(via Oleg Dou / Art) View full size

(via Oleg Dou / Art) 

I come back from Dubai with my mind a little more fucked and my heart a little more hardened and it’s not entirely a bad thing. I learned lessons in Art Dubai, I was front row witness to what Arab Spring can do a country. After all, if I felt intimidated, unheard, frustrated, angry, and desperate all at once. How much more the average person who’s really caught up in a daily situation of oppression, rebellion, and censorship in the Middle East?

But if anything that I know, my fear in that room at that moment was real. It’s as real as the anger felt by people who feel they have been wronged. It’s as real as the frustration every artist and actor experiences when their painting is taken off a wall or whose voice is silenced by a bullet or truncheon. It’s as real as the uncertainty many Filipinos experience when caught up in a legal system far from home. It’s as real as the confusion felt by every person rendered helpless and alone by the Arab Spring.

— Walk This Way - Carlos Celdran
Driftwood Horses “ But that was then, and I went on to achieve my dream by virtue of fate, the generosity of others, luck and determination. I went my own way, not always wisely and not always to accolade from the establishment. The accuracy of my drawings enabled me to command high prices for painting equestrian commissions but ultimately I found it restricting and sorely felt the lack of a degree. I was lost and without a style of my own. I sought advice from Arthur Giadelli, an artist of international standing with a well-deserved reputation for also being a gifted teacher. He told me to go and look at a hedge and draw not what I saw but draw what made a thorn a thorn. And never stop working with horses but find a way to make them mine. I am forever in his debt. I knew that to exhibit prematurely would be unwise; I had to wait until I had unequivocably found what I was seeking. So I continued with commissioned work in oils while also experimenting. Then out of the blue it came in on the tide. Driftwood. It was like a thunderbolt and I was finally ready to show my work to the world. It was driftwood horses. ” —  Heather Jansch (sculptor) View full size

Driftwood Horses

“

But that was then, and I went on to achieve my dream by virtue of fate, the generosity of others, luck and determination. I went my own way, not always wisely and not always to accolade from the establishment. The accuracy of my drawings enabled me to command high prices for painting equestrian commissions but ultimately I found it restricting and sorely felt the lack of a degree. I was lost and without a style of my own.

I sought advice from Arthur Giadelli, an artist of international standing with a well-deserved reputation for also being a gifted teacher. He told me to go and look at a hedge and draw not what I saw but draw what made a thorn a thorn. And never stop working with horses but find a way to make them mine. I am forever in his debt.

I knew that to exhibit prematurely would be unwise; I had to wait until I had unequivocably found what I was seeking. So I continued with commissioned work in oils while also experimenting. Then out of the blue it came in on the tide. Driftwood. It was like a thunderbolt and I was finally ready to show my work to the world. It was driftwood horses.

” —  Heather Jansch (sculptor)

artsimulacra: Katherine Sandoz View full size

artsimulacra:

Katherine Sandoz

Some claim that art, as entertainment-spectacle, participates in the dumbing-down values that have proved useful to big business, values that address all communications to the lowest common denominator. I tend to agree. Therefore my feeling is that today art must indict—or at the very least play the role of the noisy jester who unmasks the quietly persistent lies of the powerful. Corporate and government propaganda is often designed to deceive and victimize us—and if art cannot rebuff and contest this by fueling the political will and imagination of resistance, I wonder why we need it at all. So for me, an intricate art of noisy resistance is increasingly valuable to an analytical social movement based on skepticism as it strengthens unique personal powers of imagination and critical thinking through self-perception, while undermining market predictabilities. Such art noise counters the effects of our age of simplification—effects that have resulted from the glut of consumer-oriented entertainment messages and political propaganda, which the mass media feed us daily in the interests of corporate profit and governmental manipulations.
— Immersion Into Noise / Joseph Nechvatal
We have emerged into a complex world, inter-meshed in digital and virtual technologies, harbouring social networks and on-line communities, alongside the ever expansive growth of mobile and portable platforms; facilitating us to share with others our moments of immediacy. The convenience of connecting with others has opened a multitude of doors to a complicated era. We have become part of a larger world which is also shrinking at the same time. We are globalized citizens, united not only through economic work-related directives, but data. Behaviour related products for markets thrive on trying to find out what we are doing and thinking. We are a rich resource, fresh territories for knowledge. Digital data about us, ‘civilians’ is big business. Many individuals and organisations including artists, are cashing in on the rush to make money out of our digital identities and behaviours. Whether it be in the supermarket, with I.D cards, on the Internet or by tracing people’s movements on the streets.
—

The 4th Radiator Festival | www.furtherfield.org

Going Underground - Surveillance and Sousveillance.

Art Prize 2011 / Total Amount of Money Rendered in Exchange for a Masters of Fine Arts Degree to the School of Art Institute of Chicago, Pulped into Four Sheets of Paper by Thomas Gokey (by PhotoLab507) “I acquired the exact amount of cash ($49,983) that my tuition cost in shredded form from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. I then pulped this into four large sheets of paper. The artwork is the act of selling this paper piecemeal for the amount of money it is made out of … The project is about debt, something everyone can relate to. I am interested in the relationship of value to material, especially given the fact that I just spent so much money for a piece of paper (my diploma). This project is also about the coming university bubble.”View full size

Art Prize 2011 / Total Amount of Money Rendered in Exchange for a Masters of Fine Arts Degree to the School of Art Institute of Chicago, Pulped into Four Sheets of Paper by Thomas Gokey

(by PhotoLab507)

“I acquired the exact amount of cash ($49,983) that my tuition cost in shredded form from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. I then pulped this into four large sheets of paper. The artwork is the act of selling this paper piecemeal for the amount of money it is made out of … The project is about debt, something everyone can relate to. I am interested in the relationship of value to material, especially given the fact that I just spent so much money for a piece of paper (my diploma). This project is also about the coming university bubble.”

Art is not a notion but a motion. It’s not important what art is but what it does.
— Gilles Deleuze
blackbirdletterpress: oh the love of @uppercasemag. can’t wait until issue #7 arrives in my mailbox View full size

blackbirdletterpress:

oh the love of @uppercasemag. can’t wait until issue #7 arrives in my mailbox

OIL & WATER DO NOT MIX (by Happiness Brussels)

London-based graphic designer Anthony Burrill has created a poster using oil from the Deepwater disaster. The posters, with the slogan “Oil & Water Don’t Mix” were created for Belgian design agency Happiness, using oil gathered from the beaches of Grande Isle, Louisiana. (Fast Company)

—-

All benefits go to the non-profit organisation “Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana” (CRCL) crcl.org

More photo’s here: bit.ly/​dduEPG

Special thanks to:

Quintin Good and Michael Shoemaker from Purple Monkey Design
gopurplemonkey.com

Holt Webster
vanishingamerica.net

Drew Wheelan
drewtube.net/​blog.html

Karen Mayer Hopkins