February 16, 2011
Wiley Wiggins (b. 1976) is an American film actor and visual effects artist. A native of Austin, Texas, he is the nephew of Lanny Wiggins, who was a member of Janis Joplin’s early band, The Waller Creek Boys. Wiggins starred in Richard Linklater’s films ‘Dazed and Confused’ (at the age of 16) and ‘Waking Life’ (at the age of 25), for which he also served as an animator for.
He was involved in early ’90s cyberculture, and wrote occasionally for such magazines as FringeWare Review, Mondo 2000, and Boing Boing. His current weblog, ‘It’s Not For Everyone,’ focuses on film, art, technology and free culture.
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February 16, 2011
The Octopus Project is an American indietronica band based in Austin, Texas, active since 1999. Its unique sound, blending pop and experimental elements, is a combination of digital and electronic sounds and noises (including drum machine, keyboard, synthesizers and other devices) and analog equipment (including guitars and live drums). Its music is mostly instrumental.
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February 16, 2011
Charles Saatchi (b. 1943) is the co-founder with his brother Maurice of the global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, and led that business – the world’s largest advertising agency in the 1980s – until they were forced out in 1995. Later that year the Saatchi brothers formed a new agency called M&C Saatchi. Charles is the second of four sons born to a wealthy Iraqi Jewish family in Baghdad. The name ‘Saatchi’ means ‘Watchmaker’ in Turkish. He attended Christ’s College, a secondary school in North London. During this time he developed an obsession with U.S. pop culture, including the music of Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry. He also manifested an enthusiasm for collections, from cigarette cards and jukeboxes to ‘Superman’ comics and nudist magazines.
Charles is known worldwide as an art collector and owner of the Saatchi Gallery, and in particular for his sponsorship of the Young British Artists (YBAs), including Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. He is a notorious recluse, even hiding from clients when they visited his agency’s offices, and has only ever granted two newspaper interviews. He does not attend his own exhibition openings; when asked why by the Sunday Telegraph, he replied: ‘I don’t go to other people’s openings, so I extend the same courtesy to my own.’
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February 16, 2011
Stuckism is an international art movement that was founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art. The charter group of thirteen British artists has since expanded, as of January 2011, to 209 groups in 48 countries. Although painting is the dominant artistic form of Stuckism, artists using other media such as photography, sculpture, film and collage have also joined, and share the Stuckist opposition to conceptualism.
The name ‘Stuckism’ was coined in January 1999 by Charles Thomson in response to a poem recited to him several times by Billy Childish, who records in it that his former girlfriend, Tracey Emin had said he was “stuck! stuck! stuck!” with his art, poetry and music. Later that month, Thomson approached Childish with a view to co-founding an art group called Stuckism.
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February 16, 2011
A zombie walk is an organized public gathering of people who dress up in zombie costumes. Usually taking place in an urban centre, the participants make their way around the city streets and through shopping malls to a public space (or a series of taverns in the case of a zombie pub crawl) in a somewhat orderly fashion.
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February 16, 2011
A wildcat strike is a strike action taken by workers without the authorization of their trade union officials. This is sometimes termed unofficial industrial action. Wildcat strikes were the key fighting strategy during the events of May 1968 in France, during which the country saw its largest general strike, resulting in the economy coming to a virtual standstill.
The strike involved eleven million workers for a continuous two weeks, and its impact was such that it almost caused the collapse of President Charles de Gaulle’s government. Groups revolted against modern consumer and technical society and embraced left-wing positions that were critical of authoritarianism and Western capitalism.
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February 16, 2011
The Comic strip switcheroo was a series of jokes played out between comic strip writers and artists, without the foreknowledge of their editors, on April Fool’s Day 1997. The Switcheroo was masterminded by comic strip creators Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott, creators of the Baby Blues daily newspaper comic strip.
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February 16, 2011
Steal This Book is a book written by Abbie Hoffman in 1970 and published in 1971, which includes advice on growing cannabis, starting a pirate radio station, living in a commune, stealing food, shoplifting, stealing credit cards, preparing a legal defense, making pipe bombs, and obtaining a free buffalo from the Department of the Interior. It discusses various tactics of fighting as well as giving a detailed list of affordable and easy ways to find weapons and armor that can be used in the event of a confrontation with law enforcement. The book advocates rebelling against authority in all forms, governmental and corporate.
In the book, Hoffman referred to America as the ‘Pig Empire’ and stated that it was not immoral to steal from it. In fact, Hoffman wrote, it was immoral not to do so. The term was picked up by the Yippies, and was widely used by what became known as the ‘Woodstock Nation.’ As the book ages, the specific details of the various techniques and advice Hoffman gives have become largely obsolete for technological or regulatory reasons.
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February 16, 2011
Anti-art is a loosely-used term applied to an array of concepts and attitudes that reject prior definitions of art and question art in general. The term is associated with the Dada movement and is generally accepted as attributable to Marcel Duchamp pre-World War I, when he began to use found objects as art. Anti-art has become generally accepted by fine art collectors, although some still reject Duchamp’s readymades as art, for instance the Stuckist group of artists who are ‘anti-anti-art.’
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February 16, 2011
Recuperation [ri-koo-puh-rey-shuhn] is the process by which socially radical ideas are commodified and incorporated into mainstream society. It is the opposite of détournement, in which conventional ideas and images are commodified with radical intentions. Recuperation was first proposed by Marxist theorist Guy Debord and the Situationists. The term sometimes carries a negative connotation among radicals because recuperation often bears the consequence (whether intended or unintended) of fundamentally altering the meanings behind ideas and symbols due to their appropriation into mainstream culture, often to the dismay of the radical groups who originated them.
A dynamic similar to recuperation often occurs in the sphere of the punk rock subculture: many musical styles developed from punk rock (such as Grunge, Thrash metal, Metalcore, Post-punk, Indie rock, New Wave, Emo, and Pop punk) have garnered mainstream popularity; artists of these genres have signed to major labels, and have become household names in the mainstream culture. Kurt Cobain, in his journals, often expressed resentment at how his own band played into this situation. The formerly punk-rock group Chumbawumba, has attempted to subvert the recuperation concept by intentionally ‘selling out’ but then using their earned money to donate to the radical causes.
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February 16, 2011
A détournement [deh-tern-eh-mahn] is a variation on a previous media work, in which the newly created one has a meaning that is antagonistic or antithetical to the original. The original media work that is détourned must be somewhat familiar to the target audience, so that it can appreciate the opposition of the new message.
The artist or commentator making the variation can reuse only some of the characteristic elements of the originating work. The term is borrowed from French, and the practice was popularized by Situationist International (an anti-establishment political movement that formed in Italy in the 1950s). A similar term more familiar to English speakers would be ‘turnabout’ or ‘derailment.’
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February 16, 2011
Agitprop [aj-it-prop] (agitation propaganda) refers to highly politicized art. The term originated in Soviet Russia. The term ‘propaganda’ in the Russian language did not bear any negative connotation at the time. It simply meant ‘dissemination of ideas.’ In the case of agitprop, the ideas to be disseminated were those of communism, including explanations of the policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet state. Agitation meant urging people to do what Soviet leaders expected them to do; again, at various levels. In other words, propaganda was supposed to act on the mind, while agitation acted on emotions, although both usually went together, thus giving rise to the cliché ‘propaganda and agitation.’
The term agitprop gave rise to agitprop theatre, a highly-politicized leftist theatre originated in 1920s Europe and spread to America; the plays of Bertolt Brecht being a notable example. Russian agitprop theater was noted for its cardboard characters of perfect virtue and complete evil, and its coarse ridicule. Gradually the term agitprop came to describe any kind of highly politicized art. In the Western world, agitprop has a negative connotation. In the United Kingdom during the 1980s, for example, socialist elements of the political scene were often accused of using agitprop to convey an extreme left-wing message via television programmes or theater.
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