Roger Waters wrote:

"Over the new year 2009-2010, an international group of 1500 men and women from 42 nations went to Egypt to join a Freedom March to Gaza. They did this to protest the current blockade of Gaza. To protest the fact that the people of Gaza live in a virtual prison. To protest the fact that a year after the terror attack by Israeli armed forces destroyed most of their homes, hospitals, schools, and other public buildings, they have no possibility to rebuild because their borders are closed. The would be Freedom Marchers wanted to peacefully draw attention to the predicament of the Palestinian population of Gaza. The Egyptian government, (funded to the tune of $2.1 billion a year, by us, the US tax payers), would not allow the marchers to approach Gaza. How lame is that? And how predictable! I live in the USA and during this time Dec 25th 2009-Jan3rd 2010 I saw no reference to Gaza or the Freedom March or the multi national protesters gathered there. Anyway I was moved, in the circumstances, to record a new version of " We shall overcome". It seems appropriate.

Roger Waters

Many thanks to G.E Smith: lead guitar and Thor Jonsson, drum programming and whatever. Thanks guys!!!

PS. 3rd June 2010

And now piracy!!!!!!!

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnMMHepfYVc

The Israeli embassy in Madrid is "hurt" and "offended!" How touching... It's okay for Israelis to kill everyday, to spit on Christians and Muslims, to kidnap people and harvest their organs, to arrest and jail children, to use illegal weapons, to impose an illegal siege on a million and a half people in Gaza, to occupy Palestine, Syria and Lebanon and to threaten more war and occupation everyday.. It's okay for Israel to ignore International Law, UN resolutions, the International Court of Justice, the NPT and on and on... but its not okay for a piece of art to be critical of "poor little Israel"... After 62 years of lies, Israel can no longer hide its true ugly colors from the world... even with its total control of mainstream media... (Hat tip: Cherifa Sirry)

Stairway to Heaven by Spanish artist Eugenio Merino

A controversial art piece on exhibition at the Madrid art fair, was condemned by the Israeli Embassy in Madrid as being "offensive to Judaism."

"The hurtful message this piece conveys doesn't hurt less because it is displayed under the veil of art," the Israeli embassy wrote in a letter to the organizers of ARCO art fair, one of the world's top contemporary art fairs.

The installation "Stairway to Heaven," by Spanish artist Eugenio Merino, displays a crouching Muslim, topped by a kneeling Christian, and he in turn is topped by a Jew in prayer. Next to the sculpture was displayed a machine gun with a Menorah shooting out of its barrel.

Merino denied that the sculpture was provocative, and said it reflected "the idea of coexistence between the three religions, all of which are trying to reach God."

The work, which used human hair and silicone to give it a real look, was sold immediately to a European art collector for 50,000 Euros.

The artist says that "Stairway to Heaven", is not anti-Semitic, but reflects the alliance of civilizations.

The Israeli Embassy in Madrid sent a statement stressing its rejection of works by the Catalan artist Eugenio Merino presented in the gallery's booth at the fair in Madrid 2010. The Israeli embassy believes that the work by Merino have "items offensive to Jews, Israelis, and probably others."

In the same vein, he explained that religion is always "problem" and said he has tried to be as "respectful as possible". "I accept their criticism, but they must accept my work," said the artist, who considers that his piece is not "aggressive" because it has an "air of true religiosity." "You always have an opinion or interpretation that can not control. What others think depends on many elements I can not control, such as where you lived.

More from Eugenio Merino:

Staying Alive, Staying Alive!

As members of the Canadian and international film, culture and media arts communities, we are deeply disturbed by the Toronto International Film Festival’s decision to host a celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv. We protest that TIFF, whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine.

In 2008, the Israeli government and Canadian partners Sidney Greenberg of Astral Media, David Asper of Canwest Global Communications and Joel Reitman of MIJO Corporation launched “Brand Israel,” a million dollar media and advertising campaign aimed at changing Canadian perceptions of Israel. Brand Israel would take the focus off Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and its aggressive wars, and refocus it on achievements in medicine, science and culture.

An article in Canadian Jewish News quotes Israeli consul general Amir Gissin as saying that Toronto would be the test city for a promotion that could then be deployed around the world. According to Gissin, the culmination of the campaign would be a major Israeli presence at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. (Andy Levy-Alzenkopf, “Brand Israel set to launch in GTA,” Canadian Jewish News, August 28, 2008.)

In 2009, TIFF announced that it would inaugurate its new City to City program with a focus on Tel Aviv. According to program notes by Festival co-director and City to City programmer Cameron Bailey, “The ten films in this year’s City to City programme will showcase the complex currents running through today’s Tel Aviv. Celebrating its 100th birthday in 2009, Tel Aviv is a young, dynamic city that, like Toronto, celebrates its diversity.”

The emphasis on ‘diversity’ in City to City is empty given the absence of Palestinian filmmakers in the program. Furthermore, what this description does not say is that Tel Aviv is built on destroyed Palestinian villages, and that the city of Jaffa, Palestine’s main cultural hub until 1948, was annexed to Tel Aviv after the mass exiling of the Palestinian population.

This program ignores the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants of the Tel Aviv/Jaffa area who currently live in refugee camps in the Occupied Territories or who have been dispersed to other countries, including Canada. Looking at modern, sophisticated Tel Aviv without also considering the city’s past and the realities of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip, would be like rhapsodizing about the beauty and elegant lifestyles in white-only Cape Town or Johannesburg during apartheid without acknowledging the corresponding black townships of Khayelitsha and Soweto.

We do not protest the individual Israeli filmmakers included in City to City, nor do we in any way suggest that Israeli films should be unwelcome at TIFF. However, especially in the wake of this year’s brutal assault on Gaza, we object to the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of what South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann have all characterized as an apartheid regime.

This letter was drafted by the following ad hoc committee: Udi Aloni, filmmaker, Israel; Elle Flanders, filmmaker, Canada; Richard Fung, video artist, Canada; John Greyson, filmmaker, Canada; Naomi Klein, writer and filmmaker, Canada; Kathy Wazana, filmmaker, Canada; Cynthia Wright, writer and academic, Canada; b h Yael, film and video artist, Canada

endorsed by:

Ahmad Abdalla, Filmmaker, Egypt
Hany Abu-Assad, Filmmaker, Palestine
Mark Achbar, Filmmaker, Canada
Zackie Achmat, AIDS activist, South Africa
Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, Filmmaker, Jerusalem
Anthony Arnove, Publisher and Producer, USA
Ruba Atiyeh, Documentary Director, Lebanon
Joslyn Barnes, Writer and Producer, USA
Harry Belafonte, Musician/Actor, USA
John Berger, Author, France
Dionne Brand, Poet/Writer, Canada
Daniel Boyarin, Professor, USA
Judith Butler, Professor, USA
David Byrne, Musician, USA
Noam Chomsky, Professor, USA
Julie Christie, Actor, USA
Guy Davidi Director, Israel
Na-iem Dollie, Journalist/Writer, South Africa
Igor Drljaca, Filmmaker, Canada
Eve Ensler, Playwright, Author, USA
Eyal Eithcowich, Director, Israel
Lynne Fernie, Filmmaker and Programmer, Canada
Sophie Fiennes, Filmmaker, UK
Peter Fitting, Professor, Canada
Jane Fonda, Actor and Author, USA
Danny Glover, Filmmaker and Actor, USA
Noam Gonick, Director, Canada
Malcolm Guy, Filmmaker, Canada
Rawi Hage, Writer, Canada
Anne Henderson, Filmmaker, Canada
Mike Hoolboom, Filmmaker, Canada
Annemarie Jacir, Filmmaker, Palestine
Gordon Jackson, Jazz Musician, South Africa
Fredric Jameson, Literary Critic, USA
Juliano Mer Khamis, Filmmaker, Jenin/Haifa
Bonnie Sherr Klein Filmmaker, Canada
Joy Kogawa, Writer, Canada
Paul Laverty, Producer, UK
Min Sook Lee, Filmmaker, Canada
Paul Lee, Filmmaker, Canada
Yael Lerer, publisher, Tel Aviv
Mark Levine, Professor, USA
Jack Lewis, Filmmaker, South Africa
Ken Loach, Filmmaker, UK
Arab Lotfi, Filmmaker, Egypt/Lebanon
Kyo Maclear, Author, Toronto
Mahmood Mamdani, Professor, USA
Fatima Mawas, Filmmaker, Australia
Anne McClintock, Professor, USA
Tessa McWatt, Author, Canada and UK
Viggo Mortensen, Actor, USA
Cornelius Moore, Film Distributor, USA
Yousry Nasrallah, Director, Egypt
Joan Nestle, Writer, USA
Rebecca O’Brien, Producer, UK
Pratibha Parmar, Producer/Director, UK
Anand Patwardhan, Documentary Film Maker, India
Jeremy Pikser, Screenwriter, USA
John Pilger, Filmmaker, UK
Shai Carmeli Pollak, Filmmaker, Israel
Ian Iqbal Rashid, Filmmaker, Canada
Judy Rebick, Professor, Canada
David Reeb, Artist, Tel Aviv
B. Ruby Rich, Critic and Professor, USA
Wallace Shawn, Playwright, Actor, USA
Eyal Sivan, Filmmaker and Scholar, Paris/London/Sderot
Elia Suleiman, Fimmlaker, Nazareth/Paris/New York
Eran Torbiner, Filmmaker, Israel
Alice Walker, Writer, USA
Thomas Waugh, Professor, Canada
Christian Wiener Freso, President – Union of Peruvian Filmmakers, Peru
Debra Zimmerman, Executive Director Women Make Movies, USA
Howard Zinn, Writer, USA
Slavoj Zizek, Professor, Slovenia

To add your name to this letter, please send your name, occupation and country to tiff.letter@gmail.com

Source: Tadamon

Many in Gaza are still coming to terms with the 22-day war waged by Israel earlier this year. But one group is trying to lift the blues - by setting up a breakdancing club. The style originates from New York in the 1970s - and now it's being exported all over Gaza. Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin reports from Gaza.

From theatre in a Bethlehem refugee camp to the Venice biennale, Palestinians are making art out of adversity - and doing it with grace, finds Ahdaf Soueif, organiser of the Palestine festival of literature

Leaning against padded walls in a darkened room we eavesdrop on an argument: "the elite think they can get independence without resistance - by collaboration -"

"What's wrong with being normal? Normality as a form of resistance -"

"What is normal?"

"You know, sometimes I forget that we're under occupation . . ."

Last week I heard the same phrases in Ramallah. Today, we're listening to them at the Venice biennale, in Ramallah Syndrome, a sound installation by Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti.

New beginnings . . . Emily Jacir's proposal for Venice's vaporetto stops. Photograph: Emily Jacir

A few metres away from Ramallah Syndrome, on a spotlit patch of floor, tiny figures float, meet and merge, reproduce, splinter, vanish; OK, hit, hit but don't run is an animation by Shadi Habib Allah that aims, he says, to create a "tension between the mechanisation of nature and the naturalisation of the mechanical". It makes you think of amoebas, of cells under microscopes. You can follow a meandering train of thought to the Palestinian condition if you like. But you don't have to. The point about the art on show here is that it both resists the Israeli project for Palestine and resists being seen only in terms of resistance.

Six Palestinian artists are grouped in Palestine c/o Venice - the name reflects Palestine's historic condition of always being c/o someone else: the Ottoman empire, the British mandate, Jordan, Egypt, Israel. In an excellent catalogue, the curator, Salwa Mikdadi, describes the strategy of the exhibition, from the 100% Palestinian financing to seeking out Italian artistic partnerships. Most significant is the exhibition's presence, with duplicate work, in six art institutions in Palestinian cities. And here we have the elements at the heart of so much Palestinian work now.

Palestinian philanthropists and charitable organisations have been working in aid and education for some time; the Welfare Association, for example, marked its 25th anniversary last year. But recently a second generation has become visible. Young, dynamic and mostly American-educated, they are branching out to finance and invest in art - to notable effect.

Diaspora Palestinians are constantly activating links with home - and links between different bits of home - forming productive partnerships as part of a wider community of artists. As the Israeli process of building walls, settlements and settlement-only roads breaks up and cuts off established communities in Palestine, their friends abroad work to establish bridgeheads, virtual links, common projects.

Khalil Rabah's presentation at the biennale is an account of the restoration work undertaken in 50 Palestinian villages by the Palestinian architectural NGO, Riwaq. His aim is clear: "Riwaq has created an opportunity not only to investigate the trappings of our visual and cultural codes, but also to look at ways to reconnect isolated and walled Palestine to the international art world."

Jawad al-Malhi's House No 197 concentrates on the "project" where he grew up, Shufhat refugee camp in Jerusalem, where buildings - although built in concrete - are "never conceived as a whole from foundation to rooftop, but rather are built in piecemeal fashion for temporary use as their occupants wait to leave". The work, which also examines community and its durability under stress, is eerie in its crowdedness, emptiness, the occasional splash of colour.

Taysir Batniji zooms in on one room, his studio in Gaza - inaccessible to him for almost two years because of Israel's siege. In Hannoun, the studio floor blossoms with the pink curls of pencil shavings: are they evidence of a thousand acts of preparation for one act that hasn't - and may not - happen (writing or drawing)? Or are they poppies? The blood of martyrs dead in their thousands for something that may or may not happen? Batniji's works, the artist says, are always an attempt to speak to what is going on, but also beyond it; he wants them to have "an existence sustained through time, not consumed by the actual situation or event they evoke". As Mahmoud Darwish said in his address to the writers of the first Palestine festival of literature just before he died in 2008: "An art born of a defined reality is able to create a reality that transcends reality - an alternative, imagined reality."

The overall title of this year's Venice biennale is Making Worlds. "It is," says the director, Daniel Birnbaum, "about possible new beginnings." One such beginning - or resumption - was envisaged by Emily Jacir. Jacir, winner of the Golden Lion at the 2007 Venice biennale and, in 2008, of the Guggenheim's Hugo Boss prize, planned to display the names of each vaporetto station along the Grand Canal in Arabic alongside the Italian. "Centuries of cross-cultural exchange between Venice and the Arab world are clearly visible along the canal . . . The Arabic translations place each floating platform in direct dialogue with the surrounding architecture and urban design, linking them with various elements of Venice's shared heritage with the Arab world" - and pointing to possible future exchanges. The intervention was approved by the biennale commission and by the Venice municipality. It was welcomed by the vaporetto company, and Jacir began work, but a month later the official letter from the company came - and it refused the project. No reason was given for passing up this opportunity to highlight an un-crusading, mutually beneficial and productive historic relationship between a western power and the Arab world.

Mona Hatoum's exploration of relationships in her solo exhibition is more oblique. Her work is on two floors of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia museum. On one floor, her objects are wittily inserted into the permanent exhibits: a circle of elegant drawing-room chairs are connected by a spider's web of emerald beads. Under a huge late 17th-century painting of a battle, described as an oeuvre d'inspiration militaire and praised for the violence of its effets de lumiére, Hatoum's Natura Morta places - in an antique cabinet - hand grenades produced in mirrored glass. They are made in Murano and could be exquisite Christmas tree baubles in luminous reds, lime greens, sapphire blues and sunshine yellows. On the other floor are her stand-alone works: Hot Spot III, a huge wire globe with the contours of the world's continents outlined in red neon fizzing and spitting with electricity; and the breathtaking Impenetrable, where a cube constructed out of three-metre lengths of barbed wire becomes an object of both dread and wonder as it shimmers and levitates in a white room. From certain angles, you can just about see a way through the wire.

What is clear is that, behind Hatoum, Jacir, al-Malhi and every Palestinian artist making a name internationally, there is a whole society in a state of cultural mobilisation. You can interpret this mobilisation as a survival mechanism; a visceral response to Israel's continuing occupation, its ever-tightening siege. Or as a product of the money invested in Palestinian "culture" over recent decades by international donors. Whether it's one or the other, or both, the result is a tremendous surge of activity throughout Palestine, with people from every sector engaging in activities that they define as cultural and as affirming Palestinian identity and resistance.

People tend to think of resistance as resistance to one force. Palestinians today have several to choose from. Israel is the obvious one, then there's American and European complicity in the Israeli project, and the Arab leaders' subservience to American complicity. And recently there have been the bloody internal divisions of the Palestinian leadership. Resistance, therefore, is an insistence not just on freedom and statehood, important as they are, but on identity, cohesion and being part of the larger world.

As we travelled through Palestinian cities for the Palestine festival of literature two weeks ago, this cultural mobilisation was as evident, as visible, as Israel's wall - itself now a giant canvas for local and international drawings and graffiti. In Jenin, we visited the university and the Freedom Theatre, then lunched at a women's co-operative where the members made a living by cooking traditional recipes and selling traditional embroidery. The founder, Imm Imad, told us about her son, a journalist, who was killed by the Israelis as he photographed their invasion of Jenin in 2003. His portrait dominated the main room. "It is hard," she said, "he was my eldest and my friend and adviser. But he inspired this project and here it is."

We attended two concerts given by offshoots from the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music. The audience clapped and stamped and yelled. But for many of us, the most enduring image will be of Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. In an exhibition of photographs taken by the children, a girl in a white dress smiles luminously from the grainy page, a Shrek-like giant of a man dozes on a chair in front of his house. There are no photographs of Israeli soldiers. Yet they are there. A British camp-worker/photographer told us that the kids used to hear the jeeps when they were playing on their football pitch, and would run and hide. Then the wall was built and swallowed up their football pitch and threw up the watchtowers.

Against the wall, and under one watchtower, the Palestinians built an open-air theatre: the Return Theatre, they call it. And after we've seen the exhibition and bought the crafts and eaten the fatayer, the children dance for us. Not in their theatre - that would be asking for trouble - but in the room where they practise. Little girls and boys fly around in their costumes of black and cerise. They skip and leap and tap out the dabka and sing songs of olive harvests and of travel and homecoming to villages they have never seen.

Palestinian talent is making itself felt. And, because of the divisions, there is no party line. They are making art out of adversity and are doing it with grace. This is clear at the Venice biennale. It is also clear in every Palestinian town, university and refugee camp.

For more on the Palestine festival of literature, go to www.palfest.org The Venice biennale continues until 22 November: details at www.labiennale.org

Source: Guardian

[Hat tip: Marisa]

Hover your mouse over the presentation and view in FULLSCREEN!

This 70 pages document try to summarize Israel military aggression into Gaza Strip (December 2008 - February 2009). It contains photos, data, report and artworks related to the war. More then 30 artist involved and more then 40 artworks featured. This is the third project done by No-More-Ignorance. This document is a must-see for every people & organization who wants to see Israel-Palestine conflict closely. In this occasion, we would like to ask you to tell your friends about this document. Tell them via your Facebook notes, links, DA journal, blog post, or anything. They could download our PDF file or read it online. You could post the 500px wide JPG image in this folder as a teaser in your publication. Just ask them to visit our landing page for this project. If you interested with our project, you could join us on Facebook pages or Deviant Art. Thank you very much for your help. Sincerely,No-More-Ignorance.

More info: http://nomoreign.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/gaza-over-and-over/

My dearest friend, Ben Heine drawn this portrait. I can't thank him enough for all what he is doing as a pro-Palestine activist. His cartoons and artwork always added to the context of my posts.

Ben is a Belgian political cartoonist, caricaturist and painter born in June 12, 1983, in Abidjan, Ivory coast. He studied Art and Journalism and currently produces art relating to day to day international political issues. He can be contacted at : heinebenjamin@hotmail.com

More information on Ben can be found on his website : http://www.benheine.com and his blog http://www.benjaminheine.blogspot.com and http://www.benheine.deviantart.com

Art attack

by Peter Kennard | New Statesman | 17 January 2008 (cross-posted at peoplesgeography.com)

Banksy attracts the press attention, but around him is an increasingly influential movement of political artists operating outside the mainstream
The phone rings; the number is withheld. It's Banksy. He wants to know whether I can go to Bethlehem over Christmas. He is putting on an exhibition, bringing together like-minded artists from all over the world to raise awareness of the situation in Palestine. Like the annual guerrilla art shows that have taken place in London for the past six years, it will be called "Santa's Ghetto". Two weeks later, I find myself involved in an experience that transforms my ideas about what artists can do in the face of oppression.

We are living through an exciting time for political art. I have been an artist for 40 years, and my work has always focused on political and social issues. In the 1970s, I started making photo montage work, drawing on imagery from the Vietnam War and the row over nuclear armaments (a retrospective opens at the Pump House Gallery this month). Since the build-up to the Iraq War in 2002, I have been collaborating with a younger artist, Cat Picton Phillipps, developing new techniques and using digital technology to expose the lies that led to the invasion and the subsequent humanitarian disaster.

Over this period, our work has become linked to a group of young artists who work outside the official art world. Most of them started out painting graffiti on walls. The central figure in this group is Banksy, but although he attracts most of the press coverage, he is surrounded by a growing band of talented, politically committed artists. Our associates come from Spain and Italy, the US, Britain and Palestine. Since the era of the Bush/Blair war in Iraq, this movement has become increasingly politicised, just as my generation was politicised by the war in Vietnam. These are artists who want to connect with the real world, rather than work for the market, which has more of a stranglehold on art than ever. They combine creativity with protest, insisting that art should be more than the icing on the cake for the super-rich.

We arrived in Bethlehem with four fellow artists: Blu, an Italian who has painted on walls from Bologna to Buenos Aires; Sam3, from Spain; the long-standing Banksy collaborator Paul Insect, from Britain; and Gee Vaucher, another Brit and the only other artist of my generation. The rest are all in their thirties and come from street-art backgrounds. All of them are well informed about the Middle East and came to Bethlehem to show their solidarity with the Palestinians.

Banksy had been to the West Bank a number of times to paint on the Separation Wall. He knows and understands the situation and had a team of focused, sussed people working with him. They found a disused fast-food joint in Manger Square and managed to rent it. The idea was to show a combination of western and Palestinian artists. The art was available to buy on site only, so if you wanted to get hold of the latest Banksy or any of the other artworks, you would have to travel to Bethlehem to place a bid. This was important, because Bethlehem is being starved of its tourist trade as visitors are bussed in to see the Church of the Nativity and bussed out an hour later back to Israel. All proceeds from the sale, which exceeded $1m, went to local charities.

For our contribution, Cat and I decided to print a dollar bill across 18 sheets of the Jerusalem Post, ripped through to expose images of pre-Naqba Palestine. The pictures show the richness of Palestine's history and the diversity of its culture - a sobering antidote to the stereotype of a violent, irrational people that we so often see on the news. We wanted to make the work in Bethlehem because taking finished pieces over would be difficult, given Israel's heavy and ever-changing restrictions on what and who can travel in to the Palestinian territories.

We teamed up with a group of Palestinians, who helped to get hold of materials and sort out logistics. They also gave us all a window on life in the West Bank, with looming Israeli settlements and endless checkpoints. Every night we would pile into a kebab restaurant, where we would drink and dance, arguing over and discussing that day's work. One night over dinner, the Palestinians recounted how they had been held and tortured by the Israeli authorities while they were still in their mid-teens. It was extraordinary how welcoming they were to this motley band of artists. All the privations and restrictions have only increased the Palestinians' resilience and their desire to communicate with the outside world.

Through these friends we found a commercial printing house in Hebron, which got involved in sorting out our highly unconventional printing needs. This involved printing a giant dollar across many sheets of newspaper and also making a giant print to plaster on the Separation Wall. The printers immediately committed their time and energy to the project, and ended up printing for Banksy and the other artists.

Through this process of making, the people of Bethlehem became involved in what the work was saying. After we pasted our picture on the wall, we went for tea in the cafe opposite. The cafe owner, whose business has been destroyed by the wall, told us he appreciated the statement we had plastered on to the cement that he has to stare at every day of his life.

Sticking up a poster or painting the Separation Wall in the West Bank might sound inconsequential, but these are highly practical ways to help, in contrast to the intellectual interventions prevalent in much contemporary art. They contribute to a town and a people that are having their lifeblood strangled out of them.

In this context, it is important that the work communicates directly to the Palestinian people. While there has been a move to take on contemporary issues in a direct way in the theatre, in visual art the idea still holds that if you have something to say about the world, you have to hide it behind theory and obscurity. It sometimes seems that Britain's art colleges turn out experts in camouflage, rather than fine art.

The pressure of world events is so great that it is increasingly difficult to sustain the idea of art for art's sake. Radical art and politics converge in times of crisis, and that is happening now. I know, from my experience as a tutor at the Royal College of Art and at the University of the Arts in London, that the ironies of the Nineties YBA movement are now a thing of the past. Many art students and young artists are searching for ways to make a direct connection between their awareness of how things are in the world and their own art practice.

This involves thinking about not only the form of the art itself, but also the process of making. There are many collaborations taking place across media and disciplines, and artists are looking for new methods of distribution.

Unlike in my youth, there is no organised "left" into which artists can slot, but there is a concrete wall, 425 miles long, and we can turn it into an international canvas of dissent.

Four to watch

Blu burst on to the public-art scene after the success of his contributions to the "Urban Edge" show in Milan in 2005. His reputation is built on expansive, surreal, often aggressive wall and pavement murals. Though renowned for his playfulness, acclaimed pieces from 2007, such as Fantoche in Switzerland, Letter A in New York and Reclaim Your City in Berlin, have a more macabre tone.

Suleiman Mansour co-founded al-Wasiti Art Centre in east Jerusalem, which he now directs, and went on to lead the New Vision artists' group, which proved influential during the first intifada. A pioneer of resistance art, Mansour makes work that revolves around the Palestinian struggle. He was head of the League of Palestinian Artists for four years, and won the Nile Award at the 1998 Cairo Biennale as well as the Palestine Prize for the Visual Arts the same year. He is famous for using locally sourced materials, such as mud and henna, in his pieces.

Sam3 (Samuel Marín) comes from Granada in southern Spain, where his ephemeral long, black silhouettes haunt the cityscape. Famous works include his 12 Shadows project for AlterArte and the iconic Erase Yourself, a silent protest against the civic legal authorities for removing graffiti in Barcelona.

Paul Insect is a London-based ex-designer whose pioneering of "steampunk", a mixture of Gothic Victoriana and futuristic themes, has proved popular with the British arts intelligentsia. In July last year, Damien Hirst bought his entire "Bullion" show at the Lazarides Gallery in Soho. His painting Unicorn sold for an estimated £24,500 at Sotheby's last month.

Ben du Preez

I fell off my chair laughing and could not believe my eyes when I saw this funny picture:

Don't you just feel like doing it.... NOW :)

Well, this is not the first time I come across some of this "art". It actually reminds me of a Belgian one few years ago. This website report from Brussels about a urinal sticker with a picture of George W. Bush and the American flag and a caption which reads "Go ahead. Piss on me."

That sticker was actually designed by a Laurent Winnnock, a young man who worked for Belgium's vice prime minister.

Of course America already has its own piss-on-Bush urinal sticker. You can find it for sale at a place called stickergiant.com. Here is a sample:

Back to our new urinal sticker, it looks to be from some Arabian country, specially that you can see the Palestinian flag on the side. Maybe somewhere in Occupied Palestine, or Syria, or Iraq, even Iran, as the Palestinian flag is used widely in all these countries (they all claim they are ready and prepared for the "liberation of Palestine" - since 1948, but they never got the chance. The best they could do is "PISS on BUSH!" :-D ).

It could be a photoshop work too... but nevertheless, I liked it ;-)

Maybe you have seen this before, but just in case you did not...

How many of them you can recognize!? (Click image to ENLARGE).

A while ago, the International Herald Tribune had an article about how Muslim fashion designers are getting more creative:

But young Muslim entrepreneurs around the world are making their own fashion statements, modestly, challenging the status quo in their communities as well as stereotypes outside.
[...]
Specialty fashion houses and companies starting distinct ranges intended for fashion-conscious women who observe hijab, which means either covering one's head or, more broadly, dressing modestly, is part of a much wider trend. Filling a market gap for products that either comply with Shariah law or that are simply more attractive to Muslim values is a niche that is attracting increasing numbers of manufacturers and retailers. Toys like the Fulla doll, a modest Barbie of sorts, and comic books with Islamic superheroes like "The 99" are as much a part of this sector as the traditional domains of Islamic finance and halal, or permissible, food.

One of the most interesting designs are the Burqini Swimsuits, specially this female Muslim lifeguard (to the left) in Australia (photo by brimfulofsasha). Definitely not as sexy as Pamela Anderson in Baywatch (to the right), but it serve the purpose, unless your purpose is something else :-p .

What actually brought this subject to my mind is this new Muslim Fashion Magazine, MSLM. The magazine is for Muslim women in the Netherlands.

A group of young fashion-minded women, mostly second generation Moslem clearly stands out in our society. MSLM shows the fashion of this group. Because these young women grew up in the Netherlands, because they are Dutch, their background creates a fashion-clash which results in new interesting forms and silhouettes for both Moslem and non-Moslem women. Designers are inspired and influenced by this, use elements of another culture or design custom-fit products. From traditional to trendy, from the Mid-East to the West.

By MSLM MAMA is showing how we can play in to the wishes of this group of girls whom, with their extra frame of rules and their colourful background, have specific demands for the way they dress. MAMA is very curious to what the industry has planned for them!

[Source: MAMA]

Natasa Heydra has a little preview of the shoots in the magazine here (click thumbnail on the right) and more exciting shoots from the MSLM Exhibition here!

Also don't miss these photoshoots in MSLM fashion magazine - "Where tradition and modernity meet" :

More here!

After 20 years of the assassination of Palestinian political cartoonist Naji Al-Ali; watch this BBC "In pictures: The work of Naji al-Ali"

And this is my collection of Naji's work:

This is quoted from Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project:

For the last three years, community members in Olympia, WA, and Rafah, Palestine, have been working together to create a lasting, sincere partnership to better foster understanding between people who have not traditionally had a chance to get to know one another. It is our belief that by forming such bonds between communities, misunderstandings can be overcome and distances and differences - whether they be cultural, linguistic or political - can be bridged. We believe these sorts of humanistic, people-to-people connections are vital to creating a world in which all people are treated with respect.

That is why it is called the Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project.

The people of Rafah - and all Palestinians in the territories of Gaza and the West Bank, for that matter - live under Israeli military occupation. They are not citizens of Israel or of any state, and have no rights of protest or redress. The occupation is a violent daily reality, in which Israeli soldiers, checkpoints, tanks, helicopter gunships, and F-16 fighter jets control every aspect of Palestinian lives, and have brought social, family and economic life to a virtual halt. What we often hear described simply as "the violence" in the Middle East cannot be understood without an understanding of what military occupation means.

The Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project is now offering a series of pastel works created by artists in Rafah though the Palestinian Artists Association. These works represent what it means for a people to live for decades and decades under Israeli military occupation. The feelings of imprisonment while watching your land being taken from you must be unbearable.

Let the artists speak for themselves:

Title: The Palestinian Flag
Artist: Yusuf Subeh

Title: Waiting
Artist: Bisan Umar Atteya

Title: Right of Return
Artist: Hiba Ibrahim Al Jazzar

Title: The Prisoner
Artist: Hamza Jamal Mansur

Title: Freedom is Executed in Palestine
Artist: Bashir Hemeid Qishtta

For information on showing or purchasing the art seen here, write to art@orscp.org or visit:
http://orscp.org/art_under_occupation/

Although from different continent, the following two examples show just how ignorant and stupid some people can be about their knowledge of Islam.

The first one comes right from one of the capitals of Islam, Cairo. This first story shows how stupid can some Muslims be:

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????????, 01-??????-2006
???? ???? - ???? "??????? ?????? " ??????? ???? ??? ???????? ?? ??? ????????? ??????? ?? ???????? ??? ??????? ??????? ??????? ?????? ????? ??????? ??????.

??? ????? ????? ????? "??????? ????????" ?? ???????? ???? ??????? ????? ??? ?????? ?? ???? ??????? ?????? ???????? ??????? ????? ????? ????? ?????? ??????? ????? ??????? ?????? ????? ???? ???? ?????? ??????? ?????? -?? ???? ??????- ?????? ??? ??????? ????????? ??????? ???? ?????? ?????? ???? ???? ????? ???? ?????? ???? ????? ?????? "?????" ??????? ???????? 31-10-2006.

???? ????? ??????? ???? ??????? ?????? ???? ???? ??? ?????? ????? ??? ??????? ?????? ?????? ??????? ?????? ???????? ???????? ????????? ??????? ??????.

?????? ?????? ?? ????? ???? ???? ?????? ??????? ??? ????? ??????? ?? ???? ????? ??? ??????? ???? ?????? ?????? ???? ???? ?????? ??????? ?? ??????? ??????? ???? ???? ?????????? ????? ????? ??? ????? " ????? ?????????" ??? 5 ?????? ???? ??????? ????? ?? ?????? ?? ???????

Since when there is something called Islamic Bikini? And since when Muslim women can swim in a public place? And what does the Islamic Brotherhood has to do with the swimming pool? It just shows how empty and ruthless these people are with their ignorant followers.

Why do they care if a woman wishes to swim in public? If a woman swim in public, she is already sinful according to Islamic rules, so why does it matter if she is wearing a normal bikini, an "Islamic bikini", or not wearing anything? If they think it is haram looking at naked woman, then why do they care looking at all? How can it be better if the woman wears an "Islamic bikini"? And why should they go to swimming pools if they can't dare look at naked ladies in first place?

It is just an example of how some stupid people use religion to deliver wrong signals about Islam for their own benefits, which is elections here. Yeah... for elections, everything is haram, and they are the only right people. Ask them about Ramadan Iftar invitations and how many poor people were invited by these saviors to these rich tables.

The second story comes from one of the capitals of "modern world". [Source]

On September 26, 2006, Berlin's Deutsche Opera announced the cancellation of four performances of the opera planned for November 2006, citing concerns that the production's depictions of a severed head of the Islamic prophet Muhammad raised an "incalculable security risk." "To avoid endangering its audience and employees, the management has decided against repeating 'Idomeneo' in November 2006," the opera house said in a press release.

The Idomeneo production, directed by Hans Neuenfels, shows King Idomeneo staggering on stage carrying the decapitated heads of Neptune, Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed; a departure from the libretto and score. According to the BBC, the German press agency DPA said Berlin police have so far recorded no direct threat to the opera house. However, the New York Times reported that there was an anonymous threat in August against the theatre.

The cancellation sparked a great deal of debate in Europe on the issue of self censorship and the nature of free speech. On September 27, 2006, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel stated: "I think the cancellation was a mistake. I think self-censorship does not help us against people who want to practice violence in the name of Islam ... It makes no sense to retreat." Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble after a government-sponsored conference with Muslim representatives held independently of the incident told reporters that "to send a signal, we could all go to the performance together," and the Muslim representatives agreed that the performance should not be cancelled. Muslim reaction in Berlin to the opera was more muted than fiery. Several Muslims said the scene involving Muhammad may offend Muslims, but that artistic freedom should be respected in a democracy.

It is worthwhile to note that the severed heads are a recent 'addition' by director Neuenfels to the original, 225-year-old opera, which was last performed by the company in March 2004.

Finally today, Berlin opera house has sets new dates for Mozart work. It said in a statement on Wednesday that performances had been scheduled for December 18 and 29.

Now, what logic is there in respecting those who do not respect us? What dignity is there in defending their culture or supposed culture when they show contempt for ours? I want to defend my culture, not theirs, and inform you that I like Omar Khayyam much more than Shakespeare and Goethe and Walt Whitman and Leopardi and Mozart.

This shows how "freedom of speech" can be turned into a tool against the "respect of religions and freedom of worship", which is another human right. Anything, and everything is used to trigger violence from some radical ignorant call themselves, Muslims. Why can't the west respect others? And why should I respect him if his choose to depict me under the label of "freedom of speech."

Although no Muslim complained, they stopped it, calling it "self-censorship", in hope that if it was not noticed before, "let's show that we hate Muslims in ARTISTIC way." Not that other religions are not insulted by this same act, but it is not our problem, as Muslims, to care if Christians and Buddhist don't like to defend their religion and Goddess!

By Belgian Cartoonist-journalist- blogger - Benjamin Heine