effecting political change through art

Throughout history, and especially in recent times, artists have tried to sabotage the system, fight the man, and generally work havoc on societal customs and ideals. Are all these voices shouting in an empty forest? Do artists have a place in politics? I say yes. Artists have had a huge impact on politics, both in mobilizing voters and arguing for policy change. There are many examples, but one that comes to my mind is the hip-hop community in Senegal. In 2000, they infamously swayed the first truly democratic elections in the country by advocating through music. Senegalesee artists believed in change and successfully promoted the opposition leader to win the elections and amaze the world with a peaceful transition of power. In Senegal, music is very powerful. People who have nothing else to their name have radios. Artists from poor communities can make their voice heard through music. When I was in Dakar during the 2007 elections, campaigning consisted of motorcades driving through the city with boom boxes blasting songs about the candidate and people dancing on the backs of trucks, as you can see in this picture of a rally for President Abdulaye Wade I took in front of my house.

After the 2000 elections, many artists became disillusioned with the political process because their great triumph of democracy turned out to be politics as usual. Although some rappers complained that their chosen representative was just another corrupt politician who failed to effect any significant change, he was reelected in 2007. When I asked why the world's oldest political leader was still so popular, people pointed to construction projects he had completed in his time in office.

The following video offers further insight into the hip-hop phenomenon in Senegalese politics:

Hemp for Victory

Political Ad Proposal

Candidate: "Dr." Eric Alan Paul
(lib PA 101st District)
Issue: education
Slogan: "Hemp for Victory"

1. How can the state best meet its constitutional obligation to fund public education?
Simple. Merely get rid of 2 unconstitutional elements in this Communist wealth. 1. Get rid of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. Relocate their staff to various government and provide positions where they will still receive excellent pay. Then, redirect their funding to education. Also, legalize & tax Marijuana & hemp. These taxes will also fund education. Make the state income tax TRULY voluntary. There you have three ways to fund education and get rid of "property taxes" at the same time.

Unscripting the Political Process

Billionaires For Bush

"Billionaires for Bush is a grassroots network of corporate lobbyists, decadent heiresses, Halliburton CEOs, and other winners under George W. Bush's economic policies. Headquartered in Wall Street and with over 60 chapters nationwide, we'll give whatever it takes to ensure four more years of putting profit over people. After all, we know a good president when we buy one."

Billionaires for Bush use satire to reveal links between political candidates and their agenda to preserve the privlege of the wealthy at the expense of the lower-classes. By posing as members of the elite, the Billionaires unscript the political process by endorsing candidates for all the 'wrong' reasons. While the Billionaires started lobbying for Bush in the 2004 election, they continue their satire for the upcoming election with a guide to the candidates from the persepective of the super-rich. They expose candidates support for coorporate interests. The billionaires claim to own the political process. They advocate:

• Allow corporations to run for office.
• One dollar, one vote.
• Pay public officials in stock options.
• Eliminate corporate liablity.
• Get rid of all social programs.
• Expand the prison-industrial labor force.
• Introduce Efficiency Tracking for Public Schools.
• Move EPA inside Chamber of Commerce.
• Increase Oil and Coal Subsidies.
• Repeal Unjust Ban on International Bribery.

Although extreme, their ideas point out many of the flaws in our political system. Each of their points is backed up with examples of how these policies are already happening. According to their website, "Since January 2004, the Billionaires have garnered over 250 major media mentions ." Their method is both entertaining and just close enough to reality to alarum the public. The Billionaires use the political process of lobbying and staging protests to support their candidate, thus undermining the system. During one rally, they demonstrated their love for Carl Rove, welcoming his look-alike as one of their own. Signs with slogans such as "widen the income gap," and "Blood for oil" are paradies of traditional protest signs. Satire is particularly poignent because it is never too devorced from reality. By pretending to be corrupt billionaires, this group supports policies which exploit the 'average American'. By arguing for corporate interests, they are arguing against them.

Chiho Aoshima - City Glow

http://www.blumandpoe.com/chihoaoshima/
http://www.galerieperrotin.com/artiste_.php?id_=17&&nom_=Chiho%20Aoshima&&dossier=Chiho_Aoshima

Chiho Aoshima's "City Glow" is both whimsical and disturbing. The landscape is in constant motion. A city of towers with human faces flicker and wave like a forest as a jungle of brightly-colored flowers grow up in the foreground. The simple animation compresses time, cycling through day and night in a matter of minutes. A storm rolls across the sky, bringing with it fish which swim impossibly through the jungle. The huge towers become worms in the undergrowth. The highly saturated colors darken, suddenly becoming a graveyard drenched in blood, with insects flying out of severed cartoon heads. Aoshima's animated fantasy is bright and cheery, a child's cartoon, yet somehow eerie. It is animated in faux 3D, using simple masks and layers to create an illusion of growth and space in a 2D surface. It's simplicity draws the viewer in to a world of dreams, where rules of time and space do not apply. Her world is filled with unnatural growth and death. Inanimate objects such as buildings and hills are given human faces, blurring the lines between the living and non-living.

After viewing this work, I saw a building in Philadelphia, which flickered with multi-colored lights, much like the fantasy buildings of Aoshima's piece. As night fell, the sky glowed deep pink from the city's reflection in the clouds. Maybe Aoshima's work is not so divorced from reality after all.

Besides video animations, Aoshima does huge painting and sculpture installations which immerse the viewer in this other-world of beauty and morbidity.

"Chiho Aoshima creates her unique and extraordinary world through manipulation of computer softwares. She draws a whole universe inhabited by child-looking girls, reptiles, insects, in a scenery of cemeteries, fun fairs and old concrete buildings. The characters evolve in a surreal, fascinating and amazingly violent universe. Her works are audaciously printed in the form of monumental frescos, covering a whole wall from ground to ceiling, thus giving them a sense of transcendence of both art and illustration. "

Biography, from http://www.chihoaoshima.com/biography.htm

Chiho Aoshima (青島千穂, Chiho Aoshima) born 1974, Tokyo, Japan) is a Japanese
pop artist and member of Takashi Murakami's Kaikai Kiki Collective. Aoshima
graduated from Department of Economics, Hosei University, Tokyo. She had a
residency at Art Pace, San Antonio, Texas in 2006.Debuting in the art scene with
no formal art training, Chiho Aoshima’s work transcends traditional techniques
of representation. Aoshima uses computer software to create beautiful and erotic
worlds of ghosts, demons, schoolgirls, and exquisite natural landscapes. She
constructs her works with such elements as bodily fluids, reptiles, insects, and
old, concrete buildings. Her works are audaciously enlarged and printed by
heavy-duty printers, not only onto papers but also onto leather and plastic
surfaces , giving her works the sense of transcendence of both art and
illustration.
“My work feels like strands of my thoughts that have flown around the
universe before coming back to materialize,” Aoshima states. Aoshima’s work has
garnered international renown with a number of high profile projects. She
collaborated with Issey Miyake in 2003, with her artwork featured in the
spring/summer collection. In 2004, she was invited to participate in the 54th
Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, where she
unveiled her largest wallpaper piece to date, measuring 106 feet (32.5m ) in
length by 15 feet (4.8m ) in height. In a solo show in 2005, Aoshima presented
both her first sculptural work and a 5-screen 7-minute animation piece.She had a
residency at Art Pace, San Antonio, Texas in 2006. This young graphic artist
began in Murakami’s factory with no formal art training. In May 2005, as part of
the Little Boy project, her ecologically-themed “City Glow” and “Paradise”
series covered ad spaces throughout the Union Square subway station in New York,
greeting commuters as they passed. This was repeated in Gloucester Road tube
station in London in 2006.

Who needs an audience anyways?

If the audience should be free, as Cage suggests, to get up, move around talk, and generally do whatever they want, why bother going to a concert? The artist should be on a pedestal. The audience comes to a performance to experience something they couldn't do on their own. The artist posses talent that the audience appreciates. That's why its art and not life. Different forms of art demand different degrees of participation from the audience. Some types of music require use of the ears alone (classical), others are meant for dancing, some are merely to provide atmosphere as the background of social interactions (a band at a bar, for example). The reaction of the audience provides feedback for the performers. A good performer holds the audience's attention and a good audience encourages the artist to reach a higher level of artistry. This is the basic interaction of artist/audience.

situational tour

Poleski Park

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ritual: This park is frequented by skateboarders, many of whom have skated here for over a decade.
ideology: For many, skateboarding is a way of life.
security: Children as young as 8 skate here by themselves. They feel it is a safe environment to practice their sport.
authority: Skateboarders in this park defy authority by skating in a forbidden area.

What is the value of audience participation in art?

F.T. Marinetti "declared film to be the supreme art because it embraced all other art forms," but is it truly valuable to embrace all art forms at once? Some argue that the brain is more engaged by traditional forms of art because the imagination is forced to fill in for what is lacking in the other senses. In this view, the written word is the most engaging art form. A successful poem forces the audience to become engaged in all their senses without any direct stimulus. Take E.A. Poe's "The Bells" for example:

Hear the sledges with the bells -
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

In contrast, films are often used as a form of relaxation because the viewer can simply sit back and let the stimuli take over their system by force, absorbing their attention but not requiring engagement.
More forms of stimuli do not necessarily equal fuller engagement or audience participation.

Allan Kaprow wrote, "The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible." If the line between art and life is really that indistinct, is it really art? Shouldn't there be a distinction? If art is life and vice versa, what's the point of having a separate word for art? While it is important to expand our horizons, there should be criteria for a piece to be considered art. I've seen many "modern art" pieces that aren't actually art. For example, one piece was a string of light bulbs thrown randomly on the floor. That's not art. It's bulls*&t. A blank piece of canvas is not art. It's a piece of cloth. I can pull metaphors out of thin air, but that doesn't make them meaningful.

How have computers revolutionized creative thinking?

Personal computers, with their graphical user interface, have revolutionized how people interact with each other to create multimedia projects. Their integrated media functions are supposed lead to better efficiency. While they fail to save time, they do open up new possibilities for communication and collaboration on a global level. How computers progressed from warehouse-sized monstrosities to intuitive hand-held devises in such a short amount of time is truly a testament to human innovation.

What constitutes art in multimedia?

The difference between art and non-art is the purpose of creation. In every age, new forms of art emerge and the debate over what constitutes art starts over. The actual media used, whether it be paint, pieces of scrap metal, or pixels on a screen does not matter. In general, anything created for commercial purposes is not considered fine art, though it can certainly be artistic. After that, the lines get hazy. So what is art? I'll know it when I see it.