The Materiality of Mourning.

Doris Salcedo, “A Flor de Piel” (detail) (2013), rose petals and thread (Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Mr. G. David Thompson, in memory of his son, G. David Thompson, Jr., Class of 1958, by exchange; purchase through the generosity of Elaine Levin in honor of Mary Schneider Enriquez; and purchase through the generosity of Deborah and Martin Hale, 2014.133. © Doris Salcedo, photo by Joerg Lohse, image courtesy the artist and Alexander and Bonin, New York, and White Cube, London).

Doris Salcedo, “A Flor de Piel” (detail) (2013), rose petals and thread (Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Mr. G. David Thompson, in memory of his son, G. David Thompson, Jr., Class of 1958, by exchange; purchase through the generosity of Elaine Levin in honor of Mary Schneider Enriquez; and purchase through the generosity of Deborah and Martin Hale, 2014.133. © Doris Salcedo, photo by Joerg Lohse, image courtesy the artist and Alexander and Bonin, New York, and White Cube, London).

Doris Salcedo’s The Materiality of Mourning is at the Harvard Art Museums (32 Quincy St, Cambridge, Mass.) through April 9.

Installation view of Disremembered IV (detail) in Doris Salcedo: The Materiality of Mourning, on display November 4, 2016–April 9, 2017 at the Harvard Art Museums. © Doris Salcedo. Photo: Harvard Art Museums; © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Installation view of Disremembered IV (detail) in Doris Salcedo: The Materiality of Mourning, on display November 4, 2016–April 9, 2017 at the Harvard Art Museums.
© Doris Salcedo. Photo: Harvard Art Museums; © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Hyperallergic has the full story on the exhibition. The Materiality of Mourning at Harvard Art Museums.

Also, go have a visit at the Center for Artistic Activism.

NO DAPL Roundup.

Malia Obama (Pinterest)

Malia Obama (Pinterest)

Malia Obama has chosen to stand with Standing Rock.

A group of 100 people gathered in Park City to protest the revival of the project by new U.S. President Donald Trump. Despite freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall, Malia Obama joined the protester who were holding up signs that read: “Exist. Resist. Rise.” and “Impeach corporate control,” according to the Daily Mail.

Along with protesting the construction of the pipeline, which will disturb sacred grounds and introduce contaminants into the local water supply, the group was protesting the festival sponsorship by Chase Bank, which is invested in the pipeline. The rally was held in front of the Chase Sapphire on Main lounge.

Courtesy MSNBC via YouTube.

Courtesy MSNBC via YouTube.

Chairman Archambault on MSNBC: ‘President Is Circumventing Federal Law’.

Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II was more surprised at the rapidity with which Donald Trump signed presidential memoranda purporting to speed up the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and reinstate the Keystone XL pipeline than he was by the act itself.

“We were prepared for President Trump take a run at everything we have accomplished in the last two years,” Archambault told Tamron Hall on MSNBC on Wednesday January 25, the day after Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum attempting to move DAPL along. “This nation better start bracing itself for what’s to come if in the first four days we’re witnessing him using an executive order to circumvent federal laws. It’s not right, and it’s something we better get ready for. I was disappointed that it came this soon, because we had worked so hard for the last two years.”

The tribe wants closer study of the pipeline’s potential effects on water supply, sacred sites and treaty rights, he said, and Trump is trying to do an end run around such statutes as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

“The troubling thing is that this president is circumventing federal law,” Archambault said. “We have Treaty rights, we have water rights with our Winter’s Doctrine, we have NEPA.”

The Keystone XL Pipeline Will Create Just 35 Permanent Jobs. Don’t Believe the Lies.

For those who still insist fossil fuels are the future, the Trump administration represents a new day for some old ideas. In an early sign of things to come, the president showed his faith in big oil when he signed documents Tuesday pressuring federal agencies to support construction of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines. Each of these projects faced enormous protests and was put on hold by the Obama administration because of legitimate environmental and due process concerns.

Congressional Republicans frequently howled at far less heavy-handed exercises of executive power under the previous administration. Today, they applaud Trump’s move on the mistaken premise that these pipelines are good investments. Not only will these projects not create long-lasting jobs – as CNBC, not exactly an anti-corporate mouthpiece, has noted: “Pipelines do not require much labor to operate in the long term” – they will further delay the inevitable transition to clean, renewable energy our economy needs and the American people demand.

Standing Rock Chairman Archambault Sends Strong Letter to Trump.

Editor’s note: Reaction was swift and strong when President Donald Trump signed a series of Presidential Memoranda and Executive Orders designed to move the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) forward and revive the Keystone XL pipeline. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe responded immediately, and on January 25 Standing Rock Chairman Archambault wrote a letter to Trump explaining the legal constraints, the support that the Environmental Impact Statement and the tribe have, and the need for a leader-to-leader meeting. The full text is below.

DAPL Profiteers Steal Marty Two Bulls Designs.

You’ve probably seen and shared at least one of the many brilliant political cartoons by Marty Two Bulls at some point in time. Marty Two Bulls—an artist from the Oglala Lakota Nation—has been drawing political cartoons with great success for many years. His work has long been a staple on the pages of ICTMN. He’s known for bringing clever humor and hilarious imagery to hot, controversial issues: most recently the anti-DAPL movement in Standing Rock.

But now, you might see his work in places it shouldn’t be: dozens of t-shirt sellers who are hoping to make a buck from the #NoDAPL campaigns have ripped off Marty Two Bulls designs and been using them to sell t-shirts of their own with no credit, profit, or acknowledgement offered to the artist. Now, Two Bulls has taken the matter into his own hands. In addition to filing dozens of reports to stop production of the rip-offs, he has decided to sell t-shirts of his own.

The design thieves are mostly from overseas with no connection to Native country.
“So far I caught over 20,” Two Bulls said, “I go online, I search terms like #NoDAPL and Water is Life on Facebook, and there they are.”

Marty is an amazingly talented artist, and one of the best political cartoonists in the world, he’s brilliant. Please, if you want to show support for Standing Rock, take the time to make sure your item is coming from the actual artist. Most artists aren’t rolling in money, and this theft hurts, one more than one level. Marty is trying to do something for his people, and if you want to help, and like his artwork, please buy from Marty Two Bulls.

Don’t Call It Fashion.

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Raw Meat, Cabbage, Moldy Bread, and other things that have inspired Japanese fashion label CUNE.

Don’t call it fashion. At least that’s what Hironori Yasuda will tell you if you ask him about his label CUNE, which he started in 1994. If anything, they’re “barely clothes,” he says.

Yasuda isn’t swayed by trends. He makes what he wants, and each season he picks a seemingly arbitrary theme, one that typically has no place in the world of fashion, and designs his entire collection around it. He doesn’t think about who would wear his clothes, or how they would wear them. In fact, he even says “you don’t have to buy them.” But with two stores in Tokyo, one in Fukuoka and a thriving online shop, people seem to like his bizarre creations.

You really need to click over and see all the stuff, it’s amazing. I love the red cabbage dress, and I’d buy it in a heartbeat. Same with the meat jacket pictured above.

It’s all at Spoon & Tamago.

Following in Dad’s Brushstrokes.

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Joshua and James Wedzin with some of their art. James says watching his son work is influencing his own art. (Curtis Mandeville/CBC).

A lovely story about a child following his own artistic path in the wake of his father’s.

When nine-year-old Joshua Wedzin of Behchoko, N.W.T., isn’t watching TV, playing with his brother or at school, he is at work in his artist father’s studio, painting the stars.

His father, James Wedzin, is a well known Tlicho artist who taught himself and then trained at art school in Victoria. He draws inspiration from the landscape around Behchoko.

James said his son began watching him create artwork a few years ago. James said he would get up at 4 a.m. and head over to his studio to work on a carving or painting, and an hour later his son would get himself out of bed just to watch him work.

Joshua recalls being mesmerized by his father’s artwork.

“His painting was beautiful was [what I thought] when I first seen them,” he said.

James, 43, had been teaching others before deciding to take a break. That gave him the opportunity to teach his son.

“So this one day I asked him ‘would you like to paint?’ First he says ‘I just want to watch first.’ And then I painted and talked with him… I didn’t bug him to paint at the time… and then finally one day he came in and says ‘I want to paint northern lights.'”

The full story, and more pictures of these two extraordinary artists is here.

Wax That Ass.

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Wax That Ass, Allison Bouganim. Images courtesy of the artist.

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What do laundromats, bus stops, and supermarkets have in common? Besides being everyday locales, these seemingly innocuous sites are also hotbeds of sexual harassment. Wax That Ass, a project by artist Allison Bouganim, fuses sculpture, photography, and on-site intervention to explore the everyday discomfort felt in public places.

Bouganim began the project by making a series of sculptural butts cast from actual butts. The results were a series of plaster and wax butts (hence the project title, Wax That Ass) in a variety of different shades that seem to represent a spectrum of skin tones. Once these were made, Bouganim went to a series of sites that are not only breeding grounds for sexual harassment, but are also places where the artist herself has been sexually harassed before, to enact the performative aspect of her project.

You can read and see more at The Creators Project.

Thierry Bornier.

"Hani Terraces". Images courtesy of the artist.

“Hani Terraces”. Images courtesy of the artist.

 

"Floating Nets"

“Floating Nets”

 

"Huangshan Falls"

“Huangshan Falls”

Thierry Bornier started out as an amateur photographer. The story of his journey is an amazing one, you can read all about it at The Creator’s Project. About that last photo:

…the second, and perhaps even more evocative, is “Huangshan Falls.” Bornier recalls his conversation with several older, local Chinese men after he snapped the photograph. They told him that this type of weather effect occurred only once every hundred years. They had been coming for decades waiting for this moment and he had captured it. It is additionally profound that this photograph has zero post-production. It is the wild, Chinese landscape alone that resides in the beauty of this natural, unadulterated image and it is why Bornier loves what he does: clouds flowing over the hills without the aid of a slowed shutter speed or the manipulation of a blur effect. It is landscape photography in its most basic, and yet ironically most surreal, form.

Thierry Bornier at The Creators Project. *  Thierry Bornier’s website.

Indigenous Roundup: Avenger Missiles, No Clemency, Decampment.

Courtesy Gary Dorr.

Courtesy Gary Dorr.

Mobile Avenger Missile Launcher Appears at Standing Rock.

A first-hand account of the terrifying deployment of an anti-aircraft device pointed at people.

Later, a veteran buddy looked it up to be sure, matched it up with our pictures, and based on his experience noted:

“My suspicion is that the Avenger Missile Systems deployed to Standing Rock are a cost-effective alternative to having an Apache Helo flying overhead when they need it. The Avenger system has Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) Capabilities. The civilian plane and helicopter probably don’t have FLIR and that is when they need an Apache Helo to “monitor” situations under darkness and record for evaluation later. Instead of calling up the Apache, they can have Avengers on-site for instant intelligence day or night. The Avenger system also has video capabilities. It costs them far less to have an Avenger system on the ground 24 hrs a day than to deploy an Apache Helo occasionally. The security ground forces have Night Vision but the Avenger has FLIR and a laser rangefinder along with video capabilities. The FLIR will be at least a plate-sized round lense mounted on the weapon rail on the left side (driver side) if there is one. Just a suspicion. If I am correct, there should be more info to request in a FOIA. The sheriff’s Department can’t all have TS Sec clearances so if they brief them all using Avenger footage, it should be low hanging fruit that would be unclassified.”

[Read more…]

Okay…Inauguration Roundup.

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© Laura Racero.

Oh, where to start. I guess we’ll start with “Hey, look, a tiny, Bane-full inauguration!

(Photo: Wikipedia commons and screen capture).

(Photo: Wikipedia commons and screen capture).

For all the boasting about the bigliest ever, the crowds at Trump’s inauguration were woefully scant. The Twitternet jumped all over this immediately, and you can see many of the tweets here. Also noted by the Twitternet, and most everyone else on the planet, Trump borrowed a bit of his speech from a fictional villain, which is terribly apropos, but he picked the wrong villain, Bane. Bane was more of a “eat the rich!” kind of villain. That didn’t stop Trump:

Fans of the Batman franchise film The Dark Knight Rises were startled to hear the words of the movie villain Bane coming out of Republican Pres. Donald Trump’s mouth as he made his inaugural address — purportedly written by Trump himself — on Friday.

“We’re giving the power back to you. The people,” Trump said Friday, a nearly verbatim quote from Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s screenplay for the 2012 film starring Christian Bale as Batman and Tom Hardy as Bane.

You can read all about this one, and see some of the tweets here.

The Twitternet also broke out in gales of laughter and comparisons over Kellyanne Conway’s outfit:

Kellyanne Conway attends President Trump's inauguration (Screen cap).

Kellyanne Conway attends President Trump’s inauguration (Screen cap).

Conway’s outfit, which TMZ claims she describes as “Trump Revolutionary Wear,” is a red-white-and-blue getup that is meant to be somewhat reminiscent of Revolutionary War-era military uniforms.

CNN’s Hunter Schwarz notes that her coat is actually a $3,600 Gucci wool a-line coat — and CNN’s Kate Bennett writes that the coat was originally designed to pay tribute to the city of London, which isn’t exactly a place to celebrate the American Revolution.

You can read all about that, and see tweets here. Oh, and the buttons on it are cat heads.

Then there’s a compilation of all the things that didn’t happen, didn’t come through, and weren’t bigly at all:

Women’s March bus permit requests outnumber inauguration requests by 3 times.

Most hotel bookings have been made by anti-Trump protesters.

Trump is wrong (again): dress shops still have plenty of available frocks.

“There’s never been less demand for inaugural ballgowns in my 38 years,” Peter Marx, who owns D.C. dress shop Saks Jandel, told People. “Never ever has it been less for the inaugural.”

Other shops expressed similar sentiments.

“We were expecting heavy traffic and it has not been that way,” a D.C. Bloomingdale’s representative told Elle. “The last inauguration was a lot more people shopping.”

A spokesperson from Intermix told the outlet, “Usually, it is really big for us, but this year we haven’t seen anything yet, surprisingly.”

Elle notes that “among others we called, White House Black Market and Cusp in Georgetown confirmed they have options in stock. So does Neiman Marcus. And Gucci. And Lord & Taylor. And Nordstrom.”

There’s more here.

And there were artists out, as well as all the marchers and protesters. FORCE put on a big show:

CREDIT: Nate Larson.

CREDIT: Nate Larson.

…For roughly 45 minutes, a slideshow of photos and quotes from survivors circulated on the front of the building, as passersby stopped to take it in. The organizers of the installation hoped their message reached at least a few visitors here for Trump’s inauguration.

“As a native woman, as a queer woman, as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and intimate parter violence, there’s so much that is traumatic about seeing my country support somebody that represents violence against all of those things,” said Rebecca Nagle, a co-director of FORCE. “The racism and the misogyny that [Trump] represents is bigger than just him as a person and a figurehead, but is something that is deeply embedded in American culture.”

Many victims of sexual assault were particularly traumatized by the election of Donald Trump, who bragged on tape about sexually abusing woman. Now, as he prepares to enter the White House, there are already signs that Trump won’t pursue policies aimed at preventing sexual violence. As part of his proposed plan to reduce government spending, Trump administration officials reportedly approached the Department of Justice with a plan to eliminate the federal grants used to combat violence against women.

“The goal of the piece is really to uplift survivors voices at a time that a lot of people are normalizing Trump’s behavior,” said Nagle.

Full story at Think Progress. A great work by FORCE!

And because there’s always bad news:

President Donald Trump’s whitehouse.gov page omitted references to a number of policy issues championed by his predecessor, including climate change, civil rights and healthcare, providing a blueprint for the new administration’s priorities over the next four years.

Full story here.

The Best Bookstore Ever.

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A bookstore you can sleep in. My dream come true. The Book & Bed Hostel is established in Tokyo, with another one now in Kyoto. Your sleep cubicle comes equipped with an outlet, a light, a privacy curtain, clothes hangers, and a wireless connection. There’s also beer.

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Book & Bed is a self-described “accommodation bookshop” with beds built into bookshelves. When the first Tokyo location opened last year, bibliophiles were obviously overjoyed because, for the first time, it was socially acceptable to wander into a bookshop, pick up a book, and then doze off to sleep. Now, the popular concept hotel is getting a 2nd location in Kyoto.

 

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beds are embedded into bookshelves and surrounded by over 5000 books.

Rates are low and start at just 4,445 yen (about $40) for a compact bed. But if you’re a light sleeper, or privacy is your big thing, the Book & Bed hostel may not be for you. Sleeping areas are semi-private with just a curtain separating you from other book dwellers. And bathroom areas are shared too. In fact, the bookshop hostel doesn’t promise “a good night’s sleep.” Instead, the promise “the finest moment of sleep”: dozing off in the middle of your treasured pastime, immersed in books.

 

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Book & Bed.

Book & Bed on Instagram.

I think I’d want to stay…for always. What a wonderful idea. Via Spoon & Tamago.

The Glass Room.

The Glass Room installation view. All photos courtesy of Tactical Technology Collective and the artists.

The Glass Room installation view. All photos courtesy of Tactical Technology Collective and the artists.

The Glass Room, a pop-up exhibition organized by Tactical Technology Collective, a Berlin-based non-profit working to promote technological activism, done in collaboration with Mozilla, the non-profit behind the popular web browser of the same name.

The glitzy and pristine white space was filled to the brim with tech-inflected artworks, many of which were disguised as objects you would typically find in a high-end tech store. But the sterile appearance was ultimately a façade; there was no consumer tech for sale within the space. The works were joined by the desire to expose viewers to the malicious underbelly of the wonderfully convenient Information Age.

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Separated into different categories depending on the type of issues explored in the works, the pieces were as compelling as they were harrowing. Forgot your password? by Aram Bartholl consists of a series of books where the artist compiled the 4.6 million passwords leaked by Linkedin in 2012 within their pages.

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Located in the Data Detox Bar section of the exhibition, Julian Olivier and Danja Vasiljev’s Newstweek is a device that manipulates online news headlines that you don’t like or don’t fit your narrative into ones that are more “appropriate” to your sensibilities.

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In Unfitbit by Surya Mattu and Tega Brain, a FitBit is attached to objects like a metronome or a drill to trick the device into thinking you are working out, thus selling fake, inaccurate data to your health insurance that hopefully lowers your premium.

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“The Glass Room was inspired by two things: First, a desire to make the questions raised by living in a data society tangible and accessible using real projects, humor, and good design. Secondly, to use the language of commerce as a way to critique our enthusiasm for new technologies,” says Stephanie Hankey, a co-founder of Tactical Technology Collective and an organizer of the event.

[…]

Although The Glass Room has already concluded, full documentation of the works can be found on the project’s website, along with a series of informative resources, and a hilarious 8-day “Data Detox Kit” meant to cleanse you of your over-connectivity and oversharing tendencies.

Check out more of Tactical Technology Collective’s projects and exhibitions here.

You can see and read more at The Creators Project. I wish I could have seen this one in person, it’s bloody brilliant.

Senbazuru: 1,000 Cranes.

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All photos © Johnny Tang.

In Japan there is a tradition known as “Senbazuru” (literally 1000 cranes). According to legend, if one folds 1000 paper cranes they will be granted a single wish by the gods. The cranes are usually strung together and hung outside the outer walls of a temple. As they are exposed to the elements and slowly decay, it is believed that the sacrificed cranes will carry the folder’s wish up to heaven for the gods to receive.

I am an impatient American, so I decided to burn mine.

I folded the cranes over the course of a year, personally creasing each beak and wing myself while steadfastly refusing the help of others. I did this because I wanted to know what it felt like to bring each crane into this world, and then banish it into the next. When I first started this project I was hoping to create a huge fireball in the snow. “This will be so cool” I thought, “there’s no way I could screw this up.” But when the moment of destruction finally came, the little bastards refused to even light – instead they just simmered quietly, laughing at me.

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These fabulous photos are by no means all of the ones in this project. There are many more, and you can click on each one and read all the details of that particular shot, at Johnny Tang Photo. This is stunning work, on more than one level, and it certainly deserves very wide exposure. I’m no stranger to long term projects, but I don’t think I could ever fold 1,000 cranes.