Our fifth issue is available now on MagCloud. Â We’ve given spotlight to some impressive projects that address global issues.
CSPA Quarterly Issue 5: Issue FIVE
Our fifth issue of the CSPA Quarterly called for work related to International Initiatives. Contributors include ARTPORT, Arts in the One World, Forum for the Future, Moe Beitiks, Roberta Holden, JB Kyabaggue and Emily Mendelsohn, and Shinji Turner-Yamamoto.
HEADQUARTERS, a collaboration venue for artists and climate activist groups in Copenhagen, invites you to come play “GOOD COPâ€.
With civil society access to Bella Center growing increasingly restricted, the GOOD COP aims to make your voice heard during this critical week of negotiations.
GOOD COP opens following a bold media stunt on Monday by North American, European and African activists that placed the spotlight on countries standing in the way of a real deal in Copenhagen. The stunt – and the global attention that followed – challenged us to imagine the world as we want it, and proved that our alternative messages can and will have an impact. But this was only one statement of the many that need to be voiced in the final days of negotiations.
HEADQUARTERS welcomes the public to come voice their own statements on the GOOD COP stage. As heads of state arrive this week we need to keep our expectations high to push for our vision of a GOOD COPENHAGEN – a real deal at COP15.
Have your say at GOOD COP – show that an ambitious agreement at COP15 is not too good to be true.
HEADQUARTERS
Open 11:00 – 17:00
Gallery Poulsen Contemporary Fine Arts
Frederiksholms Kanal 4, st. th.
1220 Copenhagen K
Denmark
GOOD COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009.
Gustav Metzger with Jeremy Deller: June 5 2009, UN World Environment Day, Whitechapel Gallery, London
Does the fact that an artist like Gustav Metzger, who has been creating politically agressiveaggressive works for 60 years, is so much in the spotlight at this late point in his career say anything about what we want of our artists now?
Tomorrow, RSA curator Emma Ridgway talks about the work of Gustav Metzger as part ofGustav Metzger Decades 1959 – 2009, currently at London’s Serpentine Gallery. It’s at 3pm Saturday 7 November at the Serpentine.
If you want a flavour of the talk, Ridgway’s recent interview with Metzger about his appeals to artists over the years, is a vivid demonstration of how passionate he is about art’s need to involve itself in the political sphere:
You were an activist before you were an artist. Was there a particular moment, or was it through Bomberg, that you decided that contemporary politics was going to be a core part of your work?
Yes, my interest in politics was there from the age of around 17. That was in wartime, around 1942 – 43, when I was living in Leeds and there I almost completely converted to the idea of becoming some sort of revolutionary figure –art at that point had no place in my conception of the future. It was only in the late summer of 1944, when I felt I would move away from the ideal of becoming a political activist to becoming an artist. So moving into art was a way of moving forward without giving up the political interest; because I thought one could fuse the political ideal of social change with art. For example, the writing of Eric Gill who was both an artist and a craftsman and politically involved was a kind of inspiration to me. I could see this possibility of using the ideas of social change within art, with art and not simply through political, economic activity.
Sometimes we visit exhibitions together and discuss the work. On a number of occasions you have been disinterested in the work because it lacked any political bite or ethical aspect. Is this something you feel artists work must contain?
Yes, I think that is inescapable and the more the world changes, is changing, in the direction of more speed and more activities. And the more that happens the more necessary it is for people to stand back and, not merely in the art sphere but in every sphere of intellectual activity, to stand back and distance oneself and come up with alternative ways of dealing with reality than going along with a direction that is essentially catastrophic and consuming itself and turning itself into a numbers game. Where the technology, especially the technology of the mobile phones and this endless sound machinery that people force into their biological mechanism, seems to be unstoppable; and the more it goes on, the more we need to stand aside and distance ourselves from this rush towards destruction.
Photograph by Benedict Johnson
Go to RSA Arts & Ecology