The Vision Festival has started

Brass Bang

Tuesday was the opening night of the Vision Festival – the 14th edition, this year at the Abrons Arts Center at Henry Street Settlement. Check out the full program here and be curious: come out, open your eyes, your ears and your heart! It is a yearly blossoming of smart, generous and free expression unlike any other, mixing music, dance and visual arts.

(Yes, full disclosure: I volunteer for the creation of an Innovative Arts Center, an initiative closely linked to this, and I’ll be moderating two panel discussions at the Festival about Arts and Politics).

Adding a little spring in the Saturday routine: the Dance Parade

This blog has been dormant much too long… long enough for the first 100 days of the Obama administration to be celebrated and commentated.

This Saturday’s Dance Parade in Manhattan is as good a pretext as any to wake it up, shake it up,  and step it up.

A few moments from Tompkins Square Park, where the parade broke up after going down Broadway. There were tutorials, shows, and general shimmying and sashaying…

… and jumping for joy…

… and marveling…

… and catching a lot of springy-flowery acts…

… and getting involved…  … and clapping and tapping…

… till the feet hurt…

… and you never know who you might run into.

Not all of my writing is virtual…

Not all of my writing is virtual...

Some of my (incomplete) work is now in book form, spanning the “Bush to Bush” era that shaped the United States that Barack Obama now leads. A look back, from the hopes of the end of the cold war, the promises of the Clinton years, to the three catastrophies (9/11, the invasion of Iraq and Katrina) that define the fourty-third president’s legacy and set the scene for the most unlikely candidate to emerge as the savior of the American dream.

Find out more here

and yes, by all means, buy the book!

Change has begun

Back in New York, waking up to the fact that it’s finally real… and that the new reality is already taking hold, with the first executive orders reversing the worse of the Bush policies.

Still missing in the Obama cabinet…

… or so do over a of hundred of thousand of us think: a Secretary of the Arts.

It’s never happened in the United States, but it would be a welcome change, and the recognition that arts and culture are a vital necessity to the harmonious development of a nation and the pursuit of happiness.

Barack Obama has spoken eloquently, during the campaign, of arts education as an integral and indispensable part of the growth of all human beings. It’s time to take that thinking a step further and recognize that supporting the arts and creation is not a luxury, but an integral and indispensable part making a more perfect union.
If you agree, here’s a petition. Sign it, spread it… and be creative!

MLK Day, the day before Inauguration…

…is the time to celebrate and create a new collective vision of the United States.

It will be happening in a lot of different ways all around the country, with many volunteers contributing various efforts and talents. In these difficult times, art is one of the essential ways we can get together and move forward. Here are the details of one event, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, that will be a gathering of creative forces for change.

The invitation:

Freedom’s Ring – Dreams for a New Era

As part of the Special Martin Luther King Day / Inaugural Eve Artist’s Ball at Theater for the New City, Arts for Art is presenting a special conduction, led by Warren Smith and Joe McPhee.

Confirmed members of the Conduction ensemble include:

Alto Sax: Rob Brown Patrick Brennan Avram Fefer Henry Warner Saco Yasuma Flute: Diana Wayburn Tenor Sax: Adrian Cunningham Darryl Foster Seth Meicht Ras Moshe Bass Clarinet: Gunter Hampel Bari Sax: Dave Sewelson Vocals: Mossa Bildner Ellen Christi Jean Carla Rodea Trumpet: Lewis Barnes Jesse Selengut Trombone: Steve Swell Violin Rosi Hertlein Jason Kao Hwang Guitar: Cristian Amigo Bradley Farberman Clifton Hyde Juan Quinonez Cello: Daniel Levin Bass Michael Bisio Hilliard Greene Zak Sherzad Dance: Patricia Nicholson: Dance Conduction Ruomi Lee Hampel Jason Jordan Members of Wendy Osserman Dance Co. Drums: Whit Dickey Andrew Drury Gunter Gruner. Poetry: Eve Packer Steve Dalachinsky Poets from A Gathering of the Tribes Visual Art: Amir Bey There will be more artists coming…

Full schedule:

5 till 7: Dance / Art / Spoken Word, organized by Lower East Side Girls’ Club and LES Power of Peace Anti-Violence Youth Coalition.

7 till 9: Theater / Dance / Music performances, organized by TNC

9 till 10: Vision/RUCMA large ensemble with dance/ spoken word, conduction by Warren Smith and Joe McPhee, organized by Arts for Art

10 till 12: Vision/RUCMA individual or small group musicians, dancers and poets – personal statements of vision, organized by Arts for Art

10 till 1:30: the Artist’s Inaugural Ball, organized by the Action Arts League – Come in Costume to Express Your Dream!

From 5PM on: There will be art installations and impromptu happenings, organized by the Action Arts League – Please Come and Take Part!

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January 19, 2009 is the eve of President Barack Obama’s Inauguration and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Let us join together to express our Vision for the Future. With an artful Inaugural Ball, we will ring in a new era and establish a direct conversation with the Obama Administration on how art and culture can help strengthen the country.

This is part of a national network of events which are an official part of the Inauguration.  The event encourages participants to create music, art or costumes that reflect a “Vision” for a better America. It will include performances and activities early with a dance party breaking out later.

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Practical information:

The event will take place at Theater for the New City, 155 1st Avenue between 9th and 10th streets. The admission for the latter portion of the evening is an affordable $5 or $10. There will also be an inexpensive bar.

Since I last wrote…

…Barack Obama has been elected President of the United States and the explosion of joy in downtown Manhattan felt like a liberation, the end of a long war.

The party was over, for the president-elect, as early as November, 6, when he received his first PDB – “presidential daily brief”, the state of the world as described by intelligence services. (Later, Al Qaeda’s perplexity, faced with a black man named Barack Hussein Obama succeeding George Bush, became perfectly clear).

Soon enough, Barack Obama was holding regular press conferences, announcing his cabinet and the priorities. Rahm Emanuel was the first major figure to be designated, soon followed by Obama and Clinton loyalists, and of course Hillary herself at the State Department.The economy quickly became the top priority, with record job losses and the debate about a bailout for Detroit’s “Big 3″.

In line with the new approach of the campaign, the transition team put itself on-line. “Chicago” and the less than stellar tradition of Illinois politics came back with a vengeance, though, with the arrest of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, accused by the FBI of a “pay to play” scheme involving the appointment of Barack Obama’s successor in the Senate (but not involving the president-elect or his team, the prosecutor quickly pointed out).

And yes, there was a new song - and speaking of songs, one of the reasons this blog was once again lost in the shuffle is that, besides preparing a book (in French, and no, I have no intention to translate-blog it!) and trying to keep up the French-language “Americana” blog, I volunteer for a cause I believe in: the creation of an Innovative Arts Center in downtown Manhattan. Yes, we need it – creation and imagination is more crucial than ever in tough times – and yes, we can! And yes, there is a Gala Fundraiser this Monday, at the Orensanz Center. Good cause, good art, good party…

Erica Jong, not lost in translation

Note to celebs: sensational there will be sensational here. Latest case in point: Erica Jong’s pronouncement that “blood will run in the streets” if Barack Obama loses the election. She was talking to the Italian Corriere della Serra. For good measure, she talks of a “second civil war” and explains that “President Bush has recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets”. She adds that “voting machines are rigged”. For gossip value, she informs the Italian public that Jane Fonda “cried all night” from stress and that “Ken Follett and Susan Cheever are extremely worried”.

Would she have spoken in the same manner to an American media? Probably not.

It’s the pain and joy of writing for the foreign press.

The pain is, if there are no American interests at stake (a product or a treaty to sell to the overseas audience), most Americans have no interest in talking to the foreign media. There is one notable exception: the British press, often used as a conduit for material that would not be first printed in the US. Latest example: Barack Obama’s aunt Zeituni’s story. Otherwise the operating rule is, in the memorable words of an American elected official: “Why should I speak to you, your readers don’t vote for me”.

On the other hand, when they do accept to talk, there is always the latent impression that foreigners don’t know much, and thus need to be properly impressed with simplified or exaggerated statements. There is also the assumption that nobody at home will hear of those declarations, thus the liberating experience of expressing oneself in an unguarded manner. That’s the joy of it: occasionally, people will actually speak their minds without mental reservations. For better or worse.

… and then because we’re in an increasingly Internet-ed world, someone will read it, and translate it, and it will be picked up by the bloggers or the “main stream media”, and word will spread back in English, back to the sender.

Oh, Charlie “McCain” Brown…

… will you regret inviting Sarah “Lucy” Palin to play with you?

Mr. Fish captures the feeling with a wink to Charles Schultz in this cartoon, and today the New York Times publishes a poll that shows 59% of Americans do not think that the Alaska governor is ready to be vice-president, up from 50% at the beginning of the month. (Complete poll results here).

The Twitter terror

I thought the only thing one had to fear from Twitter were the compulsive texters, those who can not pass up on sharing a single movement or a single thought with the rest of us.

It turns out I should have been much, much more worried, according to a draft Army intelligence report published by the Association of concerned scientists, quoted by “Wired” (here). Twitter could be used to “coordinate terror attacks”. Like any major technology could, possibly? Never mind…

The part that caught my eye is of course the paragraph in which an astute intelligence specialist notes that “Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audience”.

I fit more than one of these categories, I’ll let your imagination wander… But so do the “others” thrown in for good measure at the end of the list. Could these “others” be the congressmen and senators who are now officially allowed to tweet away at their base? 39 of them already seized that opportunity – check here if your member of Congress or your Senator is a Twitter-er.

And there’s more political twittering coming soon, if this blogger (Allison Fine, of “A. Fine Blog”) has her way – and she definitely has a point – and if the network becomes the instant alert for problems at the polls on election day.