Tweeting for Technoviking: Wafaa Bilal breathes new life into '07 web meme

Wafaa Bilal has breathed life into Technoviking, a web meme circa 2007, for a digital arts festival in the UK. A commentary on social media, the replica head of the dancing YouTube star only stays inflated if enough people tweet about it.

#OpenCurating launches with discussion on online art publishing and walkerart.org

Latitudes, the Barcelona-based curatorial office, just launched a new project called #OpenCurating that looks at art publishing in a digital age and, specifically, how contemporary art projects “can function beyond the traditional format of exhibition-and-catalogue." Comprised of a 10-part interview series, an event in Barcelona, and a moderated Twitter discussion at the hashtag #opencurating, the series just launched with a discussion of our work on the Walker Art Center website.  I enjoyed the exchange with Latitudes and my colleagues, Robin Dowden and Nate Solas, and found the questions challenging. Please give it a read and let me know what you think.

Pussy Riot Protest

No one was surprised that a Russian court found three members of Pussy Riot guilty of "hooliganism" for staging an anti-Putin punk prayer service in a Moscow church. But Friday's sentence of two years in prison has sparked protests around the world and responses from artists--from graffiti in Moscow to a Mentalgassi wheatpaste on a Berlin trash bin to a Facebook image by Nadia Plesner that puts the band members' iconic balaclava on the central figure in Plesner's painting Darfurnica. And, last night in New York, before the verdict came out, The Illuminator projected a Free Pussy Riot message on the Russian Embassy's wall.  e-flux, a group that reset its Facebook timeline image to one of the Voina-affiliated punk band today, carries one of the better protests--a verbal one by Garry Kasparov:

What is most frustrating about the considerable western reaction to this horrible farce is when the media talks about Putin and the Kremlin "losing a PR battle" with a punk rock band. What does Putin care about PR in the west? As long as the oil and gas keep flowing and the money keeps going from the treasury into the crooks' pockets, they don't care about anything else! As I've said many times, Putin and his criminal regime are a Russian problem for Russians to solve, but western hypocrisy about human rights gets tiresome when they could take serious measures instead of just talking.

I am glad artists like Paul McCartney and Madonna are speaking out, but until Interpol and EU parliaments and American legislators take action to penalize Putin's cronies for criminal, financial, and human rights violations, all the press chatter in the world makes little difference. Tell the young children of Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina that their mothers "are winning a PR battle" while they sit in prison for three years for political protest!"

Chik-Fil-A graffiti: "Tastes Like Hate"

Graffiti by Manny Castro on a Chik-Fil-A: "Tastes Like Hate"

Flickr Pool: Dogs on Roofs

Why do cats get all the play, Internet? To help combat this discrimination, a dog-based Flickr pool dedicated solely to "roof dogs." 

Merchandised Meme: Cat "Breading" Gum

In my presentation about the Walker website at the National Museum Publishing Seminar in Chicago two weeks ago, I mentioned our Friday Cat Break feature (which today brings us Russian museum-guard cats!) as one of the voices--from quirky and light to scholarly and serious--we present online. Afterwards, an audience member approached me with a gift: this packet of gum dedicated to the "breading cats" meme. 

Chicago street-art: AS IS

This AS IS street art in Logan Square, Chicago, struck me as kinda Zen high above a crappy McDonald's.

Your moment of: Shoes that leave animal tracks

By Maskull Lasserre via Dezeen.

David Byrne's MLK Shirt: "Hate Cannot Drive Out Hate"

With the 10th Rock the Garden happening on Saturday, I've been digging into the Walker's archives for old photos (for this piece). I was there in 2004 when David Bryne and the Tosca Strings played the Minneapolis event, but I guess I was too far back to see what was embroidered on the back of his shirt. But my Walker colleagues Gene Pittman and Cameron Wittig were there.

It's time to fight...

Steve Lambert's letterpress poster It’s Time to Fight (2012) gets a large-scale installation in Manchester, England

Shrigley's "offending" bin Laden image

On May 31, artist David Shrigley tweeted that his gallery, Stephen Friedman, had vetoed the inclusion of a painting at Basel "for fear of offending Americans." Featuring an image of Osama bin Laden, it included the words, "He believed that he was doing the right thing." While Shrigley noted that he didn't "think they would've minded," the tweet appears to have been deleted from Twitter, although a link to it is still on the artist's Facebook page.

#MayDay

Posters spotted in Minneapolis

Interview: StaticMade on "curating," the Walker website, and more

I had a nice conversation with Jeffrey Inscho on his excellent StaticMade podcast last week:

"In this episode, we discuss the Walker’s institutional approach to publishing dynamic and compelling web content, the democratization of the word 'curate,' and what inspires Paul to create great work at the intersection of contemporary art and journalism."

Thanks for good discussion, Jeff!

Ecology Now!

A poster, created by Earth First in 1970, for the first Earth Day, 42 years ago today. Designer unknown.

Palin as art/oven

A sculptural depiction of Sarah Palin's head that also functions as an outdoor oven has finally found a home. Created by Chicago artist J. Taylor Wallace, it'll be relocating to the Bridgeport Sculpture Garden near Chicago. The artist says making We're havin' a Tea Pear-ody over three months was "cathartic" during times he felt Palin's political celebrity was distracting from issues the country was facing. At the unveiling ceremony at the park later this month the oven will reportedly "cook a suckling pig," seen here. 

Tax Deductions for War Art

What artist Chad Person does for his art--cuts up U.S. currency to make collages--isn't what's unique about it; it's what he does next: After completing his pieces, which have recently depicted the machines of war, he takes a tax deduction for the bills he's used.

He writes of the "TaxCut" series:

In 2002 I was teaching digital photography at a University near an Air Force Base. I’d had several talented and creative soldiers come through my class. And while I tend to forget the bad students pretty quickly, Harold is one I would always remember. 

Three semesters after the course ended I got a phone call from an administrator at the base. Apparently, Harold had used Air Force money to take the class. Since he had failed my class, the cost of the tuition (around $400 with fees) was to be reneged. This meant that Harold would have to repay the military out of pocket so they could reassign the funds elsewhere. 

In a time of war, we all need to make tough choices. I chose that day to change a grade, passing a failed student with an A+ to ensure that his tuition fees – which had fortunately found their way into education via a defense allocation, would remain there. He didn’t deserve to pass based on his performance, but I saw it as a rare opportunity to take a little back from our government’s excessive defense spending, even if it might have been just enough to halt the purchase of one box of ammunition. 

This series, playfully titled TaxCut, functions in much the same way. I have been destroying currency for my work for the past two years. As a professional artist, I deduct my material expenditures as a write off. If I slice up a hundred dollars to make an image, or a thousand, or just five, I am taking it out of the IRS coffers. Imaging the weaponry that I’m not buying with those dollars is a reminder for me that a little creativity can be quite empowering.

A Lost Art, by Julien Berthier

Julien Berthier, A LOST, 2011 (via Booooooom)

Presidential Street Art: Gerald Ford in Michigan

Stenciled street-art images of Gerald Ford have been popping up in the late president's childhood town of Grand Rapids, Michigan. One features a running Ford, while the other bearing Ford's words in 1974, right after being sworn in: "I am indebted to no man." The images have been appearing along I-196, the Ford Freeway. Ford was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., but changed his name in his early 20s to that of his adoptive father.

Could this be the start of a series of street-art homages to obscure presidents? Probably not, but Adrian Hopkins, who sent the link, suggests the next in the series: "A portrait of William Henry Harrison that's incomplete." 

Walker Art Center nominated for 2012 Webby Award

Whoa! The Walker Art Center's new website, which I edit, has been nominated for a 2012 Webby People's Voice Award under the category of "best art site." Competition's tough: we're up against the Google Art Project, among others. Check out our site, some of the ideas behind it, and some of the reviews, and--hopefully--vote for us!

Found Caricatures: Pascal Fellonneau's Photos of French Campaign Posters

Pascal Fellonneau, a photographer based in Bordeaux and Paris, has been watching the French elections eagerly -- particularly the presidential campaign posters plastered on an array of surfaces across Paris. While he documents how the postings get altered by passersby -- a Hitler moustache drawn on Left Party candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon's face; ketchup lipstick on Jean-Pierre Chevénement's visage -- it's the other shots that are of greater interest to me: the posters that are torn away to reveal startling pairings of images, and the photographic imagery wheat-pasted over contoured surfaces, transforming what are supposed to be stately, assuring images of politicians into ghoulish, comical, or Pinnochio-esque caricatures.

Reached by email, Fellonneau says he can't say yet whether his aim is commentary or documentation. "I'll write a statement later, once I really know what it is," he promises. "Of course, it has something documentary, but not only I hope."