Structural Patterns

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.

A friend asked me to watch PBS’s Expose program and the program actually made me very angry.  Prine strikes me as an uncritical, ultra-conservative, obsessive individual .  Rather than questioning the terror based fear machine that the Bush administration has engendered since 9/11 leading to an illegal war, he’s the fear machine’s head publicist in the gateway to the mid-West, Pittsburgh.  The work is great if it leads to getting rid of unnecessary  chemicals and hazards, but that isn’t his agenda.  He is searching for more elements that will stir fear and concern amongst people.  Fear that has already allowed massive death through an illegal and misguided war.

He wasn’t satisfied with fermenting fear in the US middle states, so then he goes off to participate in a ridiculous war and he thinks he’s helping to bring down al qaeda when he’s probably just fanning the anger and hatred toward the US from poor people with little recourse.  It’s as if this man has been brain washed by every ultra-conservative perspective that clear thinking people have finally begun to question.  Now he’s apparently returned to the US with self-righteousness over having participated in an ill conceived war that had nothing to do with 9/11 to find a new vehicle of fear – the trains!  Carl Prine reflects the sort of ignorance that I would expect PBS to not support.

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.

Yesterday, I stepped into David Zwirner not expecting to see anything exciting, but as I turned the corner of the initial gallery, I was taken aback by the gigantic, beautiful watercolors of Yan Pei-Ming.  The first gallery had one huge oil painting, which had good energy, but wasn’t anything particularly exciting, but the 5 by 9 foot watercolors on paper organized in grids that gave them context and even greater heroic scale than the individual oil paintings are great!

Part of what I love about these are the exact draftsmanship from a distance and the abstraction formed by the droplets and pools of watercolor as one approaches the paintings.

I think that painting is most exciting when abstraction is collapsed into graphic representation to create rich textures which these watercolors accomplish.

I also enjoy new takes on portraiture that present political or social undertones, in this case reflections of social and civic power.  Yan Pei-Mings paintings at David Zwirner come down this weekend.

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.

In 2007, Rhizome will commission eleven new art works with fees ranging from $1000-3000. You can submit a proposal below, or read more about our submission and voting procedures.

New works of Internet-based art, Ten commissions will be awarded in this category. Submit at http://rhizome.org/commissions/2007/artist_proposal.php

Community project, Submit at http://rhizome.org/commissions/2007/community_proposal.php

All of the commissioned works will be exhibited on Rhizome.org and at a one-night event at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as archived in the ArtBase.

Conflux 2007 will take place in Brooklyn again this September and we want you in it! The call for proposals is at http://confluxfestival.org and has all the information you need on how to participate. The online submission form will be live next week and the deadline for proposals is April 17. It’s a tight deadline, but the submission process is short & sweet and we look forward to receiving your proposals. The Conflux festival has been described as “a network of maverick artists and unorthodox urban investigators…making fresh, if underground,contributions to pedestrian life in New York City, and upping the ante on today’s fight for the soul of high-density metropolises.” At Conflux visual and sound artists, writers, urban adventurers and the public gather for four days to explore the physical and psychological landscape of the city. For more information about Conflux, check out the Conflux 2006 site at: http://confluxfestival.org/conflux2006/

Print the various pieces of the gun to use as templates, download files.

Final to scale, wooden AK47, ready to ship!

I remember stepping into the Managua Airport in 1980 or 81 and being surprised and intimidated by the number of Sandinista soldiers holding AK47s. I was about nine years old, it was my first time back in Nicaragua following the 1978-79 popular uprising and final push of a long lasting struggle against the Somoza dynasty. At the time, I had never been in an airport so heavily monitored and in arms-distance of fatigued soldiers holding automatic weapons (supplied generously by the Soviet Union).

Through the Cold War, the AK47 became the most ubiquitous automatic fire arm in the world. A weapon that at once signifies revolution – struggle, turmoil, passion and oppression. In the late 80s, during my teens, I got to fire an AK47 and feel it’s rush of power.

Based on these memories, I decided to fabricate a wooden AK47 as part of a piece for an exhibition in St. Petersburg. I did so by creating an illustration of the gun to use as a template to draw the various pieces onto thick wood panel and then with a jigsaw cut them out, round the pieces as necessary and dowel them together to assemble a handcrafted toy gun. Download and print the Illustrator files to create your own AK47. You will need approximately 2″ thick wood panel, 1.5″ and .25″ thick dowel, a jigsaw or scroll saw, drill, sander, sandpaper and a stain of choice.

In the zipped folder, you will find three Illustrator files: “illustration.ai” is the entire to scale outline; “illustration2.ai” are the various sections separated into layers ready to print onto 8.5″x11″ pager; and “illustration3.ai” is a final section of the gun to be printed out on legal size paper.  Download files.