Founded in the early 1950s, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG) has long played an important role in the cultural life of L.A. Located in the historic Barnsdall Art Park at the intersection of Hollywood and Vermont, the world class gallery has showcased internationally renowned artists, and provided exhibition space for beginning and mid-career artists. I remember the thrill of exhibiting at LAMAG as an art student in the early 1970s. The gallery annually hosts exhibitions of works created by the those who have been awarded grants from the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs. Over the decades I have been enthralled by LAMAG exhibits, and I was moved to write about their Edward Biberman Revisited show of 2009. The gallery’s history, arts programs, and community vision is exemplary - you can read about this for yourself.

It is a scandal that LAMAG has been marked for “partnering out all of its facilities” by L.A.’s city government because of L.A.’s budget crisis. “Partnering out” is simply a euphemism for the cutting of government funding and pushing the privatization of the arts institution. It is rumored that L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), which received a $30-million “bailout” from billionaire real estate magnate Eli Broad in Dec. 2008, is set to absorb LAMAG.

I received the following call to action from the President of LAMAG, and I am reprinting it here in its entirety:

September 1, 2010
URGENT!

City to Partner Out the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery

Dear Arts Community,

The Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs has been directed to issue Requests for Proposals (RFP’s) as the first step in partnering out all of its facilities. This is being done as a cost savings measure in response to the City’s budget deficit. What has been unclear until recently was that these RFP’s will include the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG).

Rumors have been circulating for some time that the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) is among the institutions considering taking over the fifty-six year old institution. The art community has been uncharacteristically silent about this impending change in the LAMAG’s status. Much like the proverbial deer in the headlights, there is a prevailing air of shock and disbelief among those familiar with its history, and tacit resignation to whatever fate might befall the institution, by those who are not. The lack of any concerted effort to promote the Gallery’s exhibition and educational programs has contributed greatly to making it vulnerable and ripe for the picking.

Since its founding in 1954 the LAMAG’s mission has been to exhibit the work of emerging, mid career and established artists from the region, as well as work relevant to the diverse communities that make up the City of Los Angeles. Prior to the building of LACMA in the 60s, it was the largest space exhibiting contemporary art in Los Angeles. It has operated with equity and impartiality, embracing both the traditional and contemporary aesthetic, while always mindful of its responsibility to the public and its goal of enhancing the quality of life. It occupies a unique niche in the city’s cultural landscape, being neither a museum, nor a commercial gallery, allowing it broad curatorial latitude not enjoyed by other institutions.

The LAMAG hosts the annual COLA Fellowship for Individual Artists and the Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg Feitelson Emerging Artist Fellowship exhibitions, showcasing the work of some of the City’s most creative minds. Biannually the Municipal Art Gallery presents the All City Juried Exhibition and in intervening years, the All City Open Exhibition in which anyone in the city can exhibit their work. LAMAG also serves as a space that hosts important exhibitions from our sister cities, something I dare say other institutions would probably be unable or unwilling to do.

We should be questioning the wisdom of, or the lack there of, any idea ceding total governance of such an important asset to any institution or individual who’s agenda is not in keeping with the public character of the LAMAG. Such a move has the effect of a greater stratification of the visual arts in a city where the disparity between so called “new school” or “high art” and more populist artistic genres is growing ever wider. Other cities are expanding their municipal exhibition spaces and establishing new ones. Many of these cities are facing the same budget challenges as are we, and see public safety as their number one priority. However they have never lost sight of the fact the that part of their responsibility in providing public safety includes promoting the general well being of its citizenry.

What can you do? Write to the Mayor and your City Councilperson expressing your concern for the future of the Gallery. (Please see the attached template letter and link to City Council.) As for the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery Associates, we are advocating that language be incorporated in the Request for Proposals requiring prospective operators to maintain the public nature of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, and that a substantial portion of the Gallery’s mission be preserved. Furthermore, we would ask that the name “Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery” be retained and that the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery Associates have a vital role in supporting the mission of the Gallery.

The Municipal Art Gallery is not only a historic attraction in a city that touts itself as an international arts destination; it is an irreplaceable source of pride for Angelenos and the creative community.

Please act now.

On behalf of the entire board of LAMAG,
Maria Luisa de Herrera,
President

Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery
Web: lamag.org. Phone: 323.644.6269. Fax: 323-644-6271. E-mail: info@lamag.org

The emergency faced by the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery must not be viewed as an isolated incident, but as part of a systemic catastrophe faced by the arts community across the United States; the crisis shows little sign of decreasing. The American Folk Art Museum in New York City, which holds an important collection of Americana, is in danger of closing its doors; the institution is currently struggling to pay off a crushing debt that has been exacerbated by the capitalist financial downturn. The museum has cut its budget by over $1 million, implemented layoffs of staff, and ceased printing its publication, Folk Art Magazine. In a further effort to cut costs the museum now publishes some of its exhibition catalogs only online.

The Wall Street Journal reported that New York’s Chelsea Art Museum temporarily closed its doors to the public for the month of August as it battles to avoid foreclosure. The paper reported that the museum, in a desperate attempt to raise money, “pledged its entire permanent collection of artwork as collateral to pay its mortgage.” That move apparently only worsened the museum’s problems, as it was a violation of state laws supervising museum charters.

Many people in the arts community voted for President Obama because they believed his administration would be supportive of the arts, that he would live up to his promises contained in his acclaimed Platform in Support Of The Arts (.pdf here), and that he would drastically increase funding for the arts. So far, the only substantive response from Mr. Obama came on February 1, 2010, when he announced he would be cutting support for the arts in his proposed budget for fiscal year 2011. It is imperative that the arts community demand President Obama act on establishing a new WPA-style arts program that will revive and expand the nation’s museums, cultural venues, and galleries, in tandem with creating a massive jobs program to put the country’s artists to work.

"Face It, You're A Man: Wear the Pants" - Dockers ad designed for Levi Strauss & Co. by ad firm, Draftfcb.

I was startled when printmaker Doug Minkler of Berkeley, California informed me that Levi Strauss & Co., one of the largest clothing manufacturers in the world, was operating an art printmaking workshop in San Francisco.

Minkler, a longtime artist and social activist, was chagrined that the corporate leviathan was whitewashing its poor labor practices by “branding” itself a champion of working people - and using the arts to do so.

This story really begins in 2003, when Levi Strauss & Co. closed the last of its U.S. manufacturing plants, eliminating thousands of good paying jobs for American workers. The company has since moved its manufacturing operations to nations like Mexico, Haiti, Bangladesh, China, and Cambodia, where wages are extremely low and workers easily exploited.

Now, through the efforts of ad firms and PR agencies, Levi Strauss & Co. is promoting itself as a conglomerate that is “a catalyst for change,” and the free printmaking workshop in San Francisco has been part of the marketing campaign. On August 26, 2010, Doug Minkler published an open letter to the arts community titled, Lay Down Your Brushes, entreating artists to reconsider their relationship to Levi Strauss, and to corporate support of the arts in general. The text of Minkler’s dispatch follows:

“Levi Strauss & Co., Wal-Mart’s largest worldwide strategic partner, is just finishing a two-month long advertising event in San Francisco via their Levi’s Free Printing Workshop. Artists from as far as Sacramento and the East Bay have made their way to the workshop to be part of the giant Levi Strauss advertisement campaign. The colorful and talented artists are not printing Levi’s logos, rather, they are printing their own art work. Most of the artists, especially the activists, would never consider creating advertising for the corporate giant, but somehow they have been seduced into helping Levi Strauss.

Some justify their advertising support by working on projects that will benefit non profits, others claim they have not been duped because they are addressing social justice issues on Levi’s tab.  A Levi’s workshop exhibit of well known activist artists titled ‘Mission Icons In Time Of Change‘ emerged from the Free Print Workshop in order to raise much needed funds for Plaza Adelante, a Mission self-help center for lower and middle class Latino families. So, what could be wrong with artists and the community finally getting a piece of the corporate pie?  I fear a lot.

Artists who accepted the free printing are tacitly saying to both the Levi Strauss corporation and the public that ‘Levi Strauss can use us for cleansing their reputation - their exploitative corporate labor and marketing practices are okay with us. Give us free printing and we will help you sell jeans and a false benevolent image.’ Levi’s co-optation of the artists’ positive image is accomplished by masking corporate advertisement with the legitimizing appearance of involvement in social justice efforts.

In Levi’s cloaked sales campaign, artists are kept far removed from the crass tactics involved in sales, consequently, artists are lulled into thinking that they have not compromised their principles. For the corporation, it is a ‘win win’ situation, but for the non-commercial artist, the ‘For Sale’ jacket they now wear is a problem.

I believe a more critical look at Levi Strauss & Co. is in order before more artists enter into a casual (or not so casual) relationship with this corporate giant.

1.  Levi Strauss & Co. is a worldwide corporation organized into three geographic divisions:  Levi Strauss Americas (LSA), based in the San Francisco headquarters; Levi Strauss Europe, Middle East and Africa (LSEMA), based in Brussels; and Asia Pacific Division (APD), based in Singapore.

2.  By the 1990s, the Levi brand, facing competition from other brands and cheaper products from overseas, began accelerating the pace of its U.S. factory closures and its use of offshore subcontracting agreements.  In 1991, Levi Strauss faced a scandal involving six subsidiary factories on the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth, where some 3% of Levi’s jeans sold annually with the Made in the U.S.A. label were shown to have been made by Chinese laborers under what the United States Department of Labor called ’slave like’ conditions.  Today, Levi jeans are made overseas.  Cited for sub-minimum wages, seven-day work weeks with 12-hour shifts, poor living conditions and other indignities, Tan Holdings Corporation, Levi Strauss’ Marianas subcontractor, was forced to pay what were then the largest fines in U.S. labor history, distributing more than $9 million in restitution to some 1,200 employees.

3.  The activist group Fuerza Unida (United Force) was formed following the January 1990 closure of a plant in San Antonio, Texas, in which 1,150 seamstresses (primarily Hispanic women), some of whom had worked for Levi Strauss for decades, saw their jobs exported to Costa Rica. During the mid and late 1990s, Fuerza Unida picketed the Levi Strauss headquarters in San Francisco and staged hunger strikes and sit-ins in protest of the company’s labor policies (The above three historical facts about Levi Strauss were resourced from Wikipedia.)

If Levi’s labor practices are not enough reason for you to end your association with them, possibly their recent sexist, homophobic DOCKERS campaign encouraging men to ‘Wear the Pants‘ and welcoming people to ‘MAN Francisco’ will, or their ‘All Asses Are Not Created Equal‘ ad emphasizing variation in butt sizes but continuing to bombard women with images of the unattainable Barbie shape will, or perhaps their ever increasing sexualization of younger and younger girls via their skin tight low rider jeans will, or all of the above will.

In the 90’s, I taught printmaking in the mission at New College of California. One day my class was asked by the administration to create a poster for SF Poetry Week. The first question the students asked me was who were the sponsors? When I informed them that the sponsors were Levi Strauss, Nestle’s and New College, they not only refused the job, but produced protest posters against their college’s involvement. Next, they produced a series of posters that exposed Levi’s U.S. plant closures, their off-shore labor practices and Nestle’s deadly infant formula peddling. These images were either wheat-pasted in San Francisco or hung in the coffee shops in which the poetry events occurred. My refusal to stifle their anger and sense of justice eventually cost me my job.

I am not surprised by Levi’s latest marketing ploy. What I am surprised and disappointed about is how easily such a large number of artists were seduced. To my fellow artists, who oppose the capitalist/corporate model of production and who became artists for reasons other than money, I recommend that you re-evaluate your association with this corporate sponsor and then withdraw your participation.”

Something that author Naomi Klein wrote of in her book, No Logos, seems pertinent to this discussion. Klein noted the omnipresent corporate branding pervading every aspect of life in the U.S., to the point where “walking, talking, life-sized Tommy Hilfiger dolls, mummified in fully branded Tommy worlds,” can be found in all corners of the nation. Klein wrote that the conglomerates behind the marketable brands were less “the disseminators of goods or services than as collective hallucinations.” Artists working at the Levi print shop were aiding - whether they realized it or not - the corporate objective of controlling all public space.

When the Supreme Court voted in January 2010 to strike down restrictions barring corporations from showering political candidates with infinite amounts of money, a substantial number of Americans understood the decision as corruptive to the democratic process. But how is corporate patronage of elected officials all that different from big money sponsorship of the nation’s arts and culture? That is the question one needs to ask when considering the Levi-sponsored printmaking workshop.

The spectacle of Levi Strauss & Co. as a benevolent, socially responsible, and altruistic “corporate citizen” reminds me of a talk given by radical Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek. His 2009 lecture, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, examines how charitable giving has become “the basic constituent” of today’s capitalist economy. Žižek contends that “In today’s capitalism, more and more, the tendency is to bring the two dimensions (charity and commerce) together in one and the same cluster, so that when you buy something - your anti-consumerist duty to do something for others, for the environment, and so on, is already included into it. If you think I’m exaggerating you have them around the corner, walk into any Starbucks Coffee, and you will see how they explicitly tell you, I quote their campaign; ‘It’s not just what you are buying - it’s what you are buying into.’ (….) You don’t just buy a coffee, you buy - in the very consumerist act - you buy your redemption from being only a consumerist.”

"We Are All Workers" - Ad campaign designed for Levi Strauss & Co. by ad firm, Wieden+Kennedy.

British artist Andrew Park has brilliantly animated Žižek’s incisive lecture for the British Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce (RSA). The First as Tragedy, Then as Farce animation is not only enthralling to watch, it offers an essential critical assessment of the type of “cultural capitalism” now being implemented at the Levi Strauss & Co. print workshop.

I have to mention the “We Are All Workers” marketing campaign launched by Levi’s for its new line of “work wear.” With the U.S. economy at a standstill, unemployment at levels not seen since the Great Depression, and millions of Americans losing their homes, Levi’s is promoting its expensive fashion line with proletarian sensibilities. Poster advertisements displaying slogans like “Everybody’s Work Is Equally Important,” “This Country Was Not Built By Men In Suits,” “Ready To Work,” and “We Are All Workers,” have appeared on city walls all across the United States.

But we are not all workers. Certainly those business executives that made the decision to close every Levis manufacturing plant in the U.S. are not workers, nor were their decisions made in the interests of working people.

Levi Strauss & Co.’s “Wear the Pants” and “All Asses Were Not Created Equal” campaigns were created by Draftfcb, one of the largest advertising agencies in the world, a firm that handles global conglomerates like Boeing, Dow, and Lilly. The “We Are All Workers” campaign was designed for Levi Strauss by the Wieden+Kennedy ad firm. Perhaps the two should be combined for a new “truth in advertising” marketing campaign - “We Are All Asses.”

WARP Magazine cover for the July 2010 special edition, "Music Against The Machine."

WARP, the Spanish language glossy magazine from Mexico that focuses on the international contemporary music scene, arts, culture, cinema, and more, conducted an interview with me that appeared in the monthly’s July 2010 print edition.

Under the headline of, “Music Against The Machine,” WARP Magazine #28 was a special edition dedicated to those bands, performers, and individuals who have spoken out in opposition to SB1070, the racist anti-immigrant law recently enacted in Arizona.

WARP Magazine #28 included exclusive interviews with Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against The Machine, L.A.’s own Latino/Rock/Hip Hop powerhouse Ozomatli, as well as interviews with Café Tacvba and Molotov - two of the most popular alternative rock bands in Mexico who have been widely admired in that country for some years. Each of the interviewees offered their take on anti-racist activism on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border.

For my part, WARP staff reporter Chëla Olea conducted the magazine’s interview with me, which offered a brief personal history on yours truly, an overview of my position regarding activist art, reflections on how art can bring about change (quoting from the interview: “The very act of creating art is based upon transformative desire – a yearning for something that does not yet exist. That is what makes art a radical gesture and the very opposite of conservatism”), and my stance regarding the growing anti-immigrant sentiment of numerous people in the U.S.

"Dia de los Muertos" was one of my artworks used to augment the July 2010 interview with me in WARP Magazine.

The interview was published in Spanish of course, so the excepts I am printing here have been transcribed into English for the convenience of non-Spanish speaking readers. When asked what I thought about Arizona’s SB1070 immigration law, my response was as follows:

“Arizona’s anti-immigrant law is racist and unconstitutional, but the law masks a much larger problem in the United States. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer also signed into law a bill that outlaws the teaching of ethnic studies in Arizona schools, simply put, this makes it illegal for educators in Arizona public schools to instruct students about the unique contributions made to U.S. society by Mexican-Americans. Ethnic studies programs in the U.S. have customarily included the history of African-Americans as well – so the banning of ethnic studies in Arizona is not just an affront to Latinos, but to truth itself.”

When asked by Olea to give my opinion on what can be done to counteract SB1070, and how art might make a difference, my answer was the same as it would have been regarding the other crucial issues faced by the arts community and society as a whole:

“Artists have an important role to play when it comes to reversing the hateful laws that have been implemented in Arizona. Already a number of artists, musicians, writers, and actors have stepped forward to denounce what is going on in Arizona, and I find that encouraging. The universality of art can sweep away the barriers that keep people divided, though sometimes art must be combined with activism. On May 1, 2010, upwards of 200,000 people marched for immigrants rights in Los Angeles, and I was among the crowd. It is the people that are the engine of history, and so the artist must fight for and protect their rights.”

The entire WARP interview with me (in Spanish), can be read online in .pdf format.

"Immigrant’s Dream – America’s Response." Malaquias Montoya. Serigraph. 2004.

Immigrant’s Dream – America’s Response is the title of a silkscreen poster by artist Malaquias Montoya. His print is just one of many posters dealing with the subject of immigration to be displayed at L.A.’s Avenue 50 Studio for the month of July.

The collection of prints from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) will be shown in the small “annex” exhibit room attached to the gallery’s main exhibit hall.

Malaquias Montoya is generally acknowledged to be one of the primary 1960s social activist printmakers from the San Francisco Bay Area of California, and known for his images of protest as well as for his focus on Chicano culture and history.

In his 2004 Immigrant’s Dream print, Montoya depicted a nameless, faceless migrant worker wrapped in a U.S. flag as though it were a body bag. A tag reading “undocumented” is attached to the bag, marking the unfortunate soul for deportation.  The immigrant’s dream of freedom and economic prosperity has fallen away to reveal a nightmare of repression and fear. Naturally, Montoya’s print was prescient given the present situation in Arizona.

Kathy Gallegos, director of Avenue 50 Studios, told me that while the gallery is booked for the year, she felt it important “to take a stand” over the issue of immigrant’s rights, so she arranged the poster exhibit with the CSPG. The poster show is in conjunction with the gallery’s main exhibit, Women on the Verge, a sculptural installation by artists Stephanie Mercado and Alpha Lubicz that questions notions of prosperity in America’s consumerist culture.

The Opening Night Reception takes place on Saturday, July 10, 2010 from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m., with the exhibit closing at the end of July. Avenue 50 Studio is located at 131 North Avenue 50, in Highland Park, California. 90042. Phone: 323-258-1435. Web: www.avenue50studio.com

"By The Time I Get To Arizona" at the Mid-City Arts Gallery. Photo by Mark Vallen ©

When you visit the Mid-City Arts Gallery on West Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles during the month of July, you will first notice the meticulously painted gallery window facing the street. Hovering above a strange looking geometric pattern are the words, By The Time I Get To Arizona.

The geometric shape is a minimalist representation of the huge “security” fence now being constructed along the U.S.-Mexican border. The words are the title of the gallery’s current exhibit; a presentation that mixes graffiti, street and conceptual art, paintings, prints, and photos that take aim at the anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona known as Senate Bill SB1070.

Step into the gallery and the second thing you are likely to discern, aside from the confrontational artworks of some 2o artists hanging on the walls, are the white funeral crosses. They exist as wooden crucifixes nailed to the gallery walls, as spray-painted images stenciled onto the floor of the art space, and as design motifs incorporated into an indoor wall mural; but all of the crosses large and small are emblematic of just one thing – the thousands of undocumented souls who have died along the border in their attempts to enter El Norte, the United States.

"By The Time I Get To Arizona" – Detail of a collaborative mural created by Vyal One & The Phantom.

Mid-City Arts Gallery is an unusual venue in that it serves the graffiti arts community of Los Angeles and beyond, showcasing graffiti artists both legendary and upcoming.

In speaking to the curator of the Arizona exhibit, Viejas Del Mercado, concerning his reasons for mounting such an exhibition, he told me it was a necessary response to dire circumstances.

A good portion of those who frequent the gallery are Latino – and they are disquieted by the racist scapegoating they see going on in the United States. Del Mercado told me that he plans to hold a series of exhibits at Mid-City Arts on the topic of undocumented workers and their dreams and aspirations. It is significant and encouraging that at least a certain layer of street artists are exploring vital social issues. The show at Mid-City Arts is visceral, angry, unapologetic – and well worth seeing.

"No Man's Land: Western Exterminators" – Vyal One. Working mousetrap painted as the Flag of Arizona. Photo/Vallen ©

The back wall of the main gallery displays an installation by artist Vyal One, an orderly arrangement of a dozen or so working mousetraps that have been painted in the colors of the U.S. flag as well as those of the State of Arizona.

The array of colorfully painted but menacing rodent traps playfully brings up a number of serious questions, not the least of which is the very idea of nationalism being a clamplike snare that entraps all. The installation also sarcastically posits the question of immigration in a way that takes right-wing rhetoric on the matter to its logical conclusion; “illegals” are vermin to be exterminated.

AmeriKKKan Gothic: Malice in Wonderland was a special installation and performance piece created just for the exhibit’s opening night reception. L.A.’s legendary street artist The Phantom, based his installation upon the famous 1930s painting, American Gothic, by the American regionalist artist Grant Wood. Everyone attending the opening was eventually encouraged to enter a small darkened room, where the only thing that could be seen was a large framed painting hanging on a back wall, only it was not a painting; it was a tableau constructed from three dimensional objects arranged to appear like a painting. Moreover, due to the fact that the faux painting actually masked a small hidden stage, a young actress was inserted into the picture. The representation of course was of Wood’s American Gothic, but the iconographic image was transformed into a disparagement of xenophobia, racism, and U.S. corporate culture.

"AmeriKKKan Gothic: Malice in Wonderland" – The Phantom. Installation with live actor. Photo/Vallen ©

The tableau replaced Wood’s old farmer and his pitchfork with a crude effigy of “Jack,” the imaginary CEO and symbol of Jack in the Box Inc., the U.S. hamburger fast food chain. Clearly Jack epitomized U.S. power, but he wore the traditional flannel button down shirt of L.A.’s Latino homeboys – he was a corporate “Trojan horse” if you will. Against a painted backdrop of Wood’s now graffiti-covered Gothic Revival style farmhouse, the dummy Jack stood next to the actress, who was dressed in a colorful huipil, the traditional garment of Mexican women.

Personifying Mexican culture, the woman clutched a microphone as if she were about to address the audience, but she remained mute throughout the performance. She wore an angst-ridden expression and her mouth trembled in anxiety; she was being smothered by the force of U.S. cultural imperialism. Melancholy mariachi music played over the entire performance, and the romantic sound of guitars, violins, trumpets and vihuelas (the Mexican 5 string guitar), only served to amplify the abject terror of The Phantom’s surreal nightmare.

"Cry Now" – El Mac. Pen on paper. 2010.

Another highlight of the show was a pen and ink drawing by El Mac. Titled Cry Now, the drawing not only displayed the sophisticated calligraphic style of a superb draftsman, it was heavy with Chicano-Mexicano based cultural signifiers. First and foremost, the favored but highly stylized “Old English” typeface so often seen in placa (Caló or “Chicano slang” for a person’s graffiti tag), is inverted by El Mac from a symbol of authority into one of victimization. The text invites viewers to collectively mourn something that has been lost; the human and civil rights of a people. “Cry Now,” is an entreaty from those suffering persecution.

The mask of pain El Mac depicts also reminds me of the payaso (clown) tattoos so popular with a certain layer of Chicano street youth, but here the clown is a symbol of lamentation instead of power. What is to come once the sorrow passes? The answer of course lays in the strength of the people, reflected once more in the constantly changing face of that mask, which ultimately resembles a magnificent stone carving from one of Mexico’s most powerful ancient civilizations – the Olmec.

My only critique of the exhibit is that it falls short when it comes to examining the economic questions behind the issue of immigration. U.S. corporations have closed factories in the states, only to open them in the so-called maquiladora zones of Mexico, where labor laws are lax, U.S. companies enjoy relaxed or non-existent environmental laws, and where Mexican workers labor for long hours but receive little compensation. Moreover, the majority of workers in the maquiladora zones are young women – and they suffer terribly from sexual exploitation at the hands of their bosses. In general Mexican women are paid one-sixth of what a U.S. worker would be paid. This has led to super-profits for U.S. and Mexican elites, but impoverishment for U.S. and Mexican workers – the real cause of “illegal” immigration.

The Phantom autographs the sketch book of a young fan with his signature placa on the opening night of "By The Time I Get To Arizona." Phantom’s graffiti body outlines with politicized text have long appeared on L.A. streets, one such image appeared as cover art for "The Battle of Los Angeles," the third studio album by Rage Against the Machine. Photo/Vallen ©

The building in which the Mid-City Arts Gallery is located has quite a history. Located in a solidly multi-cultural section of L.A., it was a gathering place for some of the first hip hop DJs in L.A. during the early 1980s. Through the 80s and 90s it served as a hip hop record store, and sometime in the 2000s the shop was split in two – becoming a record store and marketing office.

Its most recent makeover has transformed the site into a shop that sells essential graffiti art supplies to aspiring and experienced graffiti artists (33Third), and an art gallery where such artists can display their works.

By The Time I Get To Arizona will run at the Mid-City Arts Gallery for the month of July. Starting on Saturday, August 14, they will present Acto II in their series of immigration exhibits: El Camino Del Diablo (The Devil’s Highway), an exhibition featuring works by Vyal, The Phantom, Eder, and Cache. Mid-City Arts Gallery is located at 5113 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, CA. 90019 (Map directions).

On June 23, 2010, I wrote a missive regarding the financial ties the Los Angeles County Museum of Art maintains with the U.K. oil company, BP (British Petroleum). My tongue-in-cheek piece sarcastically incriminated Freewaves, the L.A.-based new media arts organization, for displaying videos at LACMA’s so-called “BP Grand Entrance” in an official LACMA program on June 26, 2010. My remarks apparently touched a nerve, and I received an e-mail from the Executive Director of Freewaves, Anne Bray, who claimed Freewaves was “sympathetic” to my position. Intrigued, I offered Ms. Bray the opportunity to submit a written rebuttal to my article, and that I would consider publishing her commentary for the sake of open dialog in the arts community. Ms. Bray indeed sent an editorial piece to me on 6/25/2010 that was co-authored by Freewaves Marketing Intern Saira Fazli. I publish their statement here in full:

Dear Mr. Vallen

We are grateful for your concern regarding our event. We agree with you – BP has done a terrible thing that reflects this society’s harrowing addiction to oil, which is the real issue. The most constructive thing we can do is to decrease our dependence on oil, not just hate BP. BP only exists to supply our thirst. Another constructive thing we can do, which Freewaves does, is to embrace activist art. We screen videos that are deemed too challenging for mainstream media. We are aware of the fact that our medium, video art, is not a green one. But we have been showing eco-friendly and eco-themed works since 1990.

We are anything but an institution or a corporation. We are a community. In fact, we have only two permanent employees. Everyone else who has worked with us has been a friend of Freewaves who decided to work with us because they believe in us. Everything we’ve done in our 20+ year history has been an attempt to subvert the way that corporations have framed mass media. We have consistently worked tirelessly to fairly and justly give underrepresented groups the attention they can’t get anywhere else. We haven’t stopped yet, and we’re not going to stop now.

The $10 per person ticket price is not excess money that we greedily collect because we sadistically celebrate seagull fatalities. LACMA is receiving all of the income from the event. Most Freewaves events are actually free. In fact, unlike other festivals, we choose to use the funding that we have to pay our artists. We care about making sure that artists understand how much we value their creativity.

We sell our books and DVDs at a small portion of production costs. We are, at our core, a small nonprofit arts organization. We are not about, and have  never been about, money.

We don’t need to waste our time giving BP extra publicity. But if you want to be constructive and help us make a dent in the world, then join us. Contribute your ideas and help us make a change. Come to our event and protest BP if you have to. Talk to everyone you meet about how much the situation disgusts you. Mobilize! The most unhelpful thing you can do is stay home by yourself and write blogs about why we suck.

We’re not going to stop fighting. Are you?

Sincerely,

Anne Bray, Executive Director
Saira Fazli, Marketing Intern

I am afraid that Bray and Fazli have missed my point entirely. My objection is not that BP has “done a terrible thing,” but that LACMA’s director Michael Govan has turned the museum into a marketing arm of BP. In 2007 Mr. Govan accepted $25 million from the oil company and in return the museum built the so-called “BP Grand Entrance” on the LACMA campus. Every time an artist or arts group presents works beneath the BP Grand Entrance, it lends authority, respectability, and quiet approval to the machinations of one of the world’s biggest polluters; even if that presentation is of a “challenging” nature – it nonetheless enables BP to present itself as a generous and “socially responsible” supporter of the arts. As one must pass through the BP Grand Entrance in order to enter the LACMA museum complex, BP has succeeded in placing its imprimatur upon every LACMA exhibit, not to mention its entire collection.

In a brief interview that appeared on the Flavorpill website just prior to Freewaves’ presentation at the BP Grand Entrance, Ms. Bray asserted that the videos to be shown would “assess art’s role in challenging racism, sexism and classism.” In the statement Bray and Fazli submitted to me, they insisted that in the 20 plus years of Freewaves’ history, the group has endeavored to “subvert the way that corporations have framed mass media.” I do commend Freewaves for having such an illustrious track record, but one thing puzzles me. How is it that a collection of apolitical mainstream Pop Stars comprised of mega-celebrities like Lady Gaga, the Backstreet Boys, Ryan Seacrest, Justin Bieber, Cameron Diaz and dozens of others, can call for and help organize a boycott in denunciation of BP – but Freewaves, which purports to “embrace activist art,” cannot?

There are many talented artists who have worked with Freewaves, and undoubtedly the group and its associates have contributed much in helping to build and sustain a new contentious art – but at this time there is a pressing need for all artists and arts organizations to think through their positions regarding oil company sponsorship of the arts. In the spirit of the familiar axiom, “think globally – act locally,” this means artists in L.A. should be opposing BP’s funding of LACMA. Around twenty years ago some of the largest corporate sponsors of the arts were tobacco companies, yet who would collaborate with, or take money from, tobacco companies today? If the idea of a “Philip Morris Tobacco Company Grand Entrance” at LACMA sounds like an outrage, then why is the “BP Grand Entrance” acceptable – especially in light of today’s ongoing cataclysm in the Gulf of Mexico?

I have put my name to a petition published in the letters section of Britain’s Guardian on June 28, 2010, an appeal signed by 170 other international arts professionals including Hans Haacke and Lucy R. Lippard. The petition, which demands an end to oil company sponsorship of the arts, was described by Artinfo as an “Army of Art-World Protestors Against BP Funding,” The petition was meant to coincide with the 20th anniversary of BP “support” for Britain’s Tate Modern, National Portrait Gallery, and other major cultural institutions – sponsorship that has been denounced, protested, picketed, and disrupted by a wide alliance of arts professionals, activists, and environmentalists in the U.K. It is time for the arts community in the United States to carry out its own efforts.

BP: Broken Promises – Logo design by Foye. 2010. The artist said the following about the design, "'Back to Black' is a term aimed at maximum brand damage – BP have spent hundreds of millions re-branding themselves as the good green oil company. The helios in this image is fading, petals falling to the ground – creating a sense of behind the brand image."

As BP’s broken underwater oil well in the Gulf of Mexico continues to gush over 100,000 barrels of oil per day into the fragile ecosystem, and as sheets of the thick sticky crude start to fill the delicate marsh lands of the Mississippi Delta – Greenpeace UK has launched an art competition to redesign the BP corporate logo.

The contest is open to professional and non-professional artists from around the world. Greenpeace UK says that the current corporate logo needs “a makeover to better suit a company that invests in tar sands and other unconventional oil sources like deep water oil,” and that a redesigned logo should better reflect BP’s “dirty business.”

Starting on May 20, 2010, the design contest will run for six weeks, ending on June 28, 2010. The environmental group says the winning logo design will be “used by us in innovative and exciting ways as part of our international campaign against the oil company,” and will be placed in high profile locations, as well as featured in newspaper and magazine advertisements. Entries will be judged by a panel of artists from the design and marketing professions, whose identities will be revealed as the competition draws to a close.

Submitted artworks can be created in any media, the only criteria being that the re-worked logo adheres to the concept of exposing BP, and that the logo is easy to comprehend and reproduce. Non-professional artists and students are encouraged to submit their ideas and concepts, as Greenpeace UK will provide such a contest winner “a day with a top graphic designer to transform your idea into a final product.”

BP: Bitumen Pilferers – Anonymous. 2010. The designer turned BP’s green sunflower icon into a dead flower dripping with oil. Bitumen of course is the hydrocarbon obtained by distilling petroleum or coal; the substance is commonly used as a component of tar and asphalt.

John Sauven, the Executive Director of Greenpeace UK, said the following regarding the launch of the logo competition; “BP’s famous green logo is there to distract us from what this company really stands for. This company has chosen to extract the last drops of oil from deep sea wells and the tar sands of Canada, instead of developing the clean technologies that can actually help beat climate change. That’s why we’re calling in the experts. We’re hoping that the design community and the public will help us come up with a logo that will actually reflect BP’s obsession with dirty oil. This is a competition with a difference, because we’re planning to use the winning entry all over Britain in a high profile Greenpeace campaign that the company will find impossible to spin.”

Complete details on the competition and how to submit an entry, are available on the Greenpeace website, at: www.greenpeace.org.uk

It should be noted that Greenpeace UK launched the design competition by simultaneously deploying trained climbers to scale the front entrance of BP’s London headquarters, where the Greenpeace activists replaced BP’s large corporate flag with a redesigned banner of their own.

Greenpeace UK released the following statement to the public regarding the event; “Our climbers have scaled the front of BP’s London HQ to present them with a logo that we think might suit them a little better. Our logo has been ‘improved’ with the addition of a bit of oil and a tagline that reads ‘British polluters.’ It’s an OK effort, but we’re sure you can do much better. So today we’re launching a competition to get you to redesign BP’s logo to suit a company that’s investing in unconventional oil like the Canadian tar sands.”

Accelerated Decay – Logo design submitted by Frank. 2010. The artist said the following about his design, "My approach shows both the tarnishing of the BP brand itself and the accelerated decay certain practices of it may cause the globe. While to many the damage may seem as though it's minimal or not impacting them, the ultimate destination is the witherment of life."

One of the Greenpeace climbers, Ben Stewart, made the following statement;

“The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico can be traced back to decisions made in this building. Under Tony Hayward’s leadership (the company’s chief executive) BP has taken huge risks to pump oil from ever more remote places, while slashing investment in the clean energy projects that could actually help reduce our dependence on oil and beat climate change.

BP’s bright green logo is a pathetic attempt to distract our attention from the reality of what this company is doing, both in the Gulf of Mexico but also in places like the tar sands of Canada. Tony Hayward’s reckless approach will cause more disasters unless action is taken to stop him.”

On a related note, at last someone aside from me has bothered to mention the financial relationship between BP and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), which I have been writing about in great detail since March 2007.

In his brief May 18, 2010 article, BP Grand Entrance at LACMA looking not-quite-so-grand, Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight noted the ongoing “epic environmental tragedy” caused in the Gulf by BP, and playfully suggested that “LACMA might want to think about commissioning a work of art that would be apt for the BP Grand Entrance.”

An architectural design for a "BP Grand Entrance" at LACMA more in keeping with the oil company’s terrible record of environmental destruction. First proposed by this writer in October 2007.

Of course, in October of 2007 I had proposed just such an artwork in my article, Another Oil Slick at LACMA, which detailed BP having to “pay a whopping $373 million in an out of court settlement designed to stop U.S. Justice Department criminal indictments against the global energy giant’s law-breaking in the United States.” In that piece I proposed an architectural design (shown at right) for a “BP Grand Entrance” at LACMA more in keeping with the oil company’s terrible record of environmental destruction.

But Knight’s article also mentioned that BP funded the creation of an exhibit at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, which has officially been dubbed, the “BP Sea Otter Habitat.” Now that is a concept difficult to imagine.

Four years ago BP gave a $1 million “donation” to the Aquarium of the Pacific, which used the petro dollars to build its new BP Sea Otter Habitat, an attraction that “transports visitors to California’s Central Coast,” providing a recreation of a rocky coastline where visitors can “peer underwater and discover the busy world of sea otters as they swim and interact amongst kelp and fish.” The BP Sea Otter Habitat presents an accurate peek at the pristine environment of California’s Central Coast, with its crystalline waters and giant kelp beds filled with mollusks, crustaceans, and innumerable fish. As a former scuba diver, that ecosystem is well familiar to me, and it has long been a source of constant inspiration and awe. But that unspoiled natural beauty is a far cry from the “Dead Zone” now being created in the Gulf of Mexico by BP.

The Louisiana governor's office released this aerial photograph showing thick streams of heavy crude oil as it penetrates the marsh lands of the Louisiana coastline at the Pass a Loutre Wildlife Management Area. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal toured the Mississippi Delta by boat on Wednesday, May 19, saying of the BP spill; "This is serious - this is the heavy oil that everyone has been fearing. It is here now. This is one of the oldest wildlife mangagement areas here in Louisiana, and now it is covered in oil."

While sea otters do not live in the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries says that 600 animal species are directly imperiled by BP’s ongoing ecological disaster; 445 species of fish, 45 mammals, 32 reptiles and amphibians, and 134 bird species.

On May 20, biologists of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge found the first oil covered brown pelican to have died from exposure to BP’s massive oil spill – and there are some 4,500 pelicans nesting at the refuge; which brings me back to the BP Sea Otter Habitat at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

To launch its new BP exhibit, the Aquarium of the Pacific announced its “Sea Otter Poetry Contest.” Commencing May 20, 2010, and running until August 15, 2010, contestants worldwide are being asked to submit a poem no longer than 300 words on the theme of sea otters. Poems are to be judged in two categories: those penned by writers’ ages 13 through 20, and those written by authors over 21. All entries must be submitted digitally or by mail, by midnight Aug. 15, 2010. First Prize winners will have their works published in the Aquarium’s magazine and on the Aquarium’s website, plus assorted prizes for Second and Third Prize winners. The Aquarium of the Pacific will announce the winners on October 27, 2010. Details on entering the BP sponsored Poetry Contest can be found on the Aquarium’s website.

Poetry has always provided a means to touch the heart as well as the intellect, and many a poet has dedicated verse and rhyme to excoriate the evils of the day, using the evocative language of poetry as social protest – the BP sponsored Aquarium of the Pacific’s Sea Otter Poetry Contest presents no less an opportunity. I believe that every lover of the written word should submit a poem to this contest, as it is a creative way to denounce BP’s role in destroying our planet, as well as expressing our vision of humanity truly at peace with the natural world.

Though sea otters do not live in the Gulf of Mexico, creative writers will no doubt be able to pen verse that connects the aquatic mammal with the crimes against nature being committed by BP. For those who wish to submit a poem of outrage to the Sea Otter Poetry Contest, but hesitate to do so out of concern that the BP sponsored Aquarium will simply ignore the entry, simply “CC” an e-mail copy of your poem to Art For A Change – where I will post the best submissions on October 27, 2010, the very day the winners of the BP sponsored Poetry Contest are announced by the Aquarium of the Pacific.

"Voices of Justice." Mark Vallen 1989. Offset poster. 11" x 15." Commissioned by the Guatemalan Information Center (GIC). The poster was based upon a 3 x 5 foot chalk pastel drawing on paper.

In 1989 the Guatemalan Information Center (GIC), a human rights organization founded by a group of Guatemalan exiles living in Los Angeles, commissioned me to create a poster.

Its purpose was to announce the Guatemalan Human Rights Tribunal, a public forum the GIC was planning to hold in the Council Chambers of Los Angeles City Hall on the subject of the war then raging in Guatemala. I had been closely following the unfolding tragedy in that Central American nation since the late 1970s, and my concerns were reflected in the art I was making in those days.

I created the poster for the GIC free of charge, and the widely distributed artwork brought hundreds of people to the group’s City Hall event. At the tribunal, eyewitness accounts of the war were provided in testimonies from Guatemalan labor union activists, clergy, representatives of indigenous peoples, students, human rights workers, and others. My collaboration with the GIC was motivated by the reports I had been reading about the plight of Guatemalans – like the following story involving the Mayan village of Las Dos Erres in the north of Guatemala.

"Voices of Justice." Mark Vallen 1989. Detail. Carrying a wounded compañero just shot by security forces.

On December 5, 1982, the hamlet of Las Dos Erres was visited by unspeakable horror when Special Forces commandos of the U.S.-backed Guatemalan army attacked the sleepy village – which the Guatemalan military government suspected was sympathetic to the country’s left-wing guerrilla movement.

Beginning on that fateful December day the commandos of the “Kaibil” Special Forces commenced the systematic butchering of some 350 men, women, and children – nearly the entire population of the Mayan settlement. The massacre would continue for three days, and only two five-year-old boys would survive the bloodbath.

I am writing about this now because on May 5, 2010, officers from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency arrested a former member of the Kaibil Special Forces who had been living in Palm Beach, Florida as a naturalized U.S. citizen. Gilberto Jordan was charged with lying about his role in the Las Dos Erres massacre in order to obtain U.S. citizenship. According to ICE, Jordan admitted “that he participated in the killings,” and that he stated “the first person he killed was a baby, whom he murdered by throwing into the village well.” The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Wifredo A. Ferrer, said, “The acts alleged in this complaint are horrific” and that “we will not provide shelter and cover to those who lie about their criminal past, especially human rights abuses, to gain U.S. citizenship.”

This past February, immigration agents also arrested former Kaibil soldier Santos Lopez Alonzo in Houston, Texas. Picked up as an undocumented day laborer, Alonzo is alleged to have held women and children at gunpoint as they were being murdered and thrown into the village well at Las Dos Erres. Immigration authorities are also seeking two other former Kaibil soldiers known to be hiding in the United States who were present at the Las Dos Erres massacre – Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes, a second lieutenant in the Kaibiles who is alleged to have murdered civilians by smashing in their heads with a sledge hammer, and Pedro Pimentel Rios, a Kaibil commando alleged to have raped a number of girls and women before they were slaughtered.

"Voices of Justice." Mark Vallen 1989. Detail.

Writing for the Global Post on May 5, 2010, reporter Matt McAllester summed up the history of the massacre at Las Dos Erres – in all its grisly detail – in his article, “U.S. rounds up Guatemalans accused of war crimes.” But McAllester’s piece also raises a number of important questions regarding the mass executions, not the least of which is the fact that the U.S. government trained and armed the Guatemalan army responsible for such mass killings.

In his article, McAllester notes that de-classified cables sent from the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala to the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C. during the years 1982 and 1983, confirm that the U.S. government knew the Guatemalan army had carried out the massacre at Las Dos Erres, “yet the School of the Americas began to welcome new instructors and students from the army only days after the killings.”

McAllester’s report stated that just a month after the atrocity, the Kaibil commando Pedro Pimentel Rios – the one who allegedly committed mass rape – became an instructor at the Pentagon’s School of the Americas in Panama. Not only that, McAllester wrote, “He was given an Army Commendation Medal for meritorious service by the then-U.S. Secretary of the Army John Otho Marsh in 1985.”

The massacre at Las Dos Erres was not an aberration. When the 36-year war between leftist guerrillas and the U.S.-supported Guatemalan army ended with a peace accord in 1996, over 200,000 Guatemalans had perished. In 1999 Guatemala’s Historical Clarification Commission, a UN-sponsored truth and reconciliation commission, released a report titled “Memory of Silence” that found indigenous Maya accounted for 83% of the dead, and that 93% of the victims had been murdered by government armed forces. The commission’s report concluded that the U.S.-backed Guatemalan army had identified “the Mayan population as the internal enemy,” and that the army’s relentless assaults upon indigenous communities comprised “acts of genocide.”

There are those Americans who were long aware of the U.S. government’s role in the Guatemalan civil war of the 1980s, and I count myself amongst those who not only attempted to bring attention to America’s responsibility for the violence, but actively sought to end U.S. military aid to the homicidal maniacs that ruled the Central American nation at the time.

I worked closely with the Guatemalan Information Center in developing the poster announcing their Human Rights Tribunal. GIC members provided me with background information and materials needed to create my artwork. However, it was the compelling personal testimonies from GIC members that I found most valuable. Many had taken flight from their homeland out of fear they would be murdered by government sponsored death squads. Each had an anguished story to tell; soldiers stopping people at checkpoints and arbitrarily arresting individuals who would never be seen again; people who would disappear, only to be found dumped in a public place, their bodies displaying telltale signs of torture, mutilation, and execution by death squads.

After hearing the personal stories of Guatemalan Information Center members, I decided upon creating a 3 x 5 foot chalk pastel drawing depicting campesinos carrying a wounded man shot by government troops. Upon completion, the chalk drawing titled “Voices of Justice” was printed as the full-color, 11 x 15 inch offset poster that announced the Human Rights Tribunal. During the event at L.A.’s City Hall, the original chalk drawing was displayed in the City Hall Council Chambers.

"Prisionero" (Prisoner). Mark Vallen 1991. Pen and ink on paper. 10" x 15." Created five years before the end of the war in Guatemala, my drawing depicts one of the "desaparecidos" (the disappeared), those civilians who were kidnapped by military death squads and never seen again. There were 45,000 desaparecidos in Guatemala by wars end – and no one has ever been charged or convicted for these kidnappings and murders. My drawing was used by the Guatemalan Information Center to promote a 1991 benefit concert in Hollywood that raised money for families of the disappeared.

Due to the fearsome level of repression and wholesale murder of political opponents practiced by the regime of President Lucas Garcia in the late 1970s, U.S. President Jimmy Carter cut overt military aid to Guatemala in 1977. Garcia was deposed in a 1982 coup d’état led by General Efrain Ríos Montt, who was a graduate of the U.S. School of the Americas.

In 1983 the Reagan administration lifted Carter’s arms embargo to arm the fanatically anticommunist military junta led by Montt. An unprecedented level of barbarity was unleashed upon Guatemala by Montt, who let loose a wave of political kidnappings, assassinations, torture, and a scorched earth policy that totally annihilated some 600 Mayan Indian villages.

It cannot be emphasized enough that the Reagan administration supported the savagery by funding, training, and equipping the Guatemalan army, as well as giving the military dictatorship full political support. In the midst of the Guatemalan army’s campaign of mass extermination against the indigenous population, President Reagan visited General Montt in Honduras. On December 4, 1982 – just a day prior to the massacre at Las Dos Erres – Reagan acclaimed Montt as a leader who was “totally dedicated to democracy,” further proclaiming that the junta leader had falsely been given “a bum rap” by human rights activists.

In today’s Guatemala there are purportedly over 100 secret graveyards where government soldiers and their death squad allies buried the many thousands of non-combatant civilians they murdered in a killing spree meant to rid the country of “communist subversives.” But those dead do not rest easy, and their tales are now just beginning to come to light in the present. Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974), Guatemala’s Nobel Laureate for Literature, was quoted in the prologue of Guatemala’s Historical Clarification Commission report for saying the following: “The eyes of the buried will close together on the day of justice, or they will never close.”

I am frankly stunned at how quickly the war in Guatemalan has been forgotten – at least by those who were not direct victims of the mayhem. What was once an international cause célèbre has been quietly put out of mind; we have moved on to Iraq and Afghanistan. But reality has an unpleasant way of stabbing through our most formidable walls of denial. The poster I created for the Guatemalan Information Center in 1989 continues to reverberate in the present – the arrests of murderous Kaibil Special Forces in the U.S. are reminder enough of that.

View a large version of the poster, Voices of Justice.
View a large version of the drawing, Prisionero.

"Ecology Now" - Anonymous artist. Designed for the environmental organization, Earth First. Offset, 1970. Poster image supplied courtesy of CSPG.

Forty years ago on April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day was celebrated in the United States.

The observance was the result of a massive, grass roots movement that wanted to create a new society where sustainable environmental development would help define an ecologically friendly course of action for civilization.

Great strides have been made since that first Earth Day, but much is left to be done if future generations are to inherit a world as beautiful as the one we now so thoughtlessly befoul.

Despite the progress made, the forthcoming years hold great peril for the planet – it is time to revive and strengthen the vision that gave rise to the very first Earth Day.

The failure of the 15th UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009, was caused by the avarice of the world’s major polluters. Some were surprised when President Obama worked with that bloc to produce the so-called “Copenhagen Accord,” an ineffectual document without enforcement mechanisms that did not even set a target date for reducing greenhouse gas emissions; which led the Director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity, Kassie Siegal, to say; “Obama the President is, when it comes to actual actions on climate, far closer to President Bush than Candidate Obama.” But since scuttling COP15 in December of 2009, President Obama’s image has turned Green – “radioactive” green.

In his January 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama revealed his intent to build “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.” In February Obama announced $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for the first atomic power plants to be built in the U.S. in more than 30 years. Without the government loan guarantees, it would be next to impossible to build the plants because of the astronomical start-up costs of reactor construction. The two atomic plants are to be built in the Southern state of Georgia, a step Obama described as “only the beginning.” Obama’s $8.3 billion gift to the nuclear power industry is expected to be the first of many, as the Christian Science Monitor reported: “The Department of Energy recently proposed $36 billion in new federal loan guarantees on top of $18.5 billion already budgeted – for a total of $54.5 billion. That’s enough to help fund six or seven new power plants.”

A CNN article on the Obama administration’s plans for more nuclear power plants noted the government has yet to solve the problem of where to safely store the radioactive waste generated by the power plants that already exist – waste that remains highly radioactive for thousands of years. CNN reported that “Currently, 70,000 tons of radioactive waste are stored at more than 100 nuclear sites around the country, and 2,000 tons are added every year.”

"Ecology Is For The Birds" - Anonymous artist. Designed for the International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBRRC). Offset, 1971.

On March 31, 2010, President Obama reversed yet another campaign promise made to the American people, by announcing he was making vast regions of U.S. coastline available for offshore oil drilling.

Obama’s declaration to open over 500,000 square miles of U.S. coastal waters to oil and gas company exploitation was made before a military audience at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, DC.

The decision allows oil companies to lease coastal areas for oil exploration and eventual drilling, in an immense area along the Atlantic coast that spans from northern Delaware to central Florida.

"Alaska-Ölsardinen" (Alaskan Sardines Packed In Oil). Klaus Staeck. Photomontage, 1989. Offset poster. A German artist's comment regarding the depredations of U.S. oil companies on the pristine coastline of Alaska. Poster image supplied courtesy of CSPG.

Some 130 million acres of northern coastal waters in Alaska are included in Obama’s plan, as well as waters comprising two-thirds of the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The region in the Gulf of Mexico that has been opened up by Obama’s plan has not been drilled before, but it has long been coveted by the oil monopolies.

During the presidential campaign of 2008, Senator Obama opposed lifting the ban on offshore oil drilling, and he chastised his opponent Senator McCain for being in the pocket of the oil companies. In a June 17, 2008 article titled Obama ridicules McCain’s plan to tap offshore oil, the AFP news agency reported candidate Obama saying the following about McCain’s plan to tap offshore oil:

“Much like his gas tax gimmick that would leave consumers with pennies in savings, opening our coastlines to offshore drilling would take at least a decade to produce any oil at all, and the effect on gasoline prices would be negligible at best since America only has three percent of the world’s oil. It’s another example of short-term political posturing from Washington, not the long-term leadership we need to solve our dependence on oil.”

But that was Candidate Obama in 2008. On March 31, 2010 ABC News Senior White House Correspondent, Jake Tapper, wrote an article titled President Obama: Drill, Baby, Drill, in which it was announced that:

“On Wednesday morning at Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility in Washington, DC, President Obama will announce that his administration will allow the lease sale to go forward for oil and gas exploration 50 miles off of the Virginia coast – the first new sales of offshore oil and gas in the Atlantic in more than two decades. The Department of Interior will also allow seismic exploration for oil and gas in the Outer Continental Shelf from Delaware all the way South to the tip of Florida, to assess the quantity and location of potential oil and gas resources.

A White House official says that the president will also approve a lease sale in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, while canceling another lease sale in Alaska’s Bristol Bay because of environmental concerns. (Lease sales in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas are essentially being suspended pending further scientific review.) The official says that ‘To set America on a path to energy independence, the President believes we must leverage our diverse domestic resources by pursuing a comprehensive energy strategy.’”

From President Obama’s sinking of the UN Climate Change Conference, to his new generation of nuclear power plants and his plans to drill for oil along 500,000 square miles of U.S. coastal waters – there is much to contemplate on this 40th anniversary of Earth Day.

Links in this article:
Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG)
International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBRRC)
Artist Klaus Staeck.

In Copenhagen, Denmark, the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) opened on December 7th, 2009 at the Bella Center located in central Copenhagen. Some 18,000 delegates from nearly 200 nations attended the international summit, which ended in complete failure on December 18th. The summit was ostensibly held to bring about a new international treaty to help reduce global warming, but it quickly broke down into a standoff between wealthy industrialized nations - who wish to preserve their dominance over world economic resources, and the less developed nations on earth - who seek parity and environmental justice.

But this article is not about the political machinations that took place around the COP15 summit, there are plenty of news sources to follow for that side of the story. My intention here is to write about how artists responded to the Copenhagen summit and the growing threat of climate change. Hundreds of artists in and around Copenhagen produced works ranging from posters and sculptures to light shows, street theater, and installations - all designed to draw attention to the climate crisis and ways to end it. People’s Climate Action and Illumenarts are but two of the Danish groups that organized multiple public art interventions and cultural events in Copenhagen – there were many others. The Telegraph has an online slideshow of 28 photographs depicting just some of the many public inventive art interventions that took place during COP15.

"Polar Bear" - Mark Coreth and Duncan Hamilton. Ice and metal sculpture. Height - 5.9 ft. Displayed at the COP15 summit in Copenhagen. Photographs taken on Dec. 7, the first day of the summit. Photo: Reuters

British artists Mark Coreth and Duncan Hamilton positioned their collaborative ice sculpture in Kongens Nytorv Square, close to the Bella Center. To create their sculpture the artists first cast in bronze a polar bear skeleton they sculpted by hand. The metal armature was then submerged in water that was frozen to produce a nine-ton block of ice - from which point the sculptors went to work carving out a realistic life-sized polar bear. Over the course of the COP15 summit the ice slowly melted, exposing the skeletonized bear.

The artists encouraged people to touch their ice bear sculpture since the collective handling contributed to the statue melting away - a simple demonstration of how humans are directly shaping the environment. In the words of sculptor Mark Coreth: “When the skeleton begins to appear, it’s going to become terrifying. When the bronze appears, it is going to take warmth through the skeleton and melt that ice even more. That is akin to a lack of ice in the arctic north… the deep, dark ocean absorbs heat and continues to melt it.” The ice bear project was funded by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a major environmental organization that also displayed photographs of the Arctic at their Arctic Program Tent set up in Copenhagen for COP15. The WWF also maintains a webpage on the ice bear project.

There were more complicated and independently produced projects carried out by the Danish realist sculptor Jens Galschiøt, who placed a number of large cast metal sculptures on the streets of Copenhagen for the COP15 summit. A self-taught sculptor who has been working at his discipline since 1985, Galschiøt’s figurative realist creations are striking, but they are meant to do more than just please viewers with a heightened sensitivity to beauty; here aesthetics are mixed with the compulsion to move people to well considered thought and action. In other words, Galschiøt wants us to change the world. He does not eschew skill, craft, or high art aesthetics - making him an artist after my own heart.

"Survival of the Fattest" - Jens Galschiøt/Lars Calmar. During the COP15 summit the statue was displayed in Copenhagen harbor at Langelinie next to the internationally famous Danish landmark statue, "The Little Mermaid." Photo: AFP/Getty.

In 1992 Galschiøt and fellow sculptor Lars Calmar collaborated on creating a work they titled, Survival Of The Fattest, a nearly life-sized statue cast in copper.

The work depicts a colossally overweight European Justitia (the goddess of justice), holding the scales of justice in her right hand - being carried on the shoulders of a starving African man.

Galschiøt has said that the sculpture represents the “self-righteousness of the rich world,” which sits on the backs of the poor while “pretending to exert justice.” Since its creation the sculpture has been shown at a number of mass public events.

"Survival of the Fattest" - Jens Galschiøt/Lars Calmar. 2002. Statue cast in copper. Height - 6.5 ft. The developed West is represented by Lady Justice, an enormous obese European woman carried on the shoulders of a starving African man. The woman was modeled and crafted by sculptor Lars Calmar. Displayed at the COP15 summit in Copenhagen. Photo courtesy AIDOH (Art In Defense of Humanism). www.aidoh.dk

Survival Of The Fattest was placed in Copenhagen harbor at Langelinie next to the internationally famous landmark statue, The Little Mermaid. Based on a fairy tale by the Danish author and poet Hans Christian Andersen and created by Danish sculptor Edvard Eriksen in 1913, The Little Mermaid is a national monument seen by an estimated 1 million tourists a year.

In placing his sculpture in the water next to Eriksen’s famous bronze, Galschiøt was assured that his creation - and its explosive message - would receive international attention. The act also brilliantly juxtaposed a fairy tale against the cold and undeniable reality depicted in Galschiøt’s artwork; as if the artist were pronouncing the goals and objectives of the wealthy nations at the Climate Change Conference to be nothing more than fairy tales.

The contradictions Galschiøt alluded to with his Survival Of The Fattest sculpture were made obvious on Dec. 16, when the Obama administration announced at the Copenhagen summit that it would commit $1 billion over the next three years “towards slowing, halting and eventually reversing deforestation in developing countries.” In making the announcement, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack averred; “Protecting the world’s forests is not a luxury - it is a necessity.”

By comparison, Mr. Obama’s other “necessity” - sending an additional 30,000 combat troops to the escalating war in Afghanistan, will cost between $30 and $35 billion per year according to Pentagon estimates; or around $2.5 billion a month. That is no doubt a low estimate.

When President Obama was deliberating on his Afghan war escalation, the Office of Management and Budget sent him a memo estimating that the cost of increased U.S. military presence in Afghanistan over the next 10 years would be $1 trillion - a figure that apparently did not dissuade Mr. Obama from intensifying the war.

Jens Galschiøt’s copper statues of starving African men are displayed wading in the water pond that surrounds the Bella Center, venue for the COP15 summit in Copenhagen. Galschiøt titled his sculpture installation, "The Pulse of the Earth." Photo by Jo@kimlarsen.eu/SevenMeters.Net

One of the other sculptural works by Galschiøt that made an appearance in Copenhagen for the COP15 summit was, The Hunger March. In 2002 the artist sculpted and had cast in copper, a number of life-sized figures of emaciated young African men.

Since their creation the figures - numbering 27 in all - were displayed on the streets during the World Trade Organization summit in Hong Kong (2005), and on the streets of Athens, Greece, during the European Social Forum (2006).

For the Copenhagen summit Galschiøt changed the name of his sculptural group to, The Pulse of the Earth. Gaining permission from the Bella Center in advance, the artist had the 27 copper statues placed in the water pond at the center’s metro station, illuminating the architectural backdrop with a special installation of pulsating red LED lights. According to Galschiøt, the pulse of the light-installations represented the very heartbeat of the planet.

The Pulse of the Earth statues at COP15 represent “Climate Refugees,” those people who are forced to flee their home or country because of drought, desertification, the sea level rising, or other environmental disasters linked to global warming and climate change. When contemplating the desolate tableau Galschiøt setup in the Bella Center water pond, I found it difficult not to think of the tiny Polynesian island nation of Tuvalu, located in the Pacific Ocean between Australia and Hawaii. In 2002 Tuvalu became the first nation to evacuate part of its population because of sea level rising.

This photograph from the artist’s studio shows two of Jens Galschiøt’s copper statues depicting starving African men. Photo courtesy AIDOH (Art In Defense of Humanism). www.aidoh.dk

Ian Fry, the chief delegate for Tuvalu at the COP15 summit, delivered a speech at the conference that was an appeal for a binding international agreement to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Expressing the frustration felt by billions of people around the planet, particularly those who live in undeveloped poor nations, Fry noted that “the fate of the world is being determined by some senators in the U.S. Congress.”

Choking back tears, Mr. Fry concluded his speech by addressing the summit and the people of the world, saying - “The fate of my country rests in your hands.”

On the last day of the summit President Obama addressed the conference. Scientists have been saying that in order to avoid climate disaster, developed nations needed to reduce their green house gas emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020 - in his speech Obama only offered cuts “in the range of 17 percent.”

There were immediate angry responses to Mr. Obama’s speech. The Executive Director of Greenpeace U.S.A., Phil Radford, said Mr. Obama “now risks being branded as the man who killed Copenhagen.” The President of Friends of the Earth said; “President Obama’s rhetoric is empty. The U.S. has failed to significantly improve upon the weak position it brought to these talks.” The Director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity, Kassie Siegal, said; “Obama the President is, when it comes to actual actions on climate, far closer to President Bush than Candidate Obama.”

The COP15 summit ended in disaster, scuttled by greed and the narrow self-interests of the world’s biggest polluters. The so-called “Copenhagen Accord” was pieced together by Mr. Obama between the U.S., China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. It was forced through by the summit chair, who according to the Associated Press; “gaveled in a compromise decision to ‘take note’ of the agreement, instead of formally approving it. Experts said that still meant the accord could go into effect.” Mr. Obama effectively kept the majority of dissenting nations out of the negotiations while to all intents and purposes forming the alliance of major polluters who would hammer out the pact.

Demonstrators furious over the sham "Copenhagen Accord" protest outside of the Bella Center as the COP15 summit ends. Photo AFP/Olivier Morin.

Mr. Obama called the final 12-paragraph Copenhagen Accord document an “unprecedented breakthrough” and a “meaningful agreement.” What a laughable statement!

The accord makes no mention of a target date for the creation of a legally binding climate treaty, it provides no target dates for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and it provides no verification or enforcement mechanisms. In short it is a toothless and unenforceable document.

The Executive Director of Greenpeace International, Kumi Naidoo, said the accord included so many loopholes that “you could fly an airplane through it - Airforce One, for example.”

Artists and designers played a significant role during the COP15 summit, and they will continue to do so in its aftermath. There is unquestionably much work ahead, and the creative community has an important part to play, not just in keeping the issue of climate change before the public, but in arousing the consciousness of the people and spurring them to constructive action.