Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

Andrew J. Bacevich the 65 year old American Professor of International Relations and retired career officer in the US Army has published an article in the LA Times titled ‘Divorcing Pakistan’ which contends the interests of Washington and Islamabad do not align, and neither do their preferred forms of paranoia. Bacevich states “The history of U.S.-Pakistani relations is one of wild swings between feigned friendship and ill-disguised mistrust. When the United States needs Pakistan, Washington showers Islamabad with money, weapons and expressions of high esteem. Once the need wanes, the gratuities cease, often with brutal abruptness. Instead of largesse, Pakistan gets lectures, with the instruction seldom well received. …But seldom has a marriage of convenience produced greater inconvenience and consternation for the parties involved. Simply put, U.S. and Pakistani interests do not align. Worse, neither do our preferred forms of paranoia. Pakistanis don’t worry about Islamists taking over the world. Americans are untroubled by the prospect of India emerging as a power of the first rank. The United States stayed in this unhappy marriage for the last decade in large part because Pakistan provided the transit route for supplies sustaining NATO’s ongoing war in landlocked Afghanistan. … A recently negotiated agreement with several former-Soviet Central Asian republics creates alternatives, removing Pakistan’s grip on NATO’s logistical windpipe. …As with most divorces, the proceedings promise to be ugly. Already, the U.S. is escalating its campaign of missile attacks against “militants” on Pakistani soil. U.S. officials dismiss complaints that this infringes on Pakistan’s national sovereignty.”

Inspired by LA Times ow.ly/cbDec image source Facebook ow.ly/cbDbG

Cultural power and a friend of other nations (September 22nd)

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the Iranian President gave an hour-long interview on his first day of a visit to the United States.  During the interview he challenged the United States administration to accept that Iran is a big power and has a major role to play in the world. He claimed that “the future belongs to Iran” but insists Iran has no intention to pursue nuclear weapons, claiming Iran only seeks peace and a nuclear-free world. “Having said that, we consider ourselves to be a human force and a cultural power and hence a friend of other nations. We have never sought to dominate others or to violate the rights of any other country,” he said. Ahmadinejad is in the US to attend the annual general assembly of the United Nations.

Political Arts | Ian Bunn Visual Artist

My digital art work is essentially politics and art. It’s about iconic people, places and events of our day.  Recorded visually through daily compilations of manipulated digital images, posted online and disseminated via online media and social networks. The works are diaristic in nature that metaphorically record a spectator’s experience of the contemporary digital age.  The resulting work intentionally has a painterly aesthetic acknowledging my historical painting practice.

Adapting Pop Art’s notion of mass media imagery into a context of the contemporary digital age, the work draws on a myriad points of reference. Utilizing fractured images to provide an allusion to the digital noise pounding away daily into our sub consciousness.  The work is essentially popular culture arts, diverging from the traditional Pop Art notion of a pronounced repetition of a consumer icon, instead this work focuses on the deluge of contemporary digital content. The compilation of the fragmented imagery is vividly distractive, not unlike cable surfing or a jaunt through Times Square.

This digital photo manipulation art work is premised on the basis that Pop art in its beginnings, freeze-framed what consumers of popular culture experienced into iconic visual abstractions. With the advent of the techno age, visual information circulates in such quantities, so rapidly and exponentially, that to comprehend a fraction of it all becomes a kind of production process in itself.  Hence this work considers fragmented elements of Popular Culture through an artistic and conceptual exploration of specific people and events of the day.

www.ianbunn.com

Pedro Almodovar Caballero the 63 year old Spanish film director, screenwriter and producer, one of the most successful and internationally known Spanish filmmaker of his generation, has been featured by Giles Tremlett in an article published in The Guardian titled ‘Pedro Almodovar backs wave of Spanish protests over family evictions’. Tremlett states in the article “Pedro Almodovar, the celebrated Spanish film-maker, has warned of an increasingly violent mood in his recession-hit country as he throws his weight behind a popular movement determined to stop banks evicting vulnerable people who can no longer pay their mortgages. “I think the country as a whole is worried about social unrest breaking out. I certainly am,” he said as Spanish unemployment hit a national record of 27% last week. “Every day that goes by, I get the impression that there is further provocation to make it explode. That doesn’t mean I am inciting anyone to violence. It is quite the opposite. I would invite everyone to react, but in the most peaceful way possible,” he added. Almodovar said be backed a controversial, if peaceful, campaign of protests outside ministers’ houses that prime minister Mariano Rajoy’s conservative People’s party (PP) government has likened to the behaviour of the Nazis. “The people being thrown out of their homes have children too,” said Almodovar, whose friend, the former Socialist prime minister Felipe Gonzalez, had called on protesters to respect the family homes of fellow politicians. “And those children see their parents or brothers and sisters dragged down the street by the police.” Almodovar, who has a new comedy, I’m So Excited!, coming out in Britain this week, says he, like many other Spaniards, is frustrated with a double-dip recession that started four years ago. The crisis has hit young people hard, with unemployment for those aged under 25 running at 57%…”

Inspired by Giles Tremlett, The Guardian ow.ly/l5p8J Image source Roberto Gordo Saez ow.ly/l5oHW

Jeremy Scahill the 38 year old American National Security Correspondent for The Nation magazine and author of the international bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, has published an article in The Nation titled ‘Inside America’s Dirty Wars’. Scahill states “…Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the oldest son of Anwar al-Awlaki, was born in Denver. Like his father, he spent the first seven years of his life in the United States, attending American schools. After he moved to Yemen with his family, his grandparents—Anwar’s mother and father—played a major role in his upbringing, particularly after Anwar went underground. Anwar “always thought that it is best for Abdulrahman to be with me,” Anwar’s father, Nasser al-Awlaki, told me. Anwar believed that his wife and children “should not be involved at all in his problems.” …Abdulrahman was not his father; he loved hip-hop music and Facebook and hanging out with his friends. They would take pictures of themselves posing as rappers, and when the Yemeni revolution began, Abdulrahman wanted to be a part of it. As massive protests shook Yemen, he would spend hours hanging out in Change Square with the young, nonviolent revolutionaries, sharing his vision for the future and, at times, just goofing off with friends. …As Abdulrahman mourned [his father’s assassination], the boy’s family members in Shabwah tried to comfort him and encouraged him to get out with his cousins …and joined a group of friends outdoors to barbecue. There were a few other people doing the same nearby. It was about 9 pm when the drones pierced the night sky. Moments later, Abdulrahman was dead. So, too, were several other teenage members of his family, including Abdulrahman’s 17-year-old cousin Ahmed. …The Obama administration would fight passionately to keep answers secret, invoking the “state secrets” privilege repeatedly …The consensus that has emerged from various anonymous officials commenting on Abdulrahman’s killing was that it was a mistake.”

Inspired by Jeremy Scahill, The Nation ow.ly/kuEpP Image source Terri M Venesio ow.ly/kuEoO

John Malcolm Fraser the 82 year old Australian former Liberal Party politician who was the 22nd Prime Minister of Australia now alienated from his party has published an article in The Age Newspaper titled ‘All the way with the USA?’. Fraser states “There is increasingly aggressive posturing between China and American-backed Japan. If war breaks out Australia must not slavishly follow its superpower friend. The ownership of islands in the East China Sea now represents a highly sensitive and dangerous issue. There has been a significant escalation that could easily lead to conflict between China and Japan. A senior American intelligence officer has strongly sided with Japan and called China a bully on the high seas with ambitions to sink American warships and seize control of waters from its neighbours. He described China as a principal threat. We have the US and Japan lined up in concert against China. …If anyone thinks containment against China and containment against the Soviet Union had any similarities, they should be disabused. The Soviet Union had minimal trade links, no financial and capital market links worth mentioning with the West. China, on the contrary, is heavily entwined in the economies of nearly every Western country, certainly of Australia. It is the largest buyer of US Treasury bills. A war between America and China would have catastrophic results, first for America’s economy, then for the economies of the world. If we had a government with a sense of history and of the future, we would seek to use our influence for peace and moderation. We should make it plain to America that we will not be going to war on that issue. We should oppose provocative action by any party. … When is Australia going to have sufficient courage to act as an independent nation?”

Inspired by John Malcolm Fraser, The Age ow.ly/i137R Image source Twitter ow.ly/i133G

Karl Pilkington the 40 year old English television personality, social commentator and  actor having gained prominence with Ricky Gervais has been interviewed for The sun Newspaper in an article titled “I feel guilty about taking the role from a proper actor”. When asked “How did Ricky persuade you to appear in Derek?” Pilkington responds “He did what he always does – he got me on set by talking about the catering! My girlfriend was away and I don’t like cooking. So he said to me: “Do you want to be in this?” I replied: “Are pork chops on the menu?” He said: “Yes” and I was there in ten minutes.” The interview continues “Did you have any qualms about acting?” responding “Yes. I’m not an actor, but I didn’t want to let my friend down. I still feel guilty about taking the role from a proper actor. There’s an actor bloke I used to see down the butcher’s. I told Ricky: “He’d be brilliant as Dougie.” Ricky said: “No, it’s you. Just do it.” I suppose I just can’t get over how lucky I’ve been. I’ve got no training, but Ricky has handed me this wonderful opportunity.” How did Ricky describe Dougie’s character to you? “He just did a doodle of a little round bald head and a pair of glasses, and then he said to me: “That’s what we’re looking for!”  What was Ricky like as a director? “I have nothing to compare him to, really. So I can’t say something like: “He’s a little bit different from Spielberg.” He might be the worst director in the world for all I know, but it seems to work.  …We’re always very honest with each other. There’s no pretending. It is true that certain things that annoy him do annoy me too…”

Inspired by The Sun ow.ly/hLQZ7 Image source Rick Walker ow.ly/hLQKf

Kate Ruggeri the 24 year old American artist, curator, and DJ has been nominated by Blouin Artinfo as an emerging artist in an article titled ‘Painter-Sculptor Kate Ruggeri Finds Heroism in Humble Materials’ by Allison Meier. Meier states “Following a fire that wrecked her studio, Chicago-based artist Kate Ruggeri is persevering by creating work that evokes hope and heroes through the unlikely materials of old clothes, buckets of house paint, and twine. …she’s been experimenting with merging her interests in painting and sculpture into dimensional forms swathed with reclaimed fabric and discarded materials, and coated with thick layers of paint. The results have a scrappy, tactile quality, but also a quiet gravity. … “Joseph Campbell’s monomyth was my main inspiration, since I was little I’ve been interested in myths, adventure stories, and biographies. I don’t think it’s very difficult to identify with a hero at moments in your own life.” …One of Ruggeri’s sculptures, appropriately called “Hero,” strides like a DIY Giacometti, a paint-stained backpack on its shoulders and a walking stick pointing forward. “In the past few months, I have seen great heroics in my friends and community,” she explained. “My roommate had been mugged and shot walking home, and survived. There were a number of tragic deaths in the Chicago community. My studio building had burned down and I had lost all of my work.” … A painter at heart, she started using sculptural constructions as canvases because she was exhausted with looking at blank, flat surfaces. After building a wooden armature, she wraps it with window screens, fabric, found materials, and personal possessions. …“In my work, I try to create homages to human experience,” she said. “I see the viewer on their own journeys, having their own lives, their own struggles, triumphs. It’s a way to be self-reflective.”

Inspired by Allison Meier, Blouin Artinfo ow.ly/gSY54 Image source lawnlike ow.ly/gSY33

Esther Dyson the 61 year old American former journalist and Wall Street technology analyst, now entrepreneur who concentrates her investments on emerging digital technologies, and is Chairwoman of EDventure Holdings focusing on issues related to medical technology, aviation, and space travel. Dyson has published an article on Project Syndicate titled ‘The rise of the attention economy’ claiming people in the attention economy spend their personal time attracting others’ attention. Dyson states “…companies go online to earn money. Google is perhaps the purest example of a company that transforms purchase intentions into income; most other “internet” companies offer something of independent value on the other side of those searches. But many individuals, most of the time, go online without any interest in buying something. They are there to find out about the world, catch up with friends, play games, listen to music, chat, or just hang out – and, increasingly, to get the attention of other people. Thanks to highly productive surplus economies, they can spend a lot more time being economically inactive. …This attention economy is not the intention economy beloved of vendors, who grab consumers’ attention in order to sell them something. Rather, attention here has its own intrinsic, non-monetisable value. The attention economy is one in which people spend their personal time attracting others’ attention, whether by designing creative avatars, posting pithy comments, or accumulating “likes” for their cat photos. Just as we are driven to spread our physical DNA, so apparently do we have an urge to spread our virtual identities, so that we cannot be erased. Instead of physical descendants, we are offering our own virtual selves to posterity.”

Inspired by Project Syndicate ow.ly/gwVob image source Twitter ow.ly/gwVdO

Johan Galtung the 82 year old Norwegian sociologist, mathematician and the founder of the Peace Research Institute Oslo in 1959, has published an article on the Inter Press Service titled ‘Preventing World War III’ in which he states “A Third World War is not impossible, but fortunately is rather unlikely. Let us explore why, and what can be done to prevent it. The worst-case scenario is a world war between the West – NATO, U.S., EU with Japan-Taiwan-South Korea – and the East – the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with Russia, China, Central Asia as members and India, Pakistan, Iran as observers. With four nuclear powers on each side, and West versus Islam as a major issue. In the centre is the explosive mix of a divided territory (Israel-Palestine) and Jerusalem, a capital divided by a wall. …The United Nations vote showed a 3/4 world united in YES for Palestine, NO to USA-Israel. Both are turning any moral high ground into moral deficit through continued expansion-occupation-siege and invasion-occupation-extrajudicial killings. The world is not against U.S.-Israel defending true homeland borders or 1967 borders but against the force and excesses they seem incapable of reversing. Reverse those policies and they could regain the moral high ground. …Islam, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, covers more of the world territory and population than the West, but has few friends outside; unlike the West, emulated and admired by Russia-China-India, by Latin America and Africa. In all but Israel, Islam has a huge and growing diaspora by immigration-birth-conversion. Not a superpower, not an alliance, only “Islamic cooperation”; but present everywhere. The result is uncertainty and fear: what do they want? A challenge to other worldviews, guaranteed by the freedoms of speech and religion. Islam offers healing togetherness and sharing to a West suffering from materialist individualism and egoism.”

Inspired by Inter Press Service ow.ly/gwRNj image source Facebook ow.ly/gwRJT

Farmers need to grow Climate Smart (January 5 2013)Busani Bafana the Zimbabwean Journalist and founding member / coordinator of the Network on Environment & Agriculture Reporting, a media network in Zimbabwe that seeks to promote coverage of agriculture and science issues by journalists, has published an article on the Inter Press Service titled ‘Farmers Need to Grow Climate Smart’. Bafana states “Farmers cannot wait much longer for negotiators to reach an agreement on including a work programme on agriculture in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. And until one is approved, “it will continue to be difficult for farmers to produce the food needed, and at the same time reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” [states] Anette Friis from the Danish Food and Agriculture Council and spokesperson for Farming First, a global coalition calling on world leaders to increase agricultural output in a sustainable and socially responsible manner. “Countries failed to get an agreement on agriculture at this year’s (Conference of the Parties) COP18 in Doha, which means that discussions will not move to the next level and a work programme on agriculture is not foreseen for the near future.” “Progress has been excruciatingly slow,” [states] Bruce Campbell programme director [CCAFS] Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security . “One sentence in Durban in the final agreement. Then a few non-committal sentences at SBSTA in June. This mirrors the UNFCCC negotiations generally. What can one say, but that we are on target for a four-degree warmer world, which is likely to reduce growing seasons over much of sub-Saharan Africa by more than 20 percent.” According to CCAFS, agriculture and land use change, mostly from deforestation, contribute an estimated one-third of total greenhouse gas emissions. However, an improvement to crop yields since 1960 has already reduced agricultural emissions by 34 percent. Arguing that farmers around the world are experiencing the impacts of climate change daily, Farming First says the agriculture sector could play an important role in both climate change adaptation and mitigation. …Climate-smart agriculture includes conservation agriculture, crop rotation, agro-forestry, better weather forecasting and integrated crop-livestock management. It is aimed at environmentally-friendly increases in food production, which thereby reduce the emissions produced from agriculture.”

Inspired by Inter Press Service ow.ly/gpPYR image source Linkedin ow.ly/gpPYa

Tomas Magnusson the 62 year old Swedish co-president of the International Peace Bureau has published an article on the Inter Press Service titled ‘why isn’t the Nobel Peace Prize for the champions of peace? Magnusson states “Leaders of the European Union (EU) will gather … to receive an increasingly controversial Nobel Peace Prize. Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor and industrialist, established the five prizes by his will in 1895 and there is a growing international awareness that his prize “for the champions of peace” does not go to the recipients Nobel had in mind. …nowhere has the EU declared a political ambition to promote the global peace order of demilitarised nations that Nobel described with unmistakable clarity in his will. …Norwegian politicians are entitled to have their opinion on the EU as a contributor to “peace” and they are free to throw great parties for political friends. But they are not free to use the entrusted money and the prestige of the Nobel prizes to promote their own agendas. A will is a legally binding instrument, yet, in the last decade, the prize has become totally disconnected from Nobel’s disarmament purpose… …In the will, Nobel formulated his purpose in unmistakable terms: he wished to free the world from the scourge of militarism and wars and ensure that resources were used for the benefit of people rather than feeding the voracious appetite of arms races. Nobel gave his peace prize to the world, wishing to foster innovative changes that would “confer the greatest benefit on mankind”. …The legitimate Nobel winner should be an opponent rather than a proponent of military programmes and policies. The world spends exorbitant amounts on a busted model of security and an illusion that it can be achieved in confrontation rather than cooperation. To use the peace prize to promote the visionary peace plan of Nobel would be the best thing that could happen to the poor and unhappy of the world, to the environment, human rights, democracy, women and children, victims of war ¬ everywhere, every year.”

Inspired by IPS News ow.ly/gdN5e image source Facebook ow.ly/gdMSu

Yue Minjun the 50 year old Chinese contemporary artist best known for oil paintings depicting himself in various settings, frozen in laughter as a sort of logo that can be attached to any setting to add value, has been profiled by Nazanin Lankarani in a New York Times article titled ‘The Many Faces of Yue Minjun’. Lankarani states “…The notion of risk is well known in China, where artists can be subject to state censorship in various forms. Recent widely-reported examples include the artists Ai Weiwei, who has faced accusations of crimes ranging from tax evasion to bigamy and pornography, and Zhang Huan, whose 2008 show at the Shanghai Art Museum was canceled in 2008 by local authorities, with no reason given. A prolific painter since the early 1990s, Mr. Yue, 50, belongs to the generation of artists marked by what he calls a “profound sense of loss and disillusionment” after the crackdown at Tiananmen Square in 1989, in which popular demonstrations culminated in the massacre of protesters. “I feel that those years enabled us to find a new energy,” Mr. Yue said in a conversation in July with a friend, Shen Zhong, included in the catalog of the Paris show. “We discovered that the ideas and assumptions we had about a lot of things were no longer credible.” For the artists who chose to stay in China after 1989, the Cynical Realism movement, which Mr. Yue joined, was a possible path to express their experience in post-Tiananmen Chinese society. “Those who stayed experimented with a new iconography lush with signs of a disenchantment in confronting their society and assessing their own status,” said Grazia Quaroni, a curator at the Fondation Cartier. But, she added, “30 years later, Yue Minjun’s work exudes a sense of melancholy rather than cynicism.”

Inspired by Nazanin Lankarani ow.ly/g2elq image source Facebook ow.ly/g2efN

Sarah Thornton the British Canadian writer and sociologist of culture, writing principally about art, artists and the art market, has detailed a list of the top ten reasons from potentially ‘hundreds’ of reasons for her decision to quit the art market beat. Blouin Artinfo has reprinted two of the reasons, being (A) It enables manipulators to publicize the artists whose prices they spike at auction. Tightknit cabals of dealers and speculative collectors count on the fact that you will report record prices without being able to reveal the collusion behind how they were achieved. …It’s a shame when good artists’ careers are made volatile by speculation.  And (B) Oligarchs and dictators are not cool. I have no problem with rich people. (Some of my best friends are high net worth individuals!) But amongst the biggest spenders in the art market right now are people who have made their money in non-democracies with horrendous human rights records. Their expertise in rising to the top of a corrupt system gives punch to the term “filthy lucre.” However, the astronomical prices paid by these guys do have a positive trickle-down effect. When they buy a Gerhard Richter for $20m, the consignor of the painting will likely re-invest some of their profit in younger art (particularly if they are American and keen to defer capital gains tax). These Russian, Arab and Chinese collectors bring liquidity to the art world and allow more artists, curators and critics to make a living in relation to art.”

Inspired by Blouin ArtInfo ow.ly/fKgvH image source ow.ly/fKgrd

Saquina Mucavele the executive director of MuGeDe – Mulher, Genero e Desenvolvimento (Women, Gender and Development), a Mozambique-based non-profit organisation with a focus on sustainability, rural development and gender, especially as related to climate change, has been interviewed by Sabina Zaccaro for the IPS News. Mucavele states in the interview “Networks and cooperatives are the right strategy for farmers’ development (provided) they have support and good leadership. Working cooperatively is not only about being involved in common work, it also enables members to share their problems and find collective solutions. There is even the possibility of creating a common market, and other facilities such as hospitals, education centres and banks, for members. By gathering in a cooperative, rural women can strengthen their voice to advocate for rights. …In order to improve productivity and farming methods, rural women need technical advice, information and training. A good development strategy would recognise the (crucial) role of educating and training rural women to improve production and productivity; promote women-friendly farming technologies that could reduce (the work day) and give women more time for political participation within the community and for other income-generating activities; and institutionalise their involvement and participation in the conception, formulation and planning of policies. They cannot continue to be seen only as ‘beneficiaries’ but a group in possession of (valuable) knowledge that can advance rural development and also contribute to the national economy. Finally, it is vital to support and assist women in the registration of and access to land titles and facilitate the issue of credit, especially for smallholder women farmers. This should (ideally) be done through a fund to support women farmers and the creation of women’s banks in rural areas where members can access credit under favourable terms.”

Inspired by Sabina Zaccaro ow.ly/fuGdY image source Poptech ow.ly/fuGcw

Celia Paul the 53 year old British Indian painter who she was taught by Lucian Freud, becoming his muse and having his child named Frank Paul, who is also an artist.  In an interview with Matilda Battersby for The Independent Paul speaks about the effect their relationship had on her own work. Battersby states “Lucian Freud said it was “like walking into a honey pot” when he first saw Celia Paul’s paintings. What Paul, who met Freud as her tutor at the Slade in 1978, didn’t realise then, but laughs wryly at now, is that the sweet thing he was taken with was her 18-year-old self, as much as her artwork. “I really didn’t know anything about his womanising,” Paul says. “I didn’t realise how predatory he was.” She later discovered that he’d taken the job as visiting tutor at the famous London art school because his relationship at the time was going wrong and “he wanted to find a new girlfriend”. The teenage Paul was caught in Freud’s spell; and a potent one it proved. …”I was really quite disturbed by his predatoriness. It felt quite complicated, because obviously I was compelled by his art, which I admired so much.” But the 55-year-old Freud, whose mesmerising qualities had at that point already earned him 13 acknowledged children, won Paul over. It took several months for them to become lovers, and two years for Freud to paint Paul. But she would become a significant muse for him in the early 1980s.”

Inspired by Matilda Battersby ow.ly/fmFrE image source Cassone ow.ly/fmFk0

Wade Guyton the 41 year old American artist regarded to be at the forefront of a generation that has been reconsidering both appropriation and abstract art through the 21st-century lens of technology, using Epson inkjet printers and flatbed scanners as tools to make works that act like drawings, paintings, even sculptures. Guyton has  been profiled by Rachel Corbett for Blouin Artinfo in an article titled ‘”A Weird, Perfect Storm”: What’s Behind the Rise of Inkjet Artist Wade Guyton?’  Corbett states “Nobody, it seems, has a bad thing to say about Wade Guyton these days. Critic Roberta Smith called the artist’s current mid-career survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art “beautiful” and “brilliant.” Art advisor Lowell Pettit described him as “a southern gentleman, the sweetest guy you’ll meet.” And perhaps the most generous compliments come from collectors, who have been shelling out upwards of $650,000 for his abstract inkjet prints. …He [] seems to have found an intellectual and financial sweet spot. His timeless, neo-minimalist aesthetic—typewritten Xs, inky monochromes, razor-sharp lines, all manufactured by an Epson inkjet printer—is highly collector-friendly, and his market was strong even before the Whitney exhibition. The intersections between painting and technology in Guyton’s work contribute to a larger historical conversation tied to Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and Agnes Martin. This is partly why observers bet that Guyton, along with perhaps his frequent collaborator Kelley Walker and Sterling Ruby, have the conceptual chops to outlast their peers.”

Inspired by Rachel Corbett ow.ly/f5vwG image source ArtNet ow.ly/f5vtJ

Wolfgang Beltracchi (born Wolfgang Fischer) the 61 year old German art forger and artist who has admitted to producing hundreds of fake paintings has been sentenced to 6 years imprisonment. Beltracchi along with his wife and two other accomplices sold some of the fake paintings as original works by famous artists including Max Ernst, Heinrich Campendonk, Fernand Leger and Kees van Dongen. Police have identified 58 paintings suspected of having been forged by Beltracchi, however Beltracchi claims he has forged hundreds of paintings by over 50 artists. Beltracchi and his associates fabricated stories to provide a provenance for the fake works of art, claiming his grandparents had been art collectors in the 1920s. Beltracchi sold a fake 1927 Max Ernst painting to a dealer for €1.8 million after an appraisal had resulted in the issue a certificate of authenticity. The Galerie Cazeau-Béraudière lent it to the Max Ernst Museum for an exhibition and subsequently sold it to a collector for $7 million. Steve Martin also paid a Paris gallery Cazeau-Béraudière €700,000 for a work supposedly painted by Heinrich Campendonk in 1915, who in turn sold the painting through Christie’s to a Swiss businesswoman for €500,000. Beltracchi and his wife Helene are to serve their sentences in an open prison, as long as they maintain regular employment through a friend’s photostudio, leaving prison in the morning and returning after work. While serving his sentence Wolfgang Beltracchi is maintaining a collaboration with a photographer to produce a number of mixed-media works.

Inspired by Joshua Hammer ow.ly/eU9AQ image source Twitter ow.ly/eU9lq

Amantha Perera the Sri Lankan journalist and foreign correspondent has published an article on the Inter Press Service titled ‘Getting Into the Business of Environment’. Perera states “Regulations that stand in the way of conservation programs lower their likely success, experts warned at the World Conservation Congress of the International Union of Conservation of Nature in South Korea. They say there is mounting evidence to show that with participation of communities, businesses and other groups, conservation efforts have shown better results. “Generally we find that protection efforts are more effective if they involve participation by different stakeholders,” Bastian Bertzky, senior program officer at the UN Environment Programme and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) … “Wherever there are businesses involved, non-governmental organisations involved, the higher their participation, better the management.” Bharrat Jagdeo, the former President of Guyana, while acknowledging the increasingly essential role private companies played, struck a note of caution. He warned that companies may try to gain undue advantage by linking with nature-friendly programs and agencies like the IUCN. Jagdeo proposed that if private sector companies are willing to take part in conservation programs, there needs to be strict criteria that tests and evaluates their willingness to change and sustain that change. “There is a need for a litmus test, to test their willingness to engage and change,” he said. Former South Korean minister for environment Maan-ee Lee suggested that governments should keep a close focus on companies willing to invest in conservation and environment friendly projects. “Governments should look at giving incentives to such companies,” he said. Lee called for a consensus among different governments because “big multi-nationals are going beyond national borders.”

Inspired by Inter Press Service ow.ly/dErmY image source Dart Centre ow.ly/dErll

April Alliston the American Professor of Comparative Literature and Guggenheim Fellow has published an article on Aljazeera titled ‘Trolling for trolls in Disney World and the real world’ referring to the increase in internet trolling – much of it misogynistic and damaging. Alliston states “You may have thought trolls were those fairytale ogres who lurked under bridges once upon a time, or maybe those vintage naked plastic dolls with the big shocks of brightly-coloured hair that are so ugly they’re cute. But recently, trolls – fictional and nonfictional – are turning up everywhere, from cyberspace to the school bus, on screens large and small, showing us how fantasy can disturb reality, and folks from schoolboys to grannies can turn into trolls. A global outcry faulted British police last week for penalising trolls who use Twitter for hate speech. After his close friends were ridiculed and lambasted online following the stillborn birth of their child, television host Piers Morgan declared this week, “But what I am going to do is go to war with these trolls.” Earlier this summer another global outcry led to the suspension of schoolboys who aped cyber-trolls in person. The one thing that’s clear is how confused we all are about the line between fantasy and reality, words and deeds, victims and trolls. …While speaking out against internet trolls is gaining momentum, shouldn’t the incidents of cruel trolling be decreasing, not increasing? Instead of rewarding their victim by sending her away from the real world, let’s teach everyone – schoolchildren and adults – that trolling isn’t tolerated.”

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George Zornick the American reporter for The Nation magazine and former researcher for Michael Moore’s SiCKO documentary has published an article titled ‘JPMorgan Starts Buying Congress Again’. In the article Zornick states “When the “fail whale” breached at JPMorgan earlier this year, creating billions in embarrassing losses as a result of risky trading, the bank immediately ceased its political giving. Not that the bank didn’t need help from Congress – it certainly did, but a long history of donations to key committees bought CEO Jamie Dimon friendly audiences during hearings exploring the losses. Rather, the bank realized that while on the hot seat, the donations were tainted and likely unwelcome in Congress. But in a clear indication that JPMorgan’s seat has already cooled considerably, the bank is once again doling out the cash. …JPMorgan PAC wrote ten checks to the PACs of ten members of Congress, many of them key members of committees with the power to stop the risky trading that created the multibillion-dollar losses at the federally insured bank this year. Nine Republicans and one Democrat split $36,000 from JPMorgan Chase & Co. PAC in roughly equal amounts. …each of the Representatives sits on [either] the House Financial Services Committee or House Ways and Means. Each senator is on [either] the Senate Banking Committee or Senate Finance Committee. These committees exercise oversight over financial reform implementation and the financial services industry needs them on its side. …this certainly won’t be the last of them—and more importantly, what it buys the industry.”

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Stan Cox the American senior scientist at The Land Institute and author of Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World has published an article on Aljazeera titled ‘Air-conditioning: The cold reality’€™. Cox discusses how the use of power-hungry appliances is skyrocketing in the developing world, and is a major factor of CO2 emissions. Cox states ‘The Earth is running a fever. So with summers growing hotter (and with affluence rising) year by year, our world is becoming more and more dependent on air-conditioning. The possibility that air-conditioning could go universal has, in turn, raised ecological alarms, prompting a scramble for more eco-friendly cooling. …Those countries around the world that still have a low degree of dependence on air-conditioning should think twice before moving toward the United States’ industrial comfort standards. Energy consumption is not the only burning issue. The cool, still, dry atmosphere of the standard US home or office has a variety of other unpleasant and sometimes hazardous side effects. …If we are ever to gain some control over fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse emissions, a massive worldwide adjustment of thermostats will be required. But most importantly, we’ll need to adjust our own internal thermostats. By taking a more flexible attitude toward comfort and finding alternative ways to make the indoor environment livable, we can not only save energy but also become more resilient human beings. And we will need that resilience. The coming decades will test our ability to adapt and create, and we cannot leave it to technology to bail us out next time.”€

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Michael T. Klare the American Professor of Peace and World Security Studies has published an article on TomDispatch questioning if Barack Obama is morphing into Dick Cheney, highlighting four ways he is pursuing Cheney’s geopolitics of global energy. In the article Klare states “As details of his administration’s global war against terrorists, insurgents, and hostile warlords have become more widely known — a war that involves a mélange of drone attacks, covert operations, and presidentially selected assassinations — President Obama has been compared to President George W. Bush in his appetite for military action. …When it comes to international energy politics, however, it is not Bush but his vice president, Dick Cheney, who has been providing the role model for the president.  …it is possible to reconstruct the geopolitical blueprint that Cheney followed …a blueprint that President Obama, eerily enough, now appears to be implementing, despite the many risks involved.1. Promote domestic oil and gas production at any cost to reduce America’s dependence on unfriendly foreign suppliers… 2. Keep control over the oil flow from the Persian Gulf … in order to retain an “economic stranglehold” over other major oil importers. 3. Dominate the sea lanes of Asia, so as to control the flow of oil and other raw materials to America’s potential economic rivals, China and Japan. 4. Promote energy “diversification” in Europe, especially through increased reliance on oil and natural gas supplies from the former Soviet republics of the Caspian Sea basin… This four-part geopolitical blueprint, relentlessly pursued by Cheney while vice president, is now being implemented in every respect by President Obama.”

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Héla Ammar the 43 year old Tunisian photographic Artist a participant in the Printemps des Arts [Springtime Art Festival] has been interviewed by Yasmine Ryan for Aljazeera in regard to the rise of conservative moral and violent religious censorship of her home land’s artists and intellectuals. In the interview Ammar states “A misleading video montage showing a painting has been widely shared online, presenting artists as non-believers. It’s this diffusion of dishonest information and images which has provoked hatred and condemnation from a fringe of society. …The concept of national or sacred values is just a pretext to muzzle artists and creativity. These concepts can be interpreted in many different ways, especially the most restrictive, which will ultimately result in Tunisia having official art and dissident art. This is very serious and echoes dark periods in history… In reality, the artists have been used as scapegoats. This affair has been entirely manufactured to eclipse more serious issues. We are in the middle of a war between several political movements, with the Salafists and other reactionary movements which are pressuring the present government against moderation and appeasement. …What is happening is definitely very serious because the personal details of some artists have been published on extremist [Facebook] pages which have thousands of fans. They are calling for the murder of these artists. My friends are receiving endless phone calls and insulting messages and death threats. We are very worried because we don’t have any protection, and even the cultural ministry, which should be defending us, has abandoned us.”

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They want to withdraw from the world (May 22nd 2012)

Anne Applebaum the 47 year old American journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author has published an article on Slate titled ‘Europe’s Extremists on the March – Many of the parties winning across the continent have one thing in common: They want to withdraw from the world’. Applebaum states “…as I look across Europe I don’t know what to call the wave of discontent, as most of the parties on the outlying right or left have more in common with one another right now than they do with anyone in the center. Generally speaking they are anti-European, anti-globalization, and anti-immigration. Their leaders, in the words of a French friend, want to “withdraw from the world.” They don’t like their multiethnic capital cities or their open borders, and they don’t care for multinational companies or multilateral institutions. Above all, they are anti-austerity: They hate the budget cuts that they believe were imposed on their national governments by outsiders in the international bond market and by their own membership in the euro currency zone. Never mind that those same national governments had created the need for austerity by overspending and overborrowing, or in some cases—most notably Greece—by funding vast, unaffordable and corrupt state bureaucracies over many decades. And never mind that many of them had begged to be part of the euro zone—nobody was forced to join—or that they benefited for many years from being members.”

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When I see Ahmadinejad, I see Hitler (March 11th)

Haim Saban the 67 year old Egyptian born Israeli-American television and media mogul has been noted by Charles Davis an activist writer in an article published on Aljazeera as “One of the wealthiest men in the US… regularly “gossips with Rupert Murdoch, vacations with Bill Clinton … and confers with former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres… “When I see Ahmadinejad, I see Hitler,” Saban said of the Iranian president the same year he purchased Univision. …meanwhile, Saban hosted a “Friends of the Israel Defence Forces” fundraiser that, according to the Jewish Journal, was “teeming with Los Angeles’ most hawkish, hard-line lovers of Israel”. And, lest anyone think he separates his personal views from his businesses, at a 2009 conference in Israel he outlined “three ways to be influential in American politics,” which according to New Yorker magazine consist of “mak[ing] donations to political parties, establish[ing] think tanks, and control[ing] media outlets.” And in “targeting media properties”, the New Yorker noted, “Saban frankly concedes his political agenda, as evidenced by his repeated efforts to purchase the Los Angeles Times… I thought it was time that it turn from a pro-Palestinian paper into a balanced paper,” Saban said when asked to explain his interest in the paper.”

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I’m a guy who practices loyalty (January 21st)

Sheldon Gary Adelson the 78 year old US casino and hotel magnate has been identified as a considerable contributor to a SuperPAC (Political Action Committee). The PAC assisting the presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich, according to Kenneth Vogel of Politico, received a $US5mil contribution from Adelson, “and has considered giving much more”. Vogel states, “The propping up of super PACs by Adelson [and others] has some establishment Republicans grumbling privately that the men may be hurting the party by setting the stage for a long and damaging primary battle that won’t block Romney from winning the nomination but will leave him limping into a general election tilt… [Adelson stated] that his political efforts were motivated by his support for Gingrich, rather than antipathy toward any other candidate. “I’m a guy who practices loyalty,” said Adelson … worth upward of $20 billion … who’s been friendly with Gingrich since the mid-1990s, when the former Georgia congressman was speaker of the House.”

Expert in creating mesmerizing forms of repetition (January 17th)

Anri Sala the 37 year old Albanian artist renowned for his favored medium in video has been announced as a representative for France at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Sala is currently based in Paris, represented by Hauser & Wirth Gallery along with the Marian Goodman Gallery. Sala studied video production at the French Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and film direction in Le Fresnoy-Studio National des Arts Contemporains, Tourcoing. Sala currently has a video installation titled ‘Dammi i colori’ (Give me the colors) on display at the London Tate Modern. The installation explores the colour transformation of his hometown Tirana in 2003. The installation includes a discussion between Sala and a personal friend Edi Rama, the Mayor of Tirana. Daniel Birnbaum wrote in Artforum in 2004 that Sala “is an expert in creating mesmerizing forms of repetition that produce strange states of mind, but he never goes so far as to cause pain.”

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Those who knew him were profoundly fortunate (December 27th)

Christopher Eric Hitchens the 62 year old UK author and journalist renowned for his confrontational style bringing him to fame in left wing circles of the UK and the USA has died after an extended battle with throat cancer. Hitchen’s death was announced by the ‘Vanity Fair’ magazine for which he had contributed articles over the past two decades. The magazine’s editor Graydon Carter stated “”There will never be another like Christopher. A man of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar, those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls.” Richard Dawkins the evolutionary biologist and friend of Hitchens, stated “I think he was one of the greatest orators of all time. He was a polymath, a wit, immensely knowledgeable, and a valiant fighter against all tyrants including imaginary supernatural ones.”

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OWS created a space where people could gather (December 13th)

Mark LeVine a US history professor in an article published by Aljazeera, laments the loss of the OWS Movement’s ‘People’s Library’ at Zuccotti Park NYC during a recent police raid on the encampment. LeVine recounts a discussion with his old friend Alan Minsky the producer of the ‘Axis of Justice’ radio show. “By permanently occupying Zuccottii and other parks, the OWS movement created a space where people could gather, create libraries, share books and ideas, and even meals. Where they could plan for another world, that isn’t merely possible anymore, but the only hope for the survival of humanity as a civilization … The library … reflected the uniqueness and power of the still young 99 per cent movement. From the very beginning, the OWS encampments were not just gestures of protest … but were efforts to build community where people were knowledgeable and participated in informed dialogue.”

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Marriage between capitalism and democracy is over (November 10th)

Slavoj Žižek the 62 year old Slovenian philosopher and critical theorist has expressed concern for the future of western democratic capitalist societies. In an interview with Al Jazeera’s Tom Ackerman, Žižek analyses the contemporary mini revolutions taking place with the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the dissention in Europe with austerity issues. Žižek who is internationally recognized for his critical examination of both capitalism and socialism, states the “system [global financial and political] has lost its self-evidence, its automatic legitimacy, and now the field is open … What I’m afraid of is with this capitalism with Asian values, we get a capitalism much more efficient and dynamic than our western capitalism. But I don’t share the hope of my liberal friends – give them ten years, [and there will be] another Tiananmen Square demonstration – no, the marriage between capitalism and democracy is over.”

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Israel must clarify why it holds Allawi (September 4th)

Samer Allawi the chief of Al Jazeera Arabic’s Kabul bureau has been charged by the Israeli authorities as being a member of Hamas and having contact with its military leadership, following his arrest attempting to cross the occupied West Bank border with Jordan at the conclusion of three week holiday in his home town Sabastia. Allawi holds a Palestinian identity card was interrogated by Israeli intelligence forces about his work and management of the Al Jazeera’s Kabul bureau. Interrogated also about his personal financial status, and his relationships with work colleagues, friends, family and even his college/school days. Allawi regularly spends his summer vacation with family and friends in his occupied West Bank hometown. The Al-Jazeera Network along with human rights and press freedom groups, are demanding the Israeli authorities release Allawi immediately.

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