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Weapons of Mass Attraction Aired 2005 on Blacked-out Media, Free Speech TV (Dish Network) Producer / Director: Julie Tseselsky Synopsis: In 2004, New York City became a national hub of antiwar protest during the Republican National Convention. The events of that week were the most documented events in history. The New York art scene, from Chelsea to Williamsburg, converged around the political events, bringing media attention to anti-war sentiments. Indymedia, a global network of non-profit Independent Media Centers, also converged to document the unprecedented involvement of art in politics and an unprecedented abuse of civil liberties by the New York City Police Department. Weapons of Mass Attraction compiles Indymedia documentation of art in politics and the city's response to anti-war protest.
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April 8th, 2006 Weapons of Mass Attraction (30 min Doc) dir Julie Tseselsky - at Atelier Wonderful + installation and discussion by Julie Tseselsky & Justin Barrera
Atelier Wonderful
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
In a communist country where media documentation is strictly monitored, Vietnamese art students met to discuss self-documentation and civil disobedience:
Migrant Media Arts presents a screening and discussion on the historical and contemporary roles of cultural documentation in our society. Thanks to the Internet and advances in digital technologies, the significance of documenting cultural, personal and political events has shifted from historical conservation to media empowerment. Average people are able to lend the world their own perspective on information previously dispensed by corporate media organizations.
Video work by Julie Tseselsky will serve as examples of current types of cultural documentation for different purposes. These will include Weapons of Mass Attraction, a video about the most documented event in history, and a rough-cut of The River Goddess, a documentary work in progress about Vietnamese traditions faced with a modernizing Vietnam. Justin Barrera will give a brief lecture and host a discussion on the topic, with simultaneous translation to Vietnamese by Aaron Robert Toronto.
Screening at 3:00 pm: The half-hour documentary Weapons of Mass Attraction was filmed in New York city in the months leading up to and during the Republican National Convention of 2004. It documents a movement of creative resistance, outraged Americans combining art and protest in response to the Bush Administration. The documentary also gives evidence of the civil rights abuses that took place in NY during the convention itself, when over 3000 people were arrested during the course of a week and held in toxic facilities for 48 hours without due process. The documentary was a collaborative process among independent videographers who risked arrest to capture these events, which were perhaps the most documented events in history...
