Contraband is Taryn Simon’s new series of portraits depicting various items confiscated at Terminal 4 at JFK Airport.  It provides an in-depth and curious look at what happens when one culture encounters another.  Simon spent five mostly sleepless days at the airport, photographing over 1,000 contraband objects ranging from the relatively unsurprising (counterfeit designer bags, bongs) to the  flat-out strange (cow-dung toothpaste, insect larvae). While many of the photographs’ subjects are shocking, they open a discussion about the  material values of different cultures and what happens when one set of cultural beliefs is dominated by another. Though the series portrays contrasting cultural values, the repetition of some items demonstrates the universality of certain societal norms, such as the mass-market appeal of cheap, knockoff material goods. The exhibit opens September 22 at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills and at Lever House in New York September 30.

Link to more work by Taryn Simon.

Arizona’s new immigration law has sparked fervent demonstrations and activist work of all kinds. Many cite the law as a blatant example of racial profiling, scapegoating, and hatred. Yesterday, Arizona federal judge Susan Bolton attempted to affirm the Obama administration’s position against the bill, but failed to meet the demand for an injunction that would have stopped SB1070 all together. Today, SB1070 officially goes into effect, but without many of the provisions that gave the law ‘real teeth‘.

Music artists have joined the ever- growing backlash against Arizona’s new anti-immigration law. The boycotts began two weeks ago, when Rage Against the Machine threw a benefit concert that raised $300,000 for organizations fighting the bill. More and more artists are joining what is being called the Soundstrike, including Kanye West, Cypress Hill, Tenacious D, Massive Attack, Norteno superstars Los Tigres del Norte, salsa-ska band Ozomatli, Nine Inch Nails, Maroon 5, Ben Harper, State Radio, Anti-Flag, and many more. Though some argue that the bands’ efforts will only hurt businesses in Arizona and disappoint fans, the nature of the boycott reflects the anger felt by those fighting against SB1070, a law they see as legalizing racial profiling and fueling an already thriving culture of hatred. In the video below, Zach de la Rocha speaks about the Soundstrike movement:

A number of other activist and artistic efforts have emerged in the fight against SB1070. On July 28th, a group known as Stop the Hate scaled down a construction crane in Phoenix to display a large banner calling for an injunction against the implementation of the law. In a statement released by the group, the activists point to the true nature of the law:

“We say ‘stop hate’ because SB 1070 is not immigration policy. Like the experience of the Irish, Italian, Chinese or others, SB 1070 is simply scapegoating and targeting of the most vulnerable among us in these uncertain times; times that should call us to stand together as a people. Within days of SB 1070 passing, we witnessed vicious hate crimes against Latinos in the Southwest. We know that hateful laws legitimize hateful acts and that tolerating their passage signals a dangerous direction for the country.”

Ernesto Yerena, a 23 year- old activist leader and artist, creates simple posters reminiscent of anti- war and civil rights graphics of the 1960s. Yerena grew up close to the border, and eventually found a way to blend his passion for art with his passionate resistance of the anti- immigration movement. See more of his work here.

Yesterday’s small victory is only the beginning in a long fight that will likely end up in the Supreme Court. As the fight continues, musicians, artists, and other activists will surely continue express their anger with Arizona and it’s leaders. Legislators and citizens are left with the responsibility to demand that this unjust law be stopped.

“The production of a normative human body is a vital means of social control. In an interview with Stefan Szczelkun, artist Alexa Wright explains how her work experiments with the defended boundaries of the human/self, and the affects unleashed by their transgression.”

“…too often the competitive forces of the art market lead artists to use facile shock tactics, which only serve to inoculate us rather than enable us to think. Alexa Wright’s work avoids sensationalism and takes a more serious and useful approach to this material.”

Click here for the full article/interview.

At the recent US Social Forum in Detroit, we got our first look at the Beehive Collective‘s amazing new campaign graphic: The True Cost of Coal, a project Provisions commissioned as part of its Brushfire initiative.  It was a sensation, as throngs of social change activists not only got an amazing education on coal, they witnessed how a great arts and social change project functions.

Add-art.org, a FireFox add-on that replaces advertising on websites with curated art images, is featuring an exhibit curated by our friends at Groundswell titled “Our Fire and Our Tenderness.”

“Care is a way of asking questions about the longevity and influence of social movements. I’m interested in how we take care of one another, establish new social relations based around those values, and still maintain a culture that’s antagonistic. To say that in a more complicated way, maybe, it’s a way of addressing a set of concerns that focus mostly on the practical delineations of who is involved in the self-reproduction of social movements, but also involves some affective, and moral considerations.

This show focuses on care as maintenance, a very practical question about production and perpetuation, and one that only slightly touches on the questions about affect and morality. Here, the art itself is maintenance labor, or makes caring labor visible.

While these actions look similar and even seem banal, they offer unique questions about caring labor. Services United interrogates human-cultivated energy, in the form of electricity, to find the value of the work, and to dig deeper into the possible historical contingencies of how we do caring labor. Material Exchange’s DIY Coat Check sets an expectation of care, and asks what might happen when it’s unmet; how far caring mechanisms can extend or be extended is at stake in the process. Other artists include Environmental Services, Natasha Wheat, Mike Wolf, Jane Palmer and Marianne Fairbanks, the Institute for Infinitely Small Things, and Hideous Beast.

This theme is also the subject of a forthcoming journal edited by the Groundswell Collective. [http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/journal/]”

Go to Add-Art.org to read more on David Morgan and Groundswell’s latest exhibit, and while you are at it, learn how to install Add-art.

This week’s installment of Basekamp’s ongoing online dialogue on Plausible Artworlds:

“El Centro is an artist-run space of interaction and debate for artists and thinkers from around the world, with an emphasis on rethinking norms imposed by northern “centers”. The CIA began operations in 2009, but emerged from intensive discussions in 2006 on the need for renewing art education, devising more plausible teaching models and education environments going beyond disciplinary and geographical frontiers were. The CIA’s activities are extradisciplinary, with a strong pedagogical focus on historic research and art theory conducted virtually and physically. The CIA seeks to hone the critical tools needed to challenge the frontiers of genres and disciplines, expanding the borders of practice, genre and media; promoting those that propose new ways of production, of exhibition and exchange; those that explore broader social contexts than the institutional or market-based mainstream.”

Tomorrow, Tuesday July 20 at 6 PM, have a discussion with the creators of “CIA” and Basekamp at 723 Chestnut St, 2nd floor, Philadelphia USA or via Skype: Skypename: Basekamp.

Note: The following interview documents a mini-residency that took place last fall as part of Provisions’ Balkans Project.

Anna Kalinina: Let’s focus our discussion on the time you spent in the Balkans and how your impressions from the region might be reflected in your work as an artist. First however, I would like to know which countries you visited and how long where you there.

Nicolás Dumit Estévez: I was able to visit Bosnia, Turkey, and Macedonia. I was there for close to two weeks. I flew to Istanbul and from there I traveled to Sarajevo with Olivia Georgia and John Feffer. In Sarajevo we met Donald Russell, then I went on my own to Skopje, in Macedonia.

Anna Kalinina: I understand that you want to practice all the faiths of Sarajevo – can you tell me more about this?

Nicolás Dumit Estévez: This is an idea for an art and life experience that I have been developing and which relates to my upbringing in the Spanish speaking Caribbean. I grew up in a very diverse environment, religiously speaking. Part of my mother’s family came to the Dominican Republic from Lebanon. My father’s side of the family is from the Dominican Republic. Lately, I have been tracing my background to Haiti through both sides of the family, maternal and paternal. But going back to the subject of religion and spirituality, I had the most pluralistic childhood in this respect. I remember going to Jehovah’s Witnesses primary school, attending an evangelical summer camp and then going to Catholic school from fourth grade until my last year in high school. At home, l was also introduced to Afro-Caribbean spirituality. So at the age of seven I had a fairly elaborate altar in my bedroom. My mother has had and continues to have an ecumenical understanding of spiritually, so it was a blessing to have this kind of upbringing. Now she goes to an evangelical church.

(more…)

http://www.dailymotion.com/videoxe1knq

Last week, Argentina became the first Latin American country to legalize same sex marriage, joining a small but growing number of countries in the international community to do so. The video above showcases a unique expression of the joy and passion in Tango dance, which has found a new home in Argentina’s gay community.

Based on the understanding that race is an ideology performed on a daily basis, this conference will investigate how and why performances of race are manifested or subverted in African American visual culture. The panels include “Race and Museum Practices,” “Race and Abstraction,” and “Performance in/of Contemporary African American Art.” The symposium will begin with keynote speaker Dr. Richard Powell of Duke University, on Wednesday, September 15th at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.  The conference will continue on September 16th between 9:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. at the Adele H. Stamp Student Union Building on the University of Maryland College Park campus.

The Sept. 15 Keynote Lecture is FREE for the first 40 people to register, and the Sept. 16 Symposium is FREE with registration.

For more information, click here or call the David C. Driskell Center at 301.314.2615.

For those in the DC area this month: Check out the Capital Fringe Festival, which will be taking place around the city with varying degrees of cost, accessibility, and interest.

“Since Capital Fringe was founded in 2005, we have been continuously asked: “Why does DC need a Fringe?” As we embark on the journey of our 5th anniversary year, we find it critically important – maybe now more than ever – to have an open-access performing arts festival in the District. Capital Fringe strives to maintain the open-access policy of the Fringe, ensuring performers can take part in a vibrant Festival without being subjected to artistic vetting or selection. DC is full of committees, institutions, special event art promoters and politically-appointed individuals who curate and filter the performing arts. They determine ‘artistic value’ for audiences, and often communicate to many artists that their story/work does not have a place.”

“Capital Fringe strives to provide outlets and opportunities for artists to self-produce in a nurturing and supportive environment while exposing their work to patrons and the local, national and international media that they would never be able to garner on their own.”

You may want to check out Edible Rex written and performed by John Feffer at the Goethe Institut.