Structural Patterns

People took over Atlantic and Flatbush, Brooklyn NY

Regular people marched from Barclays Arena in to Flatbush Avenue down to Atlantic and circled around the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush ahead of the Cavaliers and Nets game. It was a tremendous showing by people of all races and ages.

Never imagined I would see the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush entirely shut down. People peacefully marching and claiming our streets.

“Every Mother’s Son” profiles three New York mothers who unexpectedly find themselves united to seek justice and transform their grief into an opportunity for profound social change.

Two decades ago “between 1994 and 1999, 107 civilian killing by police occurred in New York City under circumstances that community groups felt represented an overuse of force.” Unfortunately, again, this situation does not appear to change. The 2004 documentary “Every Mother’s Son” features the mothers of the following innocent, unarmed men who were killed by the police:

1994 The murder of Anthony Baez by Francis X. Livoti in the Bronx

1999 Amadou Diallo shot 19 times by Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon and Kenneth Boss

1999 Gary “Gidone” Busch shot 12 times by four officers

The film opens with the death of Anthony Baez who died due to a choke hold by Officer Livoti, at times it feels as if little changes in our society.

A series of glitch images from Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Protests.

Hong Kong Glitch

Hong Kong Glitch

Hong Kong Glitch

Hong Kong Glitch

Hong Kong Glitch

Hong Kong Glitch

With each manipulation of the Nicaraguan constitution by Ortega and the Sandinista party, I feel a deep sadness for the impoverished country. I am also dumbfounded at the short-sightedness of the ruling party and the ignorant avarice of Daniel Ortega who will not hand over the political reigns of the country to a new generation. Prosperity has been illusive to this small country that has suffered a long-lasting dictatorship, natural disaster, a popular revolution and seemingly inherent political corruption. If only a true leader would emerge who seeks an end to corruption and the engineering of a society striving for the well-being of all its people. Unfortunately, since the Nicaraguan National Assembly elected to eliminate presidential term limits, an end to poverty and corruption appears as distant as the worst period of the Somoza dynasty. Ortega has effectively become Somoza.

Artist and IMA MFA candidate Grayson Earle has just launched the NSA Haiku Generator. Set against a GIF-style rainbow sky background is a haiku composed of NSA watch words. The use of any of these 845 words or character combinations over internet communications can land one on the NSA’s terrorist watch list. Grayson Earle edited the list down to some 300 terms to construct haikus that poke fun at what seems like a ridiculously sweeping effort to construct a flawed terrorist watch list. As the artist states:

This web app uses the NSA’s database of terms which can land you as a suspected terrorist if you use them in electronic communication. Rather than being all ‘doom and gloom,’ I decided to make a game out of it. I’ve assigned each phrase a syllable count which enables you to create random haikus out of hundreds of words.

Click the haiku text to generate new haikus and then share them over various social media, to make the NSA list even more pointless.

The information page to the site also presents links to organizations that are taken a serious stance against the NSA monitoring of our electronic communications:
Fight For The Future
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Stop Watching.Us and the October 26th Rally in DC

Artist, performer, activist, professor Larry Bogad recently posted his TEDxUCDavis talk on YouTube. It’s well worth checking out and may inspire some fun and thoughtful hijinks!

EXCESS is a community-based art project that investigates the large amounts of organic waste in urban centers and creatively employs new tactics to divert food from landfill and back to people to consume or compost. Can we make smarter urban infrastructure where edible food gets eaten, organic waste is turned into compost, compost is used to remediate contaminated lots, vacant lots are transformed into gardens and cities save money while reducing greenhouse emissions? EXCESS NYC is currently active in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

The food rescue and composting bike will be circulating in downtown Stamford, CT in conjunction with the exhibition Strange Invitation at Franklin Street Works.

The new prime minister of Spain Mariano Rajoy reduced 15 ministries to 13 last week by merging culture and education with sports, and entirely eliminating science. It’s difficult to imagine a Spain without a Ministry of Culture. This of course is an austerity cut to salvage the Spanish economy.

The new minister of culture, education and sports, Jose Ignacio Wert has stated “We will have to do more with less. There will be less culture of the subvention… One of our first priorities will be to develop the patronage law” has quoted by the newspaper El Mundo.

So it appears that if culture is to continue to proser in Spain it will largely be through private sponsorship. The incoming rightist party PP will in general seek to privatize, cut social spending and allow the markets to prosper… Once again, Friedman’s formula for a neoliberal economy will be the solution to Spain’s economic problems. Following the collapse of the Lehman Brothers, irresponsibility of banks and the recent economic collapse, I simply can not understand this. I can understand Spaniards being frustrated by the previous prime minister and the Socialist party’s inability to make economic reform, but to elect a strongly neoliberal party in its place?

Who is the vandal - the bank or those effected by predatory bank loans?

During my current stay in Madrid, I am two blocks from a branch of “la Caixa” – “currently the leading savings bank in Spain and the third largest financial entity in the country” – according to their website. Over the last couple weeks, new stickers have appeared on the bank’s window facade. Old stickers announce a June 19th demonstration and states “The plazas and the streets are ours… VIOLENCE IS TO CHARGE 600 EUROS”. New stickers declare “LET IT BE KNOWN, THIS BANK LIES AND STEALS AND THROWS PEOPLE FROM THEIR HOMES” and links to “Plataforma Afectados por La Hipoteca Mdrid” a blog for those effected by Madrid mortgages. There’s another sticker not pictured that presents four CEOs with nicknames and their salaries. Whereas the bank ads on the window state “Tranquility… that is what I ask of my pension plan…”

Meanwhile, “la Caixa” funds the magnificent CaixaForum Madrid the architecturally amazing cultural and social center that reflects the bank’s social cause. It’s entirely free to visit and features the vertical garden below on the facade of an apartment building across from its entrance.

CaixaForum Madrid, Vertical Garden - the social work of the large bank

The complexities of the capitalist economy… does this beautiful and “free” cultural center make up for the injustice felt by many thousands who are experiencing economic hardship?

What will happen to edgy cultural centers such as El Matadero that is currently publicly funded, when private money is its only lifeline?

Currently the feature exhibitions at CaixaForum are “Delacroix (1798-1863) and “The Persistence of Geometry” featuring a long list of well established artists such as Bruce Nauman, Donald Judd, Dan Graham, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Mario Merz, Robert Smithson… Whereas El Ranchito, the latest program at Matadero Madrid focuses on work by young artists with a social agenda. Would CaixaForum ever feature the art of a young large collective Todo por la praxis? Or the very difficult work of Sally and Gabriela Gutiérrez Dewar who have worked with squatters to realize their work at El Ranchito? Or will art work presented at Spanish cultural centers be reduced to safely historicized pieces that exist in the collections of the bank and its board members?

Last Saturday, women contained within police orange netting were pepper sprayed. The women were entirely contained, did not present a danger to anyone, were not violent and were pepper sprayed. This can not be ignored – PROTEST TODAY AT 5:30PM ONE POLICE PLAZA