Hala Faisal was arrested after walking in the nude in Washington Square Park to protest against the Iraq war.

The naked truth about the power of protest today

By Ronda Kaysen

The naked woman in the Washington Square Park fountain turned at least a few heads Tuesday. “Stop the War” was painted in red across her backside, down her legs and over her breasts. She had also scrawled something in Arabic that this reporter could not decipher.

Curious tourists craned their necks to get a better look. A few people lounging on the fountain steps applauded lamely. The nude woman, a 47-year-old Syrian artist named Hala Faisal, pumped her fist toward her supporters. She circled the inside of the fountain several times until a police officer approached and asked her to put her clothes back on, which she did without ceremony. She was then led away to a waiting police car and hurried off to the Sixth Precinct.

“What was that all about?” asked a young man waiting in line for a hot dog.

The public disrobing — Faisal’s first foray into civil disobedience since she became a U.S. citizen three months ago — was intended to protest the U.S. war in Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The event lasted less than 10 minutes and attracted the attention of those happening by the park on this hazy Tuesday at noon. Faisal’s one-woman protest begs the question: can a single individual have any influence whatsoever on global politics?

The March-on-Washington format has proven an ineffective strategy against the current administration. Ten million demonstrators marching simultaneously across the globe in 2003 — the largest protest in world history — did nothing to deter the Bush administration from invading Iraq. A week of sustained protests in New York City against the Republican National Convention last summer clearly did not oust George W. Bush from the White House. A friend of mine in Montana had no idea anything had happened here at all. Political organizations have begun to abandon their banners and bullhorns in favor of the Moveon.org Internet model instead.

“I’m suspicious of the march-and-rally syndrome,” Reverend Billy, a political performance artist famous for his Starbucks exorcisms, told me back in November in the days following the 2004 election. “It doesn’t matter how many of us are marching in the streets, that doesn’t change the government, it doesn’t change our lives.”

Onlookers had varying responses to Faisal’s display of skin — some finding it narcissistic and others cheering her on — but all agreed that it was intended to cause a stir. “We need something to wake us up. It’s scary where we’re heading,” said David Kloppenburg, a tourist visiting from Florida.

But within moments of Faisal’s arrest, Washington Square Park had resumed its leisurely pace, with tourists snapping pictures of themselves beneath the arch. “It’s kind of hard to shock people anymore,” shrugged Gregory Keller, a Grove St. resident out walking his dogs.

Despite the brevity and apparent futility of her display, Faisal, whose uncle spent 20 years in prison for speaking out against Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, might be onto something.

Cindy Sheehan, the distraught mother of an American soldier who died in Iraq last year, has been feverishly pacing outside Bush’s Crawford, Tex., ranch all week, waiting for her opportunity to tell the president to end the war. Unknown until this week, Sheehan has found herself a darling of the restless — and bored — Crawford press corps, becoming the subject of a national news story, emboldened by the political blog machine. Sheehan, striking out at a moment when Bush’s approval rating is slumping and support for the war is flagging, has positioned herself as a force to be reckoned with and might signify the beginning of a new antiwar contingent — the grieving mothers and widows of American soldiers.

History is riddled with individual acts of civil disobedience that embody a larger moment in history — Rosa Parks refusing to move to the back of the bus, Quang Duc, the Buddhist monk who in 1963 famously lit himself on fire in Saigon, an image that came to symbolize the Vietnam War.

“Yesterday it was one woman sitting in front of the president’s ranch, today it is one woman taking off her clothes in Washington Square Park, and tomorrow it will be somebody else,” said Daniel Perez, Faisal’s pro-bono lawyer. “Ultimately, it is going to force the Bush administration to cut its losses and get the hell out.”

Individual protest has the added draw of the personal narrative; a human-interest story trumps a small group of anonymous protestors milling about City Hall. Faisal’s one-woman demonstration attracted a dozen reporters, trailing her with their cameras and microphones. “How did all these reporters know this was happening?” asked a confused Orthodox Jewish woman.

Faisal hadn’t intended to go at this alone. She asked other friends to join her, she told me, but no one else was willing to get naked in the name of peace. No one was willing to join her protest clothed, either.

A slight woman with large, almond shaped eyes and a wide smile, Faisal is not new to political turmoil. Her father worked in the Syrian government with Assad before he became president in a coup in 1971, and she learned quickly to never talk politics on the phone and to beware of the risks of political dissent. In addition to her uncle who spent two decades in Syrian prison for his political opinions, her father was threatened with prison. Her mother, a Kurd from Damascus, and her father, a Syrian from Homs, raised her in a secular, Muslim home, exposing her to art and music. She speaks five languages, Arabic, Russian, French, German and English.

By the time she was 23, Faisal was a successful actress in Syria, but worried her success might draw unwanted attention from the Assad regime. She left her native country to study art in Russia and France, leaving behind a young son. “If I am in prison, I can’t do anything,” she told me last week, sipping a cup of hot chocolate at French Roast on Sixth Ave.

Faisal has a charisma about her, a certain unexpected boldness. Nicole Kidman was seated at the table beside us while we spoke, and when she rose to leave, Faisal stood up as well. “I am having an opening on Saturday,” she told Kidman, handing the actress a flier for the opening of her art exhibit at the Village Quill Gallery on Franklin St. in Tribeca. “Perhaps you would like to come.”

Kidman hesitated, seemingly baffled, and then smiled and took the invitation.

Faisal’s art, symbolic images of nude women, is similar in spirit to her Tuesday noontime protest — raw, exposed and startling. Until this week, she had never been arrested and had never engaged in a political demonstration of any kind.

She has lived in the United States on and off since 1998. What she notices most about Americans is how little they talk about politics. “America is the most powerful country in the world,” she said last week. “Imagine if the people don’t control the politics, then what will happen?”

When I first read about Sheehan, the bereaved mother camped out at Bush’s ranch, I assumed other angry mothers and wives and sisters of American soldiers would join her, that her bravery would launch a movement of its own. But so far, no one has taken up her cause. Like Faisal, alone and naked in the fountain, Sheehan will likely spend August camped out in the Crawford dust alone with only news-hungry reporters to keep her company. And if the current government will not listen to 10 million protesters, why on earth would it listen to one?

In the end, Faisal spent an hour at the precinct and was given a court summons for exposure, a violation akin to a traffic ticket. She had little words for why none of her friends would join her. “Everybody has their own comfort levels in life,” she said speaking to me from her home — she lives in a single-room-occupancy in the West Village — a few hours later. She seemed rattled by the experience. “I was feeling very shocked when they took my hands and put it in the metal things,” she said of the handcuffs. The police officer seated beside her in the patrol car, however, confided that he too opposed the war.

PROTEST AS PERFORMANCE

Peter Tatchell celebrates the OutRage! art of activism, where style and symbolism are used to empower the struggle for queer emancipation

Making A Scene: Performing Culture Into Politics, Henry Rogers and David Burrows (Editors), ARTicle Press in association with the IKON Gallery, Birmingham, 2000

In this chapter from Making A Scene, Peter Tatchell explains how the direct action campaigns of the queer rights group OutRage! are a form of "protest as performance", which draw on the traditions of camp and theatricality and of situationist and guerrilla art, in order to claim gay space, create public awareness of discrimination, challenge homophobia and promote a queer liberation agenda:

The direct action campaigns of the queer rights group OutRage! are an example of a unique political genre - "protest as performance". Our juxtaposition of political themes and cultural forms borrows ideas from performance art to promote an explicit human rights message. This "art of activism" campaigning seeks to profile lesbian and gay emancipation in a way that is both educative and entertaining.

Much of OutRage!’s direct action is also challenging and confrontational, claiming for the queer community public spaces and agendas that have been hitherto off-limits. Our bid for justice often involves intruding - usually uninvited! - into previously all-heterosexual domains where we stage symbolic spectacles that question the orthodoxy and presumptions of straight morality and culture.

This OutRage! activism has included, among other things, taking over solemn state ceremonies and appropriating sacred symbols of national consciousness, such as Remembrance Sunday at the national war memorial, the Cenotaph. Our annual alternative Queer Remembrance Day ceremony occupies – both physically and spiritually - a place of national identity and significance. It projects onto the geographic space of the Cenotaph, and into the emotional space of the commemoration of the war dead, a subversive queer message.

Queer Remembrance Day challenge four things:

1. macho militarism and military homophobia,

2. the ban on lesbians and gay men serving in the armed forces,

3. historical revisionism, as promoted by writers such as William Shirer, who ignore or censor the homo-holocaust of Nazism,

4. and the Royal British Legion’s refusal to acknowledge the contribution of queers to the fight against Nazism, and its condemnation of queer remembrance ceremonies as ‘insulting, offensive and distasteful’.

By celebrating Queer Remembrance Day at the Cenotaph we are performing an act of subversive political symbolism in a hallowed place of national importance that has been previously forbidden to queers. This claiming of a state memorial and ritual for a queer agenda challenges invisibility and censorship, promoting public awareness and debate about a marginalised element of queer history and suffering.

Queer Remembrance Day illustrates the way OutRage! transcends a purely legalistic approach to homosexual liberation. Unlike the mainstream, respectable wing of lesbian and gay rights campaigning, which tends to be co-opted into the confines of parliamentary politics and law reform, OutRage!’s model of direct action is foremost about raising consciousness and transforming cultural attitudes and values concerning queer issues. We are seeking to simultaneously revolutionise ethics, opinions, laws and institutions, in order to change fundamentally the way society thinks and acts about homosexuality. Moreover, we are not merely trying to change the way straight society perceives queers; we are also attempting to change the way the lesbian and gay community perceives itself.

Too often, we are depicted as victims of prejudice, discrimination and violence: victims of religious condemnation, victims of hate crimes, victims of bias in the workplace, victims of police harassment and so on. This victimisation is, sure enough, a reality that needs to be acknowledged and remedied. But the constant labelling of queers as victims has its downside too. As well as evoking empathy, it can also stir heterosexual contempt and disparagement, even to the point of encouraging some homophobes to see us as easy, vulnerable targets for abuse.

For queers on the receiving end of bigotry, the label of "victim" can be profoundly disempowering and dispiriting. That is why OutRage! tries - through its militant direct action tactics - to undermine the notion of gays-as-victims. In its place, we seek to create a new queer consciousness of pride, defiance and resistance, where fags and dykes maintain a sceptical, discerning attitude towards straight culture and refuse to conform to the dictates of heterosexual society.

A precondition for the self-respect and self-empowerment of queers is overturning the psychologically disabling victim mentality that has been foisted upon us by straight society, and which many homosexuals have themselves embraced in a bid for public sympathy.

OutRage!’s feisty, sassy brand of political activism is an explicit rejection of the cowering, defeatist, long-suffering image of victimhood. Our confrontational protests, where we dare to challenge even the most powerful homophobes, are about making the mental and political transition from victim to victor; creating a new, strong, uplifting identity of queers fighting back and overcoming oppression.

Christian homophobia is a classic example of how lesbian and gay people have been victimised over the centuries. The millennium marked 2,000 years of Christian persecution of homosexual people. This religious persecution is not over yet.

In 1992 and on several occasions subsequently, the Pope declared that discrimination against queers is theologically justified, and that Catholics are duty-bound to oppose civil rights legislation for lesbians and gay men. In response to this Papal edict, OutRage! staged a series of protests against Catholic leaders and institutions. One of these protests involved transgressing a sacred act of worship in Westminster Cathedral.

A video clip is shown of the protest in Westminster Cathedral, where OutRage! members walked to the altar, held up placards condemning the Pope’s support for anti-gay discrimination, and preached an alternative sermon on the theme of equality and justice for queers. As the protesters left via the Cathedral nave, they were confronted by a young male worshiper who threw a punch at Peter Tatchell and then, on the way back to his pew, knelt down and crossed himself in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary.

As this intervention at Westminster Cathedral demonstrated, OutRage! consciously intrudes into places where queers are not wanted to raise awkward issues that the political, religious and cultural establishment would rather ignore. We pride ourselves in subverting the status quo and interrupting business-as-usual. It is precisely this unwillingness to conform to the rules of traditional political discourse that distinguishes our direct action politics from mainstream lobbyists. Making trouble, defying convention, undermining normality, and questioning authority: these are the hallmarks of our activism.

This querulous, dissenting philosophy was also behind another challenge to religious homophobia: the OutRage! protest in Canterbury Cathedral on Easter Sunday 1998, when we disrupted the Archbishop of Canterbury’s sermon in protest at his advocacy of discrimination against homosexuals.

What characterises this and so many other OutRage! zaps is the guerrilla-style, hit-and-run seizure of previously hetero-dominated public and private spaces to promulgate a radical, discomforting, critical queer agenda. We deliberately confound both straight and gay orthodoxy by doing the undoable and saying the unsayable.

Our intrusion into public domains has a special significance, given the insistence of the legal system that homosexuality is, and must remain, a "private matter". Law reform in England and Wales in 1967 partially lifted the ban on male homosexuality. One of its preconditions was that sodomy and other queer perversions were only to be tolerated, providing they were kept hidden and private. That privacy precondition is written into the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, and it remains the basis on which sex between men is today afforded a degree of grudging legal tolerance.

OutRage!’s direct action tactics and occupation of forbidden public spaces have sought to challenge the "in private" settlement of 1967, with its implicit demand that queers remain silent and invisible. The "Kiss-In" in Piccadilly Circus in 1990, under the statue of Eros, was one such challenge, where we flaunted expressions of same-sex affection and dared the police to arrest us. They didn’t. On the contrary, from that moment onwards, the arrest of lesbian and gay couples for kissing and cuddling ceased in central London.

The "Kiss-In" exemplifies a successful transgressive queer politics which insists that lesbians and gays are no longer willing to remain "in private" and excluded from the terrain of public consciousness and debate. It also represents a rejection of conformism and subservience. Too many homosexual campaigners confine their goals to the parameters of a straight-dominated political system and sexual morality. Playing politics by straight rules and mimicking the heterosexual norm signals a lack of self-worth and self-confidence. Moreover, it is bound to result in gay acceptance and equality on straight terms, which may prove to be a Pyrrhic victory.

What was revolutionary about the "Kiss-In" was the way it challenged not only homophobia, but Puritanism too. It went against uptight, strait-laced heterosexual norms, asserting the validity of public expressions of eroticism and affection.

The OutRage! genre of direct action politics is characterised by six key themes:

1. A fusion of art with activism.

Despite our weaknesses and failings, few people would deny that OutRage! has made a serious contribution to the invention of something a little more imaginative than the standard march from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square. We have escaped from the stale, boring methods of orthodox political campaigning through the development of a new, modern mode of political agitprop.

Many of our direct actions involve an element of theatricality, using costumes and props. There is often a story line. The aim of this "theatre of the streets" is to promote thought-provoking queer ideas through the projection of arresting imagery.

One zap where art and activism were literally fused together was the OutRage! disruption of the Romanian National Opera performance of Aida at the Royal Albert Hall in 1996. The Romanian government had, at the time, announced harsh anti-gay laws, cracking down on homosexuality and gay human rights organisations. We saw the disruption of this major cultural event - organised and promoted by the government in Bucharest – as an effective way of getting at the Romanian leadership and creating a global awareness of Romania’s abuse of lesbian and gay civil rights.

In attendance at the performance of Aida were representatives and friends of the Romanian government, together with business people from major corporations that were being encouraged to invest in Romania. In the middle of Act One, thirty of us stormed through the artist’s entrance and onto the main stage, unfurling a huge banner which read: ‘Romania! Stop Jailing Queers!’. Simultaneously, thousands of leaflets were showered down on the audience by OutRage! members in the top balconies. Although it was a brief, symbolic intervention, this protest got the issue reported in the Romanian and international media, ensuring that the new homophobic laws became a matter of public knowledge and debate in Romania and worldwide.

2. Re-inventing the queer tradition of camp and theatricality.

Traditional left-wing agitprop is frequently dull and dour. This tendency to be too serious can, sometimes, be a turn-off that inhibits the effective communication of a political message. It is important to think carefully about getting the balance right between humour and seriousness. OutRage! has shown that many gay equality issues are open to being conveyed with wit and satire, as with our 1992 posthumous outing of British military "heroes", in protest at the ban on homosexuals in the armed forces. The statute of Field Marshal Haig in Whitehall was draped with a pink feather boa, and the memorial to Admiral Mountbatten postered with the slogan "For Queens & Country".

This bent towards theatricality cannot be explained solely in terms of OutRage! consisting of lots of out-of-work actors, graphic artists, scriptwriters and costume designers. Our theatricality stems from a conscious choice to utilise queer culture, as well as a pragmatic recognition that theatricality works.

Throughout gay history, the queer tradition of camp has been mostly apolitical, misogynistic and even self-oppressive. We have attempted to turn this tradition on its head and reinvent camp as an instrument in the service of lesbian and gay liberation.

3. Acting out protest as a form of performance.

OutRage! activism creates public spectacles as a means of promoting of human rights. Many of our actions are the equivalent of putting on a one-performance play in the street. We draw on earlier incarnations of street theatre - as practised by groups such as the Gay Liberation Front in London in early 1970s - in order to advertise our political ideas and messages. The aim is to grab the media’s attention and, through the media, project these ideas and messages to a wider public audience of millions.

The old-style leftist marches with a rally and speeches are passé. It is very rare nowadays that this kind of protest gets media coverage and creates public debate - unless it involves hundreds of thousands of people.

Small direct actions can, however, be highly effective - providing they are done with imagination and flair. A daring, witty zap by a handful of activists has the power to generate media coverage and stir public interest.

Most of OutRage!’s big spectacles involve the performance of queer narratives and quasi-morality plays to expose human rights abuses. This was the case with our "Exorcism of Homophobia" from Lambeth Palace, the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Appropriating Biblical stories and imagery, and with queerified scriptural characters and hymns, we acted out the ritual purging of the "Demon of Homophobia" from the Church of England.

These OutRage! extravaganzas usually attract large crowds of passers-by, which is a good indication of their appeal and effectiveness. One of our big, set-piece spectacles - the 1991 "Wink-In" - was so amusing and successful that two days later we received a telephone call from a tour company. Their tour group had witnessed our performance and enjoyed it so much that the company wanted to know when we were going to repeat the event, so they could send other groups of tourists to come and watch.

Such interest and enthusiasm is precisely what good activism ought to generate. To grab people’s attention, politics needs to be accessible, entertaining and informative. It is no use having wonderful ideas and not being able to communicate them. In this modern telecommunications age, the media is the main means of disseminating ideas and we have to use it if we want to influence public consciousness and the political process.

4. The politics of pleasure and the pleasuring of politics.

Protests should, wherever possible, be fun as well as serious. That means making them enjoyable for those who take part and witness them. This exaltation of "politics with pleasure" runs against the grain of mainstream political campaigning, which tends to be predicated on duty and sacrifice. Usually involving boring, repetitive methods, conventional politics can also be quite aggressive, with a strong streak of machismo. There is, of course, a legitimate place for anger when faced with monstrous injustices. But sometimes we need to step back from the fray and question whether the battle for public opinion is likely to be won by belligerent posturing and shouting.

OutRage! is convinced that there are often more effective ways of getting across a human rights message, even when it relates to dry, complex and obscure legislation. Section 32 of the 1956 Sexual Offences Act prohibits male soliciting in a public place. The penalty is up to two years jail. This law originated in 1898, at the time of Oscar Wilde. It is used today to harass and arrest gay men for consensual cruising in public places, such as parks, toilets and forests. In extreme cases, gay men have been arrested for merely smiling or winking at each other in the street.

To highlight the absurdity of this outdated Victorian law, OutRage! held a mass ‘Wink-In’ in Piccadilly Circus in 1991. This involved the erection of huge winking eyes and the public exchange of phone numbers on giant calling cards – an act of blatant mass civil disobedience. It was a funny, imaginative, entertaining way of highlighting this antiquated, draconian statute, and pressuring the police to de-prioritise its enforcement (which they subsequently did, saving thousands of gay men from arrest).

5. Claiming queer space.

OutRage! direct actions manifest queer identities and desires in public places from which we are normally excluded. There are still many public domains wholly or partially cordoned off to homosexuals: not just streets and parks where gay men go cruising, but also other public spaces. Two examples of this containment of queer identity and presence are State ceremonials and the education system.

OutRage! fought a long, hard battle to win the right to demonstrate at the State Opening of Parliament. We were fighting not just for the right to demand that gay equality measures are included in the annual Queen’s Speech, but also to secure the basic civil liberty that everyone should have the right to peacefully demonstrate in front of the Head of State.

Our homosexuality and queer agenda were, it seems, major reasons why we were so roughly manhandled by the police and so often arrested. The presence of dykes and fags was, apparently, considered an insult to Parliament and the Monarch. This made our protest at Westminster all the more relevant: it became a symbolic act to establish the political legitimacy of queer people and issues in an official State ceremony at the seat of government.

The other example of our usurping of public spaces and turning them queer was OutRage!’s "Queer Is Cool" schools campaign in 1991, organised by our affinity group ‘Sissy’ (Sex Information for School Students & Youth). The aim was to combat the censorship of lesbian and gay issues in the classroom. We handed pupils leaflets as they went into school. These leaflets included information about gay sexuality, queer history and HIV prevention. They challenged homophobic attitudes and, we hope, helped empower lesbian and gay kids to feel more confident about their sexual orientation.

For this terrible crime, OutRage! was savagely denounced by the media and "family values" politicians. According to them, it is absolutely unacceptable for students to be given upfront, unapologetic information about queer issues. As with every protest, the proof of the pudding is in the eating: our leafleting produced a huge debate among teachers and sex educationists. We put them on the spot: why were these facts not being given to kids in the classroom?

6. Challenging homophobic institutions and laws.

Just prior to the 1992 general election, OutRage! sought to overturn the prohibition on lesbian and gay marriage, as part of our campaign to put same-sex partnership rights on the political agenda. As a radical queer rights group we are, not surprisingly, highly critical of the patriarchal, misogynist institution of marriage. But our aim on that occasion was to take the institution of marriage at face value and challenge the homophobia embodied in the ban on lesbian and gay weddings.

We organised five homosexual couples to file applications for civil marriage at Westminster Registry Office, with the objective of undermining the discriminatory marriage law.

The 1949 Marriage Act does not specify that marriage partners have to be heterosexual, which is a very interesting omission. It illustrates the heterosexist presumptions of the post-war era when that law was passed. Subsequently, however, to remedy this omission, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 explicitly ruled out same-sex marriages for the first time. On the basis of the 1973 Act, the five OutRage! applications were refused. Nevertheless, this protest was significant; it being the first-ever-legal challenge in Britain to the ban on homosexual marriage. And, of course, it was a challenge with panache and pizzazz! The lesbian couples both wore bridal gowns, and the gay male partners were resplendent in tuxedos and top hates. Camp or what! It was a very subversive, effective way of demonstrating the love of queer couples, and of drawing public attention to the homophobic marriage statutes.

On an earlier occasion, in 1991, OutRage! staged a mass "Queer Wedding" in Trafalgar Square. This was also to demand legal rights for same-sex partners, but it had a different twist. In a mischievous ceremony that explicitly rejected the straight model of marriage, hundreds of queer couples – some in matching bridal gear and others in leather or rubber body suits – exchanged alternative vows of commitment. Their pledges expressed a new model of partnership based on the unique experiences, desires and needs of queers, rather than unthinkingly mirroring straight morality, lifestyle and aspirations.

In conclusion: the OutRage! genre of "protest as performance" has involved over 300 direct action zaps in ten years, encompassing a huge variety of camp, innovative, entertaining, audacious, wacky, theatrical, "in-yer-face" protests. We are still learning, evolving and adapting. There is much more we could do, and some things we could do better. But given our limited resources - and the de-politicised cultural climate in which we are now operating – OutRage! is, amazingly and thankfully, still causing trouble, mayhem and confusion.

An expanded version of a lecture given by Peter Tatchell at the "Making a Scene" conference at the University of Central England, 5 June 1999.

Copyright Peter Tatchell 1999. All rights reserved.

The OutRage! website can be found at: http://www.outrage.org.uk/

Artists Responding to the Political Present

» Theater, Performance Art & Protest

Artistic Response to Republican National Convention: Many artists responded to both George W. Bush and the Republican Party when the Republicans decided to hold their 2004 National Convention in New York. Even before the convention came to New York, groups such as norncposters.org and counterconvention.org created posters that are across the city. Another pre-convention protest took place at the Pierogi 2000 gallery in Brooklyn where people can buy t shirts printed with pro Kerry messages. Included among the different artistic protests to the RNC are:

-"Piece Peace" an antiwar window installation near Madison Square Garden created by Adelle Lutz, Courtney Harmel and Sara Driver

-"The Experimental Party Disinformation Center" displayed at the 57th Street gallery is a digital work that includes original political candidates and cabinet members. Various artists and artists' collectives worked together to created this work.

-Film exhibition at the Whitney Musuem comparing the War in Iraq to the Vietnam War

--The Kitchen exhibited "Before You Don't Vote" created by Larry Litt depicting different people discussing democracy and "Line Up: Unofficial Portraits" created by Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese depicting mug shots of the members of the Bush administration.

-The New School showed Paul Chan's film, "Baghdad in No Particular Order" during the Imagine '04 Festival of Arts, Issues and Ideas depicting Iraq before the war.

-Paul Chan and the collective Friends of William Blake created "The People's Guide to the Republican National Convention" a map of New York with protest locations, restaurants, restrooms, and advice if arrested.

- The art journal, Artforum, included in its September 2004 issue different political artworks by such artists as Richard Serra, Barbara Kruger and Jonathan Horowitz. One work included in the issue was Elizabeth Peyton's portrit of John Kerry which will be exhibited at Gavin Brown's Enterprise through Election Day.

- The Experimental Party created a virtual government in its "The Experimental Party Disinformation Center" exhibited at the Luxe Gallery. Randall M. Packer, Lynn Hershman, Paul Miller (DJ Spooky), Rev. Billy and Wetheblog.org all contributed to the "Experimental Party Disinformation Center."

-The Parlour Projects Gallery in Williamsburg hosted Martha Wilson who impersonated Barbara Bush stating that voting for George W. Bush is "the next best thing to voting for the Son of God." The gallery also includes different activist artworks from earlier periods of recent history. One such work is Rachel Mason's "Kissing President Bush" depicting the artist and the Presdient.

-"Freedom Salon" at Deitch Projects includes the work of more than forty artists. One artist, Wayne Gonzales, included his work "Yellow Poster" which depicts the convention as a production by a theater company. The artist collective Yes Men created pamphlets entitled "Let's Go Republican" where Americans can face more restrictions than those outlined by the Patriot Act. Another work is a drawing honoring the Native Americans by Devendra Banhart. Also on display is A.A. Bronson's self photograph where he is naked and hanging upside down. Atlanta artist, Benjamin Jones created a voodoo doll entitled, "War Devil." Emily Roysdon created an embroidery that is a painting, rug and bedspread called "Fighting for More Fun Not Less Pain." Other works included in the exhibit is "The People's Guide to the Republican National Convention createed by Mr. Chan and the Friends of William Blake. Other contributors include Leon Golub, Christoph Draeger, Mel Chin, Taryn Simon, Dread Scott, Mark Lombardi, Yoko Ono, Sharon Hayes, Martha Rosler, Siemon Allen, Jo Jackson, the Critical Art Ensemble, Clare Rojas, Julia Scher and Enrique Chagoya.

-Roebling Hall in Williamsburg is exhibiting the "Bush League" includes Dan Ford's "The Burning of the National Library, Baghdad; Troops Observing Looters," Laura Parnes's short television ads commissioned by Downtown for Democrats, Guy Richards Smit's watercolor of the New York Times front page, Joan Linder's caricatures of members of Bush's administration and Bjorn Melhus's "In Beautiful, Sunny Guantánamo Bay, Cuba" which transforms a news conference led by Rumsfeld into a rap song.

-Satellite, Roebling Hall's offsite location, is exhibiting Moises Saman's photographs of the War in Iraq.

-Trong Nguyen organized an exhibition at the Van Brunt Gallery entitled "AmBush!." Included in the exhibit is a protest sign created by David Humphrey depicting a portrait of George W. Bush. Norm Magnusson's work interprets Bush's 2004 State of the Union address. Jeremy Hutchins created a book, "Loving the Cheney Within: A Recovery Manual." Enrique Chagoya contributed works from his "Poor George" series that depicts the President as Pinocchio.

-Schroeder Romero in Williamsburg is hosting the group show, "Watch What We Say."

- A.I.R. in Chelsea has an exhibition of art from or inspired from Karen Ocker's "The George W. Bush Coloring Book."

-Downtown for Democracy is hosting the exhibition, " A More Perfect Union" at Max Fish on the Lower East Side.

-The Whitney is having an exhibition, "Memorials of War" which features works of art from the Vietnam War. The exhibition includes the work of six artists and shows the interconnection between war and violence. Among the works is Chris Burden's "America's Darker Moments," that includes Emmett Till's lynching to Kennedy's assassination. Also included are lithographs by Robert Morris depicting a chlorine gas filled trench in the shape of a cross and a grid constructed of transparent coffins which people could walk on. Edward Kienholz's "Non War Memorial" is also included in the exhibition.

- Whitney curator, Chrissie Iles and artist, Sam Durant organized the film collection, "War! Protest in America 1965-2004." The collection includes works by Stan Vanderbeek, Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits, Carolee Schneemann, Richard and Pat Myer's documentary, "Confrontation at Kent State," Julie Talen's "Sixty Cameras Against the War "and Brigitte Cornand's "Not in Our Name."

-Nat Finkelstein's photographs,"Defend Freedom: Lost Life Magazine Photos From August 1965 Protest" exhibited at the offices of People for the American Way on Lower Fifth Avenue. The photographs show interactions between protestors and the police during a march in Washington.

-"Freedom of Expression National Monument" is exhibited at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan. Architect Laurie Hawkinson, peformer John Malpede and the artist Erika Rothenberg all designed the work. The work consists of a megaphone and a ramp connected to a six foot high platform that people can stand on and speak. Originally exhibited in "Art on the Beach" from 1978-1985, Creative Time and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council sponsored the current installation of the work in Foley Square.

(reported in The New York Times' ART REVIEW: "Caution: Angry Artists at Work"

Projects by
Marina Potok and Wendy Tremayne

Artist Statement
Our work utilizes volunteer-based public performance as a means for articulating shared ideas within our community. What began with projects that engaged the passerby in interplay with absurd, random events, developed toward the discovery of collective socio-political ideas. Volunteerism and the synergy produced by an open forum for the creative expression of each person who participates in our projects has become the most important component of our work. We believe that presenting an idea through the collective art form, rather then traditional means of protest, allows for the delivery of authentic artistic and political messages to wider audiences.

Projects Submitted for Consideration

THE VOMITORIUM,
August 17, 2004, HOWL! Festival for East Village Arts, Avant-Garde(n)
Series kick-off event, curator: M.M.Serra, St. Marks Church in the Bowery, NYC.

The Vomitorium is a theatrical performance, modeled after the opulent parties of the Roman Empire, where guests engage in consuming astounding amounts of food and when stuffed to the limit, vomit so that they may gorge themselves again and again. A 62 person all-volunteer cast and crew came together to determine and then express to a live audience, their ideas about the likeness of our time to the days of the Roman Empire. In protest of American imperialist policies a 1.5 hour, loosely-scripted, public performance was performed just days before the Republican National Convention. The Roman vomitorium was chosen as a metaphor through which American over-consumption and waste culture could be exposed as a symptom of the decline of the American Republic. For one evening the performers and audience were transported to the long-gone days of Roman decadence in order to reflect on the fate that eventually befell the Roman Empire, and heed the warning signs of history repeating.

Materials Available
The presentation of the Vomitorium can be made through video or still photography. As a theatrical performance we think that it is best represented in video format. We have an 8-minute video cut which takes the viewer through the best moments of the performance from beginning to end.

We are also in the process of editing a longer documentary that includes interviews with the participants in addition to the performance footage. Although the final cut of the documentary will not be available by the date of the conference, a preliminary cut can be prepared for the presentation.

A combination of still photograph and video is also an option. For a small sample of the materials available: http://www.ncac.org/art/art_now/%3Cfont%20face=%22Arial,%20Helvetica,%20sans-serif%22%20size=%222%22%3Ehttp://vomitorium2004.org%3C/font%3E

NO BUSH, February 7, 2003,
Bathesda Fountain, Central Park, NYC.
28 women were recruited to brave a blizzard and freezing temperatures to proclaim with their nude bodies their strong opposition to the impending war on Iraq. The image was captured and distributed through global media networks to a world-wide audience.

Selected Press: Associated Press, Reuters, BBC, New York Times, CNN, San Francisco Gate, LA Times, UK Guardian, NY Post, Daily News,Newsday.

Materials Available
The image created and captured in still photography is available as a digital c-print, 11x14. A 9-minute documentation video is also available and can be viewed here in low quality form: http://www.ncac.org/art/art_now/%3Cfont%20face=%22Arial,%20Helvetica,%20sans-serif%22%20size=%222%22%3Ehttp://gaiatreehouse.com/movie/nobush.mov%3C/font%3E

A Hot Day In Texas performed for Warwhorz: Gender, War & Consumerism,
August 23, 2003, HOWL! Festival for East Village Arts
curator: Theresa Byrnes, Generation X Community Garden, NYC.

An all female lineup celebrating the power of women and exploring the possibility that discrimination against women, the slaughter of animals and consumerism is the fertilizer for war. Tremayne/Potok staged A Hot Day in Texas, a sight-specific performance reflecting on the blindly excessive oil consumption in the US. NO bUSH, video documentation of the February 7, 2003 protest-performance, was also screened at this event.

Happy Buy Nothing Day: On Buy Nothing Day, the day after Thanksgiving, Reverend Billy & The Church of Stop Shopping will join Greene Dragon to launch a Reformation in Times Square against Corporate Tyranny. Reverend Billy lookalikes will simultaneously exorcise cash registers throughout the neighborhood, and at 1pm the Church and Greene Dragon will post 9 Theses Against Corporate Rule on the threshold of the Times Square McDonalds, a neon cathedral of perpetual consumption. Friday, November 26 at 1pm, 46th St and 7th Ave median across from Virgin Megastore, New York City.
http://www.revbilly.com/
http://www.greenedragon.org/

Hot ButTONS: A POLITICAL VAUDEVILLE an evening of political theatre and performance to fire you up for the 2004 election october 25-27, 2004 at the culture project@45bleecker

writers: Erin Courtney, Steve Earle, Kirsten Greenidge, Neil LaBute, Winter Miller, Aaron Mack Schloff, Sheri Wilner directors: Samuel Buggeln, Erica Gould, Bruce Kronenberg, KJ Sanchez, Elyse Singer, Jessica Stone, Tony Torn

http://www.hourglassgroup.org/hotbuttons.html

Dear George: Letters to the President is compiled from a collection of over 1,500 open letters to President Bush in the summer of 2004. The non-partisan piece covers a wide range of opinions on issues ranging from Iraq, terrorism, 9/11, the economy, and gay marriage. Letters were submitted through the web and came from all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Americans overseas. Over 40 theatres across the country are independently producing Dear George this October.

Created by Marcus Woollen
Directed by Jonathan Znidarsic
October 31- November 1, 2004 at the Culture Project, 45 Bleeker St., New York, NY http://www.deargeorgeletters.com/

GEORGE & MARTHA

A broad two-character political satire that combines the real-life antics of George Dubya and Martha Stewart with Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? duo (and a touch of George and Martha Washington). This co-production between Collective: Unconscious and P.S. 122 stars Karen Finley as Martha and newcomer Neil Medlin (the self-described "Paris Hilton of Performance Art") or="eorge. George & Martha is set during a secret rendezvous in a hotel room in New York City during the Republican Convention. Here, they air their embittered legal and political woes into the intimacy of their private relationship. The tragedies and personal triumphs of these self-created icons become intertwined. Their internal struggles become a nightmarish battleground. Bin Laden hides in Bush's bowels. Martha creates invisible nose hair scissors. Bush relapses into a coke binge and Martha flies into a rage over having to drink from a plastic glass. Their pathos and suffering become connected in their symbiotic need to be loved. September 17, 2004 - October 30, 2004, Collective: Unconscious, 279 Church Street, New York, NY 10013.

DEATH OF NATIONS: THE TRAILER

is a sweeping overview of International WOW Company's upcoming epic cycle play DEATH OF NATIONS, a meditation on war, peace, civilization and global economics. The Trailer features an international cast from nine countries on four continents. Beginning as a lecture on global economicupsi by a panel of international economists that goes awry, the play leaps into the global sphere, erupting into an imaginistic world-spanning narrative.

Conceived and Directed by Josh Fox
October 16 at Teatro Heckscher of El Museo del Barrio
1230 Fifth Avenue at 104th Street, New York City
http://www.internationalwow.org/

RIDING UNTIL WE GET THERE
Waging Peace in Manhattan

For eight days, during the Republican National Convention, Eric Wallach rode his bike with a big PEACE sign on the back wearing an upside-down American flag as a cape. From time to time he sang "Get Out of Egypt". The lyrics included: "Bush lied, we cried. The news said he was right. The Constitution has died. So get out and shout tonight." Sometimes he sang "Here Comes the Sun" with one word changed in the opening lyrics: "Little darling, it seems like years since PEACE has been here."

For Eric's personal recollection of the action click here.

CAROLING THE CONVENTIONEERS
A DIRECT ACTION SUCCESS STORY

A New York-based choir named Harmonic Insurgence engaged Republican delegates at their hotels as they came back from the Convention after 11pm on September 1, 2004 singing songs of peace and protest.

The choir stood by the entrance to four hotels and sang songs including: "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free" by Billy Taylor, "We Hate to See Them Go" by Malvina Reynolds, "The Strangest Dream", "Down By The Riverside" and our nation's anthem "The Star-Spangled Anthem" with new lyrics consisting of three repeated words, "Stop the War".

At one point, the choir was met by Texas delegates in cowboys hats who organized themselves with song sheets. They sang three songs including their own anti-Kerry song to the tune of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".

For full account click here.

The State of the Union

Saturday, September 4 at 8pm, Town Hall 123 W 43rd St, New York NY, 212-840-2824. Price: $35-100

The rebels at Mother Jones predict we'll be in need of a good laugh following the GOP's retreat, and there should certainly be ample fodder in its wake to fuel this night of political humor. The State of the Union assembles some our favorite comedians to express their stance on "the issues" with some good old-fashioned buffoonery. Highlights of the lineup include: Air America's The Majority Report host, Janeane Garofalo; the droll and self-deprecating Todd Barry; and Invite Them Up! co-host and creator of the "amazing" singing baby, Eugene Mirman. Proceeds support the efforts of independent, nonprofit media outlets — now that's radical.

GUANTÁNAMO 'Honor Bound to Defend Freedom'

by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo, from spoken evidence, is the real-life situation described by Jamal al-Harith, Bisher al-Rawi, Moazzam Begg and Ruhel Ahmed. Wahab al-Rawi (Ramsey Faragallah) describes his and his brother's arrest in Gambia, where they went to set up a business. Wahab was released, while his brother, Bisher (Waleed Zuatier), was eventually sent to Guantánamo. As played with a winning combination of sardonic warmth and cold rage by Mr. Faragallah, Wahab finds a grim, grotesque humor in the illogic of his captors and interrogators. The tone of Mr. Begg (Harsh Nayyar) — the father of Moazzam (Aasif Mandvi), a young man taken prisoner in Afghanistan, where he was setting up a water distribution system — is simply sad, aggrieved and uncomprehending.

Letters home from Guantánamo are read in counterpoint to statements from politicians like Jack Straw (Joris Stuyck), the British foreign secretary, and Donald Rumsfeld (Robert Langdon Lloyd), the American Secretary of Defense, who is heard answering reporters with an obscuring, logic-twisting bravado worthy of the short-tempered Duchess in "Alice in Wonderland." Lawyers for the detainees (played by Kathleen Chalfant, Steven Crossley and Mr. Zuaiter) try to provide a sense of legal context for what is happening to their clients.
(based on Ben Brantley's New York Times review of the play)

Directed by Nicolas Kent and Sacha Wares. 45 Bleecker Street Theater, at Lafayette Street, East Village.

HOMELAND INSECURITY

A modern Benjamin Franklin reclaims his American heritage and dedicates it to all who have the courage to stay in New York during the Republican Convention.

August 2, 2004, New York, New York - Benjamin Franklin Carney III, a tenth-generation American with family traced from George Washington's surveying team, and from the Ozarks to SoHo, grapples with ambivalence about his country roots in his new solo performance, "HOMELAND INSECURITY." Carney, with wit and heart, unearths his personal history, revealing an America full of tall tales, scandals, murders, and lies.

Monday, August 30th through Sunday, September 5th at The American Place Theatre and plays every night at 8 o'clock. The American Place Theatre is located at 266 West 37th Street on the 22nd Floor (enter at 520 Eighth Avenue), accessible at the 42nd Street stop via the A, C, E, 1, 9, 2, and 3 Subway Lines. Tickets are $12, Seniors and Students $10. Reservations: (212) 802-4536.

International Fringe Festival presents:
JOHN WALKER: THE MUSICAL

August 15 at 9:30 pm, August 20 at 10:45 pm; August 24 at 8 pm; August 26 at 5:15 pm; August 29 at 3 pm

This rock-and-roll black comedy tracks John Walker, the "American Taliban," as he escapes the clutches of a pervy power-hungry government official named E.D. during a spectacular anti-terror event in Times Square. With the aid of a vain hack reporter named Bob, John Walker dashes across the U.S.in a desperate search for a crusading whistleblower named Jessie, a woman who has the secret documents that could exonerate him.

John Walker: The Musical gives insight into why a modern American suburban boy would want to pursue a life based upon fundamentalist Muslim values and fight in a foreign war. It also delves into the feelings of confusion, paranoia and fear that have been interwoven in the current American social climate and how far those feelings can be manipulated and cultivated for political power and control. With rocking songs like "Taliban Plan," "Well if this Ain't America (I Don't Know What Is)" and "Don't Want No Chemicals Dumped on Me," your political anxieties will melt away and you will feel asubversive glee.

Venue: The Michael Schimmel Center at Pace University, 3 Spruce Street (east of Park Row in lower Manhattan) Tickets:$15 For tickets and more info, visit: http://www.johnwalkerthemusical.com/

THE UnCONVENTION:
An American Theater Festival

is an amalgamation of workshops, panel discussions and performance pieces that address the interplay of politics and society. The festival will include heady productions by philospher/writers like Elie Wiesel, Wallace Shawn, and Sophocles along side more raw political lampooning from D.C. and N.Y.C. comics (e.g. Whips N' Cheneys: A Night of Shock and Ha). The festival aims at both inciting pathos, and provoking action "at a time when the world needs fewer people in the audience and a whole lot more on stage!" The UnConvention will take place at various locations throughout August 27 to September 11, 2004. For more info go to http://www.theunconvention.org.

Sheryl Oring's
"I WISH TO SAY" PROJECT

is "an interactive art show in which [Sheryl] set[s] up a portable office -- complete with a manual typewriter -- and ask[s] visitors what they would like to say to the president." From the Bay Area to Foley Square in New York, Sheryl has been conducting this public service, allowing individual voices to be heard (whether the President will read the letters or not). A Champion of free speech, Oring, in August, also participated in a public-art advocates Freedom of Expression National Momument openning. There a massive elevated megaphone was directed at Centre Street. The mega-phone provided a forum for passers-by to express themselves in robust fashion at the pillars of our society such as the Mayor's office Wall Street, and our Courts of Justice. Sheryl's letter writing campaign will be memorialized in an exhibition and a book. Until then look for the scribe on a corner near you.

ONE THOUSAND COFFINS

is a movement that seeks to drive home the dire effects of the Second Gulf War, and pierce the prim-rosed hope of a "war without cost." This group is seeking volunteers to march with them in a 1000 coffins procession "to represent and honor each of our fallen soldiers and marines," who have lost their lives in this war, "and make a bold statement that the truth of their sacrifice cannot be censored." To find out more about this organization go to http://www.newdepression.com/onethousandcoffins/.

VOTING FOR GODOT,

playing off of Beckett's absurdist theatre, is a satirical look at the state of politics in America today. "The new play pokes fun at a twisted electoral system that could reduce even the perfect candidate to utter irrelevance -- IF he ever showed up!" This election-year play will occur throughout the Republican National Convention and beyond -- from Aug. 28 to Sept. 6 at The 14th Street Y Theatre, 344 East 14th St. in Manhattan, New York City. For more information go to http://votingforgodot.com/.

EMBEDDED,

a play written by Tim Robbins, has been described as "a ripped-from-the-headlines satire about the madness surrounding the brave women and men on the front lines in a Mideast conflict. [It] skewers cynical embedded journalists, scheming government officials, a show-tune singing colonel, and the media's insatiable desire for heroes." Robbins although vehemently criticized in mainstream media for his anti-war stance, that hasn't prevented him from recieving critical acclaim, both in cinema and on stage (he is the recepient of a 2004 academy award and has recieved high praise for Embedded). Tickets are $50 and are on sale now at The Public Theater box office, 425 Lafayette Street; on-line at www.publictheater.org and via Tele-charge, (212) 239-6200.

ART & REVOLUTION CONVERGENCE
radical street and theatre performance

began in the streets of Chicago during the Democratic Convention in August, 1996. A group of artists, performers, and organizers sponsored a week-long theatre workshop as part of "active resistance," a movement-building conference of 700 anarchist and radical activists. Several hundred people took masks, theatre, music and giant puppets into the streets to confront the "destructive corporate power that weilds influence in the Democratic Party." That impacting experience inspired them to continue their mission in the furtherance of global workers rights, environmental protection, and basic liberties for all peoples. See them to the left marching on May Day in San Fran. To get involved with their creative fusion of art and activism check out their site at http://www.groundworknews.org/culture/culture-artrevol.html

In the grand tradition of Benny Hill, the Marx Brothers, and Hee Haw, comes the fantastic, fanatical performance art troop of
THE BIOTIC BAKING BRIGADE!

As multinational corporations accelerate the plunder of our world, a militant resistance has formed in response. Diverse in philosophy and targets, diffuse in geography and structure, the movement comprises freedom-loving folks with a sense of aplomb and gastronomics. Fighting a guerrilla media and ground war with the titans of industry, these revolutionary bakers and pie-slingers have achieved in short order what can truly be called a Global Pastry Uprising (GPU). To see some of their greatest hits (no pun intended) which include Bill Gates, The Dutch Fianance Minister, and many more go to http://www.bioticbakingbrigade.org/.

THEATERS AGAINST WAR

is an international network of theater artists responding to the United States' ongoing "War on Terror", aggressive and unilateral foreign policies, and escalating attacks on civil liberties in the US and throughout the world. On Saturday April 17, 2004 Theaters Against War (THAW) is proud to host: Resistance 101: A Pro-Peace & Justice Teach-In in addition to our monthly Freedom Follies! This FREE all-day event on Saturday, April 17th will include interactive panels and workshops with human rights and civil liberties experts and renowned theater artist-activists, capped off with THAW's monthly political theater performance cabaret, The Freedom Freedom Follies, held in the evening. To find out more go to http://www.thawaction.org.

HURRIYYA! (FREEDOM!):
A benefit for justice in Palestine

Featuring speakers, performances, spoken word, video, and music. 7-9pm: Reports on injustice at home and abroad, and what you can do with Kate Rhee (Prison Moratorium Project), Subhash Kateel (DRUM), Suzanne Adely (Al-Awda, Palestinian right of return coalition, Pafny), Kristen Schurr (Democracy Now and Free Speech Radio News). 9-11pm: Performances, live music, spoken word, and video, with Indymedia Palestine, Mahina Movement (fierce women of color performance/music/spoken word), more performers to be announced. 11pm-late: Blackkat DJs Jason Bk, Pow Pow, and Chrome. Who we are: Direct Action for Justice in Palestine is a New York- based collective of activists and humanitarians working in coalition with Palestinian, Israeli, and international peace activists in the Israeli-Occupied West Bank and Gaza. We are individuals and do not represent a particular political ideology or government. June 7, 2002, at Flux Factory (38-38 43rd Street, Sunnyside, Queens).

ALIVE FROM PALESTINE:
Stories Under Occupation

The Al Kasaba Theatre, Ramallah, presents a stageplay that has been deemed "necessary theatre" (The Guardian, UK) for its intimate glimpse into ordinary lives lived under occupation-- the anger, despair, love, loss and frustration. The US performance tour will begin through the sponsorship of Yale University in New Haven, CT, at The Long Wharf Theatre, June 25-29. For more information call 203.787.4282. In Los Angeles at The La Mirada Theatre, Friday, July 5. In San Francisco at The Palace of Fine Arts, Sunday, July 7. For more information on California performances email Nicole at http://www.ncac.org/art/art_now/BintFilmLA@aol.com or call 323.464.6122.

The Tenement Museum and the Immigrants' Theater Project present
AMERICAN DREAMS:
Plays About New York City & the Immigrant Experience

8 weeks of performances and staged readings by The Immigrants Theatre Project. Includes Sajjil ("To Record"), a dramatic exploration of Arab American identity woven from interviews with New Yorkers of all backgrounds, and First Language, a Middle-Eastern woman and her Western son struggle with love, sexual longing, and ethnic belonging. Thursday evenings at 8pm from June 6-Aug. 1. Tenement Theater @ 97 Orchard Street.

AFTER THE RUINS OF KABUL

Lida Abdullah performed "After the Ruins of Kabul" on April 20, 2002, at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica. Filmmaker/performance artist Abdullah describes her latest work as "handfuls of damaged words thrown against the sky that weave a momentary place of hiding." Abdullah's concern for the continuing dispossession and lack of media coverage of refugees worldwide is rooted in her personal experience fleeing her homeland of Afghanistan, moving to India, Germany and finally the U.S. She is at work on another series of short performative videos which engage with the theme of exile and the often unarticulated histories of refugees.

REBEL WITHOUT A PAUSE

Reno, the politically-minded comic, returns with her acclaimed solo show. Much of her originally planned material for this show has been jettisoned in favor of more timely observations in the wake of the World Trade Center disaster. She thinks the show might have more of a town meeting flavor, now, with the potential of audience members speaking out as well. The Zipper Theatre/Bar/Lounge, 336 West 37th Street, NYC. Opened April 18 - Ongoing.

FREEDUMB

is the new global world place...Here three women arrive: each completely different, yet all unpredictable, cunning and carrying razor sharp wits. With a mission to survive amidst a confusion of authority, media power and free asses, they discover the key to protection is holding a flag. Choreographed and directed by Nami Yamamoto. March 21 - March 24, 2002 at P.S.122 in NYC.

HEEL

Jeff McMahon presents a new solo work, HEEL, at the Institute for Studies in the Arts at Arizona State University that examines the cataclysm of the September 11 tragedy through shifting characters, images, and metaphors. Referring to fictional and nonfictional events, HEEL attempts to connect the solo thought with the group think, the bomb with the bomber and the bombed, the agony with analysis. Using excerpts from newspaper reports, films, and novels (Orwell's 1984), HEEL will let out the leash on a subject that has taken over our imaginations: the terrors of what we call freedom.

THE BOMB

An experiment in theatrical critical mass, the International WOW Company, under the direction of Josh Fox, gathered a 35-member ensemble from 6 countries to create an epic play that explores the wide range of opinions and emotional reactions in response to our current global crisis. The play hurtles through 56 years of world events, from the creation of the atomic bomb to Sept. 11, 2001. THE BOMB challenges a host of our media's current assumptions: patriotism, fear, faith in the government and the call for revenge. Feb. 28th - Mar. 17th, 2002 at Clemente Soto-Velez Center, NY.

DAY OF REMEMBRANCE

Drawing from their reactions to the terrorist attacks of September 11, Los Angeles-based artists Shida Pegahi, Denise Uyehara and poetry/spoken word ensemble Zero 3 presented original works at the Day of Remembrance commemoration at the Japanese American National Museum. The three individual pieces lend parallels to the Japanese American internment and the treatment of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. after September 11.

CHOCOLATE IN HEAT:
Growing up Arab in America

After a sold-out and critically acclaimed run in this past year's New York Fringe Festival, Chocolate in Heat by Betty Shamieh will be making an extended run beginning February 21 and closing March 10, 2002, at Theater for the New City. Chocolate in Heat is a set of five interlocking monologues infused with music and dance that take an irreverent look at love, sex, privilege, and the problems of growing up in between two cultures.

Tears of the Ditchdigger (Il Pianto della Scavatrice)

"Tears of the Ditchdigger" struggles with the war in Afghanistan, where the historical lack of political and moral vigilance has created a seed-bed for terrorism and oil-cartel opportunism whose first objective has been the systematic destruction of the Afghan people and culture. If your theater/organization is interested in presenting this work, contact Djalma Primordial Science Laboratory at https://mail.google.com/mail?view=cm&tf=0&ui=1&to=cocog50@hotmail.com or 505.586.2276.

Project Enduring Look

will unfold between Feb. 15 & Feb. 24, 2002 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's 1926 Exhibition Studies Space. Through a series of projections, performances, film and video screenings, actions, and exchanges, PROJECT ENDURING LOOK will extend the boundaries of permissible speech and action, mix up art audiences, community organizers, peace activists, and radical academics, and foster exchanges characterized by openness, critique, & solidarity. FOR MORE INFO, CALL: 773.665-4802.

IMAGINE: IRAQ

The staged reading of 8 new works-in-progress drew 900 people to Cooper Union in NYC on November 19, 2001. The pieces were inspired by the lives of those affected by the US/UK's roles in the Middle East, after ten years of bombing and the imposition of international sanctions on Iraq.

Women in Black

An international activist group, Women in Black stand in silent vigil to protest war, rape as a tool of war, ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses all over the world. On March 8, 2002, Women in Black wore sculptural costumes made by The Women in Black Art Project on the themes of transformation, leadership and struggle during silent vigils in Washington, DC before the US Capitol, the State Department, the Vietnam Memorial, the White House and the entrance to Arlington Cemetery. The costumes were photo-collaged with images & texts they have collected with the help of Women in Black groups in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, the Feminist Peace Network, Amnesty International & other peace and feminist groups. On June 6, 2002, Women in Black stood in solidarity with Jewish and Palestinian women working for peace to mark 35 years of occupation, and the continuing struggle for peace with justice.

Our Grief Is Not A Cry For War

On September 22, 2002, over 100 artists all wearing black filed onto Union Square in NYC, took their places in a semi-circle, and stood for one hour in silence wearing face masks and placards silk-screened with "Our Grief Is Not A Cry For War." Two more performances were held at Times Square on September 25 and October 5.

Complacency: A Renegade Action

On September 21, 2001, performance artist Kat Skraba was delivered on a military stretcher to Hollywood Blvd. in L.A., veiled in a translucent shroud covering her body, revealing the fact that she was bound and gagged by the American flag.

I, Unseen

by Marika Mashburn. An original play about women in Afghanistan under the Taliban at the Oberon Theatre Ensemble in New York. February 8 through February 23, 2002. Call for reservations: 212-560-2241

The Bread and Puppet Theatre

presents a Public Participation Uprising: The Insurrection Mass with Funeral March for a Rotten Idea: A Special Mass for the Aftermath of the Events of September 11th. The Insurrection Mass is a nonreligious service in the presence of several paper mache gods, with secular scripture readings, a fiddle sermon and hymns in which the public is invited to participate. Thursdays-Saturdays through December 23, 2001at 8:00 PM at Theater for the New City in New York. Phone: 212.254.1109.

Reverend Billy & the Church of Stop Bombing

The Church of Stop Bombing thinks that bombing is a sin. It's almost the only kind of sin they object to. Well, bombing and - shopping. They cause each other. Here Reverend Billy preach on Sundays from November 11-December 16, 2001 at 7:30pm at the Bleecker Theater, NYC.

It's OK, Officer!

On 11 October 2001, the New York Surveillance Camera Players (NYSCP) performed an ambulatory version of "It's OK, Officer" in the area between Astor Place and Washington Square Park in Manhattan. The NYSCP wandered around from camera to camera in the NYU student ghetto (the area has a good number of surveillance cameras, many of them operated by NYU), soliciting feedback from passersby. Contrary to the news reports that say that American citizens are willing to give up some of their freedoms for "increased security," the NYSCP once again found that New Yorkers do not see their options as a simple choice between keeping their civil liberties and being "safe" from terrorism.

Sandra Bernhard

performed Bonnie Tyler's melodramatic 1984 hit "Holding Out for a Hero" at her most recent Joe's Pub engagement in NYC. Through her furious, driving rendition of the song, Bernhard disparages the way our media and celebrity culture have exploited the tragic events of September 11.

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