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

Despite a long-running rejection of foreign cultural influences, North Korea permitted its first pizzeria in March 2009.  Pies are reportedly available only to a wealthy and political elite, prompting London-based designer Hwang Kim to create Pizzas for the People.

Hwang writes:

With the aim off challenging current cultural obstacles in North Korea, I have contacted a number of Chinese smugglers in China to distribute illegal propaganda over the border to North Korea, through the popular DVD format, which players are widely found in NK homes.

The Pizza to NK is the first in a series of designed insertions that explores how design can playfully contribute and impact on a social and cultural level, subtly challenging an ideological status quo.

Cildo Meireles would be proud.

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The same rebel cyclists who swarmed COP15 and lived to tell the tale in Groundswell’s journal are bringing their postcapitalist utopian strategies to Hamburg.

The Lab of ii prepares for COP15

The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination‘s (Lab of ii) FLOOD< FLOW> SWARM will include: a pedal powered cinema performance, bike swarm trainings for experimental and aspiring cyclists, and a distributed sound swarm on the final day, intervening in the city with a mass of bike-mounted sound systems conducted by DIY radio waves.

The Lab of ii reports:

All events are free just like life should be lived > > >
FLOW: Come help pedal-power our utopian road movie, a fictional documentary based on a 7 months journey through a post-capitalist Europe of liberated zones. The world premiere of the film part of our bookfilm project Paths Through Utopias. Free popcorn for all !

August 20th & 21st – 19:00
SWARM: Bring a bike (and FM radio) and get involved in our preparations for the final intervention, Sunday’s cycle sonic adventure across the city, FLOOD. Based on our Bike Bloc trainings in civil disobedience used in Copenhagen during the UN climate summit you can practice the art of flowing like water, swarming like bees and being in a bike gang.

Sunday August 22nd – 19:00
FLOOD: The Grand Finale. Bring a bike, an FM radio and the desire for collective adventure, invite your friends and rebel cyclists, the more the merrier…

Go forth and swarm!

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The theme for this month’s sprout spaghetti dinner is On The Radio. We’re going to look at the history of radio, the artistic medium of radio, and how radio has been used as a tool for communication and organizing. As usual, it’s happening at sprout at 339R Summer St Somerville MA with dinner at 730PM–prepared by the lovely folks at Food Not Bombs–and performances starting at 8PM.

Performers will include ::

+ music by _The Russian Nonsemble_
+ Switches, a sci-fi radio drama by Paul Dworkin, will be performed by members of the local radio troupe _The Post Meridian Players_
+ _Jacques-Antoine Jean_ will speak about his radio program “Haiti Focus” and its role as a community radio program that helps connect the Haitian community in the Boston area
+ John Bell and a group of volunteer musicians will present a modern re-interpretation of _John Cage’s Radio Music_, a piece written for 8 radios

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UPDATE: RebelArt has posted pictures of Voina preparing the action, and is reporting that 3,500 cockroaches were released in the courtroom. One of Voina’s websites has more, including some of the ones below.

The court’s decision in the much-discussed Forbidden Art exhibit was handed down earlier this week, with fines for the defendant curators Yury Samodurov and Andrei Yerofeyev, for inciting religious hatred.  The radical artists collective Voina was on hand for the verdict.

In addition to grabbing headlines by painting a giant penis on the St. Petersberg bridge recently, in 2009, Voina disrupted the Taganskiy District court during the hearing of the Forbidden Art case with a one-song punk concert, performing as the punk collective Cock In the Ass.  The song they chose was All cops are bastards from the new album PLEN, a Russian acronym for “Fuck the Police Those Motherfucking Bosses.”  Watch in the video below.

As judge Svetlana Aleksandrova announced the verdict, stating that “the artwork at ‘Forbidden Art’ is very gross and very offensive for viewers and humiliates their sense of human dignity,” Voina released thousands of cockroaches into the courtroom before being detained.

3,500 roaches hit the courtroom floor

Voina’s Pytor Verzilov being detained (Image credit: Denis Sinyakov / Reuters in The Moscow Times)

The curators have vowed to appeal.

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Five members of the art activist group Culture Beyond Oil poured non-toxic black oil around the British Museum’s world famous Easter Island sculpture, in protest at BP’s sponsorship of the museum.

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