Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Hello T,
David and I want to include you in The Black Dot Political Museum of Political Art.
Inclusion, along with all other aspects of the project at this point, is being invented as it occurs.
Right now, our home base is Facebook, where I would add a photo album: a selection of your work with captions and links back to your site. I would write a feature on you to post with a bio and artist photo.
If you accept our invitation, I want you to like what we create so that you want to use it as an external reference point. As visual artists, it seems that we are frequently on our own sites, without a third party site to reference—one that presents an up-to-date, comprehensive, useful and objective overview.
Kill Rock Stars founder Slim Moon is the manager of The Black Dot Political Museum of Political Art. He’s really keen.
Events so far:
May 1 – 28, 2010
Political Artists From Vancouver: a four-person exhibit at Northern in Olympia. A printmaking teacher at Evergreen State College invited us to curate the show—to expose students to artwork from beyond their region.
As part of the museum’s gallery outreach program, Mecca Normal played in Portland at Sarah Utter’s art opening at Land—and Land sounds keen to have The Black Dot Museum of Political Art exhibit there, maybe this time next year.
Gallery outreach program: Basically anything we choose to say is an extension of the museum, whether it is officially sanctioned by the third-party gallery or not. For instance, Mecca Normal’s appearance at Land was sponsored by the BDM, but I’m not sure anyone noticed.
As far as “political” art goes, obviously David’s work is very direct, whereas my work stretches towards a notion that everything is political.
As things progress and we move to our own domain, I will create an online archive by theme where those looking for political art can search by artist or theme. Searchable archival themes might be Labor, Racism, Animal Rights, Housing, Poverty, Feminism, Pro Choice, Environmental—with artists updating us on topical concerns (responses to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico). We aim to make ourselves known as a resource for various purposes.
The bigger picture includes securing both academic and museum interest in the project. Ideally we would be represented on the websites of these institutions in the from of an ongoing podcast series, as part of their endeavor to host, sponsor, monitor and participate in the project. Videos of our “How Art & Music Can Change the World” lecture, art openings and artist portfolios would be archived on these external sites. I’m thinking big.
What sets us apart from other online galleries and museums, besides our focus on political art as it is selected and promoted by the entity known as Mecca Normal, is that we are out there in the tactile world, too. We intend to navigate without renting space, by insisting that the organization of the project is the project, that it is reciprocal and visionary with Utopian sensibilities that challenge what is and isn’t possible. It is our ambition to be useful to individual artists who have a history of being able to participate within communities, and by providing services and creating associations, I believe we can each benefit in many ways. I won’t elaborate here on the importance and usefulness of political art in general.
I feel like I am still thinking and formulating, and at every point of articulating what else we can do, there is a new thrill: to consider some new way to go further, using what we already have by applying it differently.
Exhibitions:
The idea for the touring exhibits is to find an artist in, for instance, L.A., and that person would assist in securing a gallery, promote, advise and contribute to the exhibit of maybe four or five artists, one of whom would be an artist from the next exhibition city—Chicago, for instance. The L.A. artist is then part of the Chicago exhibit and having done the work on the L.A. event now benefits from the association with the Chicago artist. Then it’s on to Berlin, etc. This is my vision for creating a reciprocal touring experience for political artists—a replica of how indie touring bands originally functioned, finding allies in other cities and naturally tending towards reciprocal collaboration.
It would be great if the L.A. artist could make it to the Chicago show; if not, they are represented by the Chicago artist. Mecca Normal would be the art-opening performance unit, using our resources to bring people out to events. Ideally, art would be shipped from L.A. to Chicago or stored until it is required; again, part of the L.A. artist’s responsibility.
The online project is currently across several web formats: Facebook, WordPress and FreeWebs. Each has its own attributes for social networking, promo, image gallery, ease of posting, etc. We will get a permanent domain at some point, but I sort of like it that we are a nebulous, non-rent-paying entity.
I don’t expect you to follow along with every twist and turn of our doings. You know us. We have a shared history. Let us put our philosophical extensions—our work and alliances—together in one place and consider this an identifiable unification, loosely speaking, in a way that doesn’t put pressure on our friendship, but gives us a purpose, if and when we decide to rally around a possible project. It will be there when we need it. Infrastructure in place. That’s what I meant to say!!
I really enjoyed the interview you did with A Fog Of Ideas!!
Yours,
Jean
