Letters to the Art System

Looking for the Impossible Artist

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A real letter sent to the UK Government

Rt Hon David Miliband MP

Secretary of State.
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
Nobel House
17 Smith Square
London
SW1P 3JR

16 July 2009

Dear Secretary of State,

My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs.. I would now like to join the "not rearing pigs" business.

In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy.

I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people already not rearing these?

As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an accurate record of how many pigs I haven't reared. Are there any Government or Local Authority courses on this?

My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is - until this year, when he received a cheque for not rearing any.

If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not rearing 100?  I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about £240,000 for the first year. As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4 million from your department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradable carbon credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases?

Another point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000 tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals to not feed the pigs I don't rear?

I am also considering the "not milking cows" business, so please send any information you have on that too. Please could you also include the current Defra advice on set aside fields? Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand hectares)?

In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits.  I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election.
 

Yours faithfully,
 
 

Ana Amorim

Original letter from N. J. H.

Seven Million Hondurans Under House Arrest as Micheletti Writes of "Democracy"

Posted by Al Giordano - September 22, 2009 at 1:52 pm

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3444/seven-million-hondurans-under-house-arrest-micheletti-writes-democracy

By Al Giordano

Hondurans in civil resistance surrounded the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa yesterday to greet their returning president. This morning, coup regime troops attacked them violently, sending 24 wounded to hospitals. D.R. 2009 Mariachiloko, Chiapas Indymedia.

The Honduran coup regime’s 26-hour martial curfew upon the entire country effectively places 7.5 million Honduran citizens – men, women, children and elders – under house arrest. They are prohibited from going to work, to the store, or to walk down the street to visit a neighbor. Anybody on the street is subject to arrest, for violation of the curfew.

If this happened to you, what would you call it?

The stated pretext for this heavy handed maneuver is nothing more or less than that the regime, its “president,” and its security forces have been embarrassed before their countrymen and the world. Yesterday morning’s claims by coup “president” Roberto Micheletti that news reports could not possibly be true that legitimate President Manuel Zelaya was back in town, that the regime’s intelligence forces had his every step followed and “knew” he was “in a hotel suite in Managua,” became egg on Micheletti’s face when Zelaya appeared from the rooftop of the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa yesterday to greet a multitude of citizens that want their elected president restored.

Facebook and MySpace Users Are Clearly Divided Along Class Lines

By danah boyd, AlterNet

Posted on September 3, 2009, Printed on September 3, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142356/

This talk was written for a specific audience -- the attendees of the Personal Democracy Forum, an annual conference on innovations in social networking, technology and politics. This audience is primarily American, primarily liberal-leaning, primarily white and primarily involved professionally in politics in one way or another. Keep this audience in mind when I'm talking about "we" here.

Good morning!

Many of us in this room have had our lives transformed by technology. Some of us have grown up with tech, while others have embraced it as adults. Many of us have become enamored with tech and its transformative potential. And because of this, many of us have become technology advocates. We've worked our way into different institutions, preaching about new opportunities introduced because of the Internet.

Furthermore, many in this room have been active in transforming politics through technology. We've leveraged technology for fundraising and getting out the vote. We could go on and on about political events that have been shaped by technology, from the Obama campaign to the post-election Iranian protests.

All of this is brilliant and powerful, exciting and motivating. But I'm also worried. I'm worried about the rhetoric we use when we talk about technology.

Art Contract

I need to clarify a few very important points about my art project  A characterístic element of my work is the non-credit/signature for the production of the evidence of  my being alive. It means that nobody  signs the work I produce. That implies that no organization/individual or any of its sponsors can use their corporate logo  when any of my concepts and/or images are exhibited, including lectures, since this would be a breach of  the concept of the work.

Thus, if any organization/individual /space  or any of its sponsors were to use their  corporate logo in association with the registers of my being alive, that would imply that this organization/individual/space were the "author" of these registers, receiving credit for its production.

 

Therefore an organization/individual/space or any of its sponsors can make my data available exclusively for cultural purposes in the media, press  providing nobody uses their corporate logo or any of their sponsor's corporate logos to do so, and at the same time the media and press cannot use their corporate logos or any of their sponsor's  corporate logos when promoting my work for the reasons stated above. An organization/individual or any of their sponsors can make the details of my biography and curriculum available for catalogues and text information for exhibition pieces, providing that these catalogues and entries do not contain their corporate logo or any of their sponsor's  corporate logos. My artistic production can be made available on the Internet for promotion of events and exhibitions, in the press and electronic media providing no  corporate logo or any sponsor's  corporate logos are used to do so. Finally my work can be exhibited publicly providing the corporate logo of the space or or any of their sponsor's  corporate logos not be present in the exhibition space, as well as the facade of the space.

 

Further I would like to emphasize that my work is always distributed freely. I do not sell my registers and the evidence of my daily movements and since 1994 I refuse to present the work where fees are charged. The work also cannot  be exhibited in spaces that aim towards the commercialization of the concepts/objects presented.

 

This work can be freely reproduced, adapted even without mentioning the source providing no profit is earned  or corporate image promoted from doing so.

“Our model is not communist, but community based”

By Michelle Amaral da Silva — last modified 2009-07-13 14:15

Fernando Huanacuni, one of the most important Aymara intellectual references in Bolivia, defends that the foundation for the process of change in the country is structured around the return to their original culture.

13/07/2009

Vinicius Mansur

Correspondent in La Paz (Bolivia)

 

The current Bolivian political process has undoubtedly attracted the attention of the Brazilian left. The high level of protagonism from popular movements in national politics and the fact that the country elected an indigenous President, the fierce confrontations with a racist elite – which renders a state coup a plausible possibility – their international struggles to assure sovereignty over their natural resources, the strong presence  of the ethnic component as the motto for mobilizations, the changes in the Constitution of a country that now defines itself  as a Plurinational State, among other elements, attract attention to Bolivia, giving it credentials  as the main political  laboratory now.

 

The originality of the process however makes it difficult to understand, from classical analysis. If it is difficult to systematize the diversity of organizations facing large capitalists in the country, imagine the task of understanding the project behind each and every one of them. If we focus on the indigenous movement alone, leaving aside other popular movements, trade unionism and party organizations, we will see a massive plural organization, composed by cultures born at least five thousand years before western thought. (Bolivian plurinationalism recognizes 36 original peoples). The interview with the Aymara intellectual Fernando Huanacuni, is a sample of the Bolivian political mosaic.

G20 Protests

Impossibleartist in the G20 protests...

PEASANT WOMEN IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST AGRO-BUSINESS

We peasant women, riparian, extractivists, indigenous, afro-descendants and landless come forward to denounce, through our political actions, the extreme seriousness of the Brazilian situation. We will not be subordinated to a capitalist and patriarchal model of society, which concentrates power and wealth. We do not want the agriculture project from the agro-business, hydro-business and the transnational corporations in Brazil.

 

We are mobilizing, to denounce the political, economic, social and environmental crises created by the elite in charge of the State: national and international financial capital. We are not prepared to pay the bill of the crises, through the super-exploitation of our labor, low wages, longer shifts and the escalation in the exploitation of our natural resources.  We therefore DENOUNCE:

Letter on behalf of the Bushmen for president Ian Khama

H.E. President Ian Khama
Office of the President
Private Bag 001
Gaborone
Botswana

27 February 2009

Your Excellency,

I am extremely concerned about the situation facing the Bushmen of the Kalahari.

After being forcibly removed from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, many Bushmen living in the resettlement camps are exposed to diseases including HIV/AIDS, which they never experienced before. Alcoholism and depression is widespread.

The High Court ruled that the evictions of the Bushmen were illegal and unconstitutional. I urge you to embrace the spirit of this ruling by allowing all of the Bushmen who wish to return home to do so, and by allowing them to hunt for food and to access their own water using the pre-existing borehole at Mothomelo, within the reserve.

Refusal to allow the Bushmen to use their existing borehole at Mothomelo can only be interpreted as a clear sign that you are determined to continue the past government’s misguided policy of keeping the Bushmen from returning home.

Yours sincerely,

Ana Amorim
Artist

--Survival calls on Kate Winslet and Penelope Cruz to boycott Graff's jewels for Oscars 17 February 2009 - http://www.survival-international.org/news/4238

...Mountaintop removal is the dirty secret in [the US] energy supply

http://www.alternet.org/story/127877/

Dear Mr. President,

As I write this letter, I brace myself for another round of nerve-wracking explosives being detonated above my home in the mountains of West Virginia. Outside my door, pulverized rock dust, laden with diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate explosives hovers in the air, along with the residual of heavy metals that once lay dormant underground. 

The mountain above me, once a thriving forest, has been blasted into a pile of rock and mud rubble. Two years ago, it was covered with rich black topsoil and abounded with hardwood trees, rhododendrons, ferns and flowers. The understory thrived with herbs such as ginseng, black cohosh, yellow root and many other medicinal plants. Black bears, deer, wild turkey, hawks, owls and thousands of [other] birds lived here. The mountain contained sparkling streams teeming with aquatic life and fish.  

Now it is all gone. It is all dead. I live at the bottom of a mountain-top-removal coal-mining operation in the Peachtree community.

Project List 2008

Performance Project

In 1988, I decided that my living was "Art", and that my task from then on would be to create evidence of being alive in the world.

*I am going to describe briefly the most important projects of the period that have shaped my way of "art making".

Project 1: “10 Year Performance Project”  (01/Jan//88 – 31/Dec/97)

From 1988 to 1997 I collected evidence of being alive, documenting my daily movements during the day in the format of mental maps.

•  The maps were registered in 5½” x 8½” (13,4x 21,3cm) black books and later transferred to various supports for public display. They were the result of a search for a line that did not copy an image seen; or captured and action, but rather, were intrinsically related to my living. Documenting my daily movements I was working on something known and experienced.

-Aims:

•  Bring the production of art objects to a bare minimum.

             The number was determined by the minimum necessary 365/6 works a year from January 1st

             to December 31st.

•  Make my art production a product of my living.                                                              

            I chose documenting my daily movements as a response to Richard Long's project, which I considered an interruption of living.

 

• Use the minimum amount of time producing the artwork and the maximum time living.

             a) Produce mental maps very quickly at the end of the day.

             b) Counting the seconds of my life, in response to Borofsky's number counting piece.

During the process I discovered that the project involved a very important element: the incorporation of a routine - to register the mental map every night.

  I decided then to incorporate other behaviours.

    -using a pedometer to record daily the number of miles I had walked during the day (3 years)

    -collect an object from the immediate environment at the end of the day (1989).

    -collect a small flat element at the end of the day (1990).

    -counting seconds every day for an hour. This was a merge between the documentation process and       the experience, making the act of documenting a present experience (1991).

    -collect small pieces of my personal clothes, labels, sheets, towels, etc at the end of the day (1992).

    -count seconds for one hour in my own time (1992).

    -pile up 7 maps  (A4 book) covering each map with liquid paper (sculpture book.(1988-1991)

From 1993 onwards I concentrated my art making solely in registering the maps in the books at the end of the day and in long public performances counting seconds (Counting Time).

The 10 year Performance Project ended in 1997.

(47 books)

After the 10 year Performance Project ended I slowly switched the focus of my attention from the icons around me to a much oader view of the world at large. I have moved from the simple collection of an element from my environment, purely because it was part of my environment, to the reading of it in terms of its possible meaning in society.

    *see anti-logo contract

Projects developed to date:

Police shoot Tupinambá Indians

29 October 2008

Several Tupinambá Indians in the Brazilian state of Bahia have been shot with rubber bullets, as large numbers of heavily armed federal police entered their community without warning in a conflict over land rights.

The Indians responded by attacking a police car with wooden sticks.

Much of the Tupinambá’s land has been taken from them, and they have reoccupied some of it since the year 2000. But since FUNAI, the Brazilian government’s Indian Affairs Department, failed to submit a report identifying Tupinambá land to the Federal Court, the Indians are under threat of eviction. Three communities have already been evicted.

The Tupinambá said in an open letter, ‘They attacked our children, threw bombs, smashed our houses, took our work tools, stole our food and beat our elders. And on top of that they lied to society saying that we were armed; if we had firearms, as they say, would we defend ourselves with stones, clubs and spears?’

The Tupinambá say they are willing to resist at any cost. Many families depend entirely on the food they grow on their land. If the government does not act immediately, a serious conflict could ensue.

The police have been marking their presence in the area with dozens of officers and cars, as well as two helicopters. Several Indians have been arrested in the last few days, and there are fears that the federal police will use further excessive force.

Open Letter from Maputo: V International Conference of La Vía Campesina

Peasant Agriculture and Food Sovereignty are Solutions to the Global Crisis Maputo, Mozambique, October 19-22, 2008 The entire world is in crisis, a crisis with multiple dimensions.  There is a food crisis, an energy crisis, a climate crisis and a financial crisis.  The solutions put forth by Power – more free trade, more GMOs, etc. – purposefully ignore the fact that the crisis is a product of the capitalist system and of neoliberalism, and they will only worsen its impacts.  To find real solutions we need to look toward Food Sovereignty as put forth by La Via Campesina. How did we get to this state of crisis? In recent decades we have witnessed the advance of finance capital and transnational corporations (TNCs) across all aspects of agriculture and the global food system.  From the privatization of seeds and the sale of pesticides, to buying the harvests, processing the food, transporting and distributing it, all the way to retail sale to consumers, everything is controlled by a handful of corporations.  Food has gone from being a right of all people, to being just another commodity.  Our diets are being homogenized, with food that is bad for you, is priced out of the reach of most people, and makes us lose the culinary traditions of our peoples. At the same time we are witnessing an offensive of capital for the control of natural resources, the likes of which we have not seen since colonial times.  The crisis of the rate of profit has led Capital to launch a privatizing war for the eviction of our peoples, peasants and the indigenous, the theft through privatization of our land, territories, forests, biodiversity, water and mineral resources.  It is an aggression against both rural peoples and the environment.  The planting of large-scale agrofuel monocultures is an aspect of this war of displacement.  It is routinely justified with the false arguments that agrofuels are the solution to the energy and climate crisis.  But the truth is that the current dependence on long distance transport of goods, and individual transport of people in automobiles instead of mass transportation, have more to do with these crises than anything else. Now, with the food and financial crises, everything is getting worse. The food crisis and the financial crisis are linked through financial speculation on the prices of food crops and land, to the detriment of people.  Now as the crisis grows, finance capital is more desperate every day, assaulting our government treasuries for their bailouts, which will only force more budget cutting in our countries, and make poverty and suffering even more widespread.  Hunger is continuing to grow in our world. Exploitation and all forms of violence, especially directed at women, are on the rise.  With the economic recession in rich countries, xenophobia is spreading, with more racism and repression, and the dominant economic model offers ever fewer options to our rural youth. In synthesis, things are going from bad to worse.  Nevertheless, we must recognize that like all crises, this one also generates opportunities.  Opportunities for capitalism, which uses crises to reinvent itself and find new sources of profits, but also opportunities for social movements.  Among the latter are the fact that the principal theses of neoliberalism are being stripped of their legitimacy in public opinion, and the fact the international financial institutions (World Bank, IMF, WTO) are proving to be incapable of administering the crisis (in addition being among the cause of the same crisis).   This creates the opportunity to eliminate them, and create new institutions to regulate the global economy that serve public interests.  It is clearer every day that the TNCs are our real enemies behind these other enemies. It is clearer every day that the neoliberal governments do not serve the interests of their peoples. And it is clearer every day that the global corporate food regime is not capable of feeding the great majority of people on this planet, while Food Sovereignty based  on peasant agriculture is more needed than ever. Facing this reality, what do we defend in La Via Campesina? Food Sovereignty: getting speculative finance capital out of our food system, and re-nationalizing food production and reserves offer us the only real way out of the food crisis.  Only peasant and family farm agriculture feed people, while agribusiness grows export crops and agrofuels to feed cars instead of human beings.  Food Sovereignty based on peasant and family farm agriculture offers us a way out of this crisis. As solutions to the energy and climates crises: the dissemination of local food systems, that are not based on long-distance transport nor on industrial agriculture, could eliminate as much as 40% of all greenhouse gas emissions.  Industrial agriculture warms the planet, and peasant agriculture cools the planet. Changes in patterns of transportation for people and patterns of consumption are additional the steps needed to address the energy and climate crises. Genuine integral agrarian reform and the defense of the territories of indigenous peoples are essential steps to roll back the evictions and displacement in the countryside, and to use our farm land to grow food instead of exports and fuels. Sustainable peasant and family farm agriculture:  only agroecological peasant and family farming can de-link food prices from petroleum prices, recover degraded soils, and produce healthy local food for our peoples. The advance of women is an advance for all: the end of all forms of violence against women, including physical, social and other forms.  Achieving true gender parity in all internal spaces and organs of debate and decision-making, are absolutely essential commitments to advance at this time as social movements toward the transformation of society. The right to seeds and water:  seeds and water are sources of life, and are the heritage of our peoples.  We cannot permit their privatization, nor the use of GMOs or of terminator technology. No to the criminalization of social protest, yes to the UN Declaration of Peasant Rights, proposed by La Via Campesina.  It will be a key tool in the international legal system to strengthen our position and our rights as peasants and family farmers. Rural youth:  We urgently need to open ever more spaces in our movement for the incorporation of the creativity and strength of our rural young people, in their struggle to create their future in the countryside. Finally, we are the women and men who produce and defend the food of all peoples. All the participants in the V Conference of La Via Campesina commit ourselves to the defense of peasant and family farm agriculture, food sovereignty, dignity and life.  We offer real solutions the global crisis we face today.  We have the right to continue to exist as peasants and farmers, and we have the responsibility to feed our peoples. We are here, the peasants and family farmers of the world, and we refuse to disappear. Food sovereignty now! Unity and struggle of the people! Globalize struggle!  Globalize hope!

Bad Form

“There is always some element of bad form in objecting to the destructive course of events, or indeed, in making it a topic of conversation. Thus, in Nazi Germany, even among those most closely identified with the ‘final solution’, it was considered an act of discourtesy to talk about the killings.” (Milgram, Obedience to Authority, Pinter & Martin, 1974, p.204)

Bill Moyers: 'Journalism in Profound Crisis'

Very important things are sad here.

Campaigners find a weapon in Tudor land grant

Residents 'go independent' to beat skyscraper

Campaigners find a weapon in Tudor land grant

Vanessa Thorpe, arts correspondent
Sunday May 11, 2008

Observer

Residents fighting plans for a new Norman Foster-designed skyscraper in central London intend to declare 'independence' to prevent it being built in their small parish of Norton Folgate.

Like the fictional residents of Pimlico in the Ealing comedy, Passport to Pimlico, opponents claim they could have an ancient right to self-determination which they will use to stop Bishop's Place, a £700m scheme by property developer Hammerson.

They say maps uncovered in the City of London's Guildhall Library show that Norton Folgate still has the status of a distinct district and that its historic boundary gives them the right to resist central planning law in the capital.

The scheme would create 645,000 sq ft of offices, 310 flats and a hotel. Standing next to Liverpool Street's new Broadgate Tower, it will be a similar height and has been approved by Hackney council. It is destined for a corner of the area Railtrack sold to Hammerson six years ago.

The area, which lies between Bishopsgate and Shoreditch, was originally the precinct of the Priory and Hospital of St Mary Spital. When the land reverted to the Crown during the Reformation, a small extra-parochial 'liberty' retained its separate status and came under the jurisdiction of the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral. In Elizabethan times it was a popular haunt for artists and writers because it was outside the walls of the City and escaped its jurisdiction. Playwrights Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson lived in the parish.

It was thought the liberty had been abolished in 1900, but the newly uncovered documents cast doubt over whether it was ever properly abolished.

Support for the campaign to preserve the area from more skyscrapers comes from English Heritage, Cabe (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment), the Georgian Group, the Spitalfields Trust and, unexpectedly, from the singer Suggs, frontman of the band Madness, who is about to release an album and a song called 'The Liberty of Norton Folgate'. The skyscraper would mean the demolition of a Victorian electricity generation site known as The Light and run as a bar. Five thousand have signed a Save the Light petition.

Levellers, True Levellers, and The Diggers of 1649

Thinking about the "idea" of private property.

Levellers, True Levellers, and The Diggers of 1649 (1 of 3)

Levellers, True Levellers, and The Diggers of 1649 (2 of 3)

Levellers, True Levellers, and The Diggers of 1649 (3 of 3)

The Levellers were a relatively loose alliance of radicals and freethinkers who came to prominence during the period of instability that characterized the English Civil War of 1642 - 1649.

What bound these people together was the general belief that all men were equal; since this was the case, then a government could only have legitimacy if it was elected by the people. The Leveller demands were for a secular republic, abolition of the House of Lords, equality before the law, the right to vote for all, free trade, the abolition of censorship, freedom of speech, the abolition of tithes and tolls, and the absolute right for people to worship whatever religion they chose, or none at all. This program was published as "The Agreement of the People".

Maladjusted - Martin Luter King

George Monbiot - Global Day of Action

Part 1

Part 2

Letter to the President of Peru

S.E. Alan Garcia
Presidente de la República del Perú
Palacio de Gobierno
Plaza de Armas
Lima 1
Peru

 

29 February 2008

 

Your Excellency,

The Peruvian government should protect the isolated Indians' reserves by removing all loggers, stopping the entry of any other outsiders, and prohibiting any form of natural resource extraction on their land. It should also set up an emergency plan in case of contact between the isolated tribes and outsiders, and conform to international law by recognising the tribes' ownership of their lands. At present these isolated tribes are at huge risk and face extinction.

Yours sincerely,

Ana Amorim

Artist

SAY NO TO SHELL’S SPONSORSHIP OF THE WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR COMPETITION

See London Rising Tide -  http://www.londonrisingtide.org.uk/

Shell is the third largest oil company in the world. It is also the
new sponsor of the Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of
the Year Competition. Contradiction, or what?

It’s our view that oil is a curse that fuels wars for resources like
that now being waged at such a high cost in Iraq. It is also the
greatest cause of climate change, which is a worldwide emergency and
could result in the death of 400 million people, mostly in the
poorest countries of the world (according to the government’s Chief
Scientist). This emergency is certain to result in the extinction of
millions of plant and animal species. Oil spills are also major
causes of death and destruction for many varieties of marine life,
including some that are already endangered.

Shell’s core - and growing - business is rooted in oil and gas
production. It seems to have decided that pumping a tiny percentage
of its profits into sponsoring places like the Natural History Museum
(NHM) will divert your attention from this globally suicidal fact…

…which is hopefully where we come in, pointing a spotlight at the
growing gulf between what they say (a language known as ‘greenwash’)
and what they do. We run a campaign/exhibition called ‘Art Not Oil’.
As part of it, we are working with Friends of the Earth to persuade
the NHM and its visitors that Shell is an inappropriate partner for
the Wildlife Photographer Competition. The campaign will include our
own travelling photography exhibition in October 2006 and beyond,
accompanied by speakers from Shell-affected communities. We will keep
at it until Shell is no longer welcome in the NHM.

Things you can do:
* help get the word out, either with more copies of our postcard (see image), or
by contacting people – particularly photographers – who might be up
for helping out or contributing images. That work could be images of
wildlife affected by oil or threatened by climate change, or it could
be of communities directly affected by Big Oil.
* Tell NHM boss Michael Dixon what you think of Shell (not to mention
BP, which is a Museum ‘partner’): m.dixon@nhm.ac.uk, 020 7942 5000.
* keep reducing your emissions, and keep challenging the powers-that-be…

We believe there can be a greener and fairer future for the planet
and its people, a future that will require in part the consigning of
the oil industry to the history books. Our campaign hopes to be one
small step in that direction.

Thanks for reading, and for anything you’re able to do.

Art Not Oil/London Rising Tide, c/o 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES.
Tel: 07708 794665  info@artnotoil.org.uk
www.shelloiledwildlife.org.uk  www.artnotoil.org.uk
www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
See also: www.remembersarowiwa.com

SHELL’S WILD LIE: THE TRUTH WILL OUT...

 

A Sense of History by Mike Leigh

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3

Merry Christmas

"...man is only truly alive  when he realizes he is a creative, artistic being."

Dear friends,

"...art is, a genuinely human medium for revolutionary change

in the sense of completing the transformation from a sick world to a healthy one.

This means that every man is an artist or must be considered as such 
since man's creativity is the real capital of a society."

(Joseph Beuys)

Merry Christmas

Ana Amorim

 

Robots Are Taking Over The Web.

My Letter to Hip Hop

Bridget Grey Poetry

Watch (Fo)dometer!

Interested in eating less oil? In this VideoNation/Hidden Driver report, animator Molly Schwartz keeps track of how many miles your food travels from field to fork.

NESTLÉ-FREE - WEEK 2-8 JULY!

Returning from Eastern Europe

Hi

…I have just returned from a very interesting trip and I feel I should thank you for encouraging me to continue doing my maps. I traveled through eastern Europe studying the period between 1935 and 1990s and I realized that I was wrong to want to dematerialize my art work. Since my Master’s thesis I always aimed at reaching the stage where I would no longer create any evidences of being alive, completely eliminating any traces  of art making as we understand it.

Listen to communities that say "no" to bottling plants

Kim Jeffery

Nestlé CEO,

Dear Mr. Jeffery

More than one billion people in the world today don't have access to safe drinking water. I am concerned that bottled water corporations are turning a shared, natural resource into a $100 billion market - and one of the world's fastest growing branded beverages.

For example, your corporation - Nestlé  -  uses misleading ads to promote bottled water as safer and better than tap water, effectively undermining people's confidence in their public water systems.

I am joining thousands of other consumers worldwide calling on you to:

1. Reveal the sources and sites of the water used for bottling;

2. Publicly report breaches in bottled water quality comparable to reports by public water system;

3. Stop threatening local control of water when siting and operating bottled water plants.

Thank you for your prompt response to this important issue.

Sincerely,

Ana Amorim

Corporate Accountability International

http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/cms/index.cfm

Impossible Artist in dating site and development of the project

Impossibleartist

Another World is Possible

Why should you get to know Impossibleartist

(First Profile)

Why should you get to know Impossibleartist

"Technologically mediated interaction leads to a fluid, detached relationship to real life-others." (Ben Davis)

I have been doing research for my PhD in Brazil for the last 4 years and now I am getting ready to go back to the UK. I am a Performance Artist and I do a lot of work with grassroots movements - this work has taken me to remote areas and has given me the opportunity to get a new insight about other ways of living, planting, trading, relating to one another...

Reverend Billy to Bono: "Stop shopping, start giving"

Dear Mr. Bono,

Let’s give directly to the children of Africa, and to the hungry in our own neighborhoods. You urge us, from a tsunami of ads - to BUY RED. To continue consuming, to shop. But we can never shop enough for the African children, when the cost to the world from ordinary shopping is so destructive. Bono — We need to stop our shopping and start our giving. Change-a-lujah! You are right that the paradox of American giving needs to be solved. This Christian nation doesn’t give. We have tended recently to bomb people in need, rather than help them. But shopping to give is like bombing to save. You got it backwards, Mr. Bono. Don’t glamorize shopping. Amen? Let’s learn to give again.

Email to Philip Glass guestbook

Philip Glass - Community: Guestbook

by Richard Knight.

I am interested to know why Mr Glass has authorised the use of the music from Koyaanisqatsi for use in UK BMW ad. Given the subject matter of the movie an apocalyptic vision of the collision of two different worlds -- urban life and technology versus the environment - is it irony or does Buddhism have an anarchic element I'm not aware of ? Best, Richard.

by Ana Amorim

Following Mr Knight’s enquire I would like to know how is it possible for an artist who received from the Om Sarwasvati Hring Soha Tibet House, the "Art of Freedom Award", (2000) and from the Institute of International Education,the "Distinguished Service in the Arts" Award, (1994) to allow his artwork to be used for advertisement purposes by a corporation that in the 80’s used its “BMW Gallery” as a showroom in disguise for luxury cars. Where the works that “were not compatible with car selling were unlikely to be shown in such a commercial place.”

The showroom was of course open to the public. “But in doing so the company also attempted to add a psycholinguistic twist to its marketing strategy, energetically using the art works as hidden persuaders to enhance the emotional overtones and social status of their products. In the leaflet for the exhibition Drive!, for instance, the company announced: ‘Here, changing exhibits of the products, technology and heritage of Bavarian Motor Works will be displayed in the atmosphere of an art gallery beside equally stimulating exhibits from various artistic disciplines’. central to the successful swift from a gallery of art to one of automobiles is the fact that BMW doe not just sell over-priced expensive vehicles; more importantly, it sells distinctiveness and style, which art has always suggested and being associated with. It thus blurs the distinction between art and consumer durables, between what is supposed to be above commodification and that which is first and foremost commodity.”

Source: Privitising Culture - Chin-tao Wu

Ana Amorim

Banner Suggestion - Permanent Forum

Mental Landscapes - November 8th, 2006 - In Geneva today, at the new review of the Conventional Weapons Treaty, the British government supported by the US, China and Russia will be using the full force of its diplomacy to ensure that civilians continue to be killed, by blocking a ban on the use of cluster bombs. Most of the cluster bombs dropped over the past 40 years have been delivered by the two principal allies of the UK in the "war on terror", the US and Israel. And the UK used hundreds of thousands of them during the two gulf wars.

Ana Amorim - Letters to the Art System

Gilberto Gil and Aracruz

This letter will be sent to artists, curators, students, workers, activists and society as a whole.

Aracruz’ current composition of shareholders are: the Lorentzen Group, 28 %;

Safra Bank, 28 %; Votorantim, 28%; BNDES 12.5 %, and others, 3.5 %.

Publicity speaks in the future tense and yet the achievement of this future is endlessly deferred. How then does publicity remain credible - or credible enough to exert the influence it does? It remains credible because the truthfulness of publicity is judged, not by the real fulfillment of its promises, but by the relevance of its fantasies to those of the spectator-buyer. Its essential application is not to reality but to day-dreams.

John Berger

Ways of Seeing

Dear Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil,

In 1987 I decided that my life was art and I would only register evidences of being alive in the world. Naturally, during the development of the work, the life of everyone started to interest me a great deal, specially those who suffer profound limitations and restrictions to remain alive in the world. I am talking about indigenous peoples, small farmers, slave descendents [quilombolas], people who struggle their whole lives to maintain their traditional ways of living, while desperately trying to avoid being thrown into big city slums, to work as cheap labour in the houses and companies of the masters of this country.

Billboard campaign - Aracruz celulose

THIS AGRESSION AGAINST ARACRUZ CELULOSE

AFFECTS OUR COMPANIES TOO.

ARACRUZ BROUGHT PROGRESS

FUNAI*, THE INDIANS.

*FUNAI: Brazilian Indigenous Peoples Protection Agency

ENOUGH OF INDIANS

THREATENING WORKERS

FUNAI DEFENDS THE INDIANS

WHO DEFENDS OUR WORKERS

Banksy hanging himself

Painted elephant

This week once again I used an image from Banksy which I find quite useful to illustrate the issues I discuss. I have used another one in the past. I will not remove them from this blog because I feel they still stand on their own. When Banksy decided to go and graffiti the Palestian Wall there were complaints from Palestinians, who did not want the wall to look beautiful because it is the symbol of their oppression and it should remain ugly to fuel their need to fight the oppressor.

But I was reading the newspaper the Guardian and just found this - Laughing all the way to the Banksy...... he has mingled with the celebrity world in LA and decided to make it official that he has given up to the world of spectacle. Soon he will become a very high “cultural capital” like the Brat Pitts and so on...in short, he will be worth millions of dollars....

The machine, uses whatever means necessary to reproduce itself, over and over again.... in this case it was done just by given more and more rope and Banksy eventually hang himself...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl4o3mXL7vM&mode=related&search=

Banksy LA Show priview, Live Elephant

MOTORS ON

The genetically modified food giant Monsanto continued their buy up of the seed industry this week with the announcement of their takeover of the world's leading cotton seed company Delta & Pine Land Company (D&PL). Once the merger is complete Monsanto will control over 57% of the US cotton seed market and will hold power over millions of cotton producers over the world. Farmers have always been at the forefront of the fight against GM, with the storming of a biotech plant in Brazil in 2001 (SchNEWS 292) and the trashing of a research centre in India in 2003 (SchNEWS 425), just two examples of local resistance. But will they be able to resist the ever expanding Monsanto? And what are they so worried about anyway?

Climate Care

Calculate the amount of carbon created for each seat on a plane, per mile:

http://www.climatecare.org/living/calculator_info/index.cfm

SURVIVING THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW

 

150 MW of parabolic trough CSP plant at Kramer Junction, California

Solar energy is the most abundant renewable source on earth. A recent report claims that every year, "each square kilometre of desert receives solar energy equivalent to 1.5 million barrels of oil. Multiplying by the area of deserts world-wide, this is nearly a thousand times the entire current energy consumption of the world." * It suggests the use of Concentrated Solar Panels (CSPs), which focus heat on solar arrays using mirrors, driving conventional steam powered generators. This has been used in California since the 1980s and costs half the amount per unit than oil energy. (* For more see www.trec-uk.org.uk)

While all-year sunshine isn't something we're blessed with, the British Isles are estimated to have enough wind power using current turbine technology to meet our power usage three times over. And when it comes to the wave power, it would be economically viable to meet 25% of our current demand.

That our government isn't pursuing these options with any real intent shows how clearly it is in the pocket of the oil companies. As any good anarchist will tell you, power needs to be decentralised down to the grassroots level...

(Schnews - www.schnews.org.uk/archive/news557.htm)

Greenwash

Corporations do not perceive that present methods of production will deprive future generations...what corporations do perceive is that genuine environmentalism poses an enormous threat to their well-being. If you define well-being as their ability to continue to grow as they have in the past, they are correct.

The full effect of the corporate propaganda apparatus will never be known. It is most successful when the PR professional leaves no tracks near the scene of a winning campaign.

The Real Thing Is Getting So Hard to Find

Victoria Beckham, also known to the world as Posh of the Spice Girls, was giving a performance for fans in Birmingham, England, and accidentally dropped the microphone. Her voice, however, continued ringing out of the speakers as if by magic. But it wasn't magic; Posh was lip-synching to a pre-recorded track. As if that weren't insincere enough, the lip ring she wore also turned out to be fake. Posh hadn't really pierced herself like so many of her young fans... she just wanted them to think so.

It's difficult to know what's real anymore. Politicians deceive us. Corporations cover up misdeeds with frothy PR. Photoshop makes it simple to fake photographs. Breast implants and facelifts are as common as Band-Aids.

This is nothing new. The pages of history are filled with stories of fraud going back at least as far as the Trojan Horse. The difference today is that high-powered technology can manipulate reality and disseminate falsehoods on a scale never before seen.

In response to this onslaught, it's easy to become cynical about almost everything. Yet rather than throwing up our hands and accepting a world that feels faux, many of us are rolling up our sleeves to maintain what's honest in our lives. American social scientist Paul Ray calls this as a historic social development. "Authenticity is so much in demand today," he declares.

Ray became fascinated by the subject through his research on "cultural creatives"--a sizable segment of the population he has identified who share common values about the environment, social justice, creative expression and personal growth. After extensive interviews with numbers of them, Ray uncovered another trait cultural creatives hold in common: a drive for authenticity. This means living in a way that "your inner self matches your outer self," he says.

Veteran British journalist and trend spotter David Boyle also sees the emergence of a new social sensibility based upon "a determined rejection of the fake, the virtual, the spun and the mass-produced.

"There is an obsession on all levels about what is real and what is fake," he notes in a recent interview. "At its core it is a search for what's still human in business, in politics, in culture and in our own lives."

Boyle sees our growing yearning for authenticity as a factor in the recent boom of organic and local food, holistic medicine and socially responsible business. He also points to the worldwide success of the raw Detroit blues-rock duo The White Stripes, the resurgence of public poetry in the UK and the popularity of vintage fabrics from fashion designer Stella McCartney as precursors of a coming "authenticity revolution."

thought...home of the creative artistic being

Art alone makes life possible - this is how radically I should like to formulate it.

Success & Narcissism

"Success in our society has to be ratified by publicity," Christopher Lasch

Narcissism is clinically defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) as a "pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy." Although just about any person can possess certain narcissistic tendencies, the disorder can't technically be diagnosed until five out of nine criteria are met:

• A grandiose sense of self-importance unsupported by reality;
• A belief that s/he is special and unique and can only be understood by other 'special' people;
• A preoccupation with fantasies of extraordinary success, wealth, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love;
• An intense, excessive need for admiration;
• A sense of entitlement;
• A frequent tendency to exploit interpersonal relationships without guilt or remorse, including advantageous behavior to satisfy his/her own end goals;
• A lack of empathy;
• An envy of others, or the perception that s/he is the object of others' envy;
• Regular displays of arrogant behavior or attitude.

"The best hope of emotional maturity, appears to lie in a recognition of our need for and dependence on people who nevertheless remain separate from ourselves and refuse to submit to our whims. It lies in a recognition of others not as projections of our own desires but as independent beings with desires of their own."

The Chaotic state of the world - nothing to do?!

...Extracted from: THE VALUE OF BLOOD - medialens

Download medialens_the_value_of_blood.htm

...The Guardian’s Emma Brockes claims to have experienced a personal epiphany regarding the chaotic state of the world. One night last week, she writes, the 10'clock news was packed with endless horrors: Israel sending troops and tanks into Lebanon, people crawling out of bomb-damaged housing, three British soldiers killed in an ambush in Afghanistan, a further British soldier killed in a mortar attack in Iraq, and so on. Brockes’s conclusion is that we are in deep trouble. Her response:

“There is nothing to do, of course, or at least there is nothing constructive to do.” (Brockes, ‘Oh God (redux),’ The Guardian, August 5, 2006)

This from the journalist who, last November, did her utmost to smear the efforts of an individual, Noam Chomsky, who has moved mountains in precisely ‘doing something’

FLYING ELEPHANTS FOUNDATION

FLYING ELEPHANTS FOUNDATION

By appropriating the concept of innovation, and by mediating and redefining its meaning in corporate terms, business seeks to present its intervention in the arts as a great and legitimate cause.

I turn 50 tomorrow!

MY FIRST PRESENT!

Pipedreams

Richard Knight

Soulmates Project

Hi

............................

Soulmates project (not really a project) ... I was reading the Guardian as I always do, and I saw an ad for Soulmates. I had just read an article in Adbusters (Ben Davis - Liquid Love - Download liquid_love_adbusters.doc) about Virtual Interaction and the money that involves (big money). I decided to place an ad that actually used true bits about me - a real person and bits of information about what is at stake in this medium controlled by large media news corporations such as Murdoch's group. Capital, in this case uses our need for love as a tradable commodity and by doing so they have introduced the privatization of human interaction...

In my art work I have been studying how capital is Privatizing Culture and Art. For example a bank is sponsoring an exhibition: I go an study the bank, the types of businesses the bank is involved in; I then write a public letter asking a question or trying to clarify, let’s say, something about some dodgy operation; I email this letter to the bank; to a data base  of people in the arts, academics, activists, etc; publish the letter in all independent media sites and then publish in my weblog called Cartas ao Sistema de Arte (Letters to the Art System). For example: I have written about a journalist/art collector who built a media empire and allowed the military government to use it for propaganda...

So with Soulmates,  I was just trying to do my work...in order to engage in discussions with men I sent messages inviting them to chat, I chose particularly those who were trying to present themselves in the best possible way, and who sounded really honest.  I got some responses but as you can imagine the English are very cagy about their views at first...and I figured I would have to go too far to get some discussion going and I don’t find that honest. So now I am just replying to the people who contact me and try to find out what they think of my comment on the site. But they usually don’t say much...

............................

Take care............................Anax

The end of the project:

Hi Impossibleartist

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FAIR USE NOTICE. This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making this article available in an effort to advance the understanding of corporate accountability issues. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

The Moment of the Impossible Artist

THE MOMENT OF THE IMPOSSIBLE ARTIST

I have been without a map (direction) for several months. I wake up in the morning and I don’t know where I am and where should I go to. It seems that all routes have been taken, none are free...

There are so many people talking, thinking so many different things that nothing seems relevant. Besides, there is still the issue of direction. Where do I want to go and why? I cannot concentrate in anything, the whole time I am here thinking about going there, and when I get there I want to go somewhere else....

Going back and forth, got me to a total paralysis...

In fact this mental map is very interesting; I built up such speed in coming and going, that I finally reached stillness. I managed to keep up with the speed of information for a good while, but I have lost it now. I have no idea where I am.

I can’t connect the parts. I can’t find an order or sequence to everything that goes by me. It is as if I was inside of a very fast train and could not see clearly the elements going by on the other side of the window. I can see them, I know that they are there, Ii know how they relate to each other, but I can’t find an element to link them with things on this side of the window. Inside of this very fast train everything is very silent, fast, hygienic and lonely.

My life is not art; art is the only life I have.

When I drafted the art contract, the Impossible Artist was created and everything made sense because I was developing a dialogue with a moment in history. But in order to maintain this contract and to live the reality of the Impossible Artist, my life had to be subdued to norms which overshadowed everything else.

The map of the Curator

"Spring and I"

Quando, Onde e Como

Sheila Leiner

Letter for a possible PhD Programme

My name is Ana Amorim and I live in Brazil. Last year I worked with Sita in Belém - Pará - northern Brazil during the first Symposium on Isolated Indigenous Peoples, organised by FUNAI - National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples. I was an Interpreter for Sita for the duration of the Symposium and we had a lot of time to talk. Sita was the one who suggested that I should contact you regarding my PhD project.

Letter to the CEO of Coca-Cola

June 15, 2005 11:25 AM

CEO Neville Isdell

c/o The Coca-Cola Company

1 Coca-Cola Plaza Atlanta,

GA 30313