Sunday 30 May 2010

Callout Interference 2010


Interference 2010
21-25 June 2010

Combine art, politics and protest in Interference 2010

We’re looking for artists, non-conformists, pissed off individuals, alternative thinkers and people who want to make and shake things up to join us in addressing and acting upon climate change, the environment and other social and political issues of the day.

Artsadmin’s Interference is an intensive weeklong series of collaborative workshops, actions and events in June, offering you the chance to work with new people who have a range of experiences, to test ideas in a supportive environment and to push both art and activism in an array of new directions.

Working alongside artist activists Beth Whelan and Julie Hill, participants will develop new ways of working together and making a difference. During the week we’ll look at two approaches to making change happen; reacting against present systems and creating new visions for the future. These approaches will include:
Story-telling and myth making
The history of creative resistance and some of its triumphs
Climbing and reclaiming public space
Urban foraging
Self-publishing
Skill-sharing
Night biking
Evening escapades
Intervening and interfering in everyday life, with encouraging support from guest interventionists sharing their ways of working.

The week will be based at Artsadmin’s Toynbee Studios home in East London and will be punctuated by activities and trips with a focus on participation, engaging with people who inspire and excite.

How to join us!
Interference is open to people from all backgrounds and experiences, so if you are new to art or activism and want to give it a try, if you’re interested in working collaboratively or being part of an empowering movement, then please write a short paragraph explaining why you want to get involved and send it to heather(AT)artsadmin.co.uk
Please note participants should be prepared to not only think about change, but act on it!
The workshop is limited to 20 places, so get in touch as soon as possible. The deadline for expression of interest is Friday 4 June. Open to anyone who’s 16+.

Tuesday 25 May 2010

The problem. And how we got round it.

I just don't even know what to say.

These posts are a selection of advertisements taken from The National Geographic, mainly from a few years ago now.



























Thank You Man. Thank You Science. Thank You SkyDigital.

Does that Jeep float?

There's No Better Way to Fly. Lufthansa. Selling your dreams daily*!




* from $125

YOU and THE WORLD OF WORK

With thrilling career opportunites such as these: Eyebrow Threader, Chicken De-boner, Static Security Guard and Minister of Religion, trips to the Jobbie Centre are just what i need in life.

Saturday 15 May 2010

LIBERATE TATE COMMUNIQUE #1

Dear Tate

Happy Birthday. We wish we could celebrate with you. But we can’t.

As we write, your corporate sponsor BP is creating the largest oil painting
in the world, inspired by profit margins and a culture that puts money in
front of life, its shadowy stain shimmers across the Gulf of Mexico. A toxic
tide that turns thriving ecosystems into deserts and deprives cultures of
their way of life, it is one of the world’s greatest works of corporate art,
a work that reeks of death and speaks of our society’s failure of
imagination.

Every day Tate scrubs clean BP’s public image with the detergent of cool
progressive culture. But there is nothing innovative or cutting edge about a
company that knowingly feeds our addiction to fossil fuels despite a climate
crisis, a company whose greed has killed twenty-one employees in just over a
year, a company that continues to invest in the cancer-causing climate
crimes of tar sands in Alberta, Canada.

By placing the words BP and Art together, the destructive and obsolete
nature of the fossil fuel industry is masked, and crimes against the future
are given a slick and stainless sheen.

Every time we step inside the museum Tate makes us complicit with these
acts, acts that will one day seem as archaic as the slave trade, as
anachronistic as public executions. Every time Nicholas Serota is asked how
a museum that prides itself on dealing with climate change can be funded by
an oil company he responds that there are no plans to abandon BP sponsorship
(anything to do with having an ex-CEO of BP chair Tate’s board of
trustees?).

When art activist group The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination
(Labofii) were invited to run a workshop on art and civil disobedience, they
were told by curators that they could not take any action against Tate and
its sponsors and the workshop was policed by the curators to make sure the
artists produced work “commensurate with the Tate’s mission". In March 2010,
Tate Modern ran an eco symposium, “*Rising to the Climate Change Challenge:
Artists and Scientists Imagine Tomorrow’s World*”, on the same day that Tate
Britain was celebrating twenty years of BP sponsorship with one of its ‘BP
Saturdays’. Incensed by this censorship and hypocrisy, participants in the
symposium called for a vote: 80% of the audience agreed that BP sponsorship
should be dropped by 2012.

So today we offer you a birthday present, a gift to liberate Tate from its
old-fashioned fossil fuel addiction – a gift for the future. Beginning
during your 10th anniversary party and continuing until you drop the
sponsorship deal, we will be commissioning a series of art interventions in
Tate buildings across the country. Already commissioned are *Art
Action*collective, with a birthday surprise at this weekend’s
*No Soul For Sale* event, and The *Invisible Committee*, who will infiltrate
every corner of Tate across the country in the coming months.
We invite artists to join us and act to liberate Tate. Free art from oil.

www.twitter.com/liberatetate