Label :
Saturday, June 30, 2007
echelon: who is watching you?
Opening Friday August 3 from 6pm-10pm
August 3 - September 1, 2007
"One cannot use spies without sagacity and knowledge, one cannot use spies without humanity and justice" - Sun Tzu
"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face… was itself a punishable offense."
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 5
US surveillance began centuries ago with the concept of slave passes, which allowed slave-owners to monitor and control the mobility of their "chattel." Yet the slave pass system was sometimes subverted by the rare slaves who could write, such as Frederick Douglass. These literate slaves could create their own passes and might thus gain freedom for themselves and other slaves. Trafficking in passes and "free papers" soon became a burgeoning business, one that the slave system grappled with for nearly two centuries.
From slaves, the history of surveillance next turns to the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which restricted Chinese immigration to the United States. All Chinese laborers were forced to register with the government and subject themselves to being photographed and fingerprinted. A whole apparatus of surveillance was created.
In the 1920s, government surveillance spread to political radicals, especially workers trying to organize union activity. J. Edgar Hoover headed this government surveillance unit which would later become the FBI. As the 20th century advanced, computer technology proved a powerful enhancement to the regime of surveillance. This allowed most devices and databases to be monitored and evaluated, including automobiles, Your car can be tracked by GPS, and your spending habits can be gleaned from accessing your credit card records. Internet and email are monitored in the workplace and cameras are just about everywhere.
For this show artists will explore the history of surveillance and how this affects us at this present time. They will in turn create work dealing with this theme which will include 2D work, installation, and new media.
ARTISTS PARTICIPATING:
Anni Holm
Drew Browning and Annette Barbier
Dustin Klare
Elvia Rodriguez-Ochoa
Finishing School
Gretel Garcia
Ian Simmons
Jesus Macarena-Avila
Noelle Mason
Patricht Lichty
Tom Sibley
T.W. Li
Venia Bechrakis
Polvo, www.polvo.org
1458 W. 18th St., 1R Chicago, IL 60608
773.344.1940
info@polvo.org
Friday, June 29, 2007
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Mandorla magazine graciously offered an ad spot for Polvo on their next issue. Below is info about the mag and the ad I designed.
First published in Mexico City in 1991, Mandorla emphasizes innovative writing in its original language--most commonly English or Spanish--and high-quality translations of existing material. Visual art and short critical articles complement this work.
The name of the magazine--mandorla, describing a space created by two intersecting circles--alludes to the notion of exchange and imaginative dialogue that is necessary now among the Americas.
Mandorla is a member of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Churches Providing Sanctuary for Illegal Immigrants
Transcript from the News Hour with Jim Lehrer
June 18, 2007
--->See the streaming video
---->Hear the mp3
Churches and other faith-based groups in Chicago are providing housing and other resources for illegal immigrants in defiance of federal laws. The NewsHour reports on how these churches are part of a larger sanctuary movement in America.
WALTER "SLIM" COLEMAN, Chicago Activist: No child should have to go through this kind of pressure.
JIM LEHRER: Every weekday afternoon for the last nine months, longtime Chicago activist and minister Walter "Slim" Coleman has driven 8-year-old Saul Arellano home from school. Saul's home during this time has been a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of Coleman's storefront church, Adalberto Methodist in Humboldt Park on the city's near west side.
Saul and his mother, Elvira, have lived here ever since she defied deportation orders last August. In this country illegally since 1997, Arellano was convicted in 2003 for using a false Social Security number, and deportation orders were issued. She was granted three extensions in order to treat her son's hyperactive medical condition, but when the last expired, instead of reporting to immigration authorities, Arellano took sanctuary in the church apartment.
Surveillance monitors are mounted in the living room in case the church is raided. Arellano has not left the church once since she arrived.
ELVIRA ARELLANO (through translator): When I arrived at this church, they opened their doors to me. They made me feel welcome to become part of this church, and the most important thing is, they gave me space to be able to continue to struggle to be able to stay here with my son.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The Arellanos' experience at Adalberto Church has helped inspire a larger sanctuary movement across the country. Last month, a coalition of faith-based organizations from five major cities, including Chicago, announced it would shield undocumented immigrants from deportation, offering legal help, financial support, and, if needed, sanctuary.
MARTHA PIERCE, Chicago Metro Sanctuary Alliance: It's a big thing for a congregation to take on, because we regard it really as a real commitment to supporting these people and walking with them in whatever happens with them.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Martha Pierce of the group Chicago Sanctuary is helping coordinate church involvement in the new effort. At a recent meeting, several local religious representatives discussed the need to step in where they think the nation's immigration laws have failed.
MICHAEL MCCONNELL, American Friends Service Committee: Mexico, tremendous hospitality to us coming there. Why can't we have that same hospitality here for people who are forced to leave their country, in this case, economic refugees, rather than political refugees?
SIDNEY HOLLANDER, Kam Isaiah Israel Synagogue: Welcoming the stranger in the Hebrew Bible really refers to welcoming, you might say, resident alien, the foreigner who lives in your midst, in our midst. And this applies absolutely precisely to the undocumented immigrants we're talking about now.
Dangers of providing sanctuary
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: But harboring undocumented aliens is a crime, and current and former federal immigration officials we talked with say these churches and activists are traveling down a very dangerous road. Brian Perryman is the former federal immigration director for the Chicago region.
BRIAN PERRYMAN, Former Immigration Official: I think that they need to consider the fact that they might place themselves in jeopardy, in terms of violation of federal law, and I'm not talking about misdemeanors. I'm talking about felonies. So I think that congregations need to think long and hard about that. If they have a person that they believe should be assisted, then they need to pursue every provision of the law to try to get their situation corrected under the law.
KIM BOBO, Interfaith Worker Justice: We believe what we are doing is really calling forth a higher law, which is really God's law, of caring for the immigrant.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Activist Kim Bobo, of Interfaith Worker Justice, connects immigrants in fear of deportation with those churches providing sanctuary. On her office patio outside Edgewater Presbyterian Church on Chicago's north side, Bobo declared that the notion of providing sanctuary is rooted in American tradition.
KIM BOBO: Throughout our history, when systems and laws have been so broken, the religious community has challenged those in some public ways. So under slavery, we saw congregations being a part of the underground railroad; during the civil rights movement, we saw congregations challenging the laws; and so again today, and also in the '80s, we saw congregations stepping forth and providing sanctuary for immigrants and refugees coming in from Central America.
Chicago's sanctuary program
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: In fact, Chicago was a central front in a sanctuary movement in the mid-1980s, when churches and synagogues helped resettle refugees fleeing civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala. Five hundred congregations across the country sheltered some 1,000 people who had been denied political asylum in the United States.
Many of those asylum-seekers protected by the '80s movement are still in the country today.
JOSE OLIVA: My dad literally had to sell blood, sometimes on a weekly basis, just for extra cash because we didn't have money to buy clothes or we didn't have money to pay the gas bill and that kind of thing.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Jose Oliva was a 13-year-old in 1985, walking the north side streets of Albany Park, searching for work and food with his father. His family fled war-torn Guatemala after government forces threatened Jose's mother with death for trying to improve the learning environment in the school where she taught. Unable to get political asylum in the U.S., the family entered on a tourist visa and stayed.
Today, Oliva is a permanent resident and one of Kim Bobo's staffers at Interfaith Worker Justice. He credits the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation, or JRC, on Chicago's north side, for providing his family with invaluable support.
JOSE OLIVA: When we came here and we lived in this building, we actually didn't have enough money to buy food every week, so my parents got most of the food that we got donated through a variety of different congregations that were part of the sanctuary movement. The JRC was particularly important in connecting us, both with an apartment that we could afford, and with other individuals that were able to support us.
New sanctuary movement
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Today, many of those who stand to benefit from the new sanctuary movement likely will come from the Hispanic-dominated west side neighborhoods of Pilsen and Little Village. Taquerias and food vendors dot the landscape here, as do colorful murals painted by a growing number of local artists.
Many small, unmarked art studios have popped up, including this one, called Polvo, "Dust" in Spanish. Elvia Rodriguez Ochoa is a teacher-activist and an artist who shares space here. She said several neighborhood raids by machine-gun-toting immigration agents in recent months have startled the community and sent many into hiding.
And so news of a new sanctuary movement has been celebrated on the streets here, where the number of undocumented immigrants is unknown, but estimated to be very high.
ELVIA RODRIGUEZ OCHOA, Teacher-Activist: A lot of these families felt very afraid and felt that there was nobody they could turn to that would understand what they were going through. And with the sanctuary movement surging, then all of a sudden, it's like, "Oh, well, I can go to this church. They're trying to help out. They're trying to understand."
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Though Elvira Arellano is the only person in sanctuary here whose case is publicly known, activists estimate there may be as many as 100 others being sheltered here as part of this new sanctuary movement. Arellano said she and her son, Saul, will stay in hiding for as long as necessary, that God is on their side.
That's not how former immigration official Brian Perryman sees it.
BRIAN PERRYMAN: I think she's exploiting her son. And I think that she really has -- and most immigration experts will tell you -- that she has absolutely no chance at prevailing in litigation. And, In fact, she has attempted to prevail in litigation and lost. So I don't really see her as a sanctuary person, per se. She's a person who is trying to use her son to protect herself from removal.
ELVIRA ARELLANO (through translator): Why would I take him to a country that he doesn't know, that is not his country? This is his country, and here is where he'll have the opportunities that don't exist in my country.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Arellano, who only goes as far as her back garden, could be arrested at any time, according to immigration officials, but they consider her a low priority. It remains to be seen how the authorities will react if more undocumented immigrants choose to follow Elvira Arellano's lead and seek sanctuary.
Transcript from the News Hour with Jim LehrerJune 18, 2007
--->See the streaming video
---->Hear the mp3
Churches and other faith-based groups in Chicago are providing housing and other resources for illegal immigrants in defiance of federal laws. The NewsHour reports on how these churches are part of a larger sanctuary movement in America.
WALTER "SLIM" COLEMAN, Chicago Activist: No child should have to go through this kind of pressure.
JIM LEHRER: Every weekday afternoon for the last nine months, longtime Chicago activist and minister Walter "Slim" Coleman has driven 8-year-old Saul Arellano home from school. Saul's home during this time has been a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of Coleman's storefront church, Adalberto Methodist in Humboldt Park on the city's near west side.
Saul and his mother, Elvira, have lived here ever since she defied deportation orders last August. In this country illegally since 1997, Arellano was convicted in 2003 for using a false Social Security number, and deportation orders were issued. She was granted three extensions in order to treat her son's hyperactive medical condition, but when the last expired, instead of reporting to immigration authorities, Arellano took sanctuary in the church apartment.
Surveillance monitors are mounted in the living room in case the church is raided. Arellano has not left the church once since she arrived.
ELVIRA ARELLANO (through translator): When I arrived at this church, they opened their doors to me. They made me feel welcome to become part of this church, and the most important thing is, they gave me space to be able to continue to struggle to be able to stay here with my son.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The Arellanos' experience at Adalberto Church has helped inspire a larger sanctuary movement across the country. Last month, a coalition of faith-based organizations from five major cities, including Chicago, announced it would shield undocumented immigrants from deportation, offering legal help, financial support, and, if needed, sanctuary.
MARTHA PIERCE, Chicago Metro Sanctuary Alliance: It's a big thing for a congregation to take on, because we regard it really as a real commitment to supporting these people and walking with them in whatever happens with them.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Martha Pierce of the group Chicago Sanctuary is helping coordinate church involvement in the new effort. At a recent meeting, several local religious representatives discussed the need to step in where they think the nation's immigration laws have failed.
MICHAEL MCCONNELL, American Friends Service Committee: Mexico, tremendous hospitality to us coming there. Why can't we have that same hospitality here for people who are forced to leave their country, in this case, economic refugees, rather than political refugees?
SIDNEY HOLLANDER, Kam Isaiah Israel Synagogue: Welcoming the stranger in the Hebrew Bible really refers to welcoming, you might say, resident alien, the foreigner who lives in your midst, in our midst. And this applies absolutely precisely to the undocumented immigrants we're talking about now.
Dangers of providing sanctuary
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: But harboring undocumented aliens is a crime, and current and former federal immigration officials we talked with say these churches and activists are traveling down a very dangerous road. Brian Perryman is the former federal immigration director for the Chicago region.
BRIAN PERRYMAN, Former Immigration Official: I think that they need to consider the fact that they might place themselves in jeopardy, in terms of violation of federal law, and I'm not talking about misdemeanors. I'm talking about felonies. So I think that congregations need to think long and hard about that. If they have a person that they believe should be assisted, then they need to pursue every provision of the law to try to get their situation corrected under the law.
KIM BOBO, Interfaith Worker Justice: We believe what we are doing is really calling forth a higher law, which is really God's law, of caring for the immigrant.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Activist Kim Bobo, of Interfaith Worker Justice, connects immigrants in fear of deportation with those churches providing sanctuary. On her office patio outside Edgewater Presbyterian Church on Chicago's north side, Bobo declared that the notion of providing sanctuary is rooted in American tradition.
KIM BOBO: Throughout our history, when systems and laws have been so broken, the religious community has challenged those in some public ways. So under slavery, we saw congregations being a part of the underground railroad; during the civil rights movement, we saw congregations challenging the laws; and so again today, and also in the '80s, we saw congregations stepping forth and providing sanctuary for immigrants and refugees coming in from Central America.
Chicago's sanctuary program
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: In fact, Chicago was a central front in a sanctuary movement in the mid-1980s, when churches and synagogues helped resettle refugees fleeing civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala. Five hundred congregations across the country sheltered some 1,000 people who had been denied political asylum in the United States.
Many of those asylum-seekers protected by the '80s movement are still in the country today.
JOSE OLIVA: My dad literally had to sell blood, sometimes on a weekly basis, just for extra cash because we didn't have money to buy clothes or we didn't have money to pay the gas bill and that kind of thing.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Jose Oliva was a 13-year-old in 1985, walking the north side streets of Albany Park, searching for work and food with his father. His family fled war-torn Guatemala after government forces threatened Jose's mother with death for trying to improve the learning environment in the school where she taught. Unable to get political asylum in the U.S., the family entered on a tourist visa and stayed.
Today, Oliva is a permanent resident and one of Kim Bobo's staffers at Interfaith Worker Justice. He credits the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation, or JRC, on Chicago's north side, for providing his family with invaluable support.
JOSE OLIVA: When we came here and we lived in this building, we actually didn't have enough money to buy food every week, so my parents got most of the food that we got donated through a variety of different congregations that were part of the sanctuary movement. The JRC was particularly important in connecting us, both with an apartment that we could afford, and with other individuals that were able to support us.
New sanctuary movement
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Today, many of those who stand to benefit from the new sanctuary movement likely will come from the Hispanic-dominated west side neighborhoods of Pilsen and Little Village. Taquerias and food vendors dot the landscape here, as do colorful murals painted by a growing number of local artists.
Many small, unmarked art studios have popped up, including this one, called Polvo, "Dust" in Spanish. Elvia Rodriguez Ochoa is a teacher-activist and an artist who shares space here. She said several neighborhood raids by machine-gun-toting immigration agents in recent months have startled the community and sent many into hiding.
And so news of a new sanctuary movement has been celebrated on the streets here, where the number of undocumented immigrants is unknown, but estimated to be very high.
ELVIA RODRIGUEZ OCHOA, Teacher-Activist: A lot of these families felt very afraid and felt that there was nobody they could turn to that would understand what they were going through. And with the sanctuary movement surging, then all of a sudden, it's like, "Oh, well, I can go to this church. They're trying to help out. They're trying to understand."
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Though Elvira Arellano is the only person in sanctuary here whose case is publicly known, activists estimate there may be as many as 100 others being sheltered here as part of this new sanctuary movement. Arellano said she and her son, Saul, will stay in hiding for as long as necessary, that God is on their side.
That's not how former immigration official Brian Perryman sees it.
BRIAN PERRYMAN: I think she's exploiting her son. And I think that she really has -- and most immigration experts will tell you -- that she has absolutely no chance at prevailing in litigation. And, In fact, she has attempted to prevail in litigation and lost. So I don't really see her as a sanctuary person, per se. She's a person who is trying to use her son to protect herself from removal.
ELVIRA ARELLANO (through translator): Why would I take him to a country that he doesn't know, that is not his country? This is his country, and here is where he'll have the opportunities that don't exist in my country.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Arellano, who only goes as far as her back garden, could be arrested at any time, according to immigration officials, but they consider her a low priority. It remains to be seen how the authorities will react if more undocumented immigrants choose to follow Elvira Arellano's lead and seek sanctuary.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
There only needs to be one Time Based Art Show, you can set your Time Machine’s Coordinates to the following event:
Time Travelers: Time Based Art Show and Panel Discussion
Curated by [Amelia Winger-Bearskin]
June 29 - July 28, 2007
Opening June 29th at 6pm - 10pm, Live performances begin at 7pm
Panel Discussion Saturday June 30th at 3pm followed by an encore sound art performance
Time Traveler’s is a holistic look at pre-apocalyptic, post-feminist, trans-structuralist, and post post-modern misadventures. Time Traveler’s celebrates misanthropic investigations of human relationships, subversion, and mayhem of any variety; we are actively against describing ourselves anything as simple as avant-garde. Time Travelers recognizes that NEW MEDIA has incorrectly been identified as the repository for all art technologies utilizing a video camera, a computer, and an electrical outlet, but insists that as artists, first and foremost, we can use any f*&%@!’n media we want!
Artists Featured:
Donata Napoli
Dietmar Krumery
Universe of Junk
Haircuts by Robots
Bidzina Kanchaveli
Artur Augustynowicz
Joseph Winchester
Bailie Duncan
Guiniviere Webb
Per Erihsson
Michael Una
Christopher Borkowski
Also this month:
flatsceen DVD by Marina Zurkow
At 3pm on Saturday june 30th we are holding the Time Travelers Panel discussion:
Each time a loaded art word is used, two or more universes will be created in which differing ideas become the dominate paradigm [Everett-Wheeler Graham Theory of Branching Universes]. The following panelists will be but may not be in attendance [Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle]:
- Suntek Chung a well known Performance Artist and Photographer
- Christopher Borkowski co-founder of the video portal [PAM] Perpetual Art Machine
- Guiniviere Webb a time based art educator.
- Patricht Lichty a Professor of Interactive Arts and Media at Columbia College Chicago
The most contentious art movement since the Dadaists, this Time Traveler community discussion on time, space, art and possibilities will occur. Due to the implications of Bell’s Therom, it will link listeners at a Quantum Level across n-dimensional Hilbert Space. WARNING: This panel may be outrageous, and may use utilize a ridiculous blend of word-salad artspeak. Please, a special request to time travelers: check in before teleporting during the panel.
Free Manifestos available at Polvo
Download PDF POSTCARD
Patricht Lichty bio:
For much of the past ten years, much of Patrick Lichty's performance has involved issues including presence/anonymity and critical personae, collaborating with Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Fluxus, Annie Sprinkle, and RTMark. For this panel, Patrick will appear as the shape-shifting Second Life performance artist, Man Michinaga. Man will take part in the discussion and "respond" from his virtual padded room. What part does public persona have to do with the artist as object? Here, What You See is What You Get. Patrick Lichty is a technologically-based conceptual/performance artist, writer, independent curator,
co-founder of Second Front, the first performance art company in Second Life, animator for the activist group, The Yes Men, and Editor-in-Chief of Intelligent Agent Magazine in NYC. Venues in which Lichty has been involved with solo and collaborative works include the Whitney Biennial as well as the International Symposium on the Electronic Arts (ISEA). He is currently Professor of interactive Arts and Media at Columbia College Chicago.
flatsceen DVD: Marina Zurkow
 | THE SPACE INVADERS (2005) single channel animated video See Quicktime video ONLINE HERE |
Marina Zurkow works with character and narrative in animated cartoons, interactive installations, print and pop objects.
Zurkow's recent projects include The Space Invaders, a site-specific single channel video for WNET/PBS in New York; and the seven channel animated installation, Nicking the Never, which premiered at FACT in the U.K. in 2004. She's created the award-winning episodic cartoon Braingirl, chronicling a mutant-cute girl who wears her insides on the outside; Pussy Weevil, or How I Learned to Love the War, a vile cartoon persona who reacts to a viewer's proximity; and PDPal, a public art project for screen, web and mobile devices that allows a user to ìwrite her own cityî (with architect Scott Paterson and technologist Julian Bleecker). Zurkow's icons and characters have been incorporated into films, hotel design, lightboxes and clothing.
Upcoming projects include Karaoke Ice, a truck with a persona that stages karaoke battles for ISEA/ZeroOne, the San Jose Biennial in 2006, and Funnelhead, which will be realized as a graphic novel and as an animated, sculptural installation.
Zurkow's work has been exhibited at Sundance, the Rotterdam Film Festival, Ars Electronica, Creative Time, The Kitchen, the Walker Art Center, the Brooklyn Museum, SFMoMA, Eyebeam Atelier, and bitforms gallery, and has been broadcast on MTV, Fuji TV and PBS. She is a 2005 NYFA Fellow, a 2003 Rockefeller New Media Fellow, and received grants in 2005 from the New York State Council on the Arts, and in 2001-2002 from Creative Capital, the Jerome Foundation and the Walker Art Center. She teaches at NYU's Interactive Technology Program (ITP) and lives in Brooklyn.
Polvo, www.polvo.org
1458 W. 18th St., 1R
Chicago, IL 60608
773.344.1940
info@polvo.org
Sunday, June 10, 2007
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