DCMA: Not catching these guys.

The DCMA turned ten last month, and if it weren’t for the wisp of prairie wind whipping past my ears, I’m sure I could hear movie and record executives celebrating all the way from Beverly Hills.

Signed into law on October 28, 1998, by US President Bill Clinton (don’t forget, Democrats can be evil too), the DCMA has been notoriously employed to beat upon consumers, rather than its supposed target, pirates. (And no, not the oil stealing, seafaring kind, but I bet they’d try to smack those guys around with the bill if they could.)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has commemorated this decade by releasing a report entitled Unintended Consequences: Ten Years Under the DCMA. A collection of disturbing real life stories, the report reads like “a trip down memory lane for those who have followed digital freedom issues over the past decade”.

The highlights include:

• In 1999, Sony sues Connectix over the Virtual Game Station, which let you play your legit Playstation games on your Macintosh.
• In 2001, Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov is arrested after speaking at Defcon, accused of building software for his employer, ElcomSoft, that converted Adobe e-books to PDF.
• In 2003, Lexmark uses the DMCA to block distribution of chips that allow refilling of laser toner cartridges.
• In 2004, Hollywood succeeds in shutting down 321 Studios’ DVD X Copy software, which allowed people to make backup copies of their own DVDs.
• In 2008, Hollywood targets Real Networks over RealDVD, software that allows you to copy DVDs to a hard drive for later viewing.

And while managing to accomplish all this and more, the DCMA has failed at doing what it was intended to do—prevent digital piracy. A solemn celebration, indeed.

What do you think the next decade of digital rights repression will bring? Or will an Obama administration do something to fix this mess? Given his penchant for appointing Clinton-era advisers, I’m skeptical.

Alex Orion at work in Sao Palo

Imagine a grime-blackened wall – say, in a tunnel where tens or hundreds of thousands of cars pass daily.  Now imagine someone scraping images onto the wall  by rubbing away the soot. Voila.  Reverse graffiti - the latest way to reclaim and redeem abandoned public surfaces.

Reverse graffiti is thought to have started in the UK, but practitioners have popped on other continents.  Brazillian artist Alexandre Orion caught fellow Brazillian’s attention last summer with his environmentally charged image of skulls in one of Sao Palo’s busiest traffic tunnels (image above).

Paul “Moose” Curtis, one of the pioneers of the practice, says that reverse graffiti is also about bringing awareness to environmental realities.   “What I do,” he says in a youtube minidoc about his work, “is draw in pollution.”  The video shows Curtis at work in San Francisco creating a landscape of indigenous plants with stencils on a blackened concrete traffic wall.

Reverse graffiti also puts city officials in a quandary.  The artists are not damaging property, or even marking it: they are in fact cleaning it.  There are no laws (yet) against cleaning public property.

So grab a cloth and a brush … the walls are waiting.

Skim book cover

The Governor General’s award shortlist this year includes Skim, a graphic novel by writer Mariko Tamaki and graphic artist Jillian Tamaki.  Inexplicably, only Mariko Tamaki has been nominated.

Chester Brown and Seth – two of Canada’s most prominent graphic novelists - are leading an international coalition of artists to demand that Jillian Tamaki be included in the nomination.  Supporters of the cause include Art Spiegelman and  Lynda Barry, among others.

In an open letter to the Canada Council (sponsors of the GG award), they wrote “Try to imagine evaluating Skim if you couldn’t see the drawings…We want both of the enormously talented creators of this book to be honoured together for their achievement. ”

Send an email to the Canada Council and tell them what you think.  The award winners are scheduled to be named on November 18.

Check out artist Jillian Tamaki’s blog for information about Skim.

The Conservative Party has made many, many cuts to the arts, so our jury will be looking for portraits that best embody Stephen Harper’s “commitment” to the arts and culture in Canada.

Our favourite entry will win a minimum of $1000! Runners-up will also win loot, with other prizes to be announced shortly. There is no entry fee, and we encourage everyone to participate. Selected works will be put on display in an exhibition in Ottawa and Montreal with possible shows to follow in other Canadian cities.

Stephen Harper may hate art, but art loves Stephen Harper.

Submission guidelines

You may create your portrait using any media. Oil paint, video, soapstone, sound, macaroni and pipe cleaners… anything goes.

Please send the following to editor@artthreat.net:

• Your name, email and postal address, and phone number.
• Either a link to your work or an attachment (2MB max — contact us for larger files).
• If your piece isn’t digital, snap some photos and send those to us instead.
• A written statement and a brief bio.

The deadline is January 31, 2009. There is no entry fee, and no limit on the number of works you may submit.

The contest is open to all Canadian residents except employees of the federal government, who are not only eligible but are especially encouraged to enter. Submissions from non-Canadians actually interested in our politics are also welcome.

Fund the Stephen Harper Portrait Gallery

We’re going to need your help to make this project a success. We don’t receive any government funding, and rely on contributions from individuals to keep on truckin’. If you would like to help out, you can support Art Threat with an online donation by clicking below, or send a cheque in the mail.

Download the call for submissions.
Download the press release.

Image credits: heycartsten, sashamd, jcbear2, Urban Mixer.

The Guardian reports that “The event was held in support of writer Roberto Saviano, who is currently in hiding after receiving death threats from the Neopolitan “mafia” following the publication of his book Gomorrah.” Makeba spent her life battling apartheid and corruption, and spent much of it in exile for her political activities and art.

Check out Makeba’s website here. Photo from Saharan Vibe.

Part 2 of my coverage of the Gimme Some Truth documentary conference and festival in Winnipeg.

Yesterday I met many delegates and guests in my hotel who are converging on Winnipeg this weekend for what is being described as one the largest aboriginal art and culture gatherings in North America. It’s called Manito Ahbee festival and yesterday was the pow-wow with performance competitions. After breakfast I headed over to the Urban Shaman Art Gallery, where I blogged this entry from, to listen to a presentation by Zacharias Kunuk about his project Isuma.tv. Isuma was started by Kunuk and three others from Nunavut as an indigenous portal for language art and culture. Kunuk is the filmmaker who brought the world the Cannes Palme d’Or-winning film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. He has since launched a campaign to create aboriginal media in Northern Canada and to provide a platform for indigenous media the world over at Isuma.tv. In the first 9 months of the site’s online life it saw over 3 million hits. There are films, fiction, documentary, television shows, recordings of elders discussing traditional living, live webcams, channels and media from Nunavit, from Norway, New Zealand, Australia and more.

Kunuk’s latest campaign is to bring high speed internet to communities in Canada’s north. He told us that while the mining companies and government offices enjoy high speed, Inuit communities are still on dial-up. Kunuk sees the internet as a tool for sharing aboriginal media across the vast landmass below the Canadian arctic. As the languages and cultures of indigenous cultures disappear, people like Zacharias Kunuk and his project Isuma.tv, are vital life lines and life rafts for cultures under siege - cultures that are fighting back with media that they call their own.

After the talk, Kunuk screened his newest work, a documentary called Kiviaq vs. Canada. The one hour film is about Kiviaq, Canada’s first Inuk (singular form of Inuit) lawyer who is fighting to have the status of Inuit recognized under Canadian law, just as First Nations are. Kiviaq was born Inuit, but was “Christanized” and survived displacement, state intervention into his identity, language and culture, as well as a life with a mean-spirited adoptive (white) father. He learned to cope with the injustices brought upon him and his people by taking up boxing and politics, his latest battle a protracted legal suit against the government of Canada who seem intent on stalling while the near-70 year-old undergoes treatment for a cancer that could take his life before he sees victory.

Kunuk’s newest film, not yet-released, is called Exiles and is about the displacement of aboriginal peoples in Canada by way of repugnant government “integration” programs.

I’m writing from Winnipeg, Manitoba, at the Gimme Some Truth documentary film festival. It’s cold and snowy here and perfect weather for snuggling up in dark rooms with media. While I’m here for three days, I’m going to send a few Art Threat posts out, starting with this one.

Yesterday myself and Tom Waugh spoke on a panel we put together on the National Film Board of Canada’s famous Challenge for Change project - a government initiative that lasted throughout the seventies and was mandated to use documentary film to engage communities in the process of production and dissemination in order to effect positive social and political change. Many of the 200 films produced under the banner were considered quite radical because they were funded by the state, and like the classic and powerful film we screened after our presentation, You are on Indian Land (Ransen, Mitchell, Starblanket 1967), ended up being highly critical of the state.

After our panel was finished the politics of copyright and creative ownership were brought to the forefront during a special screening of Les Blank’s mystery masterpiece documentary from 1974. According to a court order, Blank is only allowed to show the film if he is present at the screening and if the film’s title is not promoted publicly. The small theatre at the Winnipeg Cinematheque was packed as Blank introduced his rock-and-roll odyssey. We were then treated to a two hour portrait of the counter-culture music “scene” in the American south during the early seventies - complete with typical Blank oddities fraying constantly from the central narrative thread throughout the entire piece. Such divergent strands as an esoteric “spaced out” artist painting a deep sea-meets-deep space mural on the bottom of a pool; a snake slowly consuming a cute baby chick whole; a man eating glass at an amateur parachuting contest; and lengthy meditations on the sun reflecting on a lake all add to Blank’s inimitable distinct style and form. The film is about a rock star for sure, and there are many sequences of live shows and studio recordings that make this film the rock odyssey it is. There are also many close-up shots of women’s legs, stomachs, breasts, and some conspicuous male-gazing camera work throughout. When I asked Blank if this was symptomatic of 70s doc filmmaking he responded that he’s been accused of objectifying women before, but that he films what he’s “interested in.” This response elicited an elated ovation from the audience, which apparently didn’t want to see the discussion careen into critical engagement with Blank’s work. This was disappointing, as I find that despite Blank’s utter brilliance as a storyteller, shooter and editor - I find women are often “ornaments” in his documentaries, the few that I have seen that is. Blank sold me five of his most “political” documentaries later last night over beer, and I hope to redeem this perspective I have of us his work, after watching them all.

While Blank doesn’t describe himself as a “political filmmaker,” his works touch on many political issues, ranging from food politics, to the political economy of tea, to sub-cultures in the states, to immigration and racial relations in the American south. This 1974 classic from the censored vault is one of his best works and its absence from the publicly available catelogue of his work shows how a litigative society can result in the strangling and silencing of artistic works. And besides, LXXX RXXXXl, the rock star who is homaged in the documentary, is in his seventies - time to move on and release this important artistic rendering of American counterculture.

Liz Miller’s exceptional documentary about water privatization and the struggle of Highland Park residents to maintain control over their public resource is entering the remix phase of the film’s journey. Miller’s film is an example of political documentary that is interested in doing more than just being seen by audiences: it’s been made part of campaigns, re-cut for classrooms, and now is part of a remix project.

The film—which has won numerous awards—has just finished a water campaign tour of the Great Lakes and Miller has released the new DVD which includes a 6 minute, 20 minute and one hour version of the film, depending on how you’d like to use or experience this important story of community action and water. The DVD is also packed with all kinds of extras including resources for teachers and students.

The newest incarnation for the film is a remix contest where the film’s title track, “Mr Waterman” by Joe L. Carter, is being offered up for remix. There’s cash to be won for the best remix of the song, and a class in Milwaulkee has alread talked about turning at least one remix into a music video about water politics. Talk about a film that challenges the old model of theatrical release-to-videostore.

To check up on the documentary, order a copy, or watch the trailer, visit the film’s site.

Republicans claim Obama has a big head, but one Cuban-American artist made it happen. Battling days of rain, Jorge Rodriguez Gerada and a team of fifty lackeys sculpted Barack’s bust in the sand of a beach in Barcelona, Spain.

Finished just in time for the election, the portrait is 128 metres long by 73 metres wide, used about 450 tonnes of sand, gravel and pebbles, and cost more then $13,000. Rodriguez Gerada believes it is large enough to be included on Google Earth, a possibility that must cause Bill O’Reilly’s stomach to churn.

Despite the grandiose statement, the artist didn’t intend on endorsing Obama.

“The piece is not really based on giving support to Barack Obama,” he said. “It is more about questioning Obama-mania.”

Still, Rodriguez Gerada said he chose the large format as an allusion to the global importance of the American vote, and to represent the hope Obama has inspired in his supporters.

“For people around the world, the symbolic power of an Obama presidency would be without precedent in modern history,” he said on his website. [CBC]

Shepard Fairey, creator of the omnipresent Obama posters blanketing the American northeast, has raised over $700,000 for the Obama campaign through the sale of his work. In this Current TV video, Fairey discusses the recent shift in his work from negative to positive imagery.

“The coup of an idealist like Obama getting as far along as he has is extremely positive and I don’t need to take a negative approach to this election, which has been my usual approach out of necessity”

You can check out Shepard Fairey’s work at obeygiant.com.