Tag Archives: culturejamming

Is Slam in Danger of Going Soft?

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“Slam poetry was invited into the White House last month and it is also the focus of the recent HBO documentary series “Brave New Voices.” So you might think that the originator of the poetry slam, a raucous live competition that is more likely to take place in a bar than in a bookstore, would be feeling rather pleased these days.

But from his base here at the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, Marc Kelly Smith expresses mixed feelings about the growing popularity and respectability of the art form that he created almost 25 years ago. From the start, he envisioned slam poetry as a subversive, thumb-your-nose-at-authority movement, and he wants to ensure it stays true to those origins.” (New York Times )

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Anonymous Postcard

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Official congressional portrait of former cong...
“The artists behind Anonymous Postcardhave created a website with real-world applications. You send a suitably interesting message of complaint or congratulations. They create a one-of-a-kind postcard and mail it to your chosen recipient.

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke received an encouragement card fashioned from a $5 bill. Former governor Rod Blagojevich’s card was crafted out of a hair-product container. And the message addressed to “Moms of Mill Valley, CA” — asking them to control their bratty kids — was printed, none too subtly, on an empty condom box.”

Street with a View

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“On May 3rd 2008, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley invited the Google Inc. Street View team and residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside to collaborate on a series of tableaux along Sampsonia Way. Neighbors, and other participants from around the city, staged scenes ranging from a parade and a marathon, to a garage band practice, a seventeenth century sword fight, a heroic rescue and much more…

Street View technicians captured 360-degree photographs of the street with the scenes in action and integrated the images into the Street View mapping platform. This first-ever artistic intervention in Google Street View made its debut on the web in November of 2008.” via STREET WITH A VIEW: a project by Robin Hewlett & Ben Kinsley.

The Pedestrian Project

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Eerily familiar...

“The Pedestrian Project consists of several performers wearing entirely black custom-made costumes modeled after the generic images of men, women, and children seen on public signs. Mimicking the lives of everyday people, the roaming sculptural forms inspire the imaginations of onlookers, who often find themselves mesmerized as these familiar icons assume busy lives of their own.” via The Pedestrian Project | Trend.Land.

The Last Whole Earth Catalog

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Fall 1969 cover

The Last Whole Earth Catalog, from June 1971, has been scanned in and is available for electronic browsing pleasure. I was a devotee of the mindset of these folks and a charter subscriber to the quarterly spin-off from the catalogs, known at different times as Whole Earth Review and Coevolutionary Quarterly. I visited them in Sausalito at one point, and had the pleasure of being the next-door neighbor in New Haven of their graphics editor for awhile. (My across-the-street neighbor at the time was the New Haven Zen Center. Nice neighborhood.) In many ways, they were all about hacking the world and your life long before there was electronic hacking. Their closest online literary heir is Kevin Kelly.

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City hit by ‘legal to pee’ prank

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‘People should ignore signs telling them that it is legal to urinate in certain public places in Nottingham, the city council said.

The signs, which were put up by pranksters in and around Nottingham, are designed to look official.

They feature a toilet sign and include the words: “Public Urination Permitted After 7.30pm”.’

via BBC .

Spoof New York Times Proclaims Iraq War Over

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“A fake edition of The New York Times distributed Wednesday by left-wing pranksters delivered an unusual dose of extremely happy news.

The parody announced the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as progress toward reversing global warming and U.S. economic woes.

The activists behind the parody publication said they handed out 1.2 million copies of the 14-page paper, which was dated July 4, 2009.” (Wired News )

Related:

“Silent Soldiers on a silver screen
Framed in fantasies and dragged in dream
Unpaid actors of the mystery
The mad director knows that freedom will not make you free
And what’s this got to do with me
I declare the war is over
It’s over, it’s over

Drums are drizzling on a grain of sand
Fading rhythms of a fading land
Prove your courage in the proud parade
Trust your leaders where mistakes are almost never made
And they’re afraid that I’m afraid

I’m afraid the war is over
It’s over, it’s over

Angry artists painting angry signs
Use their vision just to blind the blind
Poisoned players of a grizzly game
One is guilty and the other gets the point to blame
Pardon me if I refrain

I declare the war is over
It’s over, it’s over

So do your duty, boys, and join with pride
Serve your country in her suicide
Find the flags so you can wave goodbye
But just before the end even treason might be worth a try
This country is to young to die

I declare the war is over
It’s over, it’s over

One-legged veterans will greet the dawn
And they’re whistling marches as they mow the lawn
And the gargoyles only sit and grieve
The gypsy fortune teller told me that we’d been deceived
You only are what you believe

I believe the war is over
It’s over, it’s over”

— Phil Ochs (December 19, 1940–April 9, 1976)