http://www.flawedart.net
The New American Dictionary
The Boston-based performance group Institute for Infinitely Small Things has published a book called The New American Dictionary.
The dictionary highlights the terminology of fear, security and war that has permeated American English post 9-11. It includes 68 new terms i.e. Preparedness and Freedom Fries as well as terms that have recently been redefined i.e. Torture.
The dictionary also has an interactive dimension. 58 terms are left undefined for the reader to pencil in their own definition. Furthermore, readers are invited to submit their additions to the institute for a possible inclusion in the 2nd edition.
The New American Dictionary is available at several online stores.
exhaust emissions balloons
a huge balloon, tied to a car�s vent-pipe, depicting the amount of exhaust emissions a car releases a day.
the "bursting earth" project is similar, but more dynamic. activists attach world globe balloons on exhaust pipes of cars in Berlin. the exhaust gas inflates the ballons. after the message becomes readable, there is a big "bang".
[link: frederiksamuel.com & adsoftheworld.com & 20to20.org]
WoW!
Aram Bartholl is a german artist renowned for making physical abstractions of the digital world, particularly game-worlds.
One of Aram's not-to-be-missed performances is inspired by the popular computer game World of Warcraft (WoW).
In WoW, the nickname of the player's avatar is constantly hovering above the head of the player so that the identity is visible for everyone else in the game.
Aram took this little feature out of cyberspace to see how it would look if people's names would float above their heads in the physical world too.
WoW has been performed at different locations around the world. Luckily, it is well-documented!
• Getting coffee WoW style • Workshop in Ghent • Project Site
REALIZING THE IMPOSSIBLE: ART AGAINST AUTHORITY
Aesthetics and Politics
REALIZING THE IMPOSSIBLE: ART AGAINST AUTHORITY by Josh MacPhee, Erik Reuland, editors :: There has always been a close relationship between aesthetics and politics in anti-authoritarian social movements. And those movements have in turn influenced many of the last century's most important art movements, including cubism, Dada, post-impressionism, abstract expressionism, surrealism, Fluxus, Situationism, and punk. Today, the movement against corporate globalization, with its creative acts of resistance, has brought anti-authoritarian politics into the forefront. This sprawling, inclusive collection explores this vibrant history, with topics ranging from turn-of-the-century French cartoonists to modern Indonesian printmaking, from people rolling giant balls of trash down Chicago streets to massive squatted urban villages and renegade playgrounds in Denmark, from stencil artists of Argentina to radical video collectives of the US and Mexico. Lots of illustrations, all b&w.;
DOW, BURSON-MARSTELLER CLAMP DOWN ON FAKE WEBSITES
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Paul Hardwin: phardwin@yurt.org
DowEthics.com: info@dowethics.com
DOW, BURSON-MARSTELLER CLAMP DOWN ON FAKE WEBSITES
But companies find it harder to stifle criticism
Two giant companies are struggling to shut down parody websites that
portray them unfavorably, interrupting internet use for thousands in
the process, and filing a lawsuit that pits the formidable legal
department of PR giant Burson-Marsteller against a freshman at
Hampshire College.
The activists behind the fake corporate websites have fought back, and
obtained substantial publicity in the process.
Fake websites have been used by activists before, but Dow-Chemical.com
and BursonMarsteller.com represent the first time that such websites
have successfully been used to publicize abuses by specific
corporations.
A December 3 press release originating from one of the fake sites,
Dow-Chemical.com, explained the "real" reasons that Dow could not take
responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe, which has resulted in an
estimated 20,000 deaths over the years
(http://www.theyesmen.org/dow/#release). "Our prime responsibilities
are to the people who own Dow shares, and to the industry as a whole,"
the release stated. "We cannot do anything for the people of Bhopal."
The fake site immediately received thousands of outraged e-mails
(http://www.dowethics.com/r/about/corp/email.htm).
Within hours, the real Dow sent a legal threat to Dow-Chemical.com's
upstream provider, Verio, prompting Verio to shut down the fake Dow's
ISP for nearly a day, closing down hundreds of unrelated websites and
bulletin boards in the process.
The fake Dow website quickly resurfaced at an ISP in Australia.
(http://theyesmen.org/dow/#threat)
In a comical anticlimax, Dow then used a little-known domain-name rule
to take possession of Dow-Chemical.com
(http://theyesmen.org/dow/#story), another move which backfired when
amused journalists wrote articles in newspapers from The New York
Times to The Hindu in India (http://theyesmen.org/dow/#links), and
sympathetic activists responded by cloning and mirroring the site at
many locations, including http://www.dowethics.com/,
http://www.dowindia.com/ and, with a twist,
http://www.mad-dow-disease.com/. Dow continues to play whack-a-mole
with these sites (at least one ISP has received veiled threats).
Burson-Marsteller, the public relations company that helped to "spin"
Bhopal, has meanwhile sued college student Paul Hardwin
(phardwin@yurt.org) for putting up a fake Burson-Marsteller
site, http://www.bursonmarsteller.com/, which recounted how the PR
giant helped to downplay the Bhopal disaster. Burson-Marsteller's suit
against Hardwin will be heard next week by the World Intellectual
Property Organization (http://reamweaver.com/bmwipo/wipo.html).
Hardwin, unable to afford a lawyer, has composed a dryly humorous
57-page rebuttal to the PR giant's lawsuit
(http://www.reamweaver.com/bmwipo/response.htm#reality). On page 7,
for instance, the student notes that Burson-Marsteller's "stated goal
is 'to ensure that the perceptions which surround our clients and
influence their stakeholders are consistent with reality.'" Hardwin goes on to assert that his satirical domain is doing precisely that, by publicizing "academic and journalistic materials about
Burson-Marsteller's involvement with and relationship to, for example,
Philip Morris and the National Smoker's Alliance, a consumer front
group designed to create the appearance of public support for
big-tobacco policies; Union Carbide and the deaths of 20,000 people
following the 1984 disaster in Bhopal; and political regimes such as
that of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and more recently Saudi
Arabia following the events of September 11; and to properly associate
them with the relevant Trademark so that they may be understood
accordingly by Internet users."
In response to the suit's claim that "a substantial degree of goodwill
is associated with [the Burson-Marstellar Trademark]" Hardwin offers
much "evidence to the contrary" including "a newspaper headline in
which the Complainant is characterized as 'the Devil.'"
The primary goal of RTMark (http://rtmark.com/) is to publicize
corporate subversion of the democratic process. Just like other
corporations, it achieves its aims by any and all means at its
disposal. RTMark has previously helped to publicize websites against
political parties (http://rtmark.com/othersites.html#fpo), political
figures (http://www.rtmark.com/bush.html), and entities like the World
Trade Organization (http://www.gatt.org) and the World Economic Forum
(http://www.world-economic-forum.com).