Best and Worst of 2009 in Art and Public Media
Julia Kirt, Executive Director, Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition
10 worst artist excuses for turning proposals or artwork in late heard at OK Visual Arts Coalition
10. My printer broke.
9. I've been out of town.
8. I just saw this deadline.
7. I couldn't find your office.
6. I didn't get a reminder about this deadline.
5. I thought the deadline was next week.
4. Someone in your office sai...d I could deliver it late.
3. I haven't been inspired yet.
2. I lost my laptop charger and got stuck at the Apple store trying to replace it.
1. I couldn’t leave my house because my door knob broke.
Belinda Rawlins, Executive Director, Transmission Project
Top 10 items in my download folder that I keep coming back to
1. Powerful People Make Good Decisions Even When they Consciously Think
Is it the way you think that is affecting your decision-making or your power position?
2. The Future of Public Media FAQ and Public Media 2.0: Dynamic Engaged Publics
Jessica Clark synthesizes all things public media. I think I’ll consider her my personal moog.
3. Process is Powerful: Planning and Evaluation for Media Artists
“The purpose of grounding our work in principled practice, strategic planning and evaluation is so that we can develop the knowledge and methods to respond quickly and effectively to situations without being thrown off course and without being derailed from our long-range goals.” Word.
4. Cry Baby Cry – Van & Titus
Oh, wrong list. But I can’t take it off…it’s too good.
5. Maximum Performance – Different Things to Different People
Part of my honest practice philosophy that I’m cultivating, this article offers a variety of frameworks to assess organizational effectiveness.
6. Net Neutrality’s Impact on Low Income Communities: Equal Access for All
A fabulously wonky mix of stories, stats, and smack down, this doc from Public Knowledge makes the case and rebuts the arguments.
7. The Great Leap of Faith
It might be a couple of years old now, but I frequently find myself thinking back to Ginny Berson’s reflections on the changes facing community radio. And then I wonder what she’d change in those reflections today.
8. Same Old Song: An Analysis of Radio Playlists in a Post-FCC Consent Decree World
Didn’t payola die with Alan Freed? Funny, radio play was easier then than it is now. Uncovering the structures that shut out voices of new artists is the first step to reform.
9. The ACORN 361 Affiliated Organizations list
Are you sure you’re not on it? Did you even know that there was a list?
10. A Field Report: Media Justice Through the Eyes of Local Organizers
Before deciding it’s time to work with non-media focused groups, you’ve got to read this.
Patricia Zimmermann, professor of cinema, photography and media arts and codirector of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, Ithaca College
Ten Best International Multi-Platform Web 2.0 Projects of 2009 that Torque Documentary Form
Top ten lists of commercial films, high end art exhibitions, and books from the big publishers jam the press and websites this time of year. I devour these lists and end up saving them for my Netflix queue and my travel reading. That said, I find myself a lot more energized by projects that jack me into thinking about archives, history, concepts, politics, real people, real struggles and documentary practice in new ways. And that seduce me to keep coming back to see what’s new. The projects on my list engage some common strategies: collaborative, interactive, merging the digital and the real, the urgent and the imaginative. These are not auteurist projects—they are convenings. And are alphabetical order, in no particular ranking of importance.
1.The Hub, by Witness (an NGO based in NYC)
A user-generated, issue-focused, easy-to-search portal for uploading videos from around the world documenting a staggering array of human rights including armed conflict, labor, children’s rights, prisons, sustainable development, discrimination, violence, health, women’s rights, humanitarian issues, justice. A model of ethical, collaborative, social media, where uploading and sharing means taking action and campaigning for real world change for real people, not avatars or products.
2. Iranian Social Protest on Facebook
The Zapatistas wrangled the internet for politics. 15 years later, the Iran protest movement has nabbed social media and grabbed attention for turning recent updates into something more than your favorite youtube video or latte hang out. Despite the US state department’s enthusiasm for toppling regimes by any digital means necessary, Facebook and blogs have rendered the separation between the local and the global inoperative. Check out the link above for news about the men in head scarves movement.
3. Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change, Nunuvut, Canada
From Zacharias Kunuk and Ian J. Mauro, an exciting, interactive web project the gathers centuries of Inuit knowledge by elders and hunters on climate change in the Arctic, featuring blogs, multimedia, raw footage, live internet shows and skype. Say farewell to Al Gore and his multimillion dollar power point films.
4.Post Secret, by Frank Warren
This community art project is simple: people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard. But the results are complex: condensations of psychic fissures and social relations. Images and words are posted on the blog daily. Several books have been published from this material and hit the NYT bestseller list. But it’s still a model of engagement worth taking a look at..and, according to its own website, it’s the largest advertising free blog in the world. Send one in. Noone will know it’s you.
5. Public Secret, USA, project conceived by Sharon Daniel in collaboration with Justice Now
A massive collaboration between digital artist Daniel, the Vectors Journal at USC, Justice Now, and incarcerated women. It explores gender, family, and the prison industrial complex with an elegant, spared down design that remaps our preconceptions all the first three. It also cuts through decades of documentary debate about images, victims and ethics with more clarity than most scholarly essays on the subject.
6. RMB City, China, by Cao Fei, aka in SL China Tracy
A project spanning RL (real life) and SL (Second Life) that satirizes overdevelopment and overbuilding in China through avatars and buildings in Second Life, and a web site promoting the RMB city including press releases, city channels, manifestos, maps, city views and a blog. Strapped for cash? You might want to book your next weekend getaway in RMB City…
7. Sarai, Delhi, India
The go-to hub in South Asia for cracking open the liminal zones between the digital and the real with the edgiest new media theory around, practical and concept-changing on the ground projects mapping urbanism, and endless innovations in convening people and ideas with art shows, editable and free CDs, books, audio, free software, publications, translations and dialogue across languages (Hindi and English), and cybermohallas (you gotta love it—exploring the alley ways and corners of communities and cities.)
8. Saving the Sierra, California, USA, project coordinated by Catherine Stifter and jesikah maria ross
A compelling, elegant, clear-sighted regional project chronicling the culture, economy and environment of the Sierra Nevada as it confronts development challenging sustainability. It marshalls public media, radio documentary, citizen storytelling, and story mapping. The multiple and diverse voices in this project as a mighty and awe inspiring as Yosemite, Lake Tahoe and the sequoias, the spectacles and clichés of the Sierras.
9. Soweto Uprising, South Africa, project by Ismail Farouk and Babak Fakhamzadeh
An interactive website creating a living archive and new cartography of the student uprisings on June 16, 1976 with participants and people living in Soweto, with video mapping, blogs, routes that are tagged, Flickr projects for image uploading, comments on the maps of the routes.
10. Transborder Immigrant Tool, A Mexico/US border Disturbance Project by Ricardo Dominguez, Brett Stalbaum, Micha Cardenas, and Jason Najarro
A mind-blowing and controversy-igniting project where cell phones as digital coyotes meet phone apps meet GPS to help immigrants from Mexico cross the border. Before they’ve been built, they’ve generated a lot of blowback all ready. Start googling and find out what all the fuss is about. And then, start thinking apps and maps as a new media form.
