The first time I saw a Heidi Taillefer painting was in Montreal. The Yves Laroche Gallery had her work in its front show room and I couldn't take my eyes off it. Her detail, design and mechanical subject took my breath away. Ms. Taillefer muses in her blog:
I have a crush.
Maybe art is soul, and to say it has no purpose in the world would be like saying the physical body has no purpose if the spirit exists. Art seems to carry us along the drama of life, providing meaning to our existence as it acts as the channel through which the soul can pass into this dimension, a dimension we can perceive and understand. We live in the physical world, a world of imperfect modes of expression, communication, or representation, such as language, medium, context or technique...and this challenges and engages us in a way that actually makes things more interesting, if not also frustrating.
Brilliant diatribe from Photoshop Disasters via Feminist Philosophers this morning:
In a breathless deconstruction of the trite family self-portrait, USA PhotoHouse deftly excises the phallocentric father figure, leaving a single hand to signify - with profound semiotic irony - the hidden hand of capitalism. The camera is bereft of any screen or viewfinder in a de facto refutation of the omnipresent panopticon of male gaze, while the child points aimlessly out of the savaged image in a cathartic denunciation of the testosterone-poisoned concept of understanding directions. Marvellous.
Antigone Magazine's Dreams for Women postcard art project is launching it's 2009 Dreams for Women calendar featuring postcards submitted by men and women around the world! The calendar seeks to help raise money for The Antigone Foundation and for other women's organizations around the world. As part of this launch, we have created a video in which men and women share their dreams for women equality.
The Project:
Featured in Ms. Magazine, in the International Women’s Museum, and on Feministing.com, the postcard art project has attracted worldwide attention and interest, garnering media attention and submissions from as far away as Japan, Germany, Brazil, France, Portugal, Romania and Los Angeles. The Dreams for Women art project asks women and men of all ages to depict their hopes and dreams for women (examples include “I dream of a world with more female leaders” and “I dream of a world where no woman is seen and not heard”) by painting, drawing, writing, sketching or decoupaging them onto a postcard.
Inspired by the popular mail-art project PostSecret.com, a postcard art project that encourages people to send in their secrets, Dreams for Women strives to be a feminist PostSecret. Instead of asking what your secrets are, the project wants to know what your dreams for women are. The Antigone Foundation began receiving submissions in January 2008 and has received hundreds of submissions so far. Their YouTube videos, which showcase the project, have also received thousands of hits.
The project, which is coordinated by a small group of dedicated young women ranging in ages from 20-24, is committed to envisioning progress for women around the world. According to founder Amanda Reaume, dreaming is essential to change: “the postcards we have received and continue to receive keep expanding our vision of the future, and keep adding more voices to the conversation of what that future will look like for women.”
The project was started out of a desire to encourage women and men to envision a better future for women and to help fund work towards that future. Dreams for Women has thus launched a fundraising calendar. The calendar, featuring 12 postcard submissions from around the world, will be sold for $20 and is available via Antigone Magazine’s blog www.antigonemagazine.wordpress.com.
Indeed, the project hopes to raise money to officially launch the Antigone Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that will encourage young women to get involved in leadership, politics and activism. The organization will continue the work started by Antigone Magazine, a publication about women, politics, leadership and activism that started at UBC and has since expanded to a national subscription base, as well as, to the University of Toronto.
But the organization also hopes to help raise money for other women's organizations around the world. They will be selling the calendars in bulk at a discounted price so that other women's groups can use it for fundraising. Groups who buy any amount over 10 copies for fundraising purposes will pay only $10 per calendar. They will then be able to resell the calendar for $20 and raise money for their organizations. For more information please e-mail antigonemagazine@hotmail.com or check out their website here:
http://antigonemagazine.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/its-here-the-dreams-for-women-2009-calendar-is-here/
Via Boing Boing this morning:
Janes in Love: graphic novel is a call-to-art for young people
The P.L.A.I.N. Janes are an arts collective made up of high-school girls all named Jane, who stage daring, commando-style public art projects in the dead of night, transforming their tight-ass suburb into an outdoor art gallery. They're not just in it for the hell of it, either: their little suburb was the site of a terrorist scare and bombing that has everyone on edge and baying for authority.
The Janes won't take this lying down. They refuse to be terrorized, and continue making their art, even though it gets them in trouble with the authorities and their parents, and nearly drives them apart.
But the Janes aren't just serious art-guerrillas; they're also teenaged girls, and the art-shenanigans aren't doing much for their love-lives, or their friendships.
Ugly Betty (my fav t.v. show)'s Amanda sings, "Milkshake" in this hilarious clip from last week's episode...
When: Friday November 16 from 10:00am - 9:00 pm
Where: Calgary Opera Centre; 1315 7 st S.W.
Who: Calgary Anarchist Black Cross & Community Artists
$3.00 Cover Charge, all proceeds going to the cause.
What is the cause?
Lily Phan is being charged with public mischief for the attempted "pie-ing" of priemier Ed Stelmach in July 2007 where she smeared cream instead on a body guard.
Donna McPhee has been charged with "Assault with a weapon" for successfully chocolate cream pie-ing Calgary Mayor Dave Bonconier in the same month.
These women's actions were in protest of Alberta's inaction on homelessness and poverty. The proceeds of the cover charge and selected portions of the art sales are contributing to these women's legal fees.
A couple of days ago Himbly posted a list of the top ten music videos of all time. Since then, I can't seem to get my suggested video of my head so I'd like to share. Chris Cunningham's Window Licker (Aphex Twin) rips viciously into the beauty standards of our modern music video industry. It's a long video (10:35) which opens to hook the targeted audience, but have patience; at about 4:15 things take a turn and the ideals of sexy are popped along with the classic explosion of a champaign bottle.
An image I created last summer/today and will be putting on some tee-shirts and hoodies soon enough!
Come the Revolution!!
The photo here is just one of many of Bansky's brilliant art. I recently discovered this graffiti artist's work and have placed him on one my "one of my heroes" list. This is an appropriate acompanying feature today as I just read this report from nosweat.org about popular clothing giant, Gap's sweatshop in Bangalore, India. For one, I don't shop at Gap as I am not a big khaki fan and I hate their advertising but this is a fundamental reason to encourage a boycott of the retailer. Gap's overseas sweat shops are hurting women.
A couple highlights from the article:
-Local unions told the Guardian that Ms Padmavathi, a 39-year-old factory worker, collapsed near the factory gate at midday on September 18, two-and-a-half hours after she had asked to be allowed leave to go to hospital. They claim she started vomiting at 9.30am and had asked her manager for leave. But, they say, she was not granted immediate leave and was instead verbally abused. When she was eventually granted leave and left the factory, she collapsed near the gate. Passers-by carried her back to the factory, where she was taken to a clinic and then to Victoria hospital, where she died at around 1pm.
-Ratnamma, 27, spoke of her anger at losing her baby, a boy, in March, when she was forced to give birth alone in the street at the factory gate after being refused immediate leave when she went into labour.India isn't the only country with Gap factory human rights violations. At the end of day, lets do our research about where our clothes are coming from and what they really cost, and just say "YUK!" to retailers like Gap.
Megafån is a group from Finland, made up of three artists: Freja Bäckman, Fredrika Biström, and Heidi Lunabba. Their first project is called "Feminist Wallpaper" explained here:
We are interested in the interface between activism and art. We wish our art to function as a platform for communication and that it should create spaces for people to meet in. We wish our art not only to comment or reflect, but also play an active part in the shaping the society we live in. . . .
800 people took part in the feminist wallpaper project, every one of them came to our mobile studio to be photographed during one of the fourteen opportunities that we arranged. Information about these opportunities was spread through mailing lists, newspapers, and radio. Everyone who participated was given the opportunity to define their own feminism in a speech bubble on the wallpaper.
