Thursday, November 15, 2007

A Thought on the Port Protests & A Call for New Radical Protest

Although not active in the protests, i have been keeping up on what has been going on and they have my moral and spiritual support. I was thinking about the effectiveness of what they are doing, as well as protesting in general, and it is quite apparent that there needs to be new radical forms of protest. Society has become assimilated to the way protests are carried out: they send in a pollice unit, the police brutalize and arrest the protesters, and nobody (the mass public) does nothing about it. We need to find new methods of protest in which the police won't know how to process it. I am suggesting something in the form of high satire. And I started to think of a performance:

The scene is a crowd of performers dressed in full-body, white butoh make-up, naked except for a turban on the their heads and cloth around their genitals (as to not get arrested for "indecent exposure"). They will play the dead Iraqis. A sea a dead Iraqis writhing on the ground, exposing their wounds and spitting up blood. The protesters will boo and hiss at the Iraqis, kicking them down and spitting at them when they reach out for help. The protesters will also be armed with little debbie brownies, which they will hurl at the Iraqis as well. The Iraqis, being offered no aid from the protesters, have no other choice but to reach out to the policemen for help. As this is going on, a performer dressed as an Iraqi woman is being raped by a group of American soldiers. Amidst this commotion a performer dressed as a politician (Bush) is wandering around chuckling to himself, counting a large wad of money and gluttonously drinking oil from a can. The back drop is set by large speakers pumping out music by Metallica, Disturbed, and 3 Doors Down.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Garbage

I am currently working on my next piece called "GARBAGE." It is an installation, which will be set up in a downtown alley way. As of now, I've been working on the video portion of the installation. I also plan to incorporate a performative element to installation as well. I will need as many performers as i can get for this one. I will also try to upload some production stills from the video and maybe some sketches as they become available.

Suburban Inspirations









These are photos of a retail park that was built in West Olympia over a year ago. They are still empty. Thanks to suburban development, we now have these colorful post mod buildings to look at instead of ugly undeveloped land.

I added the captions. I think I might print off posters and hang them up around town and maybe hand them out to real estate firms. I feel as a community we really need to support the expansion and growth of our town. Not only does it create more jobs and more affordable living for families, but it also makes our town look en vogue with beautiful architecture. Making motivational posters such as these is just one of the many ways you can take part in supporting your community. If you have trouble coming up with an original idea, just email me and I will provide one for you.