Structural Patterns

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!

August 16, 2005

The army swarms the malls, entertainment centers, 42nd street, television and online youth oriented sites seeking to send naive and uncertain kids to face war and death.
Recruitment officers have quotas and their wet dream is some 18 year old who may not have gotten into college, may be rebelling against their home, may not want to go to college and is basically uncertain about what s/he is supposed to do with her/his life. And there is no fucken sense of guilt in targeting this kid. And what socio-economic background is this kid likely to be coming from? You can bet that the children of senators, congressmen, our president would never end up in a recruitment office because they are uncertain about their future.

I was checking out the ifilm site again and it’s riddled with these highly romanticized, bullshit army ads that would only function on a kid who doesn’t know any better and hasn’t been taught to be critical of our authorities and all the lies that they spread.
Every recruitment officer should be regularly informed of the army life and personal situation of each youth that s/he recruits, should be informed if that person is facing warfare, should be informed if that person has been injured or died. Perhaps then they may feel a shred of guilt at targeting the youth of our country and taking advantage of their uncertainty, socio-economic background, lack of resources, naive notions of patriotism. Of course, it’s naive of me that they would give a shit, after all most recruitment officers themselves have been brainwashed into thinking that they represent the only truth…