Register

Protest + Protest Art V.6

By Peggy Roalf   Thursday April 27, 2017

PROTEST

May Day, or May 1st, has historically been a day of protest, and 2017 is no exception. On Monday, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics will host a book launch and festive reception with DJs for Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production.

The press release states:

The refusal to participate in an oppressive system has long been one of the most powerful tools in the organizer's arsenal. Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency, and Cultural Production is the essential reader for today's creative leaders and cultural practitioners, and includes original contributions by artists, scholars, activists, critics, curators, and writers who examine the historical precedent of South Africa; the current cultural boycott of Israel; freedom of speech and self-censorship; and long-distance activism. Far from representing withdrawal or cynicism, boycott emerges as a special condition for discourse, artmaking and political engagement. 

As U.S. cultural and academic organizations are increasingly subjects of boycotts—in response to the ban on immigration from majority Muslim countries issued by the current U.S. administration—the question of boycott attains additional urgency. This May Day Book Launch features the three editors, Kareem EstefanCarin Kuoniand Laura Raicovich, in a lively exchange with book contributors artist Mariam Ghani and art historian Chelsea Haines, joined by Claire Potter, Professor of History, The New School, and investigates the potential of boycott as a tool for organizing and art making.

A festive reception with DJs ConVex and DJD (Salome Asega and Derek Schultz) follows, in celebration of the book and other May Day assemblies in the city. Co-sponsored by Interference Archive.

 

PROTEST ART
Above, from New York artist Louisa Bertman; to see animated gif, go here  and here: #TRUMPADDRESS. Louisa printed up the pink version [shown here] as postcards to send to White House as "pink slips".

 

 

Above,  from Joshua Brown, Executive Director, Center for Media and Learning/American Social History Project, the Graduate Center, CUNY:
I drew this portrait of “The Colossus of Rogues” in November with the assistance of my “Life during Wartime” cartoon subscribers, who contributed ideas for the Rogue-elect’s tattoos. It was inspired by Bernhard Gillam’s June 1884 cartoon, "Phryne Before the Chicago Tribunal,” in the satirical weekly Puck, attacking the scandal-ridden Republican presidential candidate James Blaine. Since we appear to have entered a new Gilded Age, led by an executive unlike any other in U.S. History, it seemed like the right time to resurrect “The Tattooed Man.” Info

 

Also note:
There will be a book signing/opening reception on Saturday, April 29, from 4 to 6 pm for Susan Meiselas: Prince Street Girls, 1976-1979. Higher Pictures, 980 Madison Avenue. NY, NY Info

 


DART