• Art

    I don’t want to write only about war. Here are some recent art exhibits I’ve seen, plus a future recommendation. Some of the shows have already closed.

    • Jeff Burton at Casey Kaplan: Trust me it was great. Casey Kaplan has a lousy website without images. There was a good article on it in HX of all places — but I can’t find it online. The whole photo shoot consisted of him spending 10 minutes with a go-go boy, Kevin, in a gay strip club in New Orleans. Kevin is wearing a red velveteen thong, white socks, and Bass Weejuns.

    • Larry Mantello – “Box Rap” at Henry Urbach — an installation of kitsch, patriotic and otherwise

    • Type A at Sara Meltzer

    • Group show at John Connelly, including Wade Guyton — no web site!

    • Öyvind Fahlström at Feigen — brillliant Scandinavian/Brazilian conceptualist whose work seems decades ahead of its time

    • Doug Wada at Elizabeth Dee — semi-photo-realistic paintings, especially for the fans and air conditioners

    • Holly Coulis at LFL Gallery — This gallery is a consistent favorite, especially for work of interesting young painters

    The future recommendation is Jules de Balincourt, opening at LFL in May. When we were there on Saturday to decide on buying a couple of works, having seen the work when visiting to see the Holly Coulis exhibit, the back was buzzing with people looking at his work. While we were there a collector/critic and a good artist stopped by to check out his work.

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  • The police state

    Police Attack California Anti-War Protesters

    OAKLAND, Calif. – Police open fired Monday morning with non-lethal bullets at an anti-war protest at the Port of Oakland, injuring several longshoremen standing nearby.

    Police were trying to clear protesters from an entrance to the docks when they opened fire and the longshoremen apparently were caught in the line of fire.

    Six longshoremen were treated by paramedics and at least one was expected to be taken to a hospital. It was unclear if any of the protesters was injured.

    “I was standing as far back as I could,” said longshoreman Kevin Wilson. “It was very scary. All of that force wasn’t necessary.”

    oakland-protester.jpg

    A protestor, who refused to give her name, bears the wounds after she says was hit by Oakland police weapon during a anti-war protest in Oakland, Calif., Monday, Aug. 7, 2003 outside the port area. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

    Also there was a demonstration at Carlyle Group in Manhattan today. I can understand that those engaged in non-violent civil disobedience were arrested, but the police also arrested legal protesters across the street from Carlyle.

    There will be a demo in support of those people at One Police Plaza tonight beginning 5-6pm.

    I think we all better leave before the 2004 GOP convention is held in NYC.

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    Update: Yahoo has a story with photos on the Oakland attack.

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  • Bridge to Baghdad

    I wrote about this project in late February right before it happened: “a live satellite conversation between students in Iraq and students in America to include the voice of a younger generation in the current public discourse.”

    I just watched a few minutes of the show on WNYE (channel 25 in Manhattan), and I’m ordering the video. The American students were at DCTV, and the Iraqi students were at this gallery — yes they have a web site. You can order the video, or watch a few minutes from it here.

    They have been unable to get any of the major networks interested in the show. I heard the producers this morning on WNYC’s On The Media show.

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  • Iraq-O-Meter

    Iraq-O-Meter

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  • Ewan loves playing gay

    I’ve never really worried about being masculine. I know it’s a very popular thing, especially in America, to not want to be seen as homosexual. But I thought it was kind of exciting.

    Ewan McGregor, via Welshcake.

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  • Hell in a handbasket

    I’m not sure I recognize this country anymore. I think we’ve slipped down the rabbit hole and only a few people I know are still sane.

    Americans say they’re ready to go after Iran and Syria next, and that driving Hummers is patriotic. They think war is something to watch on TV. This is also war, more than driving some 10 mpg SUV is:

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    William Buesing III, the biological father of U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Brian Buesing, is overcome with grief as he holds the U.S. Flag presented to him at the funeral services for his son Saturday, April 5, 2003 at Cedar Key, Fla.

    The government can hold American citizens in jail without charging them using sealed warrants. We are not a nation of laws if no one bothers to enforce the Constitution, and frankly that’s one of the only good aspects of our society. If we lose that, what do we get to be proud of? A commercial culture? The fact we can’t provide healthcare to over 41 million Americans? That we make things like Something About Mary: The Collectors Edition?

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  • War photography

    Digital Journalist has some good photo galleries from photojournalists covering the war on Iraq. [via kottke]

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  • greg.org

    Greg Allen over at greg.org is doing some great writing lately, ranging from the use of “incursion” vs. “invasion”, to Norway’s use of nonviolent tactics to resist the Nazi occupation, to Gran Fury.

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  • The Art of War

    The latest Village Voice has a good essay by Barbara Pollack on the history of protest art. One of my favorite paragragraphs is:

    Across the Met in the Assyrian gallery, artists gathered on March 5, Moratorium Day, to stage a more contemporary version of anti-war art-making, a “Draw-In for Peace,” organized by Artists Against the War, and focusing attention to the wealth of archaeological treasures in Iraq, as well as the human life, that could be destroyed by American bombing. “If you are a serious artist, you don’t want to make work that is thought of as agitprop,” says Joyce Kozloff, one of the event’s organizers, “but now I feel that what I want is to learn to do that and fast.”

    Here are links to some of the works and artists discussed in the essay:

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  • Trifecta

    Bush used to joke about hitting the trifecta. The French say we made a triple mistake with the war in Iraq.

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