Cops In Classrooms Are Rarely Evaluated

The white sheriff’s deputy who grabbed a black student’s chair, flipped her over and dragged her across the floor on Monday at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina, prompting an FBI civil rights investigation, worked as a school resource officer. SROs, law enforcement officers who are specially trained to work in schools, are a common sight in public schools, but their work is seldom scrutinized — and the Spring Valley High incident is focusing attention on the danger that their presence could have a disparate impact on black students. A 2008 study by the ACLU of SROs in three Connecticut towns found that black students were disproportionately likely to be arrested or reported to the police by an SRO.

How common are these officers? According to a National Center for Education Statistics survey of 1,600 public schools nationwide, 30 percent had a school resource officer on the premises in the 2013-14 school year. Eleven percent of public schools reported that they had a law enforcement professional on their campus who was not trained specifically as an SRO.

SROs are present at almost half of high schools and middle schools (49 percent and 46 percent, respectively), while 18 percent of elementary schools have an SRO on duty. Large schools like Spring Valley High (enrollment 2,010) are the most likely to have an SRO working in the halls; 73 percent of schools with 1,000 or more students employed one.

The federal government has encouraged schools to bring cops into the classroom. SROs are intended to deter shootings and other violence in schools, while also becoming a positive presence in students’ lives and increasing trust in law enforcement. In 2013, the Department of Justice spent $45 million to create 356 new SRO positions nationwide, which represented a third of all new law enforcement positions that the department created through its Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) that year. The office’s grant-making process gives additional consideration for funding to applicants who plan to hire SROs.

Although COPS encourages grant applicants to add SROs as part of their community policing efforts, the officers are seldom evaluated to see whether they change students’ relationships with law enforcement for the better. A 2005 Justice Department study of 19 new SRO programs found that “very few … conducted useful and valid assessments of their programs.” When schools do any sort of evaluation, they are prone to track things like weapons confiscated, fights broken up, etc., but these are tricky ways to measure success. If, say, an SRO disciplines more students for any particular infraction, does that mean more infractions are taking place or just that the officer is recording more of them? Are students behaving worse than they were before? Do crackdowns deter future rule-breaking or enhance student safety?

The study recommended that schools include metrics like graduation rates in their evaluation of SRO programs, not just incident reports. The Justice Department also suggested that schools include surveys of student attitudes about their SROs in assessments.

One 2005 Justice Department study of student attitudes surveyed 907 students across four school districts about their relationships with the SRO at their schools. Overall, 74 percent of students had a positive opinion of the SRO on their campus, but opinions varied considerably among schools, with a low of 43 percent feeling positively and a high of 99 percent. Although students might approve of the SRO in the abstract, only 64 percent felt comfortable reporting a crime to their school’s officer, and only 50 percent said they’d be comfortable approaching the SRO with any sort of problem.

For many students in the study, the officer on campus was more a uniform than an individual, even though an SRO is meant to build relationships. Thirty-eight percent of students didn’t know the name of their school’s SRO, and over half (55 percent) had never spoken to him or her.

"What If Social Media Died and Plants on Acid Took Over?"

Screencaps via

The internet is dead, social media is gone, and plants are on “some serious acid.” These gargantuan plants are spreading across the earth, while humans have devolved into “socially deprived” zombies chasing a couple of freedom fighters in a military humvee.

Or, at least that’s how the Swedish visual effects house Stiller Studios’s Alf Lovvold envisions humanity’s post-apocalyptic future.

Lovvold’s Dawn of the Planet of the Zombies and the Giant Killer Plants on Some Serious Acid—"Dawn of the Stuff" for short—looks a lot like World War Z and the I Am Legend. The imitation is so spot-on it's as if Stiller Studios designed both of those films' VFX. This satire of zombified social media obsession even extends to an aerial 360-degree shot that is a virtual copy of Michael Bay’s signature camera movement.

DAWN OF THE STUFF from Stiller Studios on Vimeo.

Though Lovvold’s trailer is a fake, it would be great to see this as an actual post-apocalyptic comedy. Perhaps a crowdfunding campaign is in order? For those who dig the psychedelic-plant-life-taking-over-the-planet scenario, check out John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids and Thomas Disch’s The Genocides, two science fiction novels with plots that include invasive, viral-like plant life.

Click here to see more of Stiller Studios’s work.

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Meet the Artists/Occultists Channeling the Death of Monsanto

Monsanto (2010-2011) by Steven Leyba. Image courtesy the artist

If you’ve been paying attention to the reports of certain serious consulting firms, then you are well aware that chaos magic is sweeping the undersides of the internet. But magic, like many basic aspects of networks, has always been there, whether we have been aware of it or not. The most fundamental transubstantiations of data packets require magical incarnation. To teleport will across platforms and servers necessitates the ability to shapeshift oneself through digital image and digital text. These are assumptions that we have internalized, unspoken mantras we repeat subconsciously, as our fingers find the keys of our liturgical usernames and passwords.

But more rarely, do these spirits find their way into the real world. And yet they have been, for years. The high magic social sets of the OTO and Golden Dawn had their heydays in the early 20th Century, New Age movements and the Church of Scientology found their mainstream expressions through the 1960s and 1970s, and the 1980s saw a resurgence of darker, chaotic influences in Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth.

Monsanto (2010-2011) by Steven Leyba, image courtesy the artist

Since the late 1980s, artist Steven Johnson Leyba has been producing art books. The Trickster’s Bible, first published in 2009, solidified many of his influences along with that of other artists, coming together in what would become known as the Coyotel Church.

The Coyotel Church takes a legacy of occult and magical influences, and retranslates it through an open hostility to brands and corporate entities. The ideals of Coyotel attempt to liberate the will through magical acts, fusing the intention of will into the space of artistic creation via its works.

Image from Coyotel Church Facebook

All of this sounds like the text of a manifesto, and for Coyotel, often is. But lurching beyond the overly ritualized text of social media posts are actual rituals, far less common in this day and age. Whether because of our increased existence in virtual space, or a cultural over-reliance on the written word, we seem to have stepped away from the act itself. The pics, as it were, are more important than the happening.

But with the books of Leyba and Coyotel, the text is the happening. The 2010-2011 book Monsanto came into existence through a series of blood rites and rituals, culminating with a live performance of a death curse against the corporation. Just recently, Leyba and Coyotel performed a death curse against Nestle in response to attempts by the corporation to bottle water from California, featuring piercing, suspension, blood, and a lot of body paint. [Ed. note: Head to LA Weekly for photos - you'll be glad you did. Obviously NSFW.]

These curses are working—not in the sense that any person is literally "dead" as a result, but in the sense that the performances substantiate the will in a way that the internet cannot: quite literally, in the words of Coyotel Church, in "blood, sweat, and chocolate."

Image from Coyotel Church Facebook page

Click here to learn more about Steven Johnson Leyba and the Coyotel Church. 

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Repurposed Shopping Carts Make Perfect Chairs

Images courtesy of the artist

Cart furniture designer Etienne Reijnders is a piece of work. Every once in awhile he goes to visit the German company Wanzl—the largest manufacturer of shopping trolleys in the world—to collect discarded shopping carts, iron colossi that were otherwise destined for the smelter.

Put his creations in your living room, and you can sit on a shopping chair, or at the shopping cart dining table. Drop your bags on a shopping cart side table while sprawled out on a shopping couch.

Is there a future for this kind of upcycling? "Companies like IKEA will probably not be so quick to it—on a large scale, recycling is cheaper," Reijnders responds over the phone. "But that does not mean you can't automate upcycling. I made a couple of chairs that are fairly easy to produce, and that you could build at a fast pace. "

Reijnders furniture pieces are durable, but that doesn't answer the most important question regarding couches and chairs. "They are quite comfortable, I also stand a few prototypes in my house," he says. "I trained as a furniture designer, so I think of humans in the first place, and from there I decide which material is appropriate."

Etienne Reijnders work is on view until February 7 at the exhibition Light Unites at the Artemis Hotel in Amsterdam.

A version of this article originally appeared on The Creators Project Netherlands.

 

 

 

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Hillary Clinton Got The Biggest Post-Debate Polling Bounce

Hillary Clinton got some good news Wednesday, when Vice President Joe Biden announced that he wouldn’t run for the Democratic nomination for president. And she’s testifying before the House Select Committee on Benghazi today. So there’s a lot going on in the news that could affect the polls. But here’s what we know right now: Clinton’s post-debate polling bump looks real.

As might have been expected after the media declared her the winner (more on that below) of the first Democratic primary debate on Oct. 13, Clinton has gained in national and New Hampshire polls (only one post-debate Iowa poll has been released, so we’ll have to wait to know for sure what’s going on there). Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders has dropped in most polling after the debate.

Before we look at the exact numbers, I’ll note again that a rise in post-debate polls won’t necessarily last. After the Sept. 16 Republican debate, we saw Carly Fiorina climb in the polls only to drop more recently. Additionally, we’re still a few months away from any actual voting. And there’s all that news.

Still, looking at an aggregate of polls gives us a far better picture after the debate than any one poll. With Biden out of the race,¹ I’ll be looking only at polls in which Biden was not included or could have his support allocated to the other candidates. If I use the same methodology² as I have previously to compare pre- and post-debate polls, we can see that the debate worked to Clinton’s advantage among Democrats and those who lean Democratic.

	CHANGE IN CANDIDATE SUPPORT, PRE- TO POST-DEBATE
POLLSTER	CLINTON	SANDERS
ABC/Washington Post	+11	-4
CNN/ORC	-1	+5
Emerson	+15	-9
Monmouth	+4	-5
Morning Consult	+2	+2
NBC/WSJ	+5	-5
Average	+6.0	-2.7

Clinton gained in five of the six national polls taken after the debate. This shouldn’t be too surprising: Media spin is what matters most after a debate, and Clinton received very positive coverage. That’s in contrast to her media coverage before the debate, which was very negative. What’s a little bit uncertain is how much ground she picked up. The average has her up 6 percentage points, but CNN found her down 1 point, and the Emerson College poll had her up 15 points.

Sanders, on the other hand, seems to have dropped a little bit, though the picture is muddled. He was down in four polls and up in two. That fits with the idea that Sanders didn’t necessarily do poorly in the debate. Sanders has a well-established ideological base and a group of core supporters who are well-versed in politics and were unlikely to be swayed by the debate.

All told, Clinton has averaged 59 percent to Sanders’s 27 percent in national polls without Biden since the debate. In an average of all polls without Biden in the month before the debate, Clinton was at 53 percent to Sanders’s 29 percent.

Clinton has also gotten a boost in New Hampshire, home to the first primary. New Hampshire has been a weak spot for Clinton. She hadn’t led in a single New Hampshire poll taken in August or September. In fact, Sanders was up by an average of 43 percent to 35 percent in the month before the debate.³ In five New Hampshire polls taken since the Oct. 13 debate, Clinton has led in three to Sanders’s two. On average, they’re essentially tied: Sanders is at 40.6 percent to Clinton’s 40.2 percent.

If Sanders falls behind in New Hampshire, it will be very bad news for his campaign. Not only is New Hampshire right next door to Sanders’s home state, Vermont, it’s also filled with his base voters: white liberals. If Clinton wins New Hampshire, it’s probably a sign that Sanders won’t be competitive in most states outside of Vermont.

Here's Everything Awesome About Processing 3.0

Welcome to Processing 3 from Processing Foundation on Vimeo.

It's like Christmas coming early for the creative-coding community: the latest update to Processing, perhaps the most artist-friendly programming language and IDE, is out, bringing Casey Reas, Ben Fry, and Dan Shiffman’s initiative to the next step. Staying true to the initial value and philosophy that have been signature to the platform since 2001, the 3.0 version keeps things going strong when it comes to promoting the open-sourced, community-developed computer programming environment, offering everyone the ability to understand, read, and write software for computer-based art and creativity,

By providing an extremely user-friendly coding format, syntax, and interface, Processing offers non-programmers the ability to not only learn the computer and code-generated arts, but to wade through the fundamentals of computer programming through a visual means. As a tool enabling boundless creativity, Processing has attracted many creators, allowing them to amplify their projects by injecting code at the core of their creative process. Arduino-powered wearable, complex generative patterns and even mathematical-driven music videos are just a fraction of the impressive works that have emerged so far.  

Processing 3.0 PDE design by James Grady, Ben Fry and Casey Reas

The new makeover enhances both front- and back-end, and the ever-evolving and easy-to-use interface debuts with new features including a re-thought editing window, a brand new, redesigned user interface, high-res display support, and even a unified contributions manager.

To learn more about about the essence of Processing—and also about the latest features—The Creators Project talked to Casey Reas, one of the co-creator of the platform.

Diagram of how Processing has influnced some programming languages and has been influenced by others

The Creators Project: Processing has evolved significantly since its creation. Can you briefly talk about the different main steps from the beginning to now?

Casey Reas: It started as a software “sketchbook” and environment for classrooms and it's still both of those things, but it has also emerged as a high-performance environment for computer graphics and interactive installations. It evolved into this new role in two steps, at Processing 2.0 and now with Processing 3.0.

It has also evolved as a community as libraries created by the community have become essential to Processing and its identity.

Yeah, it seems that the community aspect is crucial into the development process. Can you give us some details about that?

Processing is almost entirely created by volunteers—people who donate their time because they believe in the project's mission. As a free, open-source project since the beginning in 2001, we have always worked as an international group coordinating through online tools. The list of current and past contributors is online here and GitHub keeps track of the precise data here and here.

Documentation from the Processing 3.0 development meeting sponsored by the Emergent Digital Practices program at the University of    Denver, November 2014. Left to right: Ben Fry, Casey Reas, Dan Shiffman

Can we have some details about the new features offered by this upgrade? What's new?

This is a big release. Dan made a 20-minute video to walk through the new features—it really takes that long to get through it all.

In short, we've pushed it in two directions. We have completely updated the code editor and environment to help beginners with suggestions and annotations that includes a new “tweak” mode for making changes while code is running as well as an integrated debugger to inspect what the code is doing in more detail. We have made internal changes for your code to run faster, to take advantage of high resolution displays, and to run at full screen across multiple displays.

Related, Processing for Android has been updated for 3.0 and we're actively adapting Processing to integrate well with the Raspberry Pi. The Pi project will be announced soon. Also,we launched an official library for audio for Processing 3. It's developed by Wilm Thoben and it's called simply "Sound."

Source code commits to Processing from 2002 to 2015 by volume and individual

Do you have any advice for using these new features?

We've changed very little of the Processing language for 3.0 so almost all programs that use the core of Processing will run without modifications. Many of the contributed libraries need to be updated and we're currently reaching out to Library creators to help with updating their important contributions for the new software. We have a full list of changes on GitHub that includes tips for migrating code from Processing 2.0.

What's next for Processing? Any insights that you can share with us?

We think of Processing as an approach to writing code within the context of the visual arts, more than we think of it as a specific software tool. This is easier to understand with the addition of p5.js (a JavaScript version of Processing) and Processing.py (a Python version of Processing) all under the banner of the Processing Foundation. We have always sought to bridge the “two cultures” (the humanities and the sciences) and we are pursuing that further with new software development and partnerships with like-minded orgs.

Later this fall, we plan to launch an open call for a Processing Fellowship initiative to offer a stipend to people to explore ways to move Processing forward in new social and technical directions.

Enhancements for high resolutions displays in Processing 3

Documentation from the Processing 3.0 development meeting sponsored by the Emergent Digital Practices program at the University of Denver, November 2014. Left to right: Manindra Moharana, Andres Colubri

Processing 3.0 is free and open-sourced, and is available for download here.

Credits:

Lead Developers: Ben Fry and Casey Reas started Processing in Spring 2001 and continue to obsessively work on it. In 2012, they started the Processing Foundation along with Dan Shiffman, who formally joined as a third project lead.

Senior Developers: Andres Colubri (Boston), OpenGL / Video, Florian Jenett (Frankfurt), Forum, Elie Zananiri (Montreal), Contributed Libraries / Tools, Scott Murray (San Francisco), Website / Reference / UI.

Developers: Jakub Valtar (Brno), Processing Core, Scott Garner (New York), Hello Processing Website, Gottfried Haider (Amsterdam), Serial Library Updates (64-bit), Jamie Kosoy (San Francisco), Website, Manindra Moharana (San Diego), PDE / Core, James Grady (Boston), Visual Design.

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A Tiny Hamster Celebrates Mini Halloween

Screencaps via

Struggling for spooky inspiration this Halloween season? Connoisseur generator of mini-creativity HelloDenizen has got you covered with a new video called Tiny Hamster's Halloween. This time our titular hero, with whom we've been on micro-Valentine's Day dates and to tiny barbecues, gathers his animal posse and goes trick-or-treating dressed as pizza rat (duh), the jet Tom Cruise hangs onto in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, and, of course, Donald Trump. Watch below for dopamine-inducing tiny nibbling critters, Halloween decoration ideas, and a frightful fall atmosphere.

See more tiny hamster videos on HelloDenzien's YouTube account.

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Lose Yourself Inside a Room Filled with Colorful Mist

Walk into Gallery 2 at the Wellcome Collection in London and, after passing through a couple of doors, you'll find yourself enveloped in mist, but not just any mist—this haze is imbued with bright colors. So thick is the fog that you can barely make out your feet or see what's in front of you.

The installation is Ann Veronica Janssens' yellowbluepink, and like the name suggests, the colors light up the vaporous space that you travel through. Completely directionless, it's disorientating, which is its aim. There's even a list of tips that people are encouraged to read before experiencing it.

"Please move slowly and carefully and do not run," Janssens says. "Please do not proceed into the space if you feel unwell." "All persons entering the installation do so assuming all responsibility for any risk or hazard that may result therefrom,"—just in case you walk into a wall, which is a possibility.

"Color is caught in a state of suspension," runs the press release. "Defying the apparent immateriality of the medium and veiling any detail of surface or depth within the space. As visitors walk through this thickly coloured world, attention is focused on the process of perception itself."

Credit: Wellcome Trust

The installation launches the museum's States of Mind exhibition, which will be a year-long look at human consciousness and what defines it. "At the heart of the subject lies the ‘hard question’ of why objective brains give rise to our subjective consciousness," the museum says. "Neuroscience can explain the relationship between brain activity and conscious functions such as memory retention or decision making. Yet it struggles to describe how the activity of neurons results in our individual experience of colour, as in Janssens’ vibrant environment."

In yellowbluepink your perception becomes isolated. If you've been in a club staggering about in brightly-lit dry ice at the early hours of the morning, your sight blinkered and struggling to make anything out, you'll know the sensation well. And that's the idea of the piece: to make you relfect upon your own awareness.

“Without understanding exactly how it happens, we are all experts in our own experience," says curator of the project, Emily Sargent. "Ann Veronica Janssens’ sensory installation reminds us of the richness of our interaction with the world; a personal universe of experience constructed within the confines of our skulls. Janssens’ work disorientates the viewer through the dissolution of normal perceptual boundaries. The mist appears to disintegrate the materiality of the space whilst at the same time imparting a materiality and tactility to light and color. Visitors are participants in an experiment which challenges habitual practices of seeing and accords a fresh emphasis to the simple fact of experience.”

Credit: Wellcome Trust

Ann Veronica Janssens’ yellowbluepink runs from 15 October 2015 – 3 January 2016. States of Mind: Tracing the edges of consciousness runs from 4 February to 16 October 2016. Both are at Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE. Click here to learn more. 

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Taming the Pack of Feral, Flame-Throwing Robots

Nelmarie du Preez, Autonomous Times, 2015 at Arebyte Gallery. Image courtesy of Arebyte Gallery. All rights reserved.

South African artist Nelmarie du Preez has brought a pack of wild robots to the Arebyte Gallery in east London for her show AUTONOMOUS TIMES. These small, fierce-looking machines, inspired by the savage-industrial DIY styles of Mad Max: Fury Road, were built by Preez. 

Preez tapped into the online maker community for the designs to her "feral robotic arms that need to be tamed" hitting up open source sites like thingiverse.com and Github. Repurposing the "safe" designs and adapting them—and learning to program the bots by engaging with hobbyists in online forums. 

"Some of the things were just simply impossible to find and I had to improvise," she explains to The Creators Project about self-building the pieces. "A lot of the instructions that I found online asked that I 3D print or laser cut certain parts and at some point this simply became too expensive and I ended up cutting and crafting certain parts by hand. It was only in that ‘crafting by hand’ that I also began to alter the aesthetic designs of the robots by adding my own little nuances by ‘hacking’ into the designs." 

Photo by Christian Kaatz

This meant the robots became jagged, edges were exposed, they weren't the shiny, smooth forms their designers intended. But by hacking the designs and materials the robots' characteristics were altered too, augmenting their unpredictable and "feral" natures. "I rather enjoyed this unpredictability and in the end I ended up altering the control systems for these robots as well and programmed them to test their own limitations even more so as it became an act of producing errors. In the end I also decided to use quite long signal cables, which created a lot of twitchy failures and unpredictable movements on their part."

To add to their hostility Preez looked into creating fire-throwers, smoke-machines, and lasers—all adaptations readily available online, but bypassed the safety aspects the hobbyist's suggested. "My own interpretations of their instructions sometimes created a space for all kinds of health and safety violations. So I guess more so than the robots becoming harmful, I was the one transforming." 

Photo courtesy the artist

Preez wanted to explore robotics through the prism of maker and DIY culture because it was a way to examine what the world might be like if every one of us was capable—and had the resources—to create AI.

"To me DIY culture exemplifies the way in which the workplace is changing, especially through the open source online culture, but even within this seemingly free and open culture there are tons of limitations that are dependent on various individual circumstances determined by who you are and where you come from. DIY culture also provides a particular aesthetic and it was important for me to explore this through an artistic platform where robots could become art objects."

Photo by Christian Kaatz

The installation involves a video, a row of responsive robotic arms, and a performative piece. The arms respond to a digitized version of Preez where she recorded herself cracking a whip, which is played back to the robots. Preez likens her screen-based image to a lion tamer, with the machines reacting to "create a kind of choreography or performance themselves." 

"My question within all of my works is always: why and how do we innovate new technologies? How do these things expose our relationship to each other? How does the human-computer relationship reveal how we deal with each other and ultimately trust each other?" Preez notes. "I want to ask at which point will the technology cross over from simply being a mediator between us to becoming a fully-fledged intelligent actor and how will this alter our systems—our democracies."   

Photo by Audrey Salmon

Nelmarie du Preez, Autonomous Times, 2015 at Arebyte Gallery. Image courtesy of Arebyte Gallery. All rights reserved.

GIF courtesy the artist

Nelmarie du Preez's AUTONOMOUS TIMES is on display at the Arebyte Gallery in east London through November 1. 

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Doodles Come to Life on a Giant Face

The black-and-white murals from the Montreal-based collaborative En Masse look like notebook doodles made extravagant. Their latest project, EN MASSE x VISAGE, sees the melding of artists working across a variety of mediums to harmonize artistically right in front of your eyes like a barbershop quartet.

The self described, “highly spontaneous, multi-artist collaborative” was captured through in jittery stop-motion animation by filmmakers Salman Sajun and Brian Tornay. Painters from the crew create a series of patterns on top of a large sculpture of a human face. The resulting video animates their crisp, street art-infused graphics with a beautiful yet chaotic synchronicity.

The group aims to create works of art conceived with a collective vision, executed by the group, as a means to create something greater than anything one person could create alone. Salman Sajun shared with The Creators Project some behind-the-scenes images of the shoot, which you can check out below:

 Images courtesy of Salman Sajun.  

More from En Masse here. And follow new works from Salman Sajun on his website.

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Women Get "Fresh" with Art World Sexism

“Do Women Have to be Naked?” Guerilla Girls, 2012. All images courtesy NMWA

The National Museum of Women in the Arts in D.C. are rolling out a new movement that addresses the still-skewed representation of females in the arts. Titling their cause “Women, Arts, and Social Change,” the team—headed by NMWA director Susan Fisher Sterling—aim to dissect gender issues in contemporary art and culture, dissolving the structures that reduce females to footnotes, quotas, or afterthoughts in museums, galleries, and institutions.

The initiative kicks off this month with “Fresh Talks,” a series of conversations in which invited speakers tackle questions such as “Can design be genderless?” and “Can there be parity in the art world?” which is the subject of the inaugural talk on October 18.

The Guerrilla Girls’ 1986 Report Card alongside Pussy Galore’s 2015 Report Card © Pussy Galore

“When we began our research, looking into other arts initiatives that were about women and social action, we realized there were almost none. Really, nothing,” says Sterling, who said the idea for initiative seeded around three years ago. “So I think we have the opportunity here to become this beacon of reason for women in the arts—to make sure women were represented and effecting social change.”

Conversation about gender parity is already omnipresent; however, this has been little change in areas such as arts and culture, where inequality begins with appointment of staff, board members, curators and of course, artists. In 1989, the anonymous activist group Guerilla Girls inaugurated their irregular headcount of female artists versus female nude sculptures shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. They asked, “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?”

Carrie Mae Weems: Photo courtesy the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

In 1989, the ratio was less than 5% artists to 85% nudes; in 2012, an incredible 23 years later, the ratio is still less than 4% artists to 76% nudes. The transparency of this underrepresentation and the stigmatizing catch-all dredges up fallacies such as: women artists simply can’t paint as well as men (thanks, Georg Baselitz); women can’t make art and have kids, it’s one or the other; and women should be relegated to being objects and muses rather than creators themselves.

“Having children and being a mother... It would be a compromise to be an artist at the same time,” Tracy Emin famously said in an interview with Red magazine in 2014. “There are good artists that have children. Of course there are. They are called men.” How then in the face of such adversity, can social change be enacted?

Gabriela Palmieri: Photo Courtesy Sotheby's

“A conference can inspire, but cannot make change. Everyone attending this one should do some kind of action afterward,” says an anonymous member of the Guerilla Girls, speaking on behalf of the group. A GG member is a panellist in the upcoming “Can there be parity in the art world?” talk, which also features Sarah Douglas, Editor-in-Chief of Artnews, and Gabriela Palmieri, senior vice president at Sotheby’s. Maura Reilly, curator and writer, will moderate. GG continues: “There are people in every institution that care about gender and diversity and they are collecting and exhibiting more art by women and artists of color. But there are also people who have drunk the fancy art world Kool-Aid and only care about the most expensive art, and showing the work of the same few artists over and over.”

Sterling’s view is more of a hopeful one. Having studied the inner workings of the equality movement, she is convinced that the stone has already gathered moss—and now, with some funding, actions can take place. “I’ve been talking to people for a bit and I kept finding the same reason: they can never find the money [for social activism in the arts]. You must have the capital to be able to make this work. We’re finally able to launch our programming, because instead of making headwind, we already have jet stream that is starting to come behind us.” After the launch in October, the initiative has two more talks planned. In November, Carrie Mae Weems leads her own talk, “Can an artist inspire social change?"

And the argument about females being lesser artists than men? The GG have the last word. “Hey, no one believes that any more,” their spokesperson retorts. “Great women artists are here and completely ready and empowered. It’s just the institutions that are lagging behind.”

Image by Cara Despain for Micol Hebron’s Gallery Tally

For a schedule of "Fresh Talks" and to learn more, visit The National Museum of Women in the Arts in D.C. here.

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'Black Power Tarot' Cards Feature Billie Holiday, Andre 3000

From the Black Power Tarot by King Khan; artwork by Michael Eaton

Most people are familiar with the concept of the tarot, but for many, it takes a lifetime to truly understand it. Through images, words, numbers, and sounds, 22 major arcana cards in the tarot such as the Fool, the Lovers, Strength, the Sun, and the World symbolically illuminate different paths in life. Until now, representations of these archetypes have mostly been white. With this in mind, VICE Records alum King Khan of the eponymous King Khan and the Shrines decided to collaborate with Chilean avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky and Belfast-based designer Michael Eaton to create the Black Power Tarot. Each card is inspired by a real-life figure that King Khan believed was able to follow the path of enlightenment.

King Khan's cards, courtesy King Khan

The Tarot de Marseille is the oldest mass-produced tarot deck, manufactured by printing press around 1500 CE. Figuratively, the Tarot de Marseille inspired the Black Power deck, which casts famous people in different roles.

"The figures in each card represents a likeness to 19 real African American musicians, two real African American magicians (Marie Laveau La Papesse and Black Herman the Magician) and one comedian, the Fool," King Khan says. "The Fool in my tarot is not a musician: what he holds above his head is a crack pipe, and the microphone is there to represent a comedian, not a musician. He was modeled after Richard Pryor, who was in many ways the ultimate fool."

King Khan with Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra and the Sun card, courtesy King Khan

Other famous figures include Billie Holiday as the Moon, designed by a jeweler in Geneva named La Brutte. Gospel singer and activist Sister Rosetta Tharpe is cast in the World card, and the Temperance card features Curtis Mayfield, famous for his falsetto voice. "You could say he sounded quite androgynous, but his music was also very much about balancing the love within. He is not supposed to be macho; au contraire, he is a sweet soul."

Before the Black Power Tarot first appeared on Dangerous Minds back in June, King Khan had the idea to create his deck through a series of dreams. While working on the soundtrack for the Invaders documentary, black power quickly became a theme. Meanwhile, the musician had been having his cards read by Jodorowsky and was amazed at the results, so he ran each card past his mentor, who provided guidance and support throughout the project.

From the Black Power Tarot by King Khan; artwork by Michael Eaton

"Jodo wanted me to make sure my ego wasn't interfering," King Khan says. "I originally had N.W.A. as the Judgement card with a blue-skinned Eazy-E rising from the grave, but this had nothing to do with what the card represents. The Judgement card shows the union of the masculine and feminine, and the creation of the perfect, balanced, androgynous child. So I decided to change it up and put Andre 3000 and Erykah Badu in the card. They definitely show the perfect balance of masculinity and femininity, to the point where they become a superior androgynous form that forces us to judge without color or sexuality."

Another card that Jodo "corrected" was Tina Turner as Strength. Originally, King Khan had her wrestling with Ike Turner, but Jodo was adamant that they keep the traditional lion in the card. "This card is not about her conquering a man, it's about her conquering a beast that is inside of her, which means much more," says King Khan.

The Black Power Tarot by King Khan; artwork by Michael Eaton, courtesy Michael Eaton

Designer Michael Eaton believes he was lucky to have such detailed instructions from King Khan via Jodorowsky. "The thing that really helped was, King Khan was very specific about what he wanted and how everything should look. He had a big list of people who he had assigned to a certain card. I would look at reference images form the Tarot De Marseilles and incorporate a version of that person into the card."

In the end, King Khan believes the new deck of cards celebrates black power through the language of the tarot.

"I find it amazing how the path of the Fool getting illuminated and understanding the world has not changed since the 1300s," King Khan says. "The cards are a great to help navigate through life decisions; it's like having a divine mystic guidance. I can't tell you what the future holds, that would be a sham, but I can show you the path, and then you can decide better what decisions to make."

From the Black Power Tarot by King Khan; artwork by Michael Eaton

Check out the full Black Power Tarot deck here.

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