Art spin on the news
by Carine Zaayman
Imagine Art After
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/imagineartafter
Imagine Art After is a project about dialogue, that is, dialogue between artists who have left their conflict-riddled countries of origin, and those who have stayed on in those countries. Some of the world's most pressing concerns are addressed in this project, as the artists were selected from countries 'whose people, according to the Home Office, make an unusually high number of applications for asylum in the UK' (http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/imagineartafter/story/0,16630,1596935,00.html). With this project, artists are given a valuable opportunity to reflect on their experiences and discuss their work.
For this online exhibition, Curator Breda Beban selected seven artists, from Afghanistan, Albania, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria and Serbia Montenegro, as well as seven artists who have emigrated from these countries and now live in London. The site features the biographies, discussions and works by these artists, as well as an online exchange between them on the Guardian Online's Talkboards (http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.774834bb).
According to the Buzzle.com (who helped set up the project), this exhibition and forum was intended to make use of the unique capability of the internet to facilitate discussion between people who are geographically isolated from each other (http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/11-26-2005-82374.asp). This is especially pertinent when one considers the countries involved, and the need for these stories to be heard. Imagine Art After provides some very interesting images, insight into poignant situations, and a platform for art to speak in a personal way about large issues within our world.
The Average Shoveler
http://www.softaid.biz/average/index.htm
The Rhizome.org commissioned project, The Average Shoveler, finds itself somewhere between news casting, games, and art. This quirky project, created by Carlo Zanni, has been inspired by the graphics layout of the classic game Leisure Suit Larry (1987), and features a protagonist (ostensibly you, the player) who is constantly shovelling snow in front of his East Village, New York City apartment.
Attached to every snowflake, is an image from the current news - your job is to shovel the snow, and keep the area in front of your apartment clear. Meanwhile other pedestrians bring you the headlines from current news events. The images and the news blurbs are loaded dynamically from the web into the interface, so the game is constantly changing and reflects current topics.
Zanni explains that this project addresses the overload of information: 'Your only alternative is to shovel pumping news from your head, saving your life from that daily soft bombing, from a news overload.. There is no way to win. Of course you are going to die, it is a matter of time... While you are experiencing a fictional environment, you are playing with feedback (text and images) coming from your real life, from the real world.' (http://www.softaid.biz/average/average-presskit.htm).
Perhaps more importantly, the project comments on the insidious and propagandistic nature of news media. As Zanni states, 'They want to convince you; they want you to think like them; they want your head to explode.' And indeed, at some point in the endless snow-shovelling madness, everything around you explodes. At other times though, when you find yourself in interior spaces, there is nothing to do but contemplate what you see. In this way, Zanni makes a humorous but significant comment on the effect of the incessant news feed on our lives, the 'daily soft bombing'.
