Niels Van Tomme interviews Andrea Geyer for Foreign Policy in Focus:
Investigating concepts such as national identity, gender, and class, German-born artist Andrea Geyer uses both fiction and documentary elements in her image and text-based works. Her multifaceted projects include Queen of the Artists' Studios, The Story of Audrey Munson, an exploration of the continuous struggle of women through the life of one of New York's most famous artist's models. 9 Scripts from a Nation at War, her much-discussed collaboration with Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt, Katya Sander, and David Thorne, is a room-sized, 10-channel video installation. Through this complex presentation, the artists reflect on the war in Iraq and how it constructs specific positions for individuals to fill, enact, speak from, or resist.
Focusing on the ongoing readjustment of cultural meanings and social memories in current politics, Geyer has constituted a revolutionary as well as poetic body of work. Living and working in New York, she has exhibited at numerous prestigious institutions worldwide, including the Secession in Vienna, the Whitney Museum in New York, TATE Modern in London, and Documenta 12 in Kassel.
NIELS VAN TOMME: Your latest project, Solemnly Proclaimed, is a collaboration with a group of 10 Canadian Inuit activists around the UN Declaration for the Rights for Indigenous Peoples. What was the starting point for this project?
ANDREA GEYER: I must say as a disclaimer to start off with that Solemnly Proclaimed is on hold right now, because there is absolutely no funding for it. The idea came out of two projects I've worked on since about 2003. 9 Scripts from a Nation at War deals with the situation of individuals in relation to the war that is happening in Iraq. The other project is Spiral Lands, a sequence of works that address land rights and questions of identity and identity claims in North America, taking the Southwest as an example.
In both of these projects, the role of law and questions of justice became very prominent. Spiral Lands contains passages on how the court system was used to deconstruct Native sovereignty and land rights in the 19th century (see Cherokee Cases, Chief Justice John Marshall). And then, of course, there is the part in 9 Scripts From A Nation At War that addresses the detainees in Guantanamo Bay and the role of the Enemy Combatant Status Review Tribunals. Now, with the Obama administration, we'll see how the detainees will be tried.
The project Solemnly Proclaimed looks at the Declaration for the Rights for Indigenous Peoples (DRIPS) that the UN passed in September 2007 After 30 years of trying to get it passed, activists finally built a consensus to ensure indigenous rights worldwide. The reason why there needs to be a special declaration is due to the history of colonialism and the fact that indigenous communities need a particular kind of protection, being colonized and living mostly within postcolonial conditions. There were four states that voted against DRIPS: Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand (although Australia has signed it since). All were, interestingly enough, British settler states. They could not ratify the declaration, mostly because of questions of land rights and entitlement of Indigenous people to their land, their history, and their culture.
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Sunday, June 7, 2009
Poetic document making
Unrest in the Amazon - Understanding the issues
On May 15, 2009, the Peruvian Times spoke with Richard Chase Smith, Executive Director of El Instituto del Bien Común, an agency that works with indigenous peoples in Peru`s jungles, in order to gain a better understanding of the roots of the current unrest in Peru`s Amazon.
http://www.peruviantimes.com
The sociopathic police personality
Is it a product of the “Rotten Apple” or the “Rotten Barrel?”
Catherine Griffin1 and Jim Ruiz1
(1) Westfield State College, Westfield, USA
Abstract The “Rotten Apple” theory states that deviant police officers are those who psychological testing fails to screen out. This concept is favored by police administrators because it offers a quick and easy solution to police deviant behavior. However, there is a growing body of literature that suggests that it is the stressful occupation that is policing that is the fertile soil from which police deviant behavior springs otherwise known as the “Rotten Barrel” theory. This article shall explore police deviant behavior from the perspective that it is the “Rotten Barrel” that leads to police deviant behavior.
Cell phone video shows highway patrol grabbing paramedic by the throat
Even More Reporters getting arrested filming cops! Part 3
Col. Ralph Peters - "Kill Em All". How does a sociopath get to be a Colonel in the Army?
~ Source: Police State Jobs Available for Psychopaths ~
13 killed in Peru as Indians battle police
Reporting from Lima, Peru, and Bogota, Colombia -- Protests by indigenous communities over oil drilling and mining in the Peruvian Amazon region turned violent Friday, leaving at least 13 people dead in clashes with police and subsequent rioting.
According to local officials, nine police officers and four Indians were killed in an early morning confrontation on a road between Jaen and Bagua in northern Peru and in the protests that followed. The Bagua public defender's office said 45 people were injured.
Violence continued throughout much of the day. Rioters sacked city offices, the local headquarters of President Alan Garcia's political party and 50 stores.
Some reports said the death toll was even higher. One said protesters were holding 38 police officers hostage and threatening to kill them unless the police withdrew.
The Health Ministry said it was sending emergency teams of doctors and paramedics to the area, raising concern that the casualty totals were far higher than officially reported.
Tensions between the indigenous communities and the government have been boiling since early April, when tribal members began protesting Garcia's granting of mineral development rights to foreign companies. Half a dozen indigenous communities claim the jungle as their ancestral lands.
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image from http://www.spitting-image.net
