PRESS RELEASE from FUSE magazine: Winter Issue Launch & PINKY SHOW Exhibition Opening

FUSE MAGAZINE IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THE LAUNCH OF OUR WINTER ISSUE!

The winter issue features a conversation between Winnipeg-based artist and curator Milena Placentile and The Pinky Show, Vancouver’s Randy Lee Cutler writing about Truth and Reconciliation, Gita Hashemi on the Women’s movement in Iran and Francisco Fernando Granados’ column Reflections of an Ungrateful Refugee. Also in this issue, an Olympic Index by Am Johal and a call to action from No One is Illegal Vancouver. Artist projects by Mel Chin and Kevin Rodgers and reviews of the 2nd Annual Palestine film festival, Omar Fast’s Nostalgia, Roger Hallas’ Reframing Bodies, ATSA’s Change exhibition and the experimental shorts program from ImagineNative 2009.

EXHIBITION OPENING: THE PINKY SHOW : Class Treason Stories (excerpts)

Toronto Free Gallery and Fuse magazine are pleased to present The Pinky Show’s latest multi-media installation, Class Treason Stories (excerpts) organized by Milena Placentile.

EXHIBITION DATES: January 14 – February 21, 2010

OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, January 14 at 8pm. Opening reception is in conjunction with Fuse magazine’s winter edition launch. See below for more details.

ARTIST TALK: Please join and the human representatives of the Pinky Show for an artist talk. January, 16 at 4pm.

TORONTO FREE GALLERY
1277 Bloor Street West
Toronto, ON M6H 1N7
tel. 416-913-0461

PINKY SHOW summary:

From an undisclosed desert location, somewhere between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, a collective of gently voiced cats produce and disseminate an educational project called The Pinky Show, intended to cultivate intellectual curiosity, openness, and compassion.

Focusing on information and perspectives that have been misrepresented, suppressed, ignored, or otherwise excluded from mainstream discussion, Pinky and her friends use a variety of formats (i.e. online videos, visual art, books and 'zines, blogging, etc.) to explore the unseen world in ways that are easy to understand, with special attention given to reconnecting information (plentiful in our contemporary world) to its oft-ignored ethical and moral dimensions.

The Pinky Show's video episodes are generally organized around "simple" questions: What is settler colonialism? Is the War in Iraq legal or illegal? How do we get rid of nuclear weapons? They consider the mainstreaming of progressive ideals to be a foundational component to any broad strategy to create a more aware citizenry - one that is more apt to understand, support, and participate in the vital work being done by the many thousands of social change organizations established throughout the world.

In addition to material production, they also deploy human representatives to carry out their educational objectives via diverse forms of community programming including workshops and other public presentations, exhibitions, and agitprop dissemination. Some examples include Picturing Politics: Artists Speak Truth to Power (Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, Virginia), Encounter on Radical Education (Ljubljana, Slovenia), and study circles and workshops with the Center for Hegemony Studies (Honolulu, Hawaii).

• • • • •
Class Treason Stories (excerpts) seeks to provoke questions about the nature of education and the application of knowledge for either socially beneficent or individualist and competitive purposes. It inquires about the transformations we could each undertake in order to move toward a genuinely ethical state of being.

A well-established internet phenomenon with fans worldwide, this exhibition marks The Pinky Show’s first visit to Canada organized by Milena Placentile. After launching at Gallery 1C03 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Class Treason Stories (excerpts) will join us in Toronto before moving on to Sherbrooke, Quebec.

The Pinky Show is a project of Associated Animals Inc. - a non-profit educational organization based in the United States. For more information, visit http://www.pinkyshow.org/

• • • • •

For press inquiries and photos please contact: Izida Zorde at izida@fusemagazine.org. Toronto Free Gallery is a non-profit art space dedicated to supporting work that deals with social justice, cultural, sustainability and environmental issues. We our proud to receive support from the Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts and Trillium Foundation.

The Pinky Show in FUSE Magazine

Posted by Pinky.

Nice news! The Pinky Show is going to be the cover story in the Winter issue of FUSE magazine (website at www.fusemagazine.org)! FUSE is an art/culture/politics magazine published out of Toronto, Canada, and Bunny and I were interviewed by Canadian art curator Milena Placentile for the magazine a few weeks ago. I remember it was fun (talking with Milena is always fun) but unfortunately I don't remember anything we talked about - hopefully we didn't say anything too ridiculous. Anyway, today we got to see a preview of the cover:

Pretty neat, huh? As you can imagine Bunny is real happy with the cover!

The launch party for the winter issue is actually going to be held in conjunction with the opening of our Class Treason Stories exhibition at Toronto Free Gallery: Thursday, January 14, 2010, at 8pm. The exhibition runs till February 21 - everybody who can get to Toronto by February 21 please come see our show! But make sure you wear something warm - Toronto can get really cold in the winter!

TORONTO FREE GALLERY
1277 Bloor Street West
Toronto, ON M6H 1N7
tel. 416-913-0461

For more information, please read this.

Take care,
pinky

COP15 Happening Now; New PS Voice Over Project

Posted by Bunny.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference is going on right now (December 7 - December 18, 2009). You can follow its progress here: http://en.cop15.dk/

A couple of weeks ago the folks at WeForest (WeForest.org) asked Pinky if she would be willing to do a guest voice over for a video they'll be using at COP15. The video is supposed to help them focus attention on reforestation using permaculture techniques as a strategy to fight climate change. Unlike some people who think that climate change is just part of an elaborate conspiracy to usher in a New World Order (hello YouTube people?), we think that human activity really does drive climate change and, if done properly, reforesting previously destroyed forest-lands seems like a pretty reasonable step in the right direction.

Anyway, here's the video, as it came out. Just to be clear, we didn't make the video. We just did the voice over.​

Oh hey, if you want to see a good case study presentation of how this would actually work, please watch this TED video by Willie Smits. It's only 20 minutes long but I think you will be pretty amazed, and not just by how he can seemingly talk without ever using commas and periods.

Bye. Bunny.​

Afghanistan, continued.

Posted by Kim.

This is kind of like a continuation of Bunny's post from Wednesday about the war in Afghanistan.

Phyllis Bennis (the same Phyllis Bennis that explained the Iran thing to us last year) is really fantastic at making complicated foreign policy issues easy to understand. So I was happy to find an article at the Institute for Policy Studies website where she breaks down the speech President Obama gave the other day on Afghanistan. Please read it!

[ Go here to read the whole article! ]

For those of you who are too lazy to click a link, here is an excerpt:

"What Was Left Out [from President Obama's escalation speech]:

• The 18-month timeline references only the “beginning” of transferring U.S. troops out of Afghanistan; there was no reference to finishing transfer of all troops out of Afghanistan and ending the occupation. The words “exit” or “exit strategy” do not appear in the speech, and the word “withdraw” appears only in a reference to what the U.S. will NOT do.

• There was absolutely no explanation of how this year’s $30 billion additional costs for the 30,000 more troops, on top of the billions more already in the pipeline, would be paid for...

• The speech assumed Afghan support for the U.S. occupation, ignoring the massive evidence to the contrary...

• Obama paid no attention to the increasingly visible opposition to the Karzai government and the U.S. occupation from the majority Pashtun population — whose southern and eastern Afghanistan territory will be the operations center for the new troop escalation...

• There was no reference to the U.S.-paid mercenaries (both local and internationals, all paid through U.S. contractor corporations) in Afghanistan, whose numbers rose by 40% just between June and September, now totaling 104,101, and already outnumbering U.S. troops...

...Obama also did not acknowledge that about 30% of all U.S. casualties in the 8-year war in Afghanistan have occurred during the 11 months of his presidency. He did not remind us that the cost of this war, with the new escalation, will be about $100 billion a year, or $2 billion every week, or more than $11 million every hour. He didn’t tell us that the same one-year amount, $100 billion, could cover the cost of ALL of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals: clean water, health care, primary education and vaccinations for the people of every one of the poorest 21 countries in the world..."

The article's very good, I hope you all read it. It's rare for someone to carefully go point-by-point over an important speech and show exactly what is being said, and also what is not being said. Studying the difference between the two is an effective way to learn how politicians are very crafty at taking advantage of what the public doesn't know or understand in order to accomplish dishonesty, often even without lying! They practice this constantly and the public doesn't counter this with learning anything meaningful so of course the politicians win all the time.

In other news, I have been working on my own comic strip. It is called The Adventures of Super Bunny and Kim. The first one is about how Bunny and I were at a store and I couldn't reach something on a shelf but Bunny's a lot bigger than me so she got it for me. The hardest part is drawing the pictures.

Bye-bye for now! ~kim

Bunny Mailbag: More Death for Afghanistan?

Posted by Bunny.

As we expected, we got a lot of e-mails today asking us if we think U.S. President Obama's announcement that he plans to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan is a good idea.

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: The U.S. needs to stop this deceptive and catastrophic "War on Terror". U.S. Americans have to be the ones to stand up against their own leaders' imperialist desires. Out of Iraq. Out of Afghanistan. Now. And the U.S. needs to take responsibility for all of the death, destruction, and suffering its caused. Also, the leaders of the political establishment and business elite most responsible for carrying out and supporting these vicious policies must be held accountable and punished. These are the most basic, concrete first steps that can be done to address the ongoing disaster we are all guilty of accepting.

Must read: this Marjorie Cohn essay we noted in 2008.

We've been reiterating similar logic over and over for years now, but somehow we still receive a lot of e-mails every day asking us things like "How can we win in Afghanistan?" or "How can we withdraw from Afghanistan and still protect our national interests in the region?" To which I have to ask: Are we really speaking a language that is so difficult to understand?

Maybe U.S. Americans need their moral and political destiny framed in terms of what they seem to understand best: Money. For your consideration, here are a couple of resources specifically relating contemporary colonial warring to $$The Bottom Line$$:​

View fullsize

Notes re: 2009 Federal Budget (from War Resisters League)

Data re: Military Spending (from International Peace Bureau)

And, just for comparison, the IPB also includes dollar estimates for achieving the following:

Shelter for every human being: $21 billion
Eliminate ALL Starvation and Malnourishment: $19 billion
Clean Safe Water for every human being: $10 billion
Eliminate ALL Nuclear Weapons: $7 billion
Eliminate ALL Landmines: $4 billion
Eliminate ALL Illiteracy: $5 billion
Relief for Refugees everywhere: $5 billion
Stabilize Human Population Growth: $10.5 billion
Prevent Soil Erosion Globally: $24 billion

[ source ]

So yes, war is bad, expensive, and, not surprisingly, also very wasteful. If Americans wanted to stop this ridiculous tragedy NOW, a decent first step would be to organize and pressure your so-called representatives to cut off war funding - the U.S. military would have to withdraw from Afghanistan near-immediately. Just shaking our tiny furry fists at it from a distance does absolutely nothing. ~Bunny.

....................................

Posted by Pinky: Thanks Bunny. I'd like to add one more link relating to the war and money, the National Priorities Project's excellent Afghanistan Fact Sheet: The Numbers Behind the Troop Increase. ]​

Wheee! I'M ON UR LAND... Now Zoomable!

Posted by Pinky.

I'm so excited! Okay, so I'm a total work-nerd and I've been fuzzying around with a little software contraption that makes zoomable big pictures. It's kind of hard to explain in words but easy to enjoy once you start playing around with it...

Click on the image below to start. [ Note: It's a big picture so it might take a few moments to load - depends on your internet connection speed. ]​

Instructions: [ Note: This feature is now obsolete as of PS website v3.0. ]
• Mouse your cursor onto the picture to start.
• Press the SHIFT key to zoom in.
• Press the CONTROL key to zoom out.
• Click & drag your mouse to move around in the image (only works once you're zoomed in).

Did it work? It's neat, right?

I'm going to ask Bunny to clean up the interface later but I wanted to post this today because tomorrow is Thanksgiving and... yeah, you know.

Take care,
pinky

....................................

Posted by Bunny: I also added the triptych from the On Native Land series to the archive page.

Academic Freedom Mini-Zine: I don't get it...

Posted by Pinky.

Thank you for everyone who has sent me well-wishes. My cold is going away. I'm still coughing and sniffling but my fever is gone and I definitely feel a lot better. My voice still sounds a bit weird though - Bunny has taken to calling me "sexy Pinky" the past several days - which is a problem because I have to record a guest voice over for a reforestation project thing at the end of this week. I hope I don't mess that up.

Anyway, here's a nice e-mail we received tonight:

Dear Pinky & Bunny, I think it's awesome that you guys came to Winnipeg! You have no idea how excited me and lots of other people were to have you here. Your show in the gallery was so special. I can guarantee you it led to a lot of conversations between us students about our futures and what we will make of it. That's the best part of your show to me, you always make things that clarifies and sends me on a path of thinking about my life. Which leads me to a question! I attended the academic freedom panel (which was terrific by the way) and got a Pinky Show Zine after the talk. But this might be the first time I read the Zine over and over and I still don't get what you and Bunny were trying to say. Specifically the ending -  Can you please explain to me what you were trying to say in this Zine? I hope you write me back! Best wishes, Andrea

I'm guessing there's probably other people out there who might also be confused by the academic freedom mini-zine, so I'll respond to it now while we're still in Winnipeg-mode.

Hi Andrea. Thank you for your feedback for the show. It really makes us happy to hear that people are considering the implications of class treason. It is a theme that we hope to keep revisiting in the future, especially as Bunny and I continue to reflect upon the choices we've made as a result of our analysis in our own lives.

Regarding the mini-zine... Well, we made the mini-zine tell this little story after we saw the list of presenters for the panel. Nothing personal against any of the presenters (actually, we met three of them while we were in Winnipeg and they were all greeeat), but we DO think it's significant that all of the people on the panel work at the university. Which is another way of saying that no one on the panel is not from the university.

I'm sure lots of people might think that such an omission does't mean anything - after all, the topic is academic freedom, and of course academics that work at universities have lots to say about the subject, right? Of course they do. But we made our little zine in the hopes of raising a few questions: Why is academic freedom so often considered an 'academics-only' issue? Would non-academics have any worthwhile perspective or analysis to offer in such a conversation? Does the issue of academic freedom affect life beyond the university campus?

Universities are often thought of as being a society's centers for research, theorizing, intellectual development, and all that other good stuff. In many ways universities occupy a dominant position in relation to other kinds of social institutions, especially as it relates to bettering society (and not just the university) through courageous acts of thinking. This is why we believe non-academics should not be excluded from these kinds of conversations. Everybody needs to understand that what is encouraged or discouraged or allowed or not allowed at a university ultimately has far-reaching consequences that affects all of us. In fact, often times the most profound effects are for those who seem very, very far away from universities.

When Bunny and I were discussing what we wanted to put in the zine, one of the things that I was worried about was the idea that people might think that we are just using the zine to poke fun or criticize the people on the panel or the organizers of the event. But Bunny pointed out to me, and I think she is correct, that not having any non-academics is not a failure of one or a few individuals (Bunny: "This is not personal."). This is an institutional problem; this is a social problem. Maybe we should call it a collective failure of the imagination.

Sorry for the looong e-mail, have you fallen asleep by now? Anyway, I hope it gives a little background on how we are thinking about such things.

Take care,
pinky

Oh, another thing about Winnipeg. Although we did more or less finish organizing our materials for the post-Winnipeg report, since the report does contain quite a few photographs and detailed notes regarding the exhibition installation, Bunny and I finally decided to release the report after the exhibition shuts down in Winnipeg and re-opens in Toronto. If we release it now it'll just be so boring for people in Toronto who are planning on seeing the exhibition in January/February, right?

Anyway, we have lots of things to keep us busy till then. We are currently in the process of re-accessing everything about our project, including whether or not we should continue. Mimi, who is kind of like Director of Bookkeeping & Paperwork (not a real title), has been telling us emphatically that we can't continue like this and we need to shut the Pinky Show down. Obviously Bunny and I don't want to do that, but we also don't really know how we can turn things around either. Every night I pray for an idea that will save our work but so far I haven't come up with anything really good. Maybe I'll write about all this in more detail later.

Till next time, I wish you all peace,
pinky

COP15 Rap Battle: Lord Monckton vs. Al Gore

Posted by Pinky.

The guys at JuiceNews have made another video and I think I've already watched it 4 times! lol

I know this sounds stupid but I just marvel at how people write such sharp, informative AND funny material that actually RHYMES. Wow...​

Maybe most importantly, it turned me onto the Indigenous Peoples' Global Summit on Climate Change, which I have to admit I hadn't even heard of before watching this video. o.O I seriously need new news sources...

MP3 and Lyrics here (click on little "i" icon on the audio player thing).

~pinky

Daisy's Mini-Report from Makua Valley

Posted by Bunny.

Pinky and I have never been beyond the secured gates to the entrance of Makua Valley, so Daisy was nice enough to snap a few photos for us while he was there this past weekend.

Pinky organized the materials into a slideshow format and put it in the Commons Gallery. See it here. (The pictures have mouse-over commentary by Daisy - don't miss it.)​

​For those of you who never heard of Makua Valley, here is some background information from KAHEA, EarthJustice, and DMZ Hawaii/Aloha Aina.

~Bunny.

....................................

Posted by Kim: I think I see the dog in the petroglyph. Did Hawaiian people know about cats before the European and American people showed up?

....................................

Posted by Bunny: I don't think so. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that cats first arrived in Hawaii along with the first wave of European "explorers" (late 18th century). Apparently we were employed on those ships as rat hunters. Anybody know?

....................................

Posted by Pinky: I heard that story too. I wonder how the cats got from ship to shore? Did they jump and swim? Did Captain Cook bring his cat friends to shore on those little boats? I wonder what Hawaiian people thought when they first saw cats? Did they like how soft we are? I wonder what was the first thing said after that first somebody touched that first cat?

....................................

Posted by Bunny: Damn. As always, so many unexpected questions.

Pinky Show is "Best... Canadian Art..."

Posted by Bunny.

Excuse me for butchering words in order to generate fake-reverence but hey, all the big movie studios do it.

We just got another mention in the Canadian press - which is cool, but I don't like their description of our project:

"...a collective of politically minded artists anonymously explores the ethical and moral obligations of mainstream media through a group of cartoon-cat spokespeople..."

Cartoon-cat spokespeople?? WTF?!?

Whatevers. At least they call us "Best".​

​Thanks to Milena for sending us this press clipping!

~Bunny.

Q: Is it art? A: Who cares, etc.

Posted by Bunny.

I think we need a press clippings area on this website. In the past I've just been depositing them here in the blog, but somehow it feels very random and disorganized and I don't like it.

Anyway, here are a couple of reviews that came out today, graciously forwarded to us by Jennifer Gibson, (art) curator at the University of Winnipeg's (art) Gallery 1C03. Thank you Jennifer for keeping an eye out for us.​

​from Uptown Magazine

​from Winnipeg Free Press

Pinky likes contemporary art more than I do. I like old art more, the didactic stuff. Especially old religious art - those guys were always telling you exactly what to do! (I like.) With contemporary art it seems to me a lot of people get all huffy and start stomping around if the work is somehow not sufficiently weird / ambiguous / deliberately-mystified enough. Which isn't to say I have a problem with any of those attributes, I just get annoyed with people who think the world is not big enough to also accommodate overtly didactic work.

Which is why I find it a little odd that neither writer criticized us for making didactic work that also happens to look very art-like. Or maybe I just have a misconception regarding what art reviewers will find acceptable nowadays? (Apparently I do.)

I hope Kim and Mimi don't get all big-headed now that their pictures were chosen to be in newspapers.

For those of you who have been asking what we've been up to since returning from Winnipeg:

1. Pinky got real sick. She's still working but also sleeping a bit extra (slightly annoying) and coughing all over the place (very annoying).

2. We've been working on making ‘fine art prints’ of some of the images in the exhibition (plus some others that we haven't had time to put on our website). Hey - no need to roll your eyes - a fine art print is just a very high quality print made on archival materials.

3. Finishing up two more videos.

4. Trying to troubleshoot our stupid water heater that finally stopped working. Can it be saved? Still don't know.

5. Running all the errands that we neglected to do before we left for Winnipeg because we were busy preparing for Winnipeg.

Life is less exciting here than in Winnipeg but still okay. We're working. ~Bunny.

Persiflage: Check it out.

Posted by Bunny.

Go visit www.persiflage.ca, my current favorite source for relevant news and insightful commentary. So good. ~B.

New Mini-Zine: The Academic Freedom Debate

Posted by Pinky.

Hi. We made this new mini-zine for the Pinky Show-inspired panel discussion going on in Winnipeg tonight: Academic Freedom? A conversation about the way things are and the way things could be… Unfortunately we had to come home before the event so in lieu of attending we just made 125 of these little mini-zines and left them with Milena Placentile, the curator responsible for inviting us to Winnipeg and organizer of the academic freedom panel, and asked her to distribute the mini-zines to everyone who attended the panel.

Download the thing here. If you need instructions on how to cut & fold it, there's a little instructional video on how to do just that here.

Hope you find it interesting.

Take care,
pinky

The Pinky Show : Class Treason Stories (excerpts) @ University of Winnipeg

Posted by Pinky.

The Class Treason Stories (excerpts) exhibition is now open at the University of Winnipeg's Gallery 1C03! The talks were all well attended and exciting and the opening was fun - with Kim, Zach and Haley right outside the gallery at the IWGS table selling Pinky Show t-shirts and books and stickers we sort of felt like rock stars! lol Here's a couple of pictures of how the installation came out.

The exhibition runs until December 12. Then it'll be taken down and packed up and shipped off to Toronto, where it will open for a second time in January (details coming soon) at the Toronto Free Gallery.

~ ~ ~

A big THANK YOU to everybody who made the 1C03 exhibition happen: Milena Placentile, who without her invitation and positive energy and guidance we would have never, ever, EVER been able to do this exhibition; Jennifer Gibson, art curator at UWinnipeg who was so accommodating and patient with us and just all-around helpful with helping us take care of all the little details an exhibition inevitably produces; Glen Johnson - the artist who basically single-handedly installed the show for us (we don't know how to use power tools and he's a lot taller than we are) and kept us reassured that everything would be okay with his calm temperament and deadpan hilariousness (?) even when cables were pulling out of the wall; Kim Hunter and her incredible family for showing us a deeper level of Winnipeg kindness and complexity and beauty; Zach, Haley, Tyler, Lissie, and all the folks (Hi Roewan! Hi Fiona! Next time please!) at the Institute for Women's and Gender Studies (IWGS) for their enthusiasm, institutional support, and of course, the non-stop bake sales; the people at AceArtInc, who  allowed us to use their very cool space for a public-HR03 dialogue (Liz Garlicki, can we hang out next time?); Cliff Eyland at the University of Manitoba School of Art for his graciousness and generosity (he invited us to talk with his students and he was so nice to us even though I could tell he was sick as a dog)… and of course the dozens and dozens to people we met at the talks, the opening, and behind-the-scenes meetings & get-togethers that made us feel welcome and gave us so much to think about. We were in Winnipeg for only a week and of course there are probably about 700,000 other people there we didn't get to meet but the people that we did meet were all very warm and welcoming and made us feel like there really is somebody out there who is engaging our work at a very deep level. To us, making work that is useful or helpful to others is the most important thing we can possibly do, so it's actually very difficult to put into words how important this trip was for us.

We will write more about the trip a little later (we're still getting our materials in order), probably in the blog.

Take care,
pinky

....................................

Posted by Bunny: Glen and I ate bison burgers.

Pinky Show currently in WINNIPEG, CANADA

Posted by Pinky.

Hi everybody. In a few hours we are getting on a Canadian airplane and flying to Vancouver, then Calgary, then Winnipeg. We'll be in Winnipeg for about a week for THIS.

According to meteorologists, it'll be about 45/30°F (7/-1°C) day/night in Winnipeg this week - brrr! Bunny and I will bring a camera and try to photo-document the installation. We'll post it on the website when we get back. Everybody in Toronto: don't look at the pictures otherwise it'll be boring when the exhibition gets to your city!

Okay, I'm going to go pack. Bye bye for now!

xoxo,
pinky

....................................

11/15 UPDATE: We are safely back at home now. We'll post a special report of our Winnipeg Trip as soon as we finish writing it up & sort through our photos! ~p.​

Press Release from Gallery 1CO3: Class Treason Stories (excerpts)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Image: The Pinky Show, Isolated in a Self-Serving Fantasy, 2009.

Gallery 1C03 proudly presents The Pinky Show's latest endeavour,

Class Treason Stories (excerpts)

WINNIPEG MB, October 27, 2009 - Gallery 1C03 proudly presents The Pinky Show's latest multi-media installation, Class Treason Stories (excerpts).

From an undisclosed desert location, somewhere between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, a collective of gently voiced cats produce and disseminate an educational project called The Pinky Show, intended to cultivate intellectual curiosity, openness, and compassion.

Focusing on information and perspectives that have been misrepresented, suppressed, ignored, or otherwise excluded from mainstream discussion, Pinky and her friends use a variety of formats (i.e. online videos, visual art, books and 'zines, blogging, etc.) to explore the unseen world in ways that are easy to understand, with special attention given to reconnecting information (plentiful in our contemporary world) to its oft-ignored ethical and moral dimensions.

The Pinky Show's video episodes are generally organized around "simple" questions: What is settler colonialism? Is the War in Iraq legal or illegal? How do we get rid of nuclear weapons? They consider the mainstreaming of progressive ideals to be a foundational component to any broad strategy to create a more aware citizenry - one that is more apt to understand, support, and participate in the vital work being done by the many thousands of social change organizations established throughout the world.

In addition to material production, they also deploy human representatives to carry out their educational objectives via diverse forms of community programming including workshops and other public presentations, exhibitions, and agitprop dissemination. Some examples include Picturing Politics: Artists Speak Truth to Power (Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, Virginia), Encounter on Radical Education (Ljubljana, Slovenia), and study circles and workshops with the Center for Hegemony Studies (Honolulu, Hawaii).

Class Treason Stories (excerpts) seeks to provoke questions about the nature of education and the application of knowledge for either socially beneficent or individualist and competitive purposes. It enquires about the transformations we could each undertake in order to move toward a genuinely ethical state of being.

A well-established internet phenomenon with fans worldwide, this exhibition marks The Pinky Show's first visit to Canada. After launching at Gallery 1C03, Class Treason Stories (excerpts) will travel to Toronto Free Gallery in January 2010.

The Pinky Show is a project of Associated Animals Inc. - a non-profit educational organization based in the United States. For more information, visit www.PinkyShow.org.

The Pinky Show: Class Treason Stories (excerpts) runs from November 12 - December 12, 2009

Opening reception: Thursday, November 12 from 4:00 - 6:00 p.m. (Gallery 1C03)

Off campus artist talk: Thursday, November 12 beginning at 7:00 p.m. (aceartinc. - 2nd Fl., 290 McDermot Ave.)

On campus artist talk: Friday, November 13 from 12:30 - 1:30 p.m. (University of Winnipeg, Room 2C15)

Members of the media are invited to arrange interviews with the artists between November 9 - 13, 2009.

Gallery 1C03 and the artists wish to acknowledge the generous support provided by the Institute for Women's and Gender Studies and Cliff Eyland. We also wish to thank Platform: Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts for their assistance.

Contact: Jennifer Gibson, Art Curator
Gallery 1C03, The University of Winnipeg
515 Portage Ave, Winnipeg MB R3B 2E9
204.786.9253 | j.gibson@uwinnipeg.ca
uwinnipeg.ca/index/artgallery-index | gallery1C03.blogspot.com

Press Release from Gallery 1CO3: Academic Freedom? Panel

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Image: The Pinky Show, The Consequences Are Terrifying, 2009.

Gallery 1C03 and The Institute for Women's and Gender Studies proudly present: Academic Freedom? A conversation about the way things are and the way things could be...

WINNIPEG MB, October 27, 2009 - Gallery 1C03 and The Institute for Women's and Gender Studies proudly present a panel discussion inspired by Gallery 1C03's upcoming exhibition, The Pinky Show: Class Treason Stories (excerpts).

In light of recent scandals around the world involving academics being served cease and desist notices for producing valid research challenging corporate activity, being arrested under suspicion of terrorism, or losing tenure without due process as a clear response to different ways of thinking and teaching, it is a ripe moment to discuss intellectual and ethical integrity vis-à-vis academic freedom in the context of societal expectations.

Academics are perceived as belonging to a certain social and intellectual "class". In what ways can they gravitate toward a genuinely ethical definition of their profession while confronting the influences that expect them to toe the line in order to maintain status?

With a view to opening discussion on this subject, four University of Winnipeg faculty members have been invited to express perspectives concerning the dilemma experienced by academics who come to realize that their political, social, and/or ethical beliefs run counter to the status quo maintained by the elite. Should academics perpetuate traditional networks and hope their different opinions will appear more palatable through association with moderates, or should they find altogether new ways of working? Should they speak out and risk being ostracized by their professional community, or take that chance and turn their practices of research and analysis into active resistance? What's at stake and is it worth it?

Featuring:

● Kelly Gorkoff, Instructor, Criminal Justice Department discussing the neoliberalization of higher education

● Christopher Leo, Professor, Department of Politics revealing barriers in academic publishing

● Vesna Milosevic-Zdjelar, Instructor, Department of Physics addressing biases in educational curriculum

● Brock Pitawanakwat, Asst. Professor, Aboriginal Governance Program commenting on abuses of power within the academy

Winnipeg-based curator and writer Milena Placentile will moderate this conversation. Extended biographies and summaries of each presentation are available online; please visit: http://gallery1c03.blogspot.com.

Academic Freedom? A conversation about the way things are and the way things could be...
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 from 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall, University of Winnipeg, 515 Portage Ave (3rd Fl. Centennial Hall)

Admission to this event is open and free for all! Members of the media are invited to attend.

Class Treason Stories (excerpts), created by internationally renowned feline artists and educators, Pinky and Bunny (with the assistance of Mimi and Kim), offers a multi-media installation seeking to provoke questions about the nature of education and the application of knowledge for either socially beneficent or individualist and competitive purposes. This exhibition runs from November 12 - December 12, 2009 before traveling to Toronto Free Gallery in January.

Contact: Jennifer Gibson, Art Curator Gallery 1C03
The University of Winnipeg 515 Portage Ave, Winnipeg MB R3B 2E9
204.786.9253 | j.gibson@uwinnipeg.ca
uwinnipeg.ca/index/artgallery-index | gallery1C03.blogspot.com

Bunny Mailbag: U.S. Imperialism or...?

Posted by Bunny.

It's good to start off a new month with a new Bunny mailbag. Today's e-mail comes from Shawna.

Hi Pinky, I've been slowly working my way backwards through your collection of videos and wanted to say that I've enjoyed them all in different ways so far. I just finished watching the Ribbon Sticker video where at the end you make your own sticker that says "Reject U.S. Imperialism". I was wondering if you could think of a more positive alternative that would basically say the same thing, much like the "Support Our Troops" ribbons are "positive" (they may be misleading but the tone is positive). I believe very strongly in positive messages! Because we can't build a social justice movement with negative slogans! I just wanted to ask you for your 2 cents! Shawna

My reply:

Hi Shawna. I'm glad you're enjoying our videos. I'm going to respond for Pinky because she's busy editing right now. But we talked about your e-mail and in the end we both decided there's no simple answer to your simple question. For example, part of the problem with a statement like "Reject U.S. Imperialism" is that it actually doesn't make sense if you really think about it. (We just went ahead and used it anyway because we wanted to keep things simple.) The reason why this doesn't make sense is, considering how the U.S. came into existence, how it developed into what it is today, and what it has to do in order for it to "maintain its shape and form", there is no way to even imagine the U.S. "without" imperialism. Actually, we think it's fair to say that the U.S. is imperialism - always has been. So how could we really say that anybody should "reject U.S. imperialism", as if the two could somehow be split apart and one side thrown away? See the problem? We still believe that the U.S. should stop stepping on people - not only all around the planet but also including people here within its political borders - but if the U.S. were to really stop doing that, we think the U.S. would literally become something so different that maybe it wouldn't even make sense to call it by the same name anymore. Anyway - that's getting a bit ahead of ourselves - we'll worry about finding a good name after we've fixed a few problems, yes?

In the meantime, how about we just get comfortable with the idea that rejecting bad things is not negative; it's positive.

-Bunny.

Winnipeg Descends Into Raging Pinky Show Frenzy

Posted by Bunny, PSR.

WINNIPEG, CANADA - The first fund-raising event for the upcoming exhibition by The Pinky Show at the University of Winnipeg's Gallery 1C03 was mobbed by enthusiastic supporters today, resulting in the sale of 18, possibly more, t-shirts.

Reports confirm it was, apparently, somewhat like an unholy shark feeding-frenzy. No serious injuries were reported.

The event, staged by the University of Winnipeg's Institute for Women's and Gender Studies (IWGS), was highly successful. Kim Hunter, suspected leader of left-wing fringe group Women, said, "We've sold 18 t-shirts".

"18 shirts is a lot of shirts. I don't think we've even sold 18 shirts from our website in the past 3 months," commented Pinky, democratically elected leader of the fabulous Pinky Show project. "I'm not sure, I have to check."​

​Semi-related: Pinky, Bunny, and Emily folded up a sizable stack of new Pinky Show mini-zines, which are set to debut at a roundtable discussion on the subject of academic freedom, November 17 at the University of Winnipeg. For more information, you gotta find out yourself because that's all I know.

​Report on bake sale based on "facts" heard third-hand by Bunny (IWGS Kim > Pinky > Bunny). Bake sale photos courtesy of IWGS Kim, mini-zine photo by Pinky.

....................................

​[ Note from Pinky: Bunny & I send our appreciation and thanks to everybody who helped make this happen - Kim, Lissie, Tyler, Roewan, and Milena! xoxo pinky ]

Are You My Bug-Bot?

Posted by Bunny.

Okay, if you're a regular reader of our blog, by now you may have noticed that we have a perverse fascination with cutting-edge technologies of war and death. (Like this, or this...) A small part of the attraction I'm sure is just the "wow, that's amazing"-factor involved. The remainder is more like, "wow, that's totally insane."

I suppose a reasonable question would be: Do we really need more craziness in the world?

Unfortunately, even if you think the answer is 'no', when it comes to the proliferation of weapons technologies, even the most futuristic inventions eventually become more widely available. Which means there may come a day where every nerd with a god-complex will have access to his very own swarm of MAVs.​

Enjoy your paranoid nightmares.

~Bunny.