#laughriot via @TREEOR2X4DESIGN “OK, This video takes the cake”
A provocative installation in Sweden about female genital circumcision has been labeled sexist and racist after the country’s culture minister actively participated in the provocative mock-mutilation show.
Artist Makode Linde presented his mind-blowing “Painful Cake” installation for World Art Day at Stockholm’s Moderna Muséet on April 15.
The cake was made in the caricatured form of a naked torso of an African tribal woman with the live, make-up-covered head of the Afro-European artist attached to it. Makode Linde was hiding his body within the serving table.
To make the process correspond to genital mutilation, the installation was cut starting from the nether-regions, revealing the blood-colored interior of the red velvet cake.
To make the allegory even more convincing, the artist screamed in pain every time a visitor cut a slice of the brown body on to his or her plate.
Screenshot from videoMakode Linde could be celebrating true success of the installation by publishing photos and videos of the event in his Facebook account, but the appearance of Sweden’s Culture Minister at the installation created a scandal with a racist twist.
Image from sluniverse.comLena Adelsohn Liljeroth poured more fuel on to the fire of controversy by a sticking a knife into the macabre chocolate body to claim a wedge, sparking outrage in Sweden.
The artist commented the situation in Facebook saying, “Documentation from my female genital mutilation cake performance earlier today at Stockholm MoMA. This is after getting my vagaga [sic] mutilated by the minister of culture, Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth. Before cutting me up she whispered ‘Your life will be better after this’ in my ear.”
Sweden’s Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth talks to artist Makode Linde. (Image from thegraph.com)Sweden’s National Afro-Swedish Association rushed to stigmatize the event as “a racist spectacle,” informed Swedish newspaper The Local. The Association demanded Liljeroth’s resignation for taking part in the performance.
The minister dismissed the suggestions, reminding that true art must be heartfelt.
“I was invited to speak at World Art Day about art’s freedom and the right to provoke. And then they wanted me to cut the cake. [He] claims that it challenges a romanticized and exoticized view from the West about something that is really about violence and racism. Art needs to be provocative.”
As Makode explained: “If one pulls things out of context, it is easy to feel offended or angry […] I am using an old caricature of black – this ‘Blackface’ that whites used once in order to mock blacks. Then, I worked on strengthening the cartoons to illustrate the prejudices that exist.”
Slice of Swedish scandal: ‘Racist, sexist’ art takes the cake (PHOTOS, VIDEO) — RT
RT @qqud: Don’t believe the hype http://pic.twitter.com/ZDJwIGr1
‘This is War!’ Italy museum burns art to protest deadly cuts
Art is the latest victim of the EU’s debt crisis. A director of an Italian museum is burning works from around the world in protest at the government’s harsh austerity measures. With the permission of the artists, he’s promised to destroy three pieces a week until the government listens to what he has to say. Patrick Young, Executive Director of investment firm DV Advisors says although Italy’s art protest should be treated as a joke, the problems it highlights are very serious.
(by RussiaToday)
Anonymous in ‘The Hivemind’ from artist @Mollycrabapple. Look at it closely - We think the thoughtfulness and detail in this work makes for an artistically insightful interpretive representation of Anonymous. Brilliant! Stay tuned for close-up shots later. :)
(via lilithlela)
Summit Entertainment Claims To Own The Date November 20, 2009; Issues Takedown On Art Created On That Day
by Mike Masnick, Mar 19th 2012, via @AdamfromNorway
Summit Entertainment, the movie studio behind the Twilight films, is no stranger to ridiculous-to-insane overreaches of intellectual property law. In fact, the studio seems to make a habit out of it. The company has sued Zazzle because some of its users made fan art inspired by Twilight. It’s shut down a Twilight fanzine. It’s said that only it can make a documentary about the real town where the fictional Twilight story is based. It’s sued to stop a fashion designer from factually stating that a character in one of the movies wore its jacket. It shut down a silly 8-bit YouTube game. It issued a takedown on a song that was written years before the Twilight movies. It went after Bath & Bodyworks for daring to to sell a body lotion called Twilight Woods, which had nothing to do with the movies. It aggressively sued a fan and pressed criminal charges for tweeting some behind the scenes photos of a Twilight movie. It also sued the guy who registered twilight.com back in 1994.
This is a company that thinks that the world revolves around its trademarks, and it appears to have little concern for what the law actually says.
Its latest move is particularly asinine.
[…]
RT @nubspeace: YOU CAN’T OCCUPY MY SOUL IT BELONGS TO ME,THE 99% AND THE ANIMALS HUMANS ABUSE #opvoiceless#occupyvirginia#occupyNY #occupycalifornia#animalactivism (via Twitpic)
Photographer Francois Robert has created an amazing series of artworks using real human bones. He calls the resulting images “Stop the Violence.”
(via mamitah)
