Interview: Carl Pope

A Celebration of Blackness, 2006. Letterpress poster.

Carl Pope, an American artist working out of Cleveland, understands the power of art as a tool for social change- his whole body of work deals with social issues, including but not limited to race and class. Because posters allow immediate access to the public sphere and enable conversation with a broader audience, he often chooses this medium for his work. Pope uses letterpress posters as both single images and large, visually striking installations. His interest in addressing the community has also led him to use billboards in public space: A Celebration Of Blackness, commissioned by the Mobile Art Museum in Mobile, Alabama, is one such project. Pope began by asking local individuals, “What do you think when you think about blackness?” Ten of the more than 300 answers ended up as single posters; five were selected for a city-wide billboard campaign.

Billboard for the Mobile Art Museum, 2006.

Poster for the Black Is Black Ain't exhibition, 2008. Letterpress poster, 24 x 18 inches.

Pope has also done more intimate work, like performances where he marks his own body. Last year, Pope produced the poster for the “Black is Black Ain’t” exhibition at the Renaissance Society in Chicago which, in the tradition of his previous work, deals with charged subject matter by downplaying it with a bit of sarcastic humor. Nicholas Mirzoeff has stated that Carl Pope is “doing the hard work of imagining a future for the United States at one of the bleakest times in its history. His work is at once a form of geography, reimagining and imaging the forgotten histories, people, and places in America and a new psychology, creating a state of mind capable of sustaining the shocks of the present. It's soul food for the mind, in sharp contrast to the quick hit of consumer pleasure that dominates the art market, and it's all the more important for that.”

This interview was done via email.

J. Roca.

The Bad Air Smelled of Roses, 2005 (ongoing). Letterpress poster installation, dimensions variable.

Jose Roca: In works like Palimpsest and The Bad Air Smelled of Roses you use diverse forms of imprinting to address very personal issues. Can you describe those works for me?

Carl Pope: What do you mean by imprinting?

JR: I use imprinting instead of print to refer to a mark (potentially repeatable) that is made by a matrix on a support. In the case of Palimpsest, the imprinted surface was the body, whereas in The Bad Air a commercial form of printmaking (letterpress posters) is used to address personal questions. I just wanted to know more about the impetus behind two works, which, although apparently very different, I find profoundly related.

CP: Oh ok…

My attraction to text began as a child artist in photography. As a child growing up in the 1960’s, television, advertising and news media had an unparalleled effect on me in those formative years. As a result, text has been the only formal aspect present in the entire body of my work. Working as a commercial photographer for many years added to my understanding as to how to incorporate text with imagery or to form imagery with text. I realized after doing a number of projects that I am basically a storyteller, and that realization led me to consider many of my artworks as writing projects. Other things occurred in my practice in the late 1990’s; I split my practice into public art projects and private projects as I began to become more interested in text and narrative structure.

Palimpsest (1999) was my first private writing project where I used my body as a surface of writing and a contested space in terms of black history and identity. I wrote on the surface of my body using branding, surgical cutting and tattooing. I was and continue to be interested in why people in the West chose to construct and/or reconstruct their identities through body modification/writing. I felt it strange that black artists exploring identity in the 1990’s did very little work that used the body and I wanted to open the conversation up by returning to the body. Well, that piece came at a conservative, post-black moment where “identity” was dead and [for] black artists, using the body was “out-of date” and forbidden.

The Bad Air Smelled of Roses (2005 until now) is my second private writing project where the text provides the image. I was introduced to letterpress printing by Amos Kennedy and spent a year in York, Alabama making posters for this installation. Each poster is an answer to the question, “What do I think of when I think of Blackness?” The answers I printed referenced a variety of sources from Freud, Lacan, Ellison, Reed, etc. I wanted to make a “forest of signs” that articulated the concepts of Blackness much like stars articulate the blackness of outer space. The Bad Air has a narrative structure created from answers to a question [accompanied by] footnotes.

A Celebration Of Blackness, 2006. Series of 10 letterpress posters, 24 x 18 inches each.

JR: You are planning to do a project for Philagrafika that could be described as a branding strategy for cottage industries. Can you expand on this?

CP: I have titled it “The Philadelphia Cottage Industry Association Ad Campaign Project” (PCIA). President Obama’s administration has plenty of plans: The Economic Stimulus Plan, The Energy Plan, The Medicare Plan, The Environmental Plan, and the list goes on. There is an expanding network of interconnecting plans centered on a basic plan for economic recovery. While Americans are waiting for these plans to succeed, what can be done to inspire grass-roots economic vitality right now? What can be done to create and promote products and services in order to keep money circulating within neighborhoods and small communities? A revival of cottage industries may provide some solutions to the mounting challenges many are facing in this economic crisis.

A cottage industry is a small business where the creation of products and services is home-based, rather than factory-based. Many people operate cottage industries in addition to full time jobs or depend on it as their main source of income because of the current recession. Home-based businesses can create stability in their neighborhoods since their income is usually derived from the communities in which they reside. Communal bonds are strengthened and trust is established through successful and affirming business transitions between members within a community. As a result, the circulation of money and resources will revitalize and support those living in the neighborhood.

The Philadelphia Cottage Industry Association Ad Campaign Project will consist of a series of billboards of various cottage industries in two areas of Philadelphia. An outdoor installation of them will be displayed in each side of town to promote home-based businesses in that area. An indoor [installation] will be exhibited at the Tyler School of Art.

The goal of the PCIA Ad Campaign is to heighten the public visibility of the city’s cottage industries, to generate new customers, and to create a trend to support home-based businesses as a way to strengthen the economic and communal vitality of a neighborhood, town, or a city.

JR: This dovetails beautifully with the ideas put forward by the founder of Temple University, Dr. Russell Conwell, who in his famous speech “Acres of Diamonds” said that you need not have to look for opportunities or resources far or abroad, but rather realize that they can be found in your own community. His famous motto was "dig in your own back-yard!" Were you aware that the original intent of Temple University was to educate primarily the working class, and was located in the North Philly district as a philanthropic strategy to revitalize that part of the city?

CP: I understand that Temple University is a socially engaged institution and Philly has a long history of commitment to humanitarian causes, but I didn't know about Dr. Russell Conwell specifically.

The dedication of individuals like Dr. Conwell can influence a community for generations. In one of his last lectures, the deconstructionist Jacques Derrida announced that 9/11 marked the beginning of the Age of the Individual. Our ability to affect the world has increased, as evidenced by the horror of the destruction of the World Trade Center. If we are living in the "Age of the Individual" where small groups or an individual can wage war with an empire, then a small group or an individual can usher in tremendous healing and transformation, right? One of the goals in my recent work is to inspire and challenge those individuals whose destiny is to be an effective catalyst at this time in history like Dr. Conwell was in his...

To "dig in one's own backyard" has become a necessity for Americans since the economic collapse has signaled the decline of the American Empire. The corporate consumer mindset made Americans believe that we want the same things in the same way, no matter where we live. Digging in our backyard will cause us to discover our uniqueness. It leads us to experiences of authenticity and to our true selves instead of being unidentified cogs in an imperial/corporate machine. The current economic collapse is influencing people to create new relationships and alliances in their local community that are rebuilding [the community's] institutions. America has experienced the freedom and independence that money can bring, but our humanity suffered because it caused us to conduct our relationships with people and the cosmos with a market-driven, consumer/manufacturer consciousness. This creates misfortune because human relationships and communities are built through an active gift economy and not through viewing people as consumer items. It's no wonder why divorce is so high in Western countries. Therefore, this new trend of "digging in one's backyard” fills me up with gladness and despair. On one hand, I've seen communities improve and people recognizing the need to work together while breaking through historical boundaries of separation. On the other hand, the predatory elements in big business and government have turned their eye from world domination to a surreal post-post-post-colonial/disaster capitalist vision of bankrupting the national treasury. If Dr. Conwell was here to today, I am sure he would be surprised at the web well of meaning and complexity his famous slogan has accrued by those who are for and against his vision of social justice and balance.

Letter from Japan

Studio wall, Montparnasse. Screen print based on frottage by Masao Okabe. Chihiro Minato showing one of his Phototypes.

Dear friends:
Roland Barthes analyzed the image as surface on “Empire of Signs”, and although Barthes’ Japan was a fictional one, his observations nevertheless reverberate when one confronts firsthand the primacy of the printed image in Japanese visual culture, both traditional and contemporary. The printed letter becomes pure (de)sign when the eye cannot decode, and every printed surface can be experienced in graphic terms: composition, balance, scale, color, etc.

In Tokyo I had a very interesting meeting with Chihiro Minato, who was the commissioner for the Japanese Pavillion at the last Venice Biennale. The pavilion consisted of a large-scale installation by Masao Okabe. This Japanese artist originally trained as a printer, and he has for the past decades, done a series of collaborative projects that involve taking the imprint of streets, sidewalks and buildings. Using the “urban environment as a plate," Okabe collects rubbings of the surfaces. In Venice he covered the interior walls of the pavilion with rubbings of the stones from a train station in Hiroshima, which was subsequently demolished. The rubbings were accompanied by some of the recovered stones from the station. The visitors were invited to make their own frottages from of the historical boulders. Okabe’s considers these rubbings as a way to rediscover the environment, and he likes to work with volunteers, not only other artists but ordinary people and children as well. There is information on this project at the Japan Foundation's website: http://www.jpf.go.jp/venezia-biennale/art/e/52/index.html

Chihiro Minato is also an artist, and he has worked with Patrice Forest in France, one of the few workshops in the world that still does phototype. This is a technique is similar to lithography but uses a plate of glass to render exquisite details in the print. He showed me Okabe's silkscreens, done from the frottages, and his own phototypes.

From Tokyo, I traveled to nearby Yokohama to see the Triennial. This year’s team had two local and three international curators, two of which are seasoned Biennale experts and stars of the curatorial Olympus: the peripatetic Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Daniel Birmbaum, who is curating the upcoming version of the Venice Biennale.



Shilpa Gupta, Don't See, Don't Hear, Don't Speak, 2008. Cerith Wyn Evans and Throbbing Gristle, A=p=p=a=r=i=t=i=o=n, (2008).

The Yokohama Triennial’s theme was time itself, or rather how art creates an instance “outside of time”. Time Crevasse (its title taken from a poem by Paul Celan), included more than 70 artists, which makes it the biggest exhibition of this kind in Japan. According to the artistic director Mizusawa Tsutomu, “The best art arises when different forms of time twist, swirl, and collide, creating unexpected paths and crevasses through which we can glimpse a deeper abyss. By revealing this abyss and courageously descending into the ‘time crevasse’, art has the power to give us a more sensitive understanding of differences between individuals, societies, nations, genders, generations, races and religions in the context of our present circumstances.”

Despite the artspeak on the opening text, the Triennale was a great show by any standards. I found the scale of this event to be perfect: two main venues housed most of the works, which were well displayed, each in its own space. The curators took the opportunity to give visibility to a historic site (Sankeien Garden) by placing five installations in different areas of this incredibly beautiful park. More works were situated in other urban sites that required traveling to other places in the city, but overall the Triennial relatively small and pleasurable to visit. There were just the right quantity of artists per venue, so as to maintain the visitor’s interest yet not overwhelm him/her with too many works. Since the theme was time itself, performance was a strong component of the show, but video documentation of time-based art or long-duration videos, which are almost impossible to experience within an exhibition context, were shown in a series of small auditoriums, where the visitor could relax and see them in a proper setting. Moreover, there was a program of happenings and performances every weekend for the duration of the exhibition.
The complete information about the Triennial can be found here:
http://yokohamatriennale.jp/2008/en/



Fujiko Nakaya, Fogfalls #47670: Tales of Ugetsu, (2008).

At Sankeien Garden there were only five works, but each one was carefully selected and placed so as to highlight a specific building or area of this wonderful setting. This garden was built in the late 19th century by a wealthy businessman who reconstructed important 16th and 17th century buildings and temples from Kyoto and Kamakura. The visitor had to make first a long parcours in the park before encountering the first work of art, which was British artist Tris Vonna-Mitchell’s musings about time, a sound-and-text piece. At a point the visitor found herself walking in the garden amidst a dense fog, which highlighted the dreamlike character of Sankeien Garden. The piece, which could (or not) be identified as an artwork, was one of Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya’s mist installations. Nakaya has worked with musicians and choreographers like Trisha Brown and David Tudor, so the placement of the nozzles was very precisely done creating a mise-en-scene of the garden itself (the trees, the creek, the bridges and paths). The mist flowed from the high part of a slope, followed a little creek and branched into several small paths. I can truly only describe the experience as magical.

Not far from this installation was Argentinean artists Jorge Macchi and Edgardo Rudnitzky’s installation Twilight, displayed at Yokobuean, a Tea-hut built in the rustic “Inakaya” style. The visitors entered in groups of twenty and were expected to stay for the duration of the work, which was very simple yet powerful: a bare light bulb slowly descended diagonally from the top corner of the building to the bottom corner opposite to it, with a musical score composed by Rudnitzky with traditional Japanese instruments and electronic sounds. Macchi, whose work has always dealt with the printed image and with language itself, whose work was prominently displayed at the Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil.



Reena Seini Kallat, Synonym (2007).

In Tokyo I visited a very interesting show about contemporary Indian art at the Mori Museum. I confess that besides Raqs Media Collective, Shilpa Gupta and Hema Upadhyay, I am not very knowledgeable about the contemporary art scene in India. This exhibition helped me to understand the current situation of a complex country that is grappling with rapid modernization in one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, while struggling to maintain its identity and cultural traditions. Among the many interesting works, there was one that I found strongly print-related although it would not normally be considered a print: Reena Seini Kallat’s Synonym (2007), a series of sculptural portraits done with rubber seals. Each seal has the name of someone that has died in conflict. The pieces are visually striking, placed in freestanding frames taller than an average person. Kallat also does photographs of people's torsos with the shapes of a map inscribed with stamped names. The shapes vary, reflecting on the shifting boundaries of the territorial conflict.

J. Roca.

Letter from Taipei

Dear friends:
There has been much discussion in recent years about the pros and cons of the proliferation of Biennials and triennials, with a new one opening each year in a different place. Many of them respond to political agendas and/or efforts to boost the profile of a city through cultural tourism. But there are two things that remain valid regardless of the motivations behind a Biennial: one, they do provide the local artists with an opportunity to be seen in an international context, through exposure and new contacts; two, they provide the outside visitor with the opportunity to see a sizable group of artists from a given region, which allows him/her to catch a glimpse of the local and regional art scenes. Both have proven true in my visits to these events in Asia.

In Taipei I visited the Biennial, curated by Vasif Kortun and Manray Hsu. I met Vasif long ago, when we were part of the short-lived VOTI (The Vnion Of The Imaginary), an online forum for discussion about curatorial practice. I met Manray in Finland in 2005 when we were both doing research on art of the Nordic countries; at that time I was co-curating the Sao Paulo Bienal, while he was working on the Liverpool Biennial with the Cuban curator Gerardo Mosquera.

I arrived to Taipei last Tuesday, coinciding with a lecture that Vasif gave on the Biennial model. I decided to attend, because it is a rare treat to have a curator speak of the conceptual framework of his/her project as opposed to the slide walkthrough of the event (at worst) or a lecture on the chosen theme (at best).

Having curated two versions of the Istanbul Biennale, Vasif offered candid insights about the strengths, the dangers, the successes and the failures of these types of events—at least of the ones he has been involved with—and illustrated his arguments mixing images from Istanbul (a city he calls "contaminated") and from Taipei (where, according to him, it is still possible to create contamination).

He started by showing two meanings of the word Biennial: one was “something that happens every two years”; the other was “a plant that flowers at the second year.” He chose the latter to stress the fact that only after a two-year process—the process being what is really important—can something actually be achieved. If the plant is not well tended during the two years, it probably will not yield any flowers.

He contends that Biennales have turned into events, and the process tends to be neglected. And in most cases there is no connection to the host city. I completely agree; in most cases the curator does not spend significant time in the city that is hosting the event. These were concerns that we tried to address in MDE07, a six-month-long event that I co-curated in Medellín, Colombia last year: how to connect with the local scene in a way that was truly meaningful? We devised several ways to achieve this, with relative success. There is a link to the MDE07: www.encuentromedellin2007.com (sorry, only in Spanish).

Vasif proposed several guidelines for the curating of this type of events, although acknowledging that what might work for a given context might not be appropriate for another:

-Undo event culture: there should be a conscientious attempt at bypassing the “big and noisy event” syndrome in favor of something of a lesser scale that above all, serves the local public and the local arts scene. How to avoid “exhibition fatigue”? There is only so much a visitor can take, before one loses attention and interest. It is a question of scale, both of the scope of the event and in the size of the spaces chosen to house the exhibits.

-Institutional hospitality: one should strive to create the context so the city succeeds in articulating many other projects (in addition to those directly related to the Biennial) toward the same goal.

-Long-term residencies. A Biennial can be the ideal situation to invite artists to spend time in the city, mingle with the local scene, establish ties, and produce a meaningful work based on real involvement.

-Spanning the region: Vasif contends that biennials end up concentrating too much on the host city, neglecting the regions. In my opinion, this is true for certain contexts and not for others. Often when you try to cover too much ground you lose focus and become entangled in something that doesn't serve the local public and doesn't succeed in reaching a wider region.

-Rethink publications: instead of going for the usual catalog, it is important to think about what is really needed in each case, and how it should be designed and edited so it fulfills its role. I agree: too many trees have been felled to print fancy maps, flyers and guides that end up unused or thrown in the wastebasket.

-Ecology of the exhibition: in sync with the idea of only printing what is strictly necessary, an eye should be kept on the “carbon footprint” of the biennial: what is really needed? What is unnecessary, superficial or redundant? In Taipei they painted only those walls that needed to be a certain color for the sake of the work: the rest were left unpainted, in many places showing previous colors, the remnants of a side wall, etc.

Finally, he ended with a truism: biennials are a bundle of intelligent questions, at best an interesting narrative; they cannot purport to provide answers, nor to be conclusive about a subject.



The Biennial site (http://www.taipeibiennial.org/2008/index.aspx), provides a wealth of information about this event, although I personally find Universes-in-Universe’s coverage easier to navigate: http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/bien/taipei_biennial/2008

I found the Taipei Biennial a particularly pleasurable event to experience, with strong works that related with the others but not in an illustrative way. It was cleverly articulated in spatial terms so as to provide a varied viewing experience, with long-duration video installations being followed with paintings or sculpture, intimate works providing respite from overwhelming works, and humorous works providing a light note, in a conscious reminder to both artists, curators and the public to not take oneself too seriously.

J. Roca.

Letter from Singapore and Shanghai

Dear friends:
I just visited Singapore, where the 6th Singapore Biennale is being held. The Biennale, curated by Japanese curator Fumio Nanjo (director of the Mori Museum in Tokyo) for the second time, was hosted in three main venues, with other projects also located on alternative sites. Here’s a link to the official website:
http://www.singaporebiennale.org/
And to Universes in Universe coverage of the Biennale:
http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/bien/singapore_biennale/2008

The 2008 Biennale is based on the concept of “wonder”, both in its demand for amazement and for questioning. The theme lent itself to a rather simplistic approach to the selection of works, all of which had, for the most part, some kind of spectacular or gimmicky character. Many pieces moved one to ask “how did he do it”? Large-scale, labor-intensive works coexisted with works that invariably had a trick, but all of them were intended to awe you in some way. For example, Zhan Wang’s Stone To Fill the Sky features a vitrine with a hovering silver rock that defies gravity; Marielle Neudecker’s piece is a striking model of a mountain range in a water-filled glass case with milky water that suggests clouds; Jane Lee’s impressive large-scale tapestry-like painting was done directly on the wall with paint flowing from a tube; Lee Yong Deok made bas-relief paintings,that appear convex to the eye if viewed from the right direction and thus seem to move as the viewer approaches them; Sergio Prego’s video is of a firework-induced cloud of smoke that was photographed simultaneously from all sides by an array of cameras, resulting in a video with a continuous shot around the cloud that allows the viewer to experience it in a quasi-sculptural manner; or Leandro Erlich’s twin barbershop rooms, one the exact reflection of the other, trick the eye into thinking that one of them is merely a reflection on a mirror. This quality of trickery made the event read very much as an archetypal Biennial: a theme-based, well-funded, cultural-tourism-driven event composed of spectacular rather than meaningful works. However, even despite this catering to tourism, the Biennale included many interesting artists.



Among the most beautiful works were Ben David Zadok’s Blackfield, a field of plants and flowers etched out of metal, inserted one by one on a sand carpet. The motifs for the plants were taken from 19th-century botanical illustrations, multi-colored on one side and completely black on the other. The resulting effect caused the viewer to witnesses the “field of flowers” as it came to life or died out, depending on which side he or she approached the work from.



Another work that interested me was the one by Indonesian collective Tromarama’s Serigali Militia, a fast-paced music video done entirely with woodcuts that were animated with the traditional step-frame method. Visually it was very effective, and the raw quality of the woodcuts reinforced the band’s punk attitude. The video showed various steps in the carving of the wood, and, as the image developed and morphed into something else, the viewer witnessed the carving of the wood incorporated in the video, which in terms of process was very engaging and self-reflective.


Joselina Cruz, on eof the co-curators, comments on this work in universes-in-universe, the leading website for the often-overseen art from Latin America, Africa and Asia-Pacific. It can be found on this link (there is even a snippet of the video):

http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/nafas/articles/2008/tromarama

Also, on Tromarama’s blog, there are some images of the process of turning a live performance into frames that were then carved one by one and then animated:

http://tromarama.blogspot.com/search/label/BEHIND%20THE%20SCENE

Scroll down to: Behind the Scenes Serigala Militia.



While in Singapore I visited the world-famous Singapore Tyler Print Institute (SITP), a veritable cultural center devoted to the print medium, which was conceived by the American master printer Kenneth Tyler, who for more than 40 years collaborated with artists such as Josef Albers, Anthony Caro, Helen Frankenthaler, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Motherwell, James Rosenquist, Frank Stella and Donald Sultan. I saw Sema Upadhyay‘s exhibition there, which featured large-scale prints in mixed media, often incorporating sculptural elements like Chinese wooden puzzles. Here is the link to the STPI site:
http://www.stpi.com.sg/

The STPI also hosts a residency program. The current resident was Japanese artist Tabaimo, whose work was prominently displayed at the last Venice Biennale.
Tabaimo is known for her references to Japanese Manga culture, which are often displayed as animations on video installations:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYL-9A5SZag&NR=1

She was working on several projects at the STPI, most of which involved collaborating with the Institute’s two main strengths: etchings and paper-making. Tabaimo’s drawings of different types of insects were printed in lithography on a gossamer vellum-type paper, which were then incorporated in a single sheet in alternating layers: printed vellum, paper pulp, another printed paper, another layer of pulp, etc. With the paper still damp, Tabaimo proceeded to cut “windows” on the paper, thus revealing motifs hidden under the paper pulp. The results were large-scale prints with round “potholes” that reveal fragments of insects, delicate and poetic, yet powerful and visually striking.

From Singapore I traveled to Shanghai, to visit the 7th Shanghai Biennale. The Biennale was curated by a team composed of Zhang Qing, Julian Heynen and Henk Slager.

Here’s a link to the official website:
http://www.shanghaibiennale.com/

And to UIU’s coverage:
http://universes-in-universe.de/car/shanghai/eng/2008/index.htm

Like the Singapore Biennale, the Shanghai Biennale had a distinctive title and theme: Translocalmotion, which demands a sense of migration in the featured works. But, unlike in the Biennale in Singapore where the works themselves were strong and varied, in Shanghai it was difficult to find truly engaging pieces because most of them tended to be subsumed in the illustration of the all-encompassing thematic premise of mobility and migration. There were many videos that tracked the experience of migrants in different contexts around the world. Other works showed different aspects of displaced cultural groups clinging to tradition as a way to maintain a connection with their homeland. The wall texts tended to give a reductive view of the works by attempting to tie them too tightly to the curatorial premise. They lead so often into the same argument that in most cases any given text would have worked equally well for any given work of art.



Among the works that I found most interesting was media theoretician and artist Harun Farocki’s video on immigration, a fast-paced slide-show narration done entirely with ideograms and charts taken from German official documents.



Two other videos also based on graphic illustrations were visually and conceptually interesting. The first one was Bu Hua‘s Savage Growth, an animation whose aesthetics reference woodblock-printed children’s books; the other is Huang Hsin-Chien’s Shanghai, Shall We Dance?, a three-screen video interactive installation in which the viewer feels completely immersed. The animation reacts to the viewer’s movements, mimmicking the viewer’s shadow with computer-generated images of buildings. It thus comments on the rapid urban development of China through this flowing dance of images.



The Biennial was full of young people on a Sunday morning, and in this sense, it seems to be capable of fulfilling its role of creating a new audience for art. The “pièce de résistance” was Yue Minjun’s impressive cavalcade of dinosaurs, which referenced the famous display at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Each one of the dinosaurs had a human head that boasted Yue‘s signature grinning smile, and could be interpreted as an ironical commentary on China’s happy and relentless “evolution” towards globalization. Take cover: the dinosaur is waking up…

José Roca.

New West Philly Shop Committed to Popular Education

A Print Community Report by Beth Pulcinella

At the intersection of 49th and Baltimore Ave, behind a modest storefront, beyond a metal gate young entrepreneur Quan Blanche and his business savvy partner Darnell Thomas are building an impressive production silk-screen shop. Boxes, ink and piles of tee shirts set the stage for this young and growing business. The days here are spent hustling jobs, making prototypes, cleaning screens, negotiating new designs, printing, printing, printing and training and supporting the young people who hang around the shop, partly because of employment but really because this is the place to be. It hangs in the air here at The Grind House a calm sense of determination, an aura of magic, and a belief that our lives are our own and can be lived on our own terms. This is a special place for yet another reason; its founders have a rock solid commitment to using some of the profits from the business to support educational programming for youth. The questions of how to design a shop that can support production as well as workshops for folks in the community is forefront in the minds of Blanche and Thomas.

In line with this educational mission the shop decided to partner with teaching artist Beth Pulcinella. Blanche and Pulcinella met in 2001 when Blanche was a member of the Student Union, a group with which he is still associated. Pulcinella was an employee at Spiral Q Puppet Theater and worked with activist groups looking to make puppets, signs and banners for protests and actions. The Student Union was organizing around the state take over of the Philly school district. This past fall they realized that they share yet another common vision. Both are passionate about providing access to silk-screen skills to folks in Philly who might not have an easy time finding affordable ways to learn these skills, and also a commitment to the idea that art must support progressive political movements.

Blanche and Pulcinella applied for a Leeway Art and Change Grant. They were awarded $2,500, which will be used to run a free 15-week “Print for Change” class. This class begins on Saturday November 1st and will be from 3-6pm. The class is for individuals, ages 14- 21 and will explore how print and print shops have played an active role in movements for social justice. Participants will learn about South Africa in the 1980’s, Indonesia in the 1990s, Mexico during the Mexican revolution, Emory Douglas and the Black Panthers and more. Participants will print multicolored posters and tee shirts of their own designs. They will learn about the art of stencil cutting, of how to make screen prints with low-tech traditions and they will also learn about photo emulsion techniques as well as Adobe Photoshop computer skills. The class is also partnering with three or four Philadelphia activist groups who will present to the class and provide an opportunity for the participants to develop art and posters that will be used in current local campaigns.

The project struggles with resources, the small grant barely covers the cost of the materials required to provide the participants with a state of the art experience. The project could use of few things. The list is as follows; a metal spring drying rack (preferably a smaller size), folding tables, tee-shirts, squeeqies, hinge clamps, screens, silk screen mesh, water soluble poster inks, visiting artist one day skill shares, books, field trip opportunities, spaces to exhibit our work, and monetary donations are always welcome.
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If you are interested in this project you can contact Beth at bettypulse at gmail. And if you have other Philadelphia area community print projects, please let me know at cperkins@philagrafika.org