Big Fun Arts are Teachers for Social Justice

This past Saturday I attended the Teachers for Social Justice (TSJ) curriculum fair here in Chicago.

http://teachersforjustice.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=48&Itemid=55

(TSJ) is an organization of teachers, administrators, and other educators working in public, independent, alternative, and charter schools and universities in the Chicago area.

This inspirational and powerful event was held in Orozco Community Academy in the Pilsen neighborhood. Orozco, is a top Elementary Fine Arts & Sciences school that serves grades 1-8.
http://www.cps.edu/Schools/Pages/school.aspx?unit=7610



The event included, The Keynote by Association of Raza Educators who spoke on Consciousness and Democratic Schooling. As well as presentations by The Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE), Committee for Safe Passage to School and others. I was extremely excited to meet Kevan Coval and the Young Chicago Authors and hear spoken word performance by their "Louder that A Bomb".

http://louderthanabomb.org/AboutLTAB.aspx
The day was a full one that included about 20 Resource Tables as well as fantastic workshops given on topics including Creating Relevant Curriculum, Theater and a weapon for Social Change and more.

TSJ works toward classrooms and schools that are anti-racist, multicultural / multilingual, and grounded in the experiences of our students.
TSJ believes that all children should have an academically rigorous education that is both caring and critical, an education that helps students pose critical questions about society and "talk back" to the world.

The current policies lead by default because public discussion and debate is stifled. TSJ is committed to working together with other educators, parents, students, and community members collectively to reshape the discussion of school policy in order to create more just and humane schools.

Next year we hope to be a participant at the Fair and be working along side of our fellows.
Big Fun Arts are Teachers for Social Justice.

We are net artists...

Recently I learned a term I had never heard before... Okay okay, I don't know how I missed it but...

The term is netart.

What exactly does this mean? Who are the net artists? What do netartists do?

According to Wikipedia it is an art movement started in 1994 by artisits Vuk Ćosić, Jodi.org, Alexei Shulgin, Olia Lialina, and Heath Bunting. Their movement was formed as a takeoff of other avant garde art movements. The netart movement came about within the time and context of the developing internet art movement. Most importantly netart is art by artists who embrace the internet and it's technologies as new artistic medium and focus on finding new ways of sharing the public space of the internet.

Net artists work with and challenge how the Internet is used often going past the form of websites but not exclusive of it. Key to this art form is that the viewer is also a participant in the creation of this work which always remains in process. An example of this being unconventional use of e-mailing or a web forum.

Netart is about collaborative art on the internet, not just art placed on the internet.


As participants in this space together we are all net artists!

Why is Art important?

This is something that is on my mind often, and since you are a member of this page it is probably on your mind too.

For me art is where I find comfort and meaning in the stampede of life. It is a great release of emotions and a deep meditative experience.

Please tell us why art is important to you. We would really like to know!

The Dryden Central school district offers some great insights in this topic.

Signs and Symbols

Hurrying through your everyday life, you might not have stopped to think about the prevalence of visual representations that have a practical use in our society. When something is designed for practical use, is it still art? Before we can discuss whether or not a particular symbol or sign can be considered art, we need to understand the difference between a symbol and a sign.

A symbol or icon is a visual image which looks like the object it is representing. For example, the figure on the men's room door is a symbol of a male human. A sign is a more general form of a symbol in that it represents a meaning, but doesn't necessarily closely resemble an object. A sign is more about expressing an idea, while a symbol is the direct representation of an object. A "School Crossing" sign has a symbol of two children in motion. Together this sign and this symbol express the idea that caution should be used because children might run into the street.

Both signs and symbols are everywhere in our society, and most of them are easily recognized. The interesting thing is that you would recognize signs that don't actually exist if one were to compose known images together. In the design world, new icons are constantly being designed and because of the many signs and symbols already in our daily lives, we don't actually have to think much about the meaning of them.

So are signs and symbols pieces of art? Well, that's something to think about. Even Big Fun Arts can't definitively define what is or is not art, but we're thinking about it, and you might too!

Stick 'em ups

Lately we have been exploring the street art forms of sticker bombing, (or slap tagging), postering, and stenciling from a “Big Fun Arts” point of view.

We are intrigued by these art forms because of their freshness, immediacy, and what seems to be effective and playful placements. These sometimes off beat art works are usually creatively designed, are often beautiful and are used for expressing political agendas, guerrilla marketing, and advertising tactics. Truth be told we are also realizing our own need desire to engage in this practice as a way of getting the Big Fun Word out there.

While Street Art including graffiti is often done as “unsanctioned” public art, the term Street Art is used to make a distinction between contemporary public-space artwork and tagging or other graffiti vandalism.

Familiar street art projects include the work of Shepard Fairey. His OBEY GIANT sticker posting project started 20 years ago by skateboarders would slap the famous Andre the Giant face stickers everywhere. Fairey described his project ”an experiment in “phenomenology”.
Urban areas including San Francisco, New York's Lower East Side, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro are a few places to find this social art culture in abundance.

While we chose the more safe and sanctioned route of posting our “take aways” in bookstore, grocery stores, community centers, etc, we encourage you to take a new look at this powerful and pervasive art form.

We would love to see your photos of street art. Feel free to post some of your photos on the wall.

East Side Gallery

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the “Mauerfall”, “fall of the wall”. A celebration in Berlin gathered world leaders and the people of Germany in a celebration of the tearing down of a most infamous landmark. It's sort of a strange name though because the Berlin wall wasn't ripped down on November 9^th, 1989.

It all started with a botched press conference. Representatives from the East German government announced there would be changes in travel law, and the party member who read the news said the words “effective immediately”. The government was actually intending to start a visa process, and the new travel laws would have been modified, effective in a few days.

Those two words, “effective immediately” inspired a crowd to gather in front of the gate at Bornholmerstraße. Another crowd gathered at Invalidenstaße. Another crowd at Brandenburg Gate. A few days earlier, the East German government had given strict orders forbidding the border patrol to use weapons. The crowds started chanting, “Macht das Tor auf!”, “Open this gate!” The border patrol didn't really know what to do. They tried calling party members, but no one answered, and in the end the border patrols just said, “Well...ok...” and opened the gate at Bornholmerstraße. Other gates followed suit. The tearing down of the wall didn't begin until a few months later.

It's important to understand that the wall itself is still not completely torn down. One of the oldest remaining sections of the wall is called the East Side Gallery.

The East Side Gallery is the largest open air gallery in the world. A section of the Berlin Wall measuring approximately 1.3 kilometers in length, is the canvas for murals begun in 1990. Standing as a memorial to freedom, the East Side Gallery has paintings from more than 106 different artists from all around the world.

Paintings depicting people tearing down a wall piece by piece, doves pulling at the chains of oppression, socialist leaders making out and figures “dancing to freedom” adorn the wall. Styles and methods vary of course, as each of the 106 original artists had different messages and techniques in their professional arsenal. A lack of funding has caused the original 1990 paintings to fall into disrepair, but a fourth of the gallery has been restored by the original artists.

The East Side Gallery is an astounding example of the power art has. This gallery reminds the people of Berlin, and the world, of this city's fascinating history and the change evoked through the power of the people. So if you're ever in Berlin, check it out!

See some pictures and read more about the East Side Gallery by clicking the blog title!

Anna Deavere Smith - Actor/Ethnographer

http://bigthink.com/annadeaveresmith

A powerful artist, thinker and educator.