Bits: 08.18.09

Damara Kaminecki's Bang Bang, via Street Anatomy

• Chicago 20-year old Firas Alkhateeb is unmasked as the creator of the original Obama-as-Joker image that was later manipulated into the "SOCIALIST" posters being plastered everywhere. Still doesn't answer the question about who --lobbyist or guerrilla artist -- turned it into street-art, a question Hrag's been noodling for awhile. (Via @Groundswellblog.)

• Speaking of rightwing art: A fascinating post -- also via Groundswell -- about Ku Klux Klan quilts. (Here's one donated to Michigan State University in 2000.)

• A thoroughly engrossing essay by Adam Levy on how 701 photos of Hiroshima were unearthed in a suitcase more than five decades after the bombing.

• Last Wednesday, Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei and colleagues were detained in a hotel room so they couldn't attend the trial of Tan Zuoren, an activist who tried to investigate whether graft by Sichuan officials contributed to shoddy construction of schools that fell during last year's earthquake. Ai was to testify at the hearing; he and a supporter were roughed up by police during a 3 a.m. raid in which they were hauled off, the AP reports.

• Shown only three times -- in 1971, 1984 and 1989 -- Robert Irwin's Slant/Light/Volume, a series of translucent scrims installed in the gallery, is now on view at the Walker Art Center.

• New work by Blu in Grottaglie, Italy.

• This ain't right: Guernica in 3D.

• LEGO Guggenheim.

• It's 90 degrees and sunny out in Minneapolis, but it's time to start thinking about ice: Proposals for the 2010 Art Shanty Project are due October 5.

• Gum wall heart.