Meet the Street Artists Who Pranked Showtime

After planting a special Arabic message on the set of Showtime’s hit show Homeland, Heba Yehia Amin, Caram Kapp, and Don Karl became internationally notorious. They explain themselves in Homeland Is Not a Series, a short film from The Intercept’s wonderful Field of Vision video series. Check out the video and the accompanying interview.

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“Interview With Hebia Yehia Amin, Caram Kapp, and Don Karl of Homeland Is Not a Series”
by Eric Hynes
The Intercept
December 20, 2015

Commissioned to apply realistic graffiti to sets for the popular Showtime series Homeland, three artists and activists took the opportunity to critique their employer by painting satirical and damning phrases in Arabic “” such as “Homeland is NOT a series” and “Homeland is racist” “” that nobody on the Homeland team seemed to notice. That is, until an episode that aired worldwide in October was watched by viewers who could read Arabic. Within days, the political prank became an international media sensation.

The conspirators behind the Homeland hack, Heba Yehia Amin, Caram Kapp, and Don Karl, come from a diverse array of disciplines and backgrounds. Amin is a visual artist and professor born and based in Cairo; Kapp is a Cairo-born, Berlin-based graphic designer and multimedia artist; and Karl is a Berlin-based graffiti writer and author. When the following interview was conducted, kaleidoscopically via Google Hangout, the trio was collaborating on the edit for Homeland Is Not a Series from three separate cities.

In anticipation of bringing this latest iteration of their project to Field of Vision, the “Arabian Street Artists,” as they cheekily refer to themselves, talked about the effectiveness of humor as a weapon against intolerance, the challenges of making a movie when they don”t consider themselves filmmakers by trade, and how they”re trying to foster further discussion around Western representations of Middle Eastern culture.

Read the full interview here.

Negativeland’s Ian Allen, RIP

Ian Allen, Former Negativland Member, Dead at 56
by Kory Grow
Rollingstone
January 22, 2015

The musician helped usher in the band’s notion of “culture jamming” and was most active in the group during the Eighties

Ian Allen, Peter Montgomery/Sharon Jue
Ian Allen, Peter Montgomery/Sharon Jue

Onetime Negativland member Ian Allen died on January 17th, a result of infections and complications following heart-valve replacement surgery at a hospital in Sanford, California. He was 56. The band reported the news on its Facebook page.

A member during their 1983 album A Big 10-8 Place, Allen was part of the group on the vanguard of “culture jamming,” the wry use of existing recorded material and tape splicing, joining the eras between John Cage and contemporary hip-hop sampling. He was most active between 1981 and 1987, leaving before the group’s critically acclaimed, confrontational mid-Eighties run on punk label SST. That run included their 1991 U2 EP, which kickstarted a legendary court case over unauthorized samples.

“His impact, inspiration and influence on the group is impossible to overestimate,” the group wrote in its statement. “There would be no group as we know it today, no Over The Edge radio show [on KPFA], no ‘culture jamming’ and no A Big 10-8 Place LP without him.”

Read the rest of this article here.

Valuable Life Lessons and Limited-Edition Boxes of Poo

Emerson Dameron chats with Cards Against Humanity’s Max Temkin:


bullshitcahLike numerous other small businesspeople, the braintrust behind the controversial party game Cards Against Humanity ran a money-saving special on “Black Friday,” the designated consumer orgy following Thanksgiving.

First, the company pulled its flagship game offline for the day, leaving any prospective buyers with plumper wallets. In case anyone remained dead set on exchanging scratch for CAH merch, it introduced an exclusive new item: the Box of Bullshit. It sold out within hours, despite the fact that it was, as its creators explained repeatedly throughout the day, precisely as advertised.

I checked in with Max Temkin, a Chicago-based designer and the most high-profile member of the Cards Against Humanity team, to see how it went.

How did you hatch the idea for the Box of Bullshit?

We all hate “Black Friday” and the ensuing media frenzy around it, which is a problem for us because holiday sales are pretty important for our company. I’ve always loved the Black Friday culture jamming that happens, like people who run up to a Best Buy moments before it opens and U-lock the doors shut. So it just seemed right for us to parody black friday by taking part in it in completely the wrong way. Continue reading “Valuable Life Lessons and Limited-Edition Boxes of Poo”

Creative Activism in Bulgaria

From Marcy LaViollette: Appreciated and reblogged from animalnewyork.com


Bulgaria’s Soviet Soldier Statue Vandalized Again: The Ukraine Colors Edition
by Marina Galperina
Animalnewyork.com
February 25, 2014

The most hated statue in Sofia, Bulgaria has been painted in the colors of the Ukrainian flag, in solidarity with the revolution and the deadly protests in the former Soviet Republic.

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It is, essentially, a gigantic bronze relief to remind the Bulgarian people about an invading Soviet forces that crushed and “liberated” the country from its a reformist uprising 45 years ago. It was previously vandalized in June 2010 when the soldiers were painted as Superman, Ronald McDonald, Santa Claus and other capitalist/pop culture American icons, captioned below in graffiti: “In step with the times!”

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It was vandalized again in August 2013, when it was sprayed entirely in hot pink and tagged with the words “Prague “68”³ and “Bulgaria apologizes” in Czech and Bulgarian, as in, sorry about the Warsaw Pact, you know, that time Bulgarian troops aided the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

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And of course, that time in August 2012 when it was briefly balaclava”ed in tribute to the jailed Russian feminist art-band activists of Pussy Riot.

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lead image: AFP Photo/Nikolay Doychinov

This Way, Please

From Peter Markus:


Boise craft-beer maker ordered to remove sign near Connector
by Zach Kyle
Idaho Statesman
March 13, 2014

When Woodland Empire Ale Craft opened in January, the brewery announced its presence with a billboard mimicking the nearby green and yellow signs on the westbound entrance of the I-184 Connector. The sign read like a freeway off-ramp: “Craft beer: right here.” An arrow points to the brewery parking lot.

The Idaho Transportation Department is not amused.

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Read more here.