For the last few days I’ve been preoccupied with preparing an installation I made with Future Archaeology, just barely getting it ready in time for the opening. I’ll write about that project in future posts, but I thought I should share this magnificent documentation of a project we did one year ago in the same gallery, Splatterpool artspace.
I recall being fairly inarticulate the night we did our group interview in the gallery, so my part in the video is a non-speaking one, but the other members of the group did a fine job of explaining our project Ohm Ω. I think Tom, in particular, has a knack for describing what it is we’re doing with our collaborations.
The Future Archaeology part starts about 15 minutes in.
Seeing the tiny exhibition on LA photography at the Getty reminded me how much I like Henry Wessel Jr. (who had one print in the show). “It can happen any time anywhere. You don’t have to be in front of stuff that’s going to make a good photograph. It’s possible anywhere.”
As part of the recent Fluxus exhibition at MoMA, artists were invited to curate objects from a reconfigurable suitcase called the Fluxkit. I helped David Hart shoot this video with William Pope.L, one of the most fun things I did at MoMA last year.
While we don’t have an exact copy of the memo, NYT’s VP and assistant general counsel George Freeman said:
It seemed pretty clear from the video that the Times freelance photographer was being intentionally blocked by the police officer who was kind of bobbing and weaving to keep him from taking photographs.
And while the NYPD’s department head has acknowledged receiving the note, there has been no response from Commissioner Kelly or one of his representatives. Because who needs to answer to journalists anymore?
I’ve censored the following, in protest of a bill that gives any corporation and the US government the power to censor the internet–a bill that could pass THIS WEEK. To see the uncensored text, and to stop internet censorship, visit: http://americancensorship.org/posts/6562/uncensor
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Last night the Personal Democracy Forum Media people held a “flash conference” at NYU. The panel of speakers included two of my favorite people, Beka Economopoulos and Clay Shirky (who mentioned me during his talk! zomg!), focusing on the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements. It was skewed more toward OWS, but I did appreciate what Mark Meckler had to say about his experience doing grassroots organizing for the Tea Party.
Mark starts at 38:00, Beka at 57:00, and Clay around 1:14:00.
“There are more 17-year-old black people in jail than in college.”
Update: Commenter Ilverin makes a good point, “barely any 17-year olds of any group attend college, as the great majority still attend high school.” It goes without saying that the other prison statistics are troubling enough without that particular one.
There’s a grim undercurrent, following the Occupy Oakland eviction on Monday night, that Scott Olsen may be America’s Mohamed Bouazizi. If you haven’t seen the following video already, I urge you to take a moment and watch it. It really hits me in a visceral way, it fills me with dread and anger and nausea.
Last night’s march in solidarity with Occupy Oakland in New York City produced a similar video showing police clashing with protestors. Both videos use slow motion to help explain what’s happening, while elevating the emotional stakes.
In the second video police are swarming against singular individuals. But I also see a police force that’s outnumbered, that’s barely holding their own. While protestors are not responding violently, per se, this is clearly outside the bounds of effective nonviolent protest. Aggressive yelling is not the same as tackling and pinning somebody, but it’s going to increase the likelihood of escalations in violence.
The only way the Occupy movement can achieve meaningful change is through nonviolence. Similarly, the use of video to mobilize the public in solidarity must not overstate the case that police are wielding an inappropriate response against protestors. We only need to look to Oakland for evidence that current police tactics are dangerous and unwarranted. Or to Staten Island.
Goading on a conflict between police and activists, either as a release valve for built up frustrations or for the sake of damning YouTube case studies, is bad for the OWS movement. Obviously it’s bad for police. But it’s also bad for everyone else who are watching from a safe distance hoping that something transformative can come out of all this.
Here is some video documentation of Ohm Ω, a performance drawing piece I helped create with the Future Archaeology crew at Splatterpool gallery. It was very experimental, in the sense that we had no idea how it would come together until it was up on the wall. And I think it came together very nicely, the audience really got into participating toward the end!
Here is some video documentation of my photo performance in November for Bushwick BETA Spaces. The piece uses three digital SLR cameras with their flash memory cards removed. It is still possible to take photos, but the resulting images can only be seen on the camera’s preview screen. They’re lost as soon as the next shot is taken.
Documentation for a project I helped create with Future Archaeology, the name some friends and I chose for our ad-hoc collective. We have another installation this weekend in Ellie and my apartment.
Dan Phiffer builds websites, makes art, and teaches in NYC