Submitted by Marcy LaViollette:

One of the most difficult things for a DIY label to do is to create an engaging music video on a shoestring budget. The Get Out Clause has found a novel way around this problem using a combination of Manchester’s state of the art CCTV system and a little knowledge of the Freedom of Information & Data Protection Act. The Get Out Clause set up at various locations around Manchester city centre where they knew there would be CCTV coverage and performed their new signal Paper. The footage was then requested under the Freedom of Information & Data Protection Acts and a video was cut together in their home studio.

Read more about it on here on Telegraph.co.uk.

Update submitted by Marcy LaViollette, May 8, 2008 (see original post below):

This stencil art festival has some pretty amazing artistry. This is my favorite:

Many other wonderful images to check out:

From ArtDaily.org:

Tunnel becomes Banksy art exhibit
BBC News
May 2, 2008

A disused road tunnel in south London has been turned into a giant exhibition space by graffiti artist Banksy.

Murals in the Bristol artist’s famous stencil style appear with work by 29 other artists in a half-mile stretch of the tunnel in Leake Street, Waterloo.

Images of Madonna kissing Britney Spears and a hoodie appear alongside installations of crashed cars. (more…)

Gas price protest singer arrested at Ind. convenience store
1010WINS
May 6, 2008

Valparaiso, Ind. (AP) — A man with a guitar and a megaphone climbed atop a convenience store roof to serenade commuters with his musical protest of high gasoline prices - until police halted the impromptu concert.

Once atop the roof of the Family Express store Monday, and above pumps dispensing fuel at $3.78 per gallon, Jay Weinberg, 29, performed his ditty called “Price Gouge’n.”

Dozens of supporters chanted: “I can’t afford it. I’m banging on my dashboard. I can’t believe they think I’m a fool.”

The performance lasted about 15 minutes before three police officers arrived and arrested Weinberg on charges of trespassing and disorderly conduct. Police said he was cooperative.

The crowd, made up of Weinberg’s friends and other people who just happened to be pumping gas, continued singing. Then some, including his wife, Danielle, drove to Porter County Jail to bail him out.

Weinberg left the building around 7:30 p.m. and was greeted with cheers.

image: crazy-jokes.com, via BruceFong

The Arts: Art Aimed to Shock
High Concept: Schneider with an installation on Bondi Beach, Australia
by Jennie Yabroff
Newsweek
May 5, 2008

Yale’s abortion artist is the latest to try—and fail—to start a conversation.

A German artist wants to install a terminally ill patient in a gallery as an exhibit. In Nicaragua last year, an artist displayed a starving dog, tethered just out of reach of food, as conceptual art. In New Haven, Conn., an artist claims to have made multiple attempts to impregnate herself and then induce miscarriages as a work of art. All these artists say their projects are intended to start conversations. But apart from all the shouting about indecency and insensitivity, are any ideas actually being exchanged?

When Gregor Schneider, who previously installed sunbathers in cages on an Australian beach, announced his search for dying patients, gallery owners were quick to say they would refuse the exhibit. Meanwhile, animal-rights activists are demanding that Costa Rican artist Guillermo Vargas be banned from the upcoming Central American Biennial art exhibition after Vargas displayed the dog tied up in a Nicaraguan gallery. And last week Yale administrators banned senior Aliza Shvarts’s induced-miscarriages exhibit, which includes sheeting smeared with what she says is her blood, unless she admits it was a hoax. (more…)

Most of the following images are from Body Modification Ezine and have been widely circulating on the Internet.

For the definitive work on the subject, check out V. Vale’s Modern Primitives, published by RE/Search. From the back cover:

[Modern Primitives is] an anthropological inquiry into a contemporary social enigma — the increasingly popular revival of ancient human decoration practices such as symbolic/deeply personal tattooing, multiple piercings, and scarification. “Primitive” actions which rupture conventional confines of behavior and aesthetics are objectively scrutinized. In context of the death of global frontiers, this volume charts the territory of the last remaining underdeveloped source of first-hand experience: the human body.

thanks Nick

(more…)

From artist Chris Jordan of Seattle’s Web site:

This series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 410,000 paper cups used every fifteen minutes. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. The underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

My only caveat about this series is that the prints must be seen in person to be experienced the way they are intended. As with any large artwork, their scale carries a vital part of their substance which is lost in these little web images. Hopefully the JPEGs displayed here might be enough to arouse your curiosity to attend an exhibition, or to arrange one if you are in a position to do so. The series is a work in progress, and new images will be posted as they are completed, so please stay tuned.

~chris jordan, Seattle, 2007

Plastic Cups, 2007
60×90″

Depicts one million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the US every six hours.

Partial zoom:

Detail at actual print size:

(more…)

Editor’s note: For the official press release, visit Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund Web site.

Federal Charges Against Steven Kurtz Dismissed
by Jeff Woodard, Executive Producer
WGRZ.com
April 21, 2008, updated April 22, 2008

The indictment charging UB professor Steve Kurtz with two counts of mail fraud and two counts of wire fraud, has been thrown out.

Judge Richard Arcara dismissed the charges in federal court Monday.

FBI agents in Haz-Mat suits went into Kurtz’s Buffalo home in May, 2004. Kurtz had called 911 after finding his wife unresponsive. It turned out that Hope Kurtz had died of natural causes.

But once police entered Kurtz’s home, they found biological samples inside. The F.B.I. was called and a huge investigation followed.

Kurtz told authorities that he used the samples as part of his performance art that deals with bio-technology.

After a lengthy investigation, Kurtz was charged not with bio-terrorism, but with fraudulently obtaining two of the samples that were in his home.

The following is an interview Kurtz conducted with Channel 2’s Scott Brown in 2007, when the indictment was still in place: (more…)

Editor’s note: Remember the Calvin Klein ad that was hacked to promote the opening of the New Museum in NYC? In his day job at Droga5 ad agency, Ji Lee was part of the team responsible for this.

Behind the Memes: Ji Lee, Bubble Project Media Jammer
by Jenna Wortham
Wired Blog Network: Underwire
April 23, 2008

In Behind the Memes, Underwire introduces you to web celebs who have created some of the internet’s biggest buzzes. The cewebrities profiled will be in attendance at ROFLCon, an event billed as “group dissection of internet culture.” ROFLCon meets Friday and Saturday in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Media hijacker Ji Lee sank $2,000 into the Bubble Project, an ambitious (and illegal) campaign that transforms advertisements into DIY comic strips ripe for input from anybody with a magic marker.

Five years ago, fed up with the corporate grind of his gig as art director at a global ad agency, Lee decided to leave the professional world and begin hacking his environment with graffiti. “The kinds of ads being produced were very dull and boring,” said Lee in a phone conversation. “It was frustrating to see these ads taking up space all over the city, so I wanted to do something about it as a creative person and a consumer.” (more…)

Submitted by Andrew Boyd and John Sellers:

Agit-Pop’s video Stop the Clash of Civilizations has won the coveted 2007 Youtube Video Award for the best Political video of the year!!

As you can imagine, with the ascent of Generation Youtube in this critical election year, we were up against some real electoral heavy weights. But Obama Girl couldn’t lay a glove on us. Neither could that whuss Chuck Norris or his boy Mike Huckabee.

Submitted by Rev. Al of Cacophony/Art of Bleeding:

We’ll see how long it takes ABC to get riled about this, but I’ve created a new “Polygamy Dance Hit” and/or video mashup out of an extremely weird Good Morning America interview with the FLDS Sisters from Eldorado, TX.