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