C.A.R.T.E.L.

Feeling like your little artists' collective could use some "too-big-to-fail"?

Many years in the making, New York City-based 16 Beaver Group announced today the initiation of a complex multiyear process that will produce the largest global merger of arts and politics collectives known to date. Critics immediately attacked the move as being, “out of touch with recent developments in art and economics.” But the group argued at their press conference that the new mega-art collective, which will use the acronym C.A.R.T.E.L. (the group did not specify what each letter stands for), will soon be ready to compete within the current monopolistic anti-marketplace. C.A.R.T.E.L. plans to bring to a politicized cultural community a significant share of the benefits enjoyed by the recent slew of mega-mergers, also known as rescues, such as the few and well subsidized surviving banks that have risen from the ashes of the economic meltdown.

How about "Conglomerated ARTists of Every Leaning"? At any rate, count me in.

More at Art Work (via Temporary Services; see previous post here). To join C.A.R.T.E.L., e-mail cartel@16beavergroup.org.

And b.t.w. . . .

Happy New Year, and thank you all for coming! Please feel free to send suggestions!

(In case you were dying to know, there have now been 829 purportedly high-quality posts.)

Privacy Compressed: "The New Normal" at Diverseworks

. . . in Houston, opening Fri., Jan. 5, includes some of my favorite artists, such as Eyebeam R & D, Jonah Peretti & Michael Frumin, Harrell Fletcher, Guthrie Lonergan, Jill Magid, and Trevor Paglen. Curated by Michael Connor; more at the-new-normal and at Diverseworks. Also, on YouTube, there's video of a panel discussion of the show here and of Connor discussing the show here.

Facebook Status of a Young Muslim:

"YOU TAKE MY WATER, BURN MY OLIVE TREES, DESTROY MY HOUSE, TAKE MY JOB, STEAL MY LAND, IMPRISON MY FATHER, KILL MY MOTHER, BOMB MY COUNTRY, STARVE US ALL, HUMILIATE US ALL . . . BUT I AM TO BLAME: I SHOT A ROCKET BACK!"

Note the 1st item (you take my water).

(Thanks, Mari333!)

More Re- Nature Theater of OK

Just came across an "Excellent" interview in Bomb by Young Jean Lee of Kelly Copper and Pavol Liška, who direct Nature Theater of Oklahoma (see my previous post here).

Another Great Chart Re- Healthcare

You'll have to click on the image to get a legible version; but basically, the turquoise lines represent countries that have universal coverage provided by public and private insurers, and the orange lines – the U.S. and Mexico – represent the countries that do NOT have universal coverage.

The US line is super-high on the left because that's how much more we spend compared to the other nations. And the US line is much lower on the right because, even though we spend so much more, our life expectancies are actually below the mean average of that in the others.

U.S. insurers have already had decades to show they could deliver better results doing it their way, and it hasn't worked.

In contrast, in many other countries, universal coverage with a public option has been working well for decades; it's a proven solution.

UPDATE: Here's a calculator to help you figure out how you'd fare under the new law as of this writing. I'd check the results under the "Senate Leadership Bill," since it seems whatever passes will more closely resemble that version. In my own case, it says I wouldn't be eligible for any subsidy, I should expect to pay nearly 13% of my before-tax income for insurance – and that doesn't count whatever I'll have to pay in deductibles, co-pays, etc. – AND there would be no cap on premium increases.

Temporary Services: "ART WORK"

The Chicago-based artists' collective, Temporary Services, has published a one-off newspaper issue on how depressed economies affect artistic process, compensation, and property, including artists' initiatives to organize in their own and others' behalf.

You can download a complete copy of the issue here or here (please share these links!) A limited number of hard copies are also being distributed at select locations across the U.S.

Contributors to the newspaper include artists, critics, writers, and educators "seeking to articulate the ways in which artists and culture-makers both respond to and deal with the economic depressions of the world," including Holland Cotter, New York Times art critic and 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism; writer/artist Gregory Shollette, contributor to Artforum and co-editor of The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life; Julia Bryan-Wilson, author of Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam Era (2009) and Work Ethic (2003); Christina Ulke, Marc Herbst, and Robby Herbst, editors for The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest; Harrell Fletcher, visual artist; Futurefarmers, a collective design studio that supports art projects, artists in residencies and research interests; Nicolas Lampert, interdisciplinary artist; Lize Mogel, interdisciplinary artist; Linda Frye Burnham, writer and founder of High Performance magazine; Scott Berzofsky and John Duda, organizers of City from Below; Cooley Windsor, author of Visit Me in California; and many more.

TS has been described as "working out of a Situationist tradition"; their projects or publications have been featured at Mass MoCA, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, the Smart Museum of Art, the Creative Time Summit, and elsewhere.

UPDATE: Additional hard copies of the issue are available for the cost of shipping, through Half Letter Press; but due to the limited supply, orders of additional copies are being limited to 10 each; so get yours soon. Also, Temporary Services' Art Work website has the issue in the now-traditional interactive format, plus additional materials that could not be included in the hard copy because of monetary or time constraints.

Political Art Month

You can now see artists' and art professionals' responses to Political Art Month so far here. They're interesting, inspiring, and funny.

Founder Gene Elder writes, "Our goal [among others] is to alert galleries across America to devote some thought and time to either political, social or religious subject matter for July." For more on P.A.M., see my previous post.

What are you planning for P.A.M.? Let Elder and the world know; send him the details at elder4tomato at yahoo dot com.