Emily Henochowicz [ previous post ]

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via [ Washington Post ] Dana Priest and William Arkin

via [ Frontline ]

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“2053″ - This is the number of nuclear explosions conducted in various parts of the globe.

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via [ The Atlantic ] By Richard Florida

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via [ Mail Online ] By PETER BARBER, Head of Map Collections at the British Library

1) BE ON GUARD! 1921	2) HENRICUS MARTELLUS WORLD MAP, c1490	3) CHINESE GLOBE, 1623
4) WALDSEEMULLER WORLD MAP, 1507	5) GOOGLE EARTH, c2005	6) DESCRIPTIVE MAP OF LONDON POVERTY, 1889
7) 'RED LINE' MAP OF NORTH AMERICA, 1782-3	8) LONDON TUBE MAP, 1933	9) PETERS PROJECTION WORLD MAP, 1974
10) EVESHAM WORLD MAP, c1400

Thomas Information Graphics

Emily Henochowicz’s blog [ Thirsty Pixels ]

Obstruction:

Ingredients; One layer of determined activist over a layer of obediently angry army men, and a layer of camera people (to give it that worldly flavor) with a bulldozer on-top!

Emily Henochowicz is the American artist/activist, who lost her eye during clashes with Israeli troops at the Kalandia checkpoint between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem yesterday, Monday, May 31, 2010.

“Activism as a Genre of Art” is a nice idea but difficult to follow to its logical end when the opposition is willing to exert it’s interests with overwhelming violent means.

Are you willing to give your eye, your hand, your hearing, or your voice to your cause?

AP Story

- My prayers are with Emily

Thomas What I am Looking at

via [ Radical Cartography ]

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via [ TalkingPointsMemo ]

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Thomas What I am Looking at

via [ Harvard Ethics Course ] By Michael Sandel

About Justice:

Justice is one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history.  Nearly one thousand students pack Harvard’s historic Sanders Theatre to hear Professor Sandel talk about justice, equality, democracy, and citizenship. Now it’s your turn to take the same journey in moral reflection that has captivated more than 14,000 students, as Harvard opens its classroom to the world.

This course aims to help viewers become more critically minded thinkers about the moral decisions we all face in our everyday lives.

In this 12-part series, Sandel challenges us with difficult moral dilemmas and asks our opinion about the right thing to do.

He then asks us to examine our answers in the light of new scenarios.  The result is often surprising, revealing that important moral questions are never black and white.

Sorting out these contradictions sharpens our own moral convictions and gives us the moral clarity to better understand the opposing views we confront in a democracy.

Thomas Misc, Politics, What I am Looking at

Thomas What I am Looking at

via [ visualizingEconomics ]

Thomas Economics, Information Graphics

via [ FlowingData ]

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UNDER THE PLUME OF PERMITTING

Thomas Environment, Information Graphics, Ways of Seeing

via [ Information is Beautiful ]

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[ Skafish ]

Another by-product of East Chicago.

Thomas The Air I Breath, Ways of Seeing

There are other East Chicagoans locating East Chicago through map making.

More work.

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The art making practice of many artists keeps them squarely in the realm of “Art.” In-so-doing, they continue to function in society as the Artist with that identity intact, but for me that has not always been the case. With every foray that I’ve made into other disciplines I’ve found myself landing smack dab in the middle of the edge of that culture. The confidence that allowed me to make this foray very quickly dissipates into fear when I realize the commitment necessary to gain awareness threatens my ability to find my way back to the studio. It doesn’t matter whether I am studying philosophy, traveling, developing online learning communities, working in urban planning, advocating for my fenseline industrial community, raising children, or trying to maintain a relationship with my wife, at a certain point I’ve shifted my thinking so significantly that I threaten someone else’s identity of the artist and the reason for my foray. To be effective, the challenge is to find my way back through the narratives that control their perceptions of my identity. Ouch! or I can just keep doing what I do without the capitalization to do it.

Although I don’t know this to be really the case, each time I attempt to re-enter the art world I feel a little more distant and a little less accepted by it. I feel like the cameraperson or reporter who put down the camera or microphone and just started helping-out with whatever means necessary at that particular moment. Usually that has meant that I relied on some other aspect of our visual culture, but sometimes that has meant that I write a post in my blog, a position paper, a plan, or engaged in politics. And because I can’t remain steady or I wobble too much for those observing me from some distant art world, I must not be really contributing. I know, I know I have to market myself in manner that the art world recognizes. all I have to do is read Joanne Mattera’s Marketing Monday blog posts to understand that.

It is much easier to receive a thumping on the chest than to be ignored.

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“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” By Walter Benjamin (1936)

Preface

When Marx undertook his critique of the capitalistic mode of production, this mode was in its infancy. Marx directed his efforts in such a way as to give them prognostic value. He went back to the basic conditions underlying capitalistic production and through his presentation showed what could be expected of capitalism in the future. The result was that one could expect it not only to exploit the proletariat with increasing intensity, but ultimately to create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself.

The transformation of the superstructure, which takes place far more slowly than that of the substructure, has taken more than half a century to manifest in all areas of culture the change in the conditions of production. Only today can it be indicated what form this has taken. Certain prognostic requirements should be met by these statements. However, theses about the art of the proletariat after its assumption of power or about the art of a classless society would have less bearing on these demands than theses about the developmental tendencies of art under present conditions of production. Their dialectic is no less noticeable in the superstructure than in the economy. It would therefore be wrong to underestimate the value of such theses as a weapon. They brush aside a number of outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery – concepts whose uncontrolled (and at present almost uncontrollable) application would lead to a processing of data in the Fascist sense. The concepts which are introduced into the theory of art in what follows differ from the more familiar terms in that they are completely useless for the purposes of Fascism. They are, on the other hand, useful for the formulation of revolutionary demands in the politics of art.

Read more…

Thomas Ways of Seeing

This is one way I wrap my mind around Tax season - and a way of seeing. Two days ago, April 13, one of the largest solar prominences in years erupted from the sun. The expanding cloud could deliver a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field around today, Tax Day, April 15th.

Thomas Energy, The Space I Occupy

Thomas Information Graphics, What I am Looking at