Dedicated to critical cultural production at the intersection of art and activism.

Groundswell’s journal is hot off the presses, and available in our online store.  Copies are available in select book stores (see below) and are coming soon to the rest of the country and the UK!  If you’re interested in helping to distribute copies, please contact us.

This first edition focuses on crisis folklore, and includes contributions by us, Gavin Grindon (the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination), Susan Sakash (RadKidCare), John Hulsey and collaborators (City Life/Vida Urbana), Karl Fitzgerald (Real Estate 4 Ransom), the Team Colors Collective, and Chris Kennedy (basekamp/The Institute for Applied Aesthetics).

You can also buy copies from the bookstores below.

• Red Emma’s (Baltimore, MD)
• Bluestockings (NYC, NY)
• Lucy Parsons Center (Boston, MA)

Also, stop by Provisions Library in Washington, DC, and find a copy among their many other arts and social change resources.

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In celebration of their new space, the Design Studio for Social Intervention (DS4SI) will host an open house this Friday, March 5th, from 3-8PM.

SmartMeme’s Doyle Canning, DS4SI’s current Activist-in-Residence will be cohosting, and DJs Paul Nickerson and Francis Englehardt will be spinning. DS4SI is on the second floor of 1946 Washington Street, in Roxbury, MA.  See you there!

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The Urbano Project and Artists in Context lend a hand to Mel Chin’s collaborative art piece, Fundred, this weekend, as the project celebrates its Boston kick-off. Fundred is an advocacy strategy to garner $300m in federal funding for lead decontamination efforts in New Orleans. Participants draw interpretations of U.S. $100 bills, and after 3,000,000 have been collected, they will be delivered to Congress in a vegetable oil-powered armored car, along with the request that the fake bills be exchanged for real funds.

A hand-drwan Fundred from Fort Wayne, IN

The city of Boston has pledged to raise fifteen thousand Fundreds.  Participants needn’t wait for the Fundreds to come to town, as an online template will help you get involved now.

Mel Chin explains the project in his own words in the video below, from Art21.

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Somerville’s speculative history/community art project by artist Tim Devin (previously seen on Groundswell here) has launched, offering a rich vision of the next 90 years, from fleets of mobile libraries to population influx due to the flooded streets of neighboring Boston.  Grab a free PDF of the book,  or browse the full timeline here.

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We’re frequently involved in conversations about what comprises an intervention, and what makes interventions effective. The Urban Wilderness Action Center (UWAC) is expanding that line of inquiry further, asking: “What is it in which we’re intervening?”

UWAC is an Eyebeam family project, initiated by alum Jon Cohrs and in collaboration with Eyebeam Student Residents and artist Kai-Oi Jay Yung.  It’s a guerrilla gardening effort, combined with a discursive online platform that seeks out the ground beyond the more common manifestations of nonhuman life in urban environments.  Beyond those parks, urban farms, and the ivy that grows in abandoned lots, what is urban wilderness?

If you have an answer, submit it to UWAC here.

Some respondents will have the opportunity to present their ideas, selected by UWAC, at the international Electrosmog festival this March.

Via Eyebeam

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