Here's yet another example of how blogs can make cool stuff happen in the real world, and foster collaboration between people who may not even be in close contact:
It appears that I sort of have a piece of art in this year's Whitney Biennial!
The "sort of" part requires a bit of explanation, I think. A while back, I posted a call for action: an attempt to get people to post Picasso's mural Guernica on billboards
across the country as a war protest. It was part of a larger concept of
large scale public art using open source techniques of collaboration.
Well:
Last weekend, members of Visual Resistance installed a mural at the Whitney Museum. Our friends at Deep Dish TV had been invited to show their Shocking and Awful series at the Whitney Biennial.
They were assigned a 20-inch TV mounted on a 20-foot wall, which they
wanted to spice up a little bit. They called us about 10 days ago and
asked us to come up with a mural based on Picasso’s Guernica.
So
the Biennial catalog of the exhibit only lists Deep Dish Television,
not even Visual Resistance, but I think that since the Guernica project
was designed as open source, in a way I can claim that the installation
was an example of my American Guernica Project. And VR was kind enough
to mention me in their account of the installation, so I know they were
thinking about it:
Several months back, John Unger proposed an open-source art project called American Guernica.
The idea was to put Picasso’s painting on billboards throught the US as
a protest against the current wars being waged by the US. While
billboard space is probably out of our range, working on this Whitney
installation has gotten VR folks talking about using Guernica images
on the street in New York.
The
Biennial is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious art shows in the
world, so, hey, I'd love to be able to claim some partial credit on
this if it's applicable. I'm going to see if I can do some further
projects with VR as the anniversary of the war comes up this week. They mention in their post that they're looking for someone to do Guernica stencils in Illustrator and oddly enough, I've been thinking of doing just that for the last few weeks. Funny, that.
So, do I have too much on my plate right now? Uh, yeah. Am I loving it? Oh yeah.
Tags: billboard, Picasso, Guernica,
antiwar,
war,
peace,
politics,
News and politics,
culture jamming,
free culture,
activism,
iraq,
art,
culture, collaboration, street art, tagging, graffiti, design, opensource
Oedipa,
Wow, this sort of story always makes my day. I *love* teaching, but rarely get to do it in a classroom situation (something to do with not finishing college and refusing to play by the rules. sigh). Anyway, glad to have been of service.
You might be interested in a little write-up I had to do of one of my teaching projects. It discusses some of my basic strategies for getting students involved way over their heads, which I've found to bring good results. Check it out here, if you like: http://www.johntunger.com/nlreport.html
Anyway, thanks for the post. It's been interesting to see how many different interpretations the Guernica idea has brought forth. Keeps me honest. heh.
Posted by: johntunger | December 02, 2005 at 06:58 PM