Carrotmob, which recently begat Virgance, organizes consumers to make purchases that give financial rewards to those businesses who agree to make socially beneficial choices.
Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.
From the Carrotmob Web site:
…groups of Carrotmob organizers are springing up all around the world… one crew recently tried out a campaign in London (see an article in the Guardian here), and there’s another one in Helsinki this Saturday (RSVP here if you speak Finnish)! There are more people looking into organizing Carrotmobs all over, from Kansas City to New York to Shanghai…. We will let you all know as these ideas start evolving into more official Carrotmob events….
Read more:
Groundswell Talks: Don Russell of Provisions Library
pimg class=“size-full wp-image-558” style=“float:right; margin:20px 0 0 10px;” title=“Groundswell Talks” src=“http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/groundswelltalks.png” alt=“Groundswell Talks” width=“300” height=“50” /br /
Provisions Library is an arts and social change learning resource that amplifies compelling voices that challenge and redefine the mainstream. Don Russell is the organization#8217;s Executive Director; we spoke with him about radical social change, and how it can be#8230;/p
Related posts:ollia href=‘http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/2008/12/19/groundswell-talks-mark-tribe/’ rel=‘bookmark’ title=‘Permanent Link: Groundswell Talks: Mark Tribe’Groundswell Talks: Mark Tribe/a/lilia href=‘http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/2008/06/27/groundswell-talks-the-change/’ rel=‘bookmark’ title=‘Permanent Link: Groundswell Talks: The Change’Groundswell Talks: The Change/a/lilia href=‘http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/2008/03/10/groundswell-talks-critical-art-ensemble/’ rel=‘bookmark’ title=‘Permanent Link: Groundswell Talks: Critical Art Ensemble’Groundswell Talks: Critical Art Ensemble/a/li/oldiv class=“feedflare”
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pimg class=“size-full wp-image-495” style=“float: right; margin-left:10px;” title=“SocialDesignSite.com” src=“http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/socialdesign-300-200.gif” alt=“SocialDesignSite.com” width=“300” height=“210” /Our friends at Social Design Site have launched a new blogging effort, just in time for 2009. An adjunct to a href=“http://www.SocialDesignSite.com/” target=“_blank"SocialDesignSite.com/a, a href=“http://www.socialdesignblog.org/” target=“_blank"SocialDesignBlog.org/a will complement its parent site with a deeper problematization of the issues presented in projects on SocialDesignSite. Interested in#8230;/p
Related posts:ollia href=‘http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/2008/02/06/social-design-site/’ rel=‘bookmark’ title=‘Permanent Link: Social Design Site’Social Design Site/a/lilia href=‘http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/2007/07/11/david-berman-on-design-social-responsibility/’ rel=‘bookmark’ title=‘Permanent Link: David Berman on Design #038; Social Responsibility’David Berman on Design #038; Social Responsibility/a/lilia href=‘http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/2008/03/24/designing-the-revolution-ii-social-change/’ rel=‘bookmark’ title=‘Permanent Link: Designing the Revolution II: Social Change’Designing the Revolution II: Social Change/a/li/oldiv class=“feedflare”
a href=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?a=97o7ZT.O"img src=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?i=97o7ZT.O” border=“0”/img/a a href=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?a=NDGR68.o"img src=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?i=NDGR68.o” border=“0”/img/a a href=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?a=nuYPn2.O"img src=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?i=nuYPn2.O” border=“0”/img/a a href=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?a=pwUODR.o"img src=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?i=pwUODR.o” border=“0”/img/a a href=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?a=QzE5pg.o"img src=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?i=QzE5pg.o” border=“0”/img/a
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End of Year Fundraising Campaigns
pWe couldn#8217;t let the chance to lend a hand to our friends and allies slip by, so while you#8217;re pondering what to do with that massive check grandma gave you, allow us to make a few suggestions:/p
pimg class=“size-full wp-image-2192” style=“float:left; margin-right:10px;” title=“Journal of Aesthetics and Protest” src=“http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/joaap.gif” alt=“Journal of Aesthetics and Protest” width=“229” height=“58” /Arguably our most important#8230;/p
Related posts:ollia href=‘http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/2007/12/05/osocio-social-advertising-and-nonprofit-campaigns/’ rel=‘bookmark’ title=‘Permanent Link: Osocio: Social Advertising and Nonprofit Campaigns’Osocio: Social Advertising and Nonprofit Campaigns/a/lilia href=‘http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/2008/08/05/just-seeds-article-in-alarm-magazine/’ rel=‘bookmark’ title=‘Permanent Link: Just Seeds Article in Alarm Magazine’Just Seeds Article in Alarm Magazine/a/lilia href=‘http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/donate/’ rel=‘bookmark’ title=‘Permanent Link: Donate’Donate/a/li/oldiv class=“feedflare”
a href=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?a=iMhqot.O"img src=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?i=iMhqot.O” border=“0”/img/a a href=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?a=Ih7Sz5.o"img src=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?i=Ih7Sz5.o” border=“0”/img/a a href=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?a=xXP2TZ.O"img src=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?i=xXP2TZ.O” border=“0”/img/a a href=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?a=vrF7RU.o"img src=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?i=vrF7RU.o” border=“0”/img/a a href=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?a=oMsz7b.o"img src=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?i=oMsz7b.o” border=“0”/img/a
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p style=“text-align: center;“img class=“size-full wp-image-640” title=“Dan Tague’s Church and State” src=“http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/dan_tague_chruch_and_state.jpg” alt=“Dan Tague’s Church and State” width=“476” height=“191” /br /
Dan Tague#8217;s emChurch and State/em from emCash Rules Everything Around Me/em/p
pa href=“http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/2008/04/17/dan-tagues-oragami-activism/” target=“_blank"Dan Tague/a and Jonathan Ferrara Gallery are reproducing Tague#8217;s emCash Rules Everything Around Me/em as a a href=“http://www.cashruleseverything.com/” target=“_blank"line of t-shirts/a. One dollar from the sale of each t-shirt will be donated to the New#8230;/p
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a href=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?a=Zus51Q.O"img src=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?i=Zus51Q.O” border=“0”/img/a a href=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?a=DnLP9J.o"img src=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?i=DnLP9J.o” border=“0”/img/a a href=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?a=G3ETRr.O"img src=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?i=G3ETRr.O” border=“0”/img/a a href=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?a=qMkxn7.o"img src=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?i=qMkxn7.o” border=“0”/img/a a href=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?a=hs1t2z.o"img src=“http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/TheGroundswellBlog?i=hs1t2z.o” border=“0”/img/a
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Disobedience is a platform of discussion dealing with the relationship between artistic practices and political action.
Conceived as a diverse and constantly changing archive, the project represents a guide to the geography of civil disobedience, from the social struggles in Italy in 1977 to the recent anti-globalisation protests before and after Seattle. The project is also an atlas of the plurality of resistance tactics such as direct action, counter-information and biological resistance. By setting in motion different signs and situations, Disobedience is presented as a network of open topics, brought together by artists, activists, film producers, philosophers and political groups. Each of them was invited to create a separate section by involving other artists, documents, political magazines, cheap offset printing, ephemera, etc.. The current sections are: 1977 The Italian Exit, Protesting Capitalist Globalization, Bioresistance and Society of Control, Reclaim the Street, Reclaim the Media, Playtime in Orange/Benelux, Argentina Fábrica Social, Disobedience/East.
Disobedience presents itself as a comprehensive map of social conflict and as a network of contemporary activism.
2009: A Year of Critical Activism?
Quilian Riano, an Archinect Senior Editor and Harvard GSD blogger, pened a small essay about “renewed interest by design practices of inserting themselves into political and legal processes.”
Feed the World. 
“In 1986, the anarchist band Chumbawamba released the album Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records, as well as an EP entitled “We Are the World”, jointly recorded with US band A State of Mind, both of which were intended as anti-capitalist critiques of the Band Aid/Live Aid phenomenon. They argued that the record was primarily a cosmetic spectacle, designed to draw attention away from the real political causes of world hunger.”
Thomas Hirschhorn: 'Doing Art Politically: What does this mean?' 1/3
Scarecrow Hacking at the Border
Activists in Tucson, Arizona have been placing life-sized cutouts of Maricopa County’s insidiously regressive anti-immigrant law enforcement officials around town on street corners and at intersections, including one of the chief of armed despicability himself, America’s self-described “toughest sheriff†Joe Arpaio, and another of a Border Patrol agent, presumed to depict Nicholas Corbett, who just recently faced a hung trial for the second time after being charged with the murder of Mexican immigrant Francisco Dominguez in January of 2007.
A project i saw at the Bolzano branch of Manifesta, more precisely in the dramatic ex-Alumix factory which used to produced aluminum.
Tantalum Memorial - Residue, by England-based Graham Harwood, Richard Wright, and Matsuko Yokokoji, is a telephony-based memorial to the people who have died as a result of the coltan wars in the Congo.
Coltan is the colloquial African name for columbite-tantalite, a metallic ore which is mined for the metal tantalum - an essential component of consumer electronics products such as mobile phones and computers. The demand for tantalum makes it highly valuable. Analysts say that the international demand for coltan is one of the driving forces behind the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the presence of rival militias in the country and, indirectly, the disappearance of gorillas from the area.
This installation is constructed out of an old electro-mechanical 1938 Strowger telephone exchange, discovered amongst the remains of the Alumix factory. Seen from afar it looked like it does belong to the ex-factory. An old telephone switch forgotten for decades. The switches are reanimated by tracking the phone calls from Telephone Trottoire - a social telephony network designed by the artists in collaboration with the Congolese radio program Nostalgie Ya Mboka in London. The TT network calls Congolese listeners, plays them a phone message and invites them to record a comment and pass it on to a friend by entering their phone number. This builds on the traditional Congolese practice of “radio trottoire” or “pavement radio”, the passing around of news and gossip on street corners in order to avoid state censorship.
But back to the amazingly beautiful installation. As the catalog states: The movements and sounds of the switches create a concrete presence for this otherwise intangible network of circulating conversations, weaving together the ambiguities of globalization, transnational migration and the impact of our addiction to constant communication.
View of the facade of the ex-Alumix factory. Photo credit: Andrea Pozza
More images of the installation. Photo on the homepage: Graham Harwood, Richard Wright and Matsuko Yokokoji @ Manifesta 7, The Rest of Now, Bolzano/Bozen, Italy, 2008.
Muezzin inside catholic churches
Johannes Gees action Salat won a Honorary Mention in the Hybrid Art category of the Prix Ars Electonica 2008.
In the summer of 2007, Gees sneaked automated speakers into famous church towers in various Swiss cities and in one mountain village. At the times of Islamic prayer the call of the muezzin could be heard. The context for this action is the heated debate in Switzerland that ensued after right-wing conservative politicians demanded the ban of minarets.
On show at the OK Center are photos, a video showing the reactions of passer-bys, legal letters from city administrations, that followed the action, and one of the speakers, shown in the snapshot, that always on the full hour plays the sound that was used in the action.
Written by Jan from http://pieceoplastic.com/
Top Five Criminal Justice Videos of 2008
Matt Kelly’s favourite videos criminal justice videos. Here’s the first one:
Brussels Biennial: Lufthansa Deportation Class
The Brussels Biennial has opened its first edition a few weeks ago. The programme is good. A bit severe but really good. However, the whole experience is laborious. The first venue we visited was so cold i almost took no picture afraid as i was to remove my gloves (Brussels i love you and that derelict Post Sorting Center was charming but if you can't afford to heat the place do consider to biennial us in the Summer next time, ok?) The second one was remarkably well hidden. Number three was a bit gloomy and the fourth venue was indicated on the Biennial map as 'the Central Station', easy peasy to locate the station but this is a big train station and where the artworks to see actually were remains a mystery to me.
It will be my pleasure to moan and curse in another post but let's focus this one on an art piece that got my attention.
Silke Wagner, Buergersteig, 2001-2002
At the beginning of 2001 Silke Wagner bought a Volkswagen-van.
During one year, the artist drove her Bürgersteig (Pavement) project to three German cities. Her budget for the project was left at the disposal of local socio-political groups to customize the vehicle according to their needs and set up various projects in public.
The third stop of the van was Frankfurt am Main. There, Wagner cooperated with the Hanau activist group kein mensch ist illegal (no-one is illegal) to comment on the practice of deporting refugees and immigrants living illegally in Germany and examine it in the framework of the process of European integration (see Lufthansa Deportation Class brochure). Lufthansa is deeply involved in the deportation process. Germany deports between 30,000 and 35,000 people each year and more than one third are taking off from Frankfurt, making it the country number one airport for deportation.
Sticker on the side of the van
The van was repainted to resemble a Lufthansa van marked with the words "Deportation Class". Different events were carried out in the bus, focusing on the deportation of refugees carried out with the help by the German airline: protests, handling of information leaflets, performances in the street, at the airport but also at a major cultural event such as the Frankfurt Book Fair. The only feature of the project brought to Brussels is the onboard radio that broadcasts the audio documentation of the project.
Lufthansa sued the artist to obtain that they stopped using the van but the airline company lost its case.
The Brussels Biennial runs until January 4, 2009.
Herencia by Pablo Pino
This website is for people to use a ready supply of well-designed, wild postings that comment on the issues of our time. These 11×17, B/W posters in PDF format are for anyone, anywhere to download, print and post.
Last year, Packard Jennings hand-crafted Anarchist Action Figures and placed them at Target and Wal-Mart stores in the San Francisco Bay Area to show how easily even radical ideologies can be commercialized.
WHAT IS YOUR VIEW Mr. WAGONER & WHAT IS YOUR VIEW Mr. R. LEE SCOTT; was a letter sent to the 100 largest companies, according to the Fortune Magazine Global 500, which is based upon the annual turnover of global corporations. The appeal to the ethical responsibility of such corporations - who tend to be involved in everyday lives in the global village - was manifested in three basic questions: what is your views on democracy?, what is your views on power?, what is your views on economy?. Only 5 corporations representatives made an effort to respond TO THE FIRST LETTER in a more conscientious manner, 9 others respondents were the “we-are-to-busy-at-the-mo” type. Of the 100 CEOs IN YEAR 2000 there were 99 men and only 1 women. WE’RE AT THE MOMENT WAITING FOR RESPONSES ON THE LETTER SENT 2008. ALL OF THE TOP 100 CEOs IN YEAR 2008 WERE MEN. The Fortune Global 500 is a ranking of the top 500 corporations worldwide as measured by revenue. The list is compiled and published annually by Fortune magazine.
THIS PROJECT IS DEVELOPED BY Mr. JOHAN TIREN & Mr.CHRISTIAN HILLESOE
Via free soil.
http://www.free-soil.org/
Swedish artist uses 'unethical' cash to fund cultural scholarships
Swedish performance artist and filmmaker PÃ¥l Hollender, who in 2003 invested SKr100,000 (around €11,000) in ‘unethical’ companies, has distributed SKr32,500 (€3,235) in ‘scholarships’ derived from the returns. The grants were awarded to visitors last month to ‘The PÃ¥l Hollender Foundation for Ethically or Aesthetically Offended Consumers of Culture’ at Malmö Art Museum in southern Sweden.
He chose companies involved in what he called the ‘five main unethical industries’: arms manufacture (Lockheed Martin), tobacco (Swedish Match), alcohol, pornography and gambling. ‘My investments are [doing] better the worse the situation in the world [becomes]. Wars, drinking problems and so on lead to growing profits for the companies I invest in. But people do not understand that others get hurt to increase their fortunes,’ Hollender told The Art Newspaper.
“A site where anyone with an internet connection can watch a movie to educate themselves or simply explore another perspective whenever they please. These movies aren’t just for education but are also for entertainment.
As a secondary objective freedocumentaires.org allows independent filmmakers to have their message heard by viewers that they may not normally reach.”
Via http://www.free-soil.org/
Action_figure Activism Airlines Anarchy Architecture Archives Arizona Artist_talk Biopiracy Boat Border Christmas Colonialism Coltan Communication Congo Corporations Crime Deportation Design Diy Documentary Download Drains Drugs Economy Event Flora Fortune Free Frontiers Game Graphic Hacktivism How_to Immigrants Immigration Islam Law Locative Memorial Mexico Migrants Oil Online Pharmacy Phone Piracy Politics Printing Prison Protest Refugees Religion Remotely Shoes Sound Street Supermarket Switzerland Toys Usa Video Wall War Water Wearable Show all
Curated by Régine Debatty
Régine Debatty writes about the intersection between art, design and technology on her blog we-make-money-not-art.com.
She also contributes to various design and art magazines, curates art shows and lectures internationally.
