Mural Arts mimics W

"For David Guinn, an artist who painted “The Heart of Baltimore Avenue” on that West Philadelphia street, the planning and execution of the mural this year overcame the mutual distrust of groups with differing views on the issue of neighborhood development."

Clearly this is a lie, dissent was discouraged and those who did speak out were treated as outsiders - troublemakers.

“Everyone understood that it was their neighborhood, and it was everyone’s neighborhood,” Mr. Guinn said. “It was inclusive.”

This mural was not, in any way shape or form inclusive! People were bullied into accepting the design. Ironically the mural is on the side of an allegedly radical space - the “A-Space” with other supposedly radical people living right next to the mural. Here was an opportunity to create a truly radical antiwar, anti imperialist mural - blown because people were terrified of speaking truth to power.

"The success of the program has led to requests from other cities for advice on how to set up mural programs."

Can you imagine a totalitarian arts organization like MAP in every city across the country! YIKES

“Community public art can knit people together in a way that other things can’t,” Ms. Golden said. “It has this ability to build a consensus and to challenge people who think collectively for the greater good.”

Yes - it can - but this is just hyperbolae. Any real attempt to do community art within MAP is systematically crushed, the unmeltable eliminated. The danger here is that MAP dominates funding and appropriates community arts language without doing the work. When authentic community artists do try to work with them they don't last long, there is no place for democracy in MAP. MAP threatens to destroy the community arts movement through starvation while rewarding a few elitist artists. This organization needs to be exposed for what it is - a tool of the military industrial complex, the Fascists and corporate elite. The goal is to silence dissent and help gentrify communities.

Comentarios

sloppy... but hilarious

Submitted by Anonymous (no verificado) on Jue, 10/09/2008 - 7:44am

Talk about hyperbole! Reading this makes me envision MAP shock troops marching the streets with cattle prods, tazing the "real" community artists into submission. Give me a break. And if you're truly gunning for the "military industrial complex, the Fascists and corporate elite," I, uh, think there might be bigger fish to fry right now.

Oh, and most journalists generally aim to support a claim with a bit of "evidence." Even the anarchists.

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Well...

Submitted by Rich Gardner on Jue, 10/09/2008 - 10:51am

Stark-O is rather obviously speaking from personal experience. Yes, ordinarily proof is called for, but proof in this case is neither here nor there.
And yes, there are more important issues, but progressives in general are pretty pissed off about being shouted down by Republicans over the last several years.

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Point Taken...

Submitted by Anonymous (no verificado) on Jue, 10/09/2008 - 1:44pm

I agree that progressives are angry after enduring the reign of W. I'm one of those progressives! However, what's that have to do with MAP? Comparing MAP to W's administration is akin to calling someone who cuts in front of you at WAWA a Nazi.

I've been a big fan of IMC for quite some time, but it troubles me whenever anyone on either side of the fence says, "proof in this case is neither here nor there." Even when writing from person experience, persuasive writing relies on actual support to sustain the inflammatory rhetoric.

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Nah, you're right

Submitted by Rich Gardner on Jue, 10/09/2008 - 3:28pm

I was reading the statement

Clearly this is a lie, dissent was discouraged and those who did speak out were treated as outsiders - troublemakers.

as the statement of someone who had dealt personally with the issue and was speaking from direct personal experience. The author should have made his expertise (or lack of same) clear. Yeah, the statements on MAP are perhaps a bit overheated.

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i wouldn't mind hearing more

Submitted by Anonymous (no verificado) on Sáb, 10/11/2008 - 6:55pm

i don't know that much about MAP, so i wouldn't mind hearing more from this person about what's gone on in the past (or links to other articles that talk about it). i'm not dismissing this story, but it would be more interesting if it did include some of this background. MAP may be a flawed organization, but just posting quotes from them and saying the equivalent of "nuh-uh!" after each one doesn't tell me a lot about what their problems are or how to effectively confront them.

put another way, stark-o, what should we say when we speak up?

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