Tibetan Children...

                       

Shocking new information has come to light that as many as one million Tibetan children & youth – as young as 6 years old – are being held in China's colonial boarding schools, removed from their parents, families, culture, and religion, and faced with intense political indoctrination.

Please take action to demand Chinese leaders stop the use of colonial boarding schools in occupied Tibet.

TAKE ACTION NOW!

Tibet Action Institute's report shares heartbreaking stories from survivors and witnesses about the brutal impact of China's colonial boarding schools.

One anonymous witness told them, "I know of children aged four to five who don’t want to be separated from their mothers. They are forced to go to boarding schools. In some cases, the children cry for days, sticking to their mother’s laps, begging not to be sent away."

This spine-chilling practice is similar to historic residential schools for indigenous children in Canada, the US, and Australia that aimed to destroy their indigenous language, culture, and identity. We can’t let this happen again.

Please take a few minutes to email China’s Vice Premier and Minister of Education to demand this practice is stopped?

We're now developing plans and resources for Tibet groups to build more urgent action about China's colonial boarding schools to ensure Tibetan children are not forgotten.

Thanks for all that you do to support Tibet.

Mandie, Lobsang, Pema, Terluz and the team at Tibet Network

TAKE ACTION NOW!

Read more about China's Colonial Boarding Schools:
Separated From Their Families, Hidden From The World
Tibet Action Institute

The horrors of Canada’s residential schools are being repeated in Tibet
Globe And Mail - Tsering Yangzo Lama

Theatre of Actions for Rights  

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World Action Day for Tibet

Observed in the calm, 

Performed in the Storm - 

Free China/Free Tibet 

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TAR wheel (after Duchamp & Dharma)

  Marcel Duchamp, Rotorelief, 1949

  Marcel Duchamp, Rotorelief No. 5 – Poisson Japonais 

  Tibetan woman with Buddhist prayer wheels

  Tibetan prayer wheel disc

TAR wheel                               Theatre of the Actors of Regard 

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Re. control over appearances

Melbourne is again hosting the Australian Open.
 
On Monday night, there were many fans to support the young Greek star Stefanos Tsitsipas in his first-round match. Tsitsipas later suggested the fans had 'crossed the line' in their chants and conduct, that they should show more respect to his opponent, that such behaviour is not appropriate for tennis.

We noted a group of young men who posed in celebration of the Tsitsipas's win by all raising the horned hand.
  

It's a gesture common to many cultures, often symbolising a warding off. Warding off the evil eye, warding off evil, warding off the unwanted. 
In recent decades, it has even been used to represent the opposite, a welcoming of the forces of opposition, from satan to heavy metal ...

... to grindcore and parodic transmutation. 

 free-style grindcore/power-violence band Self Deconstruction

We don't know Jimmy Connors' intention when he used it (directed at himself) at the Australian Open in 1974.

 Jimmy Connors wins the Australian Open 1974 : The Age

Our own preferred signification derives from its use as an esoteric Tibetan Buddhist mudra : 

having control over appearances.

  

Perhaps, Connors used it in this way? A note-to-self not to be misled by the momentary appearance of victory.

This application is also often used by TARists.

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Tibet : Lest We Forget

This Sunday 10 March is the 60th anniversary of the first major popular Uprising against China's rule - in Lhasa in 1959 - when the Dalai Lama was forced to escape from Tibet (below, centre). He reached safety in India on 30 March 1959.

Whilst Tibetans are paying tribute to the courage of generations both past and present, China is preparing to befuddle the UN Human Rights Council with its response to last November's Universal Periodic Review. As previously, China has rejected most of the Tibet-related recommendations, include basic requests for UN officials to visit, calling them “inconsistent with China’s national conditions, contradictory with Chinese laws, politically biased or untruthful.” Bizarrely, China claims to have "already implemented" a recommendation to restart dialogue on Tibet, when in fact there has been no acknowledged formal contact with the Dalai Lama's representatives since 2010. - International Tibet Network 

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We call him "Mr No Enemy Liu", he said.

Liu Xiaobo, Chinese Dissident Who Won Nobel While Jailed, Dies at 61

by Chris Buckley / New York Times (13 July 2017)

full article here

Mr. Liu was imprisoned and unable to accept the Nobel Peace Prize 
in person in Oslo in 2010. The actress Liv Ullmann read from Mr. Liu’s 
“I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement to the Court.”CreditOdd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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Liu Xiaobo, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, died today, July 13, 2017, from complications of liver cancer, while serving an 11-year prison sentence for “inciting subversion of state power.” The following essay is excerpted from Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century, by Orville Schell and John Delury.

Liu Xiaobo’s Three Refusals: 

No Enemies, No Hatred, No Lies

An Excerpt from ‘Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century’

  

In the spring of 1989, Liu Xiaobo was a thirty-four-year-old professor of literature and philosophy at Beijing Normal University with a keen interest in political ideas, who when demonstrations broke out, quickly became a habitué of Tiananmen Square. Having written a doctoral thesis on the topic of aesthetics and human freedom, he was a prolific if acidic writer, a loner and iconoclast who believed that the most worthy role of intellectuals was to “enunciate thoughts that are ahead of their time” and to strive for a vision that is able “to stretch beyond the range of accepted ideas.” He believed that a truly autonomous intellectual must be “adventurous” and “a lonely forerunner” whose true worth would be discovered “only after he has moved on far ahead.”1 A uniquely independent thinker whose signatures were close-cropped hair, an addiction to cigarettes, and a fondness for aviator glasses, Liu rejected the fundamental premises of one-party rule, which he felt had corrupted the ability of most Chinese to think for themselves. Party rulers, he later said, “bribe us with small favors, threaten us with the lash, entertain us with songs and dances, and use lies to poison our souls.”2 For those intellectuals who too easily accommodated the party, Liu had little but contempt. “And China’s so-called intelligentsia,” he wrote, “is, for the most part, the dictator’s conspirator and accomplice.”3

An admirer of nonviolent leaders such as Vaclav Havel, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., Liu prided himself on his intolerance for cant, groupthink, and political pandering.4 “The Chinese love to look up to the famous, thereby saving themselves the trouble of thinking,” he wrote before the 1989 demonstrations began. That’s why they “rush into things en masse. Occasionally someone stands out from the crowd and lets out a shout: Everyone is astounded. What I’m saying is that there are too few people with their own minds, their own ideas.”5 ....

full article extract here

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Signed Sealed Delivered

         
from Blouinartinfo/Nicholas Forrest, the following report :

French auction house Pierre Bergé & Associés has set a new record for a Chinese seal, selling an 18th-century imperial seal to a Chinese collector for €21,000,000 during its December 14 Extrême-Orient sale at Hotel Drouot in Paris – more than 20 times its estimate.

Owned by Emperor Qianlong, the palm-sized Qianlong period (1736-1795) red and beige soapstone seal is decorated with nine stylized dragons chasing the sacred pearl through the clouds. The dragon is a symbol of imperial authority, the pearl a symbol of imperial power and immortality, and the number nine, being the highest single digit number, a symbol of masculinity.

Alice Jossaum, an expert in Asian art at Drouot, told AFP that the seal was remarkable for its colour, which she described as being “very red, almost blood.”

“This seal was used to sign paintings by Emperor Qianlong himself, along with calligraphy,” Jossaum said. “The markings underneath the seal reiterate the famous saying: ‘Emperor Qianlong's paint brush,’ meaning everything he had painted or written himself,” she added, also stating that “the Qianlong period is highly prized, it’s flourishing, it’s the absolute pinnacle.”

   
from FIAPCE, the following report :

Untitled Document from 1973 on a single sheet of Arches paper two broad-brushed black-squarish washes of thin pigment sealed eight times across two rows of asymmetric four.

AAA_Art Archive Australia   

from TAR, the following report :

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HAND SPACE and the Red Regard

R E D ] L A B E L ( G U A R D

This week marks fifty years since the beginning of Mao's disastrous Cultural Revolution.

Support the Great Cultural Revolution's

standard bearer, study and pay respects

to Comrade Jiang Qing!!

 Mao's last wife Jiang Qing (see: Gang of Four) with Mao's Little
 Red Book. Cultural Revolution era propaganda poster.

 Members of Theatre of the Actors of the Red Guard perform 

 'Let Us Raise the Red Rectangle : from Abstraction to Praxis'

 

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World Press Freedom Day : Shokjang Day

Popular, courageous Tibetan blogger sentenced to three years in prison

International Campaign For Tibet 

19 February 2016

The popular Tibetan blogger Druklo, known more widely by his pen name Shokjang, has been sentenced to three years in prison after being ‘disappeared’ nearly a year ago, according to Tibetan sources in exile.

Druklo (pen name: Shokjang) an intellectual, blogger and writer, is known for his reflective and thought-provoking articles on issues of contemporary concern such as ethnic policy and settlement of nomads. There was widespread dismay when he was detained by security police in Rebkong (Chinese: Tongren) on March 19 (2015), with numerous netizens expressing their sadness.

According to the exile Tibetan newspaper, Tibet Times, and other Tibetan sources, Shokjang was sentenced to three years in prison in a court in Xining, the provincial capital of Qinghai. Details of charges are not known, although one source in exile said that he believed it was connected to ‘separatism’.

Golog Jigme, a Tibetan monk, teacher and former political prisoner, who escaped into exile in 2014, said: “We believe that Druklo challenged the court ruling, saying that he had not done anything against the Chinese Constitution or against Chinese laws and regulations. Like so many Tibetan political prisoners, he has been sentenced on baseless charges due to the Chinese Communist Party authorities exerting their power."[1]

- Read full article here
              

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Oh SupermART, oh flippin' heck!

     
After the severity and pricking humour of Ian Burn, Mel Ramsden and Roger Cutforth in Ann Stephen's significant 1969: Retrieving the Black Box of Conceptual Art at the VCA's Margaret Lawrence Gallery... 

     

 Ian Burn, Installation photograph for Xerox Books, Pinacotheca,
 1969, black and white photograph. © Estate of Ian Burn.

... arriving at the NGV presented quite a contrast. The Warhol-Weiwei exhibition felt more like a fun fair or Boxing Day sale. Very crowded, obviously the word was out that this was a fun thing to take the children to in the school holidays. The loud music from the NGV Teens Art Party dance squad rehearsals in the Great Hall added just one more upper there, like at The Factory perhaps, or whatever...

Talk about, pop musik
Talk about, pop musik
Shoobie doobie do wop
I wanna dedicate this
Pop pop shoo wop
Everybody made it
Shoobie doobie do wop
Infiltrate it
Pop pop shoo wop
Activate it
New York, London, Paris, Munich
Everybody talk about pop musik
Talk about, pop musik
Talk about, pop musik
Pop pop pop pop musik

- M (Pop Musik, 1979) 

... but was quite inappropriate when also heard in the Asian and European galleries. Nowhere to hide. Where's Poly Styrene when we need her?

Some people say little girls should be seen and not heard
But I say... 1 2 3 4
Oh Bondage! Up yours!
Bind me tie me
Chain me to the wall I wanna be a slave
To you all
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more
Chain-store chain-smoke
I consume you all
Chain-gang chain-mail
I don't think at all
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more
Thrash me crash me
Beat me till I fall
I wanna be a victim
For you all
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more
Oh bondage up yours
Oh bondage no more

-  X-Ray Spex (Oh Bondage Up Yours!, 1977)

 Ai Weiwei, Study of Perspective

   

Theatre of the Actors of Regard 
    Report of 8 April 2016 re. 
    Observation of young children giving the finger
    to photos/images/appearance(s)...

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Fukurokuju Rocks OK

We appreciate the ever cool ways of Fukurokuju, the Japanese Lucky God of Wisdom and Longevity.

Here, below, we see him pictured at LACMA, entertaining for TAR with his fellow Lucky Gods. Yes, it's Fukurokuju pretending to be Jimi Hendrix. Writing with his head bound fox hair axe the characters of "Scuse me while I kiss the sky".

The other six all laugh and cheer, and then the Seven as One chorus "Oooooooooooooooooooh, there ain't no light nowhere! (It's a favourite old party trick of theirs.)

Theatre of the Actors of Regard  

Fukurokuju Writing with His Head
Series: Sketches by Yoshitoshi
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (Japan, 1839-1892)
Japan, 1882, May
Prints: woodcutsColor woodblock prin
Image: 6 5/8 x 9 3/8 in. (16.8 x 23.7 cm)
Paper: 7 1/8 x 9 3/8 in. (18.0 x 23.7 cm)
Collection: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) - Herbert R. Cole Collection (M.84.31.352)
Japanese Art

Fukurokuju is always available to the projects of his friends and students. Here, today, with the flaming pearl of wisdom in one hand and his staff and scroll-of-lives in the other, he holds steady as one of his students paints the sign of our present regard on the sky-kissed ediface of that noble being.

click image to enlarge 

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TAR End-of-Year Financial Report

Around this time of year, we receive various end-of-year reports from the State and National galleries. 

Below, unaltered, is a page from the NGV Annual Report (here). It serves as facing page to the report titled : Five Year Financial Summary. The speculative caption given to the image is:

Visitors enjoy the exhibition A Golden Age of China: Qianlong Emperor, 1736–1795

Once again, the use/value of such as this has the Accountants, Economists, Philosophers and -oLogists of every mask at Theatre of the Actors of Regard all in a spin, debating how the Value of our Acts of Regard might be calculated and weighed.

Use value : Origin of the concept

The concepts of value, use value, utility, exchange value and price have a very long history in economic and philosophical thought, from Aristotle to Adam Smith, and their meanings evolved. Adam Smith recognized that commodities may have an exchange-value but may satisfy no use-value, such as diamonds, while a commodity with a very high use-value may have a very low exchange-value, such as water. Marx comments for example that "in English writers of the 17th century we frequently find worth in the sense of value in use, and value in the sense of exchange-value." With the expansion of market economy, however, the focus of economists has increasingly been on prices and price-relations, the social process of exchange as such being assumed to occur as a naturally given fact.

Marx emphasises that the use-value of a labor-product is practical and objectively determined; that is, it inheres in the intrinsic characteristics of a product that enable it to satisfy a human need or want. The use-value of a product therefore exists as a material reality vis-a-vis social needs regardless of the individual need of any particular person. The use-value of a commodity is specifically a social use-value, meaning that it has a generally accepted use-value for others in society, and not just for the producer. ( from Wikipedia )

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Gough

Being 21, in Australia in 1972...

Remembering still the zeitgeist thrill of hearing for the first time Gough Whitlam address the nation : not under the old imperial hierarchical ranking of "Your Majesty, Your Excellencies, Your Eminence, Your Honours, distinguished guests and so on down the ranks to ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls" but by that most simple egalitarian greeting : "Men and women of Australia". To which there was a mighty cheer.

Others will list the great vision and the many reforms of Whitlam and the Labor Party in that brief turbulent period. In coming days we will provide links to some of these.

Usually this blog focuses on aspects of the Arts, so we'll stick with that today. Gough's involvement in this area was as significant as it was in so many others. To his cost, he supported encouraged and actively advocated on behalf of James Mollison's proposal to purchase Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles for the collection of the (then) Australian National Gallery.

We still have our souvenir front page of the Melbourne Herald, the first they ever printed in colour, with the headline editorial addressed to each one us : Would you pay $1.3m. for this? 

 
The reactionary and yobbo media reckoned that Australians would think it stunk. Comedian Paul Hogan...
       

       
Our observation was that people were more open and interested than that.
     

FIAPCE 

Anyway, the public goading only encouraged Gough who responded with a Blues Poles Christmas Card for the comrades.
            
 
     
Being 22, in Australia in 1973...

Your correspondent gave two weeks notice at the old Abbotsford CUB brewery - where his job title was Beer Passer, true - on the day he received the news of a small grant in the first of Gough's new Australia Council Arts Grants. Enough to live for a while as an artist. Thanks Gough, for all you provided to so many. Vale.

On twitter from the National Gallery of Australia :
"Gough Whitlam will be remembered as a visionary of the arts in Australia", Allan Myers AO QC, Chairman, NGA Council
             

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