently spoken are the ones repeated ad nauseum in the video. On my way to work, I would see Wayne every day walking on 7th Avenue in Ybor City (Tampa):

"How's it going Wayne?"
"It's all mutha fuckin' good."

Day after day, his reply never changed: "All mutha fuck'n good."

The Audacity of Desperation

why are we so desperate?

In November 2008 something is going to change. The worst president ever will finally be voted out of the White House. But, as the infamous writing on the wall reads, IF VOTING CHANGED ANYTHING THEY'D MAKE IT ILLEGAL. The desperate push by progressives to include Ralph Nader in the 2000 elections and then their desperate about face towards Nader in 2004 is forgotten history. Now, in 2008, even though Nader is back in the race, we are still firmly rooted in the abyss of a two party system.

For many of us born after the assassinations of JFK, MLK and Malcolm X, belief in revolutionary change through electoral politics is not easily resuscitated. Our first political memory falls somewhere between Nixon's resignation and Bill Clinton's lies about having sex with Monica Lewinsky. Obama's seductive oratory style that instills nostalgia for movements we can't remember, Clinton's ability to go up against the men weighing down the glass ceiling, and Edwards' anti-corporate power to the people rhetoric is countered by Nancy Pelosi's miserable failure to radicalize the senate and end the war in Iraq as the first woman Speaker of the house.

The potential for the executive branch to be made up of firsts: the first president to be a black man or the first woman or Latino vice president, is not enough. The Bush white house knew the power of representation, and they delivered: Condoleeza Rice, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Clarence Thomas and Mary Cheney's baby. Choosing to vote based on community affiliation has led to more exclusive tendencies, not less.

what are our options?

Despite the the crisis in American leadership, there's a real utopic moment before us. Electing the first president of color, indeed, might bring change. But our political system, in which any president would work, is fraught with inequities, violence and power plays in which change looks like reform. Movements, not leadership, new technologies, or more consumer products, is what makes long term, change.

Now is not the time to congratulate ourselves for supposedly moving past our radicalized state, we must not be complacent. How much do we compromise when we chose to participate in a stubborn old beast of a system that is unlikely to learn new tricks or rollover. How do we connect communities, select alliances, establish coalitions? Is it possible to be so reckless that desperation can be re-imagined as a tool for political organizing? Do we need to delve fully into an emotional crisis or can we wallow in our desperation and find creative possibilities for effecting social change?

desperation organizers

Jessica Lawless is a video artist and founding member of the Seattle based self-defense and arts organization, “Home Alive.” Her videos have screened internationally in film festivals, activist spaces, art galleries and universities alike. She co-facilitates the FTM Alliance group for loved ones of transgendered and gender queer folks. Jessica teaches Media Studies and Women/Gender Studies at the Claremont Colleges.

Sarah Ross is an artist whose works focus on myths of health, safety and cleanliness that surface in the physical and visual structures of everyday spaces. She teaches at various institutions including the Illinois State University and an Illinois state prison, and works with U-C Books to Prisoners, and Education Justice Project.