P is for Power. B is for Burge. A is for Action.

photo by Kevin Kaempf

If you have never heard of Chicago police commander Jon Burge before, or have no idea about the systematic torture that took place in Chicago police stations for over 20 years, then please check out this recent article and info graphic compiled by In These Times.

In response to the police torture of over 100 African American men on the South side of Chicago, and the continued failure of the criminal justice system to repair that damage, The Chicago Torture Justice Memorials Project "put out a call for speculative memorials to recall and honor the two-decades long struggle for justice waged by torture survivors and their families, attorneys, community organizers, and people from every neighborhood and walk of life in Chicago."  My collaborators and I at Lucky Pierre responded to this call by creating Actions for Chicago Torture Justice, an accumulating archive of actions created by both Lucky Pierre and the public in response to the Chicago police torture cases.

Iterating this work  has been a multi-faceted endeavor. There is the original list of the first 100 actions that were written by Lucky Pierre, and published in a booklet by Half Letter Press (a project of Temporary Services). We cast five of these actions in bronze so that they can be installed as—yes, commemorative bronze plaques. To continue to build this archive, and to encourage visitors to participate in a process of reflection and action, we invited them to add to our list, by writing their own actions into a ledger that we installed vis a vis the five bronze plaques.  We have also added a feature to our website that enables anyone in the world to send us their action and have it added to the list.

Additionally, we have designed curriculum in response to the piece and have been holding writing and performance workshops that question the nature of power, its abuse, and what we can do to respond to abuses of power. The next workshop is on October 18th, as part of 96 Acres' "P is for Power" series.  96 Acres is "a series of community-engaged, site-responsive art projects that address the impact of the Cook County Jail on Chicago’s West Side... [which aims] to generate alternative narratives reflecting on power, and to present creative projects that reflect the community’s vision of transformation." You can stay informed about upcoming workshops being presented by 96 Acres, by liking their Facebook page.  

Yes, there have been abuses of power. Yes, the abuses continue. Yes, you can take action in response to it. SO MANY ACTIONS. Read some examples here, and by all means, add your own. Heck, don't stop there! Perform one of these actions, or even several of them, and document what happens! We'd love to hear from you.

Learning to Walk Again

As someone who reached adulthood prior to the proliferation of cell phone use, I have many clear and fond memories of going for long walks alone, with no digital distractions or help, no set destination, and no way for anyone to reach me. But it has been a very long time since I practiced this mode of being alone with myself. This article claims a connection between this kind of long-form, free walking, and creative thinking. I met a writer once who spoke of how integral to her practice walking is. She "writes" while walking, and only while walking. Sometimes talking into a recorder, sometimes waiting to get home to put it all on paper (or perhaps screen).

I think I need to learn how to walk again. 

http://m.bbc.com/news/magazine-27186709

What we're up against

Yet another example of why the United States of America could be more acurately referred to as the United Corporations of America. 

Death to the oligarchy!!

We petition the Obama administration to maintain true net neutrality to protect the freedom of information in the United States.

Please sign this petition and share widely. The "death of net neutrality" is an assault on our ability to access broad audiences, and on our ability to hear perspectives that run counter to that of Big Business. If you are in favor of an internet that supports a multiplicity of voices, please sign.

Government hoarding of lord-only-knows-what

While going through all of my old things in preparation for a move, I have become acutely aware of the difference between hoarding impulses, and purging impulses. The United States Government needs to sit down and go through some old piles of odds-n-ends that have been languishing. After TWO years, they are still sitting on all of those Mega-upload files they confiscated. The government's refusal to sort out the good from the bad and the ugly negatively impacts the lives (and livelihood) of untold numbers of innocent mega-uploaders.

Hear the story on NPR, All Tech Considered.

Engage

This weekend Tom Finkelpearl and many others will elucidate the subject of socially engaged, dialogical, participatory, collaborative, community-based, whatchamacallit art...

MCA Talk
Out There: Contemporary Practice, Art, and Civility

Sat, Apr 26, 2014, 10  am–6 pm

View the full schedule and registration information here:

http://www2.mcachicago.org/event/mca-talk-out-there-contemporary-practice-art-and-civility/

The Pedagogical Impulse: Bad Education

Pablo Helguera is a socially engaged performance artist who works as the Direc­tor of Adult and Aca­d­e­mic pro­grams at the Museum of Mod­ern Art, New York. 

In Bad Education, an interview published in The Pedagogical Impulse, he says  "Education is about people and about visitors and they are adjusted to the porosity of social relationships. Curatorial departments, historically, are about objects and connoisseurship. They are about understanding the object and how to exhibit it and how to maintain its narrative and things like that. More and more these divisions are eroding."

[fill in the blank]: 101

This is a really great way to educate and excite a public about new programming initiatives at a museum.
When the Tate in London decided bring performance art programming to the museum they ran a weekly blog called Performance Art 101 to introduce their public to the art form, and its history.

A Good Conversation

Alison Knowles with Augustin Dupuy at the opening of Loose Pages, Emily Harvey Gallery, 1983. Photo by Melanie Hedlund. Courtesy the artist.

This is a fascinating interview of Hannah Higgins who is an art historian from the U of C and also the daughter of two key Fluxus artists. They talk about art, education, and art education as they relate to experience and pull so many influential thinkers into the discussion—from John Dewey, to John Cage and so much more. 

Project Based Learning

This is a project these students will never forget. Life skills, meet social awareness. Social awareness, meet life skills.


https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/tiny-house-collaborative-project-hth

How do we see what we look at?

Christopher Williams' three part exhibition Production Line of Happiness, now at the Art Institute of Chicago through May 18th, includes extensive selections from Williams’s ongoing project, For Example: Dix-huit Leçons sur la société industrielle  begun in 2004.  The title of this portion of the exhibition, appropriately located in the architecture and design galleries on the second floor of the Modern Wing, translates to Eighteen Lectures on Industrial Society.  It frames the internal structures of photography and design, pulling into focus insider knowledge which insiders typically don't deem interesting enough to put on display. But a laying bare of, or calling of attention to the inner workings of instruments and methodologies employed by visual communications practitioners reveals larger systems filled with workers working to create the images we consume.  For example, When I see a cross section of a camera I see the genius of it's design and engineering, I see the craftsmanship and precision with which the pieces were manufactured and then assembled together. And I see the myriad choices made available to the photographer using the instrument—choices regarding focus, depth of field, and exposure etcetera. The lenses alone are worth marveling at. I also sense the history of experimentation, which lead to finding the relationships between these myriad options, and the various components of the mechanism itself. No one is born knowing how to operate a camera like this, nor how to manipulate color and light to express an idea. The complexity of the instrument demands a period of education, and inculcation into the medium of photography as an agency for visual communication. 

In their own ways the methodologies used by the model, and by the stylist, and by the lighting technician are all every bit as complex as the machinery of the camera. I'm not sure I would have been able to arrive at this understanding without seeing these camera cross sections interspersed with the other images that reveal typically-hidden views. For example an image of a woman photographed from behind reveals not only the calloused bottoms of her feet, but also several binder clips fastened to her garments so as to make them appear snug and smooth from the front. This calls my attention to the choice of angle that the photo is taken from, and how that works hand in hand with the choice of placement for those binder clips. This photograph is a very subtle subversion of a conspiracy between these two practitioners that must exist in order to show the viewer only one perspective. I am so used to reading the content of photographs as they are "meant" to be seen, that these very restrained indicators of propaganda may have been inscrutable to me without multiple, explicit references to the inner-workings of the camera. 

Likewise, when I find myself stooping down slightly in order to "see" the photos on the wall, I am made aware of a difference I perceive between the height at which these works have been hung and the height at which I am used to seeing works hung in museums and galleries. (I am even noticing a slight, back-burner curiosity within me to know what it's hanging on... wire and hook?) The center of each work feels like it is hung at four feet from the ground. I have grown accustomed to viewing works with the center hung five feet from the ground. For me this is about nose height. Someone else's nose height may be four feet from the ground. But whose? Christopher Williams? A curator from AIC? A curator from MOMA?  An AIC preparator? I am now looking at a work of art with an awareness of the process by which someone had to measure, level, hammer, hang... How was this height arrived at and by whom?

I don't know that these exact burning questions of mine were necessarily intended by the artist, but the fact that I have them results directly from my awakened awareness of the instrument and methodology inner-workings that were harnessed to form the images I see. Williams simultaneously masters and exposes this meticulous process of image-making in such a way that everything I see, I look at as part of the piece, even the billboard advertising it... a portion of which, incidentally, lies cross-sectioned on the floor, with a clear view of the raw lumber and hardware holding it all together.

What society might learn from My Little Brony (!?)

I highly recommend watching "Bronies: the extremely unexpected adult fans of My Little Pony". It makes one uncomfortable. And yet it is also refreshing to see thousands of (mostly) straight men--a significant contingent of whom are in the MILITARY--singing songs together about kindness, smiling, and friendship as magic. It is hard to explain. One must witness the brony fandom to understand. I am still trying to process this documentary about a community of men that could NEVER have thrived like this in a pre-internet world: They enjoy stories about pastel colored ponies with cute little graphics  like rainbows and sparkles stamped on their butts.  Initially I was slightly concerned by what could be read as self infantilization—actually let me back up and admit that I was horrified the first time I watched the trailer. But then I was forced to really question my own response. Plenty of men have been horrified by the thought of female soldiers, or cops, or hockey players (not all but some). So then I thought Hmm… Is this a double standard? Am I unfairly vilifying men who simply want to celebrate the idea of a kinder, gentler (cuter) reality because they don't fit my idea of what it means to be masculine? I began to appreciate, and am even moved by the courage these guys have to reject society's punishing standards of masculinity.  On the other hand these female characters aren't exactly challenging normative expectations for girls to achieve eye-candy-cuteness all the time, which can be punishing in its own way. And I did feel a little like I was watching an extended commercial for Brony-con because the documentary was so uncritically gung-ho. Anyway it's fascinating no matter how you slice it. I think you should watch it. It's really compelling. 

User Experience

Dear Monsieur Google,

What did I ever do to you to deserve such treatment? Honestly, I do not appreciate these little mind games.  I went to my blog, clicked on "Sign in" (seems pretty straightforward so far—I wasn't trying to do anything complicated or fancy, except for SIGNING IN), and then you had to go and respond with this message: 

Let's talk.

1) Language like "you do not have access to this service" is not made more palatable when prefaced by "we are sorry" (because no you're not). 

2) Not only is an essential ACCESS DENIED message rude, it is also confusing to refer to me-trying-to-sign-in as a service you are providing. 

3) And then there is the next portion of the message, "Please contact your domain administrator for access." Really? You make it sound so simple: "It's easy, just contact your domain administrator, you remember, Geraldine from the domain administration desk, her number is 555-1234, just give her a jingle and she'll fix you right up." 

I don't know what a domain administrator is, I don't know who mine is, I don' t know her number or email address, and deep down I feel it is wrong to have to embark on a research project before I can sign in to Blogger. If you're going to make suggestions on who to "contact," provide CONTACT INFO. A link. Something. Now, had I embarked on such a research project I would have landed on a page like this:

That's a lotta reading right there, Señor Google. BUT honestly, it was just bad advice to begin with because I DIDN'T need to contact Geraldine or who ever my domain administrator is. I needed to simply sign out of my email, and then try again. I arrived at this understanding by ignoring your rude message, and asking a nearby friend. 

4) Next time you can simply say "You're logged in to the wrong account. If you have multiple accounts, try logging out of the one you are in, and then you can sign in with the one you use for Blogger. If that doesn't work, call Geraldine at the domain administration desk, her number is 555-1234. You can also email her at Geraldine@google.com.

I may be a novice, and of merely average intelligence but I have just had a crappy User Experience and I expect better from you, Herr Googlemeister. SO that's why I'm blogging about it.

Sincerely,

A concerned cyberpedagogy-ologist