Bleeding in the Gulf
A huge mural takes on both the Gulf BP oil spill and the Haitian earthquake.
Benefit Event for Louisiana Bucket Brigade
We know the power of poetry to demand change and to heal our world. On July 31, at Eatonville restaurant, we will be using that power to throw a benefit for the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a grassroots 501(c)3 environmental health and justice organization that has been helping residents living near Louisiana refineries fight air pollution for years, and is now helping them track and respond to the BP Oil Disaster that is ravaging the Gulf.
What is Democracy?
Artist Oliver Ressler wants to hear what we think.
Music is Still the Weapon
Hope isn’t lost for those who believe that art can transform our world.
Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation and Witness
As the country continues to grapple with two wars, the economic crisis, and social and environmental ills, Split This Rock offers participants opportunities to speak out, make common cause, and explore the many ways poets are working for change through their writing, activism, and community work. Co-Director Sarah Browning said, “At times of crisis, poetry that looks directly at our world and struggles to understand, to bridge differences, to imagine other possibilities than those endlessly repeated by politicians and pundits is more important than ever.”
Activist Listeners
The Raqs Media Collective is revolutionizing the art of communication in Delhi and beyond.
Poets in the (Think) Tank: ROCKPILE Symposium
In anticipation of what is sure to be a music and poetry extravaganza at Busboys and Poets November 4, ROCKPILE artists David Meltzer and Michael Rothenberg host an open discussion on art and activism, poetry, music and the troubadour tradition, censorship and the academy, community and collaboration.
ROCKPILE is a collaboration between David Meltzer, legendary poet, musician, and essayist, and Michael Rothenberg, poet, songwriter and editor of Big Bridge Press. In the tradition of the troubadour and with the spirit of improvisation and collaboration, the duo will journey through eight U.S. cities and perform poetry, composed on the road, in a spontaneous fusion with local musicians in each city. Washington DC is the fourth stop of the ROCKPILE journey.
David Meltzer was an important figure in the 1950s San Francisco Renaissance and appeared in Donald Allen’s “The New American Poetry,” a seminal work of that era. “Beat Thing” a book-length, poetic journal, published by La Alameda Press in 2004, won the Josephine Miles PEN Award in 2005. His books, Reading Jazz, Writing Jazz and No Eyes, Lester Young all reflect his deep connection and dedication to music throughout his career. His complete publication history is at http://meltzerville.com/.
Michael Rothenberg is a poet, songwriter, and editor and publisher of Big Bridge magazine online at www. bigbridge.org. His poetry books include The Paris Journals (Fish Drum Press), Monk Daddy (Blue Press), Unhurried Vision (La Alameda/University of New Mexico Press) and most recently CHOOSE, Selected Poems (Big Bridge Press). He is also editor for the Penguin Poet series, which includes selected works of Phillip Whalen, Joanne Kyger, David Meltzer and Ed Dorn. He has recently completed the Collected Poems of Phillip Whalen for Wesleyan University Press. Complete publication history can be found at http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/Rothenberg m/
Fred Joiner is a poet living in Washington, DC’s Historic Anacostia neighborhod. He works as a systems administrator for a small progressive consulting company. He collaborates frequently with jazz musicians and his poems have appeared in Callaloo, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Warpland: A Journal of Black Literature and Ideas, and Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS from the Black Diaspora.
Sarah Browning will moderate this event. If you can’t make it on November 3rd, be sure to attend ROCKPILE’s other DC events: 11/1 at The Writers Center in Bethesda, and 11/4 at Busboys and Poets.
The European Loser
Bosnian artist Damir Niksic specializes in bringing excluded voices into the art world.
Siding with the Barbarians
Two radical artists have set up an immigration agency, a political consulting firm, a Ponzi scheme for marketing contemporary art, and seven other enterprises. Welcome to the mock entrepreneurial art of Société Réaliste.
Poetic Document Making
The provocative work of German-born artist Andrea Geyer make us confront our responsibility as citizens.
Seeing Things
Trevor Paglen talks about the art of documenting that which does not want to be documented.
Arts Forum: ‘Torture and Representation’
Artist Daniel Heyman, Professor Julie Mertus, and attorney Katherine Gallagher will explore the issues of artistic and legal representations of victims of torture in a panel discussion moderated by Sarah Anderson. This event is sponsored by Foreign Policy In Focus and Provisions Library and is connected to an exhibit called "Close Encounters: Facing the Future," also at the Katzen Center, which runs through October 26.
Daniel Heyman is a painter and printmaker from Philadelphia who has been capturing the images and words of Iraqi victims of torture from U.S. facilities like Abu Ghraib. In these works, now on display in “Close Encounters,” Heyman’s spare and expressive portraits are haloed by words from the victims’ own harrowing narratives. More of his work may be viewed at his website [http://www.danielheyman.com/].
Julie Mertus is an Associate Professor and Co-Director of the MA program in Ethics, Peace and Global Affairs at American University. Her work focuses on human rights, U.S. foreign policy, refugee and humanitarian law and policy, gender and conflict, and post-war transitions, with a specialty on the former Yugoslavia. Professor Mertus has nearly twenty years experience in the human rights field, as a field researcher, lawyer, advocate, political analyst and trainer.
Katherine Gallagher is a Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), where she focuses on holding individuals, including US and foreign government officials, and corporations, including private military contractors, accountable for serious human rights violations. Prior to joining CCR, she worked at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia from 2001-2006.
Moderator and IPS Global Economy Project Director Sarah Anderson has written numerous studies, articles and books on global corporations and the social and environmental impacts of trade and investment liberalization.
This event is free and open to the public.
The Katzen Arts Center is located on Ward Circle at the intersection of Massachusetts and Nebraska Avenues in NW Washington, D.C. For museum hours and driving directions, please visit their website.
The "Close Encounters" exhibit is part of BrushFire, a national arts initiative organized by Provisions Library and focusing on social activist art in the run-up to the November elections.
Illustrating War
A recent exhibition shows that the illustrator’s pen is mightier than the sword.
Albert Heta
Artist and Director of the Center for Contemporary Art in Pristina Albert Heta debates the political and social consequences of art in times of conflict.
Arben Castrati
Actor and director Arben Castrati talks about ethnic identity in the Balkans, and his experiences in regional and international theater.