If you really want a job doing, you need to grab the bull by the horns, or in studio-mate Oli’s case, jump on a plane to Egypt. Olivier Kugler’s Cairo is a rich illustrative tapestry based on first hand experience, research and personal insight.
The prolific use of viewer generated content in news media has seen the idea of ‘on the ground’ reporting become a bit of a branded exercise in recent times. That is to say broadcasters either announce their exclusion from a situation or their direct access to unfettered information.
The Guardian picked up on this goldmine of alternative content to run a middle page spread worth every minute of time it takes to read and absorb. The content makes the broadsheet seem innovative and insightful, because, well, Olivier Kugler is innovative and insightful.
We popped down to St. Pauls a few weeks back to finally see the Occupy London camp for our selves. Whilst talking to a young fella, we came across another occupant who happened to be giving his mum – who was apparently checking up on him on her way home from work – a tour of the site before she left. The story makes the last image in this series particularly poignant. The others speak for themselves.
Banksy pays real attention to the world around him, which is why unlike many artists – musical, visual or otherwise – his work will always be around us.
The world’s economic paradigm is shifting quicker than Lewis Hamilton would in a Red Bull. Brazil has officially overtaken the UK to be the 6th largest economy and Africa is the new China.
The relatively recent growth of the African nations is based on rich commodity resources (but that’s nothing new), improved infrastructure and a generation of young folk wholly embracing technology.
However, the perception of change on the continent will be a tad slower. Decades of mediated images and reports of famine, war and dictators has left westerners with a single vision perspective.
Afrographique is a blog that consciously aims to change that through infographics based on economic and lifestyle data from the African continent. From countries broadband speeds, Co2 emissions to foreign investment in Africa. Created by Ivan Colic, an art director at Zoom Advertising Cape Town part of the Ogilvy and WPP group, is an interesting story in itself.
The repositioning of the African continent for the 21st century has only just begun. First step first though, and it’s an important one. Repeat after me; Africa is not a country.
Public unrest at the role of ‘the corporation’, bailed-out banks and company CEOs still pouring bonuses into their pockets, juxtaposes with the the nigh on beatification of Steve Jobs. These really are interesting times we live in.
Occupy Wall Street protestors have captured a portion of the headlines recently – much in the same way as our own St. Pauls brigade. The arguments for being there however, haven’t captured the headlines in quite the same way.
If you were having problems understanding the nature of the argument amongst protesters who are – contrary to mainstream media outlets – indeed part of the general public, hopefully David McCandless‘ broad info-graphic brush strokes will have made things that little bit easier to digest, despite being very hard to swallow.
“I really hate this shot [above]. It’s the worst of humankind. I always ask myself, ‘Why do you do this job?’ And the answer is: I want to show the best and worst of humankind. Every time you go to a conflict, you see the worst. We need to see what we do to be able to show future generations the mistake we make. The guy with the knife in his mouth is a human being like the rest of us, What’s important is that we show what human beings are capable of. The day I don’t do that with my photography is the day I’ll give up and open a restaurant.” – Alvaro Ybarra Zavala
While paparazzi photographers everywhere waste their [technical] talent and your time with what I’ll just describe as nonsense, there are journalistic photographers risking life and limb to capture some very harsh realities.
Featured in The Guardian, The shot that nearly killed me showcases essential imagery and supplementary written narratives that need to be both seen and heard. Here’s hoping you have the stomach for it.
Heidi and Guy make up CoDoc. They are the team behind The Truth Wasn’t There: a documentary about the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s civil war. In May 2009 the CoDoc team headed to Sri Lanka as student journalists; a privilege that allowed them unrestricted access to the frontline and the opportunity to document what other journalists could not.
Since creating the feature documentary, the film has been supported by Amnesty International. With that new found notoriety, the pair have been travelling around student campuses sharing their story.
Not afraid to tackle political sensitive subjects, their next film ‘Forgive Me Mother’ is a documentary focusing on formerly abducted child soldiers in Uganda. Out later this year, we feel it will definitely confirm CoDoc as ones to watch.
Our Ansel is getting to be a dab hand [or is it mouth] at this public speaking malarkey. UpRise were invited to part of the ‘Art Against Cuts’ panel at this years Progressive London. His esteemed panellists included Bonnie Greer, Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger, Helen Gardener and Cllr Tulip Sidiq , who all said their bit about the recent cuts to the sector.
Ansel’s talk focussed on the need to rethink the definition and value of creativity, its outcomes and how to go about successfully engaging the wider society so they in turn become vocal advocates for the arts. Bonnie Greer was also in agreement, pointing out that the arts need to be able to measure the ‘outcomes’ in this new economy.
Other speakers throughout the day included the organisations front man, Ken Livingston, Diane Abbott and the formidable Mendi Hasan from the New Statesman.
Another one of my childhood fav’s tackles the social and political issue of ‘black hair’.
It may or may not have come to your attention that many black women in the western hemisphere wear what we call weaves: hair made from artificial or human hair that is literally weaved or plaited into their own hair.In an effort to help young black girls feel good about their natural afro hair, Sesame Street created a sketch of a happy young lady singing about her wonderful afro and her various hair styles.
This is a subject that I could quite easily write a thesis about, but for the sake of keeping it short and sweet, it’s an interesting state of affairs when a children’s show feels it has to create alternative representation for authentic afro hair (albeit on a muppet).
Great to see a children’s programme consistently not afraid to tackle the social and political.
We came. We saw. We conquered. We got pretty damn wet. And with the help of Juliette Dalton and her 2diceproductionz team, pretty soon we’ll have the film to prove it.
The problem with mediated representation is that it’s invariably designed to benefit the traditional media outlet while rarely serving the interests of those allegedly represented.It takes a clever person to invert that traditional process, but a clever person Russell Brand most certainly is.
