The Art of Politics

THE aRT OF POLITICS

VOLUME I

SO WHAT’S POLITICS? This publication explores art and design withing politics, looking at a range of styles and mediums, the artworks have been created in response to social and political issues from around the world.

Politics is the activities associated with the governance of a country or area, especially the debate between parties having power. These activities are aimed at improving someone's status or increasing power within an organization.

Artists and designers have channelled there thoughts and feelings on the issue of politics

throughout history. The aim of this magazine is to celebrate and promote political art in all walks of life.

Art has the power to change and innovate, exploring how this has been communicated through photography, sculpture, painting and through online mediums.

BURNING TRUMP AI WEI WEI POLITICAL MURALS SHADOW DRONES JAMES BRIDLE JR LATIN AMERICAN PHOTOBOOKS

BURNING TRUMP Mexicans celebrating Easter burning this effigy of the U.S Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Trump's anti-immigrant views have sparked a lot of controversy, and the people of La Merced a poor neighbourhood in Mexico City took to creating this large effigy for burning as part of the Mexican Holy Week tradition. Hundreds of residents to too the streets to cheer on the burning of the grinning papier-mâchÊ mock up of Trump.

AI

The Chinese artists Ai Weiwei's recent work at the Konzerthaus building in Berlin uses 14,000 life jackets collected from refugees who landed on the Greek Island of Lesbos after battling the Mediterranean Sea from Turkey. Ai Weiwei's work hopes to bring to attention the huge amount of refugees trying to see refuge in Europe and the 400 people that have died trying to make the same journey.

This piece was created for the Cinema for Peace gala which took place February 15 2016.

WEI WEI

“MY DEFINITION OF ART HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE SAME. IT IS ABOUT FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, A NEW WAY OF COMMUNICATION. IT IS NEVER ABOUT EXHIBITING IN MUSEUMS OR ABOUT HANGING IT ON THE WALL. ART SHOULD LIVE IN THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE. ORDINARY PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE THE SAME ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND ART AS ANYBODY ELSE. I DON’T THINK ART IS ELITE OR MYSTERIOUS. I DON’T THINK ANYBODY CAN SEPARATE ART FROM POLITICS. THE INTENTION TO SEPARATE ART FROM POLITICS IS ITSELF A VERY POLITICAL INTENTION” – AI WEIWEI

POLITICAL MURALS Murals have been used as a tool for promoting change throughout the history of modern art, These works show the variety in styles, sizes and content that make up a mural. Guernica (top left) painted

by Pablo Picasso in 1937 in light of the

Nazi bombing of the Spanish town Guernica, As Picasso didn't paint many political artworks this shows the passion he had for the issue. God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love (top left) painted

by Dmitri Vrubel painted in 1990 on the Berlin wall depicting the famous Fraternal

kiss. Todos Juntos Podemos Parar El Sida (Together We Can Stop AIDS),(centre) painted originally by Kieth Haring in 1989 comments on the Aids crisis of the 80's and 90's. The 'Make Art, Not War' Mural is painted by Shepard Fairey for Santa Fe University.

The Drone Shadow's are project by the artist and writer James Bridle, first created in 2012 the project has been created eight different times still ongoing today. In response to the ongoing drone attacks for the UK and US military on the middle east James Bridle has painted the shadow of drones in the streets of western cities to raise awareness of the devastation that they course that go unnoticed.

In February, Einar Sneve Martinussen and I were talking about drones. Einar is one of the team from AHO and Voy in Norway behind such wonders as Immaterials: Wifi Light Painting, and Ugle; both, in their way, visualisations of the invisible, instantiations of technological processes and communications.

I’ll go into more detail in a moment about why drones, but the thing that bothered us the most then, staring at the little pieces, the models of drones which we had to hand, was trying to get a feel for what it would be like to stand next to one. To stand before, or under, it. I envisioned drones in tanks, a la Hirst, the ability to touch the cold metal of it, to measure oneself against it. Despite occasional appearances in the dayto-day world (air shows, for example, or museums), most people have never seen one IRL; in operation, their very point is invisibility.

So we drew one.

In the car park of the studio in London, we measured out the proportions of an MQ-1 Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) with chalk and string, and we sketched its shadow on the ground: a 1:1 representation.

In Gaza, which is under daily surveillance and attack by Israeli drones, the Palestinians call the aircraft ‘Zenana’, meaning, roughly, “buzz”, although it’s also a slang term for a relentlessly nagging wife. I am reminded of the Nazi “doodlebugs” or “buzz bombs”

of the Second World War, which fell on London and elsewhere, and which were condemned as “terror weapons” (although the term terrorangriffe was coined by Goebbels to describe the Allies area bombing of German cities). The modern UAV is more akin to the V2 in its ability to operate unseen, and to strike without warning. General Atomics’ Predator drone, the most widely used combat drone currently in operation, cruises at around 30,000 feet. You won’t see its shadow, but it casts one nevertheless. Last month, I was invited to participate in Adhocracy, one of two exhibitions of the inaugural Istanbul Design Biennale, which opens today. The exhibition is being held in the former Galata Greek Primary School

on Kemeraltı Caddesi, a busy road and tramway which arcs around the southern, Asia-facing coastline of Beyoğlu, funnelling traffic across the Galata Bridge to the old city.

The six-storey building overlooks the road and the forecourt of a Greek Orthodox church: it is there I drew another drone.

Turkey has its own drone issues. After specifically asking the US to base Predator drones on its own soil, it has used the information they gather—from flights operated by US servicemen—to strike at PKK forces in Turkey and Northern Iraq, part of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s re-

escalation of that conflict. The same accusations of civilian casualties have dogged these actions as elsewhere. Turkey has repeatedly requested to purchase Predator UAVs for its own use, while also developing its own systems. The Predator-like TAI ANKA UAV, named for a mythological halfhuman bird known as “absorber” or “exterminator”, is expected to enter service in 2012 or 2013 (recent accidents notwithstanding).

There is much excitement in many quarters about the possibilities of civilian, journalist, and DIY drones, but for the moment they remain primarily a military and law-enforcement tool. (My ongoing work with balloons is in part an explicit attempt to counter the

potential use of police drones against peaceful protest, providing both independent aerial imagery, and a barrage.) As a military tool, the UAV allows its operator to act with complete impunity, which in turn leads directly to the moral vacuum of kill lists and double-tap strikes. UAVs are the key infrastructure of the 21st Century shadow war: unaccountable, borderless and merciless conflicts.

The drone also, for me, stands in part for the network itself: an invisible, inherently connected technology allowing sight and action at a distance. Us and the digital,

acting together, a medium and an exchange. But the non-human components of the network are not moral actors, and the same technology that permits civilian technological wonder, the wideeyed futurism of the New Aesthetic and the unevenly-distributed joy of living now, also produces obscurantist “security” culture, ubiquitous surveillance, and robotic killing machines.

This is a result of the network’s inherent illegibility, its tendency towards seamlessness and invisibility, from code to “the cloud”. Those who cannot perceive the network cannot act effectively within it, and are powerless. The job, then, is to make such things visible.

We all live under the shadow of the drone, although most of us are lucky enough not to live under its direct fire. But the attitude they represent—of technology used for obscuration and violence; of the obfuscation of morality and culpability; of the illusion of omniscience and omnipotence; of the lesser value of other peoples lives; of, frankly, endless war— should concern us all.

With huge thanks to Joseph Grima, Elian Stefa, Elif Akcay, the men of Ömür Trafik İşaretleri, and a great number of other people who made this possible. The Adhocracy exhibition is full of fascinating and fantastic things, if you have a chance to visit: do. – James Bridle

JR

The French graffiti artist JR is a huge provocateur of politically driven art, his large paper mock ups are a response to social and political issues around the world. These images show the amazing impact and size JR works in the work is unlike any other and does an amazing job of highlighting these issues.

This Face 2 Face piece uses portraits of Israelis and Palestinians and tries to highlight the similarities of the two cultures, putting the different faces together try to highlight how the two could live alongside one another.

'Portraits of a Generation' (left) is part of the 28 millimetres project and one of the most iconic photographic projects of the artist JR, its aims to provoke passers-by to question the social and media representation of a generation that people only want to see outside the doors of Paris or on the news.

The image on the right is another of JR large paper images looking at the theme of immigration, the image shows Elmar, a 20 years old immigrant from Azerbaijan who has been photographed walking through the city, living in the shadows of the city totally unknown.

The idea that people would walk over the large image and have no idea that it is there.

These photo books taken from the collection of photographer Martin Parr, show a time of political and social upheaval in Latin America, In the wake of the Cuban revolution there was an influx of rebellions and guerrilla movements acting against the various political regimes.

As books were cheap to produce, manufacture and distribute these photo books became an outlet for artist and photographers alike to voice there protest.

The books became the voice of protest and a symbol of hope, convoying both rage and optimism of the future the designs seem to really speak out to the people and unify a nation. The books testify to the spirit of dissent and the hope of cultural liberation.

DESIGNED BY SAMUEL HARPIN SAMUELHARPIN.COM