From the category archives:

Rise Up

Shia LeBeouf Arrested, Art Teacher Suspended Over Separate Anti-Trump Video Art Incidents

by Michael Anthony Farley on January 26, 2017
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Actor-cum-performance artist Shia LeBeouf has been arrested outside the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. Meanwhile in Dallas, a highschool art teacher has been suspended after posting a video to Instagram in which she squirts a projection of Trump with a water gun. Seriously?

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We Went to Protests: Scenes of Inauguration Resistance in Three Cities

by Michael Farley Whitney Kimball Corinna Kirsch on January 25, 2017
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MEXICO CITY, NEW YORK, WASHINGTON—Over inauguration weekend, three members of the AFC fam found themselves in different cities, united by pissed-off-edness at Trump and the rise of the Right-wing. On inauguration day, Whitney Kimball navigated the surreal belly of the beast: Washington, DC. Meanwhile in Mexico, D.F. Michael Anthony Farley joined in a #J20 solidarity strike, protest, and march from the U.S. Embassy. The next day, Corinna Kirsch was among the hundreds of thousands participating in the New York City chapter of the Women’s March on Washington.

Whitney: DC was a weird labyrinth of barricades populated by me and untold thousands of zombie people with stupid red hats trying to find a gap into the National Mall and failed. Everything blew.
Corinna: I wish the “caring-yet-silly” aura of the marches were mentioned more frequently.
Michael: To be perfectly honest, if I had been in the United States I would’ve totally been one of the fire-setting, window-smashing kids in black. That’s part of why I am in Mexico instead. But I do kinda want a tattoo of that limousine in flames with the anarchy sign…

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The AFC Guide to Inauguration Resistance Actions

by Michael Anthony Farley on January 17, 2017
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I think I have more Facebook invitations to different demonstrations in Washington D.C. and New York this Friday than I have friends. If you live within a hundred miles of either city, it’s likely you already have inauguration protest plans. For those of us not presently near the respective political and media capitals, it can feel like we’re left out of the party. But don’t fret: we’ve reached out to artists in seven cities where we have a large number of readers—Baltimore, the Bay Area, Berlin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Philadelphia—and got the scoop on where you can go while joining us in the #J20 art strike. It’s incredibly inspiring to see hundreds of thousands of RSVPs across the country and beyond. And after the demonstrations, we’ve found some fun nighttime activities to raise funds and solidarity for the long fight ahead.

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Join the #J20 Art Strike on Inauguration Day!

by Paddy Johnson on January 13, 2017
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Come inauguration day, many New York Galleries will be closed and art websites gone dark. It’s all part of the #J20 Art Strike, which has been debated over blogs and facebook for the last month and a half. The protest would be in solidarity with the J20 General Strike, which is intended to send an economic message to Donald Trump, a leader many feel will lead us into fascism. If no one works or buys anything on that day, the economy would quickly grind to a halt. An art world strike might also address concerns many have that the culture wars will be renewed again, and federal arts funding will disappear entirely.

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The Pant Suits Come Off: Yesterday’s Action at Madison Square

by Paddy Johnson on December 20, 2016
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It’s hard to imagine a day for worse news than yesterday. Andrey G. Karlov, a Russian ambassador to Turkey was shot dead while speaking at an art opening the Contemporary Arts Center in the Cankaya area of Ankara. In Berlin, an attack by terrorists killed nine after they plowed a truck into a Christmas market. And what many believed to be our last hope to save democracy, the electoral college, let America down: only two Trump electors defected in the electoral college, while four voted against Clinton. (Congress would have voted for Trump even if 37 voters defected, but the symbolism would have been significant.)

On days like this, it can be easy to lose sight of the work that is being done. Amidst all the set backs, there are people protesting and taking a stand. One such example came yesterday in Madison Square Park, when a small group of 10 women performers stood clustered in the cold wearing pant suits and holding scissors.

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Announcing Double Crossing Brooklyn at The Brooklyn Museum

by The AFC Staff on November 9, 2015
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The Brooklyn Museum continues its long tradition of focusing on Brooklyn-based artists with a follow up to our landmark survey, “Crossing Brooklyn,” with a new show featuring works by over forty-five artists who live and/or work in Brooklyn. “Double Crossing Brooklyn: 6th Annual Real Estate Summit,” on view Tuesday November 17th featuring practices that span what Johanna Drucker has called “complicit aesthetics’ to Julia Bryan-Wilson’s identification of “Occupational Realism” the artists in the exhibition operate in the field of real estate that seek to erase boundaries between art and Capitalism. While most of the exhibition will take place in the museum’s galleries, there will also be counter programming off-site in the streets and public spaces of the Brooklyn Museum.

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On the Latest Ken Johnson Shit Storm: Are “Bad Boy” and “Soccer Mom” Comparable Terms?

by Paddy Johnson on November 7, 2014
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It’s been two weeks since New York Times critic Ken Johnson penned his review of Michelle Grabner’s show at James Cohan and debate over whether he used sexist language to dismiss it still rages on. A few responses to the responses on the responses.

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Industry City Forces Artists Out of Studios Then Launches Giant Art Show

by Paddy Johnson on October 18, 2013
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The Dedalus Foundation, Jamestown Charitable Foundation, and Brooklyn Rail mount a benefit exhibition for Sandy at a location in which artists are being forced out due to rent increases.

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Should Art Volunteers Be Paid? Some Suzanne Lacy Volunteers Say Yes

by Whitney Kimball on October 18, 2013
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Like many of Suzanne Lacy’s works, tomorrow’s performance—Creative Time’s largest undertaking to date—aims to get widespread attention on the issues of a local marginalized community. “Between the Door and the Street” enlists around 350 activists, mostly female, to stage small conversations on city stoops about issues of class and labor inequality. So it seems fitting that the project has already opened a discussion about a perennial activist problem: volunteers want to get paid.

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AFC Exclusive: Jonas Mekas’s First Vine!

by Rhett Jones on June 28, 2013
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A great moment in Vine has occurred. Last night we went to famed filmmaker Jonas Mekas’ opening at Microscope Gallery and asked him to shoot his first Vine ever for us. Most Vines look like Jonas Mekas movies to begin with, so we figured why not go to the source? Best moment not caught on Vine: watching Mekas’s eyes light up as he learned what Vine is and what he could do with it.

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