The Tijuana-based artist ERRE (aka Marcos Ramirez) created this “Toy an Horse” in 1997. Its two heads faced north and south, with one set of wheeled legs in the US and the other set in Mexico. Ten years later, this border intervention seems no less apt.
Community Informatics
My friend, the artist Ryan Griffis, took this photograph of a telephone pole covered with staples and bits of paper from fliers, posters, and remnants of announcements past. With it, I am trying to capture the essence of community informatics–a phrase that brings a puzzled look to many a face. This is an image of […]
Publico transitorio
The website for the eight-day moving public event between Los Angeles, San Diego and Tijuana–Political Equator 2— is now online. It looks terrific and represents, in a phenomenal way, the collaborative possibilities of artists, scholars, and designers coming together around issues of common concern.
Time flies, racism persists
This is a photo I took in the 1990s, looking down on a wannabe headdress that was floating in Boneyard Creek. Back then it seemed like the University of Illinois mascot, Chief Illiniwek, would never go away. Yesterday, when Illinois played Michigan here, I still saw Chief Tshirts, bumper stickers, and flags everywhere. The Chief […]
Chicago. Fig.
Chicago. Fig. These are titles of two books by the photographic team of Adam Bloomberg and Oliver Chanarin. “Chicago” is the name of a cardboard and junk city in the Negev used to train Israeli and US soldiers in milieus that simulate Gaza or a refugee camp. “Fig” includes images of pine forests that have […]
Arlene, Love, and Flares in Community
Arlene Goldbard posted a new message for Rosh HaShanah on her blog. Here’s an excerpt that rings true for me: I know someone who has been saying that the world offends him. He means that our society seems off-course, with unworthy people exercising social power while many who desire a more just and merciful world […]
Laurie Long
I just heard that Laurie Long died quite suddenly of heart failure, during treatment for lung cancer, on Thursday, September 13. Laurie is in black in the photo with (L to R) M. Simon Levin, Piotr Adamczyk, and Kevin Hamilton. I remember when Laurie came to my cabin during one of her trips to Champaign-Urbana […]
Slipstreaming
Ryan Griffis recently sent around a link to an article on ctheory. Browsing the links there, I came across this 2005 interview with Christina McPhee. I like her use of “slipstreaming.” Christina McPhee: Thinking about the poetics implied by “between your body and ‘the machine’”: — one wonders if ‘machines’ could be imagined as distributive […]
Just Space(s)
I’m getting prepared to go to Los Angeles in November to see the Just Space(s) exhibit and participate in the tour from LA down to the Mexican border at Tijuana, called The Political Equator. This will be another version of a trip organized in 2006. Also during the Just Spaces exhibit there will be a […]
Berni Searle
The videos and prints by the South African artist Berni Searle, currently on view at the Krannert Art Museum, stir sensations in many ways: she climbs up, jumps and rolls down huge mounds of grape skins. I could see the stains on her white shift and almost smell the remains of fermented fruit. She sits […]
