Poster Power
Power to the Poster is this ace new site that has heaps of fantastically designed posters on global issues that you can download for free and print in your hood. Heaps of them would make good stickers too.
And the best bit is that you can submit your own posters to the project. So you crazy conscious designers our there should go check out the submit section.
Yay for open source creativity!
We W.A.N.T. No More War
Sorry things have been a bit quiet round here of recent. I had this crazy election thing going on and then as soon as that was over we skipped over to Vanuatu to spend 10 days working with the local community on economic sustainability issues. More on that later when I’ve edited up video and photos! I have some serious craft loveliness from my trip to share!
We’ve also been pretty busy with the Craft Cartel summer market series. We had the first market (in the cold!) on Sunday at the Bicycle Film Festival B.est F.riends F.orever Street Party and it was an extreme amount of fun! Great to meet some new cartel members and awesome to see some mad bike fun going on. The Craft Cartel was sponsoring the market, Art Jam, the Bike Beauty Pageant (which I got to judge!) and the Bicycle Mating Project. Here’s some pics:
This is Dan from Nearly Road Kill with his best bad-ass face on. His belts made from old bike tyres were a serious hit with the BMX kids. This market was made for Dan!
My lovely wee stall set up on a plastic kids table which we grabbed from Savers on the way there!
They had Bike Polo too. It was mental. I actually thought it could be a bit more violent. But they tried their best. And I did admire the sticker on the bike in the foreground of this pic which read ‘One Less Horse’. Nice. If you find the thought of riding around on a bike while chasing a plastic ball to be your ultimate idea of thrillseeking, check their website for training and playing times.
(note the blue skies in that photo for all you who stayed home ’cause of the ‘rain’)
Some of the Craft Cartel crew have been busy over the last couple of weeks attaching gorgeous crafty valentines to bikes all over town. If you found one on your bike and also managed to find it’s matching pair, you could come claim a prize. These two bikes found each other and decided to come to the street party on a date. It got a bit risque…
There’s more pics on our Facewank group if you’re wanting more.
So while the cool kids of Melbourne have been celebrating all the different fossil fuel-free ways to get around and have fun, some crafty Iraq War vets have been bringing attention to the human costs of filling up your car. Called Operation W.A.N.T. (We Are Not Toys), this ace crew went and did an installation at their local gas station to show people just how many US soldiers have been buried during this state sponsored corporate resource grab.
Awesome pics by Jonas Lara
Props Groundswell
So now all my winter business has passed and my summer business is beginning I should be posting a lot more stuff on here. And we’ll be doing more work on the Craft Cartel site so you should get on the mailing list!
Clever People Rule
Especially clever people that like to hack the crazy world we live in.
Like Evan Roth who has created very thin laser cut stainless steel plates designed to slip in your luggage and cheer up your friendly local customs agent. Getting there is indeed half the fun. I’m wondering if we should get some ‘not a property developer’ plates for our upcoming Vanuatu trip..
The amusing part of this project for me was discovering that the TSA actually has their own blog. And this project did indeed pop up on there, prompting an extremely long and amusing converstion, I recommend a read!
I found a link to Evans project on Wooster, where I also found this nice project:
Genius.
Economics without the spin
If you’ve been watching any of the news about the global economic crisis recently you’re probably wondering why all the ‘expert commentators’ are bankers, traders and politicians aka the people that got us into this mess. But if you wany to learn about what this economic crisis is really about and learn about the real solutions to use the economic system to put us on a true path to sustainability, Economics for Activists is the course for you!
Hosted by Karl Fitzgerald who you all know as the host of the Renegade Economist on 3CR, this four-week course is designed for activists keen to get to the root causes of many of the social and environmental injustices we face today.
It’s a four week course starting next Tuesday and registrations are limited and essential. It’s only gold coin so anyone can afford it. Get on over to the Earthsharing Australia website and register your bad ass self today.
xox
More Free Tibet XStitch love
I haven’t had time to visit Craftster in a while but this morning Johanna sent me an email going ‘seen this?’
Holy freaking wow!
It’s by craftster user cface23. She had this to say:
I made 2 separate cross stitching patterns, one for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan flag, and I made up the dove and text by taking inspiration from the internet (google image search anyone?). Then, I combined all of the patterns using my creativity and math skills. Unfortunately, my ambition got the best of me, and I was unable to finish my cross stitch before the contest deadline- finishing 2.5 weeks too late, just in time for the 2008 Olympics. But not I have this wonderful cross stitch to show off and share with you.
This is an amazing piece and has come out really well. I especially like the use of backstitch around the glasses on the Dalai Lama and the dove, makes it look quite striking. A wee bit late for the comp, but I reckon a winner anyway.
Awesome!!!
Mosaic Liberation
Those of us in the craftivism world often use our skills to demonstrate solidarity in a public way with those that either don’t have a voice, or have an exceptionally marginalised one. Craft has such a mainstream appeal, it can open up issues to a wider audience than the normal activist audiences that some issues get ghettoed into.
One such issue is the racism of the prison industrial complex. If you live in the suburbs it can be easy to forget or not even know about the living hell that many, mostly indigenous men, are experiencing in prisons across the world.
The prison industry must love all the fear that politicians like to whip up about how unsafe our streets are. The more people demand longer sentences and the abolishment of parole, the higher the profits of the private prisons go. And the higher the cost to society. In the 2006/2007 financial year the cost of housing each inmate in New Zealand was $92,000. If the goal is to reduce crime, you can not tell me that is the most effective use of that much money.
In America aka the land of the Free, there is 1 adult in prison for every 100 adults. A country with 5% of the population has 25% of the world’s prison population. And of course the prisons are all privately run. So the more people in prison, the more corporate profits. And to make things even sweeter, most states don’t allow prisoners or even former prisoners to vote. And when you think about the fact that only about 1% of the prison population in the US are ‘white’ you can quickly see how this human rights tragedy is offensively racist beyond belief.
Which leads me to the point of this post which is to celebrate the new work of The Baroness.
A spectacular new mosaic mural has been unveiled on the outside wall of the Treatment Rooms in the west London suburb of Chiswick to raise awareness of African-American men confined in the notorious Angola prison, Louisiana.
The artwork, which took four months to create with help from a dedicated group of activist artists, decorates The Treatment Rooms, home of street artist Carrie Richards, aka The Baroness, and her partner Mr. Spunky. The mosaic is inlaid with 3D ceramic pieces and tiles that The Baroness has printed on herself. Having studied ceramics for the past 6 years, she is now about to transfer any image onto tile to add incredible detail and complexity to her work.
The mosaic depicts the so-called Angola 3 – Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert King – men wrongfully convicted of murder at Angola prison in the 1970s and who subsequently spent decades in solitary confinement. Though Woodfox’s conviction has been overturned, and Wallace’s recommended for such, both men remain behind bars.
The extensive work is also dedicated to Kenny ‘Zulu’ Whitmore, who has similarly spent 33 years in solitary confinement at Angola, where the majority of inmates are black and will die inside its walls.
The Baroness is personal friends with all of these political prisoners and has recently become spokesperson for the London Chapter to support the Angola 3. This mural follows on from the Luis Ramirez Wall – which was a mosaic mural in memory of her first prisoner penpal Luis who was executed by the State of Texas. She continues make mosaics infused with social and political commentary, and she’s The Treatment Rooms as the UK’s only ceramic adorned house of resistance.
The only freed member of the Angola 3, Robert King –who spent 29 years in solitary confinement and was released in 2001 after his murder conviction was overturned – attended the unveiling on June 21. One of the purposes of his stay in London was to launch the Free Zulu campaign. He spoke to a crowd of 150 artists and activists from the UK, Europe and North America who have rallied around the causes of the Angola 3 and Zulu.
Robert King spoke to Zulu after the unveiling and Zulu said he now had hope in his heart. He has since seen pictures of the unveiling and is overjoyed by the support reaching him from the UK.
Isn’t that the most awesome thing you’ve ever seen? I for one, am inspired.
Because this piece is not only beautifully designed and executed, but it deals with something important. With all the effort the creative community puts into making stuff, you’d think we’d be able to spare a bit more time and creative energy for the things that really matter.
www.thetreatmentrooms.org
www.angola3london.org
www.freezulu.co.uk
Counting down til Suffrage Day
Anyone who’s been within air shot of me recently would have heard me going on about Suffragettes. I’ve been doing a ton of research into the Suffrage Movement in the context of creative resistance. And I’ve been reminding myself how militant the movement was. And it makes me wonder what fabulous ideas we’re missing out on hearing due to the fear based panic our world seems to be operating on. If the suffragettes were doing their campaign today, the majority of them would be locked up indefinitely as terrorists because they dared to question the state and how the state defines participation in democracy.
You wouldn’t think that exercising your opinion is a crime these days. But try telling that to the 400-odd people, including journalists, that got locked up during the Republican Convention. It is unbelievable that in the supposed land of the free, the government would spend US$50 Million on policing to prevent people from getting out and voicing their opinion. Most of the people arrested were on pre-emptive charges. So they hadn’t even committed a crime, the police just thought they might. And many people were arrested just for attending a concert. Brilliant. In the real world, we call that fascism.
So in the spirit of free speech and celebrating true heroes, let’s all take some time to remember all the freedom fighters in our history that dedicated their lives to ridding the world of injustice. And those who put their bodies on the line to demand equal rights and liberation for all on this lovely planet that we share.
Cat has taken a lead with the awesome pattern of American Suffragette Lucretia Mott at the top of this post. You can download the pattern here. Thanks Cat, legendary!
And if you’re in London, go see this.
GRL Takes on South Korea
Have you been paying attention to the recent protests in South Korea about the US Beef Trade Agreement? There’s been some crazy stuff going on there and the S. Koreans have been doing an awesome job of maintaining their bad ass reputation of amazing protest on agricultural and sufficiency issues. I don’t think anyone in the anti-FTA movement will ever forget the ultimate sacrifice made by Lee Kyung-hae in Cancun in 2003 when he look his own life on the wall in the middle of the WTO talk protests.
So the cool kids at the Graffiti Research Lab decided to head over and join in the fun. Check this one out and see what they got up to
Korean Beef – Graffiti Research Lab from fi5e on Vimeo.
Props: Wooster Collective
Stitch For Senate
I thought I’d already written about this but turns out I only thought about writing about it. Confused?
The Stitch For Senate Project is an antiwar craft collaboration underway to coincide with the upcoming US election. Participants will be drawing on the long history of war knitting projects to knit a helmet liner for every US Senator.
Building on the tradition of wartime knitting, a practice as old as the American Revolution, Stitch for Senate revives this cultural trend by engaging with public officials about the war in Iraq. The Stitch for Senate website will compile testimonies from contributing knitters, that express everything from charity, allegiance, patriotism, resistance, and radicalism; using the tradition of political organizing within knitting circles as a space for storytelling, discussion, exchange and protest. Hobbyists knit in solidarity to persuade elected officials to support the troops by bringing them home. All the senators will receive their own helmet liner before the 2008 Senate election, after being displayed in the seating chart of the US Senate at gallery venue. Once they are received, senators can opt to send helmets to a soldier.
And they’re still looking for contributors so if you can knit and you aren’t too fond of the whole war thing, get on board.
The Stitch For Senate project is the brainchild of Cat Mazza who is one of my absolute favourite craftivists. You can check out more of her work and her blog here.