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

Adam Friedman’s “No Vestige of a Beginning, No Prospect of and End” (2010)

Big Shots | Take a look at the rich, white men at the top rung of the NYC cultural ladder. [NYTimes]

DIY WPA | The Work Projects Administration is experiencing a revival, at the hands of public artists and community organizers. [WPA]

Reason to Interfere | Invitations are being solicited for work combining art, politics, and protest, for Interference 2010. [Artsadmin]

Preference & Prejudice | Tackle the issue of bias where art and politics  meet. [The Arts Politic]

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Heather and Ivan Morrison’s How to Survive the Coming Bad Years

Sweet Release | Autonomedia’s dropping their new book, Critical Strategies in Art and Media, and throwing a big party. [Eyebeam]

Eponymedia | The conference that inspired the book, also titled Critical Strategies in Art and Media, featured Steve Kurtz, Bifo, Brian Holmes, and more.  The video documentation can be watched online. [World-Information Institute]

We ♥ Geo-Affinities | Spend some time with this experimental mapping project exploring the interrelation of gender, ethnicity, race, class and sexualities in contemporary European art. [GenderArtNet]

Groundswell Gains | We wrote a piece on how we work, and what we do when we work. [Sheepless]

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In commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Toward Women and Girls, five SF Bay Area artist/activist groups are staging a public multi-arts performance, including appearances by Judy Grahn, MamaCoAtl, SF Mayor Mayor Gavin Newsom, and Nina Serrano, among others.

Image source.

They Are All Our Daughters! / Todas Son Nuestras Hijas! is one of a planned 16 Days of Artivism for the Healing of Violence.

From November 25th to december 10th, 2009, community organizations, artists, curators, educators, healers and all those who care, are asked to organize, to hold space for the most important work of our generation; healing the violence.

Thanks, Anna!

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(Anne Elizabeth Moore is an author, editor, artist, teacher, and Groundswell guest blogger. She divides her time between Chicago and Cambodia, where she teaches young women the art of self-publishing.)

Perhaps by accident, Groundswell has invited someone who thinks obsessively about text and vocabulary and dialogue and communication to contribute to its mostly visual pages. One who, moreover, feels that what is missing from our society at large and the immediate network of artists and activists Groundswell is among, is space for analysis. Those of us who work toward transformative justice are fully, daily, frustratingly aware that this is work rooted in dialogue. And Paolo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed reminds us that “the essence of dialogue itself” is “the word.” Emphasis his.

So: I make language-based work to contribute to a vocabulary of change. You can find some here, in German, Khmer, English, Spanish, and Arabic. For the next few weeks, I will make some here on this blog, with you.

Then, after that, I will return to Cambodia, where I conduct ongoing work with young women — doing what? Oh, the same exact thing: participating in a dialogue about social justice and human rights, although this one in the weird mixture of English and the Cambodian language called Khmenglish. It’s a project I’ve come to call The Advantage and Disadvantage of Zine, because we have so far focused on zine- and bookmaking. Incarnations of this project have appeared in Chicago, New York, LA, Southern Illinois, Providence, and South Texas.

Social change happens through dialogue, and dialogue occurs in shared language and over shared experiences. But sometimes, there are pictures, sure.

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Christa Donner‘s work will be on display at EveryBody!

Chicago’s I Space Gallery will host a retrospective of the visual culture of the United States Women’s Health Movement this September 11-October 10, 2009.  EveryBody!, curated by Bonnie Fortune, includes contemporary and historical works, beginning with posters, ephemera, and literature of the late 1960s-1970s.  The show will include presentations and performances by artists and activists working towards health care justice in the present day offering

creative responses to and representations of the issues surrounding the health needs of women, men, and transgendered people.

Opening night will include a performance by cyberfeminists subRosa, and other such allies as Just Seeds, the Library of Radiant Optimism/Let’s Re-make the World, the Pink Bloque, and Favianna Rodriguez.

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