Reconstructing frames

What does the inhabitant of this urban living room have in common with
the large-mouthed bass in my previous post have in common? Both ar
voiceless, invisible, disenfranchised and powerless. The difference is that
we only eat one of them.

I didn't want to keep talking about CT & the BDS but it keeps coming up on blogs & on FB. I would like to see our whole set of values premises torn apart. Meanwhile, since I've already been outed on & called on my views, I'm reposting for the record, what I wrote in individual exchanges when i was taken to task for the seriousness of my charges quoted on Mira's blog (see previous posts). The following is from those exchanges today.

I stand totally by what I wrote about incitement to Neo-Nazis, who incidentally target Muslims as casually as anyone else. A good look at history is the best proof of that. I think ideally, this conversation goes to deconstructing and rethinking the narrative frame. As Suzanne Lacy mentioned in her workshop about narratives, & Mira referenced in her blog, some of us struggle with being defensive. I am very sensitized, as many Jews are, to the perils of anti-semitism. My Mother was a Holocaust survivor. My father escaped the Russian pogroms AND the revolution. One uncle, a revolutionary war hero, was sent to Siberia by Stalin for being Jewish and another uncle died in a suicide bomb in Jerusalem. My father changed his name from Gabin to Rahmani, because he had many Arab friends and sympathized with their cause. The BDS argument is that circumstances in Israel conflate with Apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid is a loaded term. I agree that in many circumstances that is the outcome in Israel but for very different reasons and that is worth noting. One of my most vivid memories is a conversation with a Palestinian taxi driver in Tel Aviv in 1984, who told me that Iranians then were going door to door threatening people's families if they didn't join the Intifada. I recall visits there as a child & young woman when the separations we see now were non-existent. It must also be noted that blacks in So. Africa never targeted school children and white supremicists there never offered to negotiate. This is complex stuff and my argument is against the dangers of over-simplification. And I've probably written too much.

How many artists from how many countries receive funding from govts whose policies are impeccable? Yes, I made serious charges. No, I don't think the BDS is open to serious dialog. I have been in dialog my entire life with both Israelis & Palestinians and my father before me. I think there are serious issues there that require serious attention with people's lives at stake, not flamboyant grand standing. My point beyond the excerpt in Mira's post, in much longer posts I wrote on FB, was that when serious political statements are made that tacitly disenfranchise any group of artists, both sides need to be presented and the whole framed in terms of what principles on what basis.  

Framing the frame, considering fish

There has been an on-going conversation on Martha Rosler & Nato Thompson's FB pages, partly in response to Mira Schor's blog about the Creative Time Summit, which I refer to here as CT.  I linked to Mira's blog on CT in my last post here. On Martha's page the discourse has been about value. On Nato's, it has been about framing. But I think they are the same question about where, as artists, we direct the gaze and what means we use to get there. My take away is that we still aren't thinking clearly about our relationships to the world we live in, which is why I'm looking at fish in Memphis for "Fish Story." I've added some clarification in parens.

Large-mouthed bass have been over-fished in the Mississippi and have to
be artificially stocked to satisfy sports fishermen. The fish are also affected by
contaminants, which are under study: http://toxics.usgs.gov/pubs/
wri99-4018/Volume2/sectionD/2507_Schmitt/pdf/2507_Schmitt.pdf

What I wrote on Nato's page, who invited critique, was as follows:

I think the key issue is framing (which I partially addressed in a previous blog here as the horizontal conference), which is initially set by the organizers and focus (confronting inequity as the stated CT conference topic). There were many wonderful aspects to the "Summit," which I thoroughly enjoyed but some were not as well-thought out as they might have been, for example, what I commented on in my own blog over the BDS protests and how Mosireen co-opted some of the frame. Also what came up in Mira's blog and on Martha's FB page last night about audience interaction.

Conferences have become a far more vital venue for artists than most galleries and therefore the framing/ curatorial issues become more complex than TED. Altho I respect CT's decision, as Anne (Pasternak) described it to me of letting the artists speak for themselves, I think the frame evolved from Friday to Sunday and perhaps, is still evolving here. What still seemed most problematic to me at CT was the (absence of a) group platform to discuss the question of how we determine, who determines inequity. For example, as an ecological artist & environmental activist, I think it's an outdated red herring to discuss capitalism as the overall critique of power, dominance and inequity, when from my point of view, the problem is our anthropocentric presumptions. I would have liked to have seen a more assertive engagement between the organizers, the artists and the wider audience to address those perceptual gaps.

And, may I add here, about why people fish for the vanishing large-mouthed bass, according to the University of Iowa, is how much "fun" it is to see them fight for their survival.

http://www.iowadnr.gov/fish/iafish/lmb-fish.html

Framing Creative Time

I'm exhausted but feel good at the end of the Creative Time Summit, which presented many terrific artists and their ideas, from whom I learned a lot. Part of what exhausted me, however, was a contretemps over an Egyptian artist who made a melodramatic protest against Israel that colored most of the first day by refusing the invitation to appear, at the last moment. One reason I feel good is time well-spent with people, including organizers Nato Thompson & Anne Pasternak about the boycott issue. As far as the boycotters, honestly, I  think Egyptian artists have enuf fish to fry in Egypt. I've written about it on my FB page and will only add here that I think, when critical political issues aren't adequately framed, they become a dominance free-for-all, serving only individualistic interests.

I also think this question of who or what takes dominance goes to the heart of what has precipitated our present environmental crisis. When we privilege anthropocentrism, we are presuming human dominance. When our (mine also) point of view is stubbornly selfish/ close-minded/ nationalistic/ anthropocentric, we (I am) are doomed to fail, regardless of the "justice" of our (my) point of view.

In this case, the case for "Confronting Inequity," the conference subtitle, in my opinion, was not adequately framed over the boycott. I don't accept Israeli policies wholesale, for example, on the settlements, but think serious issues deserve seriously framed discussions of the issues and policies, separated from the peoples. In their defense, CT said they were blind-sided.

More on the conference and the boycott is on Mira Schor's blog:

http://ayearofpositivethinking.com/2012/10/13/amazing/

I'd rather play a good game of chess than deal with artists boycotting each other. Art politics and chess are both based on surprise but chess, generally has better framing.

Friendly adversaries playing chess in Washington Square Park.

The following are some of my notes from the first day of the conference (with my comments in ital.):

Nato Thompson & Anne Pasternak introducing: Art & social change- talking vs. doing @ Zucotti (Nato) and Arab Spring; artists that pulled out of CT to boycott Israeli because Israeli Center for Digital Art in Holon, Israel, had been a screening partner.

Pablo Helguera: songs about immigration, humour. Asked for volunteers for role playing &gave out dollar bills to reapportion: "The Dictator Game." Then the Ultimatum" game. Another song, "This little angel has died ..." asking questions- art about the thing, art. Everyone is an artist is condescending. Who are the winners & losers? Why should I give the public what they want? 3rd song, a la Woody Guthrie: "Deportee ... they are just deportees (killed in plane crash)" ... (their bodies/lives) scattered like dry leaves on (our) fields."

Martha Rosler: capitalism, neo-liberalism & class, 1973 "Garage Sale,"(I recall going to one of her garage sales in 1977? in Solana Beach, CA) to address relationships with things, shame of what we discard, gender, as an indicator of economic instability- art as one more system, negotiation for value, parsing 1 project for a Marxist critique, change over time. Relaxed about tech troubles, narratives. Attacked by Marcuse & Sandi Dijkstra for inappropriate art

(Note: I also recall many long arguments I had with Marcuse & my then street theatre group, the American Ritual Theatre about what is revolutionary art)

Hegel vs analysis. Owning material & means, friendships. Marx on the fetishism of the object @ the center of art world? (legitimizing) shopping. Meta-monumental labor & work in walls made of money. What is the social value of art, production?

(Note to self re: 1968 Alejandro Jodorowski on the only acceptable residue of performance should be the changed psyche that has framed all my work since)

Malkia Cyril: Center for Media Justice. Racial wealth gap. Consciousness created from ‘us’ but wealth concentrated w/ corporations (1%) 100 million people no access to media. Media action grass roots action. Prison as arts & culture issue. “Bank vs America.” ‘when I came out as a teenager, my Mom told me we had to go on the talkshow circuit.’

LAPD, John Malpedes: biggest recovery group program anywhere (homeless in LA). Parades & stories. LACAN not allowing homeless people to lie down on the street.

Joia Mukherjee: Medical- no sustainability without art. “Partners in health” began in Haiti re: hydroelectric dam displacing people from their land. Missions as dignification of social & economic rights: FOOD, WATER, SANITATION vs sentimental idealization compared to another beauty? Haiti hospital mural  “every person is a person.” Beauty in ugliness of oppressive disease rooted in lack of dignity. Diseases of impoverishment. AIDS as a disease of oppression. Migration as part of that oppression. Treatment as a basic right& became part of recovery. They are we.

Skart: 50 person choir for Yugoslavia political songs in refugee camps to give joy to Serbia. “Backward” poem for conservative institutions. Women in Black against church involvement in public life: poem- story- song about, "a tree that grew in locksmith’s shop with no concept of birds or the sky"- Very Moving!!!

Taring Padi: about landslide in Indonesia caused by fracking “give us back our land," May 29,2006 hot sludge buried rice fields, in river, 30 villages, 60, 000 people displaced, forced migration. People left behind their history, lost their cultural cohesion. Art focus on retrieving cultural memory, “Reflections in the Mud” to fight for their rights. Using art to confront critics creating alternative livelihood: giant banners & puppets to express grief & pain during carnival. (Weird sound to tell presenters their time was up from musicians) Way to express frustration & anger & community. Still waiting for compensation. http://taringpadi.com/

Suzanne Lacy & Jodi Evans (Code Pink): (Jodi began with statement in support of the boycott about Israel persecuting Palestine, which I found very jolting but was thankfully much briefer than some subsequent statements by other artists). Rape addressed @ Nuremburg, Rosa Parks & rape, Jim Crow, “he offered me a drink of whiskey.” Bangladesh rapes- still no prosecutions. Susan Griffin, ramparts, rape as the all-American crime, “Ablutions” (the seminal work on rape that Suzanne, myself, Judy Chicago & Sandi Orgel did in 1972.) , “3 Weeks in May,” Leslie Labowitz & Women’s Building to raise awareness. Rape as tool of war- Balkan war on 60, 000 Muslim women. Rape as crime against humanity as genocide. Congo despite  peacekeepers- sexualized violence, Eve Ensler, Egyptian sexualized violence in Tahrir Square. LACE changes since 1974- prominent map if incidence of rape w/ 50 events, men deeply involved. Focused on schools where rape has increased. Used social bloggers. Shame has NOT changed. Women under siege. 1 in 3 raped in US military. Syrian rapes: 92% by Govt. officials. Obtrusive guitar sound calling them to conclusion. “Why don’t you (Republicans) spend your time ending rape vs defining rape.”

Break: lobby visits with Mary Miss, Lillian Ball, Martha Rosler, Mira Schor, Carol Stakenas, Linda Weintraub, Suzaan Boettger, etc., where it was mentioned that Suzanne had referenced me for "Ablutions." Lillian thought she’d seen me in Suzanne's slide, bathing naked in one of the tubs we had set up. I corrected her that that was not me. In a similar conversation, walking with Martha and Suzanne a little later, we clarified to Martha that none of the creators had been naked- a deliberate decision about power & vulnerability )

Tidal Journal: Occupy theory & strategies on Palestine. Boycotting Israeli Digital Art from occupied Palestine. Call for boycott against Israelis & divestment (BDS: please boycott my country & those who are profiting). Arab Israeli normalization & institutional violence @ expense of indigenous population (implication that Israeli Jews are not indigenous, solidarity with American Indians, etc). debt governments responsive to global capital not people. Strike debt. The debt resistors <strikedebt.org>.

Note: Tying Jews & $: sad old story. As I blogged on FB later, where would these people be if they boycotted the tech & medical advances which have come from Israel?

Rabih Mroue: the Syrian protestors are recording their own death. How make the victim visible? (powerful film) Victim reflected in sniper’s eyes over & over in pixellated focus Complexity between warmaking & picture making. Put the other hors de champs by killing him. Real event Syria 2011. Reenacted 2012.

A.L. Steiner: in transparent plastic suit over ‘naked’ body suit. Pussy Riot films. “Patriarchy is a pyramid scheme.” Moving screaming “music.”

Leonidas Martin: Spanish revolution. World Bank & IMF 10, 000 arrived to tour Borsa de Barcelona, chanting, “you will not have a home in your whole fucking life.” “It’s too weird (for the Guinness Book of Word Records).” Constructed more houses than France & Germany combined during boom. Not a crisis but a fraud: 424,465 billion bank bail out. “Transform your anger into fun.”

Tom Finkelpearl: Put the RMutt urinal back in the bathroom. Immigrant movement (Roosevelt Ave). Socially collaborative art. Co-operative vs adversarial activism, SDS, Saul Lewinsky & “Revelry for Radicals,” Radical Women- Carol Hanish (sp.?), Zap Action, Mierle Ukeles, SNCC, The Diggers “live as tho the revolution was already won.” Abbie Hoffman dropping & burning dollars @ Stock Exchange, Act Up, Yoke Ono’s “Cut Piece,” Kaprow, Suzanne Lacy, Beuys, Rick Lowe @ SHAPE, People’s Front for the Liberation of Judea. Re: boycott cancellations (Mosireen) if not here, where? When? What are the practical implications of taking this action? John Dewey.

(My note re: thoughts on art & artists re: society, comparing Biden as chessmaster anticipating Ryan’s next move in debate; me often quoting from one of the IPCC members on climate change, 'look out for where the hockey puck will be vs following the puck')

Fernando Garcia-Dory: Paris Commune. Spectacle & narration of success. Community artists as contradiction: individual vs the commons. Self as renegade. Environment as a thing that requires remedy & sales. Not narrow, technical solutions myth & religion. Walking from Brussels to Berlin with flock of sheep, stopping to make actions in each village. Shepherds as curated vision. Soul + matter, thing & symbol, GMOs, Goats. Organizing. Silent wars. Campo adentro. Shit is very important: rural Spain- traditional music & new tech. Welcome to Majorca.

Slavoj Zizek: things are going pretty bad. There will be crisis. Does the global left know what it wants? Difficult to imagine change? Moralism= don’t know what they want. Liberal capitalism. Accepted vs the system. Chinese prohibited alternate realities & time travel narratives. Can imagine end of life but not socialism. (Why) are we blind, unjust?

A few closing thoughts:

In one of today's workshops, with Steve Lambert, Steve commented twice, that we're going to die, so we need to choose what we're going to do with our time.

As I was walking home tonight, I saw the sign for the passing of Rev. Moody, a man whose time was well and generously spent, framed by the deaths of servicemen in our wars. Now that's what I call well-framed.

Courage, lies and the art of the horizontal conference in our brave new world

The brave new world of "Fish Story" in Memphis, TN

This evening, I'm heading to a reception for the weekend Creative Time (CT) conference instead of listening to the Ryan- Biden debate. I expect it will help me think about my new project, "Fish Story." 

There is a lot of talk in the circles I'm in about Romney as a liar. Sean Capone, for example, on Jerry Saltz' FB page, has taken on a Republican at great length for the past couple days, itemizing not just Romney's lies, but how even Newt Gingrich was confounded by how to debate with a bald-faced liar. Here's Clinton on Romney's performance: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7EyYhbLn98.

What is the evil power of a lie? I think the reason people lie is fear. Compare the trajectory that the radical right that Romney & Ryan represent, to the Taliban in Pakistan who tried to murder Malala Yousafzaia for being progressive, bright and wanting an education. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/world/asia/teen-school-activist-malala-yousafzai-survives-hit-by-pakistani-taliban.html?smid=fb-share

They are all afraid. And they are willing to lie to themselves as well as others rather than be courageous about scary realities. Every bully is someone who is scared inside, scared by their own fear. I think what these people are scared of is our present. I think any reasonable person is scared of our present, where nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of crazies, where corporations have taken over global governance, where new, essential expensive tech toys come out every week, our food is tainted, our waters are disappearing under the weight of over-population and fracking, and climate change, cross-dressing and uppity women are the new norm.

We are all scared by and initially inadequate to change. But when terrifying people who are so terrified of real life, that they act on their yearning for a delusionally unchanging world where they might feel safe, secure and in control, are willing to murder, debase, destroy whatever stands in their way to go back to that imagined Eden, that's when they endanger themselves and their own children as much as they threaten the rest of us.

My take on the people who would have murdered Malala is that they are like the Neo-Nazis around the world or the retro bullies in the USA, who egg on Romney and cheer for Ryan when they declare on the stump that they will cut access to good public education, social services for the poor and deport immigrants. 

The right, whether in the USA or Pakistan, seems to confuse economic prudence with depriving the future of the tools to think clearly. In the case of the USA and Europe scarcity as replaced planning. In too many places, gender freedom is threatened by those who can't accept difference. I have to label this cowardice about the dangerous present and the scary future. The cowards are those who want to return to an imagined past, running from what we all fear rather than facing the present and difficult options. 

Since 2009, the corporate right seems to have figured out that they need to fight back and have responded on the same horizontal globalized level, countering a grass roots movement with big oil money, seeding sufficient doubt, particularly in the USA, where leadership on climate change is so critical, to arrest critical change and dig in with ever-more aggressive extractive fossil fuel industries and repressive social policies.

Just saying no to the present isn't an option. We must parse real options to survive. Real options include understanding the history of the kinds of choices we need to make, socially, economically and environmentally. That is an interdisciplinary process.

I've been going to interdisciplinary conferences since the early nineties. Many artists, including myself, are used to the College Art Association conferences, where thousands of artists compete for attention to get jobs. But in the early nineties, I started attending and presenting at science conferences, starting with the Island Institute and the Society for Ecological Restoration. And then in 2009, I was at the IPCC conference on climate change in Copenhagen and realized that for that historical moment, the whole world became what I labeled a "horizontal conference," and wrote about for James Brady in the UK and the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts (CSPA). 

http://www.sustainablepractice.org/

Difficult parsing is why I'm going to a CT art conference tonight. Art is where we think big, broad and courageously- albeit, not fearlessly. Being fearless in the face of real danger is stupid. The reason I'm going to a reception for a conference where I'll see my art colleagues instead of listening to tonight's Vice-presidental debate (which will no doubt will be rerun to my heat's content later), is my faith in the horizontal conference, which is not just about CT. It is in the conversations I read and engage on FB. It is on NPR and even on Rush Limbaugh because Limbaugh is countered on FB and NPR, as is the Taliban and the Republican right. The horizontal conference is something artists are really, really good at. It is, in fact, a discursive performance of democracy.

In this performance, there is no golden man at the center, no superstar, no perfect hero. Yes, of course some people stand out. But at it's best, the horizontal performance of democracy gathers collective intelligence. It is not a mob led by a bully. Artists, as many have pointed out, are as easy to corral and lead as a herd of wet cats. We are too iconoclastic, too broody, too egocentric and self-centered, too freedom loving and rebellious to conform to anything or anyone very easily. And we are very bad liars. These failures are, in fact, the very strengths I suspect we need right now to deal with our very complex, brave new world.

In the next weeks, as the election looms and my thoughts and plans take greater shape, I will write more about applying these skills to "Fish Story," for Memphis, TN and Social Memphis.

http://www.beautifulfields.org/memphis-social-curatorial-statement

As I settle in to work on my GIS mapping of how invasive species are decimating fish and seaweed (like eelgrass), I'm listening to Bill McKibben and Bill Maher on climate change: "this is why we have scientists." Re: that used car salesman, Mitt Romney and his huckster movement.

http://grist.org/climate-energy/bill-mckibben-nails-it-on-bill-maher-show-plus-tuesday-afternoon-quarterbacking/

I was at the Met, with politics on my mind, to talk with Susan Leibovitz Steinman about "Fish Story" for the "Memphis Social" project May 2013. Walking to the stairs, I was greeted by the Acapela Blues singers playing, "Do you love me?"


I'm pulling together an amazing team of thinkers for "Fish Story," including the 2 scientists I've worked with the most since I began "Gulf to Gulf," in 2008: Gene Turner and Jim White. respectively a couple of the top people in the world working on dead zones in Gulf regions and global warming. The big deal now, is scheduling my first visit to Memphis, meeting folks there to hear their concerns and what they've already been working on. What I hope might come of that visit would be to begin to flesh out a picture of how Memphis is already functioning as a trigger point at a critical geographical nexus.

Memphis is between the Midwestern factory farms to the immediate North and melting Arctic to the far North, dead zones to the South in the Gulf of Mexico, at the base of the Mississippi, increasing drought and wild fires to the West, increasing floods and storms to the East and is on a river that reached historic flooding levels in 2011 and has recently had to be dredged when it fell too low for barge traffic in 2012.

The politics on my mind, are the surge of approval for Mitt Romney, which seems entirely based on whether Obama is a "strong leader," and whether he can deliver jobs, regardless of what those jobs are or the consequences, for example, extractive industries that destroy water and air, causing death and destruction, not just to wildlife but people.

Fish are an indicator species. I chose them as the focus for this project because they tell a story that's much more basic than all the political rhetoric in the world.

Fall is a Busy Time

Before winter sets in is the time to make plans for the following year. I just ended this year with conferences around the world and am booking travel and work for 2013. Stay posted as I share my work and thoughts.