Us: As a political artist, how can you know when you’ve been successful?

Hans Haacke: I’ve been asked that question many times, and that question requires one to go around it before one really avoids it.

“How to Win” is a work in progress by Stephen Duncombe, an academic, and Steve Lambert, an artist. We are both long-time political activists and both of us believe that using art and culture to transform the world is a good idea. But we are both haunted by the same question: How do we gauge the success of our projects? Hell, how do we even think about success when our goal is utopia?

This site is a place to explore this and related questions. It is an evolving repository for our research. While far from a finished product, we’re offering it as an open window into our process.

On this site you can find unedited interviews we’ve conducted with artists and activists, examples we’ve found of how others gauge success from the world of art, activism, advertising, and social marketing.

What started out as a spur of the moment prank is now developing into a more developed plot that could actually save the land from development instead of just delaying the sale. De Christopher also has some quotes from his interview with Amy Goodman that show while his action wasn’t premeditated, it was the result of a line of thinking very much in line with the ideas of “How to Win.”

via: Democracy Now “I saw some protesters walking back and forth outside, and I knew that I wanted to do more than that and that this kind of injustice demanded a higher level of disruption. And so, I just decided that I wanted to go inside and cause a bigger disruption.

And from there, I found it really easy to get inside and become a bidder, and went inside and was in the auction room. And once I was in there, I realized that any kind of speech or disruption or something like that wasn’t going to be very effective, but I saw pretty quickly that I could have a pretty major impact on the way this worked. And it just took me a little bit of time to build up the courage to do that, knowing what the consequences would be. And so, I started bidding and started driving up the prices for some of the oil companies. And throughout that time, I knew that I could be doing more and could really set aside some acres to really be protected. And so, then I started winning bids and disrupting it as clearly as I could. “

“I’ve seen the need for more serious action by the environmental movement and to protect a livable future for all of us. I’ve seen that need for a long time. And frankly, I’ve been hoping that someone would step up and someone would come out and be the leader and someone would put themselves on the line and make the sacrifices necessary to get us on a path to a more livable future. And I guess I just couldn’t wait any longer for that someone to come out there and had to accept the fact that that someone might be me.”

via: Salt Lake Tribune

The University of Utah student who foiled a federal oil and gas lease auction the Friday before Christmas hopes he can buy time for Utah’s scenic redrock desert - and himself - until the Bush administration is out the door.

Tim DeChristopher announced Wednesday afternoon that he would pay the U.S. Bureau of Land Management $45,000 to hold the 13 lease parcels he won in a Dec. 19 sale. His aim is to fend off drilling at least until President-elect Barack Obama takes office and new officials are in charge of the federal Interior Department and Bureau of Land Management.

“This would be the most effective way of ensuring we could protect the land, at least until the new administration came in,” DeChristopher said.

The 27-year-old economics major faces possible federal felony charges after winning bids totaling about $1.8 million on 13 lease parcels that he admitted he had neither the intention nor the money to pay for.

But since committing what he called an act of civil disobedience, DeChristopher has heard from hundreds of individuals around the country willing to chip in to keep drill rigs off the land and DeChristopher out of prison.

So far, would-be benefactors have pledged $14,000, he said.

DeChristopher, his lawyers and other advisers reckoned that if there were a specific reason for the fundraising, rather than just an ill-defined defense fund, enough money would roll in to allow him to write a $45,000 check to the BLM within the next couple of weeks.

Not effective: Simply drawing attention to yourself. Yelling at him at a political rally.  Flipping him off.

Effective: throwing a shoe at him and the press asking questions.

Conclusions: The more unusual things one does that stray from U.S. norms and culture that cause the press to ask questions, the more effective you will be.  Who said this guy was dumb?

YouTube - Bush: “So What If The Guy Threw a Shoe At Me?”

Mainly for Jay and Duncombe. I think at the core, one of the things he’s talking about, is if all that work getting Obama elected actually mattered…

via Ill Doctrine

Words do their jobs but what I’m doing here says a lot more.

I’m tired of reading and looking to design as Art, making people to be confused about it. Some people are just looking for fame, and not really thinking on giving creative answers. The world is about to explode, and we have to fill our heads with more and more warm gadgets. Enough!

User Mike K in response:

Interesting. While I do absolutely agree that the world faces large problems and that the role of design should be forcefully stronger in helping solve them, that in no way illigitimizes the need for conceptual or artistic design. In fact, as in science, many useful discoveries come from this type exploration as much as they do from pointed purposeful problem solving.

found on: Rhizome

This struck me. I suppose I never considered scientists playing around and stumbling upon answers they weren’t looking for. And that as a means of research. Of course could be used as a “get out of jail free card” for any practitioner but I think it’s valid.

Also where were the parliment guards when this went down? You shoot a laser beam at Congress and it’s Guantanamo time here in the good ol’ USA. Nice to know there’s still some Dukes of Hazard style parity in Russia.

via: Exiled Online

Last weekend (Nov. 7 actually–ed), a Russian anarchist revolutionary art group called War pulled a fast one on Prime Minister Putin. Or at least they thought they did. Russian revolutionaries sure do fall far from the tree these days.

On the night of November 7, a group of them set up a laser on top of a building across the river from the Russian White House — that’s the place where the prime minister carries out daily his business — and projected a 150-ft. wide toxic green skull and bones on its facade. But the protest didn’t end there. While a laser was sweeping across the building, a half-dozen people were scaling the building’s 20-ft. front gate. But they revolutionaries didn’t linger, staying on hostile territory long enough to pose for a few photos and a quick Rocky victory jog up the stairs. They were in and out so fast, the cops didn’t have enought time arrive at the scene. Take that Vladimir Vladimirovich! (More pictures below.)

The stunt was meant to commemorate the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, with the laser beam symbolically standing in for the revolutionary signal shot fired from the Aurora cruiser. My first thought was, “Cool!” But then I thought, “Whoa! Are Russian revolutionaries going candy raver?” I mean, this was one of those non-violent and non-confrontational attempts at political change through art. Laser art, probably to techno. It really put Russia’s rich history of revolutionary violence to shame.

This is an except from the end of the interview that I thought was relevant to the questions we’re asking in How to Win.

Gross: Do you think some of the tactics that you took on were in some part this youthful expression of anger, something that only a young person would do?

Ayers: Absolutely.

Gross: What fits into that category?

Ayers: Well I think that you’re caught up in a street demonstration and you are young and full of fire and you just spontaneously find yourself spilling onto the streets. Leaving the line of march. And deciding to throw a rock at the window of a military recruiter. That’s spontaneous opposition. It’s not well thought out, um, but it makes a certain amount of sense but it’s not part of a larger strategy that’s thought through.

Gross: Is there a level of doubt that you feel when you were young you didn’t allow yourself to entertain because you had to feel so committed to the cause and what your plan was that you couldn’t allow certain doubts to enter your mind?

Ayers: Yeah I think that I live with doubt today, every day, all the time. And it is different than being young and certain and jacking yourself up to do certain things. I argue to my students, I argue to young people all the time that you cannot live a political life – you can’t live a moral life – if you’re not willing top open your eyes and see the world more clearly. See some of the injustice that’s going on. Try to make yourself aware of what’s happening in the world.

And when you are aware, you have a responsibility to act.

And when you act, you have a responsibility to doubt.

And when you doubt, you can’t get paralyzed. You have to use that doubt to act again. And that then becomes the cycle. You open your eyes, you act, you doubt, you act, you doubt.

Without doubt you become dogmatic and shrill and stupid.

But without action, you become cynical and passive and a victim of history. And that should never happen.

P.S. If you haven’t seen the Academy Award nominated Weather Underground documentary, I highly recommend it. You can watch it in its entirety below:

In recent weeks, I’ve ended up more than once amid marketing executives discussing, with apparent seriousness, what the purveyors of ordinary products can learn from the campaign that sold America on Barack Obama. To which my response is, well, they can learn lots. As long as they, too, sell something that makes people cry when they see it giving an acceptance speech.

…

Hate to tell you, Mr. Marketer, but your yogurt isn’t going to turn those who eat it a few times a month into heroes. Because—duh!—yogurt, like virtually all other products, won’t generate intense identification and loyalty and participation among the citizenry. Those who pontificate on marketing matters already are prattling on about how Obama created a wiki campaign, in which thousands, if not millions, both influenced and sold the brand. But what’s left obscure is how impossible it is for almost anything else to generate such a response. And it overlooks how disciplined the Obama campaign was in driving its one-word message of “change” from the top down. The genius was not in the wiki. It was in launching a simple-themed campaign that participants flocked to.

Marketing Lessons from Obama’s Campaign - BusinessWeek