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Tongues on Fire: the Black Panthers remembered
2010-09-03 22:55:00
On September 11, a unique ?multi-artform? event, Tongues on Fire , inspired by the Black Panthers, will be coming to London?s Barbican Centre.

Friday Film Pick: Unrecognized
2010-09-03 16:41:00
Over 100,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel live in these "unrecognized" villages and are under constant threat of dislocation and racial and ethnic discrimination.
More About: Film , Friday , Pick

Triumph for BC arts community
2010-09-02 18:17:00
Just two weeks following the resignation of Jane Danzo, Chair of BC Arts Council, the Government reorganized its funding to provide an additional $7 million to the BC Arts Council, increasing the council's budget to just over $16 million for this fiscal year.
More About: Community , Triumph

Berlin bombed with 100,000 poems
2010-09-02 04:32:00
100,000 poems dropped from the sky onto Berlin to celebrate poetry and condemn acts of war.
More About: Poems

60 Israeli actors boycott theatre in West Bank settlement
2010-08-31 17:40:00
A group of Israeli actors, directors and writers have signed a letter to the management of six Israeli theatres announcing their refusal to participate in stage productions in a new performing arts centre in an West Bank settlement.
More About: Theatre , Actors

A Conversation with Return to El Salvador director Jamie Moffett
2010-08-31 16:56:00
Return to El Salvador is an intimate documentary that tells?mainly through candid interview?the story of the individuals and communities effected by El Salvador’s brutal civil war that ended nearly two decades ago. While a little heavy-handed on narration (which isn’t to say Martin Sheen’s usual talented presentation of context isn’t well-executed, but that there is ...
More About: Return , Et Cetera

Video installation infiltrates 6000 NYC taxis
2010-08-30 12:30:00
Artist Amir Baradaran's latest project, TRANSIENT, will confront New Yorkers with a series of 40-second video installations infiltrating New York's taxicabs.
More About: Video , Installations

Glenn Beck rewrites art history for Tea Party
2010-08-29 07:00:00
Glenn Beck helped cement his reputation as a misinformed art critic when he gave a ironicly incorrect lesson on the design of the Washington Monument.
More About: History , Republicans , Party , Glenn Beck

What?s at stake in Canada?s culture war?
2010-08-11 13:22:00
Why, one might ask, would Canadian taxpayers support a play that asks us to sympathize with a man who was apparently going to try to blow up federal buildings and kill Canadians?
More About: Culture , Performance , Canada , Stephen Harper

A Short History of the BC Spirit Festival
2010-08-10 18:22:00
Running alongside this celebration of BC arts was the spectre of massive financial cutbacks.
More About: History , Olympics , Policy , Festival , Spirit

My name is ? When public art, biography and history collide
2009-09-12 15:43:00
Spinoza, for those who missed this 17th century Dutch philosopher?s moment of celebrity, is one of the guys who helped put God ? the idea of god ? into its rightful abstract place. For Spinoza, nature was absolute and his political philosophy spiraled out from this essential truth. He was one of the ...
More About: History , Biography , Public , Edward Said , Amsterdam

Should we boycott TIFF?
2009-09-05 22:08:00
Dozens of prominent filmmakers, writers, academics and activists have condemned the Toronto International Film Festival's decision to highlight the city of Tel Aviv during this year's event. Should Art Threat do the same?
More About: Screen , Boycott , Tiff

Uighur doc spurs online attack on film festival
2009-08-12 21:31:00
An unnamed Chinese hacker attempted to crash the Melbourne International Film Festival ?s website, angered over the screening of the film The 10 Conditions of Love, which recounts the story of exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer.
More About: Australia , Online , Spurs

Public domain audiobooks for the iPhone: Wowza!
2009-07-28 14:14:00
It is a staggering work of generosity and contribution to the cultural commons. It might also serve as a wonderful teaching tool for learning languages or for overcoming literacy barriers.
More About: Iphone , Domain , Public , Public Domain , Audiobooks

The Bible as bathroom stall
2009-07-27 18:52:00
Outrage over an art exhibit which invites users to deface the Bible has put a negative spin on what would otherwise be dubbed an inspired curatorial program.
More About: Bathroom , Installations , The Bible

One and Other: 100 days of raw humanity as art
2009-07-25 16:30:00
There is a plinth at Trafalgar Square in London, England that will host 100 days and nights of human performance/intervention/being in what may be the longest art performance ever mounted. Certainly one of the oddest. But also perhaps most apropo for a time whose shiniest cultural trait is a willingness to participate in making culture rather than (only) consuming it.
More About: Performance , Humanity , Days

Best film trailer of 2009 (so far): REPORTER
2009-07-24 01:40:00
Reporter Documentary trailer kicks ass.
More About: Screen , Film , Trailer , Reporter

Copyright consultations schedule announced
2009-07-21 14:41:00
It seems we have well informed readers! A helpful visitor to Art Threat posted a link to the newly created Copyright Consultations 2009 website detailing this summer’s public hearings into copyright legislation in Canada. Depending on where you live, you have between 1 and 36 days to get ready. Here is a ...
More About: Schedule , Et Cetera

Copyright controversy returns to Canada: Conservatives to hold public heari
2009-07-20 18:20:00
The importance of these hearings can?t be overstated. Bill C-61 would have outlawed remixing, turntablism, mash-ups, audio/visual collage and copying DVDs and CDs to your iPod. Fines were set to escalate up to $10,000 per infringement (i.e. per file) along with provisions for jail time. It was an industry-sponsored assault on the cultural commons that was defeated by alarmed and outraged Canadians.
More About: Canada , Public , Policy , Conservatives , Controversy

The acoustic art of politics: Audioscaping the war on the poor
2009-07-15 17:16:00
From the audio labs of Ultra-Red comes the fourth and final volume in their Sounds of the War on the Poor series. Beginning in 2008, activists and artists were invited to create one-minute sound responses to the question: What is the sound of the war on the poor? The contributions include micro-documentaries, soundscapes, ...
More About: Politics , Performance , Acoustic , Et Cetera

NFB Funding Cuts: And then there was one...
2008-06-10 02:18:00
Despite statements made to the contrary at the time, the $2.5 million that the Conservative government cut from the National Film Board of Canada's budget in March is resulting in more jobs being lost, including in programming. The NFB, Canada's sole publicly-funded film agency, has announced it will be eliminating 22 positions, including two of its three remaining staff directors. Paul Cowan and Beverly Shaffer, two of Canada's most renowned documentary film directors, with a combined 46 NFB films to their names, will now be joining the ranks of Canada's private filmmakers (including other NFB alumni who have seen their jobs disappear during previous rounds of Liberal and Tory backed cuts). The sole director remaining on staff will be Alanis Obomsawin. Bredan Kelly has more in a good article from today's Montreal Gazette.
More About: Funding , Cuts

Big City Mayors Bash Bill C-10
2008-06-06 05:38:00
Opposition keeps growing to the Conservative government's Bill C-10. The controversial bill would allow the Minister of Heritage to rescind tax-credits from television programs and films after production should they deem it 'contrary to public policy.' Today the mayors of Montreal and Toronto made the nickel and dime argument against C-10 to the Senate banking committee: ?This industry is of incredible importance,? said [Toronto Mayor David] Miller after telling the senators that it employs 35,000 people in his city ? more than the manufacturing sector. Its artistic and financial success depends on its ?continued ability to work in a field where the boundaries are well defined and political interference or censorship will not be tolerated.? Mayor Gerald Tremblay of Montreal told the committee that the film industry has been active in his city for 60 years and that the industry is worth $1.3-billion to his province. ?Having read the bill, we feel obliged to state that the measures...
More About: City , Bash

Garbage Warrior inspires us to live with what we throw out
2008-05-30 22:28:00
There is a war being waged far from the carnage of Iraq or Darfur. It connects to the war on want, but is more about making peace with our environment than anything else. The documentary Garbage Warrior is the story of renegade architect Michael Reynolds, who has been quietly waging a battle in New Mexico for the right to make mistakes when designing housing. Reynolds has been building ?Earthships,? sustainably self-contained housing units in the desert of New Mexico since the 1970s. The film traces the growing community of like-minded builders that work with him and the decade-long fight Reynolds embroils himself with, first with municipal zoning boards then with the state legislature. His goal: to have a bill passed that would allow experimental housing such as his Earthships legal and physical space to develop and grow. The documentary is funny and inspiring, well shot and aside from the odd overdone cliché of a hammer hitting dirt to drive a point home, is skillfully edited. Re...
More About: Live , Throw

CRTC preparing to regulate the internet
2008-05-28 13:20:00
They said they wouldn't do it 1999. And again in 2003. But now the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommmunication Commission is getting set to regulate the internet and they want Canadians to help them set the terms for an upcoming hearing on the matter. The CRTC is Canada?s federal communications regulator. In 1999, they took the position that the internet was mostly alphanumeric text, not technically sophisticated enough to provide audio and visual content easily, and not of sufficient interest to consumers of audio and visual content to warrant regulation. Well, that?s changed, and regulations are coming. In Broadcasting Public Notice 2008-44, the CRTC has announced a major investigation into the feasibility and scope of regulating content on the internet. But before they rip open the discussion, they want input from Canadians about what questions to ask -- What areas to focus on? What concerns should get priority? For example, should questions about net neutrality be r...
More About: Internet , The Internet

Everything you wanted to know about online censoring and filtering
2008-05-26 17:53:00
Even wonder what you?re not getting access to on the internet? New technologies and new powers that be are increasingly capable of filtering websites from online use. A new book from MIT Press Access Denied gives the skinny on internet censoring strategies and motivations. From a review at neural.it: Ten OpenNet Initiative (ONI) researchers were involved in this seminal report for a few years, focusing on general internet filtering strategies and motivations, and analyzing the filtering conditions and legal/ethical tactics state by state .. Every sensitive country has its own mix of motivations and consequent strategies. So, showing a warning or a disguising error web page is a political choice, directly reflecting the government policies, as well as using passwords, IP classes or entire services (Skype) as the censorship technical targets. Scanning the different filtering politics is like viewing a social and political atlas, revealing what a formal territory fear most. And t...
More About: Online , Wanted , Censoring

Redacting reality: Art exhibition about what the government doesn't want us
2008-05-23 13:49:00
How can a democracy work if the citizens don't know what the government is up to? Access to Information - the little rules that manage the sticky territory between what the government thinks we need to know and what the government is actually up to - is all about organizing the public imagination. It's an intellectual game of hide-an-seek. The government hides and we seek, and it begs questions about the foundations of trust in democratic systems of governance. For Reasons of State takes this tricky bit if state business on directly. The exhibition, which opened on May 16 at The Kitchen, explores government secrecy and censorship. Installations involve a myriad of information technologies - surveillance video, voice mail, 16 mm film, photography. From Ed Halter's review at Rhizome.org: Ben Rubin's Dark Source (2005) offers a bank of microfiche readers displaying copies of documents that appear to be nothing but hand-scrawled bars. During a 2002 security snafu, Rubin wa...
More About: Government , Reality , Exhibition

Rally on Parliament Hill for Net Neutrality
2008-05-22 13:48:00
Canadians outraged by the slow strangling of the internet are invited to share their outrage with the Parliament of Canada on May 27th. The Net Neutrality Rally will demand legislation to protect the internet from predatory practices like traffic shaping and data management, and to encourage transparency among ISP companies. Transportation assistance is available -- check out the Net Neutrality Rally webite for more details. This is an important first step in the battle to save the internet -- a strong showing at this rally could be the beginning of legislative protection for net neutrality in Canada. You can also check out savethenet.ca for more info on the movement to protect net neutrality in Canada. See earlier stories on net neutrality: Lawrence Lessig on net neutrality Net neutrality in Canada under siege: Bell implements ?traffic shaping? service to throttle Internet access
More About: Hill

Pangea Day: connecting the world through film
2008-05-20 20:14:00
Pangea Day was a global event of short films, music and speakers ounded by Jehane Noujaime, TED Prize winner and director of the award winning film Control Room. It was broadcast live in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro. It was also shown at grassroots screenings in cities, communities, and private homes around the world and was streamed live on the internet. Most people don't know other cultures or societies and some don't even know their neighbors. Noujaime states, "By sharing stories, we've started the process of turning strangers into friends." She believes that if people from all around the globe start trying to understand each other, then we can move a few steps closer to world peace. Since many aren't willing and others aren't able to travel, Noujaime concludes that we can use film to share stories and overcome the obstacle of distance. The first part of the program seemed a bit light, like it was oversimplifying m...
More About: Film , World , The World , Pangea Day , Connecting

Maori activist/artist Tame Iti addresses ?terrorism? through art
2008-05-20 16:27:00
Aboriginal activist and Tuhoe traditional leader Tame Iti has re-entered the art world. Facing arms-related charges from a raid last October by New Zealand authorities that saw the arrest of some 16 people (including 2 artists apparently arrested for knowing Iti), Iti has re-issued a hip-hop song ?Terra-ism? on a CD of songs produced in conjunction with a four-part panel of paintings produced by New Zealand artists Mike West and Otis Frizzel. The hip hop-style song describes state action against indigenous people as terrorism -- certainly not a new idea for anyone familiar with the history of AIM (American Indian Movement) and their fight against colonialism in North America or the writings of Ward Churchill. But when indigenous people accuse states of terrorism, it always seems to cause outrage, especially among those who want to monopolize the idea of terrorism in politically strategic ways. In a direct reference to 9/11, the paintings depict, among other things, aircraft f...
More About: Terrorism , Artist , Maori

Bare Life in Jerusalem's Museum on the Seam
2008-05-07 23:41:00
Walking into Bare Life in Jerusalem's Museum on the Seam, one is immediately absorbed by the exhibit's thick layers of context and irony. The building, which once functioned as Israel's military outpost on the seam between Israel and Jordan when the city was divided (1948-67), is now a venue for contemporary socio-political art. Among the human rights-themed artworks are windows backed by sliding steel doors originally used for armed lookouts. Bare Life provides the space to reflect on the tension in this ideologically and religiously divided city, and the normalization of its militarization. Thoughts of Apartheid might enter viewers' minds when they approach the exhibit's first installation: the South African artist Kendell Geers's Time of the Harvest constructed with shelves filled with Belgian police riot helmets. From the surveillance works of Sophie Calle to psychologically disturbing photos by Paul McCarthy and absurdist films of Samual Beckett, the museum's curator has...