Very interesting post even if you don’t agree with all the points he is making. Posted on April 7, 2004 by Dyske Suematsu, a cultural critique.

Dyske write about the historical roots of the political art as a conceptual art movement that was born in the late 60’s. He share his opinion about the effectiveness of political art, and claim that artists cannot be exempted from the suspicion of having impure motives when dealing with political issues.

“If artists are not required to prove the integrity of their motives, why should anyone else be? If we were to speculate hidden motives of government institutions and private corporations, it is only fair that we also speculate the hidden motives of the artists who criticize them.”

Another question that Dyske have about political art is its effectiveness. He claims that by taking positions as artists, they necessarily distance themselves from the real nitty-gritty of politics, he says that to him, what is interesting is not so much the content, but why they choose to use art as a platform for their fights.

Read the original article by Dyske Suematsu at DYSKE.COM

What would you do if you were The Next Great Dictator?

This open call is open to all artists and writers worldwide.

What would happen if you assumed sole and absolute power and control in Israel, or the middle east, or even the entire world?

In the Roman Republic the term “Dictator” did not have the negative meaning it has later assumed. Rather, a Dictator was a person given sole power for a specific limited period, in order to deal with an emergency. At the end of his term, the Dictator was supposed to hand power over to the normal Consular rule and give account of his actions – and Roman Dictators usually did.

Imagine you had an extraordinary amount of personal power, especially the power to make laws without effective restraint, will you be a positive dictator or a mean one?
Submissions to this project are limited only by your imagination and desire to be in control.

We are looking for any kind of art, poetry, plays, images, videos, sound, journalistic pieces, academic extracts, experimental texts, everything and anything which you feel responds to the above question.

All articles should be no more than 1,000 words long and respond to the above question.

The Next Great Dictator

ArtPolitica will publish your submissions on our Homepage and our Facebook  fan page, along with an abstract of the authors bio and website link at the end of each post.

Please email all submissions to info {at} artpolitica {dot} com with the subject heading “Publication Submission”.

This open call has no deadline for submissions (for the time being).