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Month February 2012

Radiator Gallery presents Together Again

Radiator Gallery 
10-61 Jackson Avenue, 3rd Floor, 347.677.3418
Long Island City
March 2 – March 20, 2012 
Opening: Friday, March 2, 6 – 9 PM

Artists: Adam Frelin, Daniela Kostova, Georgi Tushev, IM International,
Michel Kong, Paul Jacobsen, Vikenti Komitski, Yael Kanarek

Curated by Daniela Kostova. Site-specific projects by guest curator Natalia Mount.

The show’s title is based on a piece by Vikenti Komitski, which presents an intriguing world map whose continents have come together in a single, interconnected body. Is this restored Panguea, a Utopian island or a new world order?  Is it the result of natural disaster or of carefully engineered forces of globalization?

“Together Again” is charged with both contradiction and potential, fueled by a Romantic sentiment that togetherness/ solidarity is still possible. The show is immersed in the “ideal,” presenting artistic gestures that push beyond a possible yet desirable future.
Landscape is a recurring motif, behind which lie attempts to observe and contemplate, efforts either enhanced or mediated by technology. This detour back into nature is interrupted by an accelerating tension between nature and culture. Thus is formed the overall arch among these artists’ exercises in Utopia.

In Paul Jacobsen’s imagery social norms have been vanquished, renewed sensuality is everywhere and the natural world is looked upon with honor and wonder. Jacobsen first seduces the viewer with over-sexualized nudity, then confronts us with a bold pronouncement about the world we’ve created: “Civilization is a Bridge from Paradise to Nowhere.” Continuing the rhetoric further in another piece, he waves a black flag at us, suggesting unity without nationality, in a space of zero gravity.

In Yael Kanarek’s piece the viewer becomes hostage to an irresistible landscape of languages, radiating from center to periphery in a perfect red circle – a wavelet of emotions. Drawing from her personal history living between cultures, languages and body languages, and her study of Networked Society as an increasing global phenomenon, the artist proposes that the future citizen can only be post-national.

The photograph by Daniela Kostova is an ironic celebration of internationalism. A white dove has landed on the head of an infant child in a space suit, its sewn-on badges suggesting affiliation with countries previously on opposite sides of a divide, Capitalist and Communist. The image feels borrowed from a TV commercial designed to convince us of a dream which anyone’s money can buy: the Cold War is over, globalization of space is a reality and even infants can fly.

An attempt at gaining more space is seen in the video by Georgi Tushev that presents flying as Utopia. Using custom made aircrafts with mounted, remotely controlled cameras, Tushev offers an experience that challenges our physical limitations. Grounded in the immigrant experience, his work is an emanation of changing human conditions resulting from global processes. Tushev’s second piece, “Strange Attractor,” is a mysterious “formation-painting” created by the Earth’s magnetism and never touched by hand.

In Adam Frelin’s video, a golden boulder floats impossibly on water, enjoying its fictional freedom despite the constraints of its small pond. In another video, “Unknown Lesson,” (a collaboration with Michele Kong) a blind woman drives a car. In both cases, human and stone, limits set by the subject’s very nature are challenged and conquered, allowing us to experience the impossible.

This contagious spirit of ’dreams come true’ is a temporary reality in a participatory project by Immigrant Movement International, simultaneously an artwork and a social movement. Their “Immigrant Respect” pin becomes a flag, a gesture in solidarity – an ideal which we sense might still be possible.

Special Events: March 2 and March 9
Guest curator Natalia Mount organizes a series of elevator based performances and sound works, which highlight themes of contemporary cultural production of simulation and appropriation. Her projects also deal with issues of commodification, fetishism and shamanism.

Radiator Gallery: 10-61 Jackson Ave, LIC, New York 11106
Tel: 1.347.677.3418, email: info@radiatorarts.com, www.radiatorarts.com
Gallery hours: Monday-Friday 2-6 PM, Weekend 11-6 PM during Armory Week,
After Armory week Wednesday, Friday 3-6pm, Saturday11-6 PM

NYSYLC Dream Act Fundraiser at Immigrant Movement

IM International stands strong with the Dreamers!  We had a great time at the Dream Act Fundraiser last Friday.  We are pleased to announce that over $1K was raised and will go towards scholarships for undocumented students. Click here to join the YLC on March 6th for the Dream Act Albany Day of Action.  To get more information about the New York State Dream Act click here.

SIGN THE PETITION to pass the NY State Dream Act!

Immigrant Movement International in Mexico with PPM

El Partido del Pueblo Migrante (PPM) will be working in Mexico City from January 2012 to July 2012

Migrant People’s Party
A project by Tania Bruguera
Description:

The Migrant People’s Party (MPP) will intervene in the 2012 elections in Mexico with a platform focused on the political presence of citizens that have been expelled from their places of origin and from their rights.  Starting from the migration phenomenon, the party’s political axis is making steps toward eliminating borders, as dignity has no nationality.

The platform on which we work demands the creation of structures in civil society that:

·     Include migrants in equal conditions and access as complete citizens.
·     Eliminate differentiation amongst people based on their migratory status.
·     Recognize that, through migration, the global system generates traits of a trans-border modern slavery.
·     Create and promote living conditions that make migration a choice and not an imposition.
·     Identify the inadequate treatment of institutions towards the Central American migrants in Mexican territory like and similar to the one suffered by Mexican immigrants in the United States.
·     Demand receiving places to have a political space for both citizens and migrants.
·     Claim dignity in migrant treatment.
·     Require public space to be common property of all those who inhabit it.

The party highlights a contemporary Mexican phenomenon in the public sphere: Migration; a political axis that has been displaced from the history of electoral campaigns of the main political parties of the country, especially those in 2012. The borderline geographic condition between Mexico and the United States leads to a massive migration of Mexicans to the North, which adds to the reception and transit of groups coming mainly from Central America. This, therefore, generates a time-space in the Mexican territory related to displacement and associated to the violation of human rights of the Central American people, which further tears the country’s social tissue. Mexican authorities, then in many cases, reproduce the same unjust conditions with migrants and passers that arrive to Mexico as those that migrant Mexicans are subjected to when arriving to the United States. On the other hand, the migrant community that lives in Mexico constitutes a ghost population that lacks a space of political breakup in the country.

The party is assumed as a space from where all migrants can exercise a political presence through educational projects, of the active and conscious use of media communications, and through creative actions that are focused on issues that affect the different types of migrants. The MPP, presented by the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (SAPS), will hold a series of conversational forums, open to the general public, centered on Mexico’s complex migratory issues. During the months leading up to elections, the MPP will link to other groups that work on migration topics, with artists and citizens in general. Media will be used by the MPP to communicate with the public sphere and the political sphere of the country. In April, the party will move to a physical space in the center of the city, which will be neutral, safe and accessible for those who decide to join the party.

Finally, the MPP will conduct a series of creative interventions in the public space during the months of May and June, keeping in mind that this is the time when parties have a marked public presence, to highlight both the absence of compromise and of a project with migration issues in the country’s electoral campaigns. In August and September, a publication will be done to commemorate the project, which will be launched at the end of 2012.

The MPP in Mexico City (in collaboration with SAPS) is a project that originates from Immigrant Movement International in Queens, New York, initiated by artist Tania Bruguera and sponsored by The Queens Museum of Art and Creative Time.  Its mission is to redefine the citizen-migrant situation and to put the concept of “useful art” to test, a notion that promotes the integration of art in the search of sustainable long term solutions, to urgent social and political issues.

Partido del Pueblo Migrante
Un proyecto de Tania Bruguera
Descripción:
.
El Partido del Pueblo Migrante (PPM) es un partido de ideas que irrumpirá en el proceso electoral del 2012 en México, con una plataforma orientada a la presencia política de los ciudadanos expulsados de sus lugares de origen y de sus derechos. A partir del fenómeno de la migración, el partido tiene como eje político dirigir sus pasos hacia la desaparición de las fronteras, donde la dignidad no tiene nacionalidad.
.
La plataforma sobre la cual trabajamos es demandar la creación de estructuras en la sociedad civil que:
·      Incluyan a los migrantes en igualdad de condiciones y acceso como ciudadanos plenos.
·      Eliminen la  diferenciación de las personas a partir de un estatus migratorio.
·      Reconozcan que el sistema global genera, a partir de la migración, rasgos de una esclavitud moderna trans-fronteriza.
·      Creen y fomenten las condiciones de vida que hagan de la migración una elección y no una imposición.
·      Identifiquen el inadecuado trato institucional al migrante centroamericano en territorio mexicano como, similar al sufrido  por  los mexicanos emigrados especialmente a Estados Unidos.
·      Reclamen a los lugares receptores un espacio político para los migrantes como ciudadanos.
·      Reivindiquen la dignidad en el tratamiento al migrante.
·      Exijan el espacio público como propiedad común de todos los que lo cohabitan.
.
El partido puntualiza en la esfera política uno de los fenómenos del México contemporáneo: la migración; un eje político desplazado del centro del debate de los principales partidos políticos del país en la historia de sus campañas electorales, y especialmente en la del 2012. La condición geográfica fronteriza entre México y los Estados Unidos conlleva a una migración masiva de mexicanos hacia el Norte, además de la recepción y tránsito de grupos provenientes principalmente de Centroamérica, que generan un tiempo-espacioen el territorio mexicano relativo al desplazamiento y asociado a la violación de los derechos humanos de los centroamericanos, lo cual desgarra  aún más el tejido social del país. De tal forma, las autoridades mexicanas, en muchos casos, reproducen con los migrantes y pasantes que llegan a México las mismas condiciones injustas a que son sometidos los inmigrantes mexicanos en los Estados Unidos. Por otro lado, la comunidad inmigrante que vive en México constituye una población fantasma que carece de un espacio  de ruptura política en el país.
.
El partido se asume como un espacio desde el cual todo migrante pueda ejercer una presencia política, a través de proyectos de educación, del uso activo y consciente de los medios de comunicación, y de la realización de acciones creativas enfocadas hacia las problemáticas que afectan a los distintos tipos de migrantes. El PPM presentado por la Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros (SAPS), realizará una serie de foros de conversación ciudadana, abiertos al público general, centrados en la compleja problemática de la migración en México.
.
Durante los meses anteriores a las elecciones, el PPM se vinculará con otros grupos que trabajan el tema de la migración, con artistas y ciudadanos en general. Los medios de comunicación serán utilizados por el PPM para comunicarse con la esfera pública y política del país. El partido se desplazará en el mes de abril hacia una sede física en el centro de la ciudad que será neutral, segura y más accesible para aquéllos que decidan sumarse al partido.
.
Finalmente, el PPM realizará una serie de intervenciones creativas en el espacio público durante los meses de mayo y junio teniendo en cuenta que es este el período en que los partidos tienen una presencia pública más marcada, y de esta forma señalar la ausencia de un compromiso y de un proyecto con el tema migratorio en las campañas electorales del país. A finales de junio y los primeros días de julio, en vísperas de las elecciones, se harán las últimas intervenciones públicas del proyecto. En agosto y septiembre se realizará una publicación como memoria del proyecto que se lanzará a finales del 2012.
El PPM en la ciudad de México (en colaboración con la SAPS)  es un proyecto que parte del Movimiento Inmigrante Internacional (Im International) radicado en la ciudad de Nueva York, fundado por la artista Tania Bruguera, presentado por el Museo de Arte de Queens y Creative Time, Nueva York. Su misión es redefinir la situación del ciudadano-inmigrante y poner a prueba el concepto de “arte útil,” noción que promueve la integración del arte en la búsqueda de soluciones, sostenibles a largo plazo, a las urgencias sociales y políticas.