The COP15 Conference, the  meeting in Copenhagen for countries party to the United Nations Framework Convention (UNFCC) on Climate Change, has begun in earnest. With it, a flood of foreigners has washed ashore in Denmark, among them NGOs, IGOs (Intergovernmental Organizations), the Press, and delegates from UNFCC signatories. Among them, unfortunately, is not your correspondent, Wilson Dizard, the one writing this blog post from Copenhagen. Others are in a similar position, and not just due to the fact that the they basically accredited twice the number of people the conference center can hold.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of interesting things going down around town that concern the arts of social change. Here are the first photos of the acts at the conference.

Alright, this is a picture of a ice flow in Iceland, where I had a rather long lay over. Iceland’s endangered glaciers are a topic of discussion at the Conference, as you might imagine.

The Bella Center. The world will have to wait to see what kind of substance, if any, might manage to emerge from this building a fortnight from now. Look at the cranes in the background, evidence of economic development chugging along. And then there’s a wind turbine, too. To be sure, Denmark is a land of contrasts.

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In a hip hop and R’n’B world dominated by men and noted for misogyny, the unstoppable female lyricists of Say My Name speak candidly about class, race, and gender in pursuing their passions as female MCs. This worldwide documentary takes viewers on a vibrant tour of urban culture and musical movement: from hip hop’s birthplace in the Bronx, to game on London’s eastside.

Featuring interviews from a diverse cast of women including Remy Ma, Rah Digga, Jean Grae, Erykah Badu, Estelle and newcomers Chocolate Thai, Invincible and Miz Korona, this powerful documentary delves into the amazing personal stories of women balancing professional dreams with the stark realities of poor urban communities, race, sexism and motherhood. The more then 18 artists featured in Say My Name battle for a place in a society that creates few changes for women. From emerging artists filled with new creativity, to true pioneers like MC Lyte, Roxxanne Shante, and Monie Love, these are women turning adversity to art.

More here.

Showing 12:00 pm, Wednesday, November 29 at Montgomery College, Takoma Park Campus, HC 122

New York Times. The Guardian. Art: 21. e-flux.

For the past decade, the work of Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo has addressed social and political relations in the Americas. She draws attention to these issues by inflicting or mimicking direct, physical violence on her body – as in Himenoplastia (Hymenoplasty) or Perra, during which the artist carved the Spanish word for ‘bitch’ into her leg. Galindo often places herself and the viewer into difficult psychological situations – as in El Dolor en un Panuelo (The Pain in a Handkerchief), during which newspaper articles about victimized women were projected on her naked body.

Exit Art is now showing her first solo exhibition in New York until November 21st. More.

Video excepts from past performances here.

Dismantling the Corporate State and Other Amusements at Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book & Paper Arts is a one-woman exhibition of work by Anne Elizabeth Moore, artist, media activist, editor of the now-defunct Punk Planet, founding editor of the Best American Comics series, and author of Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity. The exhibition includes zines, video, and ephemera that chronicle Moore’s tireless work as a thorn in the side of corporate media and marketing culture and as an advocate of DIY culture.

Emblematic of Moore’s corporate parodies is “Operation: Pocket Full of Wishes,” in which she produced cards parodying shopping guide cards at the American Girl Place store. Her cards, displayed in the exhibition, offered such consumer goods as Domestic Partner Benefits, Free Tampons, Ample Career Opportunities, Safe, Legal Abortion Access, and Equal Pay for Equal Work. The project eventually caused her to be banned from the store.

Instead of a traditional book tour for her Hey Kidz! Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People, Moore went on a Radical Education Roadshow, teaching kids to create their own media with a zine called “How to make this very zine.” The show includes a plethora of examples of small zines made by kids she worked with. In a similar vein, but with more overtly political ramifications, is the collaborative project “New Girl Law,” in which young Cambodian women leaders collaborated with Moore on a revision of the Cambodian “Girl Law,” a restrictive code of behavior that, while no longer officially law, continues forcefully to shape gender norms. Together Moore and the 32 Cambodian women produced a text that was then letter-pressed and hand-bound in Rhode Island and calls for “basic human rights, gender equity, the eradication of corruption, and funding for cultural production…a re-envisioning of a potential future for the country.”

The exhibition also displays documentation from The Unlympics, held in winter 2009 as a series of alternative games and open discussions on Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid that brought attention to the potential cost to taxpayers of the event, the displacement of low-income residents, and issues of incarceration in Illinois. The Unlympics included such sports as Class-Conscious Kickball, Live Action Role Play Family Dinner, and The Solitary Isolation Game. Planning is underway for Summer Unlympics to take place in September 2009.

“Amusement” is key: Moore consistently mixes a sense of fun in with utopian imagining and fierce critique, demonstrating that activism does not have to be dour. While most of her work is thoroughly collaborative, she also spoofs corporate brand identity by making her personal identity a brand. At the exhibition’s closing festivities, on Friday, August 21 at 6:30pm, Anne Elizabeth Moore will present The Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness. In the running this year are Anne Elizabeth Moore and some candidates other than Anne Elizabeth Moore.

The exhibition opened June 19 and runs until August 22, 2009. Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book & Paper Arts is located at 1104 S. Wabash (2nd floor), in Chicago, IL.

The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women, currently at Cheim & Reid in NYC is a group exhibition of many prominent female artists depicting women in hopes to reclaim the traditional domination of the “male gaze”. The idea of the “male gaze” is simple, and one women experience on a daily basis –  how a woman is perceived by others and even sometimes by herself is based on men’s desire for her physical characteristics. This exhibition does the opposite of that – it allows women, in this case female artists, the opportunity to present their womanhood as they see it. As Contemporary Art Daily states, it “attempts to debunk the notion of the male gaze by providing a group of works in which the artist and subject do not relate as “voyeur” and “object,” but as woman and woman.” 

Including works from a variety of different media, this exhibition is sure to create some dialogue about where we are right now in terms of women’s rights. Sure, we’ve come a long way, but why are women still allowing themselves to be told their worth by a man? I think many women, especially young women, are guilty of doing this subconsciously without even realizing how much emphasis they put on the approval of men to feel good about themselves. Society and this kind of consumer culture based on living up to a certain standard certainly play a chief role in making this an acceptable way to view oneself. 

For a full gallery of the works displayed, visit Time Out New York or Contemporary Art Daily.

The Price of Pleasure, a recently released documentary by Chyng Sun and Miguel Picker, focuses on the pornography industry and its affects on society, sexuality and relationships. The Feminist Review has a great synopsis of the documentary, which is described as “abandoning the tired and often cyclical rhetoric on whether pornography is “right or wrong”. Instead, the film relies on the opinions of “college students, professionals, media makers, distributors, consumers and adult performers” to draw their own conclusions about how the once underground industry affects America and the world today.

While the film has received significant praise for presenting the adult entertainment industry in a new and ultimately less judgmental light, apparently many of the adult entertainers interviewed in the film felt they were misrepresented and there have been protests outside universities and other centers that have chosen to screen the movie.

Many opinions have been presented on the movie, some positive, some negative and most somewhere in between. Though I haven’t seen the movie myself, the part that I’m interested in most is the exploration of the choice of female porn actresses to participate in adult movies. It seems everyone likes to present the idea that women are often “forced” into the industry, and it is true that many of them are, however, many of them express that they willfully chose pornography as an occupation and have no regrets about that choice. I think it is important to hear that message as well.

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Gertrude Berg’s short film, The Pick Up Artist, is based on a phenomenon she complains she sees “all the time…the sense of disconnect between her…neighbors diligent efforts to look attractive and stylish and their total lack of concern for the trash-filled streets of the neighborhood”. Serving as a fairly straight-forward metaphor for many people’s over indulged self-interest and apparent lack of concern for their troubled surroundings, the video featured Berg dressed up in a fashionable outfit, picking up street garbage atop stiletto heels. 

Berg says her statement also has to do with femininity and the choice women also feel forced to make between being attractive and being realistic. “I wanted to be feminine and sexy,” Berg concludes. “The work is about how I look, the pleasure of shopping, and the pleasure of luxury. It’s also about their opposites: the trail we leave behind, the things we don’t want to see, and the things we dispose of as quickly as possible.”

For more information on The Pick Up Artist, visit artinfo.

The debate between the so-called “condom worshippers” and those of the “virginity movement”  persuasion has not ended. In fact, it seems, the war on how teens should be educated on sex has just begun. Many were outraged when the Centre for HIV and Sexual Health at NHS Sheffield in England published a pamphlet entitled “Pleasure” that dared to discuss topics such as sexual pleasure and masturbation, going as far as to state that “an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away”, in reference to the fact that doctors suggest certain servings of food and other healthy lifestyles to keep young adults healthy but often forget to mention a healthy attitude towards sex in the mixture.

Of course, it’s not hard to imagine the amount of criticism this little pamphlet has received. Conservatives claim this encourages promiscuous and unprotected sex and that teens will take the message the wrong way. However, those who wish to be more open and realistic in the realm of sex education have received it well. Even liberal-minded organizations that encourage teens to wait have been able to appreciate the “no bullshit” approach the pamphlet provides. Rachel Gardner, creative director of the Romance Academy, an organization that encourages delaying sex until readiness, says “we welcome any publication that seeks to encourage open and honest discussion with young people that is both relationship positive and sex positive”.  It has also been received positively by teens who appreciate the fact that it’s more than just biological information and that it addresses real-world questions and concerns. 

Here in America, however, many of us don’t seem to be ready for that kind of progress in our sex-ed classrooms. Leslee Unurh, president of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse has this message for American “condom worshippers”. She wants those of us who might be ready to take a cue from Britain to know that “abstinence education is not going away any time soon. Taxpayers will not tolerate their money being used for ideological latex-only programs and the molestation of their children’s minds and future”. Is this true? Or would taxpayers rather see their children be educated about healthy, safe, pleasurable sex, especially when we know that abstinence-only education doesn’t work, and in fact leads to more occurrences of unsafe sex among teenagers (wonder why?). 

Unlike this blogger’s vivid and somewhat disturbing memories of sex education, I don’t remember a lot about my sex-ed experiences. Even though I attended progressive private schools my whole life, nothing much stands out in my memory of sex-ed, except that throughout middle school we all thought it was a topic to giggle about rather than take seriously. Once I got to high school, sex-ed was a once a year seminar about how to avoid STDs (duh, use a condom) and rape at a party (don’t drink the punch). While I don’t feel an absence of knowledge about sex, I think for many kids, especially those from families where sex is not a welcome topic of discussion at the dinner table, a more comprehensive, realistic sex-ed curriculum would be a blessing. 

For some reason it’s impossible to download a PDF of ‘Pleasure’, however an image of the pamphlet is available here.

Alternet’s article about the current burqa ban controversy led me to wonder if there was any good art on the topic. What I found was Amir Normandi’s highly contested 2006 photo essay 12 postcards for Muharram.

For the most part I agree with Sarah Seltzer’s stance in the Alternet piece – while the burqa may not be something I’m in favor of, banning any piece of clothing, be it a burqa or a miniskirt, sends a very negative message to women and to society as a whole. Seltzer perfectly states, “rather than single out other people’s problematic dress, we should all be engaged in a robust critique and examination of the way gender norms inform beauty standards everywhere”.

Of course, if we’re going to criticize France for their persistence in the burqa ban, we have to examine the messages we’re sending to women here in the United States. Middle and high schools across America institute dress codes (something I remember very well from my middle school days) that are supposedly for the purposes of ridding classrooms of “distractions”. But what does that say to young girls? That it is their responsibility to cover up their bodies so that boys don’t become distracted? Isn’t that about one step away from claiming that victims of rape were “asking for it“? As Seltzer states, communities that treat women “like jezebels…reinforce a misogynist ideal that puts the burden on women to cover up rather than men to avert their gaze”.

In many ways, this may represent the thinking behind the burqa ban, and if so, then it’s from the right place. However, banning any kind of clothing for whatever reason just doesn’t seem to fit with the feminist movement that has come so far. Even though many women are getting behind the burqa ban, I would argue that telling someone they cannot wear something, regardless of what it is or why, is wrong.

If you view Normandi’s photo essay, it will become immediately obvious why it stirred up such a controversy – while the photos of Iranian women partially nude and partially covered by a burqa are done quite tastefully in my opinion, that kind of thing is obviously far from accepted in Iran. We can think what we want about Iran requiring burqas or France trying to ban them, but if we want to set an example, we need to let go of our own hang-ups about women’s bodies and fashion.