Dimensionally Barrett

Zooming out from the roiling strife in Burma, cause and effect are playing out on a vaster canvas than might seem immediately apparent. As much as despots and dictators would like to hew to the narrative that “our conflict is only internal and doesn’t involve anyone else/is no one else’s business”, this lie has been put to rout repeatedly.   With the Tatmadaw, it is especially egregious given that the military is still receiving support from multinational corporate funding(1), employment of tech from China(2), and purchasing arms from Russia(3). The stage is set for Burma to return to the bad old days for military despotism. Also, it’s important to remember that this is not a civil war. Right now, the various ethnic groups that form Myanmar’s polity are united against this brutal military force. That the unrest in the country is directly tied to support from regional and global players out to make a buck is one side of the story on the international field; the other is the effec...

  As Sonali Kolhatkar writes , “Making Juneteenth a holiday was the easy part — but will real justice follow?” Yes, it’s wonderful that it’s a holiday, but it’s difficult to feel like this is more than a feel-good piece of legislation that is more performative than substantive. There is a lot of hype and hypocrisy surrounding the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation, not the least of which is that the narratives purporting its reaching Texas late because “news traveled slowly in those days” is bunk. Christopher Wilson, Experience Design Director at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, writes for the Zinn Education Project : "Very often Juneteenth is presented as a story of “news” of the Emancipation Proclamation “traveling slowly” to the Deep South and Texas, but it was really a story of power traveling slowly, and of freedom being seized. Due to the telegraph, newspapers and the United States Army spread out all across the country to put down the sla...

  If the past year and a half has been brutal for most, it has been several magnitudes of uglier for refugee populations. Imagine fleeing your country for fear of your life because of natural disasters, war, or violent social environment. Refugee crises have expanded because of climate change, civil wars, violent coups, and situations where families and individuals are threatened with execution for attempting to speak truth to power and to fight for change(1). Let’s be clear: no one wants to be a refugee . However, few seem willing to show support to refugee populations, despite a majority around the world being in favor of allowing refugees into their countries(2). In so-called “developed” nations, we denigrate or dehumanize those fleeing political persecution or war. We turn them back at borders (3), we leave them adrift at sea (4), and this puts a lie to the values of inclusion and assistance we purport to believe in. Recently, Vice-President Kamala Harris had a succinct mess...

“Each/Other” by Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger In Denver recently, I had a chance to take in the “Each/Other” exhibition by Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger, both Native American artists whose work - separately and together - rest on collaboration as both an operative term, as well as a point of departure for inspiration and reflection.   As part of the mission statement at the Denver Art Museum’s installation, the wish was that each piece on display would foster a sense of the scope of each person’s experience in being part of the process. This is adds several levels of depth and dimensions to the work before us. This should be a guiding principle in viewing most large-scale works; the understanding that any given piece is not merely the result of one person’s effort adds a richness to the experience of engaging with that piece.  However, this is not something that many artists tend to emphasize, despite the number of assistants big name artists (and sometimes not ...

From the Greenwood Art Project: for more information go here or click on the image. There are plenty of articles around about the Tulsa Massacre, and more than a few are think pieces about the aftermath . The ramifications are vast. That a major and critical event of unleashed white rage was buried so effectively and for so long, speaks to the results of what happens when history is written - or rather, erased - by the victors. The rippling tides of similar early twentieth century events continue but we are seeing the effects play out in interesting, if not particularly definitive ways.  The lynchings and the slaughters of the Jim Crow area eventually receded in the face of the growing Civil Rights Movement. That has not stopped Black people from being murdered by law enforcement or the thousands of daily aggressions - micro and macro - from being perpetrated on a daily basis in the form of rigging voter rights legislation to loan approval based on skin color . At every turn, e...