REVIEW of NYC art exhibit which featured Artists Network among other groups
for more about the Blame Show

Fifteen Minutes of Blame The Blame Show:
A Forum for Political Art After 9/11
by Sara Ogger AufBau
Thursday, MAY 16, 2002 o No. 10
THE ARTS

In the "Blame Video," ninety or so people explain who or what they think is to blame for "the current homeland situation." Their answers to this intentionally vague question range from "the oil" to "these crazy people with their crazy religions" to "the Republicans" and "my mother," but a lot of the same people who air these views also end up saying "I blame myself." This last answer is, conceivably, the whole point of the exercise. To create the "Blame Video," a work of social political art, writer and videographer Larry Litt invited the pedestrians of Chelsea's gallery-laden streets to visit White Box, an alternative not-for-profit cultural venue, to participate in the video. In conversation with Aufbau, he explained that the line went around the block; people seem to have jumped at the chance to act as a talking head, and more than four hours of digitally recorded opinions were edited down to a more manageable fifteen minutes.

Litt also served as the curator of the larger "Blame Show" surrounding his video. The show, and a companion open forum called "Art Now: Polite, Politic or Political?" focused on dissenting political art since 9/11. Several questions seem to have been pressing on all the artists represented in the show: have artists been the victims of a chill in the cultural and intellectual climate in this country? Can something be done about it by way of art? Are political artists in a new situation? Is dissent possible, and if so, where may it be found?

Show documents censorship
While one might safely assume that the answer to the first of these questions is "yes," the question itself was gamely tackled in this exhibition in the form of documentation by artists who work for the free-speech watchdogs: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC). The participation of these artists in the show and forum seemed more complex than official sponsorship, so I asked Litt how it had come about. Litt says he became aware of the work of graphic designer Sarah Glover through her eye-catching design for "You have the right NOT to remain silent," a graphic slogan for www.aclu.org, and invited her to contribute to the show. In fact, most of the artists and artists' collectives invited, such as Dan Perkins (a.k.a. Tom Tomorrow), the Artist Network of Refuse & Resist, the Independent Media Center and Political Artistsā Open Media Lab, created new works for this show.

Svetlana Mintcheva of the NCAC created a "Censorship Timeline" documenting selected acts of censorship since 1989, when the young artist Dread Scott created a furor with his (now even more timely) piece "What is the Proper Way to Display an American Flag." At the public forum, which was attended by about 50 people on a Wednesday night in May, Mintcheva provided some specific examples of censorship since 9/11. One journalist, having reported that President Bush "skedaddled" in the hours after the attacks, was fined and forced to retract; the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched a Houston art gallery looking for "terroristic" artwork; the Armory Show in New York pulled a work because it incorporated the World Trade Center and attacking airplanes in a video-game style presentation; and several college and university professors have been disciplined for speech considered inappropriate or unpatriotic. Mintcheva also described the broadened powers of surveillance granted by the passing of the USA Patriot Act, which, for example, allows investigators to obtain court orders to compel libraries or booksellers to turn over private information about their patrons and customers.

Hand-outs provided by the ACLU, NCAC, and the Free Expression Network, as well as copies of the alternative Indypendent newspaper were available at the beginning of the show, but these soon ran out due to popular demand.

A serious problem facing political art today is what some of the commentators at the forum called the "invisibility" of dissent after 9/11. Although there has been public dissent, it has barely made an impact in the media. Events, such as the demonstration on September 22 in Union Square by one hundred artists wearing placards that read "Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War," hardly received any press.

Political humor is still thriving
One arena that is thriving, though, is political humor. "Animal Farm," a piece by Tim Rollins and "Kids of Survival" (KOS is a collective Rollins formed a decade ago. Its changing membership is drawn from his art students from the South Bronx who might otherwise, literally, not survive), plays on the art of the political cartoon in its drawings of animals with the heads of world political leaders. George Bush the senior, according to Rollins, was first depicted in this ongoing work as "a big fat fox" while our current President has become "a big fat squirrel."

Behind the playful critique contained in these images is Rollinsā worry that the form of dissent is no longer "passive resistance" but now "passive aggressiveness," where passivity has become mere apathy. Luckily, a lot of political humor is, indeed, provocative.The cartoons of Tom Tomorrow added a splash of hand-applied color and perverse humor to the exhibition, while the editor of About.comās political humor pages, Daniel Kurtzman, displayed his choice of political web pages. When setting up a computer terminal in the gallery proved impractical (users could surf all over the place, not just to the carefully curated web sites), Kurtzman and Litt opted for legal sized printouts of the sitesā home pages, hung up on a line with clothespins -- a home-made look for a grassroots show.