NEWSgrist: *ACTIVE DUTY*

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Vol.5, no.7 (May 12, 2004)

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*Underbelly*

Bulletin board: post your own news, press releases, urls:

http://pub11.bravenet.com/forum/show.php?usernum=870870569

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*NEWSgrist blogs it up*

NEWSgrist’s fledgling blog

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CONTENTS:

- *Splash* Active Duty: Armed Artists of America (AAA)

- *Art Rage* Art work vandalized (Artforum.com)

- *No Exit* Terrorvision at Exit Art (Village Voice)

- *Canned Before Cannes?* Disney Blocks Film (michaelmoore.com)

- *From Left Field* Political art is suddenly hip (NYTimes)

- *Book Grist* Bruce Sterling’s new novel (Amazon.com)

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*Splash* http://newsgrist.net

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 12, 2004

ACTIVE DUTY

Armed Artists of America (AAA)

Armed with ideas and the tools to create a rapid response to the global

progression towards chaos and war.

THIS IS A CALL TO DUTY

Curated by Artist and U.S. Army Veteran Lee Wells as a rapid call for art.

Active Duty has organized over 30 international artists in less than 21 days

as a direct response to the

current socio-political state of America and the phenomenal events taking

place all over the world. These artists are temporarily banding together

under the banner of Studio 84 as a timely autonomous art

movement called: Armed Artists of America (AAA).

Armed Artists of America (AAA) have no formal or ideological agenda;

instead they hope to set in motion imaginative, pro-active and practical

ideas.

Active Duty is looking to open up a dialogue between artists and the community

at large. The ideas and feelings expressed by the artists engaged in Active Duty

form the front lines of the discussion.

Studio 84

84 South First Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY 11211

L-Train to Bedford Ave, to South 1st st. located between Berry and Wythe

Hotline: 718 349 7951

Saturday May 15 (Armed Forces Day)

through July 4, 2004 (Independence Day)

Opening Reception: Saturday May 15, 2004, 7-10 pm

Performance and Open Discussion: Monday May 31, 3-6p.m.

Closing Celebration: Sunday July 4, 2004, all day

Exhibiting Artists

Michael Ricardo Andreev, Tom Billings, Shepard Fairey, Joy Garnett, Eckart Hahn,

Mark Kostabi, MichaelKrynski, Tina La Porta, James McCarron, Donna and Joseph

McElroy, Brian Miller, MTAA, Angel Nevarez, Jon Nicholson, Bob Petrick, postfixE,

MM Robinson, Carlos Roque, Maria Joo Salema, Melissa Schubeck, Secret Rocker,

Elin Slavick, Nico Smith, Tracey Toth, Lee Wells, Glenn Wexler and Special Guests.

For more information please contact:

email: Lee @ leewells.org

http://www.leewells.org/activeduty

splash archived at: http://www.newsgrist.net/Splash_Active_Duty.html

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*Art Rage*

CATTELAN'S NEW WORK VANDALIZED

by Jennifer Allen

Art Forum Online: INTERNATIONAL NEWS DIGEST, May 12, 2004

http://www.artforum.com/news/week=200420#news6869

Maurizio Cattelan's latest installation, which opened last week in Milan's

venerable Piazza XXIV Maggio, has had an extremely short life span. As

Il Manifesto's Arianna Di Genova reports, many people in Milan found the

work—which features the figures of three barefoot boys hanging by nooses

from a tree—tasteless and disturbing, and one forty-two-year-old local

resident was particularly infuriated by it. The disgruntled man climbed the

tree and cut down two of the figures before falling to the ground himself and

being taken to the hospital with a concussion. Firemen, arriving on the scene

after the man fell, cut down the third figure, thus putting an abrupt end to the

work, which was to be on view until June 6. Cattelan, who took inspiration for

the piece from Goya and local myths, described it as a "disenchanted tale of

childhood, which is a space of freedom but also of surprises." For Di Genova,

the piece evokes the violence and torture of the war in Iraq; she quotes Pablo

Picasso's famous reply to the German army officer who, upon seeing a

photograph of Guernica, asked the artist: "Did you do that?" "No, you did,"

said Picasso. A spokesperson for Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, which produced

the piece, says that the work will be on view again this fall at the International

Contemporary Art Biennial of Seville, curated by Harald Szeemann.

More: NYTimes, CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK, May 13, 2004

Why Attack Art? Its Role Is to Be Helpful

By ROBERTA SMITH

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/arts/design/13NOTE.html

Almost as long as there has been art, there has been iconoclasm. In these days

of anger management courses, we might call it art rage. A work of art offends

people's religious or political beliefs or their sense of propriety, and they take

matters into their own hands and damage or destroy it. [...]

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*No Exit*

Getting Personal, Political, and Very Idiosyncratic at Exit Art
by Jane Harris

The Village Voice: art, May 7, 2004

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0419/harris.php

"Terrorvision," a large group exhibition conceived prior to 9-11, features

work crackling with energy, emotion, and more humor than the show's

title might lead one to assume. The predominant expression remains

tethered to contemporary politics, with Homeland Security, the Israeli-

Palestinian conflict, and the war in Iraq being particularly popular themes,

but many artists address the theme of terror from personal, psychological,

physical, and historical points of view as well.

The best works are often the most idiosyncratic and darkly humorous,

such as Gary Keown's Ceci n'est pas un coupeur de boîte (This is not a

boxcutter), which replicates Magritte's famous work This Is Not a Pipe;

Paul Wirhun's 21 Skull Salute, a bowl of eggs with skulls on them; and

Arnaldo Morales's weirdly sexual sculptures of sleekly designed "theoretical"

weapons. Others deal with historical events and figures—Pinochet's

bloody rule (Iván Navarro), the Cuban missile crisis (Barbara Broughel),

nuclear weapon testing during the Cold War (Joy Garnett), Hitler (Kosyo),

the fight for Irish independence (Kevin Noble), and the struggle of Native

Americans for sovereignty, wryly evoked in an anonymous poster depicting

four armed Indians that reads, "Homeland Security, Fighting Terrorism

since 1492."

At times some of the selections (all of which were culled from an

international open call) seem at best perplexing, at worst overkill. François

Zelif's Dr. Love, an audio installation featuring a stethoscope, for example,

loses relevant meaning in the context of the show, while his Toothache,

featuring a ceramic sink with fake blood running into its drain, evokes

torture in an action movie sort of way. For the more discerning gore

hounds out there, don't fret, there are more effective works on display.

Terrorvision
Exit Art

http://www.exitart.org
475 Tenth Avenue
Through July 31

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*Canned Before Cannes?*

Wednesday, May 5th, 2004

Disney Has Blocked the Distribution of My New Film... by Michael Moore

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?messageDate=2004-05-04%3C/span%3E

Friends,

I would have hoped by now that I would be able to put my work out to the

public without having to experience the profound censorship obstacles I

often seem to encounter.

Yesterday I was told that Disney, the studio that owns Miramax, has officially

decided to prohibit our producer, Miramax, from distributing my new film,

"Fahrenheit 9/11." The reason? According to today's (May 5) New York Times,

it might "endanger" millions of dollars of tax breaks Disney receives from the

state of Florida because the film will "anger" the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush.

The story is on page one of the Times and you can read it here (Disney

Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/national/05DISN.html ).

The whole story behind this (and other attempts) to kill our movie will be told

in more detail as the days and weeks go on. For nearly a year, this struggle

has been a lesson in just how difficult it is in this country to create a piece of

art that might upset those in charge (well, OK, sorry -- it WILL upset them...big

time. Did I mention it's a comedy?). All I can say is, thank God for Harvey

Weinstein and Miramax who have stood by me during the entire production of

this movie.

There is much more to tell, but right now I am in the lab working on the print

to take to the Cannes Film Festival next week (we have been chosen as one

of the 18 films in competition). I will tell you this: Some people may be afraid

of this movie because of what it will show. But there's nothing they can do

about it now because it's done, it's awesome, and if I have anything to say

about it, you'll see it this summer -- because, after all, it is a free country.

Yours,

Michael Moore

mmflint@aol.com

www.michaelmoore.com

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Thursday, May 6th, 2004

Today's NY Times Editorial: "Disney's Craven Behavior"

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php

Friends,

Below you will find today's New York Times Editorial. Please pass it

around.

Thanks for all of your letters of support. No news to report today,

hopefully tomorrow.

Yours,

Michael Moore

//////////////

May 6, 2004 – Editorial, New York Times

Disney's Craven Behavior

Give the Walt Disney Company a gold medal for cowardice for blocking its

Miramax division from distributing a film that criticizes President Bush and

his family. A company that ought to be championing free expression has

instead chosen to censor a documentary that clearly falls within the bounds

of acceptable political commentary.

The documentary was prepared by Michael Moore, a controversial filmmaker

who likes to skewer the rich and powerful. As described by Jim Rutenberg

yesterday in The Times, the film, "Fahrenheit 9/11," links the Bush family with

prominent Saudis, including the family of Osama bin Laden. It describes

financial ties that go back three decades and explores the role of the

government in evacuating relatives of Mr. bin Laden from the United States

shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The film was financed by Miramax

and was expected to be released this summer.

Mr. Moore's agent said that Michael Eisner, Disney's chief executive, had

expressed concern that the film might jeopardize tax breaks granted to Disney

for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Jeb Bush is

governor. If that is the reason for Disney's move, it would underscore the

dangers of allowing huge conglomerates to gobble up diverse media companies.

On the other hand, a senior Disney executive says the real reason is that

Disney caters to families of all political stripes and that many of them might

be alienated by the film. Those families, of course, would not have to watch

the documentary.

It is hard to say which rationale for blocking distribution is more depressing.

But it is clear that Disney loves its bottom line more than the freedom of

political discourse.

So Who's Afraid of Michael Moore?

4 Letters published: May 7, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/07/opinion/L07DISN.html

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*From Left Field*

Republicans Lure the Arts to Politics and Protests

By JULIE SALAMON

NYTimes, May 4, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/04/arts/04PROT.html

Correction Appended

Could it be that President Bush has made politics cool again for the arts in

New York? Nothing in recent memory has stirred the far corners of this

world like the prospect of the Republican National Convention at Madison

Square Garden from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 and of the crowds that will visit to

record the event and to protest or support it.

This occasion has made unlikely partners of scruff and style, uniting old-

time protesters, counterculture artists and mainstream producers as well

as the "Sex and the City" crowd from the world of design, galleries, public

relations and sleek magazines.

"Right now what's sexier than politics?" asked Heather Grayson, the

actress and playwright who attracted strong notices for her solo show

"After the Storm," based on her experiences as a soldier in the first

American war against Saddam Hussein.

Dozens of arts organizations are making plans for at least four nights of

political theater during the convention at East Village clubs, established

theaters like Symphony Space, public libraries and of course the streets.

The Internet is throbbing with information and strategies exchanged by

people often identifying themselves by first name only or by acronym

(FEVA, UFJP, THAW, WW3, NoRNC).

They want to make it clear that this is not the same old same old. In a

recent e-mail discussion of who should speak for the various groups,

Alexandra Tager, who rents art to the film industry when she is not

organizing protests, said, "This presents a P.R. challenge to those of us

who hope to tell our story to the world and to debunk the myths and

stereotypes of violent-uninformed-crunchy-freaky-scattered protesters

bent on wreaking havoc for the heck of it."

At the office of Downtown for Democracy, a political action committee,

Erik Stowers, a founder, said, "Usually when reporters hear artists are

doing something, they go, `Ha ha ha, they're going to dance around a

building.' "

That is not what Christopher Wangro, a special events impresario, has

in mind. "The Bush administration's ideas and policies have really ignited

people," he said, adding that the convention "gives us a chance to respond."

Mr. Wangro has a long list of noncrunchy, nonfreaky credentials. Now a

private operator, he is the former director of special events for New York

City's Department of Parks and Recreation and has produced big public

events like a parade of elephants for Ringling Brothers and Barnum &

Bailey and Pope John Paul II's appearance in Central Park.

He began planning for the Republican convention about a year ago. He

and some colleagues arranged a series of discussions with focus groups,

advertising and marketing executives, and strategists who had worked in

the Clinton and first Bush administrations. From those discussions came

the Imagine Festival of Arts, Issues & Ideas, which is planning at least

50 events.

Fund-raising began in March, when Agnes Gund, emerita president of the

Museum of Modern Art, held a cocktail party at her home on the Upper

East Side. Details of the festival are to be announced on May 24.

"We're not partisan," said Boo Froebel, an Imagine Festival organizer,

who is a curator for the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria on

42nd Street. Then she added: "But we don't want people to neuter

themselves of political opinion. This is not the `boring' festival."

At Symphony Space the Thalia Follies, a cabaret show of political satire,

will run every night of the convention. To help write the sketches, E. L.

Doctorow, Roy Blount Jr. and Mary Gordon have already been recruited.

After the show the audience can stay to watch television coverage of the

convention on a big screen onstage. "You can get wine and beer and

even popcorn to throw at the screen in congenial company," said Isaiah

Sheffer, artistic director of Symphony Space, who organized similar

shows during the Vietnam War and Watergate but not since.

The Asia Society will present Forgiveness Project, a multidisciplinary

theater work based on a classic Chinese opera about a warrior's revenge,

and there will be a staged reading of Sophocles' "Electra" at the Lincoln

Center Performing Arts Library. Dance Theater Workshop will offer a

Teen Poetry Slam with Danny Simmons (co-founder of Def Poetry Jam),

and Joe's Pub will have something, not yet decided. The Bowery Poetry

Club will remain open 24 hours a day with a roster of politically themed

theater, music and poetry.

Deanna Zandt, creative administrator for the Poetry Club in the East

Village, said her idea was "to give people a place to come together to

have a good time, to burn off some energy, to have a safe outlet for

their outrage at this."

Which doesn't mean there will not be plenty of street theater, perhaps

still the easiest way to attract attention. "There's going to be 15,000

journalists of various kinds in New York City for those four days, and

they're going to be bored a lot of the time," said Andrew Boyd, whose

Billionaires for Bush troupe made its debut at the Republican convention

in Philadelphia in 2000. "Our experience in Philadelphia was that the

journalists were looking outside the convention for the pulse of the street,

and in many cases it was more interesting to the public and the

journalists than the proceedings at the convention."

The Billionaires pretend to be rich people — sort of updates on Thurston

Howell III, the millionaire on "Gilligan's Island," carrying martinis and golf

clubs — and mock Bush administration policies by pretending to praise

them. (Saying things like "We're very happy George Bush is in town and

happy 40 million people in this country don't have health care.")

Convention planners appear to be unperturbed. "We are confident that

the N.Y.P.D. and the U.S. Secret Service will create a security plan that

will allow the Republican National Convention to conduct its business in a

safe and orderly manner, while ensuring that other individuals are allowed

to voice their opinions at that time in New York City," Rori Patrise Smith, a

convention spokeswoman, said.

During the convention in Philadelphia, Mr. Stowers of Downtown for

Democracy handcuffed himself to other protesters in a human chain

intended to block the route between the convention and delegates' hotels.

Instead, Mr. Stowers and others in the chain were arrested and spent nine

days in jail.

"I think street theater is great, but I decided after that if your intention is

to defeat Bush and foil the Republican attempt to hijack our country, the

most direct method is to directly engage in the political system," Mr.

Stowers said. So he organized Downtown for Democracy, or D4D,

registered it as a political action committee and has been raising money

through events intended to attract cultural types more inclined to network

and party than to protest. In March a reading featuring Jonathan Franzen,

Paul Auster, Joyce Carol Oates and Michael Cunningham at Cooper Union

raised $75,000; an art auction earlier netted $130,000

The money so far has gone to five Congressional candidates and to Moving

America Forward, a political action committee in New Mexico, a swing state.

"People can't quite grasp what we're doing at first," said Mr. Stowers, 25,

who studied archaeology and anthropology at Brown University, dropped

out of a Ph.D. program at Princeton and then began work on a novel.

Instead, Mr. Stowers is using e-mail. So much that he was wearing braces

to protect inflamed nerves in his hands during an interview in his office in

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as he worked to promote D4D's next event: a design

auction, promoted on the organization's Web site as featuring furniture,

lighting, flooring and tabletops, both new and vintage, by American designers.

New and vintage could also describe what is happening. While a smattering

of plays, visual art and music emerged in reaction to United States involvement

in Iraq, many people in the arts became disengaged from politics once the war

began.

"There had been a lot of anxiety about taking a stand or being too political,"

said Valentina Fratti, a theater director and organizer for Theaters Against War,

or THAW, a group of 200 theaters that formed about 18 months ago to

organize protests against the invasion of Iraq. "That climate has completely

changed. Now everyone seems to have a united goal, and the details of the

politics don't matter. People want to get rid of Bush."

Correction: May 7, 2004, Friday

An article in The Arts on Tuesday about plans by arts groups to protest during

the Republican convention in New York this summer misstated the age of Erik

Stowers, a founder of Downtown for Democracy, a political action committee.

He is 31, not 25. The article also misstated his actions at the Republican

convention in Philadelphia in 2000. While he was indeed arrested during a

protest, he did not handcuff himself to other protesters.

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*Book Grist*

The Zenith Angle
by BRUCE STERLING

Publisher: Del Rey; (April 27, 2004)

ISBN: 0345460618

Review
"A darkly comic fable of info-war, the black budget, uber-geek idealism and

the politics of Homeland Insecurity. Sterling's grasp of the surfaces of

contemporary reality is deftly prehensile; his understanding of what underlies

those surfaces is both compelling and important."
-William Gibson, author of Pattern Recognition

Amazon.com
The Zenith Angle, futurist Bruce Sterling's first novel since Zeitgeist (2000),

tells the story of Derek "Van" Vandeveer. As The Zenith Angle opens, Van sits

peacefully at his breakfast table, enjoying life as a new homeowner and happily

married man, with a new son and a fortune in stock options. Then the morning

news reports a jetliner has crashed in nearby Manhattan--colliding with the

World Trade Center. Like many other Americans' lives, Van's will never be the

same. He leaves his corporate job to work fighting terrorism for the U.S.

government. He soon finds himself sequestered at a top-secret undisclosed

location while his fortune vanishes, his former company sinks into a morass of

lawsuits and arrests, and his wife and son move to the far side of the country.

And as Van is transformed from cyber-whiz to spook, he finds himself changing

in ways he would never have imagined. [...]

From Publishers Weekly
The godfather of cyberpunk abandons SF in this satiric look at the high-tech

security industry after 9/11. Dr. Derek Vandeveer gives up his high-paying job

in private industry in order to try to help the government plug the nation's most

serious computer security leaks. Unfortunately, he soon discovers that many of

the worst problems are either too expensive to fix or impossible to deal with for

political reasons. Vandeveer finds himself living in a slum in Washington, D.C.,

up to his ears in red tape and surrounded by a cast of would-be cyber warriors

and failed dot-com entrepreneurs. Even worse, he's paying for the equipment he

needs out of his own pocket. Worst of all, Vandeveer's wife Dottie, a world-class

astronomer, is off on a mountaintop in Colorado. Meanwhile, something or

someone is playing games with America's most sophisticated spy satellite and

Vandeveer stakes his reputation on solving the mystery. Sterling (Zeitgeist)

knows the world of cyber-security inside out, and he does a fine job of talking

the talk without losing his readers. The Vandeveers have a convincingly

believable geek marriage and their scenes together are particularly well done.

Sterling has always been more comfortable with satire than action, however,

and the shift near the end to techno-thriller mode isn't entirely successful. Still,

this novel should please the author's fans, many of whom will be interested in

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