Archives: Projects

https://hyperallergic.com/857014/that-time-when-i-tried-to-move-to-israel/

https://hyperallergic.com/802165/ai-wtf-do-you-know-about-pain/  

Three issues of the Fair Contract News were distributed in support of the November/December 2022 strike at The New School, the longest adjunct strike in US history.

https://hyperallergic.com/744940/reflecting-on-nationalism-at-the-venice-biennale/

While humans are paused in a frenzied standstill, they become militant: electro-ants cause short circuits in factories. It is high time to make contact in order to make common cause against fossil fuel-dependent catastrophe capitalism: two species, one …

Continue reading “Global Swarming: Science of the Ants”

Demos is an illustrated speculative fiction novel in development. “This thing’s about to kick the bucket!” Vinegar shouted over the raucous chants.  Vinegar’s phone was perpetually running out of juice, bringing urgency to even mundane communications. …

Continue reading “Demos: Chronicles of the Mark Lombardi Society”

I used to think that to be relevant as an artist was to participate in the logic of the market, but that changed in 2011…This visual reflection was published in Hyperallergic on the 10th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street.All original images are pen a …

Continue reading “Thinking About Art on the 10th Anniversary of Occupy Wall Street”

Ten years ago, a group of occupiers rode the subway from Zuccotti park to MoMA, where we held a small but obstructive assembly in front of the museum. Shouting through the “people’s mic,” we compared MoMA to the ratings agencies which had awarded AAA s …

Continue reading “Financial Abstraction”

The Graphic story is entitled “The Giant Pit.”  It’s a meditation on art and the economy of the future, the legacy of the Guggenheim family, and hopefully you’ll appreciate the dark narrative humor and intense detail of the drawings as you journey into …

Continue reading “The Giant Pit”

https://hyperallergic.com/615843/why-the-art-world-needs-populism/

While Trump appears to have sparked a progressive uprising in the art world, there remains a battle between a grassroots struggle to redistribute power, and those who place institutional preservation at the center. https://hyperallergic.com/615843/why- …

Continue reading “Why the Art World Needs Populism”

A small table set with an empty pie tin and a can of Reddi-wip. Fischer walks onto stage with a theater seat strapped to his body like a shield. Hello! We caught each other at a strange moment, not a particularly safe moment, especially for an activist. My name is Noah Fischer: I am an activist, or at least I was, before this moment. But I got myself all freaked out about the potential violence of the Left. And that’s what I’m working with now. So I’d like to get you freaked out too.

During the Occupy Wall Street Movement, the artist wandered Zuccotti Park as a talking coin giving voice to the complaints of a faltering democracy in the face of concentrated corporate wealth. Then one day an old Yippie, famous for pie-in-the facing W …

Continue reading “Breakthrough Performance, 2036”

https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/art-world-key-terms-2010s-1202673541/4/?fbclid=IwAR1EVndLpVcxFZsAlS0X3IVknHwC83prRa7OY2l2xnYvIIu9uFwn72cskWI

September 17, 2011, a talking coin circulated through the New York streets of Occupy Wall Street blending outrage and humor to proclaim broken trust in capitalism. In the utopian urban camp, the talking coin met an activist from the 1970’s known for throwing pies in the face of the powerful. Noah Fischer, the talking coin of 2011, speculates on methods beyond the violence of pies for confronting dystopia head on.

This essay published in Out of Place: Artists, Pedagogy, and Purpose, edited by Tim Doud and Zoë Charlton. Art is not a practical career and people generally know this. One who takes it up ought to eventually make peace with this fact but that’s not me …

Continue reading “Personal Essay: Art and the Shame Economy”

https://publicseminar.org/2019/04/artist-as-debtor-debt-as-creator/ This article is part of a series of texts published on Public Seminar in the lead-up to the Digital/Debt/Empire symposium in Vancouver in late April 2019, convened by Benjamin Anderson, Enda Brophy and Max Haiven.

Debtfair New Mexico is a project of Occupy Museums.

The Art Party: A Sci-Fi Story (Part 1) The Whitney had five separate doorways leading to separate experiences according to credit levels. As a leading collector, gallerist, and chair of the board, Agnesia entered through the founder’s gate. She took a …

Continue reading “The Art Party: An Election Speculation”

The bronze public monuments built to cut through time as Shackleton’s Endurance was built to cut through arctic ice are arriving in our present moment as anachronistic vessels. Whether appropriate or not, they refuse to budge from public space.

I can’t forget the puzzling silence of Mark di Suvero…(read full essay in pdf)

Pulished in Hyperallergic:  

The School of Everything is a project of longtime collaborator Joulia Strauss. Curator of the Symposion is Sotirios Bahtsetzis. Its a platform organized by AthenSYN in documenta 14 Kassel”We build an educational system which consists of politically motivated and artistic initiatives for sharing knowledge, and of proposals by thinkers who see education as decisive for social change.”

What does commencement mean for artists in the billionaire feeding frenzy of the Trump era? Commencement symbolizes the entry of studied, curious individuals into a world that they have been prepared to influence and impact. But what is this world into which graduates are entering today, and what impact can they have amid a reactionary crackdown on art and cultural difference, saddled with backbreaking amounts of debt?

Debtfair was included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. In 2012, Occupy Museums launched Debtfair, an exhibition and organizing platform that groups artists and artworks by their debts and other financial realities. The system reveals the relationships binding individuals to the banks holding their loans as a hidden but highly consequential layer underneath the surface of American art. For the Whitney Biennial iteration of Debtfair, Occupy Museums announced a national call for American artists to answer questions relative to their economic realities for inclusion on debtfair. org.

On #J20- the day of Trump’s inauguration ceremony in Washington DC, I co-organized a speakout with  artists, poets, and activists responding to the following questions at the Whitney Museum.

Alexander Karschnia: It always begins on January, 20th: „20. Jänner“, it’s more than a date, it’s a quote, a code-word for freaks of German literature. The best text begins like this: „Am 20. Jänner ging Lenz durchs Gebirg’“. On Jan. 20th Lenz crossed …

Continue reading “The Year 2017: A Collective Chronicle of Thoughts and Observations”

Occupy Museum’s project Debtfair will be included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. The first stage is a national open call to collect profiles on art and debt. We will then sift through the data and create a platform of artwork “bundles” to be installed in the museum and presented online in March 2017. DEBTFAIR OPEN CALL

Dear Friends, we need art now more than ever. Artworks are”real answers to the puzzle externally posed to them” as Adorno wrote. And what a puzzle! And what better form than theater? Ritualistic life-acting. Experiments for potential revolutions.

Read on Hyperallergic

Like art markets and financial markets, Bank of NO isn’t confined by national borders. It conducts business in austerity-bound Cyprus and now the city of Leipzig. Bank of NO crosses over the waters of the Mediterranean and it also crosses the waters of history. In Leipzig it will now re-open Bankhaus Meyer & Co, the last private bank in the GDR whose owners became refugees from Nazi Germany in an earlier chapter of history. This makes a circular migration through time with people now crossing the Mediterranean in hopes of reaching Germany.

Does art speak in commands when a museum is run like a dictatorship? This question initiated our project. We are artists who are critical of the abuse of labor as modus operandi. From preliminary research it seemed that such a situation existed at the Wroclaw Contemporary Museum (MWW). Abuse of power is a fitting theme because the particular museum in question is situated in a former Nazi bunker.

http://www.art-magazin.de/szene/15300-rtkl-die-artivisten-2-occupy-museums

“Last night, in a visually dazzling act of public protest, the artist-activist groups Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.) and the Illuminator turned the spiral facade of the Guggenheim Museum into a projection screen.

By Holland Cotter

A People’s Monument to Anti-Displacement Organizing by BETTY YU AND NOAH FISCHER

Google-translated from Polish. Original is here

Bank of No: Event Program: February 1, 2016 7:30 PM, at Leventis Gallery: Lecture and discussion about new artistic practices related to politics and activism from the streets to art galleries. 10:00 PM, at Point Centre for Contemporary Art Dance Party …

Continue reading “Bank of No: Nicosia”

In this moment of extreme economic inequality and political instability, art has been captured by the 1% to sweeten real estate deals, wash the brands of giant corporations, and build up a lucrative global auction market. He will discuss how the practice of Occupying Museums helps to reclaim art’s public value and how to balance strategy, aesthetics, and collective work in a complete artistic practice.

http://field-journal.com/issue-2/fischer Part 1: Introduction

Debtfair is an ongoing artistic campaign dedicated to exploring the relationship between economic inequality in the art market and artists’ increasing debt burdens. Debtfair at Art League Houston is organized by Noah Fischer and Kenneth Pietrobono with Tal Beery, Imani Jacqueline Brown and Arthur Polendo: Occupy Museums members. Occupy Museums is a direct action art group that grew out of the Occupy Wall Street Movement in 2011.www.debtfair.org debtfair@gmail.com

http://glasstire.com/2015/10/26/debtfair-is-all-about-art-and-heres-why/ We couldn’t help but respond to Rainey Knudson’s recent op ed about Debtfair because she describes a project that we would not want to participate in. We see a different Debtfair—one in which art and artists play a powerful role in articulating the scope of the debt crisis, and illuminating possible ways out of it.

As a member of Global Ultra Luxury Faction/ Gulf Labor participating in the 56th Venice Biennale, I worked with S.a.L.E Docks to stage an occupation of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice following the May 1 action in New York. Together with Marco Baravalle of S.a.L.E, I organized much of the action and designed flags and other graphics.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/activists-new-and-old-jab-art-world-1431047274 By  JENNIFER SMITH May 7, 2015 9:07 p.m. ET Last weekend, the art-activist group the Guerrilla Girls engaged in a typically bumptious gesture: projecting images from their latest campaign on the side of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s building in lower Manhattan as a block party to fete the new location wound to a close.

Translated into Italian and Included as “The Artist as Debtor” in EXPLOIT,edited by Giorgio de Finis, Fabio Benincasa, and Andrea Facchi.

Imagine that you are in your studio, or at the desk of the office where you work, or in the classroom where you study. You are temporarily lost in thought about your creative process, thinking about what you will work on next, trying to make something of value. But how do you settle on a system that constitutes quality? How do you reconcile your own vision with the jury of institutional gatekeepers who curate artistic quality and keep score on your art practice?

We live in an era of unprecedented profits from contemporary art sales and massive debts incurred by art students. Are these phenomena related? Is it a coincidence that in an age in which art can be made from nothing, the price attached to an art degree is staggeringly high?

All videos narrated by Peter Coyote Mask of Money Priests of Growth https://youtu.be/B-X8SoeBQaQ Value of Occupy Trauma Currency

A video for the first song of Jascha Hoffman’s album The Afterneath. Each song on the album is inspired by an obituary. Lyrics: The Mercy Machine (Jack Kevorkian, 1928-2011)

On November 6th, the Guggenheim Museum will host one of the premier fund-raising events for New York’s high society. Guests will be feasting royally at $75,000 tax-deductible tables. On the other side of the world, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi’s migrant workers are being exploited while having meager rations on their plates and very little time to prepare their meals after a punishing 12 hour workday. 

Debtfair is Occupy Museum’s ongoing campaign and series of proposals to reveal the hidden debt in the art market. The extractive mechanisms of interest-bearing loans from education or credit cards increasingly keep artists poor, even as the overall wealth in the art market increases.

As the world prepares to converge on NYC in a mass call for Climate Justice, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will honor David H. Koch, a 4-star general in the dirty energy industry’s war against planet earth. The public space and two grand fountains in front of the Met’s facade will be renamed as the David H.

http://issuu.com/ivorstodolsky/docs/tsq2_newspaper_hr

Artleaks Gazette, the yearly magazine of the international art organizing site Artleaks has published an essay which finds new connections in my artistic/poltical practice of the last years from Occupy Museums through GULF. Comments on the 7th Berlin Biennale by Artur Zmijewski.  You can read the Gazette here PDF of article here

You can download the full article PDF here: http://worker01.e-flux.com/pdf/article_8984545.pdf Excerpt below: Aestheticization and the U-Turn

Opening: May 11, 2014 (2:00 pm – 6:00 pm)

I joined with the Aaron Burr Society and Queen Mother Dr. Delois Blakely for an intervention/ celebration of Mother’s Day and blessing on the East River. “Queen Mother of Reality” is a monumental sculpture sited at Socrated Sculpture Park, mean as a symbol to protect all mothers from eviction.  It’s based on Queen Mother Dr. Delois Blakely- present community Mayor of Harlem and UN Goodwill Ambassador to Africa and currently fighting eviction from her own home.

Please join us for the 3rd annual May Day Free University in New York City!We will create a space where everyone who cares about grassroots urban social justice can come together, learn about each others’ initiatives, and share old wisdom and new developments in radical politics.

Spring 2014, I joined forces with Gulf Labor and Tidal on a series of actions (ongoing) to pressure the Guggenheim Museum to adopt fair labor practices building its new museum in Abu Dhabi. New editions of the Lourvre, NYU Campus, and Guggeheim Museum are being build on a luxury island called Saadiyat (“Island of Happiness” on the backs of indebted migrant laborers.  

Within today’s “crisis of education”, driven by privatization, many artists, curators and art institutions attempt to reinvent the relations between art and research outside of the academic world, and to experiment, often in a collaborative manner, alternative models of knowledge production and exchange. Composing Differences brings together artists, curators, researchers and others from Europe and the United States, who are establishing new platforms to experiment with art and knowledge production, which defend the circulation of knowledge and the immaterial value of art as a too

By Zoë Schlanger

Each time the Guggenheim speaks, its approach to migrant labour issues on Saadiyat Island sounds more like that of a global corporation than that of an educational or art institution. We would like to remind the Guggenheim that it’s a museum, with a mission to “explore ideas across cultures through dynamic curatorial and educational initiatives.” Museums should help the public come to a greater understanding of the global complexities we all face.

http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/interviews/protesting-the-guggenheim-in-abu-dhabi-an-interview-with-gulf/by Matthew Shen GoodmanCourtesy G.U.L.F.ADVERTISEMENT

http://www.obieg.pl/fokus/30942

I will co-facilitate an activist;s summit at ZKM museum along with artist Joulia Strauss and curator Linnea Semmerling

In exchange for action.  

In exchange for resources (to create more art).

http://www.dwutygodnik.com/artykul/4992-system-nas-wykorzystuje.html By IWO ZMYŚLONY (Google translated from the Polish):  

“Mask of Money” an artwork/artifact from the 2011 Occupy Movement positioned on a pyramidal display structure was included in the exhibition, and in January an “Activist Summit” provided means to “unfreeze the frame” of the exhibition by holding an assemby which ended in an action to intervene in the curatorial text and exhibition walls.

In exchange for a personal or collective art-debt bailout (www.debtfair.org)

To be given freely to activists while on the street.

An interview about Occupy Museums to be published in What’s Next? edited by Johannes M. Hedinger + Torsten Meyer  Book will be presented in Zurich Dec 2, 2013   “What’s next ? Art after the crisis “is a reader, and the 177 essays and interviews , as well as over 150 theses , manifestos Quotes from a total of 304 authors gathered about the possible neighbor in art. Discussed are the changes in the conditions of production, distribution and reception of art today in a global context , the

Winter Holiday Camp is a next stage of Occupy Museums set in Poland- its an artistic experiment in institutional democracy, including every worker of CCA Ujazdowski Castle and its visiting public.

A project of Performa 13, artist Pawel Althamer in collaboration with Noah Fischer, Roman Stanczak, Szymon & Bruno Althamer, Rafal Zwirek and the Aaron Burr Society present a space of performative possibility at BiBA of Williamsburg, open from November 2-21 2013.

For the past 30 years former Catholic nun and Community mayor or Harlem, Queen Mother, has been an advocate for women’s rights. Currently she is struggling against predatory lenders to stay in her house at 477 West 142nd Street. During Occupy Wall Street, she housed many occupiers in this house and joined Occupy Museums and other groups in many actions.

A journey from South Brooklyn to New York’s Halloween Parade  bearing an effigy of Queen Mother.  Collaboration with Pawel Althamer, Roman Stańczak and the Aaron Burr Society.  http://www.artforum.com/video/id=44186

Occupywallst.net



Decentralized, on- and off-line, crossing institutional hierarchies in both public and private spaces, artists contextualize their work within the narratives of their actual economic lives. Collectors receive artwork in exchange for checks directly to the artist’s loaning banks.

http://blogs.artinfo.com/artintheair/2013/07/31/get-ready-for-debtfair-where-collectors-can-buy-works-by-paying-off-artists-debts/

http://www.popularresistance.org/occupy-museums-calls-on-deans-to-support-debtfair-for-students/

Polish Version: http://www.krytykapolityczna.pl/artykuly/kultura/20130615/fischer-sztuka-potrzebuje-bailoutu

The No-Eyes Viewing Wall at Brooklyn Zen Center presents seven large collaborative mindfulness drawings created by members of the Awake Youth program in collaboration with artist Noah Fischer.

http://www.guernicamag.com/daily/kirsten-oregan-agora-phobia/By Kirsten O’ReganIn ancient Athens, the agora functioned as market, civic center, and meeting-place; a large, open space ringed by temples, shops, libraries, theatres, and administrative buildings, it was a buzzing communal hub and a locus of financial and political exchange. Supporting social networks and the free trade of goods, services, and ideas, the agora enabled public speech and was thus central to the establishment of democracy.

http://artfcity.com/2013/06/07/where-is-occupy-now/ Where is Occupy Now?June 1, 2013.  Answer:Turkey.

DebtFair is a project of Occupy Museums and friends.  It’s a series of experimental market-actions to address the massive debt crisis in art today. Decentralized, on- and off-line, crossing institutional hierarchies in both public and private spaces, artists contextualize their work within the narratives of their actual economic lives. Collectors receive artwork in exchange for checks directly to the artist’s loaning banks. In DebtFair, Art = Liberation.

The spread of digital technologies has given new opportunities to activists around the world. At the same time they can also be the cause of new threats to activists and people using digital media for political communication or mobilization. Successful campaigning and political action requires knowledge of digital technologies and social media, as well as skills in communication strategies and creative forms to express a message. 

This came just came out in February issue of Brooklyn Rail, guest edited by Martha Schwendener.  http://www.brooklynrail.org/2013/02/artseen/lotus-petals

Friday November 1 from 6:30 to 7 I was interviewed by Claire Lebowitz and friends on the Occupy Wall Street show on WBAI http://www.wbai.org/ 

Haters dubbed the Occupy Wall Street movement as a bunch of bongo-playing, hand-rolled cigarette- smoking hippies. A year after the movement kick started, RT’s Anastasia Churkina takes a deeper dive into the lives of a couple of active members of the movement, looking at the talents they bring to the table and the shift of the movement itself to a strategy-based campaign.

Russia Today, an international media station funded by the Russian Government, was the first TV on the scene on September 17th where I interviewed as FDR coin. Here they are following up on directions in the movement through three activists deeply involved in OWS. They filmed me in the studio working on a student debt currency project. This was right before Hurricane Sandy, and they managed to capture the re-energization of the movement in the last few weeks.

Occupy Museums hosts a Discussion #2 of Occupy Your BFF: 7 Billion Bloombergs at Momenta Art http://www.momentaart.org/ As we stand in the face of an escalating coup of the public sector by private interests, Occupy Museums asks the following questions of New York City’s art workers:

http://artfcity.com/2012/10/03/the-big-trouble-with-bloomberg-at-momenta-art/

  Art Monthly/September 2012

http://blog.frieze-magazin.de//truth-was-concrete/Raimar Stange over the week-long marathon of Camp Truth is concrete steirischer herbst 2012th

During the Truth is Concrete Festival (Steirischer Herbst) a group of artist activist organized a group within the group called “Action is Concrete” in collaboration with local activists from Graz to experiment with mobilized  political vitality.   The press release from Sept 25, 22 p.m. announced: “Tomorrow 26 September 2012, a jolly group of local and international artists and cultural workers will take to the streets of the capital of the Styria, Graz! They will visit local points of interest where global and local conflicts merge into one.

(CNN) — In 2011, as the world marked 10 years since 9/11, we asked artists around the globe to illustrate the ripple effects of the terrorist attacks. The result was “9/11 Ripple,” CNN’s first digital art gallery.With the 2012 elections approaching, we again wanted to include artists in our coverage of a major news event.

   (google translated from Hebrew)

  http://www.berlinbiennale.de/blog/en/allgemein-en/an-open-letter-to-occupybiennale-31367

  http://blog.frieze-magazin.de/an-occupied-biennial/  

In late June, I participated in a project oranized by Jerusalem- based artist Guy Briller called Going up: Jerusalem.

Occupy Museums (OWS) participated in the 7th Berlin Biennial from June 1-14th.  We saw this as an opportunity to share ideas, resources, tactics, challenges, and solutions with our international partners in a world struggle for economic justice.  It was as a risky experiment between activists, governments, and cultural institutions which could possibly offer unique exposure and international connectivity. The risk was co-optation of our movement’s grassroots power. We hope that the relationships we build will open lasting lines of communication for this global- movement.

Atmospheres of ProtestSymposium on Sustainability and Contemporary ArtCentral European University Budapest, 11 May 2012

Last weekend, the luxury contemporary art fair called “Frieze” arrived on Randall’s Island in New York via London. Frieze is a highly exclusive affair where a selected group of international taste-making galleries sell their wares to the wealthiest people in the world, many of whom were intimately connected to the credit crisis and are now busy shopping for art objects, private jets, and fourth or fifth houses as people in their respective countries suffer foreclosures, unemployment and austerity measures.

The No-Eyes Viewing Wall at Brooklyn Zen Center is proud to present Silence and Noise, a new multidisciplinary project that will open on Friday, April 13th from 7pm to 10pm.

NOAH FISCHER IN CONVERSATION WITH JOANNA WARSZA AND FLORIAN MALZACHERfrom the website of the 7th Berlin Biennialhttp://www.berlinbiennale.de/blog/en/projects/occupy-a-museum-near-you-20371

I will be speaking on this panel along with other members of  Occupy Museums: The Occupy Wall Street movement (OWS) has altered conceptions of the international socio-political environment on the left, and has accordingly sent shock-waves throughout the realm of art and culture.

 Note: this text was written by consensus by the Occupy Museums group, and represents an update of the original manifesto of October 20th, 2011.

March 10th and 11th 2012 Occupy Museums issued an open call for artists to exchange their work outside the bounds of the financial system, right in front of the Armory Show. This was a protest against the increasing financialization of art using the strategy of mobile exchange booths.

Edythe Wright, adjunct professor of sculpture interviews of the following alumni for their thoughts on the Rhode Island School of Design Scultpture program, and asks for advice to current students>Video interview here

On Monday, January 23rd, Noah Fischer joined Jim Costanzo of the Aaron Burr Society to perform a distribution of stamped dollar bills and smashed pennies for the opening of a show titled “It’s the Political Economy Stupid.” The show is curated by Gregory Sholette.http://davidplakke.us/client/ACF_Political_24Jan2012/content/ACF_193_large.html

On Friday night, Jan. 13, 2012, a trumpet sounded outside the Museum of Modern Art at exactly 6 pm and a banner was unfurled by its front door, announcing the presence of Occupy Wall Street. Occupy Museums, a working group of OWS, had decided to take advantage of Free Fridays at the museum and enter the premises for a well-organized teach-in.

by brian boucher 01/17/12

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) in New York last night got Occupied again — by Teamsters from Local 814, Occupy Wall Street, museumgoers, artists, arts enthusiasts and culture activists. The groups gathered outside of the multimillion-dollar exhibition of Diego Rivera’s legendary murals and disrupted museumgoers’ quiet viewing experience.Organizer Noah Fischer addressed the crowd, giving them an alternative interpretation of Rivera’s art:   

By Erin SicklerWho really runs and most profits from the current art system.  Not 99% of artists and not 99% of the general public, now forced to pay ever-escalating museum admission fees to gaze at contemporary artworks they could never afford…Read article here: http://issuu.com/erinmariesickler/docs/art_and_99percent 

They were madmen, but they had in them that little flame which never dies.—Pierre-Auguste Renoirhttp://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Commune-plus-one-7227

On Sunday, December 18th, Occupy Providence will stage a one day event at Roger Williams Park to celebrate Roger William’s legacy of freedom of speech seen in the new light of the OWS movement.  Former Providence mayor Buddy Cianci will be speaking along with Occupy Providence people.  I will head up there with the Aaron Burr Society to offer some perspectives from OWS New York.https://www.facebook.com/events/214526481958688/ 

By Ravenna Koenig for Columbia Spectator

Printed Matter is pleased to announce a collaboration with Occupy Wall Street, coordinated by the OWS Occupennial and a team of occupant artists. Through November 26th the Printed Matter storefront window will feature Occupy Printed Matter, a rotating installation of work created by artists participating in the #OccupyWallStreet arts and culture working group, the inaugural artist action from that committee.

http://galleristny.com/2011/10/occupy-art-street-a-guide-to-recent-art-world-protests/ by: Andrew Russeth

By: Paddy Johnson

By MELENA RYZIK

In a piece yesterday at artINFO, Karen Archey asks, “Why is Occupy Wall Street Protesting NYC Museums, and Not Super Rich Galleries and Art Fairs?” The post is aimed at Occupy Museums, the Occupy Wall Street Arts and Culture Working Group project that began protesting yesterday outside MoMA and the New Museum.

http://paddyjohnson.tumblr.com/post/11652516894/occupy-museums-speaking-out-in-front-of-the-cannons

by: Karen Archey

By Maura Judkis

New York-based artist Noah Fischer has officially launched the “Occupy Museums!” movement as an offshoot to Occupy Wall Street. The movement was approved by OWS’s Arts and Culture group. The Art Info blog published the news on Wednesday, after Fischer …

Continue reading “Huffington Post: ‘Occupy Museums,’ Inspired By Occupy Wall Street, Launches In New York”

Is Occupying Museums Misguided? by Hrag Vartanian on October 19, 2011 56 This Occupy Museum effort is the most peculiar Occupy Wall Street/art-related thing I’ve heard about yet. A protest is slated for tomorrow and intends to “occupy” the Frick Museum, MoMA and the New Museum. How is occupying the Frick Museum constructive? They don’t even show contemporary art but historic work that isn’t exactly driving the art market.

The man traveled alone, pulling a mask of George Washington — or, at least, the version that is embossed on the front of quarters — over his face.Victor Blue for The New York TimesTourists visiting Wall Street took pictures of the New York Stock Exchange.The protesters are getting more attention and expanding outside New York. What are they doing right, and what are they missing?Connect with us on Twitter for breaking news and headlines in New York.

“Today, September 22nd, 2011 is the last day of Summer.  And tomorrow is the beginning of the Fall…of the Empire of Greed. These coins, though insignificant in value, are the seeds of change for a new nation built on equality and justice” With these words, spoken before the New York Stock Exchange, the seven performances of the Summer of Change conclude.  We distributed each American numismatic currency from the dollar to the penny at the feet of the Gods of Wall Street in a bid to break through the mythology of Free Markets.

Saturday September 17, 2011 a peaceful movement inspired by Tahrir Square in Egypt, Puerta del Sol in Madrid, and the worldwide rage against an out-of-control financial system blossomed in New York City just as the Summer of Change turns to Fall. Protesters who had hoped to occupy Wall Street were not suprised to find the pedestrian mall completely shut down by the NYPD. However, The protest went on anyway in other locations of the Financial District and it continues as of this writing. The Summer of Change project is taking part in

Link to video here: interview is at 1:35. 

Midnight on Wall Street. Alexander Hamilton appears on a red carpet, saunters past the Stock Exchange, and approaches the Federal Building steps.  In the center of the square is a cardboard box inhabited by The Common Man. “Who is here that distrurbs my slumber?” “It is I who have some to see/if there is anything I can do for thee…”And thus ensues a performance in rhyme, a modern day Faust which, like Goethe’s great story, tells the tale of ambition, wealth, and ultimately, folly, and chilling horror.

High Noon on Thursday, the Father of our Nation shall dialog with the Common Man on the Federal Hall Steps of Wall Street. They will then distribute 400 US Quarter-Dollars to the Commonwealth for the latest numismatic offering of the Summer of Change. This is a joint venture of Noah Fischer and the Aaron Burr Society.

translation: It  was  a  novelty   for   New Yorkers  when Mr.  Noah Fischer,  a  famous  artist,  as  well  as the  Aaron Burr Society,  one  of the city’s  social  service  organizations  working  for  the  prosperity  of  the  society,  joined  their hands  together. The   large  crowd  witnessed their performance …

Continue reading “Daily Mirror, Kerala, India”

  http://www.thirteen.org/metrofocus/2011/07/kickstarter-picks-pugilism-and-performance-art-for-change-of-the-nickel-and-dime-variety/

July 15th, Please Join us on Wall Street at 4:00 PM for the second event in the Summer of Change: A distribution of 200 50-cent pieces.  At 4:30 we will march in procession to the Irish Hunger Memorial (map) where Ed Kimball will screen archival 8mm footage on JFK (whose visage adorns the 50-cent piece).The whole event runs from 4-7 PM.This performance is dedicated to the memory of Maria Soledad Loya 1940-2011 

We are a joint venture of New York based artists: the Aaron Burr Society and Noah Fischer& Co.  As chance would have it (though one person’s chance is another’s karma) this joint venture initially formed in 2008: the year of change, when then-candidate Barak Obama inspired legions of volunteers to canvas for change; a concept which seemed vanguard at the time.

Coins, those age-old metallic discs struck with the symbols of national mythology,  just might unlock reason & light in the fourth year of the Dire Global Recession, an economic state whose laws do not apply within the stones of Wall Street; whose invisible great wall is impregnable to marauding justice, equality, and change.  So we present the Summer of Change; a series of numismatic ritual offerings to our nation’s bankers; those citizens worthy of prizes and honors; which we as artists are honored to bestow in public. Standing on The Street safely w

Exclusive gift packages are our way of saying thank you For your donations on Kickst*rter. $5 and over: “Proletariat Travel Package” This gift includes one unique exploded penny. $25 and over: “The Word and the Deed” This gift includes one letterpress print on hemp paper manifesto and one unique exploded penny. $45 and over: “The Numismatic Treasure Chest” This exclusive gift includes one letterpress letterpress print on hemp paper manifesto, three unique exploded pennies, one unique Patriarch Quarter, and one Greenback hand-stamped with red ink.

A Lively Experiment  an art installation in Roger Williams National Memorial which will be part of Providence’s 375th Celebration,.  A Lively Experiment aims to connect Providence residents to each other and to the city’s history through creative garden design..

curated by Catherine Speath

https://youtu.be/-km-CfhuAhg  

I smelled manifesto when Brian Unger asked me to write “some kind of aesthetic-philosophical commentary on Zen art in America” for this issue of Zen Monster.  It is a daunting subject, but I had actually been waiting for someone to request this.

The central practice in Zen Buddhism is called “wall sitting.” One sits in silent meditation, facing a blank wall, for minutes, hours, or even days at a time. While Brooklyn Zen Center offers many such walls for sitting, one wall is different. The

“The ability to construct symbolic objects attains its greatest triumph in money.  For money represents abstraction at its purest form; it makes comprehensible the most abstract concept …thus money is the adequate expression of the relationship of man to the world which can only be grasped in single and concrete instances yet only really conceived when the singular becomes the embodiment of living mental process which interweaves all singularities and in this fashion creates reality.” -Georg Simmel,  The Philosophy of Money

Act 1 of Lady Liberty: Tragic Story of a Torch Singer, a radio play begins with an interview between performance artist, Kalup Linzy and collaborator Noah Fischer.

Random Randal: Made in Kerala is an installation and performance by New York artist Noah Fischer in collaboration with Elisa Soliven, Anil Dayanand and the Students of RLV College in Kerala, India.  Fischer was invited to RLV College by adjunct professor Anil Dayanand along with dean Sidharthan Kunjan and professor Bipin Balachandran who also curated conceptual dimensions of the project.  In Malayalam the native tongue of Kerala, ‘Randal’ means lantern.

read the article here  

Electrical Forest: Made in Troy is a dense constellation of actual felled trees, surrogate trees, handmade leaves, leafy projections, found objects, and mobile sculptures and lanterns. A site-specific work, the Forest invites the contemplation of nature, art, and the sublime—conjuring the regional history of the 19th century Hudson River School. Additionally, Fischer’s method of construction draws more specifically on Troy’s industrial legacy. The piece begins with a week long “Factory Phase,” during which Fischer transforms the Arts Center into an industrial production line.

Catherine Spaeth: I am interested in both of your practices in the context of Third Mind. There is Ann Hamilton’s commissioned piece, but the show really stops at 1989. So I’m interested in how the practices and ideas that are coursing through this exhibition relate to your work, as Buddhist artists who are practicing now.  What I notice right away in both of your practices is an interest in meaning that I don’t think the artists in Third Mind engage with in quite the same way. 

 This interview with Noah Fischer occurred at his gallery exhibit, “Monitor,” at Claire Oliver on November 12th.

Noah Fischer – State of the Art from KA21 / CastYourArt on Vimeo.

The object that we call “monitor” is at once ubiquitous, obsolete, and in the end, perhaps a non-object because we gaze into its pixilated illusion, never directly at its shape and mass. Today the clunky beige boxes adorn sidewalk trash piles because their cathode ray tubes have recently given way to the solid-state flat screen. In a backwards-alchemical shift, they have morphed from object of desire into “e-waste.” In this sense, they now monitor the speed of consumption.

Conversation/Chat on Technological Trash and Related Ideas between NoahFischer and Gene McHugh.11:31 AM Gene: so -how did you get interested in thinking about technology and junk?your new pieces seem to be a sort of post-apocalyptic depiction of high tech gone bad.11:32 AM Noah: yes, I saw the two extremes of the tech/design process: the i-phone ofdesire on one hand (and all the advertising that goes with it) and the 7 year-old beigemonitors in trash piles on the other, on their way to China to be melted down in toxic

  jardin

Pop Ark is in search of a stimulating approach to life after global warming. What is happiness when drowned polar bears are washed ashore because they could not find a piece of ice to save them? And when you can no longer trust the sun?

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail.

Between 10 and 19 March, the Kunstenfestivaldesarts held a discussion with Noah Fischer via e-mail. The following text is an excerpt from that e-mail exchange. Both Rhetoric Machine and Pop Art are discussed in it.

We write the year 50 according to the calculation of time by the cosmic comsomolzkis: In 1957 the Soviet Union managed to shoot a small ‘accompanist’ into orbit and thus gave the starting signal for space-travel. A sputnik-shock for the western world because finally it became obvious that the Soviet-Union was now able to reach America with rockets. From this zero-point TIME REPUBLIC takes off to tell another story of the 20th century about forgotten promises of a future past.

http://174.129.38.48/2007/01/11/the-best-art-of-2006/   by ART FAG CITY on JANUARY 11, 2007 · 9 COMMENTS  

This young, Brooklyn-based artist has a winner of a first New York solo: a two-room, Rube-Goldbergesque kinetic environment set to a score of clips from doom-threatening speeches by United States presidents, ardent pop love songs and the baseline sound of jets and bombs. In sync with the soundtrack, low-tech, handmade light-projecting machines whir and jerk into life, turning the show into a combination of modernist ballet mécanique and gothic danse macabre. Technically ingenious and full of ideas, the show takes approximately 10 minutes to complete one sound-and-motion cycle.

  http://www.timeout.com/newyork/art/noah-fischer

  http://jameswagner.com/2006/12/noah_fischer_at_1.html It’s an awesome piece and an awesome engineering feat as well. It’s also a beautiful work of art, but it wouldn’t have been possible without more than half a century of the mendacity or pure villainy of Americans with great power and the laziness or stupidity of us lesser folk.

A homemade magic lantern throws swooping silhouettes of fighter jets across the walls and ceilings of this darkened gallery, while snippets of presidential speeches (Reagan delivering a classic better-dead-than-red bromide) and pop songs (Whitney’s soaring “I-I-I will always love you!”) provide the soundtrack for Fischer’s installation Rhetoric Machine. Gears whirring, a straggly plaster eagle slowly flaps its skeletal wings amid clunky tape recorders, TVs, tanks, and other objects cobbled together from cardboard and plywood while the lightbulb eyes of a bulky robot flash.

Rhetoric Machine is a two-room kinetic installation that appropriates the language of movies, television, radio, and speechmaking. Presidential speeches and emotionally laced pop songs serve as the soundtrack for a sculptural light show that marches through the last sixty years, what many would call the golden age of American history.

Revolutionary Timing is a performance by andcompany&Co., based on an improvisation at the first &Co.LAB in Amsterdam in May 2005 and performed in the lighting- and sculpture-setting of New York based artist Noah Fischer in the ground floor of the AT&T building in Manhattan in March 2006. The initial idea was to re-appropriate the revolutionary cutting technique of the filmmaker Sergej Eisenstein for the stage by the live-use of light and sound.

I went to all of the large anti-war protests in New York City between 2002 and 2004 and always brought a camera. But it never worked. The pictures produced by my father’s black Ricoh were neither fuzzy nor pointing in the wrong direction – yet, even worse, they were not even photographs. Later I realized that my snapshots had been nullified by powerful forces emanating from the center of the crowd. So I put down my camera and set out to take a photograph of the crowd.