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Projects We Like: SITUATIONAL JUNTA @ Bowery Poetry Club – October 21, 2013

Posted on October 20, 2013 | No Comments

sjboweryEmcee: Negin Farsad Main Dish: Alex White Mazzarella & Artefacting With: Caron Atlas, Stephanie Gooel, Brian Halloran, Niki Singleton, Lawman Lynch, Chloe Bass, Dave Ruder, Abigail Levine and Wen-shaun Yang

Location: Bowery Poetry Time: 6-8pm $10

{Each evening begins with a happy hour from 6pm to 7pm, and a live radio broadcast from 7-8pm.}

ABOUT THE SERIES

Dates: Mondays, Oct 21, Nov 18, Dec 16

The United States Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) and the Associação Espaço Cultural Lanchonete (aka Lanchonete) are taking over Bowery Poetry for a series of evening encounters and exchanges, one part happy hour and the other part radio talk show… shaken, stirred, and served straight up on the airwaves! For three evenings this Fall, Situational Junta poses a simple question: If artists are empowered to innovate on a large enough scale to interrupt the status quo, what would that look like?

Antonio Gramsci wrote that “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Situational Junta convenes a cast of unlikely midwives to cross borders and spark whimsy as they search for workarounds (or gambiarra) to the present condition and stoke a hunger for something new. Equal parts salon, happening, cabaret, and fireside chat, Situational Junta is a mash-up of ideas and forms building new alliances and bridging Bowery Poetry’s past to the future.

Description: Each evening is designed as a radio talk show, hosted by an emcee, and featuring a main guest or guests. In addition to their interview-conversation or performance, guests may prompt the audience to speak amongst themselves as music takes over the broadcast. A rotating, intergenerational, interdisciplinary cast of characters round out the hour through a tightly choreographed sequence of commentary, artist work, news flashes, and ‘commercial breaks’. People and projects emerge in unlikely proximity. Music, ideas, and drinks flow and the evening culminates with a soapbox open mic that invites audience members to join the broadcast. The <> is surrounded by a sequence of newsflashes, ‘commercial breaks’, and urgent interventions by a retinue of of creative schemers and artful dreamers.


Two more nights:

Nov 18: Emcee: DW Gibson Main Dish: Lee Ann Norman’s ‘This is Our House: On music, memory, and the politics of culture’ (co-presented w/ Foundational Sharing) Plus More: Kristiania Collective

Dec 16: Emcee: Bob Holman Main Dish: Willing Participant (co-presented w/ Elastic City) Plus More: Spoken word by Sparrow.

While NewsFlashes & Commercial Breaks won’t be final until the night-of, they may include content from initiatives such as the Arts & Democracy Project and TrustArt. Our Cast of Characters & Pop-up Encounters may be on the stage or simply in the room, and include sculptures by Brian Fernandes-Halloran, jams from singer/songwriter Stephanie Gooel, art from Niki Singleton, books from Bureau of General Services Queer Division (BGSQD), a new-wave phenomenon called dance-casting, as well as regulars from the Bowery Poetry Club scene.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS: One is a new national department. The other is a lunch counter in Brazil.

The United States Department of Arts and Culture (www.usdac.us) is a people-powered department that works to forge a future with cultural democracy, community cohesion, and social imagination at the nation’s core. Lanchonete (www.lanchonete.org) is a popular lunch counter in the fast-changing center of São Paulo, Brazil. It serves as a meeting spot for hungry people claiming their right to the city.


A cornerstone of Bowery Arts + Science’s fall season, Situational Junta gives airtime to a variety of projects, possibilities, and paradigm shifts, transporting audience members to a world with art and culture at its core. Livestreaming and media partnerships with Radio Al Cabira and The Mantle.

Presentation: The Right to Freedom of Artistic Expression & Creation

Posted on October 1, 2013 | No Comments

IndependentExpertArts/Rights/Justice Working Group presents UN Special Rapporteur on Cultural Rights Report on The Right to Freedom of Artistic Expression & Creation – October 2 – Brussels

The presentation of the UN Report, “The Right to Freedom of Artistic Expression and Creation” at the European Parliament in Brussels on 2nd October 2013, from 11:30-14:30 in the Paul Henri Spaak Building, Room P5B001.  Presenting the report will be its author, Mme Farida Shaheed, UN Special Rapporteur in the field of Cultural Rights.

The United Nations established the UN Special Rapporteur in 2009. Ms. Farida Shaheed’s UN Special Report was formally presented to the UN on 31st May 2013. The EU Working Group on Arts and Human Rights (ARJ)* invites members of the European Parliament and the European Commission, selected foundations, NGOs, artists and experts to join in the discussion.  A copy of the Report can be found here.

 
The European Parliament already recognises artists as a category of human rights defenders. Recent highly visible events such as the incarceration of the Chinese visual artist Ai Wewei or of the Russian music group Pussy Riot have brought the vulnerability of artists to the public eye. Indeed, discussions about artists as human rights defenders have taken place relatively recently in the European Parliament and the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights. Artists are an ‘early and easy target’ for governments seeking to increase repression. Closer to home, we see increasing numbers of cases in Members and candidates of the EU. From censorship to beatings, imprisonment and death we have documented stories of the silencing of artists who wish to highlight injustice through song, writing or image.

Freedom of expression is the cornerstone for protecting artists. States that inhibit freedom of expression often curtail other related human rights: freedom of association, freedom of assembly or the right to gather with others, freedom of association or the right to join unions or professional associations, freedom of movement or the right to travel in and outside the country, the right to access information, the right to defend a cultural identity.

Women’s survival strategies in Chechnya: from self-care to caring for each other

Posted on September 11, 2013 | No Comments

Luiza encounters regular violence and intimidation in her work helping women survivors of state-sponsored violence. Living under the Chechen regime, activist women need a combination of self and community care. 

by Keely Tongate

Chechnyan refugees

Luiza has seen many attempts to silence Chechen human rights activists.

There was the car with tell-tale tinted windows and no number plates that tried to run over her sister, after she gave a speech attacking Chechnya’s poor human rights record. The constant emergency trips to neighboring republics with her children, having faced by threats from gangs on the government payroll. The drive-by paintball shootings. These were thugs trying to keep activists in check, part of a wider effort to enforce women’s compliance with a strict Islamic dress code.

As part of her work helping women survivors of state-sponsored violence, Luiza encounters regular violence and intimidation.

In 2008, the Kremlin-appointed President of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadirov, introduced a plan for “moral education” which included a decree requiring that all women employed in the state sector, and all female school and university students, wear headscarves. Kadirov’s men enforced this decree by shooting at girls that had their heads uncovered with paintball guns, physically marking them out for surveillance and public scrutiny.

Luiza is obviously not alone: she is one of many women that the Urgent Action Fund supports. All face grave danger due to their work for human rights.

Living under this regime, meditation, yoga and other forms of self-care may seem like luxuries or distractions. In fact they are essential components of sustained and effective social activism. They help people to manage the accumulated stresses and strains of a life lived in constant danger.

For Luiza, self-care starts with regular exercise to keep her body strong, her senses clear and her mind alert: “I think that human rights defenders should be physically prepared for unexpected circumstances” she told me, “at least in my life, my ability to run quickly has saved me several times.”

But self-care isn’t enough, especially for those who face seemingly insurmountable odds. There are so many activists like Luiza in the world, and few of them have access to the resources and opportunities they need to care for themselves. Activists gain strength in numbers, but they still need a way of making these opportunities available to everyone who requires them.

That means building collective communities of care.

The Urgent Action Fund has showed how a focus on self-care can privilege the leaders of organizations or those with more time and resources – those who speak English for example, who tend to have more access to Western funding. Retreat centers and sustainability programs usually focus their attention on those at the Executive Director level who tend to be seasoned activists from NGOs. These programs mostly overlook younger leaders and activists who frame their work outside of the narrow limits of the NGO sector, yet are still at huge risk of ‘burning out.’

During a recent debate on Organizing Upgrade, US social justice activists argued forcibly against prioritising individuals over the collective. As one contributor bluntly stated: “Self-care stands as an importation of middle-class values of leisure, blind to the dynamics of working class (or even family) life, inherently rejects collective responsibility for each other’s well-being, misses power dynamics in our lives, and attempts to serve as a replacement for a politics and practice of desire that could actually ignite our hearts.”

This is an important critique. We need strategies for collective sustainability that make sense for activists and their communities. That doesn’t mean abandoning self-care, but it does mean integrating it into broader cultures of community care that can sustain more people in relationship to one another.

What would a combination of self- and community care look like? For activists in Chechnya, it means creating individual and organizational security plans, for example, that ensure if one woman is threatened, there are others standing by to help to keep her safe. A security plan provides more options when things get especially dangerous, as when the car with tinted windows is heading in your direction.

Phone trees are vital – networks of people who can organize quickly to spread crucial information. Mandatory organization-wide attendance for security trainings can also help, by integrating self-care techniques like meditation with security basics like keeping multiple mobile phones to throw off surveillance.

These mechanisms help to guarantee that the collective work of activists can continue, despite the challenges that are faced by individuals. As Luiza told me: “Before I never even thought about self-care, but since I started to participate at the trainings on security, I’ve understood its importance. If you go without rest, one day you will not be able to continue what you do.”

Collective childcare and rotating meal provisions for monthly meetings among activists are other ways of embodying these communities of care. Strategies like these ensure that activists’ family lives, whatever they look like, can be integrated into their work by providing whatever support is necessary for them to function effectively.

Sending regular texts when traveling to remote villages ensures that someone knows where Chechen activists are at all times, in case of (un)expected trouble. In this system, when one person struggles, others are mobilized to support them.

Supporting the collective also diffuses risks to leaders by shoring up the capacity of other members of the community, thereby strengthening groups of individuals as a movement. Activists are more resilient when they do not stand alone.

If more activists could create communities of care like these, their work would become more transformative by reflecting their internal values externally – through the structures in which they operate. By contrast, structures that privilege sustainability for some – usually the more privileged – are not going to build more equal and liberating relationships.

Instead, a better balance is required between self-care and the health of the community so that all activists, not just their leaders, can get the support they need. Embodying compassion for ourselves and other people throughout our work for human rights will build the kind of social movements that more people will want to join.

Text and image reposted from Opendemocracy.net

A ‘new poetry’ emerges from Syria’s civil war

Posted on September 8, 2013 | No Comments

halaMore literal and visceral, Syrian poetry is being spread on social media and chanted in the streets.

Ghada al-Atrash, a Syrian-Canadian writer and translator, has been studying Syrian poetry for decades.

Yet in all her years of work, she says she has never encountered works of poetry such as the ones emerging today from the depths of a Syria in the throes of an increasingly deadly civil war.

“Today there is literature coming out of Syria that we could have never even dreamed of just a few years ago,” Atrash says.

Rather than relying on metaphors and allegorical images, these new poems rely on literal, visceral descriptions, with a newfound emphasis on a united Syrian identity instead of religious symbols. For instance, a poem she translated by Najat Abdul Samad, called “When I am overcome by weakness”, reads:

“I bandage my heart with the determination of that boy / they hit with an electric stick on his only kidney until he urinated blood. / Yet he returned and walked in the next demonstration… / I bandage it with the outcry: ‘Death and not humiliation.'”

Another by Youssef Bou Yihea titled “I am a Syrian”, declares: “My sect is the scent of my homeland, the soil after the rain, and my Syria is my only religion.”

“A lot of poetry and beautiful lyrics are rising up from the ashes in Syria,” says expatriate Syrian writer Ghias al-Jundi, who is responsible for PEN International’s research on attacks against free expression in the Middle East.

“There is a cultural side to the revolution, and it’s brilliant.”

New literary tradition

It’s not just the content that is new. Syrian poetry is also being spread through different channels. Instead of being introduced at formal gatherings or readings, Syrian poets often debut their work at public demonstrations, or on social networking sites such as Facebook.

Mohja Kahf, an award-winning Syrian-American writer and associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Arkansas, wrote an article in 2001 titled “The Silence of Contemporary Syrian Literature”, in which she argued that fear, government censorship, and repression were the defining characteristics of Syrian writing.

“That has all changed now,” Kahf says, thanks in part to the Internet and social media platforms. “A new Syrian identity and literary tradition are being formed around the events of the last few years.”

Poetry is “playing a huge role in Syria right now because the lyrics are part of demonstrations,” says Jundi.  “People are singing these verses together in the streets.”

Peaceful demonstrations have reduced in number and size as the violence has intensified, but they have not stopped altogether.

Facebook is one of the main channels that Atrash uses to connect with her partners in Syria. She says she discovered two poets from the city of Sweida – Youssef Bou Yihea and Najat Abdul Samad, whose work is quoted above – through the social networking site.

Atrash contacted these writers and was granted permission to translate their works into English.

“I take their poems fresh, translate them, and share them through social media,” she says. “It’s not just me. Today there are a lot of people translating and spreading Syrian poems from the ground.”

Civilians in Syria and around the world are using social networks to share these new poems without censorship. Kahf herself has served as the leader of about 20 Facebook pages focusing on nonviolent components of the revolution.

“The young people in Syria today grew up as part of a global conversation,” says Kahf.

Although Atrash believes the revolution is rejuvenating Syrian poetry, both in the Middle East and around the world, she says language barriers between global readers and Syrian writers on the ground keep international audiences from accessing many of these new works.

And it’s not just language barriers hindering accessibility. The Internet is not accessible for large swaths of the Syrian population, especially as the UN estimates between a quarter and a third of the country’s people have been displaced. Nevertheless, social media tools are among the only platforms for new Syrian writers to connect with each other, whether at home or in exile.

While these past two years have seen a flood of new Syrian writers, not all of Syria’s prominent poets participate in this digital sphere.

“People are waiting for opposition poems from Adunis,” says Maram al-Masri, a Syrian poet based in Paris, referring to Ali Ahmad Said Esber, one of Syria’s greatest living poets.

“He does a little, but for me and for a lot of people, we feel disappointed. It’s not enough. We need the fathers of modern Syrian poetry to speak out.”

Dangerous profession

Yet with the country in the grips of a two-year-long civil war that shows no sign of abating, Syrian poets – and writers more generally – are in more danger today than ever before.

“Poets and writers are disappearing across the country,” says Jundi. “Syrian writers are caught between a double danger: the regime and the Islamists. It is a risk to write or utter a word.”

Poet Ibrahim Qashoush was kidnapped and killed in July 2011. Two writers – Dia’a al-Abdulla and Tal al-Mallouhi – are still believed to be in prison without access to a lawyer. Writer Khaled Khalifa was attacked in Damascus in May 2012 and his left hand was broken.

“Most of the poets I talk to knew there was a risk of death, imprisonment or exile if you write the truth,” says Jundi. “And even if they flee, they can also be killed abroad.”

Expatriate Syrian poets have been intimidated: Masri, who recently published a book of poems titled Freedom, she comes naked, inspired by social media images and posts from Syria, says she has received death threats and had loved ones in Syria forced into hiding.

“It’s not easy to enter a Syrian jail,” says Masri. “You don’t know if you will ever come out.”

Some writers take precautions, saving lyrics under different names in case police search them or their homes, or propagating their poems anonymously. In such an atmosphere, few individual poets of this new style have risen to fame.

But although Syrian writers are still in grave danger, fear no longer controls their work. Violence is so pervasive in Syria that silence is no longer seen as a road to safety.

Before 2011, even the popular tradition of public poetry readings were controlled by government censorship. Now Syrian writers are defying these restrictions. Newly empowered by their passionate audiences, some Syrian poets are holding nothing back.

“We have broken the old phantom of fear,” Masri says.

Text and image reposted from Aljazeera.com

Indian author shot dead in Afghanistan

Posted on September 5, 2013 | No Comments

sbanerjeeUnidentified gunmen have shot dead an Indian author in the eastern Afghan province of Paktika, police say.

Sushmita Banerjee, the writer of a popular book about her dramatic escape from the Taliban in the 1990s, was shot dead on Wednesday night, police announced on Thursday.

“We found her bullet-riddled body near [a religious school] on the outskirts of Sharan city [Paktika’s provincial capital] this morning,” provincial police chief Dawlat Khan Zadran told the AFP news agency.

Banerjee, 49, was a fairly well-known writer whose book Kabuliwala’s Bengali Wife, about her escape from the Taliban was made into a Bollywood film in 2003.

Police on Thursday said that the book may have been the reason she was targeted, saying they had spoken with her husband.

“Our investigation […] indicates that the militants had grievances against her for something she had written or told in the past, which was then turned into a film,” the provincial police chief said.

“She had been shot 20 times and some of her hair had been ripped off by the militants,” Zadran said.

She was married to Afghan businessman Jaanbaz Khan and had recently moved back to live with him in Paktika province, reportedly to run a health clinic there.

Text and image reposted from Aljazeera.com

Call for Entries: CENSURADOS Film Festival – Lima, Peru

Posted on August 23, 2013 | No Comments

logo-censurados“The story that is behind a censored film can help us to understand better our society”

CENSURADOS Film Festival will take place in Lima (Peru) on December 2013 with the aim to give voice to those fiction, documentary and animation films that have been censored in different countries for political, religious, sexual or environmental reasons, among others. The Festival wants to open a new space for directors and producers that their films have been prohibited and wants to know and talk about the story that is behind each censure. Since the beginning of cinema many films and scenes have been prohibited by different social, religious and political groups. Yet in 1894 we can find the first images censored in United States (“Carmencita”) that were prohibited by two local politicians because the scene shown the underskirt of the dancer. Others films such Clockwork Orange and The Great Dictator were also censored in the past and nowadays are some of the greatest films of cinema’s history. These are only some examples of how the censure has been very close to the history of the cinema and the documentary films.

THE FESTIVAL

The first edition of CENSURADOS Film Festival will take place on December 3-8th in a main location (Tupac Centro de Creación Contemporánea – Barranco – Lima) where open air screenings and activities will be held as well as in some other outreach locations. Different activities will be organized during the SIX days of the Festival: open air screenings, exhibitions, conferences, seminars, workshops, performances and concerts. All of them will be free entry.

The Festival will have an official selection (call for entries that is now going on) and also other documentary and fiction sections and retrospectives about the censorship from different points of view: Women, the Peruvian Censure, the Catholic Censure, the conflict between enterprises and indigenous villages, the history of the censored films, among others.

OFFICIAL SELECTION

This section is non-competitive and will program documentary, fiction and animation films that have been censored in the last years. A call for entries until September 1st is going on in order to invite worldwide filmmakers to participate with their long and short films and the story that is behind the censure they have suffered. The jury not only will consider the quality of the films but also the reasons because it was banished.

For more information visit: www.censuradosfilmfestival.wordpress.com

Ukrainian Museum Director Destroys Critical Painting Ahead Of President’s Visit

Posted on August 2, 2013 | No Comments

ukbanptNatalia Zabolotna’s primary job as director of the Mystetskyi Arsenal art museum in Kyiv was to oversee the pieces under her roof.

But on July 25, the night before a visit by President Viktor Yanukovych and the opening of an exhibit meant to celebrate Ukrainian heritage, she took a can of black paint and doused a piece that she deemed “immoral.”

A day later, the destruction of artist Volodymyr Kuznetsov’s “Koliivschina: Judgment Day” has prompted the resignation of the museum’s deputy, helped fuel a street protest, and triggered alarm within the country’s artistic community.

Speaking to RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Kuznetsov expressed shock at the destruction of his piece.

“I had agreed to come on Thursday night (July 25) to finish the work. In the afternoon, I was not allowed to come inside,” he said. “At first, I did not know that my work had been painted over.”

The painting, a mural measuring 11 meters by 5 meters, showed a flaming nuclear reactor with priests and judges semisubmerged in a vat of red liquid. A car that appeared to be carrying officials was shown plunging into the vat — likely a reference to the numerous traffic accidents caused by officials in the country. A hodgepodge of other figures were grouped alongside, including what appeared to be the image of Iryna Krashkova, the woman who accused two police officers and a civilian of beating and raping her last month. Her case has prompted a wave of protests.

Zabolotna, who has since apologized for destroying the work, cited the nature of the exhibit in explaining her actions. “Great and Grand,” as the exhibit is called, opened to the public this week in commemoration of the 1,025th anniversary of the baptism of Kievan Rus, the medieval kingdom that laid the Orthodox foundation for modern-day Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.

In comments printed in the publication “Left Bank,” Zabolotna said the exhibit “should inspire pride in the state.”

“You cannot criticize the homeland, just as you cannot criticize your mother. I feel that anything said against the homeland is immoral,” she added.

Zabolotna also claimed that Kuznetsov had diverged in his work from the concept that was previously agreed upon.

The same explanation was cited by the Culture Ministry, which denied any involvement in the incident.

Some observers have suggested that Zabolotna was under pressure to get rid of the work ahead of Yanukovych’s visit. Others suggested that she may have feared the state would cut funding to the museum over the painting.

But Kuznetsov said the act was unforgivable.

“No one has the right to destroy somebody’s work, especially to do this without permission,” he said. “Perhaps there is a hierarchy at Arsenal and it is against such a hierarchy — state and religious — that my work is directed.”

Another artwork, “Molotov Cocktail” by Vasyl Tsygalov, was also reportedly removed from the exhibit ahead of its opening.

The controversy helped fuel a small protest that was held outside of the museum on July 26. Eight people were arrested for holding the unsanctioned rally against what they described as the mixing of church and state in Ukraine and official censorship.

The incident has also led to two resignations. Kateryna Stukalova left her position as the editor in chief of the journal “Art Ukraine,” which was founded by Zabolotna. Oleksandr Solovyov, the deputy director of the Mystetskyi Arsenal museum, also stepped down in protest.

Speaking to RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, he said, “This is not censorship but self-censorship. In the work of Kuznetsov, I see nothing more terrible than our life.”

Text and image reposted from http://www.rferl.org/

The Gezi Park Experience

Posted on June 20, 2013 | No Comments

Turkey-Resistance by Pelin Tan

“An event is political if its material is collective, or if the event can only be attributed to a collective multiplicity.” —Alain Badiou

Before the Turkish government brutally invaded Taksim Square and Gezi Park with water cannons and tear gas last Saturday, protesters held forums to discuss sustainable action that would continue the resistance beyond the park’s occupation. The Gezi Park experience is about collaboration, solidarity despite differences, voluntary shared labor, an agonistic democratic platform, and friendship. Whatever form of protest the next demonstrations take, they must contain these core aspects of the “Gezi Park Experience,” with art and its dissemination playing a crucial role.

Before that violent Saturday evening, Gezi Park was a self-organized village. Occupiers provided free food, drinks, and tents, and camps had expanded over the previous 10 days. Demonstrators planted vegetable and flower gardens, and an activist group created Videoccupy to stream footage of the demonstrations. All these initiatives were collective and organic. The food was free and based on exchange—money had no validity here. These are all reminiscent of J.K.Gibson-Graham’s ideas of community economy, vertical dimensions of collective organization, and “a politics of collective action.” We should keep his questions in mind; “What are our needs, and how can they be met? What is surplus to our needs, and how should it be generated, pooled, distributed, and deployed? What resources are to be consumed, and how should this consumption be distributed? What is our commons, and how should it be renewed, sustained, enlarged, drawn down, and/or extended to others?”

The contemporary art research group “Like a Rolling Stone” organized a public meeting in Gezi Park that focused on voluntary labor and the labor of the volunteer. Voluntary labor is vital in heterogeneity and collective togetherness. This sort of togetherness grows through mutual needs, participants’ demands, and capacity based on solidarity and autonomy. This togetherness can build economical activities and labor processes. In this context, the key questions are: How is action constructed? How are labor processes created, and how do they function? What is the role of voluntary labor in the construction of collective labor? The discussion examined how artistic practices can be collectively disseminated. A counter-cultural value could be spread by artistic representation in terms of the philosopher Jacques Ranciere’s modes of visibility. Ranciere writes, “aesthetic practices are … forms of visibility that disclose artistic practices, the place they occupy, what they ‘do’ or ‘make’ from the standpoint of what is common to the community.”

We know and have experienced through practicing socially engaged art that collective collaboration, forms of dissemination, and conditions of exchange labor provide can strengthen communities. Along with other video production initiatives, Videoccupy collects images of resistance to establish a video database. They want to be the eyes of the resister and to create a visual memory of this historical moment. Videoccupy is based on a voluntary labor exchange. It is, however, much more than just a set “volunteers.” Here, voluntary labor transforms itself into a power of collective everyday action.

Since Sunday, forums have continued and citizens keep discussing what kind of democracy we want and how to develop the Gezi Park Experience. The public forums take place in every district; inhabitants gather in parks of the district. The forums discuss what kind of democracy we want and how to maintain and develop the communal vitality and dynamism that came out of the Gezi Park experience. Artistic representation and its dissemination through visual presentation, performances, and public workshops must be used to document these moments and to keep re-invigorating this collective social energy.
Pelin Tan is an assistant professor for the New Media Department at Kadir Has University in Istanbul. In 2011, Tan was the MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology fellow.

Image by Kianoush Ramezani

Zunar vs. the police and Malaysian government

Posted on June 12, 2013 | No Comments

komik_cartoon_o_phobia_zunarStatement from Malaysia political cartoonist, Zunar. Zunar vs the police and the Malaysian government (Unlawful Detention under The Sedition Act): An appeal at the Appellate Court on the 18th June 2013

The Appellate Court has set 18th of June to hear my appeal on the decision of the Kuala Lumpur High Court’s ruling regarding detention of me under the Sedition Act three years ago.

 

In his ruling on July last year, the Kuala Lumpur High Court Judge Justice Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera rules that the detention was lawful, even though in the other part of the judgment the court had instructed the police to return all my books and drawing and pay the damages.

On the 24th September 2010, I was arrested and jailed for two days over the publishing of my then new comic book, Cartoon-O-Phobia. I was investigated under the Sedition Act, which carries the maximum of three-year jail if found guilty.

The detention was made several hours prior to the launching of the comic book.

I then filed a suit to challenge the Malaysian government on the grounds that the arrest was made in bad faith, mala fide, and not according to the law. This is based on the fact that when the arrest was made, the books were not available in the market yet.

In my suit, I claimed general, aggravated and exemplary damages, losses from an art collage and the 66 books confiscated during the raid, and loss of earnings from the inability to sell books.

I am represented by R Sivarasa, N Surendran, Latheefa Koya and Fadiah Nadwa Fikri.

Zunar, Political cartoonist – 12 June 2013

 

Forced to Flee: Exiled Voices and Visions for Justice – 11 June 2013

Posted on June 10, 2013 | No Comments

545-1Forced to Flee: Exiled Voices and Visions of Justice

Tuesday, June 11 @ 12PM PST / 3PM EST

Greetings!

We are pleased to announce our upcoming conference call Forced to Flee: Exiled Voices and Visions for Justice, which we are presenting in collaboration with Arts & Democracy Project.

Emotions conveyed and evoked by art and culture can open hearts and minds, heal and transform, build community across difference, and promote peace, equality and justice, advancing positive social change. In Forced to Flee, we will hear refugee artists, artists forced into exile, cultural organizers and their allies talk about how they are using the power of art and culture to amplify the voices and visions of those forced to flee their countries of origin.

Presenters include:
• Sidd Joag, director of freeDimensional
• Chaw ei Thein, Burmese Artist and Activist
• Erika Berg, founder of Refugee Youth Empowered
and curator of Forced to Flee
• Leilani Chan, performance artists, cultural workers and co-creator of Refugee Nation

The call will be moderated by Todd Lester (Arts-Policy Nexus / Lanchonete.org / Queer Art) and Kathie deNobriga (Arts & Democracy Project). Andrea Assaf (Art 2 Action) will be a respondent.

We look forward to having you join us.

Click here to RSVP for call-in info. 

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