I stumbled on the work of 17-year-old painter AJ while cruising through Tumblr recently. What the New Jersey based artist lacked in age she made up immensely in talent. Her work, which she documents with process shots she posts to Tumblr, is vibrant, poised and refined. It’s as if she’s possesd with an old soul. She coy-fully says she’s “no artist” but hopes she can “learn to be one.” If you ask our opinion she could give us a pointer or two.

Since I’ve taken on the massive task of reading the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, and because it’s an overwhelming mindfuck of a read, I wasn’t planning on writing anything this week. But then as I cruised through the site I call home this afternoon, I came across an article written by a reader named Eddieftw in response to my “Death Of Free Speech Pt.1″ entry from last week. First of all, I highly recommend you go and give it a read; he breaks down a very important subject that I think we all should pay more attention to. Secondly, I’d like to tip my hat to him since he made some excellent points. Such great points that the gears began to grind in my head and well, here I am, back behind my laptop and chain smoking my way through an unplanned writing session. Call it a response to a response or a sudden stroke of inspiration; whatever it is, I’m glad it happened.

Sidenote: This article is an expansion of a comment I made on Eddie’s article. So click the link in the paragraph above if you’d prefer to read the Cole’s Notes version.

While I agree with virtually everything Eddieftw had to say in his article, it was this statement that really jumped out at me: “Activism has ZERO effect if anti-intellectualism, greed, incompetence, apathy and naivety is already killing the country”.

I couldn’t have said it better. The problem with what we perceive as being “activism” is that it really isn’t that at all. Instead what we have is reaction-ism completely dependent on the approval of the majority; meaning that people wait until something they don’t like impedes on their chosen lifestyle and they react to it in accordance with the sentiments of their peers. If the general consensus is “this is bad and we don’t like it” amongst a large percentage of the group then they will gladly join the fight, but only if they are surrounded by enough people to ensure their safety should there be any repercussions for their actions. Today’s activist is no longer the mysterious figure in a black sweater and a balaclava; he’s the cashier at Starbucks, the frat boy from the upper class family, the 75 year old retired war veteran or the pissed off rapper that writes for a Hip Hop blog (*raises hand*). And as we saw from the recent SOPA debacle, now people from a variety of cultural, political, financial and ethnic backgrounds are repeatedly finding themselves banding together to fight a common enemy, which leads me to ask the question, do we all share a similar set of principles or are we all just here because it’s the popular thing to do?

To put it into perspective, Time Magazine named the protester their “Person Of The Year” for 2011. While most people would take that as a sure sign that the establishment is recognizing the power of our presence, I can’t help but wonder if it was their way of slighting the activists as if to say “Congratulations, you’re the new trend” and to encourage mainstream America to get involved in social and political activism so it can later be discredited. Perhaps this was their clever move to commercialize dissent so that it will be looked at as disingenuous and insignificant.

The upside to this is that it inadvertently works to strengthen the message by adding physical numbers to the respective movement. Rather than 100 people standing outside of the Parliament Building, you have 100,000 descending on the National Mall, which draws attention to the issues at hand. And while a lot of the people involved may not have a clue as to why they’re there in the first place, their attendance alone will spark debate amongst outsiders and possibly cause a few more people to join in. The great thing about truth is that it’s addictive and once the public gets a taste of it they will demand more. “Occupy” is a great example of this. Even though a lot of the people taking part in it are there for different reasons, they inspired millions of people to look further into their own circumstances and question their government. Regardless of their lack of organization, the message became clear: the people want change.

Unfortunately there is a downside to it all as well; a lot of the information being passed around is incorrect. We live in a society based on hearsay, where large groups of people share assumptions masked as information. In our time, truth is not defined by proven fact but on the opinion of the majority. The media pushes an idea, which is then regurgitated on the Internet (websites, blogs, etc.), people then take these opinions, reinterpret them and personalize them via Facebook and Twitter and then the rest of the population nods in agreement. Sadly, very few of these people ever take the time to trace a story back to its origin and find the motivation behind it. More often than not they just accept it and base their own knowledge of a subject on something that is a complete fabrication.

This is how the media maintains control over the average person. They know that most of the public won’t take the time to check the information and so they twist and manipulate events in order to push their own agenda. This is where “activism” becomes dangerous because it’s a path that leads to nowhere. Without ever stepping back and investigating their own motives, these people play right into the hands of the ones they’re fighting against. Instead of understanding the system and possessing the necessary awareness to effectively engage their enemy, they wait until their rights are infringed upon and spring into action after the fact. The problem with our fight is that it’s less pro-active and more reactive.

In closing, I’d just like to encourage you all to define you own individual freedom and pursue it if you aren’t already doing so. Educate yourselves on the issues that impact your life directly and work to remove whatever obstacles that are blocking your way. As Eddie pointed out in his article, there are hundreds of bills being passed into law every year which have a much more negative consequence than anything written in SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA.

Now with that said, I’m gonna get back to reading this novel known as the National Defense Authorization Act. See you next week.

Dear Society,

The idea of being defined by others rather than one self seems to permeate our culture. Parents have desires for who we should become, friends have preferences for how we should act, and society as a whole determines if our way of life is acceptable or not. This could include anything from occupations and life long dreams to small habits and personal quirks. But there is also an alternative that exists within the true self. In this photographic series, I aim to collaborate with my subjects and encourage them to react to this contrast by placing their opinions directly onto the negatives of themselves. Additionally, I am creating diptychs to reinforce this dichotomy between the imagined self and the true self, and provide a visual representation for the conflict itself. My hope is to invite the viewer to become more comfortable with the conflict within them, and more accepting of the person they dream to be.

Sincerely, Emily Detrick

“You is kind. You is smart. You is important” is the mantra that Abileen Clark (Viola Davis), a domestic worker in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s, uses to comfort and empower her employer’s daughter. Neglected by a mother who finds her too chubby and cumbersome, and a constantly absent father, Abileen is the only caring adult in the girl’s life, the one who’s there for her through real and metaphorical storms. This all while being told, she is nothing short of the opposite of her own mantra.

Based on the bestseller by the same name written by Kathryn Stocket in 2009, the movie version of The Help, directed by Tate Taylor, tells the story of the young aspiring writer Eugenia (nicknamed Skeeter and played by Emma Stone). Skeeter is different from Elizabeth (Ahna O’Reilly), Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her other friends who spend their time playing bridge, organizing charity events and being snooty. Instead of trying to find a husband, Skeeter’s focusing on her career. She also believes that black domestic workers shouldn’t be treated as subhumans; a radical view stemming from her relationship with her old nanny Constantine (Cicely Tyson), who raised Skeeter before disappearing without a trace.

After landing a job answering housekeeping questions for a newspaper column, Skeeter, who knows nothing about housework, asks Elizabeth to let her domestic worker Abileen help her. After a short time in Abileen’s company, Skeeter realizes that life as a black domestic worker isn’t all rosy, and the idea is born to collect the stories of all the invisible hardworking black women surrounding her and her friends and write a book. Initially reluctant Abileen eventually succumbs and convinces her friend Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer), an outspoken lady who has just been fired by Hilly to help Skeeter realize her dream. As the film progresses the audience is treated to various displays of racist stuck up behavior, bad parenting, loyalty and silent resistance. “This isn’t about me. It doesn’t matter what I feel,” Skeeter promises early in the film which turns out to be mainly about her, Elizabeth, Hilly and the ostracized housewife Celia (Jessica Chastain).

As New York Press’ reviewer Armond White points out the main aim of the film is to entertain, which might explain the lack of engagement with the subject matter at a level that considers the changes that have influenced discussions about race, gender and power in America since the sixties. The approach makes for a dated film that requires the audience to ignore the most important change; that black American women no longer rely on white spokespersons to voice their concerns. In 2012, we have a Black President but a black actor can’t get noticed at the Oscar’s let alone win unless it’s in a yawn-worthy period piece like The Help. Abileen’s, Minny’s and Constantin’s primary function in The Help, a film that does little to challenge traditional racial power dynamics, and translates black agency into steeling and black pride into frying chicken, is simply to help us distinguish good whites from bad, coward and victim whites. Maybe the shallow treatment of the complex subject matter and the blatant stereotyping (incl. Minny delivering one Chappellesque line about chicken after the other, among them “Frying chicken just makes me feel better about life. I just love me some fried chicken”) got in the way of all the fun, but regardless, the film would have gained from more nuance and less slapstick.

The ethos of the film is that of Skeeter; quite radical in the 1960s, less so in 2011. Black underprivileged women playing second fiddle to their white counterparts isn’t the problem. It’s just a pity that the white women, having forgotten how much they loved their black nannies as children, let the black help raise their children but not use their bathrooms. For someone in tune with this ethos it makes sense that Skeeter is the one who contributes with ambition and skills, and her informants (even if they, like Abileen, also are aspiring writers) with sensational stories about daily humiliation to be turned into literature by Skeeter. To assume, as Skeeter does when finding out what happened to her nanny, that the old woman, who at least until the day she disappeared had a brave and caring daughter by her side (LaChanze), wouldn’t survive another minute without Skeeter isn’t outrageous given the logical framework of the film, and similarly there’s nothing strange about Skeeter’s narcissistic reluctance to leave the thirty something informants in the racist town for an attractive job in New York. A concern that reminds me of a that of the man who approaches a group of girlfriends in a bar, asking them what they’re doing there all alone.

Different approaches at different times; that’s how to make any story relevant at any time. Nothing illustrates this better than the example of The Stepford Wives, the 1974 novel by Ira Levin which was adapted to the big screen in 1975 and 2004, and to TV in 1980, 1987 and 1996. Also dealing with oppressive and reactionary ideals, each version of the original story reflects the time in which it was made, with hypnosis being the tool of domination in the 1980 version, role reversal in 1996, and a woman being the master brain running the show in the 2004 version in which the women have become sex- and cash machines. In response to Taylor’s dealing with The Help, nothing feels more appropriate than to conclude in the same non-innovative and slightly offensive manner that characterizes his take on the story:

You is patronizing. You is irrelevant. You is out of touch.

Watch This Space: You’re welcome, black people. White people, solve Racism.

Are you ready to JUMP?

The Perfect Cherry Blossom is a symbol for flourishing spring and peace, but also the name of one of the most advanced and violent Japanese Bullet Hell Games. A video game made by gamers for gamers from a time before the gaming industry turned into a home entertainment device. Artists Keiichi Tanaami and Oliver Payne explored this game in their latest series of work.

In the films by Keiichi Tanaami pop culture from east and west meet. Abstracted, post-traumatic impressions from the Great Tokyo Air Raid are combined with LSD fantasies and aesthetics of consumption merge with hallucinatory erotic desires. Tanaami is one of the most influential Pop Art artists of post-war Japan. His work had a great impact on a younger generation of artists working with pop aesthetics in Japan and abroad like Oliver Payne.

In Oliver Payne’s collages stickers of Japanese Bullet Hell Games are arranged on torn out pages of an ancient Greek sculpture catalog. Payne transforms the violent imagery of these videogames into psychedelic explosions of color. Greek statues serve as a background and a reminder of the fantasy worlds produced in Japanese arcade games, which often picture rural Europe. Sounds of an arcade field recording give a notion of manic playfulness towards the exhibited works.

The arcade has traditionally represented an idea of a “third space” for teens. Too young to go to bars, adolescents have so few places to hang. I like places like that — skate spots, graffiti halls of fame, arcades. Slightly sketchy places for teens to kick it. The arcade industry is on the way out and they really wont be around for much longer. I think places like these are important to document. An aural representation of them makes the most sense to me as the “noises” they create have these completely inimitable and unique quality. Nothing but an arcade sounds like an arcade — a completely deafening cacophony of bleeps, bangs, teenage yells and deposited tokens. It’s a noise that I can hear many bands aspiring to capture — but always falling short of the mark. Perhaps due to the fact that they don’t spend hours playing in arcades.

 Another motivating factor for the recordings is that it poses the question: Why are arcade on the decline? Why have they they been shutting at an alarming rate? The lazy answer is that home consoles such as the PS3 and the XBOX360 are so good that they have brought arcade quality to the home. But arcades are still in full force in Japan. So why can the west no longer profit from dedicated gaming rooms? Oliver Payne

“Everything is born of the need to answer the call of the subconscious.
Open a channel where can emerge, these dream images that come to my mind.
I try to illustrate a confusing message, which will take effect over time.
My work reflects a personal universe that is embraced with Dada and Surrealism kisses.
Bright colors, nature, humanity and the spark that gives life, are the protagonists of this in my work, which is constantly evolving. Always with hands full of spray paint, crop images, draw, paint, on paper, canvas or digital, trying to not have any structure or steps. Try my work is an invitation to travel without movement and feel without touching.” – Ale Sinestro

sorteo / prize draw: “Torre de Babel” (dic’11) from ale siniestro on Vimeo.

Ale Sinestro is a self-taught Argentinian artist, born in Buenos Aires in 1982. In his teens, he made poster and flyer illustrations for underground punk rock bands from Argentina. At the of age 22 he moved to Berlin, Germany, where the explosion of the 1990s underground art street scene influenced and encouraged him to develop and dig deeper. Street art often associated as a platform for social or political activism, notoriously if not always blurs boundaries. With Sinestro it is no different. Contemporary culture is his medium as he uses iconographic collage as a primary weapon, superimposing colorful images evoking dreamlike scenes. The succubus surrealist narrative of his work is clear. In which the element of surprise and unexpected juxtapositions are common, if not defining theme throughout his prints and videos. His prints, generally small in scale (no larger than 12x16in in size), often depict an uncomfortable mix-mashed confusion of human figures with animal anatomy and vice-versa. Described as dreamlike, they could only be found in the darkest of fetish nightmares or perhaps on the downward spiral of the brightest acid trips.

In September of last year Sinestro had his first exhibition in the United States in the C.a.v.e. Gallery in Los Angeles, California. Dig for Fire was a group show curated by Kevin Titzer, of art inspired by the 1980s American alternative rock band Pixies. Sinestro exhibited art-work Ed is Dead- a canvas print which had been digitally collaged. Characteristically Ed is Dead is true to Sinestro’s vexatious nature, a colorful contortion of nine human hands manipulated to depict features of a human face. Where the eye would find the eyes, they are round wide and startled, symptomatic to that of an owl. The mouth is a dark hole surrounded by the eroticism of a single male hand gesture. It speaks of the self-satisfaction of masculine power play. However on closer inspection of the image as collective whole, another hand gesture could be in the foreground, a symbol of anti fascism-the Nazi salute appearing upside down as a nugatory. Given Sinestro history with Berlin and the street art scene, this may not be such a far off assumption. The piece is a colorful mix of suggestive stupor.

Currently living in Barcelona, Spain, the theatrical eccentricity and complacency of Sinestro’s work continuous to attempt to reveal the unconscious and reconcile it with rational life.

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known.”
– Chuck Palahniuk from “Invisible Monsters”

“If feels a bit reductive…” “What does that mean?” “…Look it up.”

Originality is a big lie that artists tell themselves. We like to think our intellect is so great that everything we think is solely our idea. But we fail to realize, all art comes from art. Can we even be ‘original’ in the first place? No. The true masters have made magic, by combining two, three or four or more previous ideas to create something totally new.

Artists are the closest thing to gods on earth, and even we can not make something out of nothing. Everything evolves from a base idea. You can define originality two ways, one which one argues originality is coming up with a whole new concept while the other one is more of a compromise that one is original if one can take shreds of existing ideas to form one of your own. I think the latter definition is more reasonable. And If we adhere to the latter idea, then it is quite a paradoxical idea of originality. We have more of a reason to believe in creativity than originality.

Anything you think already exist because you are thinking it, all art is theft. Picasso said it best, “bad artists imitate, good artists steal.” What would Jay-Z be without the old songs he sampled? Or Big Daddy Kane and Biggie for that matter? Before GaGa there was Madonna. And before Madonna there was Marilyn Monroe. That’s a bit, reductive. Call it Blonde Ambition or not, but Madge isn’t the only one who’s got a bone to pick with Mother Monster. Colette Justine, the legendary downtown performance artist who often simply goes by “Colette,” is accusing Lady Gaga of stealing her ideas in a new video titled, “Looking for Lady Gaga.”

Dear Colette, you are unique, just like everyone else. ;-P

Watch This Space – Pop: because maybe, it was born this way #kanyeshrug

Olek‘s first solo exhibition in the UK, opens this Thursday, January 26 at Tony’s Gallery in London. Entitled I do not expect to be a mother, but I do expect to die alone, the show runs through March 23, and features a bevy of her signature crocheted mixed media sculptural environments which according to the artist, “tell a story that’s a reflection of life, love trust and lust in our trying modern times.”

“It is not just another apartment installation,” Olek explains. “It is the progression of my life as a woman, as a female artist put together through text messages, emails and personal objects and experiences… blood, sweat and tears and cum camouflaged with the sparkle of my colourful cheeky humour, as we all do when carrying on with our lives.” Take a closer look at a London street car she crocheted in addition to a piece that will show at the gallery below.

According to the gallery, “Niels artistic focus expanded when he begun study under Anthon Beeke, a Dutch graphic designer considered an expert in the field, and went on to start a deisgn company named Caulfield & Tensing, an advertising agency named Unruly. Niels continued to stay busy working as Creative Director of all MTV brands, and then devolping Calligraffiti, a personal style of combining calligraphy with graffiti, in 2007. Neils unveiled his Calligraffiti exhibit in Amsterdam, where it enjoyed a successful opening, and the success continued into 2010 when Niels published the book Calligraffiti, and promoted it with a 22-city tour.”