The Phantom Street Artist: Make Amerika Jack'd Again

T H E P H A N T O M S T R E E T A R TI$T MAKE AMERIKA JACK’D AGAIN

In a manner perhaps not anticipated by the German enlightened philosopher... That manner of our day and age which has been addressed to us as a contrived Kulture today... I invite you to join with me to critique our culture and its politics in question with intent to take back our questionable culture through the Street Phantom’s Theater of Question and its enlightened exhibition titled, Make Amerika Jack’d Again at California State University, Stanislaus University Art Gallery on November 9, 2017.

P H A N T O M S T R E E T A R T I$T Mak e Ame rik a J ack ’d Again

300 copies printed The Phantom Street Artist Make Amerika Jack’d Again October 9–November 10, 2017

University Art Gallery Department of Art School of the Arts California State University, Stanislaus One University Circle Turlock, CA 95382

This exhibition and catalog have been funded by: Associated Students Instructionally Related Activities, California State University, Stanislaus

Copyright © 2017 California State University, Stanislaus All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher.

Catalog design and production: Brad Peatross, School of the Arts, California State University, Stanislaus Catalog printing: Catalog photography: courtesy of the artist.

Photographs included are used under the permission of the artist.

ISBN: 978-1-940753-31-7

MAKE AMERIKA JACK’D AGAIN

S O C I A L J U S T I C E IN T H E C E N T R A L V A L LE Y

Make Amerika Jack’d Again represents an

Social Justice in the Central Valley: A Community

opportunity to view the inspirational and often

Focused Conference is a signature event for the

controversial works of the Phantom Street Artist,

College of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

aka Joey Krebs. As the invited artist in conjunction

This year’s conference program is reflective of

with the 3rd annual Social Justice in the Central

the broad spectrum of academic areas of study

Valley: A Community Focused Conference, Joey’s

supported by our faculty and draws on expertise

artwork in many instances forces people to look

and creative talents across the arts (with spoken

very close at issues of race, social injustice, and the

word, hip hop, theatre, installation art), humanities

appropriation and commercialization of street art.

(with creative media, narrative documentation,

Many of the works in this exhibition deal with

ethical voice), and the social and cultural sciences

extremely controversial issues that are at the forefront of our time and it is hoped that this important exhibition leads to interesting and meaningful dialogues about the work.

I would like to thank Joey Krebs for the opportunity to exhibit his inspirational work; Daniel Edwards for recommending Joey be the invited artist in conjunction with the 3rd Annual Conference on Social Justice in the Central Valley; and both Daniel and Janet Owen Driggs for writing insightful catalog essays; the College of the Arts, California State University, Stanislaus for the catalog design, Claremont Print & Copy for the printing of this catalog; and the campus community that came together to help in the installation of the exhibition.

(with attention to local, national, global human rights, immigrant, race and ethnic exposures, and community activism). The variety of voices drawn together for this conference bring us face-to-face with complex struggles for social justice, inviting us to engage with a listening ear and an open heart and mind. The Phantom Street Artist is one of these voices, and his installation reflects one of these invitations to linger contemplatively with the probing reactions stirred within us by the content of our experience standing here before this work.

Allowing the creative arts to speak expressively— by conveying the striking, strident, subtle tones of a collective sensitivity to situations of human life that deserve another look—the sessions featured at this year’s conference encourage us to grapple with humanitarian sensitivities to conceivably rampant

We are also grateful and extend our warmest

inequity, privilege, distortion, anger, repression,

appreciation to the Instructionally Related

oppression-fueled circumstances where the struggle

Activities Program of California State University,

is on to save lives and improve the lot of the living.

Stanislaus, as well as anonymous donors for the

An installation like Make Amerika Jack’d Again

funding of the exhibition and catalogue.

conveys the urgency of addressing these issues while the iron is hot. Engage!

Dean De Cocker, Director, University Art Gallery

Jim Tuedio,

California State University, Stanislaus

Dean, CAHSS California State University, Stanislaus

You don’t know what art is?

Swinging through the city like a winged shadow, the Phantom Street Artist wants to burst the South Sea Bubbles that hold contemporary society and the contemporary art world in thrall.

Once upon a time the Phantom sprayed the streets of Los Angeles with human silhouettes, and gained international recognition on the cover of an equally burst-intending, mega-selling album

by Rage Against the Machine. But graffiti, which the Phantom describes as “an indigenous voice to challenge oppressive social and cultural notions of conformity,” became “a gimmick, marketed by elite private interest groups whose underhand designs result in the gentrifying of our communities.”1 Rejecting the recuperation, the Phantom expanded his practice. “The new school graffiti artist,” he explains, “expresses themselves through protest with a hybrid of multi-disciplinary, comprehensive, expressive forms. Referencing semiotics, post structuralism, neo-murals, media-staged performance, tagged barrio design, and transcendental throw ups, they practice a new language that is beyond hermeneutics.”

“Q U E S T I O N I N G O U R K U LT U R E I N Q U E S T Dancing with the ghost of Expressionist Emile Nolde, the Phantom’s hybridity aims to make images “so sharp and genuine that they never could be hung in scented drawing rooms.”2 They include an equalizing conflation of fascist, patriotic, and commercial insignias; Abraham Lincoln as drunken sot; red carpet performances with an unhappy dwarf; and a long-standing cage-fight challenge to art world insiders Shepherd Fairey and Jeffrey Deitch, the former director of LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Using aggressively gestural brushwork, a garish palette, and distorted figures, Nolde violated the bourgeois sensibilities of early 20th century Europe, which sought to overlay swamps of inequality with a lace-trimmed doily. Using parody and self-parody in ways that only someone with a decades-long history of street activity and Rage Against the Machine-levels of street-credibility could pull off, the Phantom similarly contravenes the bourgeois liberal sensitivities of our age. He does it with tastelessness and uncool; with a Kaleidoscope of unKool that sends squirms of embarrassment down the liberal spine.

The Phantom checks the right boxes in the art world’s unwritten codes of correctness: working-class Chicano street artist, check; détournement of popular tropes and commercial culture that turns “the expressions of the capitalist system against itself,”3 check; an extensive art-theory vocabulary, check. But then, Diogenes-like, he makes a dwarf cry and pisses all over the agora.

As the Tate Gallery defines it, deconstruction “involves discovering, recognizing and understanding the underlying and unspoken and implicit assumptions, ideas and frameworks of cultural forms.”4 “But Writer, artist, and curator Janet Owen what’s the point of institutional critique,” says the Phantom, “if Driggs co-authored Preserving a Home the institution refuses to apply it to the inside”? for Veterans (Les Figues Press) and It’s in the squirm that rupture happens. Was it inevitable that the scented “assumptions, ideas and frameworks” of early 20th century Europe led to the First World War? To what inevitabilities will today’s perfumed but unspoken frameworks lead? I may not know what art is, but I know what I want it to do. “Art Saves Lives?” – yes, but only when it kicks against “radical chic” and the liberal pricks.

Quotations from the Phantom Street Artist derive from conversations between the artist and the author, 2010-2017 Emile Nolde, reported in Richard L. Lewis, Susan Ingalls Lewis: The Power of Art, Wadsworth Publishing 2013, p.397 3 Douglas B. Holt: Cultural Strategy Using Innovative Ideologies to Build Breakthrough Brands, Oxford University Press 2010, p.252 4 Tate Online Glossary: www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/deconstruction, accessed 11/22/2017 1

2

Something More Than Just Survival (Proboscis). Hammer Museum, Annenberg Foundation, KCET Artbound, Artillery, ArtUS, Art Review, and Puppet Life have published other writings. Janet teaches art history at Cypress College, CA, and participates in collective identity “Owen Driggs” with Matthew Owen Driggs. Together and separately, their artworks and programs have been exhibited internationally.

So..

If you don’t want a ticket you better zip it..

If you want a show you better pay your dues Ain’t much better if you play it with your jewels...

T I O N . .”

Coz it’s so easy it’s so right Coz it’s so easy it’s so right To Teabag it all night If you want a show you better pay your dues Ain’t much better if you play it with your jewels...

Coz it’s so easy it’s so right Coz it’s so easy it’s so right To Ass-kiss it all night...

If you want a show you better pay your dues Ain’t much better if you play it with your jewels...

Coz it’s so easy it’s so right Coz it’s so easy it’s so right To Brown-nose it all night...

Ours is a time of fabricated and contrived realities with its mocking of history.

Ours is a time of fabricated and contrived realities with its mocking of history. An age where a President can ridicule media, its trans soldiers, its immigrants, the disabled and its Black NFL Athletes. Previously through diverse platforms as a photo journalist, performance artist and Reporter, I have directed artwork and branding for Rage Against the Machine as their Album Cover Artist whose critical and polemic satirical commentary on the contrived swindled movement of Street Kulture by game-players like Banksy, Jeffrey Deitch and Shepard Phoney. My critique unveils the attempted swindled ruse of media MOCA’s Art of the Street Exhibition package as a speculative multibillion dollar collection soiled and stained with mammon as its contemporary art world money making scheme.

Through inquiry the Street Phantom Questions our culture in Question who cast himself through many appropriated roles as this generations new cultural street revisionist, a social satirist who is a philosophical rush hour epater raconteur, a muckraker like Orson Welles who uncovers the fraudulent campaigns of its greedy carpetbaggers..

A great Cultural critic once said, “We have learned that History has never belonged to us,” eloquently argued by Historian and Philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer “but we belong

A great Cultural critic once said...

to it.” Thus, Gadamer continues, “the first item on the agenda is finding the way to win back a horizon that includes art and history together.”

“Opinion management with its ‘promotion’ and ‘exploitation’ goes beyond advertising and media; it invades the process of ‘public opinion’ by systematically creating news events and or exploiting events which attract attention”.

—Jurgen Habermas

The true Visionaries of our Kulture are those who practice the action of foretelling or prophesying future events.

A great Kultural Critic is like a forensic scientist who at a crime scene can reveal in analysis who murdered Kulture with its great reason why and its motive..

As a true prognostician, Walter Lippman wrote in 1925 of a “Phantom Public,” where out of default and out of ignorance the future public will not have time to educate themselves in becoming better informed thinkers or citizens. Ignorance will reign as the ultimate obscenity of our time where only stupidity will be introduced as its favorite colloquial. It was Walter Lippmann, who argued his lack of faith in the democratic system, expressing that the public which includes culture exists only as an illusion, myth, or a phantom. In the 1960s, Jurgen Habermas wrote of a public sphere which has been acquired by the liberal European and Eurocentric bourgeoisie of the 19th century where its public and its space has become lost to the world of consumerism media and publicity.

Lost to those who consume Kulture and its consumption of commodity culture dictated by its elite select few through its owned manipulation of defining culture through its artifice of mass media.

So called Street Art and its language as a form have today become appropriated by the new speculative hegemonic market and its private sectors like the Former MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch with his exhibit “Art in the Streets” aka CA$HING IN ON THE STREETS who have literary attempted to swindle and manipulate the public by creating instant hyped careers of prized Street Artist as commodified objects token white boys Banksy aka FAKESY and Shepard Fairey Phoney..

Many great writers like the Italian Post Marxist Critic Gianni Vattimo have dedicated his life to the announcement and its decline as well as its degradation, its crisis and its extinction of public consciousness defined as pensiero debole..

We begin our collective’s work by calling into question Shepard Fairey’s unethical cultural practices of producing art which is lifted from important cultural and historical third world and misrepresented sources. Shepard Fairey most recently stole the work from an AP photographer for the OBAMA campaign. Fairey has years of exploitative actions in manufacturing radical chic as mercantile.

In the tradition of the great 19th Century Duals, the Phantom Street Artist personally called out and challenged Shepard Fairey to a MMA fight in the cage, the proposed Duel Match will address Fairey’s legitimacy and credibility in question by systematically uncovering a decade of culture thievery and exploitation which has been revealed by Mark Vallens website. There are many others important writers and artists who have identified and shared the same critique. This is an important issue to address as Fairey is operating as a wolf in sheep’s clothing presenting himself as a Street Artist who is citing creative commons when in fact he is hiding under the umbrella of Fair Use. The artist says he is defending artist everywhere when he is only protecting his assets and other potential lawsuits. The so called rip-off Artist Shepard Fairey is facing serious allegations of Copyright Infringement from the AP. There is a strong organic movement which is being directed towards unveiling individuals like Shepard Fairey who are exploitative in their fundamental practice as the merchant who has violated a decade of copyright laws as well as misrepresenting the media in the marketplace.

Each time the RIP OFF ARTIST Shepard Fairey is legitimately critiqued in the Media he and his minions can only respond by hurling insulting epitaphs or smear campaigns against Brian Sherwin, Lincoln Cushing, Josh MacPhee, and Favianna Rodriguez, Mark Vallens and The Phantom Street Artist. He and His camp of hired publicist have no reasonable argument or substantial response to Fairey’s closeted ten year decade of copyright violations and infringed actions.

The opponents to Shepard Fairey are not one singular individual but a collective of many who have taken a respectable stand against him and his Companies, Greed and Exploitative Acts. Its gives me great honor to present our collectives Art Saves Lives latest critical cause as well as a proposed charitable event.

The recent conjured 20 year Retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston on February 6th 2009 is a sham. This is a reputable Museum which has chosen to support over a decade of Fairey’s unapologetic infringed actions without calling into question the true authority of its sources. The Phantom says, “Art and its modern day discourse can no longer exist within the confined borders of white walls but its galleries have turned into an appropriate cages to settle the score of rhetoric dispute and conflict.”

Now the world of art and designers have weighed in against $hephard Fairey.

Writers, Critics, Artists and Designers have unilaterally and collectively have spoken out against him and his exploitative blatant thievery corporation. Renowned Designer Milton Glaser was quoted in Print Magazines titled article “Milton Glaser on Shepard Fairey” stating: “Some in the design community feel the “by” in that first sentence is in question, since many of Fairey’s images are based on preexisting photos and illustrations. And this week the issue exploded: The Associate Press has accused him of copyright infringement for his ubiquitous blue-and-red Obama poster--which they claim was based on an AP photo.”

In response The Fairey has decided to take the offence and sue the AP. Mat Gleason is an art critic, writer, and publisher of the Coagula Art Journal of Los Angeles, California who shared his explicit thoughts in a video interview that appeared in the Ovation Network documentary, “Art or Not”, Gleason compared Fairey’s art to advertisements for Coca-Cola, saying; “They’re both on the street, they’re both promoting a brand, and at the end of the day, it’s a very empty experience.” Gleason went on to say that, “I think that the art experience is to raise someone’s consciousness, and at the end of the day the Shepard Fairey experience is to promote the brand of Shepard Fairey as a corporate entity, so I don’t consider it art. He is about the furthest thing from art there is.” Mat Gleason went on to add that.

“I just consider him to be a successful designer and marketer who pretends to be an artist” Josh MacPhee of Justseeds/Visual Resistance Artists’ Cooperative is a decentralized community of artists who have banded together to both sell their work online in a central location and to collaborate with and support each other and social movements. Josh was quoted as saying: “One important thing to acknowledge is that Fairey is not just appropriating, but also copyrighting images that exist in our common history. Posters and graphics made in the heat of political struggles are often made by anonymous individuals or groups that want to keep the images in the public domain for use in further struggle. It is unfortunate that Fairey is attempting to personally capitalize on the generosity of others and privatize and enclose the visual commons (as seen by the prominent copyright symbols on his website and products).”

The Street Phantom pulled no punches in echoing…“Fairey is dismissive of critique. His thinking is one dimensional he employs cut-and-paste as his artwork. He inveigled against the depredations of consumer culture, but his design firm works on a “Want It!” campaign for Saks Fifth Avenue. Shepard Fairey wants the street cred of a revolutionary artist extolling freedom fighters and quoting Noam Chomsky all the while doing “guerrilla” marketing campaigns for Netscape and Pepsi.”

True Fair Use is employed for purposes such as social criticism, comment, news reporting, education, scholarship, or research, and is not an infringement of copyright. These uses generally must be educational, non-profit uses. Fair Use safeguards artists who critically reference language such as satire and parody.

But Fairey’s work clearly isn’t a parody of anything other then to profit, exploit and gain economically.

Fairey Use TM steals in gratuitous interest.

In the tradition of the great 19th Century Duals, the Phantom Street Artist personally called out and challenged Shepard Fairey to a MMA fight in the cage, the proposed Duel Match will address Fairey’s legitimacy and credibility in question by systematically uncovering a decade of culture thievery and exploitation...

YOU DON ’ T K N OW W H A T A RT I S...

M R M A STER PI ZZA

Through decades of protest in many cities and venues the Street Phantom language of inquiry premieres spectacle and in exhibition through ironic stagings.. The Phantom directed and participated in vignettes and performance which questions the integrity and elitist mission of the once excommunicated MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch and his premiere Graffiti Exhibition “ART IN THE STREETS� today satirically known with its newly revised title as CA$HING IN ON THE STREETS which once opened to a great media puffery and fanfare eventually fell to the protest of the Phantom Street Artist and its collective of street artist activism in Los Angeles on Nov 3rd 2012.

Our emphasis is on material that exposes things in which the public is not supposed to know of or that we have somehow been lead to forget.

Within this context, our collective mission is twofold: one, to develop an independent alternative media and two, to make alternative voices and issues heard in the mainstream media.

PYR8FREETV The Phantom Street Artist and its collective are responsively creating an independent media channel to document the voices of marginal related content and its issues in the world. PYR8FREETV is an American talking head news satire television program hosted by the Street Artist which is grounded in improvisation, parody, pranks and lampoons current events and social stories....

“Q U E S T I O N I N G O U R K U LT U R E I N Q U E S T I O N . .”

On October 16th of this year, the anniversary of medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists in protest for civil rights on the Olympic podium in Mexico City in 1968, Phantom Street Artist Joey Krebs worked in the CSUS art gallery to put the finishing touches on a 14’ mural of NFL quarterback and Black Lives Matter activist, Colin Kaepernick. Ostracized like Smith and Carlos, who were expelled from the Olympic village for their protest, Kaepernick seems blackballed from football for taking a knee in protest during the national anthem. A hometown hero from Turlock and national symbol for social justice – Colin Kaepernick was the perfect subject for The Phantom Street Artist during his residency on campus.

I first met Joey Krebs while he was coordinating a revolt against director Jeffrey Deitch of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles for whitewashing a controversial anti-war mural by Blu at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. So, when we were discussing which artist to invite to campus in conjunction with the 3rd Annual Conference on Social Justice in the Central Valley, I felt Joey would be perfect.

Joey is a foremost expert of street art and very territorial in its regard. His protests are largely aimed at the commercialization and appropriation of street art by artists like Shepard Fairey and Banksy. Joey is regarded as the real deal; an artist who used the streets to express himself for the betterment of the community, not his pockets, which is why he was the perfect artist for Rage Against the Machine’s Battle of Los Angeles album cover, which features a silhouetted figure with fist in the air like Smith and Carlos. Joey is also the street artist in RATM’s videos for Bulls on Parade and Renegades of Funk. Joey’s a legend.

The Kaepernick Mural represents a stylistic first for the Phantom Street Artist. Joey explains that as the Phantom, he only spray painted silhouettes of figures. This mural was not a silhouette, but a fleshed out figure pasted up with elements of collage which depict cityscapes within the figure. He modeled the paste-up with sand paper and paint, and included a few of the signature paint drips for which he is known. I think it is one of the finest pieces he has ever done.

I am greatly appreciative for all Joey accomplished during his two-week residency, recruiting students to assist him, being accessible by keeping the gallery door open and taking time to speak with students. He wanted to express his protest against some of the socio-political ugliness we are experiencing today, and he was very thoughtful about it. He wanted to bring as much fight as he thought appropriate, making sure he lived up to the premise of the conference of which he was invited to participate. He always ran his ideas past others for approval, which was a polite thing to do.

By bringing the street and cityscape into the CSUS art gallery the way artist Joey Krebs has, I expect we’ll be referring to his exhibit as a template for future presentations hosted in conjunction with the Annual Conference on Social Justice.

Daniel Edwards, Associate Professor of Sculpture, California State University, Stanislaus

JOEY KREBS

When there’s danger all about?

SHAFT! Right On! They say this cat Shaft is a bad mother.

SHUT YOUR MOUTH! I’m talkin’ ‘bout Shaft, Shut your Mouth..

-Shaft, Issac Hayes To honor the great cause of Colin Kaepernick in defense of his inalienable right to properly exercise his free speech, through peaceful means as protest, I have sculpted a surrealist high fashion wardrobe line which through ironic trope illustrates its Owners as the New ‘NFL Team Klan Fan designers who are this age’s branded plantation Masters practiced at ‘shafting’ its most outspoken players.

Colin Kaepernick, Local graduate of Pittman High School in Turlock, California who is the former NFL 49er Quarterback and the subject of my exhibition has just formally announced through release that he is seeking legal justice in retaining the legal services of Geragos and Geragos Law Firm.

Mark Geragos has previously represented top celebrities and personalities like Michael Jackson, Chris Brown and Winona Ryder, among many others who seek social and legal justice.

Colin Kaerpernick has retained the law firm of Mark Geragos to responsibly provide him with justice against the back door collusion of its NFL owners who have blacklisted and terminated his career.

I have also directed a mural size portrait which measures 14 ft x 6 ft through a limited edition print which honors Colin’s name and cause and titled:

SONZ OF BITCHES.

FILMOGRAPHY HARVEY GIRL FROM SHANGHAI - Michael Frost Helsinki Films 3FACES OF EVE - Michael Frost Helsinki Films WEATHERED UNDERGROUND DAVID DONOHUE/I-CHOOSE FILMS VENICE UNDERGROUND - Eric De La Barre/ Jeff Most Films 29 PALMS - Bruno Dumont/ Tradart Films STARK RAVING MAD - Michael Bockman/ Zane Productions THE BROKEN - Stephen Rush/ Broken Films THE DISCONTENTS - Andrew Jackson/ Incandescent Films SHADOW HOURS - Isaac Eaton/ Newmark Films 50 ODD DOLLARS - Stephen Goldmann/The Collective GUIDO TAKES A HIKE - Joe Tokin/Alisa Productions MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL - Wim Wenders/ Icon BEING JOHN MALKOVICH - Spike Jones/Propaganda XICANO - Eddie Alguelles/Xicano Film TAXI,TAXI - L. Miller/Mermaid Films HERO LOVER FOOL - Joe Ritter/Zero Pix POISON IVY II - Anne Gorsaud/Cinetel LORD OF ILLUSIONS - Clive Barker/MGM MUSIC VIDEOS/INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION RENEGADES OF FUNK - Steve Murashige/ Revolver Films MARTINA MC BRIDE - Thom Oliphant/ The Collective ROBBIE WILLIAMS PROMOvKyle LaBrache/Atlas Pictures STARS IN A DOPE SHOW - Paul Hunter/Mars Media MONSTER TRUCK - Ted Crittenden/Arsenal GREENAPPLE QUICKSTEP - George Vale/X-RayFilms BULLS ON PARADE - Peter Christopherson/ Squeak Films LION BAR - David Hodge/Tony Kaye Films LONG WHITE CADILLAC - Neil Abramson/Propaganda BACK TO THE WALL - Meiert Avis/ Windmill Lanes ROCK OF LIFE - Alex Proyas/Propaganda PIANO IN THE DARK - Dominic Sena/Propaganda THEATER/PERFORMANCE ART SINGLE COLOR RAINBOW - Fountainhead Theater INVISIBLE DARKNESS - Zero Gallery/Los Angeles LOLLAPALOOZA II - Los Angeles COMMERCIALS AVAILABLE ON REQUEST

ART SAVES LIVES Mission Art Saves Lives seeks to develop collaborative goals, we will: • Use network to build diverse relationships between creative organizations and professionals like yourself.

• Link our collaborators -- the best and the brightest talent in our community with production professionals with diverse companies, which employ our creative problem solving solutions?

• Be more than a creative service.

• Become a powerful mediation and marketing tool.

• Leverage and engage the latest digital technology to quickly and efficiently accomplish our goals.

• Develop a language that distinguishes our creative work in Culture today.

• Seek out new ways to serve our community by developing new features and • technical innovations that add new commentary and value to the expressive work, site or event.

• Encourage and invite our creative community to engage in an open creative dialogue with us.

We have assembled a diverse creative team called Art Saves Lives. Our Collective is committed to social interaction across diverse expressions. Art Saves Lives fosters select developmental projects with many Individuals, Companies, Movements, Activist Causes and Disciplines who dare to make commentary, cross-diverse mediums and new genres with the intent of creating new visual delineations of Society, Culture and Art. The diverse work that I will create in development proposes, critiques, informs and educates the public outside of traditional media formats and norms, The aim of Art Saves Lives (“ASL”) is to provoke socio-political and cultural change through the creative arts, to promote discourse and take action in critiquing and changing our culture and society. We seek to work directly with enlightened individuals and organizations who speak the new language of media, communities, of groups and of causes to place Distinctive images in the Public and in the Media. Our goal is not just to provide an Image but also a Social Commentary that engages in a social critical discourse through engaging the cultural landscapes of our time.. I am the Activist Artist who created the infamous urban silhouettes for Rage Against the Machine and creatively directed their merchandising, videos branding album cover and logo.

Our collective Art Saves Lives is an interdisciplinary group that pursues projects, which focus on the mélange interactions of Art, Music, Video, Politics and Economy in the conception and realization of Media Commentary as Art. We commit to socially engaged action through media performances, exhibitions, education, and community activities. We create interdisciplinary projects with individuals and groups such as yours, which crossdiverse genres and appropriate new media, creating new models for art and culture. We welcome people from all disciplines to journey with us in challenging existing specializations, divisions, and intellectual, aesthetic, and economic paradigms.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS California State University, Stanislaus

Dr. Ellen Junn, President

Dr. Kimberly Greer, Provost/Vice President of Academic Affairs

Dr. James A. Tuedio, Dean, College of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Department of Art

Dr. Carmen Robbin, Chair, Professor

Dean De Cocker, Professor

Martin Azevedo, Assistant Professor

Jacob Been, Lecturer

James Deitz, Lecturer

Daniel Edwards, Associate Professor

Jessica Gomula-Kruzic, Professor

Chad Hunter, Lecturer

David Olivant, Professor

Ellen Roehne, Lecturer

Dr. Staci Scheiwiller, Associate Professor

Susan Stephenson, Assistant Professor

Jake Weigel, Assistant Professor

Meg Broderick, Administrative Support Assistant II

Andrew Cain, Instructional Technician I

Jon Kithcart, Equipment Technician II

University Art Gallery

Dean De Cocker, Director

Nikki Boudreau, Gallery Assistant

Special Thanks

Thanks to all the members of Art Saves Lives who personally assisted with the artwork,

photographs, installation and video of the installations exhibited here. —Joey Krebs