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« February 2008 | Main | April 2008 » 
March 28, 2008 S.F. Art Institute facing animal-abuse controversyLinda Frye Burnham / 02:28 PM Faculty and staff members of S.F. Art Institute will meet with the public March 31, 2008, to discuss an SFAI video exhibition that has been called animal abuse by In Defense of Animals (IDA). Adel Abdessemed’s exhibition, "Don’t Trust Me," which opened in the Walter and McBean Galleries on Wednesday, 19 March, has been "temporarily suspended." IDA sent an alert to its members about the exhibit which consisted of six monitors displaying video images of six different animals -- a doe, a goat, a horse, an ox, a pig and a sheep -- being bludgeoned to death with a large sledgehammer. The alert asked concerned people to contact the president of the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), the installation's sponsor, urging him to shut it down immediately on the grounds that "animal abuse is not art, but merely a cruel and self-serving bid for attention." SFAI has posted a notice on the Web about the upcoming discussion, describing the exhibit as "images of events that took place—and regularly take place—in the real world. Their being depicted in video by Abdessemed is part of a long representational tradition, in Western art and beyond."
GREAT JOB in Oakland! Linda Frye Burnham / 08:06 AM Forwarded from California College of the Arts: POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT THE COLLEGE:
March 27, 2008 Contribute to the Mindful WordLinda Frye Burnham / 01:44 PM Forwarded message from Angela Lombardi I am currently a volunteer editor for the e-zine The Mindful Word (TMW), and I am in the process of collecting reviews, articles, essays, and so forth for the publication's upcoming Permaculture and Sustainability issue. One fundamental question we'll be asking in this issue is this as follows: how do we learn to sustain this planet, and most importantly, ourselves? And although we'll be sherpherding text and art that relates to this theme, we also accept submissions related to alternative forms of education. The e-zine is meant to examine living mindfully (either through formal meditation or everyday mindfulness practice); deep listening/communication; active entertainment versus passive entertainment; intentional and participatory living. As the publisher often tells me, it is about taking ownership in whatever process we are engaged in and getting fully involved to live our lives to the fullest, rather than acting out of a future or past-oriented passivity. Please let me know if you are interested in contributing to TMW. We'd like to hear from you! To better acquaint yourself with the scope and content of the e-zine, visit http://themindfulword.org. Regards, Angela Lombardi, M.A. (M.Ed. candidate at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto)
Sweet Home Alabama by the Red Army Chorus Linda Frye Burnham / 12:11 PM And, on the cutting edge of music: The Leningrad Cowboys (a rock band from Finland) and the Red Army Chorus (from Russia) in a Russian concert for screaming teens, singing "Sweet Home Alabama." Thanks to Rodger French (who lives in Ghana) for forwarding this. http://youtube.com/watch?v=0lNFRLrP014
March 26, 2008 In the language of autismLinda Frye Burnham / 01:52 PM There's a video taking You Tube by storm: "In My Language" by Amanda Baggs. Baggs is part of an increasingly visible and highly networked community of autistics. She works with the Internet as well as innovations like type-to-speech software to let us know that she has her own language, but we don't consider her a "thinking being" unless she uses our language. You can see and hear her using both languages on this video, which she shot, edited and uploaded by herself. Also, there's a great article about her in Wired. Her message is that she is not "trapped in her own world," she just interacts differently with the world we all inhabit. I learned about this concept 15 years ago at Little City Foundation in Chicago when my friend (and API board member) Alan Dachman was running Project Vital, an award-winning video program for people with developmental challenges. Dachman was highly motivated to see that people with developmental challenges have the opportunity to participate in mainstream culture. His vision was grand: "To exclude the point of view of any individual based on a misperception of his/her ability to function 'normally' skews our basic concept of human reality. Inclusion is not charity, but an essential philosophy that only makes life richer and more meaningful for all." You can read more about what I learned about this sector in a story I wrote in 1993 for High Performance: "Impatience with Things as They Are: Art faces a developmental challenge." It's on CAN at: Thanks to Jill Burnham for telling us about these items:
March 24, 2008 Pat Graney's new education programLinda Frye Burnham / 02:08 PM Seattle choreographer Pat Graney and her company have instituted "Keep the Faith Transitions," a new arts-based education program for female ex-offenders and their families. It's based in the many years of prisons arts work by the company, at home and around the U.S. We'll let you know when Graney issues an announcement about the program and posts info on her Web site. In the meantime, the "Keeping the Faith—the Prison Project" annual reading event is set for 4-6 p.m., March 30, 2008, at the Bottleneck Lounge in Seattle, Wash. (206-323-1098).
Thoughts on the MICA conference Linda Frye Burnham / 01:10 PM The Community Arts Convening & Research Project held its conference at Maryland Institute College of Art March 16-18, 2008. There were about 150 participants from all sectors of the field. The meeting's design kept us in small groups of 25, so my experience is limited to the group I was in. Therefore I'll report from my own perspective.
March 20, 2008 Voices Web site is upLinda Frye Burnham / 12:23 PM Voices from the Cultural Battlefront: Organizing for Equity, which I wrote about in my year-end roundup, has posted it Web site, offering a history of that movement and a four-day convening model, plus some resources. Well worth looking at.
March 15, 2008 MIT interview with John MalpedeLinda Frye Burnham / 09:52 PM Check out the wonderful interview with John Malpede (L.A. Poverty Dept.) by Larissa Harris in connection with his being named a Fellow of the MIT Center for Advance Visual Studies 2007-8. You can get his current version of how to connect all the dots of his adventurous art career. Malpede is also one of the COLA (City of L.A.) artists for 2008, and will present a solo performance for the COLA Show titled "Cruel, Unusual Outrages upon Personal Dignity, Punishment and Humiliating Degrading Treatment, " which uses as its source material a 2006 speech by President Bush, text from the CIA training manual, and a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that policing on Los Angeles’s Skid Row amounts to cruel and usual punishment.
March 13, 2008 The Dhamma BrothersLinda Frye Burnham / 10:16 AM There's a new documentary making the rounds that chronicles a Vipassana meditation program in a maximum-security prison in Alabama. "The Dhamma Brothers" by cultural anthropologist and psychotherapist Jenny Phillips follows the 36 participating prisoners (called “the dhamma brothers” after the Dhamma, or dharma, the term for the collective teachings of the Buddha) for hours, discussing their childhoods, their crimes, their struggles to get through each day in lockup and the Sisyphean challenge of trying personal transformation inside an often-hopeless prison culture (N.Y. Times, 9/13/07). The film is being released theatrically April 11, 2008, and “Letters from the Dhamma Brothers,” an accompanying book of the letters the inmates sent to Ms. Phillips and the Vipassana teachers, is scheduled for publication in early 2008 by Pariyatti Press.
National Arts and Social Change Funding Circle Linda Frye Burnham / 08:48 AM Forwarded from the Please Join Us for a House Party!
March 12, 2008 Leadership transition at TouchstoneLinda Frye Burnham / 11:54 AM forwarded from Touchstone Theatre: Bethlehem, PA- Mark McKenna, Producing Artistic Director and Ensemble Member of Touchstone Theatre, announced that he is stepping down as leader of the not-for-profit Ensemble Theatre and Lisa Jordan, the company’s Production Manager and Ensemble Member, will be taking over as the new Producing Director. The Touchstone Board and Mr. McKenna have been grooming Jordan for the transition.http://www.touchstone.org
March 11, 2008 For art-history enthusiastsLinda Frye Burnham / 01:23 PM Allan Kaprow's Happenings from the 1950s and '60s will be "reinvented" by 29 local institutions throughout Southern California during the L.A. Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) exhibition "Allan Kaprow–Art as Life," March 23-June 30, 2008. A special Web initiative is scheduled to launch on March 21, 2008, providing a calendar of Happenings in the region, says MoCA. "The Kaprow site will also serve as an archive where participants will present documentation of the Happenings and create a community-driven dialogue, building upon the dynamic relationship between interaction and interpretation embodied in Kaprow’s work. Happenings, a term coined by Allan Kaprow in the late 1950s, define an art form in which an action is extracted from the environment, replacing the traditional art object with a performative gesture rooted in the movements of everyday life. Thanks to a generous grant from the Getty Foundation, MOCA has invited Los Angeles-area art schools, academic institutions, arts organizations, museums and artist-run spaces to reinvent a diverse selection of Kaprow's Happenings."
March 10, 2008 Join the All-Waitress Marching BandLinda Frye Burnham / 10:57 AM Forwarded from Jerri Allyn: JOIN THE ALL CITY WAITRESS MARCHING BAND For more info and to RSVP: jallyn@otis.edu
News from Full Frame Doc Fest Linda Frye Burnham / 10:42 AM DURHAM, N.C. – Full Frame Documentary Film Festival has announced Special Programming for the 11th annual Festival April 3-6 in downtown Durham. Special Programming will include 15 films by notable filmmakers that will bring special guests to the Festival including Phil Donahue and Elvis Mitchell. Three specially spotlighted films are:
March 07, 2008 Art actions against the war, D.C., March 18-19Linda Frye Burnham / 02:23 PM Artists will join the ranks of United for Peace and Justice in Washington, D.C., March 18-19, 2008, marking the 5th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The antiwar event is themed "5 Years Too Many." Action begins Tuesday at 5 p.m. with "Sound the Alarm at Union Station," a march including a five-minute freeze. (To see what this looks like, search YouTube for "Frozen Grand Central.")
Swedish arts org to create New World Bank Linda Frye Burnham / 12:27 PM "thenewworldbank.com" is the name of an arts conference launching a new artspace in the north of Sweden:
March 05, 2008 Community arts fans: Don't miss "Arts: The Catalyst" (online)Linda Frye Burnham / 04:20 PM "Arts: The Catalyst," a documentary on the Craigmillar Festival Society, has been posted on Google Video and I strongly recommend that CAN readers view the 17-minute award-winning movie from Plum Films (2005). Craigmillar was a deprived and much maligned public-housing estate (20,000 people) in east Edinburgh, Scotland, during the 1960s. A mother asked the local head teacher if her young son could learn to play the violin. When her request was refused, she set about organizing a community arts project, the seeds of which traveled the world, winning international acclaim for using arts as the catalyst for social caring and social change. (From the Plum Films description.) This is a story that should be carved into the tablets of Art History. In the film, the story is told by the Craigmillar residents who created the Craigmillar Festival Society (1962-2002), using the arts to transform their own lives and demand political action from the powerful. It's truly art of, by and for the people. (The second generation of Craigmillar arts activists is already in motion. It's the same crowd that instituted Craigmillar Communiversity; organized a Craigmillar community-arts-history exhibition at City Arts Centre, Edinburgh, in 2004; and started World Community Arts Day. ) View this movie. It will make your day. (And you can download it for keeps and show it to your friends, your students, your next President!)
Stitching Truth: : Women's Protest Art in Pinochet's Chile Linda Frye Burnham / 03:03 PM "Stitching Truth: Women's Protest Art in Pinochet's Chile" is a great study guide you can download from the Web site of Facing History and Ourselves. It tells the story of the courage and resistance of Chilean women -- sisters, wives and mothers of people who disappeared without a trace at the hand of the Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973–1990) - who turned to the folk art of embroidery, telling the stories of the disappeared through bright-colored tapestries, called arpilleras in Spanish.
March 03, 2008 Arts center as polling placeLinda Frye Burnham / 03:42 PM Santa Monica, Calif.'s 18th Street Arts Center served as an official polling place during the February 5 California primary election. Reports 18th Street Executive Director Jan Williamson: "We had hundreds of old-timer folks from the Pico Neighborhood coming through our doors that have never stepped foot on [the Center's campus]. There was a steady stream of folks all day long, and by 5 p.m. there were lines of people here to vote. More African American and some Latino seniors during the middle of the day, while at the end of the day folks were younger, and many European Americans." Said 18th Street Business Manager Ramla Roussel, “Exciting to see so many people of all kinds, people of all ages coming in to cast their vote right here where I work in an election that has not been this exciting since my family voted for John F. Kennedy. That was a really great time for me in my youth, a time when I could not wait to be old enough to vote and when I was, the excitement was over -- until now!" The February 5 event reflected the theme for 18th Street’s exhibition year: “The Future of Nations," intentionally tied to the 2008 Presidential election and the issues that will determine the direction and future of the U.S. It was also part of guest curator's series, "Patriot Acts." The Future of Nations:
Our side is winning? Linda Frye Burnham / 01:20 PM The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind – creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers. These people – artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers – will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys. Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind
News from Slum TV in Kenya Linda Frye Burnham / 11:45 AM Forwarded from Slum TV: Since the disputed Kenyan election results Mathare has seen ongoing violence and unrest. At the height of the troubles homes were destroyed, shops looted, men beaten and women raped. Slum TV members felt the full force of the violence; some were forced to vacate their properties, others, tragically, lost family members. Tension in Mathare is high and each day the political negotiations are watched with caution. Until the outcome of the negotiations is announced the future is uncertain. In the opinion of Slum TV, however, the focus on violence in the media only tells one side of the story. |
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