Occupy KC under smear attack, publishers call it art. Is this the 4chan-ification of insurrection? The image macros of conspiracy theorists?
from KSHB:
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Members of the Occupy Kansas City movement say they have nothing to do with racist material that is being distributed in their name.
A mailer by a group calling itself “The Occupy Kansas City Journal” is full of anti-Semitic and racist articles and cartoons.
Occupy Kansas City condemned the publication and say they don’t know who is behind it. The material is published on a website and was mailed to several Kansas City Council members.
“The Occupy Kansas City Journal” features many swastikas, epithets and provocative conspiracy-laden cartoons “anonymously” submitted to the editor, Jessica Logsdon, by what looks like the white nationalist walking dead. Political collage art hasn’t progressed with the digital age. In fact, it seems to have regressed quite a bit, not only in cut-and-paste technique but in rhetoric too.
An incredibly limited overview of the history of modern collage art as political and social critique from found objects to agitprop:
The dadaists’ nihilism failed to destroy culture when they became counter-culture aesthetes. The disassociated news clipping screen prints by Andy Warhol were stark, but grimy pop culture references worth a ton of cash. The collage fliers of DIY punk shows were too practiced to rightfully claim idgaf post-nihilism. The Dead Kennedys perfected the zine-culture of satirical and post-modern political collages striking back at 1980s social conservatism.
Culture jammers and subvertisements of the 1990s spoke truth to power in the anti-consumerism and anti-globalization movement by altering ads to show Joe Camel as Joe Chemo, or Coke as Killer. Truth in advertising. Sound collage art from Negativland and the Church of the Subgenius popped up in cassette trading circles. Popular commercial jingles were now apocalyptic hellscapes all caught on tape. TV Sheriff did the same with tv commercial collages by making KFC hypnotism or Chuck Norris workout/freakout infomercials. Beck rode the sound collage wave of radio friendly art-junk onto a soft beach of cash.
Whether this is 4Chan grossout anti-pc agitprop art similar to the collages in Dead Kennedys liner notes, or bottom-feeding legitimate neo-Nazi propaganda, it was none-the-less disseminated to the government in the name of an inclusive, horizontally-organized populist movement.
Personal vendettas, political differences and jealousy have long been a muse and not just for low-brow collage art, so the question is, who got their feelings hurt? All the collages include screencaps of individual names associated with Occupy KC, plus a notable native, comedian Dustin Kaufman, is referenced in a Jewish conspiracy comic on page one. Someone involved with Occupy KC at some point felt slighted or maybe just a tad annoyed and found themselves a confusingly muddled and tedious outlet.
Here’s a statement from Jessica Logsdon on her decision to publish in the name of Occupy KC.
Art is dead. Long live art. Bash the fash.
