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US Department of Art & Technology
PO Box 32265 Washington, DC
http://www.usdept-arttech.net
office of the Secretary
secretary@usdept-arttech.net
Covenant of the Articles of Artistic Mediation
Presented by the US Department of Art & Technology
To the US Department of State
Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes
Washington, DC
June 19, 2002
THE MEDIATING PARTIES, In order to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and cultural understanding by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war, by the prescription of open, informed cultural dialogue between nations, by the establishment of the understanding of the aspirations of the artist as a model for spiritual and moral conduct among Governments, and by the maintenance of the role of the artist as a mediator on the world stage, and a scrupulous respect for the following articles of artistic mediation in the dealings of organized peoples with one another,
Agree to this Covenant of the Articles of Artistic Mediation.
Article 1
Jeff Gates
Deputy Secretary
US Department of Art & Technology
The events of September 11 have caused all Americans to look at the world and our lives in new ways. We are beginning to question what it means to be an American within the greater world stage. Like Pearl Harbor, the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks have once again jolted us out of our isolationism.
This presents us with a unique opportunity. Let us reevaluate the relationship between our government and its policies and the contributions of artists and other cultural workers. We are standing at the fork in a road, just as we were soon after December 7, 1941. We can redefine our country by building taller, more impenetrable walls or we can promote our way of life by looking for new ways to solve our problems.
Traditionally, artists have developed creative ways of looking at the world. Employ our strengths and the country will be stronger and more able to adapt to the changing world around us. Work with us to become more inclusive domestically and more responsible internationally.
Article 2
Mark Amerika
Under Secretary for the Department of Freedom of Speech
US Department of Art & Technology
I am deeply offended by recent attempts by high administration figures to try and equate vocal dissent against their politically-motivated 'war on terrorism' with unpatriotic behavior. I would go so far as to say that these blatant acts of psychological manipulation and ideological coercion are themselves some of the most unpatriotic acts of any administration I have seen in my lifetime.
Article 3
Lynn Hershman
Deputy Under Secretary of the Bureau for the Protection &
Immunization Against Mediation & Alienation
US Department of Art & Technology
Initiate compassion, dignity and enlightenment in all cultural challenges.
Article 4
Pierre Levy
Under Secretary for the Office of Virtualization
US Department of Art & Technology
Each one of us is an autonomous and responsible source of meaning. We can enrich our world by integrating others as autonomous interpretation centers who are complete worlds in themselves. What is to be done with the other's meaning production? Ignore it, tolerate it, despise it, beat it, imitate itŠ? this would not be a dialogue. Collective intelligence is the reciprocal implication and mutual recognition of autonomous world's sources.
Article 5
Douglas Robertson
Director of the Office of Excessive Verbiage & Official Ceremonies
US Department of Art & Technology
Have Barney, that lovable hug-happy purple dinosaur, accompany the Secretary of State on all missions, and have Barney speak in the language of the host country. Barney will prove to be the perfect yin to every Secretary of State's yang. Alternative methodology if the Secretary of State does not consider this prudent: Appoint Bahrein as an American Ambassador at Large and send him on a world tour.
Article 6
Robert Atkins
Deputy Undersecretary
US Department of Art & Technology
Being the most complex form of knowledge, art IS the best hope for subtle, nuanced communication. Power to the palette people!
Article 7
Jack Rasmussen
Minister of Culture
US Department of Art & Technology
Artists interpret the cultures they live in... their "criticisms" take the form of invitations to engage us in constructive dialogues. Such dialogues seem to be completely lacking in the geo-political arena, where they are needed most. Let us use the artist's model to resolve international conflicts. Let's get naked!
Article 8
William Gilcher
Envoy Plenipotentiary to the European Union and Latin America
US Department of Art & Technology
US Museums and cultural institutions - under DAT's and UNESCO's leadership - should enshroud a major, signature work from their collections. Then they should hold fancy fund-raisers to pay for recovering (i.e., uncovering) the work. The money raised should be used to support the creation and maintenance of a permanent light sculpture representing the Bamiyan Buddhas, to be projected in the original space in Afghanistan. The team of artists selected to create the work should be people of various ethnic and religious origins, including at least one Afghan.
Article 9
John Paul Young
Under Secretary of the Bureau for the Blurring of the Real & the Virtual
US Department of Art & Technology
Art reflects the conscience of each generation. As we inhabit the 21st century, do we choose to take up the challenge of crafting a new vision of global compassion, or fall back upon antiquated notions of diplomacy at gunpoint? Our children will judge us by our decision. Technology in the service of "clean" war is not a solution, it is a mere political expediency. Instead of increasingly virtualized destruction, the future must embrace radical notions of humane intervention. As proud citizens of the world family, let us lead with a passion for creatively deploying and delivering life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness where they are most needed.
Article 10
Billy Klüver
Under Secretary of Reality
US Department of Art & Technology
Chaos is the best defense.
Article 11
Margaret Schedel
Under Secretary for Dissertations and Strategic Disinformation
US Department of Art & Technology
Interact with art and with each other. Ferocious interaction in art. Tender interactions with each other.
Article 12
Joan Freedman
Deputy Secretary of the Bureau for Archiving Old Media
& Anachronistic Ideologies
US Department of Art & Technology
No Land Mimes! Appoint mimes to call for an international ban on the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of antipersonnel landmines, and for increased international resources for humanitarian mine clearance and mine victim assistance programs. Send mimes to effected regions to demonstrate the effects of land mines on unknowing civilian populations.
Article 13
Mark Tribe
Director of the Office of Emerging Technologies & Digital Aesthetics
US Department of Art & Technology
The conflict between Al Quaeda and the U.S. Government may be understood in terms of two very different modes of organizing power: one horizontally distributed and nomadic, the other hierarchical and geographically fixed. In the past, we have tended to assign positive value to the rhizomatic in contrast to the hierarchical. This conflict helps us realize that there is nothing inherently good about rhizomatic organizations of power. But if we think of think of these organizations of power as technologies in and of themselves, then it quickly becomes clear that rhizomatic technologies - fugitive, resilient, designed to operate in tatters - are not only newer but also more likely to survive in an evolutionary struggle.
Article 14
Randall Packer
Secretary
US Department of Art & Technology
Organize a virtual government department, select a staff of the finest media artists and technologists you can find, have them collectively co-author imaginative acts of artistic mediation, stage an "official" event in Washington, DC with department staff and cultural officials providing remarks on the role of the artist in society, and invite the US State Department.
Article 15
David Baime
Assistant Secretary for Legislation & Congressional Affairs
US Department of Art & Technology
The sentimentalist would deceive himself, the rhetorician others; while art alone provides the reflection of reality. Art is as perennial as the grass, and may our good government sow its seed, so as to reap its splendor.
Article 16
David Crandall
Director of the Office of Strategy and Subversion
US Department of Art & Technology
I would submit that a central problem is the rest of the world's lack of understanding of America's unique burden and contribution. Inasmuch as our great nation has given the world the best-dressed peasant class in history, I would call for the commission of a series of grand, heroic paintings of, e.g. noble American yeoman stock-traders, bond-swains, cash maidens & personnel-herds, done larger than life in a golden glow.
Alternatively, murals could be created in the soviet style extolling the virtues of our noble Arts Infrastructure workers - see the sweat gleam on the sides of the redoubtable database coordinator and grants administrator as they build a better world for all! Their song: "If we lose this grant, the terrorists win!"
Article 17
Chris Bowman
Artist-Ambassador from Scotland
Global Virtualization Council
NEW CHILDREN'S GAME:
After lots are drawn, two children stand side by side pretending to be skyscrapers, while two others charge into them, pretending to be planes.
The two pretending to be skyscrapers aren't allowed to duck or dodge, and the two pretending to be planes get to crash into them as hard as they like, at which point the skyscrapers compete to see who can topple over the most dramatically.
It's in the interests of the planes not to hit the skyscrapers too hard, because in the next and final stage of the game, the skyscrapers - who have become a military alliance - get to kick the shit out of the planes - who have become foreign terrorists - in any and every way they like.
The game is known as PYRRHIC VICTORY.
Article 18
Philip Ryder
Artist-Ambassador from England
Global Virtualization Council
Being pigeon holed with terrorists should not be a frustration or insult. We do not kill. We are feared for being artists and all that it entails. Let their fear be proof of art's power and an inspiration.
Article 19
Jonah Brucker-Cohen
Artist Ambassador from the US
Global Virtualization Council
Without the negative to negate the positive, the positive would have no power. Working together we can avoid the threat that terrorism will be a threat to the way we perceive threats. Art is the only way to escape the world of what is possible into the world of what can be possible. Artists and creative processes will lead us past the bureaucratic stranglehold that stifles radical change. Our only hope is to rely on individual creative energy to prove the hypothesis that new approaches to perception will lead us to salvation.
Article 20
Agricola de Cologne
German media artist
Violence is an expression of speechlessness, of lack of communication. The best solution to eliminate violence and confrontation is looking for communicating, dialogue and networking, starting already in the smallest cel of society family, which lead in consequence to openness against the different, tolerance. A good example on the way to that represents the net based art project - http://www.a-virtual-memorial.org - Memorial project against the Forgetting and for Humanity.
Article 21
Joseph Franklyn McElroy
Cor[porat]e [Per]form[ance] Art[ist]T
It seems to be a natural tendency on the part of those in power, or wanting power, to use tactics of brinkmanship and brutality to accomplish incremental gains in their status. While people of extreme intelligence might be capable of handling the situations created by aggressive behavior, the unfortunate consequence of the success of these tactics is that people of less intelligence and experience attempt to copy the methods and are unable to control the resulting forces. This leads to tragedy and sorrow for many people. We implore you to step back from the strategies of the brute, to use new techniques of honesty, nonaggression, and inclusivity to establish a peaceful world, where equality and equitable distribution of resources are the norm.
Article 22
Ava Su GanWei
Iowan Artist
Our society has it backwards, art should be freed from the museums and galleries... it should be on the streets. But violence and war - they belong in a place where they can be studied.
Article 23
Domiziana Giordano
Italian Artist
As an intellectual and artist, I find the international politics of the US not really performing if it has to reach a point of non aggression in military and cultural forms. The dialogue between cultures has to be more open-minded towards the difference of culture and I think intellectuals and artists can pursue the appropriate way to mediate between the cultures and make a sort of free land where opportunities of understanding with each other would be easily resolved.
Article 24
Lowell Darling
American Conceptual Artist and Presidential Candidate
A National Business Museum in which money schemes can be exhibited like art, where business people can play with concepts like the recent Enron/Anderson debacle. Business people like Michael Milkin should be given a safe venue to play in, like artists. This museum would give corporate raiders a platform to perform that would protect the rest of us from seeing their visions reach fruition.
In the National Business Museum a corrupt concept could be exhibited, reviewed, discussed, and the business person who came up with the scam could get the attention they seek. a businessman could take his children to the Business Museum, show his kids the idea he had, and show them how much money he could have made if he'd done the project in real life instead of in the museum, and they could say, "wow, dad. You made that? cool!"
The National Business Museum would allow the money manipulators a way to vent their greed while giving them their ego boosts. Economic self gratification without investors being destroyed. In other words, let's treat business like art. Give money grubbers and corporate thieves a sheltered venue for their experiments. Let money makers get the sort of rewards art makers get: pats on the ass, government grants, ego enhancing shows, brief moments of recognition in trade magazines, and lots of promises. But the money stays in the people's pockets when they leave the museum and go home, glad that they are protected from such crazy concepts as those wild business people come up with.
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The present Covenant, of which the German, French, Flemish, English, Italian, Arabic, Hebrew, Portuguese, and Spanish texts are equally authentic, shall remain deposited in the on-line archives of the US Department of Art & Technology. Duly certified digital copies thereof shall be transmitted by that Government to its agencies and to other States when appropriate.
IN FAITH WHEREOF the representatives of the Department of Art & Technology have signed the present charter.
DONE at the city of Washington, DC the 19th day of June two thousand and two.
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