Ministry’s ‘secret’ employees turn to superheroes
by Yoav Zitun
Israel News
May 17, 2012

Defense Ministry employees in classified roles use actors in superhero disguises in order to protest against worsening in terms of their employment

Dozens of employees at a secret unit within the Defense Ministry chose an original way to protest in front of the Kirya base in Tel Aviv, using actors dressed up as Batman, Superman and other superheroes.

The employees could not protest in person due to the secrecy that is imposed on their role and identity. (more…)

Joey Skaggs will join the May Day Unity Rally at Union Square in NYC, Tuesday, May 1st at 4:00 p.m. with his Mobile Homeless Home and a pack of pissed-off muppets. Come visit and hold signs!

Photos from Skaggs’ Monday, April 23, 2012, action in front of Goldman Sachs in New York:

(more…)

From Joey Skaggs:

Some early photos from yesterday’s demonstration at Goldman Sachs in New York to protest greed and corruption in the financial sector.

photo: Deborah Thomas

Event Summary:

A police van filled with officers parked across the street from our staging area and waited for us to depart. As we did, officers on foot walked with us, but across the street. When construction caused us to change our route, I approached an officer and asked the best way to go. From that point on, they functioned as a police escort. When we hit West Street, which is a highway with heavy traffic, the police van, with lights flashing, stopped the traffic for us. We entered the bicycle lane and it was a clear shot down to the Goldman Sachs office at 200 West Street. The police van, with flashing lights, accompanied us the entire way. They were amazingly coordinated, without every having talked with us. (more…)

At 11:00 a.m., April 23, 2012, artist Joey Skaggs will lead a band of outraged costumed muppets down to the Goldman Sachs offices at 200 West Street in NYC. Skaggs will be peddling his Mobile Homeless Homes prototype — a low cost alternative living space for the millions of upside-down, underwater or foreclosed homeowners who have lost their houses due to the banking crisis that caused the real estate collapse.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Outraged Homeless Muppets to Converge on Goldman Sachs

“Homelessness is a great American tragedy. Our financial system and government have let us down and we, together, must take a stand to change the way the system works. With over 11 million homes underwater and millions in foreclosure, people are frightened, distressed and angry,” says Joey Skaggs.

Although not a cure, Mobile Homeless Homes (MHH) offers a temporary solution — low cost alternative living spaces for the millions of upside-down, underwater or foreclosed homeowners who have lost their houses due to the banking crisis that caused the real estate collapse. The MHH centerpiece is a camouflage, stealth, mobile home made from a series of connected plastic garbage cans, propelled by a tricycle, that will be undetectable by authorities. It blends into any urban environment. (more…)

From Joey Skaggs:

Mobile Homeless Homes

Submitted by Ivan Petrovic: Perfect prank/activism from Serbia

The Art of Joining the Party
Balkan Insight
Nemanja Cabric BIRN Belgrade
April 13, 2012

Two playwrights who joined a number of political parties, using a modified speech by Goebbels as their agenda, have turned their experience into a performance called Oni Zive, (They Live).

Annoyed by unsolved burning issues in Serbian cultural policy as well as in society in general, Maja Pelevic and Milan Markovic, artists with no permanent job, came up with an unusual idea – to become members of almost all political parties at once and tackle them from the inside.

Their artistic performance resulted in a dramatic text, audio-visual materials, and a blog.

“Our main thesis is that political parties have taken over the space for performing arts and have contributed to the fact that there is almost no budget for culture. In these circumstances, when theatres face bankruptcy, and the independent scene lacks financial support – we decided to turn political parties into our space for performing arts,” Maja Pelevic told Balkan Insight. (more…)

Egypt artists “reopen” street by graffiti protest
Nasser Nasser
Seattle Post Intelligencer
March 29, 2012

Cairo (AP) — After Egypt’s ruling military sealed off streets around Cairo’s Tahrir Square with walls of imposing concrete blocks, a group of artists decided to reopen the avenues on their own — in the public imagination, at least.

On one of the walls, they painted an exact trompe-l’oeil reproduction of the street behind it, as if it were open. The perspective painting matches up with the architecture of the neighboring buildings and even has some “pedestrians” strolling along the boulevard. The street’s new name is “No Walls Street.”

The graffiti piece is the work of the Revolution Artists Association, a group of young Egyptian artists who say the uprising against authorities in the country continues a year after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak.

(more…)

From Joey Skaggs:

Occupy Washington Square Park!

For three decades, New York City’s Annual April Fools’ Day Parade has offered the public an opportunity to express, in a comical way, its outrage against the foolishness of mankind. Thousands of participants in look-alike costumes with satirical floats creatively mock the thoughtless, corrupt and selfish acts of the past year.

Kicking off noon on Sunday, April 1, the parade marches down 5th Avenue from 59th Street to Washington Square Park where revelers party to demonstrate against new rules that restrict the First Amendment rights of performing artists in the park. It will end with the annual crowning of the King of Fools.

Spread the word!

Read the press release here.

State Pols Outraged by Anti-Abortion Laws Push Onerous Restrictions on Viagra
by Allison Yarrow
The Daily Beast
March 14, 2012

Want to use the popular potency drug? First undergo a rectal exam, celibacy lecture, and waiting period. How fed-up female state legislators—and at least one male—are pushing bills to retaliate against the male-led, restrictions-laden drive to limit women’s rights to abortion and birth control.

In the fierce public debate about contraception and abortion, revenge legislation is the new attack weapon. Women pols are using their posts to wage war on bills and laws that work to govern women’s wombs. And they’re not denying the obvious humor involved in what they’ve proposed. Monty Python is even a touchstone.

To give men a taste of how invasive and prodding government oversight into women’s sex lives has become, a number of state politicians sporting two X chromosomes have championed bills that mandate a pesky list of prerequisites for men who want Viagra pills. These include celibacy lectures, rectal exams, affidavits from former lovers swearing impotence problems, and forced viewing of a video pimping the medicine’s side effects. Acquiring the goods to get hard could be incredibly difficult. It’s tough enough reading that list of regulations with a straight face.

“We’re talking about it, that’s a start,” said Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, who in the last 24 hours has been anointed the latest liberal media darling for introducing her version of a Viagra bill. The senator wants to “protect” Ohio’s men “from the risks of PDE-5 inhibitors, drugs commonly used to treat symptoms of impotence.” Turner is retaliating against her state’s cadre of male pols who push what are essentially abortion and contraception bans. They have, her press release suggests, been so protective of women’s insides that reciprocation is only fair.

“If you want to be preoccupied with regulating women’s wombs, we’re going to do the same thing with men,” she challenged.

Read the rest of this article here.

From Tim Jackson:

It’s the Million Mustache March in support of the Stache Act – a simple request for a tax deduction stimulus for the cost of maintaining facial hair. Sounds reasonable…

Join the Movement to Seek Tax Equity for People of Facial Hair

From AmericanMustacheInstitute.org website:

On President’s Day 2012, The American Mustache Institute introduced the Million Mustache March in support of the Stimulus To Allow Critical Hair Expenses, or the STACHE Act. If adopted by Congress, the STACHE Act would provide up to a $250.00 annual tax refund for Mustached Americans. Americans can participate by:

Visiting StacheAct.com where you can add a past presidential mustache to a Facebook photo;

Or, by joining the American Mustache Institute in Washington, D.C., on April 1 for a physical march of one million Mustached Americans from the U.S. Capitol to the White House.

For every Million Mustache March participant, America’s leading tax authority – H&R Block – will make contributions to Millions From One — which delivers clean drinking water to those who cannot obtain it themselves.

(more…)

Occupy pop culture: A lesson in détournement
by Natasha Lennard
Salon.com
March 8, 2012

Borrowing from the French, occupiers turn figures from the cultural mainstream into symbols of dissent

Credit: nycgeneralstrike

TV-show writers, pop culture purveyors and peddlers of general stuff-we-don’t-need didn’t take long to latch onto the Occupy brand. The language of the 99 percent is popping up in sitcoms and terrible pop songs; the word “Occupy” now adorns a neon green Swatch. It’s probably beside the point to mention that revolutionaries in Egypt and Greece are fighting on without the help of branded watches; this is America, after all — what did you expect?

But Occupy supporters are taking from pop culture too. Not in the obvious sense of message amplification and popularization, but by helping themselves to items from the cultural mainstream and flipping them on their heads for propaganda purposes. To see what I mean, check out this video attributed to “nycgeneralstrike”:

(more…)

A Video From Tehran: It’s Not What It Isn’t, but What It Is
by A. O. Scott
The New York Times
February 28, 2012

He’s Jafar Panahi, but ‘This Is Not a Film’

The title “This Is Not a Film” nods in the direction of René Magritte’s famous painting of a pipe, but at least at first glance, this new 75-minute work of cinema by Jafar Panahi has little in common with any sly Surrealist prank.

This video essay was recorded in Tehran last year, as Mr. Panahi, one of the leading Iranian filmmakers of the past decade, was under a legal assault from his government that included the confiscation of his passport, the threat of a long prison sentence and an even longer ban on making movies.

Careful to obey the letter of that injunction — and thus exposing the preposterousness as well as the meanness of its spirit — Mr. Panahi did not write a screenplay or wield a full-size camera. A colleague, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb (credited as co-director), comes to his apartment to shoot, and Mr. Panahi restricts his activities to talking, recording with his iPhone, commenting on some of his earlier films and reading aloud from existing scripts. So if this is not a film, it is, among other things, a statement of creative resistance in the face of tyranny and a document of intellectual freedom under political duress.

(more…)

The Whitney Biennial web occupation
by Matt Seaton
guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 28 February 2012

An artful web hoax announced the sacking of the Whitney Biennial’s corporate sponsors and apologised to artists for their exploitation. So whodunnit?

This week, the Whitney Museum in New York City gives over most of its exhibition space for its 2012 Biennial, showcasing the work of more than 50 contemporary artists. As in previous years, the Biennial is sponsored by Deutsche Bank and art auctioneers Sotheby’s. The co-curators of the show, Elizabeth Sussman and Jay Sanders, describe some of their criteria for inclusion:

“Artists are bringing other artists into their work – a form of free collage or reinvention that borrows from the culture at large as a way of rewriting the standard narratives and exposing more relevant hybrids. There is also the radical production of new forms, fabrication on a more modest scale. Artists are constantly redefining what an artist can be at this moment and this Biennial celebrates that fact.”

An unknown number of artists/activists – with notably good web skills – took this brief of reinventing and borrowing for the purpose of rewriting the Biennial’s “standard narrative” a few steps further than the Whitney had anticipated. (more…)

Submitted by the Fresh Juice Party:

Fresh Juice Party “Pepper Sprayer”

Holes Of Happiness is a short documentary by Steve Wheem looking at the reactions of the public to some pothole gardens that have been popping up around East London. See more at http://www.thepotholegardener.com