Art, Culture and Gentrification.

Gazette of Political Art, #5
co-coordinator

march 2014

Issue 5 of the Gazette of Political Art addresses the relation between art and gentrification. You can browse the whole issue (in Romanian) below or download it here. A fragment (in English) of the article "Delivering the City into the Arms of Capital: Gentrification and the Harmlessness of Art in Bucharest" here.

So You Think You’re Political ?! Seven Notes on the Harmlessness of Art

original text
ArtLeaks Gazette, #1.
2013

(...)
#6 Art and legality (2)
From a legal point of view, there is an important distinction between radical politics/direct action and art. In the contemporary Western legal systems, art is seen as a fundamental right. There is therefore a tendency to tolerate, legalize and defend something that is considered art. Enacted radical politics are always directed towards forms of governmentality, and the most cohesive expression of this governmentality is the law. Take the form of revolution as the privileged form of enacted radical politics: it is fundamentally illegal. It is this definite distinction between the tendency of legalizing art and illegalizing radical politics that is at the core of the configuration of the harmlessness of art.

Read full text here.

BEZNA #2

A new, fascinating issue crossing apocalypse with the January-March protests in Bucharest.

READ IT! FEEL IT! SPREAD IT!

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fragment from "The Carnival, the Spectacle and the Non-event"

text in Bezna #2

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Tons of white, cold matter still cover the city. It feels cold, hard and deadening. Snow has become from an object a subject. It determines our lives, our needs, our actions and even politics. The few protesters who still remain in the streets sometimes sing: „The Souls melt the the Snows”. They already feel that the snow is the new body, the new flesh of the revolts, as the oppressive State-Media duo tell us. Carne vale, goodbye to the flesh is now a somber perspective. We are the snow and the snow should be cleaned, collected and disposed of.