"No to the use of firearms in dispersing protests."
An important poster, I feel, given the situation on the rise these days.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
EXPRESSÕES DA REVOLUÇÃODE, PORTO ALEGRE, BRASIL
Some of my street-art and poster work is on show now in Porto Alegre, Brazil as part of a group show titled Expressoes da Revolucao. The show started on June 13 and ends on July 14. Do check the website out for more information.
I don't know much else about the show, but Mundo Arte Global have posted some photos of the process of building the show. Here are some of their shots:
I don't know much else about the show, but Mundo Arte Global have posted some photos of the process of building the show. Here are some of their shots:
Friday, June 22, 2012
Theatrefestival Basel
I'm participating in Theatrefestival Basel in Switzerland from 29 August to 9 September with an interactive "street-art" project. The project will invite festival visitors to participate in the completion of the art, turning it into a community-powered project. But will it be something the "community" will be satisfied with? More details are available on the festival's website.
Reduced ticket prices are also on offer via the festival's Facebook page until June 30.
Reduced ticket prices are also on offer via the festival's Facebook page until June 30.
Product of the Week: "When Injustice Becomes Law" Journal
So every week I'll be offering a number of products based on a single image through my cafepress store. Which means the products you see there this week will not be available next week. Next week, there will be a group of different products based on a different image.
This week's product is the "When Injustice Becomes Law" Journal:
Measuring 5"x8", you get 160 pages of your choice of 60 lb bookweight blank, dot grid, lined, or task journal paper for only $15 US.
Potential Mural Gone Wrong in Ancona, Italy
On May 23, I announced on my blog that I'd be working on a mural in Ancona, Italy between 14-19 of June. Although having actually arrived in Ancona on June 14 as planned, you will find no murals by me in this small little harbor town.
Things seem quite off the minute I land at the airport where there is no one waiting for me. Although whenever I'd been invited to participate in any kind of cultural activity abroad, it's always been customary to have someone waiting for me at the airport, if not a cultural practitioner, then at least a driver who would then take me to a destination where I would meet a cultural practitioner with detailed information on my stay.
In Ancona, however, there is no one at the airport holding a sign bearing my name. Luckily, I had a bunch of old emails saved onto my non-operational phone, from which I am able to pull out the name of the hotel I am supposedly supposed to be staying at. No address, just the name of the hotel.
I find a taxi cab outside of the airport and ask the driver if he knows how to get to Hotel della Rosa, and fortunately he does. It isn't a short drive from the airport to Hotel della Rosa, and cab fare runs me a good 35 Euros. Having very little cash on me after a vacation in Istanbul I've just ended, I am weary of expenditures, but I figure: no biggy, surely the curators who've invited me will meet me soon, refund my expenses and provide me with a sufficient per diem for living expenses while I'm in Ancona working on the mural they've asked me to do.
I make it into the hotel lobby, and give the man at the front desk my passport. He gives me the keys to my room: number 410, and wishes me a pleasant evening. It's about 7:00 PM at this point and I have no interest in staying cooped up in a hotel room. And after a flight from Istanbul to Rome to Ancona, I'm pretty famished. I ask the man if anyone has left me anything? An informative welcome package? A little folder with information? A meeting schedule? A map? Restaurant recommendations? A local sim card? Anything?
His response is "nope." No biggy, I figure. I take my luggage to my hotel room, pull out my laptop to check my email thinking that the curators who've invited me might've sent me an email at this point, at least in response to the email I sent them from Istanbul letting them know I'm boarding the flight they booked for me. But no, no responses. I figure: no biggy, I'll just send them another email letting them know I've arrived and what my room number is... just in case they may not know.
I do that and then head on out to the nearest eatery I can find: a miserable place close to the hotel that seems to offer little more than defrosted supermarket food. I go for it, as I'm way too tired and hungry to embark on a search for a good restaurant in a city I know nothing about.
The next morning, I wake up expecting some sort of response from one of the curators with some information about the day. I'm jonzing to get to work on the mural. I expect to at least check out the location designated for the mural, get a chance to assess the space in person, draw up some preparatory sketches, but anyway, I check my email and there is no response from either curator. No biggy, I figure, its still early in the morning, so I shower and head downstairs for the hotel's breakfast: an unfulfilling "buffet" of croissants, butter, honey, and cereal.
After breakfast, I go upstairs again to check my email, and still: nothing. No biggy, I figure, its still early and perhaps they were working late last night. I go out for a walk to explore the neighborhoods surrounding the hotel, and it becomes clear to me that there isn't a whole lot to be done in this town.
I return to my hotel at around noon to check my email again, but still: nothing. Okay, I say, I'll just give one of them a call. I pull out a phone number from one of the old emails and indeed give one of them a call. She greets me and welcomes me to Ancona in a chirpy welcoming voice. I tell her I'm glad to be there and ask her how she's doing. Understandably, she's been busy with the exhibition opening due today at 6:00 PM. My mural isn't to be seen at the opening, but I was under the impression that I would start the day of the opening and finish the whole thing over the course of the next 3-4 days. But anyway, the curator on the phone tells me she'll see me at the opening at 6:00 PM and there, we can talk about my project. No biggy, I figure, we can talk about stuff later today, maybe I'll get to see the location, and tomorrow I can start. We hang up on a good note, but then I think to myself: okay, I guess I have to figure out how to get to the exhibition hall myself, as I don't have an address for that either, just a name.
I manage to pull it up on a Google Map, and sure enough its a 15 or 20 minute walk from the hotel. I make a little sketch of the map and hours later, attempt to use it to reach the exhibition hall but fail miserably. So I walk to the train station (which is right across from the hotel), and buy a proper city map for 7 Euros. Using the map, I reach the exhibition hall successfully in time for the opening, where I meet the lovely curators: very charming Italian women with beautiful smiles and a great sense of humor. I'm told by one of them that they're too tired today and would rather discuss my project with me all fresh the next morning. Fair enough, I figure, I understand where they're coming from.
The next morning, I wake up not feeling too high. The only thing I've seen of the mural's designated location up till now is a photograph sent to me by email. I have no clue about size or scope. How high is it? Will I be working on a ladder, scaffolding, or a cherry-picker truck? What about all the money I've been spending on meals and transportation? What about my artist fees for the mural? So many obscure details.
But anyway, I bump into the curator over the hotel's breakfast, and she tells me she'll be leaving town but will be leaving organizational matters in the hands of another lady who is based in Ancona. No problem. She asks me for a list of the materials I'll be needing to make the mural. I tell her I need to see the location to properly assess the correct amount of material. She tells me not to worry about it, to just give her a rough estimate based on assumption, and if I need any more material halfway, the other lady will be able to fetch it for me without a problem. Alright, so I give her the preliminary list and ask her about the situation with my day-to-day expenses. She seems surprised that I'd bring it up, and tells me that the city -as the whole show is funded by the city- cannot give out cash and can only wire me the funds after completion of the project. I tell her I shouldn't be expected to pay for my day-to-day expenses, the same way I shouldn't be expected to pay for painting materials, even if they plan on refunding it later, but she tells me it's just the way things are and there's nothing she can do about it. I'm nice about it, and don't complain further. I just wanna get my work done at this point.
So we agree that she will give the list of my materials to the other lady who will fetch the materials and leave a message at the hotel lobby with all necessary details for me to start the project. Cool, I say. And I leave the hotel to walk around the city and kill another whole day, after all... it doesn't make sense to wait around and rot in a hotel room all day for the other lady's info on this material.
I arrive back at the hotel in the early evening, and the guy at the front desk tells me he has a message for me: that "all the paint material is waiting for me at the exhibition hall."
That's it? I ask. "Yes," he says. I was expecting some more information... what time to pick up the material, who to ask for at the exhibition hall, how will material be transported to the mural location? Will I ever get to see the location first? What about the promised volunteers? When will I meet them to discuss the working process? All that stuff. But I figure: y'know what, when I go to the exhibition hall for the material, surely there will be someone there with all the necessary information.
The next morning, I wake up ready to get an early start on the mural. I don't want to waste the day. I arrive at the exhibition hall at 9:00 AM, but it is closed. I waste some time till it opens at 10:00 AM, and I ask the first person I see about the painting materials that should be awaiting me. The first person knows nothing about them. I spend the following two hours walking around the place asking everyone I could find if they know anything about these goddamn materials, but to no avail. At that point I decide: Fuck it, I'm going home.
With no credit cards and very little cash on me, I decide to go back to the hotel, get online, and find one of my friends to buy me a ticket home. And to my luck, my homeboy Hady is available to oblige. He gets me a flight from Rome, and I get myself a train ticket from Ancona to Rome.
A while later, I get a call in my hotel room from one of the curators asking me how things are going. I tell her they aren't going so well, and I give her a list of all the problems with the organization of the project since my arrival. To my surprise, she takes no responsibility for the mess, tells me about her 15 years of experience as a curator, and even has the nerve to blame me for the mess. Needless to say, the conversation did not end on a good note.
A few hours later I get an email from her apologizing for the "situation" while astonishingly boasting about how she tries to have the best conditions for her artists. Her words verbatim are: "we really tried to have the best conditions we could for artists, even if our budget is quite small. So we prepaid all the flights, we booked the hotel and we give a fee on each of you, based on the work. We put a critical text for each one, which is something really rare with young artists. "
It's amazing to see a professional curator think that all you need to do to provide "best conditions" for an artist to work in a foreign city is to prepay a flight, book a hotel room, and give a fee (via bank transfer after completion of the work). And that somehow artists should be extremely grateful to the "critical text" written about them by the curator.
I've seen cultural operators provide the best conditions for artists before. Take Makan in Amman (Jordan), for example. Mediamatic in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz (Poland), the City of Gardens office in Katowice (Poland), the Contemporary Image Collective in Cairo (Egypt), Anke Mueffelmann of Kiel (Germany), and Don K. Stone of Berlin and Beirut (Germany and Lebanon) are all examples of cultural operators who not only take care of flight, lodgings, and artist fees for their artists, but also provide proper management from the day of a foreign artist's arrival, from transportation to a daily stipend fee to appropriate scheduling to the provision of maps and restaurant recommendations and much much more. These are all people I've had the honor of working with.
Elettra Stamboulis and Domitilla Vallemani, on the other hand, the two Italian ladies responsible for the waste of my time and money in Ancona (Italy), are the worst examples of cultural managers I've ever been subject to.
It's true that in her last email to me while in Ancona, Elettra offered to refund my expenses in Ancona, but only within "the next few days," expecting me to stick around and waste even more of my time in that miserable hotel room, which only translates as even more disregard for my time.
Although passionate about the topic I was going to illustrate with my mural, which has to do with immigrant child labor, I'm glad I left before giving these people my mural.
Ganzeer, taking shit from no one, and -like the Beatles said- "getting by with a little help from my friends." Sorry there's no mural by me in Ancona, folks.
image created to promote my mural project in Ancona, Italy
In Ancona, however, there is no one at the airport holding a sign bearing my name. Luckily, I had a bunch of old emails saved onto my non-operational phone, from which I am able to pull out the name of the hotel I am supposedly supposed to be staying at. No address, just the name of the hotel.
I find a taxi cab outside of the airport and ask the driver if he knows how to get to Hotel della Rosa, and fortunately he does. It isn't a short drive from the airport to Hotel della Rosa, and cab fare runs me a good 35 Euros. Having very little cash on me after a vacation in Istanbul I've just ended, I am weary of expenditures, but I figure: no biggy, surely the curators who've invited me will meet me soon, refund my expenses and provide me with a sufficient per diem for living expenses while I'm in Ancona working on the mural they've asked me to do.
I make it into the hotel lobby, and give the man at the front desk my passport. He gives me the keys to my room: number 410, and wishes me a pleasant evening. It's about 7:00 PM at this point and I have no interest in staying cooped up in a hotel room. And after a flight from Istanbul to Rome to Ancona, I'm pretty famished. I ask the man if anyone has left me anything? An informative welcome package? A little folder with information? A meeting schedule? A map? Restaurant recommendations? A local sim card? Anything?
His response is "nope." No biggy, I figure. I take my luggage to my hotel room, pull out my laptop to check my email thinking that the curators who've invited me might've sent me an email at this point, at least in response to the email I sent them from Istanbul letting them know I'm boarding the flight they booked for me. But no, no responses. I figure: no biggy, I'll just send them another email letting them know I've arrived and what my room number is... just in case they may not know.
I do that and then head on out to the nearest eatery I can find: a miserable place close to the hotel that seems to offer little more than defrosted supermarket food. I go for it, as I'm way too tired and hungry to embark on a search for a good restaurant in a city I know nothing about.
The next morning, I wake up expecting some sort of response from one of the curators with some information about the day. I'm jonzing to get to work on the mural. I expect to at least check out the location designated for the mural, get a chance to assess the space in person, draw up some preparatory sketches, but anyway, I check my email and there is no response from either curator. No biggy, I figure, its still early in the morning, so I shower and head downstairs for the hotel's breakfast: an unfulfilling "buffet" of croissants, butter, honey, and cereal.
After breakfast, I go upstairs again to check my email, and still: nothing. No biggy, I figure, its still early and perhaps they were working late last night. I go out for a walk to explore the neighborhoods surrounding the hotel, and it becomes clear to me that there isn't a whole lot to be done in this town.
I return to my hotel at around noon to check my email again, but still: nothing. Okay, I say, I'll just give one of them a call. I pull out a phone number from one of the old emails and indeed give one of them a call. She greets me and welcomes me to Ancona in a chirpy welcoming voice. I tell her I'm glad to be there and ask her how she's doing. Understandably, she's been busy with the exhibition opening due today at 6:00 PM. My mural isn't to be seen at the opening, but I was under the impression that I would start the day of the opening and finish the whole thing over the course of the next 3-4 days. But anyway, the curator on the phone tells me she'll see me at the opening at 6:00 PM and there, we can talk about my project. No biggy, I figure, we can talk about stuff later today, maybe I'll get to see the location, and tomorrow I can start. We hang up on a good note, but then I think to myself: okay, I guess I have to figure out how to get to the exhibition hall myself, as I don't have an address for that either, just a name.
I manage to pull it up on a Google Map, and sure enough its a 15 or 20 minute walk from the hotel. I make a little sketch of the map and hours later, attempt to use it to reach the exhibition hall but fail miserably. So I walk to the train station (which is right across from the hotel), and buy a proper city map for 7 Euros. Using the map, I reach the exhibition hall successfully in time for the opening, where I meet the lovely curators: very charming Italian women with beautiful smiles and a great sense of humor. I'm told by one of them that they're too tired today and would rather discuss my project with me all fresh the next morning. Fair enough, I figure, I understand where they're coming from.
The next morning, I wake up not feeling too high. The only thing I've seen of the mural's designated location up till now is a photograph sent to me by email. I have no clue about size or scope. How high is it? Will I be working on a ladder, scaffolding, or a cherry-picker truck? What about all the money I've been spending on meals and transportation? What about my artist fees for the mural? So many obscure details.
But anyway, I bump into the curator over the hotel's breakfast, and she tells me she'll be leaving town but will be leaving organizational matters in the hands of another lady who is based in Ancona. No problem. She asks me for a list of the materials I'll be needing to make the mural. I tell her I need to see the location to properly assess the correct amount of material. She tells me not to worry about it, to just give her a rough estimate based on assumption, and if I need any more material halfway, the other lady will be able to fetch it for me without a problem. Alright, so I give her the preliminary list and ask her about the situation with my day-to-day expenses. She seems surprised that I'd bring it up, and tells me that the city -as the whole show is funded by the city- cannot give out cash and can only wire me the funds after completion of the project. I tell her I shouldn't be expected to pay for my day-to-day expenses, the same way I shouldn't be expected to pay for painting materials, even if they plan on refunding it later, but she tells me it's just the way things are and there's nothing she can do about it. I'm nice about it, and don't complain further. I just wanna get my work done at this point.
So we agree that she will give the list of my materials to the other lady who will fetch the materials and leave a message at the hotel lobby with all necessary details for me to start the project. Cool, I say. And I leave the hotel to walk around the city and kill another whole day, after all... it doesn't make sense to wait around and rot in a hotel room all day for the other lady's info on this material.
I arrive back at the hotel in the early evening, and the guy at the front desk tells me he has a message for me: that "all the paint material is waiting for me at the exhibition hall."
That's it? I ask. "Yes," he says. I was expecting some more information... what time to pick up the material, who to ask for at the exhibition hall, how will material be transported to the mural location? Will I ever get to see the location first? What about the promised volunteers? When will I meet them to discuss the working process? All that stuff. But I figure: y'know what, when I go to the exhibition hall for the material, surely there will be someone there with all the necessary information.
The next morning, I wake up ready to get an early start on the mural. I don't want to waste the day. I arrive at the exhibition hall at 9:00 AM, but it is closed. I waste some time till it opens at 10:00 AM, and I ask the first person I see about the painting materials that should be awaiting me. The first person knows nothing about them. I spend the following two hours walking around the place asking everyone I could find if they know anything about these goddamn materials, but to no avail. At that point I decide: Fuck it, I'm going home.
With no credit cards and very little cash on me, I decide to go back to the hotel, get online, and find one of my friends to buy me a ticket home. And to my luck, my homeboy Hady is available to oblige. He gets me a flight from Rome, and I get myself a train ticket from Ancona to Rome.
A while later, I get a call in my hotel room from one of the curators asking me how things are going. I tell her they aren't going so well, and I give her a list of all the problems with the organization of the project since my arrival. To my surprise, she takes no responsibility for the mess, tells me about her 15 years of experience as a curator, and even has the nerve to blame me for the mess. Needless to say, the conversation did not end on a good note.
A few hours later I get an email from her apologizing for the "situation" while astonishingly boasting about how she tries to have the best conditions for her artists. Her words verbatim are: "we really tried to have the best conditions we could for artists, even if our budget is quite small. So we prepaid all the flights, we booked the hotel and we give a fee on each of you, based on the work. We put a critical text for each one, which is something really rare with young artists. "
It's amazing to see a professional curator think that all you need to do to provide "best conditions" for an artist to work in a foreign city is to prepay a flight, book a hotel room, and give a fee (via bank transfer after completion of the work). And that somehow artists should be extremely grateful to the "critical text" written about them by the curator.
I've seen cultural operators provide the best conditions for artists before. Take Makan in Amman (Jordan), for example. Mediamatic in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz (Poland), the City of Gardens office in Katowice (Poland), the Contemporary Image Collective in Cairo (Egypt), Anke Mueffelmann of Kiel (Germany), and Don K. Stone of Berlin and Beirut (Germany and Lebanon) are all examples of cultural operators who not only take care of flight, lodgings, and artist fees for their artists, but also provide proper management from the day of a foreign artist's arrival, from transportation to a daily stipend fee to appropriate scheduling to the provision of maps and restaurant recommendations and much much more. These are all people I've had the honor of working with.
Elettra Stamboulis and Domitilla Vallemani, on the other hand, the two Italian ladies responsible for the waste of my time and money in Ancona (Italy), are the worst examples of cultural managers I've ever been subject to.
It's true that in her last email to me while in Ancona, Elettra offered to refund my expenses in Ancona, but only within "the next few days," expecting me to stick around and waste even more of my time in that miserable hotel room, which only translates as even more disregard for my time.
Although passionate about the topic I was going to illustrate with my mural, which has to do with immigrant child labor, I'm glad I left before giving these people my mural.
Ganzeer, taking shit from no one, and -like the Beatles said- "getting by with a little help from my friends." Sorry there's no mural by me in Ancona, folks.
preparatory sketches created for the mural in Ancona, Italy
designated location of would-be mural in Ancona, Italy
Friday, June 8, 2012
The New Realism - Art in America Magazine
Art in America Magazine has published a fantastic article on the emergence of an art movement bent on affecting social change by challenging the status quo in works targeting a global audience that, to a large extent, is very much disconnected from the so-called "art world."
Here are a couple of excerpts:
This is today's New Realism. In response to a host of global challenges ranging from political repression to economic crisis to endemic poverty and human rights violations, artists around the world are taking up pencils, brushes, cameras and iPhones to make art that connects with large numbers of people outside the system of galleries and museums. Despite living in far-flung locales and working in different mediums, these artists express a shared belief in the power of art to promote and effect social change. In the age of Facebook and live Twitter feeds, this conviction links them to a global audience that, for the most part, hardly follows the goings-on of the art world.
Consider, for instance, the case of Ganzeer. A 29-year-old multimedia artist and graphic designer whosenom d'artiste means "chain" in Arabic, Ganzeer has rapidly become, according to the English-languageDaily News Egypt, one of the most recognizable faces on the Egyptian arts scene-the country's "de facto cultural operator."1 Having participated in commercial exhibitions in his home country, the artist recently said he found his gallery work to be "the least satisfying."
Read the entire article here.
I believe the article has put its finger on a movement that is manifesting a new global power group. Artists around the world with similar interests and concerns are quickly becoming connected. Each of these artists has already had the ability to influence change on a small local scale. Connect these artists with a similar cause, and you connect these local groups around the world to a similar cause. Much like how corporate and political mergers were able to reshape the world to their liking, artist "mergers" that operate outside of establishments provided by corporate and political powers will be able to do the same.
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