Politics – Page 52 – James Wagner

“The Forbiden Pictures,” still forbidden

live “dancers, whores, merrymakers, and priests” outside powerHouse Books (the few “corpulent Weimar German types” to be seen last night were inside by the snacks and bubbly, but since they were there, they were obviously on the side of the republic)

Three years ago Larry Fink completed the film shoot, and the pictures were scheduled to run in the NYTimes Magazine in the Fall of 2001 as an arty fashion spread with a bit of frisson. There they would probably have attracted a modest amount of attention.
Then the world seemed to stop. September 11 may not have changed everything, but it certainly frightened the Times, and, as it turns out, apparently every other periodical market in both the U.S. and Europe.
The tableaux vivant produced in the summer of 2001, with their voluptuous, polychrome sculptural presence, have become forbidden pictures.
Fink has been unable to persuade any magazine to print these remarkable photographs. powerHouse Books is now publishing them and they are currently visible at their gallery on Charlton Street, where they will remain through the last day of the Republican Convention, September 2. The Gallery calls them, “a provocative political commentary” and “a satirical look at Americas current leaders.”
The artist tells us a little more.

It was simple! I was shooting fashion, perhaps a compromise for me, but a trivial, jovial, stylish, learning theater. Why not use its public accessibility for subversion, satire, association, and education? An idea! One of my favorite periods in twentieth-century art was Weimar Germany, with Beckmann, Dix, and Grosz all melting down convention in an impassioned visionary way. Grosz was especially political, but all of the were hyper-aware of the decadence, the despair, the hysteria, and the lies. I suggested to The New York Times Magazine (whose rear end is sometimes gifted with fashion spreads) an idea to replicate the period but loosen it, update it, and tell it anew. There were fashion equivalents and certainlymoral and historical ones.
Oh the glee! They said yes. I suggested that rather than the corpulent Weimar German types, why not use our current fraudulent leaders, George W.and his cabinet. Oh the glee! They said yes. Political satire and critical acuity are something rarely if ever done in fashion. Yet another coup.
We searched for the cast of dancers, whores, merrymakers, and priests. We searched for the look-alikes of our own Mr. G. W. and his consortium. We found it all and went to work. Five paintings chosen from the period and three days shooting them, interpreting them, and creating aesthetic clarity and political bedlam.
The pictures were shot on 7/19/01 and were hypothetically scheduled to run in The Times in the fall. 9/11 gave birth to doom. The tragic inevitable moment, the rupture of providence, the rape of the external soul of America. And its aftermath. [excerpt from the Artist’s Statement]

These are the pictures. But don’t expect credits for the fashion.

UFPJ, going up 8th Avenue to the park

the press conference across from Madison Sqare Garden ended, some participants still linger [NY1’s Michael Scotto in front, Donna Lieberman of the NYCLU in the center, and from UFPJ, Bill Dobbs, back to camera, tall on the far left and Leslie Cagan, partly obscured, fingers spread, on the right]

Beginning last June United For Peace and justice (UFPJ) started planning a New York City march and rally for August 29, the eve of the Republican Convention. They still have no permit.
In fact, no police or park permits have been granted to any of the organizations planning protests related to the Convention, although some applications were made up to a year ago.
UFPJ has filed an application for a permit to walk up 8th Avenue from 23rd Street, past the site of the Convention, Madison Square Garden, and end up with a gathering in Central Park. The NYPD and the NY Parks Department wants them to go to Queens for their rally or, alternatively to bake in the wasteland of the West Side Highway, four long blocks left of the Convention site.
Today a number of groups planning protests related to the Convention joined UFPJ in a press conference across the street from Madison Square Garden, to describe their frustrations with city agencies and to demand that Mayor Bloomberg protect their right of dissent.
We should all be concerned with what the experience of these groups says about the agenda of the Bloomberg administration, bending over backwards to see that the convention of a radical right-wing political party goes as smoothly as possible, while doing absolutely nothing to ensure the peaceful assembly of those who wish to voice objection. Should this surprise us at a time when the Republican party controls the mechanisms of all three branches of the federal government as well as Albany and our own City Hall? Now even dissent must be eliminated or at least rendered invisible.
Even beyond the big issue, the city’s behavior is appalling for what will be its impact on the basic safety of both New Yorkers and visitors in the last days of what will surely be a long summer. We should be asking how are the best interests of anyone being served when no group knows how to plan for August 29, neither a police department (already being stretched to the limit by real or imagined security concerns) nor a crowd whose size some now expect may easily end up as a seven-figure number. The city is playing a dangerous game, and we are the pawns.
Virtually every other great city of the world (and I won’t even use the customary patronizing qualifiers, “western” or “industrial”) can accomodate enormous peaceful protest without confining participants in pens or moving them far beyond the periphery of protest targets. But in the land we call “of the free” we only imagine we can exercise such liberty, and it’s some measure of just how unfree we are that few understand that they are are so bound.
The right to dissent and the right to protest are meaningless if the dissent and protest are neither heard nor seen.
On August 29 we gotta pass by the Convention site, and we gotta have the Park.

way cool photo-in captures New York MTA

Grand Central Station

waiting for the Lex express

on board, somewhere above Union Square, er . . . actually, below

transferring to the L

I saw the message captioned, “Photographer’s Rights Protest,” and I told myself, “I’m in!”
The issue is the New York MTA’s recently-announced proposal that photography be banned throughout the system. Of course it would be for our protection, from camera-hefting researcher/terrorists. I was attracted to the issue (how could its lack of merit even be arguable?), but the fact that a demonstration was announced through the internet, the modest panache of its text appeal, and finally my own recent experience with MTA security incompetence, and its photographic documentation, made it a must.
An excerpt from the organizers’ webpage:

This will be a peaceful demonstration against the MTA’s proposed Photography Ban, conducted in the spirit of Rosa Parks. We will simply ride through Manhattan with our cameras, taking as many photographs as we please, of whatever we please. This is a completely legal protest, as photography within the subway system has not yet been banned (even though the police seem to have been told otherwise).

Participants were asked to bring cameras and, if they wished, “a witty sign.” I have to admit that while I had good intentions, I didn’t manage to fabricate the cool sandwich-board I had created in my head; I went shamefully textless. So did all but one of the hundred or so people who gathered in the central hall of Grand Central Station early this afternoon. That singular body sign, “the end is nigh,” was suitably wry but undoubtedly arcane for all passers- and sitters-by.
But maybe in this action it really was appropriate to just take pictures, especially if the press was already interested, as it seemed this afternoon it was.
The weirdest thing for someone who’s been in perhaps hundreds of other zaps and demonstrations was to be in the midst of all these people taking pictures of each other. Right now there must be thousands of shots out there somewhere showing people snapping people snapping people snapping people, and perhaps beyond.
Not incidently, our progress through the system today must represented the safest time and place in the history of the MTA – at least as far as any threat originating with camera-wielding terrorists is concerned. Don’t leave those cameras home, good folks; it’s for your own security.

For some early-posted, great images go to the dart board]

In the end, I broke down and made this crummy impromptu sign on the site, hoping it might raise us above the “flashmob”-type thing.

[bottom image from Forgotten NY]

New York Times erases AIDS

The NYTimes begins its obituary of Ronald Reagan today with a three-column headline on the front page and it continues inside for a total of four more full-page sheets uninterrrupted by advertising. The size of this death notice may be unprecedented, but the most newsworthy item is what’s missing.
The words AIDS or HIV do not appear once.
This is beyond politics; it’s criminal neglect, if not part of a deliberate agenda, from the newspaper which was itself so guilty in ignoring or mishandling accounts of the plague during the Reagan years. Now that same newspaper would have us regard as serious journalism its account of the life of our second-most-disastrous president, the man whose administration, in surviving its general malfeasance and treasons, marked the final disintegration of American democracy.
We won’t buy it.

Reagan, more dead[ly] as president than now

Donald Moffett He Kills Me (installation detail), 1987

He’s dead, but as the encomiums pile up he’s not going to look dead enough.
Reagan virtually spat on people with AIDS throughout his presidency. The epidemic began under his watch, and he ensured that it would ultimately kill millions. For that responsibility alone, he didn’t deserve the relief alzheimers must have brought to his memory.
Ah, wait, Barry just turned on Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel Mighty Real.” The magical musical legend Sylvester died of AIDS in 1988, so that ecstatic, triumphant shout of delight seems very real around here today. We’re dancing on his grave tonight. Maybe me especially. I’m still talking, and now that monster/fool is not. I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve been HIV+ for decades, and I’m not leaving yet.
Oh yes, and my memory’s just fine.

[image from Richard F. Brush Gallery, St. Lawrence University]

Eyton Fox gets even better

German visitor and Israeli tour guide meet the Dead sea

I’d say that Eyton Fox has now redeemed himself in the eyes of anyone who might have thought his last film, “Yossi and Jagger,” operated in too much of a bell jar. The story of a love affair between two young Israeli officers in a remote army base on the Israeli-Lebanese border, “Y&J” does not really address the elephant in the barracks – the moral questions of occupation and violence.
The American-born Israeli fimmaker’s third film, “Walk On Water,” which premiered last night at New York’s NEW FEST, is a much more mature film than the very well-received feature shown by the director last year, and it covers far more ethical ground without stretching the moralizing. The film’s most profound voiced statement is brief. It’s delivery is given to an Israeli Arab and it’s directed at a Jewish Israeli who represents absolute power in their shared world. The young Arab, his family and his nation have just been deeply insulted in front of two visiting young Germans. His reply, painfully gentle under the circumstances, is directed into an open car window. It was something close to this: Maybe if you people could get over what happened to you a long time ago, you’d be able to see what you yourselves are doing now.
It’s a wonderful, nuanced film. It’s about all kinds of people doing both very bad and very good things, representing the relationships between one generation of Palestinians, two generations of Jewish Israelis and three generations of Germans. No one gets off easily.
Now what some of you will appreciate knowing before you decide to go: The actor playing the lead Israeli character, Lior Ashkenazi, is one of the most beautiful men ever touched by a camera.

[image from the film’s website]

will a tissue make it better?

This is one of a group of works by Brian Belott [who shows at Canada] lining the gallery’s entrance ramp of the White Box show, “Majority Whip,” which closed yesterday. Closed, but not to be forgotten, since we can expect to see its children throughout this New York summer, and far beyond.

On Wednesday night, a clutch of Billionaires for Bush managed to crash an enthusiastic gathering of somewhat less-monied and decidedly un-Bush artists and activists in the gallery:

Times about to admit it was very wrong about the war thing

Is the NYTimes about to admit it’s largely responsible for sending the country into an immoral and disastrous war?
See this story which arrived via Cursor tonight.

Sources inside and close to the New York Times say that the newspaper is preparing an “Editors’ Note” that will reassess its pre-Iraq War coverage, particularly its coverage of weapons of mass destruction. The note is said to address the reporting failures of Times staffers, including Judith Miller, and could be published as early as tomorrow (Wednesday, May 26).

So how will they propose to make the world whole now? As Barry pointed out, and with no little acerbity, remembering the last Times “Editors’ Note,” this ain’t just another Jayson Blair!
Will the Washington Post be next? See this Washingtonian article, also sighted on Cursor.

Chalabi has been a political activist in exile for most of his 59 years, and for many of those years the Post has trumpeted and championed his causes. In some ways, Chalabi is a creation of the Post and to a lesser extent the Times, where Judith Miller relied on him as a source in reporting on weapons of mass destruction.

Ah, those sneaky notoriously-Leftwing, Eastern-Establishment media giants have been at it again, pushing their pinko internationalist agenda onto peace-loving Americans across the land, through the halls of the Capitol and into the White House itself.

UPDATE: The “Editors’ Note” now [11:30 pm Tuesday] appears on the Times site and will appear in all editions on Wednesday. It doesn’t begin to describe the scale of the newspaper’s failures, and while it barely touches the subject of moral guilt the geopolitical consequences of those failures is missing altogether.

aux armes, mes enfants!

UNCLE SAM NEEDS YOU!

[Barry spotted this image of Jake Gyllenhaal, which is courtesy of the ACLU and arrives via uffish and black sheep]

can they imprison us for political protest?

UPDATE: See below for the announcement that the sentencing has been stayed.

“Can they imprison us for political protest?” We’re about to find out, right here in Gotham.
Yesterday New York City closed down 5th Avenue for the benefit of a group of people wishing to demonstrate American support for Israel. On Wednesday the same city will be sentencing, quite possibly to prison terms, another group of people who briefly closed down the same Avenue last year. Their wish? They hoped to demonstrate oppositon to what America is doing in the Middle East, including its support for the Israeli government’s murderous policy.
Four defendants have already been convicted of “blocking traffic,” but they will hear their sentences read Wednesday morning. The prosecution team is calling for jail time, based on several protest cases previously dismissed and sealed by the courts. All current charges, as well as the past charges which were supposed to have remained hidden, involve non-violent protest. The District Attorney has cited the four advocates’ history of advocacy with AIDS/Queer/Abortion/Police Brutality activism as reason for harsh sentencing, thus officially criminalizing political protest.
It has been decades since New York courts have even tried to argue that such defendants should serve time. If the move is successful this week, the long-term implications for political dissent will be horrendous. But the short-term consequences are surely the agenda of this district attorney, this police commissioner, this born-again-Republican mayor and the administration in Washington he hopes to impress. This is an election year, we are in the midst of a costly and increasingly unpopular war, and we are just now entering an anxious, hot summer which will climax in a massive political rally conducted by a failed, deceptive, radical regime which was imposed upon a world it has horribly wounded. The stakes are very, very high.
Our support of a better way, a better world, is needed this week. Our presence inside and outside of the courtroom will help these four courageous activists and of course it will help us all, including countless people who will never hear about their sacrifice or our modest witness. Please come to the Manhattan Criminal Court Building just east and a few blocks north of City Hall on Wednesday morning, May 26, at 9 am for the 9:30 am sentencing. The address is 100 Centre Street, Room 533.
For photographs and more information, including that on the fate of the 12 defendents sentenced earlier, see the M26 site.

UPDATE (Monday, May 24, 6:35 pm)

SENTENCING POSTPONED
Late today it was announced that the sentencing, originally scheduled for May 26, has been stayed, pending an appeal for review of a petition by the four against Supreme Court Justice Cataldo and the District Attorney of Manhattan (on the issue of the unsealing of dismissed cases). This means that they will appear again in court at a date in July at the earliest.
Do not show up this Wednesday; there will be nothing happening there on this case at that time.
Friends of the convicted activists are asking instead for help in finding lawyers who would want to file a brief on this case. The case is expected to be very important in establishing both political and legal precedent for all kinds of defendants.
Those who know lawyers who might be interested in this important case are asked to contact Jonathan Kirshbaum at [phone number deleted].
Even those who are not close to lawyers can help with the legal fees and fines associated with the case. Contributions of all sizes can be made through paypal on the M26 site.

[image, of the March 26 protest, by Fred Askew on the M26 site]