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Just one more example of artist run activism rejuvenating our nation’s post-industrial capital: The Imagination Station

“The Imagination Station is exploding from the ashes of a firebombed flophouse standing — barely — in the shadow of Detroit’s abandoned, antique train station. Painted colors splash from a second story window, and people congregate on the lawn to plan the future. It’s the work of a racially and generationally diverse team of community organizers, artists and activists who’ve united to show how dilapidation can be recycled into inspiration: They envision a combination community center, public art space and living quarters for resident artists. They also want to establish a model for sustainable restoration. The Imagination Station is a refinery pumping out the brand of idealistic, DIY fuel that’s helping rebuild, if not at least re-envision, Detroit.”

Click here to read on.

On June 24th 2010, the all-American sneaker Keds announced its sponsorship of the Whitney Museum of American Art. In celebration of this sponsorship, Keds launch of the KedsWhitney Collection that will feature designs by celebrated conceptual artist Jenny Holzer printed on the iconic Champion® style shoe.

Holzer, who has exhibited work during the famed Whitney Biennial, is known for using words and political phrases in a range of media such as LED signs, stone benches, T-shirts and grand-scale light projections in public spaces. For the KedsWhitney Collection, she has created a fresh take on the Keds classic Champion® silhouette by drawing inspiration from her own designs. Jenny Holzer’s limited-edition styles will feature a phrase from one of her signature text series, Survival: PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT applied to the Champion®, expected to retail in the range of $70 – $75 per pair. The shoes will be available at select Bloomingdale’s stores nationwide and online. The good part: All Keds’ profits from Jenny Holzer’s line will directly benefit the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Usually a skeptic of corporate intentions behind cause-related marketing, it was odd to find myself raving in full support about this particular project. Most likely my admiration for Holzer’s work and the many visits to the Whitney have naturally made me an easy target for this particular product. Although I have never bought into any other cause-related marketing campaign before, I truly believe in this unique and utterly brilliant collaboration.

Given the three strong corporate players, this project has the potential to reach new audiences, promote Holzer’s work, generate funding for the Whitney Museum- and, most importantly, bring art into people’s everyday lives. I also enjoy the fact that having dozens of people boasting punchy Holzer phrases across the U.S.  fits neatly into Holzer’s overall artistic intent.

Keds will continue the collection in the Fall with artists Laura Owen and Laura Owens and Sarah Crowner, also two Whitney Biennialists. A portion of the sale profits will also go to the Whitney Museum. The more I think about the project, the more I like it. So, mark your calendars for the release on July 8th,2010 —I have a feeling these sneakers are going to be museum-worthy.

[With thanks to A.P. for the tip.]

Love Football | Hate Poverty: Ranking the World Cup 2010 teams based on social justice indicators

Who Should I Cheer For?

[Cross-posted to the blog of Goal 2010!, a soccer and social media project. Graphic: screen grab of comparison of  Group H teams Portugal and its former colony Brazil.]

apexart
291 Church Street
New York, New York

June 10 – July 11
Men With Balls: The Art of the 2010 World Cup
Curated by Simon Critchley

Including work by artists Miguel Calderon • Mark Leckey • Hellmuth Costard Maria Marshall • Liam Gillick • Santo Tolone • Douglas Gordon and Uri Tzaig • Philippe Parreno
memorabilia from Roger Bennett • Bill Shankly
match results read by Mark E. Smith

“The FIFA World Cup is the most important and widely watched sporting event in the world. The germinal idea for this exhibition is very simple: to create the perfect football environment, a sort of mini-soccer paradise at apexart for watching games. Around the games themselves, there will be talks, events, and a series of works, objects, and activities that will expand the spectacle into a more conceptual and sensual rumination on the meaning and significance of football/soccer.

The World Cup is a spectacle in the strictly Situationist sense. It is a shiny display of nations in symbolic, atavistic national combat adorned with multiple layers of commodification, sponsorship and the seemingly infinite commercialization. It is an image of our age at its worst and most gaudy. But it is also something more, something bound up with difficult and recalcitrant questions of conflict, memory, history, place, social class, masculinity, violence, national identity, tribe, and group. The hope of the exhibition Men With Balls is to construct a unique situation where these questions can be ruminated on collectively.

Football is working-class ballet. It’s an experience of enchantment. For an hour and a half, a different order of time unfolds and one submits oneself to it. A football game is a temporal rupture with the routine of the everyday: ecstatic, evanescent, and, most importantly, shared. At its best, football is about shifts in the intensity of experience. And stories will multiply from that experience, stories of heroes and villains, of triumph, and a gnawing sense of the injustice of defeat. The aim of the exhibition is to produce with this show some experience of being together with others in a group, watching a game, waiting for something marvelous, unexpected, and possibly magical to happen. And it will happen.”

MORE [schedule of screenings of matches and curator's statement.]

[Cross-posted to the blog of Goal 2010!, a soccer and social media project. Text and graphic from apex press release.]

16 June 1976: ‘This is our day’
by Lucille Davie

“It is a day violently etched on the South African collective conscience. Commemorated over 30 years later as Youth Day, an official holiday, it is the day that honours the deaths of hundreds of Soweto schoolchildren, a day that changed the course of the country’s history: 16 June 1976.

On that day the government and the police were caught off guard, when the simmering bubble of anger of schoolchildren finally burst, releasing an intensity of emotion that the police controlled in the only manner they knew how: with ruthless aggression. SA History Online puts the number of dead at 200, far higher than the official figure of 23.”

more

[From the History and Heritage section of SouthAfrica.info. Photo by Sam Nzima. Cross-posted to the blog of Goal 2010!, a soccer and social media project.]