Posts tagged with "Art and Design"

Guerilla Girls meet Barnstormers - Saturday, NYC

By Ari | May 15, 08 12:19 PM

We just heard about a cool event happening on Saturday at the Bronx Museum: A "Collaborative Day of Performance" that goes 12-6pm and includes, among other wonders, a collaborative "Satiric demonstration" by the Barnstormers and the Guerilla Girls. If you don't know the folks in question yet, check out the video below of the Barnstormers in action. Now imagine it crossed with feminist art activism. I think this is not to be missed. More info can be had here: Bronx Museum Events.

(Via the Bluestockings Feminist Book Club)

Two and a Half Weeks in Israel, Amsterdam and Iceland

By Shira | May 12, 08 05:36 PM

Israel (232 Photos)

Amsterdam (232 Photos)

Iceland (207 Photos)

Photos from Ari and more about the trip coming soon :)

The Shirari Update: Recent Work

By Ari | Apr 11, 08 08:00 AM

So we're gearing up for this trip, and churning out a LOT of work before we go. In the past couple of months we've done quite a bit, much of which we've already written about. But here are some projects we haven't blogged about yet:

I worked with GLSEN to design a new look for StudentOrganizing.org and put fresh skins on their Day of Silence and Remembering Lawrence King MySpace sites.
We co-created a brand and launched a placeholder page for the new documentary Lioness, currently making the rounds at festivals. Posters and a full site are on the way... follow this film, it's a good one.
I made posters and other collateral for the freeDimensional / Casa Frela production OFF THE WALL.
Shira designed the DVD for the doc Innocent Until Proven Guilty, soon to be available for purchase at Arts Engine.
I handled the International Women's Day and May Day issues of The Socialist, the magazine of the Socialist Party USA. The May Day issue inaugurated our brand spankin' new redesign.
We designed a new film distribution brochure for Scenarios USA and rebranded (and re-designed and re-authored) their DVD collection. We also handled the collateral for their 2008 REAL DEAL Awards and Gala. (I made their site, too - though that was a few years back!)
I did a launch postcard for The Plant Republic's new site.
Shira's been a pre-screener and has been coordinating the jury process for Pangea Day, a project of TED Conferences.
I designed a guide to US citizenship and naturalization for South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) and a fresh cover for the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA), through the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL).
I made invitations, posters, programs, and a million other things for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center's Broadway Backwards 3 and Center Dinner 25th Anniversary Celebration.

I'm sure I'm missing a million things, so if we worked on your project and haven't mentioned it, apologies! We really love all of our work, though it can be hard (I got up at 7am and am currently running on empty...), and we've been very lucky in that we can choose to work only on projects we really want to stand behind politically and ethically. It's a good life, this. Thanks to all of our clients and friends who continue to bring these amazing projects to us.

Uncle Samantha

By Ari | Apr 10, 08 03:25 PM

I've been working for New York's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center for a while now, and a little job I did for them has recently gotten some new life, being put into use by Burgundy Crescent Volunteers in the DC area. Here she is! Uncle Samantha (or Aunt Sam) was meant to be a drag queen but is frequently mis-identified as a hot lesbian. Either way, she seems to be a crowd-pleaser. I originally drew her for the Gay Center's Volunteer Program and she appeared on the cover of the Center's newsletter, Center Happenings. Now the folks at Burgundy Crescent are using her to recruit new volunteers for DC Pride events. You can even get her on a shirt or mug!

Anyway, had to post this - I'm so happy to see Sam getting out there and hopefully bringing in some new recruits for the Gay Agenda. If you're queer and looking for something fun to do, I highly recommend volunteering with a local organization like the Center or BCV. They can always use people with skillz and are, I've found, generally full of really awesome people doing great work for people who really need it.

Click! at the Brooklyn Museum - Vote for My Photo!

By Shira | Apr 3, 08 11:37 AM

This is the photo I submitted to the Brooklyn Museum's "crowd-curated" show, "Click!" Anyone can rate submissions. Check it out and give my photo a high rating, if you please :)

R.I.P.

By Shira | Mar 25, 08 01:55 PM

rip - 3.08.08.jpg

When people die around the same time, are their souls somehow interconnected? I'm not sure that I believe that we have a "soul" and I'm pretty certain that there is no after-life, other than a slow reunion with mama earth, and yet when people pass away in close succession, I can't help but searching for common threads. (Remember when James Brown, Robert Altman, Saddam Hussein and Gerald Ford died in November/December 2006?)

So what do filmmaker Anthony Minghella, author Arthur C. Clarke and musician Israel "Cachao" López have in common? They were all creative visionaries.

Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley is a beautiful film that captures the conflict between external and internal identities in a way that I have never seen before or since. It also shows how totally destructive homophobia, especially the internalized variety, can be.

Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey was written concurrently with the production of Kubrick's film and published after its release. The film, the book, the whole of Arthur C. Clarke's work, is an example of the best of what science-fiction has to offer the world - a glimpse into the future that shows us what we need to do today.

I actually hadn't heard of Israel López until a few days ago, when his death was announced. On NPR he was described as the "inventor of Mambo music." While I'm sure that, as with any artistic movement, López had many collaborators and co-inventors along the way, it's still pretty amazing to be known as the creator of anything. It's time to listen to the Buena Vista Social Club Soundtrack again (López composed a number of the songs).

So rest in peace Anthony, Arthur and Israel. If there is a heaven, I hope you're all up there working on a mambo/sci-fi/cinematic mash-up.

OFF THE WALL - Opening tonight in NYC

By Ari | Mar 21, 08 02:13 PM

I've had the privilege to work with freeDimensional on an event called OFF THE WALL: Celebrating Arts and Human Rights, opening tonight at Casa Frela Gallery in Harlem. Click here for more info and be sure to check out freeDimensional. They're a growing non-profit that's doing some very important work for artists in need of asylum, all over the world.

"Conscious consumerism"

By Ari | Mar 16, 08 03:05 PM

A little while ago, Brooklyn activist/art collective Change You Want to See / Not an Alternative banned Raw Revolution products from their gallery space, issuing a kind of anti-greenwashing/consumerist manifesto along with the announcement: The Real (Raw) Revolution:

A line is here drawn against alternative capitalist products. Revolution is not a candy bar or an energy drink. Don't get us wrong, we recognize good intentions, but good intentions alone are no solution for avoiding the road to hell. All products that represent themselves as "sustainable solutions" are hereby banned from The Change You Want to See Gallery. Creating an economy where fairly traded, organic, vegan, healthy, (and even free) products are the norm rather than an anomaly is something we encourage. We believe however that to achieve this, a stand has to be taken against any commodity that is packaged as the embodiment of an alternative or a revolution. Consuming "Raw Revolution" will never be a meal replacement for actual revolution. Please... continue to invent, build, create, fight, force the limits of the capitalist system. Bring the results of your work to the Gallery, we want to and will continue to help you promote your work. However we will no longer provide a cover for a guerilla marketing campaign. If "false revolutionary", "fake alternative" "politically correct" "do-gooder" products are brought to the Gallery their packaging will be removed at the door.

(Via Stop Shopping Monitor)

Here's the video version:

I really dig the sentiment behind this move. We've been trying to figure out what we can possibly put in our own shop that would pass our ethical muster. We don't like using new materials or toxic art supplies. We don't want to ship things all over the place, requiring shipping suppplies and fuel as well as causing pollution. And we don't really like having money relationships with people anymore, either - though that's hard to avoid when you live in a capitalist society and sell your skills for a living. All of this rather limits what one can sell in a shop, if one decides to keep the shop at all.

There's such a fuzzy line between people working for social change and trying to make a living at the same time - and people who are more in it for the money, but who may do some good along the way. Where do you cross the line into exploitation, or are you always there, so long as you're participating in capitalism?

On the other side of this equation is consumerism of different sorts. In our ongoing efforts to reduce our impact we've found that there are certain things we've needed to buy that require shipping. You can find used books on alternative energy at a local bookstore, for example, but what about that washable shower curtain that requires no plastic liner (or other hard-to-find but highly efficient replacements for conventional housewares)? You'd think in our massive city we'd find it (and yes, if we were craftier, we'd make it), but no luck. But buying online from a company like Simple Family Living Homegoods or Gaiam has a broad impact (supporting capitalism; using packaging material; and polluting the air, using up fuel and clogging up a highway, during shipping). At what point does it make more sense to just buy a damn curtain that requires a liner, imperfect a solution though it might be?

I know we can't be perfect, but we can do our best to do the right thing for the planet and our neighbors. In the society we've set up for ourselves though, it can be hard to know what the "right" decision is.

UPDATE, 3.26.08
Lest I sound too negative about Simple Family Living Homegoods and Gaiam, I wanted to put in that these two companies - and Simple Family Living Homegoods in particular, which is much more indie than Gaiam - are both really great places to get things that will help you move toward a lower-impact life. Reusable, washable mesh produce bags will help you avoid using plastic ones, reusable cloth gift bags and handkerchiefs will help you avoid the use of wrapping supplies, soap nuts and a collapsible drying rack will help you avoid detergents and use less power when doing laundry, and so on. If you can't - or won't - make these things yourself, and if you can't find them locally (which is all too often the case, hence this post), these are indeed very good places to find them.

Fight Military Recruitment in Schools

By Shira | Mar 1, 08 07:21 PM

The New York Coalition of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) have recently released a curriculum that helps teachers educate their students about military recruiting tactics. The goal is to empower students with concrete information and to make sure they know about alternative ways to access education and career-building tools after high-school.

Ari and I had the pleasure of designing the cover for Camouflaged: Investigating How the U.S. Military Affects You and Your Community, which you can preview and buy online through Lulu.com.

If you're a teacher who want to get involved, you should come to the meeting this week...

NYCoRE's Counter Recruitment Project Meeting
Thursday, March 6, 5:30-7:30
CUNY Graduate Center 34th St. & 5th Ave., Room 5489
Please bring ID

Topics of discussion include:

Bringing teachers together to develop a workshop for other teachers around unpacking military recruitment in New York City Schools and across the country
Outreach to bring teachers and administrators from Upper Manhattan neighborhoods to the workshop
Strategizing ways to share the ideas developed by New York City teachers in NYCoRE's recently released curricular guide Camouflaged
Developing ways to be a voice in the events acknowledging the anniversary of the war in Iraq

If you are interested in attending or getting involved, email Edwin at NYCoRE.

And here are some great videos about recruiting and the impact of war on veterans from Media That Matters: No Child, All That I Can Be and Night Visions

The Oscars Have Come and Gone and What Have We Learned?

By Shira | Mar 1, 08 02:02 PM

Unfortunately, this was one of the whitest, most male-dominated awards ceremonies in recent history, which makes me feel less sad that I missed it this year.

I recently illustrated Judith Mahoney Pasternak's great article about racism and sexism in the Oscars for The Indypendent. Check it out: The Oscar’s Minority Report

If I Blog Today, Will the Entry Only Appear in the Archives Every Four Years?

By Shira | Feb 29, 08 06:42 PM

in theory
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

This was stuck to the bottom of my shoe at PS1.

Ari and I met up with Laimah and some of her friends to check out the WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution show. We went to a panel about art and activism, walked through the galleries and then ended up in the cafe downstairs.

That's when I felt something hard and sticky on the bottom of my shoe. As soon as I saw what it was, I figured it must have been on the floor in the bookstore, where I had been browsing. I pictured the stacks and the Theory section, somewhere in limbo, unlabeled, being consumed into other subjects.

So I turned around and walked straight back to the store and went up to the guy behind the little counter and handed it over. He took it from my hand, smiled, said thanks, and then tossed it straight into the trash. So I took it out of the trash and kept it.

HAPPY LEAP YEAR!!!!!

The Why Cheap Art? Manifesto

By Ari | Feb 10, 08 01:42 PM

I'd somehow never seen this before, and had to share it. You can get it here. Bread and Puppet made it. Find out more.

Via Green Mountain Collective's Catamount Tavern News, reachable at greencollective(at)chek(dot)com or via snail at CT News, PO Box 76, Montpelier, VT 05601.

The Indypendent Printed My Illustration for "Revolutions: Read All About ’Em"

By Shira | Feb 3, 08 06:22 PM

I had fun working on this piece to accompany Chris Anderson's review of the new "Revolutions" series from Verso Books.

I'm really looking forward to checking out the series. I'm especially excited about Slavoj Žižek's intro to Mao's "On Practice and Contradiction."

Craft Magazine really wants you to buy things

By Ari | Feb 1, 08 06:49 PM

Craft Magazine rejected an article written by one of their regular contributors, Jean Railla. The piece, called “What Would Jesus Sell?”, asks some questions about crafting and consumerism that Craft apparently decided were too dangerous to publish. Fortunately, Murketing and MediaBistro have both taken up the slack and republished the piece themselves. Yay, you can read it! It's good:

Isn’t shopping, no matter how wonderfully crafty and politically correct still, well, shopping? Can you escape the so-called sin of consumerism by buying handmade? Isn’t the whole point of modern crafting Do It Yourself - not Buy from Someone Who is Doing It Themselves?

(Via Stop Shopping Monitor)

Crafting Protest

By Ari | Jan 27, 08 08:15 PM

knitting nation jumpsuit
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

Yesterday Shira and I hit a panel at the New School called "Crafting Protest", the result of a collaboration between women working around the intersection of crafting and activism. Liz Collins, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Cat Mazza and Allison Smith showed us presentations on their amazing projects, and dropped some science.

Shira's Flickr photoset Crafting Protest at the New School - January 26, 2008 includes links to the panelists websites and such. And these are my drawings made while at the event:

Ch..ch..ch..changes

By Shira | Jan 21, 08 07:22 PM

zora checks out the new mac pro tower
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

It's still hard to believe that Shirari Industries is my full-time gig. My days feel longer in the best possible way, and I fall asleep excited about the next morning.

We just got a new Mac Pro, and it's pretty awesome. My old iMac could barely run iPhoto without crashing, so with me working from home, it was definitely time to upgrade. The cats were almost as excited about opening the boxes as we were. So far, I'm a happy customer and I'm especially psyched about the new iApps. Unfortunately, I think I might have some major issues getting sound recording set up as there are Panther incompatibility issues with the MBox and the Oxygen8 - bummer!

Technology is weird. Somehow, no matter how incredible a device seems when it first comes out, it feels slow and useless only a few years later. Has the device degraded or have we, as individuals, just upgraded our expectations? I recently read Victor Papanek's 1972 book Design for the Real World. (He was a friend and colleague of Buckminster Fuller, developer of the geodesic dome.) The book presents an indictment of planned obsolescence, the notion that corporations purposefully perpetuate a disposable, commodity-driven culture by creating products that aren't built to last, and by always pushing the newest model while discontinuing support of older editions.

The moment I started up GarageBand on my new Mac and tried to record a song using my MBox, only to discover that the device is "not yet supported," Papanek popped into my head, and I felt a rush of guilt. Should I really be investing in more machinery that's probably going to end up in a landfill in a decade or sooner? At least I can console myself with the fact that my Samsung monitor had an Energy Star sticker on it and that Apple went a little greener in 2007.

Button Patrol: They Said It Was Going to Snow

By Shira | Jan 14, 08 08:10 PM

It didn't snow today, but it might snow tonight!!!

Nestbuilding

By Ari | Jan 10, 08 06:47 PM

This image is a screenshot taken during the development of this site - it's sort of embarrassing to look at, so hey, we thought we'd share it. I think it shows how much better we've both become as designers, quite frankly. It also shows how far we can push something when we give it time. This site was about two years in the making, I reckon. This weirdly busy wood look we had going in this earlier version was cool at first, before we coded it prematurely and then struggled to improve what was already tragically flawed, our efforts just making it worse. We didn't figure this out until we'd spent countless hours poking at the thing.

It's kind of shocking how much time we wasted. Don't they say "designers are their own worst clients"? It's true, anyway.

The finished site breaks a lot of rules I usually hold sacred. The home page is a mostly cute splash page devoid of content, a big no-no. The navigation is erratic, jumping around and reordering itself and changing location and size. The sidebar elements vary from page to page, as do the things you find in footers. I'm afraid the Google Blogrolls on the links page don't work for Internet Explorer users (and perhaps others... thanks, Google, sorry visitors). I haven't yet worked out the kinks in the blog's comments and tags, the way they display. And so on.

Every time we broke a convention or integrated content from seemingly disparate parts of our lives into a new weird whole, while making this site, I found myself wondering if we'd end up with something incomprehensible. But it's true to our sensibilities - we aren't just designers, after all. I think (and hope) that it paints us for who we are, and explains in some way the various things we do to occupy and entertain and support ourselves. I also hope the blog will be entertaining. Aaaand I'll stop posting such meta content soon, which I'm sure will help.

Hello and welcome to our brand new blog.

By Ari | Jan 8, 08 11:19 AM

Well here we are. Finally! This website has been a long time in the making. The design couldn't keep up with how fast our work has been growing and changing, and had to be totally redone several times as we reconceptualized what on earth it is we're doing here. Shira will write about her end of things, so I'll just cover my own path to this new website.

I've been blogging in some form or other since 1998 or so; my most recent blog, several years in the running, was called pinkrabbitsays. Meanwhile, I was showing my work at arimoore.com - and was increasingly realizing that my politics, activism and blogging were overlapping more and more with my graphic design and illustration work, as well as with my self-education, art and writing. I've been thinking a lot about connections lately, and seeing the value in looking at things holistically. So I think this new site comes out of that - all of our work and play under one roof.

In college folks constantly mixed up our names. Our friend Diane jokingly called us "Shirari", at one point actually sending us a package addressed to "Shirari Molding-Gore" (our last names are Golding and Moore). So here we are starting a new site and a new business together. We're calling it Shirari Industries, because we're Shira and Ari, and we're industrious. I hope you dig it. Thanks for visiting.

P.S. Please contact us if you run into anything that's not working yet - this site is fresh out of the oven!

Shirari Industries