Thursday, February 22, 2007

Thursday, February 22



Well, this will seem boring to most people, but I stayed home all day working desperately to try to catch up on class preparation. Only 4 days till Maya art begins! I did have a few breaks though.

James came over to talk about the Brazilian artist in whose work he is interested. His name is Carlos Latuff and he specializes in political cartoons. His work has been pro-Zapatista, pro-APPO, anti-Bush, pro-Palestinian. Some of it is sickeningly powerful, and, some subtly effective. Check out his homepage. Also check out his archive gallery. He keeps his material copywrite free because he wants it disseminated to do its political work. One truly amazing graphic won him a law suit in Switzerland, claiming he is anti-semetic. It comes from a series of images concerning oppressed peoples (Maya, Buddhist monks in Tibet, African-Americans before Civil Rights, etc., all of whom say "I am a Palestinian." The one that got him in trouble, and is most moving, shows a Jewish boy in the Warsaw ghetto who also says "I am a Palestinian." He cleverly uses a perspective that makes the child look small and overwhelmed, enhanced by the oversized clothes. I wont post that one as I don't want to be sued. But I include two of my favourite pro-Zapatista cartoons above. I want to get them made into a T-shirt. For those whose Spanish is rustier than mine, and to use paraphrase rather than translation, the first one says "Chiapas: Low intensity warfare is high intensity terror," and the second one says literally "return the army" meaning "get the army out of here."

When Rita came back for dinner she brought a bottle of wine, so I started a fire and we worked and talked all evening: mostly politics. And....that's all he wrote.

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