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

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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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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Having just wrapped LAND/ART in New Mexico at the end of last month, the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) is back in LA, offering a guided tour of the city’s oil wells on December 18, 2009.

The bus tour is an event in conjunction with URBAN CRUDE: The Oil Fields of the Los Angeles Basin, on show in CLUI’s space since October 30th, in which the Center examines the oil field beneath they city they call home.

Los Angeles is the most urban oil field, where the industry operates in cracks, corners, and edges, hidden behind fences, and camouflaged into architecture, pulling oil out from under our feet.

Two more oil themed exhibits are upcoming this spring.  Details on this and the forthcoming shows can be found here and here, respectively.

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Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray’s Windowfarms project

Tomorrow’s workshop at Eyebeam, Play it Cool?, borrows its title from Wendell Berry’s poem, A Speech to the Garden Club of America, wherein he asks readers:

But why not play it cool? Why not survive
By Nature’s laws that still keep us alive?

Workshop facilitators Marina Zurkow, Una Chaudhuri, and Fritz Ertl will  face off against an as-yet failed climate justice movement, one that they find to be moving us back into accordance with Berry’s laws of nature “at a glacial pace and insufficient scale.”

Participants will bring their individual work to share and explore what ethics and aesthetics might jumpstart environmentalist politics, particularly using Kate Soper’s idea of aesthetic revisioning.  Some reading is required in preparation for discussion, and the materials, along with other details, can be found here.

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Commemorating the fourth anniversary of Daniel McGowan’s incarceration, his friends, family, and supporters have issued a call for art to be auctioned:

Proceeds will go to Daniel’s commissary account and a couple of his favorite environmental and social justice organizations. We are looking for art that embodies or deals with the struggles activists face in today’s climate of government repression, as well as the heart-breaking effects of prison.

Contrary to the graphic above, correspondence with the organizers indicates that the deadline is 12/10/2009.  Please see the submission guidelines here.

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