William Gibson explores themes of surveillance, intelligence and security in his current novel, which also contains a strand on locative art, a practice that uses GPS, wi-fi etc (nice essay with lots of refs), in the case of the artists in the book to superimpose anomalous objects (such as crosses commemorating soldiers killed in Iraq) in material places (the urban landscape of LA)… In the novel the technical skills that allow the art to be produced are also useful to actors working within or with links to the covert world: spies, criminals, bankers and a character readers will know from Gibson’s previous book, Pattern Recognition (discussion), of which Spook Country is a continuation | blog on Spook Country by London based author
exhibition of works made by Peter Kennard following the events of 1968 | 22 May to 28 June 2008 at Gimpel Fils in London
the April/May and June/July issues of Red Pepper have special sections on art and politics…I have a micro-contribution in the latest one… not available on line but here is the site
Baghdad: City of Walls | video by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad on guardian.co.uk | some wall art on bbc.co.uk | short video posted by multi-national (occupying) forces in Iraq | they have been sponsoring works on the walls… discussion by Mark Vallen | Mark Vallen’s excellent strand on artists and the Iraq war | piece in Foreign Policy in Focus on proliferation and role of walls in US policy in Baghdad
this phrase appears on one of the increasing number of responses coming through to the Metropolitan Police’s current counter-terrorism campaign | there is a great one based on icanhascheezburger | image from Rubin110 under Attribution-NonCommercial Share Alike Creative Commons license… 
work by Athena Tacha 2008 | 1 drop = 1 dead | link
Manifestation in the Hague, 23 February 2008 by Rashad Selim. Poster by Rashad Selim for Green Zone/Red Zone © Gemak 2008 | Explanatory text from Robert Kluijver, Curator of Gemak:
Next Tuesday February 26 at 1 pm Rashad Selim, Iraqi artist in
residence at Gemak, will deliver a petition to the Dutch
Parliament. This is the result of a public art project he has been
engaged in since October 2007.
On January the 26th, the action day of the World Social Forum,
Rashad stood alone before the International Court of Justice in The
Hague with his traffic sign and a megaphone, requesting
international law for Iraq. See the attached photographs. His
weapon is a traffic sign based on the ancient ‘Saba Ayoun’ (seven
eyes) symbol that is used in Iraq for the protection of the
innocent. His petition has been incorporated in a poster-sized
cartographic representation of what would happen to The Hague were
it submitted to the same pressures as Baghdad.
The Commission for Foreign Affairs of the Dutch Parliament has
accepted his request to submit a petition next Tuesday, at 13.30;
we will therefore gather on the square in front of the Parliament
at 13.00.
Come and join us. | Previous intervention at the International Court of Justice 26 January 2008:
Ongoing… what should appear on the ‘fourth plinth‘ in Trafalgar Square? Some of the shortlisted proposals reference the Iraq war, colonialism, militarism and the dominant symbolism of the square | The winning proposal will go on display in 2009 for 18 months | Related conference on art in the public imagination on 29 February 2008 | The proposal by Jeremy Deller would involve the display of the remains of a car damaged by violence in Iraq… | Time Out bit on the thing that is there at the moment… | The new commissions have been announced: Anthony Gormley and Yinka Shonibare
News item from Channel 4, via YouTube
‘Now that martial law has been introduced…’ Plus, ‘Meet the neo-Cons’ etc. Link.
