CNN

Michael Moore on CNN discussing Sicko

Cargo

A contribution by the Platform for (un)Solicited Research and Advice: manifestaplatform.org

Posted by Jimini Hignett
Cargo was an extremely controversial project executed in 1992 by the Dutch Werkmij group. In the middle of the kilometres long Afsluit-dyke which was built to enclose the former Zuyder Zee, a steel giant constructed form electrical pylons, and ‘bricked up’ with 20,000 loaves baked on-site using grain from the polders and sea water from the adjacent former Zuyder Zee formed an enormous sacrificial image entitled the ‘National Gift to the Sea. Due to be ‘sacrificed’ this project, which took place at a moment when the news was full of drought and famine, caused national uproar as children collected signatures, politicians and other dignitaries complained of blasphemy. The planned submergence of the sculpture was prohibited and following its disappearance and the discovery of loaves of bread washed up along the Belgian coast it left in its wake a new national myth and an unsolved mystery.

All photos from website Kees Bolten

Censorship

Censorship is a means of controlling the dissemination of certain pieces of information.  The very fact censorship takes place illuminates the power of language, communication and the media. What should be censored? When are we unable to decide for ourselves what is appropriate, when do we need to be protected, from what and by whom? How have these values changed over time. Where do we encounter censorship in our everyday lives? – How would we ever find this out!

The media, and practices such as investigative journalism both disclose facts and censor them through what is edited out, not shown or investigated at all.

Explore the Washington Naval Observatory on Google Maps

Wiki on Censorship of Maps

The File Room is an archive of cencorship. Initiated as an artist’s project by Antonio Muntadas, The File Room was originally produced as an installation by Randolph Street Gallery 1994 with the support of the School of Art and Design and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Since 2001 The File Room (TFR) has been hosted and maintained by the National Coalition Against Censorship.

- http://www.thefileroom.org/

- http://www.ncac.org/

Control

‘We observe ‘life out there’ at a certain distance, as if through the viewfinder of a photographic or video camera: a longing for authenticity… difficult to experience, given the media’s increasing control of our first hand-experience. In the current situation, no space other than art (venues, programmes, funding bodies, producers and receivers) can sustain the effort to counter this control; and, as long as they do not convert to a sort of ‘political news service’ for the art circuit, this is a potential still relatively unexplored’ Aesthetic Journalism, pp. 64-5.

A contribution by Thinking Practices  http://thinkingpractices.wordpress.com/ by Heather Jukes

C is for the Chagos Islands and the indigenousChagossians

A topical political slant on Antony Gormley’s Field

AND F is for Field, an art piece authored by Antony Gormley in many versions since the early 1990s, and fabricated under the artist’s direction by different communities in different countries. The piece comprises many thousands of clay figures, each formed by hand and therefore taking on an imprint of the makers’ conscious and subconscious individuality. The uniqueness of each piece mirrors individual identity.

Image from http://artgrove.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/field.jpg

On this level it has a naïve and primitive narrative. En masse it is very different. There is a darker message. The individuality is replaced by anonymity and its sequelae, associated with restriction and subordination under political power.

Tate Liverpool described the 2004 Field as ‘an ‘invasion’ or ‘infection’, and the sensation is that of a tide; an endless mass that has become temporarily limited by the architecture of the place where it is installed, but could easily extend further than we can see.’ http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/exhibitions/gormley/

Asian Field 2003 Clay from Guangdong Province, China, 210,000 hand-sized clay figures made in collaboration with 350 people of all ages from Xiangshan village, north-east of the city of Guangzhou in south China.www.seriousart.org/archive/gormley_interview.html

It is uncannily reminiscent of a vast broiler house of poultry. It conjures up humanitarian issues of refugees, displacement, and the aftermath of natural disasters of earthquakes and floods.

This is particularly relevant to the British Government’s plans to create a huge maritime reserve in the middle of the Indian Ocean at the expense of the 2,000 Chagossian islanders and their descendents who were evicted from their homeland in the 1960s and 1970s.  Is it right that this beautiful and isolated archipelago of pristine coral reefs (now named British Indian Ocean Territory) should be still denied to its rightful owners (currently in exile in Mauritius and the Seychelles) but be available to Britain and the US as a 21^st century potential military base?http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/18/chagos-nature-reserve-greenwash

Image, Aerial view of Middle Brother Island, in Chagos Archipelago. Illustration: Anne & Charles Sheppard/Chagos Conservation Trust, source http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/29/chagos-island-marine-reserve-plans