Clever People Abound
I’ve been finding all sorts of cool, inspiring and useful stuff online over the last day or so, and decided I’d share them.
Firstly, Sayraphim has written this great wee tutorial on how to publicise your exhibition or event. I would call this a must read for anyone putting on an event and wanting some helpful tips on how to get people there. And kudos to Sayraphim for putting this out there. I’ve been rather critical of parts of the Melbourne arts scene recently and it’s mostly because there just isn’t the community based cooperation that exists in the craft communities. I’m a staunch believer that creative communities should be taking a lead in demonstrating how people can work together. So yes, nice to see someone putting some genuinely useful information out into the public sphere!
On the helpful stuff front, I’ve had a few chats with people recently about getting grants for all sorts of things. And I have to recommend OurCommunity as a GREAT website with all sorts of helpful tips on how to write applications and they have lots of databases of grants to apply for.
Just Seeds has got the call out from the UK Anarchist Federation about a publication they’re doing on the intersections between art and anarchism. I know a fair few of you will be interested in this one, I’m sure they’d like as many submissions as possible!
And if you need a bit of inspiration I urge you to check out INCITE! and online journal of experimental and radical aesthetics. Most of it is film based so a fair bit of it went over my head but I still very much appreciate seeing artists get together with a radical analysis. The manifesto section was particularly inspiring!
Finally, if that doesn’t fire you up, this surely will. The Heretics is a new film coming out real soon about the Women’s Art Movement in the 1970s in the US, mostly New York. It’s based around a collective which produced a women’s art journal called Heresies. And the best bit is that they’ve pdf’ed all the old issues and you can download them for free. I downloaded one issue and the contents included words like: radical, anarchist, anti-colonial, revolution, liberation and strategy. How could you go wrong? I’m really looking forward to the film coming out. I’ll try and update progress on this one. In the meantime, get reading!
Craftivism in Italy
Cat Mazza from MicroRevolt has these lovely pics up from a craftivism workshop she facilitated? was in? not sure. But the pics are cool. Looks like they had an ace time expanding the imaginations of the people of Milan. And I ALWAYS give props to craftivism that involves finger knitting!
More here.
It’s awesome how much the craftivism movement is spreading. Thanks especially to the wonderful writing of Betsy Greer in her new book. We’ll be interviewing Betsy for the Craft Cartel podcast real soon. I’m looking forward to talking to her about her perspectives on the mainstreaming of the term.
Tweet
In an insane moment of procrastination, radical cross stitch and twitter combined forces yesterday. So if you’re a fan of the minutiae, come follow us!
Radical Craft on the radio
A couple of weeks before Christmas, Melbourne radio station 3RRR invited the Craft Cartel to come on air to chat about craft ins, conscious shopping and radical craft.
It was gonna be me and Casey but Casey’s bike objected to the early morning workout so it was just me in the end. It was a great interview and we covered a huge amount in such a short space of time. They’re keen to have us back on air so hopefully they will soon.
Listen to the interview here.
In English it’s called a quadrillion. In Swedish there’s not even a word for it.
First post of the new year for me. I would have liked to finish this earlier, but it took me most of December to get the stitching done.
During 2008 the situation in Zimbabwe has gone from bad to… well, catastrophic. I’ve been following the reports from Zim before, during & after the election in March last year & it feels like the whole country is turning into a black hole, like it’s slowly imploding. Zimbabwe was once a prosperous country but years of bad government & raging inflation has left it devastated & unable to care for it’s own people. The people who actually tried to do something about the situation by electing a new president but got robbed of their democratic rights by Robert Mugabe & the Zanu-PF party. Today there is no sufficient health care, hunger & cholera is killing the people, those who dare to speak up are getting arrested & are “disappearing”, Mugabe still holds his office & the talks between him & MDC about sharing government have collapsed. The money situation is bizarre, the inflation has reached heights that are pretty hard to grasp. In august 2008 it passed 11 200 000 %. As Anna Tibblin, a Swedish aid worker living in Harare, puts it: In English it’s called a quadrillion. In Swedish there’s not even a word for it.
So, with that in mind I’ve spent December working on this advent calendar. I used a pattern made from an old ANC poster (which unfortunately didn’t turn out quite as well as I’d hoped) & a quote from the anthem of neo-colonialism as I know it: the slightly bizarre Christmas song Do they know it’s Christmas? by the 80′s Band Aid project.
If you’re wondering why the dates of the calendar only goes up to 24, it’s because in Sweden we traditionally celebrate at Christmas eve, not Christmas day, so here its’ the 24th that is D-day…