The Agenda

Forwarded from Laura Travis:

Please help us save the stone!

by Matthew Everett

[Note: This article first appeared in The Agenda #15]

Psychic geography is a psychic ability to examine the
interaction between spaces and people, and also a way of thinking about those
spaces and people, in which it is assumed that the space has the upper hand and
a desire to confound, betray, or destroy the people who inhabit it. Thus, the
culprit of any crime is the space in which it took place (and possibly, by
association, the people who designed that space).

By Dan Voknine

[Note: This article first appeared in The Agenda #18]

This is a manual method of screen printing that requires no special
equipment or tools. It does require some drawing or tracing ability however.
The advantage of this method over typical screen printing is that this screen
is permanent and reusable. This particular project is focused on printing to a shirt.

A Gathering on “Beauty”

at The RISD Museum

Sunday, May 6, 1:30 pm

(free with museum admission)

This month-long sidebar festival celebrates international documentary filmmaking and runs through May 2nd at various locations throughout the state, including: the University of Rhode Island, Feinstein Campus, Providence; the Columbus Theater Arts Center, Providence; Roger Williams University, Bristol; the Westerly Public Library, Westerly; and the Courthouse Center for the Arts, West Kingston.

June 29 – July 30, 2007

Featured Festival Weekend July 12 – 15

Part carnival and part conference, ProvFlux brings together artists, theorists, urban adventurers and the general public to share their visions of what the city can be, and to take action to make it a reality.

National dialogue indicates we are at the brink of a new population migration. People are moving back into the cities, investors are seeking to capitalize on property values, and those that have been living and working in urban centers are watching the growth and development augment the city’s landscape, for better or for worse. Art has been an effective tool to draw attention to these issues , while it has simultaneously spearheaded a creative economy.

October 31, 2006

Dear Mayor Cicilline,

Thank you for recognizing Firehouse 13 as vital to Providence’s creative economy in The Providence Journal’s article “The Politics of Art” (Van Siclen 10/22/06). This article only begins to touch on the complexity of issues that artists and art organizations are experiencing in this city. I write to you today to call attention to the crisis of emerging artist-run developments and organizations in Providence.

Mayor Meets Match

Letters appear, at first glance, to have become less relevant these days. Technological devices take care of the stamp, envelope, and messy handwriting with a few clicks of a mouse. Yet, letters require the time, thought, and effort that few emails or phone calls can boast. With that said, the ease of communication today increases the significance of a letter. We are now looking at a time where people, organizations, and publications will take notice of a mailed communiquè, and thankfully we live in a city where our mayor will respond—and so will our publications.

An interactive art project is waiting at the Dirt Palace in Olneyville Square for a little food. Please Feed the Monster is a collaborative sculpture that can change daily depending on what people “feed” it. But what do you “feed” to a monster?

Mad Peck’s Poster Art

By Alden Stetzer

Posters have been a topic of conversation in the current arts dialogue in Providence.

A Design Manifesto

by Ken Garland

We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, photographers and students who have been brought up in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable means of using our talents. We have been bombarded with publications devoted to this belief, applauding the work of those who have flogged their skill and imagination to sell such things as:

cat food, stomach powders, detergent, hair restorer, striped toothpaste, aftershave lotion, beforeshave lotion, slimming diets, fattening diets, deodorants, fizzy water, cigarettes, roll-ons, pull-ons and slip-ons.

By far the greatest effort of those working in the advertising industry are wasted on these trivial purposes, which contribute little or nothing to our national prosperity.

In common with an increasing number of the general public, we have reached a saturation point at which the high pitched scream of consumer selling is no more than sheer noise. We think that there are other things more worth using our skill and experience on. There are signs for streets and buildings, books and periodicals, catalogues, instructional manuals, industrial photography, educational aids, films, television features, scientific and industrial publications and all the other media through which we promote our trade, our education, our culture and our greater awareness of the world.

We do not advocate the abolition of high pressure consumer advertising: this is not feasible. Nor do we want to take any of the fun out of life. But we are proposing a reversal of priorities in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication. We hope that our society will tire of gimmick merchants, status salesmen and hidden persuaders, and that the prior call on our skills will be for worthwhile purposes. With this in mind we propose to share our experience and opinions, and to make them available to colleagues, students and others who may be interested.

signed:

Edward Wright
Geoffrey White
William Slack
Caroline Rawlence
Ian McLaren
Sam Lambert
Ivor Kamlish
Gerald Jones
Bernard Higton
Brian Grimbly
John Garner
Ken Garland
Anthony Froshaug
Robin Fior
Germano Facetti
Ivan Dodd
Harriet Crowder
Anthony Clift
Gerry Cinamon
Robert Chapman
Ray Carpenter
Ken Briggs

“In 1964 a small number of British graphic designers lent their names to a quietly radical document. First Things First was a rebuke to their colleagues in the industry. It had the force of a flash of truth, inspiring many ad and design people.” – Chris Dixon

The innovators, artists, musicians, and designers birthed from higher-level education into the world face continuous decisions about how they will utilize their education and creative skill. As well, the professors and administrations face the need to balance their students’ creativity with the reality of a world system anchored in consumerist values.

In the aftermath of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995, the Tape Artists created the Hope Mural – a three-story-high drawing – in the center of the rescue operation during the recovery efforts. The mural took 58 hours to create. Using blue tape, the artists depicted a spontaneous image of renewal in a city shocked and reeling from a national tragedy. The events in Oklahoma were spontaneous, and began the tape artists’ entrance into city hospitals. For the past ten years, grounded by this experience, the tape-artists have been going to Rhode Island Children’s Hospital every week to draw and create for the staff and the children.

Four Hearts: The locations of the figures, plotted on a map of New York, form four hearts. Online, the map becomes three dimensional with the assistance of Google Earth.

Navigation: On many pages you will notice a small cut-out of one of the Hearts or a bar on the side of the page. These points of navigation invite you to move southwest or northwest according to the island of Manhattan and the range of the Hearts. In this way, the web site is also a walking tour.

Heart One: Closest to the World Trade Center. 3-D panorama of the tape-art silhouette which situates the figures in the physical space where they were drawn. As the Hearts progress away from the World Trade Center they become more dimensional.