As an artist and professor, I try to make the rounds to the Chelsea galleries with each new round of exhibitions. However, over the years, I’ve narrowed the number of galleries that I stop through, because there are so many and for the most part I think that most of the work I see in Chelsea is really bad.

One of the galleries that I always try to stop by is David Zwirner, because the work presented there usually reflects my flavor for an ideal combination of content and execution. I generally see compelling work that is well done. And the current exhibition by Raymond Pettibon, “The Big Picture” is a great example of this.

Pettibon’s drawings are beautiful and exciting. They are the sort of drawings that make one want to draw, because they are full of energy, they tell a story, they pull the viewer in and they are topical. Through his drawings, Pettibon lays it out, this is the world that we live in and it’s fucked up.

On the other hand, Zwirner also shows bad stuff. Step out of Pettibon’s Big Picture, down the hall way to Chris Ofili and you’ll see Modernist junk. Incredibly boring work with a precious price tag.

High numbers of children with asthma? Adults afflicted with cancer? What was previously buried in the land near a small town? What pollutants flow in the tap water of a given region? Are you living near a Superfund Site? In 1980, Reagan reluctantly implemented the Superfund Act, initially written by the Carter administration due to civic demand for the government’s acknowledgment and action to clean up hazardous sites.

Today the Superfund is broke, there is little money to clean up past sites of waste and environmental disasters, but people still have a right to know and to learn about the environments we live in, however the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t make this easy. Concerned citizens may request Superfund data from the EPA, but the data tends to be dirty - missing information or out dated information, so it’s a good thing that Brooke Singer (full disclaimer - she’s my wife) with the support of turbulence.org has launched Superfund365.

Each day from September 1st 2007 through August 2008, Singer will post a data visualization of a Superfund site. Superfund365 presents a wealth of information on the United States environmental reality. As there are thousands of Superfund sites in the United States of America, Superfund365 only paints a partial picture of the damage to this region of the world, however it is enough to get an insight into the environmental disasters heaped by industrialization and commerce. The project is an incredible exercise of environmental data visualization at a time when people are becoming increasingly conscious of the changes that we have inflicted upon our planet.

How can a hopeful presidential candidate be so insincere as to collapse immigration and terrorism? These are two entirely separate issues, after all none of the 9/11 terrorists were illegal immigrants. And I don’t think that this is an ignorant man making naive comments concerning our society. Giuliani is collapsing the separate issues of immigration and terrorism due to his political platform as mayor of New York City during the 9/11 attack. I’m making these comments after watching a video clip of Giuliani speaking to an audience in Des Moines:
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=187111df2b7391fb354aebc303c4e69f86d4e08a

“I’m not saying that all of them are terrorists. They’re not. Most of them probably aren’t.” “MOST OF THEM PROBABLY AREN’T” I can hardly believe this sort of statement. If there are about 12 million undocumented migrants in the United States and if amongst them there is a large percentage of terrorists, this country is doomed. This is an incredibly false and insincere statement. It’s political hyperbole and the sort of statement that people are tired of and can see right through. Giuliani is actively suggesting that any Mexican or Latin American who may not speak English or does not appear to have assimilated to the U.S. culture could very well be a terrorist. Can this sort of rhetoric actually carry any civil weight? Not only is it insincere, it is racist.

“Freedom, democracy, respect for human life… you believe in these things, you’re an American.” Well then, I think it’s safe to assume that the vast majority of the approximately 12 million undocumented migrants to the U.S. believe in these three ideals and these are the reasons that these people come to this country. These are the reasons that they have been able to grow to approximately 12 million. These are the reasons that they represent an incredibly important work force to the U.S. economy. These are the reasons that major corporations, farmers, suburban and urban families and individuals hire these people, because they believe in freedom, democracy and respect for human life. So according to Giuliani the approximately 12 million immigrants are good Americans.

Toward the end of the video clip he continues into racist territory with his discussion of immigration and assimilation. In a globalized world, it is incredibly short-sited to promote a population that only speaks one language. And yet Giuliani makes a point of doing so.

If Giuliani understood what is necessary for security he would not naively or insincerely collapse the issues of immigration with terrorism. Also in outlining his solution to immigration, he is repeating the Secure Fence Act that Bush signed in 2006, but has failed to recieve funding.  So he’s not proposing anything new or a working solution.

At least the video portrays how poor of a public speaker Giuliani is as he drops sweeping phrases such as “not to have to have these killings” in reference to other countries in comparison to the U.S. He makes this statement without any context or point of reference as to what countries he’s alluding to or what killings he’s talking about. I get the sense that he’s talking about suicide bombings and killing of innocent, but this is following an extended discussion revolving around building a wall along Mexico and cracking down on undocumented Latin American immigrants. Watch the Giuliani video clip and make your own call.

The keynote speech by Exxon and National Petroleum Council (NPC) executives at GO-EXPO, Canada’s largest oil conference, introduced Vivoleum, a macabre ploy to use human dead to produce fuel.

NPC representative stated: “We’re not talking about killing anyone.  We’re talking about using them after nature has done the hard work. After all, 150,000 people already die from climate-change related effects every year. That’s only going to go up - maybe way, way up. Will it all go to waste? That would be cruel.”

The keynote focused on profiteering on the human cost due to Alberta tar sands and the use of liquid coal as forms of energy.

I once did an artist residency in Poland where I got to know the artists Piotr Parda who now lives in Boston. Over the years we’ve kept in touch and I’ve become a bigger and bigger fan of his work for its humor, ingenuity and wit.

Upon first arriving to the states, Piotr made his living as a children’s book illustrator and he recently used his gift of illustration to create new Google icons that reflect ongoing conflicts and disasters. The piece titled “ON OCCASION” takes the usual Google icon manipulations to celebrate major US holidays a provoking step further. Piotr transforms perhaps the most pervasive online icon into a momentary reflection of the world we live in with illustrations that allude to Darfur, Neo-Nazis, KKK and AIDS. Piotr’s site archives his work over the years.

In a hotel room in Connecticut, three Guevarrian Neo-Marxist Latino Terror Revolutionaries seek to help establish a balance toward justice for the crimes committed by the United States of America toward small and poor nation states, cultures and peoples.

The video El Ritual Apasionado was commissioned for the exhibition 50,000 Beds organized by Chris Doyle. Chris Doyle a friend and incredible artist has spent much of the last two years in hotel rooms due to a couple large commissions, so much so that the hotel room became his studio. When three Connecticut art institutions publicized a call for curatorial proposals, Chris responded with the question - what would artists do with the opportunity to produce a video during one night in a hotel room. His proposal received approval and he contacted 45 artists and artist groups to spend a night at participating hotels in order to make a video. The exhibition will present a wide array of approaches to the task of creating a video entirely shot in a hotel room from relational and situational work, to fictive narrative, to animation and private performance…

El Rito Apasionado has been inspired by the rhetoric and tactics revolving around immigration used by Southern conservative officials capitalizing upon Homeland Security and the national fear mechanism to recieve funding toward militarizing the border. The claim that impoverished undocumented immigrants represent a terrorist threat is insincere and opportunist.

I believe that we must regain control of our dangerously porous borders, and we must cut off the employment magnet that drives illegal immigration… I am steadfastly opposed to any form of amnesty…that would provide a path to citizenship to illegal aliens, or any expansion of guest worker programs.
Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado)

No immigration reform, no amnesty, no guest worker programs… such legislative perspectives are retrograde and ignorant of the world we live in and perhaps most importantly are not realistic.

View a 6min 30sec excerpt from the video, the full length is 23 minutes and will be on view at the exhibition 50,000 Beds, opening July 20th, 2007 at the Aldrich Conremporary Art Museum, ART SPACE and REAL ART WAYS.

April 30, 2006
As pointless as it seems with an untouchable Bush Administration, the protest march was lively and huge!

Communism alive and young in the U.S.

March 05, 2006

I’m often dismayed by the realities of military recruitment. Recruiter’s thrive on young kids, with few options afterall they have quotas to meet. Finally, a friend lead me to a great resource that I can print, copy and distribute to kids:

“Mixed Signals - a counter-recruitment tool in comic book form -is now available for use in activism, outreach, counseling, education, starting conversations and saving lives.

16 pages, black & white. Suggested donation: $2 per copy.

To Order Copies: Contact sabjonze@yahoo.com with your address and how you’ll use them.

If you are a no-budget group - we can send you some free copies, otherwise, please contribute what you can to keep this thing rolling. We’re hoping to raise funds to print it with color covers (any leads?) but for now, let’s get the message out!”

Mixed Signals by Sabrina Jones

October 06, 2005

On September 15th, I attended an opening lecture and discussion for a weekend long workshop at 16 Beaver, NYC - “Continental Drift” with Brian Holmes. The workshop was dedicated to mapping tactics of resistance against current global hegemony.

In his opening lecture, Brian discusses the U.S. construction of large global economic blocs since the end of WWII, beginning with the 1944 Bretton Woods Monetary System (international marketing system - U.N., World Bank), to the 1948-52 Marshall Plan to the economic support of Japan during the Korean War… to eventually establish today’s tri-dominant economic system with the U.S. dollar, the Euro and growing Yen.

As Brian puts forth in the online introduction:

The continental blocs are functioning governmental units one scale up from the nation-state. They represent specific attempts to articulate and manage the vast constructive and destructive energies that have been unleashed by the last four decades of technological development, from the introduction of the worldwide container transport system in the sixties, all the way to the emergence of widespread satellite transmission in the eighties and the Internet in our time. Military strategies, the competitive rush for markets, but also the uncertainty and turbulence of the neoliberal globalization process itself has led capitalistic elites to seek forms of territorial stabilization – however violent this “stabilization” may be. This means re-organizing, not just spaces and flows, but also hearts and minds, whether in the centers of accumulation or on the peripheries. We are all affected, wherever we are living.

I brought up Brian’s lecture and the workshop during a recent online disussion on -empyre- as we discussed the reality of cultural translation on the web today as corporations see the value of creating online market spaces that are sensitive to the cultures of target populations. And brought up the question of how artist using the Internet as medium may play a role in articulating an ethics of translation for the Internet.

August 24, 2005

Dentimundo is a new online directory of Mexican dentists on the border with the United States.

El Progresso, Ojinaga, Juarez, Nogales, Mexicali, Tijuana, are all Mexican towns or cities that sit on the edge of the United States. These are border sites that have established a direct simbiotic relationship with the U.S. economy by providing a variety of services to U.S. citizenry and attracting U.S. dollars. Dentist clinics are as prominent as three for a dollar tacos, margarita specials and Mexican panchos.

What deficits in the U.S. health system is causing this outflow to Mexico? How do the dentists on each side of the border view one another? Where do U.S. citizens prefer to have their teeth cleaned and why? These are just a few of the questions that come to mind when considering the immense quantity of Mexican dentists along the Mexico/United States border.

Dentimundo.com is a multimedia documentary of this micro-economy between the U.S. and Mexico that investigates border dentistry while also presenting users with a directory of dentist clinics along the border.

Get your teeth cared for now!