Bits: 09.29.09

Open Your Eyes, a mural in Stephen (ESPO) Powers' "A love Letter for You" project, Philadelphia

• Yes! The Yes Men are the first ever recipients of The Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change, "presented by Creative Time to an artist who has committed her/his life’s work to social change in powerful and productive ways." [Press release pdf.] The prize, and presumably the $25,000 check, will be presented on Oct. 23 at The Creative Time Summit: Revolutions and Public Practice at the New York Public Library.

• Combat Paper: In papermaking workshops, veterans cut up their combat uniforms, beat the pieces and form the pulp into paper which is later used to make 2D art. On view at last week's Week for Peace at Minnesota Center for Book Arts, it'll be on view at the Carleton College gallery in Northfield, Minn., Oct. 22–Nov. 18. (Thanks, Mark.)

• Dissident Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei has been hospitalized in Munich for a cerebral hemmorhage he says was the result of police brutality. He was being monitored in July by authorities for criticizing the government over alleged graft that exacerbated the effects of the 2007 Sichuan earthquake: local officials skimmed funds dedicated to school construction, leaving shoddy construction that killed thousands during the quake. Via Abitare.

• ArtInfo looks at the Warhol Museum exhibition, Drawn to the Summit: A G-20 Exhibition of International Political Cartoons. And, Rob Rogers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette compares responses to the G20 to the treatment economy-wrecking financial execs got.

• Trailer: Finding Bibi, a documentary chronicling Iranian American filmmaker Bita Haidarian's cross-cultural personal journey to Pakistan in search of Mukhtaran Bibi, a woman who tried her rapists in open court and won.

• Fascinating gallery of photos from "Nollywood," Nigeria's film industry, which is world's third largest. Via @cmonstah.

• New York skywriter writes "CLOUD CLOUD CLOUD" in... well, the sky, of course.

• Via @cmonstah (again): "Autotune + Carl Sagan + Stephen Hawking + synth keyboards = I have no words."