This piece is up at Democracy Cell Project Blog today, but without the seed art pictures of Franken and Cheney that Kayakbiker photographed at the MN State Fair, as we have already published those. It would be nice to make one showing the resignation of Gonzales, but I don't think I've used that particular art form since vacation Bible School when I was a kid! Bush will be in town today, so may head out to greet him. Slugbug
As Marshall McLuhan prophetically wrote in the 1960s, "Art at its most significant is a Distant Early Warning System that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it. "
Political art comes in many varieties, from official government propaganda produced with a staggering budget to products of personal convictions of individuals working on a shoe string. YouTube and other video art are the latest phenomenon to emerge, but the pieces presented below are relatively low-tech and include car art, public space installation art, and personal marquee art.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Car art can be fancy or brutally honest. The best messages are quickly absorbed, often while moving. I have often been known to follow people quite a distance if I want to photograph the message. People respond with anything from failure to notice (scary), to thumbs up and honking to flipping off the drivers. These were both photographed in Seattle.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Sometimes people with climbing skills accomplish some impressive decoration, with political intent. The peace sign was painted on an old abandoned gasworks that sits in a public park on Lake Union, Seattle. The person who painted it had to scramble over a high barbed wire barrier. The peace message with letters was strung up behind a community center, also in Seattle, which was formerly a home for unwed mothers. It is unlikely that authorities or the public would ask to have these taken down, once mounted.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Other examples, liberal and conservative, can be seen on private property situated on busy thoroughfares.
The first example is on a busy suburban to urban route in Seattle, the second is alongside the freeway heading south to Portland. Both are changed frequently, in line with the owner's reaction to happenings.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Here is one more example of a person taking it upon themselves to make the personal (response) political (others see and interpret it). This was set up at a public event, not specifically related to the event, but no one made her remove it. This takes a certain amount of courage.
“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”
Noam Chomsky quotes. (American Linguist and Activist)
“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist”
Salman Rushdie (Indian born British Writer)
Comments