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Open wound, plaie à vif, Tchétchénie photos : Stanley Green...(1).(2) Agence VU 

"Do you like Yen?"
by mami PY...DO YOU LIKE YEN?...DOYOULIKE YEN ?...

EnContrArt (contre la globalisation de la culture - Vénézuela)
"MANIFIESTO
Para encontrarte.
Para encontrarse y encontrarnos.
Para narrar nuestras cosas, para mostrar lo que hacemos, para decir otras verdades..."



Echelle Inconnue 
Redessiner le plan de la Smala d'Abd El Kader avec la population algérienne à Ambroise, Bordeaux, Pau, Marseille, Toulon. Stany Cambot, Production (sommaire)
"Par ce travail, nous souhaitons inviter la population algérienne, et/ou d'origine algérienne, à poursuivre avec nous une réflexion autour de la tente et de l'urbanisme alternatif et provisoire entamée en juin 2003 pendant le contre sommet du G8 dans le village alternatif de la plaine d'Annemasse. Nous désirons prendre comme point de départ une des plus remarquables réalisations urbanistiques utilisant ce mode de construction : la Smala d'Abd el Kader, capitale économique, philosophique et politique de la résistance menée par le peuple algérien contre l'invasion française au XIXe siècle..."

The Emperor's New Art, The CIA as Art Patron by By LENNI BRENNER (Counterpunch)
"The CIA initially relied on Irving Brown to help the Congress organizationally on the culture front. After 1950, MoMA people ran Washington's covert art operations. MoMA chair John Hay Whitney was on the Psychological Strategy Board. William Burden of the museum's Advisory Committee, was President of the Farfield Foundation, the CIA's prime money-laundering foundation. By 1954, Rockefeller was Special Adviser to the President for Psychological Warfare..."


LAND'ART : S.O.S per la Terra (1970 Sicilia)
by Francesco Carbone (1923-1999)
Arte contro la mafia (1963)
Installazione (1968/69)
Archives photographiques de Fransesco Carbone (sources Citta Nuove Corleone/Centro Siciliano di Documentazione "Giuseppe Impastato", Palerme)

Not if but when BRIAN ULRICH photographs

ANTHONY GOICOLEA

MADE IN PALESTINE, a unique art exhibition showcasing the works of 23 palestinian artists is facing uncertain times in the United States, with major museums refusing play host (T.W.Wood Art Gallery, 18 oct/20 nov 2005, Montpelier, Vermont USA sponsored by Vermonters for a just peace in Palestine/Israel)

ARTISTS :

Zuhdi Al-Adawi
While imprisoned in Ashkelan prison, he taught himself to make art. His expressionist drawings depict the psychological anguish and physical torture he endured there. He now lives in a refugee camp in Damascus, Syria.

Tyseer Barakat
Tyseer Barakat creates his images using burned materials that suggest the damage and cataclysm of Al Nakba (The Expulsion). Barakat lives in Ramallah, West Bank where he runs the Ziriab, an art space that doubles as a salon for the artists and intellectuals of the West Bank.Tyseer Barakat: born 1959 in Jabalya refugee camp, Gaza.Education. Studied fine arts at the Alexandria University.Lives in Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine

Rana Bishara
Rana Bishara uses materials that connote issues of durability, fragility and ubiquity. Her materials have a metaphoric reach. Her previous work has involved cheap, inflated balloons and cactus in a wide variety of forms. Here, she recounts the news in glass and chocolate, drawing upon the properties of chocolate as a medium for images of violence culled from over 50 years of Palestinian suffering. Each pane of glass symbolizes one year of Israeli occupation. Chocolate bears a striking visual resemblance to caked blood. When printed upon planes of glass that suspend precariously on monofilament lines, its sweetness is tangible, yet out of reach.

Rajie Cook
Rajie Cook's Ammo Box is a pun on weaponry. The United States supplies Israel with the most sophisticated and powerful military equipment--Cobra helicopters, F-16 jet fighters, Merkava tanks, and intensive military training. These arms are primarily used against a civilian population that has little more than stones with which to defend themselves.Rajie Cook born in New Jersey, lives and works in Pennsylvania, For more information about the artist, visit his website: http://www.rajie.org/home.php

Mervat Essa
Mervat Essa lives in a small town in northern Israel not far from the town in which her grandmother lived until Al Nakba. These ceramic sacks memorialize the depopulation of Al Biram and other Palestinian villages in 1948. These villages were completely razed, its residents driven into exile, its buildings and natural resources left to waste.Mervat EssaBorn 1970 in Jish, IsraelEducation. Studied at Tel Hai School of Art Lives in Jish, Israel

Ashraf Fawakhry
Ashraf Fawakhry lives in Haifa, Israel. The xerographs and illuminated plastic hearts in Line 13 pay homage to the first 13 martyrs in the current uprising, the Al Aqsa Intifada
"-So when did it all begin?
- When I was born again, thanks to an ass.
During the fighting in 1948 they waylaid us and opened fire, shooting my father, may he rest in peace. I escaped because a stray donkey came into the line of fire and they shot it, so it died in place of me. My subsequent life in Israel, then, was really a gift from that unfortunate beast. What value then, honored sir, should we assign to this life of mine?"-Emile Habiby, The Pessoptimist. Ashraf Fawakhry, Born 1974 in Mazra'a, Education. Studied Vizo School of Design, Haifa, Israel, Lives in Haifa, Israel

Samia Halaby
Samia Halaby's abstract paintings portend a bright future for her people. Complex and extremely intelligent, these paintings represent her insights into the emotions and natural processes that underlie true abstraction. Halaby, a passionate artist and an activist, has recently published a brilliant history of the liberation art of Palestine.

John Halaka
Born 1957, El Mansoura, Egypt , Education. MFA in Painting and Drawing, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, BA in Art, CUNY, Brooklyn, New York, Lives in San Diego, CA. For more info... please visit www.johnhalaka.com

Rula Halawani
Negative Incursion
"Ten years ago when the peace process first started, I like many other Palestinians was ready to give peace a chance. As the peace process developed, the events that followed filled me with worry: the worry of losing my city, Jerusalem, and the right of exiled Palestinians to return to their home land. The days went by and in my eyes things only got worse: more of the land was taken; more Israeli settlements appeared on Palestinian land, more killings.
On the 28th of March 2002 I was in Ramallah when the major Israeli Incursion happened, I was shocked; everything around me looked so different. Every street and square I visited was dark and empty; no one was in the streets that day except the Israeli army and its tanks. I felt depressed and cold. The only Palestinian I met on the road that day was an old man. He was shot dead. I never knew his name, but I had seen him walking around those same streets before. That night I could not take away his face from my memory, and many questions without answers rushed inside my head. It was that night that my hopes for peace died."
Rula Halawani, Born 1964, East Jerusalem.Education. MFA in photographic studies, university of Westminster, UK, B.A. Advanced Degree in Photography, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, Lives in Jerusalem.

Mustafa Al Hallaj
Mustafa Al Hallaj's print creates a continuum of fantastic and folkloric imagery that spans ancient and modern times. He juxtaposes a vast and often idiosyncratic menagerie of symbols --bulls, camel men, birds, lizard-like creatures and fish, with fantastic landscapes and episodes of ancient and modern Palestinian life. The animal hybrids of Hallaj are remniscient of Hieronymous Bosch. This was to be his masterwork, a fable casting himself as man, god and devil, an imaginary release from the boundaries of political regimes and from time itself. Sections of the original print were damaged and destroyed in the electrical fire that ended his life in December 2002. Sections of the print exhibited here were re-printed by The Palestinian Artist's Union in Syria to pay homage to the artist. Mustafa Al Hallaj was born in Salame, near Jaffa, Palestine. He studied art in Egypt, exhibited his art extensively and spent his last years in Damascus, Syria. This exhibition is dedicated to his memory.Mustafa al Hallaj,Born 1938 in Salame, Haifa district, Palestine.Education. College of Fine Arts, Cairo.Luxor Atelier for Postgraduate studies.Lived in Beirut, Lebanon and Damascus, Syria.Died December 2003 in Damascus, Syria.

Jawad Ibrahim
Jawad Ibrahim's drawings of shaheed (martyrs) come from the same tradition as Francisco Goya's Horrors of War. They are dense and phantasmagoric. In them, crumpled bodies swathed in funeral garments with elongated rifle barrel eyes shoot intense stares that seem to accuse the viewer of complicity. Ibrahim lives in Ramallah, West Bank where he has been imprisoned for months at a time without charges by the Israeli authorities. When asked why he had been arrested, he replied "I don't know... ask them." Education. Born in 1953 Jenin, Palestine. BA from Jordanian University. Lives in Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine.

Noel Jabbour
Noel Jabbour's photographs from the series Vacant Seats portray families in their homes, gathered around photographs and other reminders of their murdered loved ones. Natural light suffuses these photographs with a metaphysical quality. The edges disappear into diffuse light. These people occupy real, albeit undefined, space, likewise without clear borders. Otherwise, the photographs display a minimum of framing, staging, and premeditated composition. A more obvious point is gently made-- these families grieve their losses. They are still grieving. The occupation that claimed these lives is still busy claiming others.Noel Jabbour
Born 1970 in Nazareth, IsraelStudied at Hadasah College, Jerusalem (Department of Photography / Diploma)Postgraduate studies at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, lives and works in Berlin and Nazareth

Emily Jacir
Emily Jacir splits her time between Ramallah, West Bank and New York City. Her refugee tent, rough and utilitarian, refers to the depopulation of Palestine in both a historical and a contemporary context. To this day, these refugee tents are easily seen in the camps in Gaza, where Israeli tanks and bulldozers regularly demolish Palestinian homes. The embroidery of the names of the villages destroyed was a collaborative effort. Crossing Surda is a document of Jacir’s experiences, some banal, some harrowing, of crossing the militarized Surda checkpoint that separates Ramallah where she lives from Birzeit University where she works.Born 1970.
Education. Whitney Independent Study Program, NYC, MFA, Memphis College of Art, Memphis, TN, BA, Art, University of Dallas, Irving, TX, Lives in Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine and New York, NY, USA.

Suleiman Mansour
Suleiman Mansour is a major figure in Palestinian art. He creates "emblems of decay" that are "dry, cracked and distorted," reminding us of dispersion, waste, pain and death. Ismael, son of Abraham and Hagar, the subject of his masterpiece, is the revered ancestor of the Arab people. Below the figures on a broken slab are roses symbolic of the martyrs killed during the current uprising in defense of their homes.
Suleiman Mansour, Born 1947 in Birzeit, Palestine. Education. Studied Fine Art at Bezallel Academy in Jerusalem, Lives in Jerusalem

Abdul Hay Mussalam
The works of Abdul Hay Mussalam provide a unique insight into the recent cultural history of Palestine. Mussalam, a self-taught artist, creates relief paintings that are based on traditional Palestinian village life before Al Nakba (The Expulsion) and on his military experience as a professional solider. He served in three wars in Israel, Lebanon and North Africa before becoming an artist. He makes his own art materials out of a potent mixture of sawdust and wood glue. Mussalam lives in a refugee camp in Jordan where his life's dream is to establish a small museum to house his artwork. Abdel Rahmen Al Muzayen, Born 1933 in Wawayma, Palestine
Self-taught, Lives in Amman, Jordan

Muhammad Rakouie
Muhammad Rakouie taught himself how to draw with the materials he could acquire--crayon and cut pillowcase linen, while imprisoned in the notorious Ashkelan prison in Israel. Palestinian artists are prohibited from using the colors of their flag or making overt reference to their struggle for liberation and autonomy. The design elements within his smuggled paintings refer to Soviet abstraction and social realism. He risked great pain and additional punishment by creating these images, which stylize prison life and captivity. He now lives in a refugee camp in Damascus, Syria.

Abdel Rahmen Al Muzayen
Abdel Rahmen Al Muzayen is a former general in the Palestinian Liberation Organization (now the Palestinian Authority) and a world-class artist. His masterful pen and ink drawings of the destruction of the city of Jenin reflect his commanding love of his country. The figure of a woman, Anat, the ancient goddess of the Canaanites, symbolizes the soul and the strength of Palestine.
Abdel Rahmen Al Mozayen born 1943 in Kubyba, Palestine, Education. 1966 Bachelor's Degree from the College of Fine Art of Helwan University, in Alexandria, Egypt.1975 Masters degree also from the College of Fine Arts of Helwan University,1993 Doctorate in Archeology degree from Khartoum University.Lives and works in Gaza

Mohammad Abu Sall
Mohammad Abu Sall lives and teaches art to children in Breij refugee camp, Gaza. These small paintings depict the arrival of a tank in his neighborhood. His compositions are intimate, and his use of sequences of related imagery is cinematic. Though he is expressive with his brushwork, Abu Sall is a naturalist. The majority of his paintings feature landscapes. These are no exception. Tank divisions and assault helicopters regularly make incursions into his neighborhood, destroying homes, property, agriculture, and human life. Mohammad Abu Sall, Born 1976 in Gaza,Education. Studied at the Islamic University/Gaza, Lives in La Breijj refugee camp, Gaza.

Nida Sinnokrot
Nida Sinnokrot’s rubber-coated stones recall the rubber-coated bullets that Israeli soldiers regularly shoot at Palestinians. They also suggest the iconic image of Palestinian children, armed with nothing but stones, confronting tanks in the streets of their cities. Loose stones are plentiful in the Palestinian territories, as tank incursions have reduced many of their homes and roads to rubble. Al-Jaz/ CNN compares the framing of the news and the biases of its handlers. Each of these monitors displays a constantly changing stream of stories, filtered through different languages, different editorial teams, hence, different geopolitical perspectives. The installation is open-ended: its content is perpetually changing. Nida Sinnokrot is currently making a documentary about the Apartheid Wall the Israeli military is constructing at enormous expense. This militarized superstructure intrudes well beyond the territorial conventions of the Green Line as it coils around invaluable water resources. Nida SinnokrotBorn 1971, raised in Algeria. Education. Studied at University of Texas, Austin, Texas (BS, 1995) Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (MFA, 2000) Whitney Independent Studio Program (2001-2002) lives in New York.

Vera Tamari
Vera Tamari’s iconic installation refers to the hundreds of olive trees that have been destroyed. The olive is not only an essential food staple, but also a medicine, a cosmetic and a symbol for the attachment of Palestinians to the land. The wanton destruction of hundreds of these ancient trees by settlers and military forces is one of the many great tragedies of the occupation of Palestine.“Vera Tamari pays tribute to the olive trees, a persistent theme in her work, now a dreamy vision in myriad shades of pastel blue, pink, purple and ochre yellow: The olive tree, green and solid, giving birth to coloured miniatures in itself, tired of its ancient form and of its constant symbol, breaks norms and transcends tradition, bursting into a dazzling rainbow for the future.” Vera Tamari , born 1945 in Jerusalem, Palestine.
Education. She studied fine arts in Beirut, ceramics in Florence, and completed her M.Phil in Islamic Art and Architecture in Oxford University.Lives in Ramallah, West Bank, Palestine

Mary Tuma
Mary Tuma’s dresses make notice of the absence of the human form, and by so doing, provide a metaphor for the status of a people who are known more for the shadow they cast on current events than for their own personalities and culture. Tuma teaches art at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Homes for the Disembodied
This is a tribute to Palestinian women who provide strength in terrible circumstances, but who receive little recognition. A place for the spirits of those forced out of Jerusalem to dwell. The dresses are sewn from one continuous 48 meter length of fabric. Mary Tuma
Mary Tuma Born 1961, Oakland, CA. education. MFA, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY, BS, University of California, Davis, CA, American University in Cairo, Egypt, Lives in Charlotte North Carolina

Adnan Yahya
Adnan Yahya lives with his family in a refugee camp in Amman, Jordan. His portrait is a bitter caricature of Israel’s current Prime Minister Ariel Sharon depicted in the act of torturing a Palestinian. The box of matches marked with the US flag refers to the vast military aid that the United States government provides to Israel, and the painted internal framing devices also remind the viewer of the role of the United States in encouraging Israel’s ongoing aggression.The lurid colors communicate a sense of the deathly, unnatural and unhealthy atmosphere that Sharon’s rightwing government has fostered.
Adnan Yahya born in 1960 in the Wihdat refugee camp near Amman. Education. Studied at Teachers College of amman and Later at Institute of Fine Arts, lives and works in al-Nuwwarah near Amman, Jordan

Hani Zurob
Hani Zurob was born in Rafah, Gaza and now lives in Ramallah, West Bank, where he teaches painting. In 2002 he was imprisoned and tortured for several months without being charged by the Israeli authorities. He faced a broad, erratic set of accusations, and after a long and painful punishment he was finally released without an apology. This painting tells the story of his imprisonment, his dreams of life outside the prison and his psychological war with his captors.
Hani Zurob born 1976 in Rafah, Gaza, Education. School of Fine Arts of Najah University in Nablus, lives in Betunia, West Bank

POETRY

Nathalie Handal

Even
Nothing is even, even this line
I am writing, even this line I am waiting in,
waiting for permission to enter
the country, the house, the room.
Nothing is even, even now
that laws have been drawn and peace
is discussed on high tables,
and even if all was said to be even
I would not believe for even I know
that nothing is even—not the trees,
the flowers, not the mountains or the shadows…
our nature is not even so why even try to get even
instead let us find an even better place
and call it even.

Jenin
A night without a blanket, a blanket
belonging to someone else, someone
else living in our homes.
All I want is the quietness of blame to leave,
the words from dying tongues to fall,
all I want is to see a row of olive trees,
a field of tulips, to forget
the maze of intestines, the dried corners
of a soldier’s mouth, all I want is for
the small black eyed child to stop
wondering when the fever will stop
the noise will stop, all I want is
a loaf of bread, some water
and help for the stranger’s torn arm,
all I want is what we have inherited
from the doves, a perfect line of white,
but a question still haunts me at night:
where are the bodies?

Mahmoud Darwish

I am from ThereI come from there and remember,
I was born like everyone is borne, I have a mother
and a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends and a prison.
I have a wave that sea-gulls snatched away.
I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass.
I have a moon past the peak of words.
I have the godsent food of birds and olive tree beyond the ken of time.
I have traversed the land before swords turned bodies into banquets.
I come from there. I return the sky to its mother when for its mother the
sky cries, and I weep for a returning cloud to know me.
I have learned the words of blood-stained courts in order to break the rules.
I have learned and dismantled all the words to construct a single one:
Home

Fadwa Tuqwan

The Deluge and the Tree
When the hurricane swirled and spread its deluge of dark evil
onto the good green land
'they' gloated. The western skies
reverberated with joyous accounts:
"The Tree has fallen !
The great trunk is smashed! The hurricane leaves no life in the Tree!"
Had the Tree really fallen?
Never! Not with our red streams flowing forever,
not while the wine of our thorn limbs
fed the thirsty roots,
Arab roots alive
tunneling deep, deep, into the land!
When the Tree rises up, the branches
shall flourish green and fresh in the sun
the laughter of the Tree shall leaf
beneath the sun
and birds shall return
Undoubtedly, the birds shall return.
The birds shall return

Palestine US exhibit stirs controversy by Linda Isam Haddad (Aljazeera,Los Angeles)
"Chronicling the modern history of Palestinians since 1948, Made in Palestine had its first showing in the United States at the Station Museum in Houston, in May 2003.
The exhibit displays the works of selected Palestinian artists from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as well as those living in exile in countries such as Jordan, Syria and Germany.
Currently on display in San Francisco, the opening attracted up to 1000 people. But alongside the accolades, it has also drawn the ire of some politicians.
 As a result, most museums are fearful that hosting an exhibit that is pro-Palestinian could cost them their funding.
"I thought I had enough contacts to get this exhibit shown in museums across the nation, but I found out that even people who I considered close contacts said off-the-record they would lose their museum funding if they were to hold an exhibit that was pro-Palestinian," lamented James Harithas, curator of the Made in Palestine exhibition.
Once the current show draws to a close on 21 April, organisers suspect it could be curtains for the exhibition.

Negative imagery
"We are dealing with immense ignorance here and it's unfortunate that people have one image of Palestinians and automatically deny anything created by the Palestinian people," Harithas told Aljazeera.net.
Other art connoisseurs shared his dismay.
"It is absolutely tragic the exhibit is only showing in San Francisco for a short time," said Samia Halaby, a Palestinian artist and retired professor of Yale University's school of art.
In an effort to raise funds for a future showing of the exhibit in New York, Halaby's al-Jisser (Bridge) organisation staged a slide show in November 2004 of the artwork displayed in the Made in Palestine art exhibit.
 
"We are living in a country where anything that is critical of Israel and is pro-Palestinian is not accepted and this is very problematic, especially when we are dealing with art," Uda Walker, political education director of the Middle East Children's Alliance, told Aljazeera.net.

New York protest
 Two New York legislators and an assemblyman protested against the fundraiser in written statements, calling the exhibit a promotion of terrorism and anti-American as well as anti-Israel.
Legislators George Oros and Jim Maisano said the fundraiser promoted offensive art that glorified terrorism..."  
 
  Unknown face of Palestinian art by Jonathan Curiel (San Fransisco Chronicle)
"Think of "Jewish art" or "Israeli art," and scores of powerful images come to mind, from Marc Chagall's scenic paintings (Chagall's tapestries are featured prominently in the Israeli Knesset) to Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Maus" cartoons that depict Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. Think of "Palestinian art," and no work surfaces in the popular imagination. Even longtime arts curators would be hard-pressed to cite a single painting by a Palestinian artist.
"It's very, very, hard for a person who's not paying extraordinary attention to know that there is a very ancient society and culture among Palestinians that is both interesting and enriching," says Samia Halaby, a former professor at Yale University's School of Art, whose paintings have been collected by the Art Institute of Chicago, New York's Guggenheim Museum and the British Museum in London...The exhibit, which features Palestinian artists from the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Germany and the United States (Halaby lives in New York), raises an interesting question: Generally speaking, do Palestinian artists create work that's political in nature, or does their art exist outside of politics, resulting in paintings, sculpture and other objects that have no obvious connection to Palestinian life? The exhibit suggests the former..."

Made in Palestine, history in the waking by Robert Avila (The San Fransisco bay Guardian)
'MADE IN PALESTINE ," the first extensive showing of contemporary Palestinian art in the Bay Area, is one of the visual art highlights of the year, but it's much more than that. "This show suffered occupation," Jess Ghannam of the Justice in Palestine Coalition said at the exhibit's opening at SomArts Cultural Center's Bay Gallery April 7. "I consider it having been at a checkpoint for a year and a half."
After a successful initial run at the Station Museum in Houston, Texas, and despite the museum's determination to see it tour, the exhibit was turned down by 90 museums, according to Station director James Harithas. Its presence here is already a profound act of political resistance – an assertion of the Palestinian narrative, which for years has been systematically excluded.
The exhibit, which includes work from 23 artists from Israeli-occupied Palestine and several living in exile abroad, traverses that narrative from 1948 to the present, while resonating with a cultural memory reaching back millennia. The works assembled here vary drastically in style, medium, and influence – there are trained visual artists alongside inspired self-taught ones – but in winningly idiosyncratic ways, common themes emerge of loss, love, history, memory, exile, the land, the brutality of occupation, the inevitability of resistance, and the persistence of hope..."

"Made in Palestine" by Rob Eshelman (Electronic Intifada)
"In the summer of 2003, I traveled to Palestine to write some articles for a few left-wing publications and websites. Dividing my time between East Jerusalem, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, and a handful of small villages, I shared countless cigarettes and pots of tea or coffee, along with an occasional meal, with Palestinians who told me about life under Israeli occupation. The checkpoints, home demolitions, curfews, early morning or late night military incursions, which together were the expressions of Israel's cruel presence in the areas west of the Jordan River, were a consistent topic of conversation.
One afternoon, wanting to get an idea of the affects of Israeli enclosure on the economy of Palestine, I visited a Ramallah-based company that produced household and cosmetic products. Standing outside the factory that day, one could see the outskirts of Jerusalem some distance beyond the remnants of dilapidated carnival rides that rose above the nearby roofs. Inside the factory, a company representative laid out for me the convoluted processes his business had to follow in order to export their products. I could barely understand the bureaucratic schema much less imagine adhering to its procedures.
Our meeting over, he handed me a selection of the company's cosmetic products as a gift. "Look," he said while pointing to a label on a package of facial mud "Made in Palestine!" Indeed, in bold, boxy typeface were printed those very words. Then, through a huge toothy grin, he told me that this label was illegal under the codes I had just been told about..."

T.TORAO, Japan : The Holes (Art & Music) - Former Works & Book Design
KEIKO M HAYASHI
[taxi driver's destiny] jan 25-31,06 Kodak Photo Salon, Tokyo

Cooking Eating Studio, International class for Japanese cooking, par K.Hayashi

ao ba, la feuille bleue - une vision paysagère du Japon Bertrand Desprez Espace Japon fév.05 OVNI & Japonline.com

Ray Beldner (illegal art)

Joël Guenoun

MAGMO The Destroyer

Galerie éof : Paris, espace alternatif

ILLEGAL ART Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age
The laws governing "intellectual property" have grown so expansive in recent years that artists need legal experts to sort them all out. Borrowing from another artwork--as jazz musicians did in the 1930s and Looney Tunes illustrators did in 1940s--will now land you in court. If the current copyright laws had been in effect back in the day, whole genres such as collage, hiphop, and Pop Art might have never have existed.
The irony here couldn't be more stark. Rooted in the U.S. Constitution, copyright was originally intended to facilitate the exchange of ideas but is now being used to stifle it.
The Illegal Art Exhibit will celebrate what is rapidly becoming the "degenerate art" of a corporate age: art and ideas on the legal fringes of intellectual property. Some of the pieces in the show have eluded lawyers; others have had to appear in court.
Loaded with gray areas, intellectual property law inevitably has a silencing effect, discouraging the creation of new works.
Should artists be allowed to use copyrighted materials? Where do the First Amendment and "intellectual property" law collide? What is art's future if the current laws are allowed to stand? Stay Free! considers these questions and others in our multimedia program. -- Carrie McLaren (http://www.carriemclaren.com/)

made in utopia
projet socio-artistique, linguistique, symbolique / Expo à Artazart - 12/11/03
Presse dans OVNI (fr), (jp)

Renga
"Renga", or Linked Image, is a new methodology of image creation in the digital era. It was given birth at the intersection of art, telecommunication network and multimedia.
In Renga artists share and exchange computer graphics art works on telecommunication network. An image will turn into a new piece by going through modification and transformation applied by a different artist, thus creating a series of growing imagery.
Renga originated in its experimental session called "Carefree Sunday" in 1992, which was carried by two artists Rieko Nakamura and Toshihiro Anzai.

Their Renga sessions also developed into a new form of collaboration art involving a number of people. "International Renga" at SIGGRAPH '94, "Ninohashi Renga" as a part of a series of workshops organized by NTT/ICC, "Yotsuya Renga" on the ICC-Net, and "JinnanChristmas Renga" which was broadcasted live on NHK satelite channel are such cases.
Images produced through these Renga sessions are included in the in-house edition of the Renga CD-ROM which was published in April 1995. One can also make a visit to the Renga home page .

"Do you remember your childhood that you didn't know how to communicate with words?
You may not remember the feelings that you felt, do you?
That's because you accept your feelings and emotions through filters called "WORDS" today.
"DIALOGUE WITHOUT WORDS" takes you to your childhood, again.
Try to communicate through pictures to explore new world that is full of eye-openers.
Indirect communication made of silence may talk as much as you need to communicate."
Open your mind, and enjoy gap in-between.Now is the time to get involved with unexpectable stories.
Mirei Takahashi : Session designer Produced by Toshihiro ANZAI and Rieko NAKAMURA

Face Poiesis
Toshihiro ANZAI / 
Rieko NAKAMURA

Face Poiesis ICC2003 (Renga)

Interwall/ANCL(Renga)
Interwall is an application program which supports the media art activity "Renga" implemented on distributed object middleware, ANCL (Ad hoc Network Computing Library).
"Renga" is inspired by Japanese traditional "linked poem". Server/client system "The Wall" (1998) had enabled to create a "linked image" on virtual cylinder "Wall" which shaped on the Internet under the collaboration of creators scattered over the Internet.
"The wall" had been tested also in the classroom of elementary school in 1998 and it had been shown that this system also stimulate creativity of children.
On the other hand, wireless network becomes to a network solution which gives high performance and enormous flexibility with low cost. Wireless network allows people to move around with notebook PC. "Interwall", re-implemented version of "The Wall" on the top of ANCL, seized this flexibility and mobility. When peple are in range each other, Interwall builds up their shared "Wall" spontaneously for collaboration.
PC which running ANCL, called "node", automatically detects other nodes, establish connection, and shape cluster of nodes. Virtual object space is formed and shared between the nodes belong to the cluster. Each nodes can put and get JAVA(TM) object to/from this virtual object space. Furthermore, ANCL furnishes automatic data replication mechanism, messaging facility and mutual exclusion facility to application programmers and high portability achieved by using JAVA(TM).
With ANCL, Interwall had became real-time, server-less and easy-to-use graphic centric collaboration environment, which has rich and unique drawing facilities to interaction...

Ninohashi Renga 1994 (December 2 - 19)
Z: ANZAI Toshihiro
E: Elizabeth
B: NAKAMURA Rieko
D: ONO Yasuhiro
F: ITO Sumio
G: NAKANO Mitsuko
H: NISHI Koichi
I: SAKAI Rikako
J: MURAZAKI Tatsuya
K: TANAKA Daisuke
L: IINUMA Kuniko
MMASUYAMA Hiroyuki
N: NAGAHARA Junichi
O: AI Kotaro
P: OSHIMA Tatsuya
Q: NORITAKE Rika
R: KAWASHIMA Go
S: HIRAI Bujin
T: MATSUDA Kazumi
U: MOGAMI Tomoki
V: KIMURA Nobutaka
W: CHIKAMORI Motoshi
X: YAMAMOTO Masayuki

Beijing Renga I,II,III,1996.6.26,
A three-person collaborative encounter using letterform/pictographic character between Chinese contemporary calligrapher GAO Xia of Xi'an and Tokyo CG artists and developers of the network art series Renga, ANZAI Toshihiro and NAKAMURA Rieko.
On Beijing Renga :
"In Anzai and Nakamura's Renga, a digitally-imaged "painting" is sent from one partner to the other over the net. Playing on the possibilities inherent in the until now ubiquitous problem of "manipulating another artist's work," it is now hailed as a new art form. (For details refer to Renga site.)
Only with this kind of digital methodology can the possibility of irreversible dialogue between analog and digital be explored. One aspect of Beijing Renga focuses on this issue, using Chinese calligraphy as the crossover.
Beijing Renga is divided into a first part, in which works created by the artists over a distance were physically transported as "objects" between Xi'an and Tokyo, and a second part in which the three artists met in Beijing and, in the public eye, completed a dialogue of works. GAO Xia's two calligraphic renditions of the character "soul" set Beijing Renga's start. The two pieces, one in the tensho style and one in the kokotsu style, were carried to Tokyo, where Anzai and Nakamura converted them into digital works. Printouts were returned to Xi'an, and a third generation succession was created by Gao.
"The fourth and fifth generations were created during live sessions held at Vision Quest 1996 Beijing, by invitation from InterArt Association and China Packaging and Technology Association. My calligraphy was digitized in the CG environment assembled at the exhibition hall and 'painted.' It was then printed out on rice paper upon which I 'wrote' again.
China/Japan, tradition/new technology, the letterform/painting, data/ink: in the interstice where extraneous elements collide, 'form' as a common element provided for a happy dialogue to be woven. Beijing Renga is that documentation. "

Visual Jazz 1995 (Renga)

levels9
Contemporary artist site oriented installations and multimedia, Xavier Cahen

artlibre-copyleft by Antoine Moreau
"Copyleft Attitude" a pour objectif de faire connaitre et promouvoir la notion de copyleft dans le domaine de l'art et au delà. Prendre modèle sur les pratiques liées aux logiciels libres pour s'en inspirer et les adapter à la création hors logiciel. C'est la raison pour laquelle nous avons mis au point la Licence Art Libre.
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www.jujuart.com
www.nyctalop.com par Hervé Schuwey

art & river bank (jp/en) gallery in Tokyo (photographies, multimedia art)

Imaginey - Numbers (jp/en) by Keiko Kimoto
a computerized visual laboratory

artmag
art magazine français
tinkin.com (communication - links)
Eiji Ina (jp) photographer web site