On May 4, a series of books by the Italian photographer Jacopo Benassi were showcased at The Milan Image Art Fair. Among the featured work were the set of photos, The Ecology of Image, and two collaborative works with Kubiat Nnamdie and Pete Voelker titled LaSpezia is Not Miami/ Miami is not LaSpezia and LaSpezia is not New York/ New York is not LaSpezia.

Though he might be relatively unknown outside his home country, this was not Benassi’s first large-scale acknowledgment. The self-publisher of his own books, Benassi’s works seem to emerge from some place raw and pulpy, still pulsing and bloody, often literally: a girl covers herself in layers of meat, pigs roll in mud, Benassi is naked save for a well-placed mini-coffin, fingers are bloodied, beautiful flowers are so enormous and pink they look like grotesque body parts. Photographers themselves, like Olivier Zahm and Terry Richardson, are some of his most illustrative subjects; it’s a testament to Benassi’s spirit that two purveyors of salacity become subdued in front of his lens. Benassi is good at exposing the lurid, better at vulnerably revealing himself.

Jose El Rey by Kubiat Nnamdie

LaSpezia is not Miami/ Miami is not LaSpeziais Benassi’s first proper collaborative effort. One side of the small, zine-like book is his, the other side is Nnamdie’s. While Nnamdie’s work displays a certain nuanced distance, it is all distilled with the same gritty quality as Benassi’s. Nnamdie is more the voyeur of his scenes, less the maker.

Jacopo Benassi: This project arose from an idea I had with my friend, Warbear, for a gay film festival. He invented the name “La Spezia is not Los Angeles.” Fantastic! This festival has not yet been done, and I asked him permission to use the slogan for my zines. This work’s concept is based on a “split,” with the same mood of old punk bands who recorded tapes and discs with an A side of one band and a B side of another. My idea is the same, but with photos.

Untitled Image by Jacopo Benassi

Monica: How did you select your collaborators, and how did you pick the images? I saw the preview for the book you did with Kubiat and although there are many aesthetic similarities, they’re really distinguished from each other.

Jacopo: Kubiat was incredible. We understood the other immediately and I wished to continue this partnership with him. He presented me with Pete, with whom I made LaSpezia is not New York. In my work, I hadn’t used photos of my city itself, because a city is just a place where a person lives—not the person itself. And this is the concept I want to expose. I love Kubiat and Pete because they shoot with the same mood you have when you fuck. You have erections naturally, and naturally they make their work.

Monica: Kubiat, what kind of moments—visually speaking, of course—ended up in the book?

Kubiat Nnamdie: There are funny ones, like my first muse and dear friend, Amanda Wagner, being kissed by a young man yearning for her, and wild nights with my last muse, Jozie Gonzalez, around Miami. And there are very emotional and spiritual moments that give birth to photos like the cow head, taken at my dad’s funeral.

Efrain Blue by Kubiat Nnamdie

Monica: Is it important that the photos you picked represented Miami, since the book’s title alludes to it? Or were other ideas being represented?

Kubiat: No, I try to not control that. Some works can point directly to Miami, to me as a person who grew up in Miami, or to both. The book’s title is also a celebration of both cities.

Monica: The concept of place and landscape is a really weighty one. I like the idea of visually comparing two places. When you see photographs of a particular environment, it becomes an idea, something both imagined and real, and it makes me wonder how the photographer saw it.

Jacopo: I’m not able to see a place—I try to live it at its best! I can’t shoot in a place I have just started to live. I always try to restrict these spaces to just a few photos. In all these years, I have learned to renounce something, in any case, so I can look at my job clearly.

Beheading of a King 1 by Kubiat Nnamdie

Monica: Then how do you feel about your respective hometowns? How would you describe your relationships with them?

Jacopo: I have a love-hate relationship with my city. But I love my city even more than before, especially after having lived in Milan, where I sometimes go for work. I’ve got a club here in La Spezia with some dear friends of mine: I organize events that I later document and record for my book and CD productions. The name of the club is Btomic, and it’s where I house my AntiBtomic self-publishing label.

Kubiat: I have very warm feelings for Miami, even though I also grew up in Houston, Texas. I love Miami, but naturally I feel people need to hit the refresh button on the place they love. I think Miami is refreshing itself.

Monica: Jacopo, you titled the books La Spezia is NOT Miami, NOT New York. What are their connections to and differences between each other? You are also using the images to connect people, not just places.

Untitled Images by Jacopo Benassi

Jacopo: I’m not interested in differences. [The pictures] are not social research about the environment—it’s about humanity. When someone looks at The Ecology of Image, they usually ask me how many places I traveled to have accumulated so many photos. I answer “between La Spezia and Milan,” and they remain perplexed. Pete, Kubiat, and I work in the same metaphorical landscape. This is what unites us.

Monica: Tell me what else you are working on for the future.

Jacopo: I feel sick if I think about my future. The future is now. I don’t want to go ahead.

From left to right Amanda and Luis by Kubiat Nnamdie

Top Image: Untitled Images by Jacopo Benassi

New York City based photographer, painter, and videographer Marilyn Minter began her art career in 1989 with an unflinching series of paintings based on still images from hardcore pornography. Since then, the artist’s work has evolved through various mediums, while still examining the presentation of sexuality within the confines of fashion, art, and media. Despite, or perhaps because of, her no-nonsense approach to often delicate subject matters, Minter’s work seems to effortlessly draw commercial appeal. Her art has been a feature in the Whitney Biennial, her videos have been displayed in Times Square, and her images have graced Supreme skateboard decks.

I sat down with Marilyn at the opening of a show at Freeman’s to discuss the sexualization of her work as a female artist, her political leanings, and how she feels about the process of becoming successful.

Sway Benns: I don’t want to delve too far back in your previous work but I’ve noticed something that comes up a lot when people look at your work with women – they immediately start discussing the sexualization of it. However, when faced with similar paintings that you’ve done of men, there’s rarely any mention of sex.

Marilyn Minter: Isn’t that interesting?

Sway: It seems to say something about the audience…

Marilyn: It’s always been that way. When I did the food porn and I had a hundred paintings of hands taking food apart, I’d say at least a third of them were male hands. No one wrote anything, ever, except about women with long nails. Those images were from cookbooks. Half of the chefs were men, maybe more. I think that was so telling. And if a woman does anything at all sexual – I made those hardcore porn paintings twenty years ago, but everything I do is sexual. I could paint an apple and it’s “Marilyn, the erotic artist.”

Sway: Well, even in popular culture, male nudity is typically a joke, but female nudity is sexualized.

Marilyn: Yeah. Well everyone likes to look at young flesh. Girls and boys do. I remember the first time I saw a man photographed the way they shoot women. It was in Thelma and Louise, the way Ridley Scott shot Brad Pitt. And I thought “Oh, wow, it’s finally happening.” But of course anyone would do that with Brad Pitt.

Sway: A lot of contemporary art is less process based, less detailed, less pretty. As an artist that is known for having a hyper-realistic, visually appealing style, how do you feel about that in general?

Marilyn: Well, it’s a movement. The people that are really good, are also aesthetically pleasing with the back story, A really means B and I think the best of those artists are fantastic, but I think the eye starts to crave the opposite after being inundated with… I’ve seen shows that are so academic that it’s stunning. So there’s bound to be a huge backlash. I’m a teacher so all the practices are equal to me. I always look for the best of that practice. But that has been ubiquitous in the past five, ten years. But I don’t know, I think that that’s over.

Sway: Yeah?

Marilyn: Yeah, we’re already starting to see the backlash. People are writing about “Oh God, not that again.”

Marilyn Minter, Meltdown, 2011.

Sway: I’ve started to notice that too, outside of art criticism, even in casual conversation people mention they’re tired of it and how they want it to be….

Marilyn: Juicy! There’s something about, you can almost guarantee when it becomes the academy–like it is now, that there will be people in art school, where their entire job is to make the opposite. I tell my students that are doing abstract painting, “Keep doing this because when it turns around you’ll be good at it.” And up until now they would have stopped and started making work about identity. [laughs]

Sway: That seems to be the narrative to your success. Because it took you a long time to become….

Marilyn: Famous? You know it’s not like I was never making something interesting. I think what happened was I wasn’t communicating it. The same paintings that no one was interested in – or liked – look pretty good to people now.

Sway:What do you think changed?

Marilyn: When you’re in it you don’t know exactly what’s going on. I always thought I had something to say when I was told I didn’t. And now everyone tells me I’m the bomb and I don’t believe that. I’m trying to stay right sized about it all. When everyone wants the paintings as opposed to when I couldn’t give them away. Those experiences are anti- the creative process. You can’t believe either one. Somehow you have to put your pith helmet on and just forge through. You have to be a little delusional, when no one’s paying any attention to you. I read Steve Jobs said that you have to have passion. I guess that sounds like I’m comparing myself to Steve Jobs, but I think that to be an artist and to talk about the times you’re living in, if people object to what you’re doing–on moral grounds–then you probably have something interesting to say.

Sway: I think there’s something to be said about people who keep working through failure.

Marilyn: Oh yeah, I’ve been a failure, or mediocre, through most of my life.

Sway: When you look at most people who come out through the other side that have had long stretches of failure…

Marilyn: It’s probably a good cliché. I learned a long time ago, probably in college, never to write anybody off. I remember when Richard Prince said “painting is bankrupt.” [laughs] Those things come back to haunt you.

Sway: A lot of your work really translates to pop culture now.

Marilyn: I’ve always been interested in the times I live in. Movies, I’m fanatical about seeing. They inform me about everything, they tell me how people are seeing. I probably see three or four a week. I love this movie Bellflower. It was really well done, absolutely nothing I could have predicted.

Marilyn Minter, Glisterine, 2011.

Sway: There’s a lot going on politically in New York, particularly with the protests. To me it seems like more of a European endeavor.

Marilyn: We’ll see, I can’t say that because I’ve been in so many protests in my life.

Sway: I think it’s from my generation’s perspective.

Marilyn: Yeah, it’s your generation. Civil Rights, Act Out. I was one of the people that went through the system, followed people that got arrested through the system to make sure they got out alright. I’ve been doing this my whole life. I went to the one the other night, but now I feel like “Nah, it’s your turn.” [laughs] Just go do it, even if you are going to get arrested. It’s so exciting, it’s like getting high!

Sway: All of that is typically so far removed from my generation, I’m so used to the apathy, it seems surreal.

Marilyn: Well, it’s about fucking time! Before Occupy Wall Street I was so horrified by people like Eric Cantor and the Tea Party, and the job creators not being taxed. Nobody was saying anything about it. I literally said I was going to be an ostrich, I got so crazy. I felt so powerless. New York is not the rest of this country, it’s its own country. I have relatives from the south. The worst policy Barack Obama ever had is the fact that he’s black, but the Tea Party is so sophisticated they call it “everything else.” I want the protests to get bigger and bigger, and stay totally nonviolent. I hope the Democratic Party doesn’t co-op it either. I think it has to be an independent, non-violent thing. Because that’s where people are going to start listening.

Sway: I’m not sure that people even felt that anything was wrong.

Marilyn: It’s stunning to me. I just hope that it doesn’t become – because every movement that I’ve been in, sociopaths begin to take over. So that’s the one thing…

Sway: The charismatic leader? I think apathy is the reason why we don’t have as strong of a visual culture as other generations have, but maybe every generation feels that way.

Marilyn: It’s pluralism. It’s a cliché but you can guarantee what the next art movement is going to be: the exact opposite of the current movement. It’s best to be outside of the movement all together. They used to last hundreds of years, now they last 15 months.

Sway: It might have something to do with technology, shorter attention spans.

Marilyn: Well your generation is so much smarter, they have to be. They have so much access to information. I’m enjoying it. I played video games so I’d never be afraid of technology. I just go in and start pushing buttons. I haven’t read a manual in years.

Sway: When I hear criticism of your work it’s often about it being ‘glamorous’. Where do you think that comes from?

Marilyn: Well, I understand it. I work with really abject subject matter; fashion, glamour, pornography. These are things that people just despise and they’re shallow and vapid and easy. But the reality is, if it wasn’t for pornography there would be no internet. Fashion is a multi-million dollar industry and it tells you what tribe you’re from. People want to think it’s so insignificant but if you do think that you’re lying to yourself, it’s ludicrous. Academia has a hard time with my work because of the so-called superficiality of it, but that’s self hatred right there! Because you’re dressed in head to toe Prada. [laughs] I watch people with such suspicious projects going; they’re so vapid, but they’re about how A really means B, and they get so much praise because you can write about it. But visually it’s so non-compelling, I see that and I think it’s some level of self hatred just engaging them, somehow you have to not eat, and works just about ideas and not visuals because that’s more important than something about pleasure. If it looks too good it’s suspicious.

Sway: Wel,l when you think about it, the sole reason we exist on earth is to procreate. Sex…

Marilyn: Rules the world.

Sway: But I think as a culture we work to deny that in favor of intellectualism.

Marilyn: I know! It’s a joke. I just laugh at it. If that’s my only criticism, please, bring it on! I’ve seen curators hide their Italian Vogues and put out their Octobers. It’s ridiculous how people lie to themselves, all they do is see glamorous images all day long, and it gives you an enormous amount of pleasure, and it’s also going to make you feel like shit because you’re never going to look like that.

Marilyn Minter, Cheshire, 2011.

Sway: This work sort of touches on that. They’re babies, and the material is this precious metal, this gold, silver, and they take so much pleasure in playing with it. It seems to hint at it being ingrained.

Marilyn: Yeah, it’s great because when does it start? They’re blank slates.

Sway: A lot of your images use Photoshop, cutting from various photographs.

Marilyn: Only in the paintings, all of the photos are analog. I still use film. I use film because I get so much detail. I’m totally anti-Photoshop. I don’t use it. Even when I do commercial work. And I don’t use blonde haired, blue eyed models. These are all mixed raced models. I’m on a mission! Photoshop has become so ridiculous. I don’t even recognize the people on the cover of Vogue anymore. There’s no pores on the skin. I’ve actually had fights – I did editorial for Allure - and I wouldn’t let them Photoshop me. They took it all the way to the photo editor. I wouldn’t let them straighten the teeth, take the fur off the upper lip… I said, “ Why did you ask me to do this project if you’re going to Photoshop it?” No, I’m totally anti-Photoshop… I was just thinking though… When people take my picture I still think, “Could you take this wrinkle out?” [laughs] No, you know I just decided this is how you get old; Don’t get fat, get a good haircut. That’s it. Do not do anything to your face. I grew up in Miami. They didn’t have body surgery then, but it was de rigueur for older men to have young girlfriends. And that was really warped for me. Well… my father [laughs] when I was eighteen my father had a sixteen-year-old girlfriend. And his friends had twenty year old girlfriends. You know, I thought it was normal until I moved up north. Miami was really – I mean this is when it was flip flops and t-shirts and there was nothing cool about it. It warped me terribly.

Sway: I know you have a team of assistants that help with your paintings, I’ve noticed that is a source of criticism in art, but not necessarily in fashion, architecture, etc.

Marilyn: People get weird about it in art because they’re stupid. All of us do it. They just don’t see women do it. Jeff Koons does it. Murakami does it.

Sway: Damien Hirst.

Marilyn: I’m the only woman that does it. Yeah, Richard Serra is really going to bend that metal… I mean what am I going to do? I invented this technique, I did it all alone for a few years and then I got another person to do it, and then I hired someone else and she was better than both of us, so what am I suppose to do fire her? [laughs] I made a system. It’s my vision. And I’m making videos and I’m shooting photos. I still paint. I’m just not a finisher anymore, I don’t have time. It’s just stupid. I’ve never heard anyone sophisticated use that argument, it’s only people that don’t know any better. They believe the myth of the artist working alone in the studio and can’t even use a projector. That somehow more heroic! To draw it out by hand.

Sway: I read about some of the materials you use in the actual photographs and videos…

Marilyn: All of the stuff… vodka and cake decoration. Except for the work with baby, I used non-toxic paint with the babies. The cake decoration suspends in vodka, it cakes up in water. A make-up artist taught me that.

Sway: That’s a great choice for material.

Marilyn: Yeah, that’s the only way you can do it. So everyone is playing in this goo, kicking it up.

Marilyn Minter will be featured in The Riotous Baroque at the Kunsthalle in Zurich opening on May 31, which will travel to Bilbao next February. Marilyn’s next solo show will open the new Regen Projects space in Los Angeles next Spring.

All images courtesy of the artist.

This Thursday, May 17, come view video art by the shape-shifting ladies of Symbols + Rituals, listen to music by 51717, and stare wistfully at all the beautiful objects and clothes at Maryam Nassir Zadeh. The event will be at the store at 123 Norfolk St., NYC, from 8 – 11 pm, with a live musical performance at 9:30.

Up this month at LAX/ART is a group show combining two non profit art spaces, New York’s Participant Inc. and Los Angeles’s LAX/ART. Curated by Participant’s Lia Gangitano, the show thoughtfully exhibits the work of artist Laura Parnes with the duo Lovett/Codagnone. Parnes’ video installation, titled County Down, takes from the aesthetics of traditional horror movies to tell the story of two young girls in a gated suburban community who trigger an epidemic of psychosis among the adults through the invention of a designer drug with potentially apocalyptic side effects. The video is episodic and highly reminiscent of both the optimism and style of the early 1990′s. In addition to the video, on display are photos and other arranged objects, such as like-size cardboard cut outs of the characters that directly relate to the narrative. County Down presents a strong critique on American consumerism as a means of destruction. The other half of the exhibit, featuring the artists John Lovett and Alessandro Codagnone, who have worked together under the name Lovett/Codagnone for many years, present Make Anarchy and Disorder Your Trademarks carefully twisting the known associations with understood symbols of power, revolution and protest. For example, two Mega Horns are joined together with leather straps and hung from the ceiling, creating an unique perspective on noise and power. There is also the ever classic anarchy symbol – an encircled A – which has been made into a large black and grey quilt, softening and domesticating and possibly changing the typical message the symbolism conveys. In addition, outside of the gallery a large, mostly blank billboard bears the image of a falling black and white American flag being supported by a crane. This subtle play on strong cultural signifiers elicits an interesting personal response, especially when contrasted with the work of Laura Parnes. This collaboration between the two non-profit galleries highlights the important role that these organizations play on each coast, offering an alternative viewpoint prominently supporting experimentation and innovation.

Participant Inc is up at LAX/ART runs through May 19 at 2640 S. La Cienega, 
Los Angeles. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11am – 6pm.

Top image: Lovett/Codagnone. Bottom image: Laura Parnes. Images courtesy of LAX/ART.

London’s perennially popular Frieze Art Fair descended on New York City for the first time last week with a roar, bringing with it Frieze’s famous custom-designed tent (this iteration designed by Brooklyn-based SO-IL), and unique programming around the fair’s temporary home on Randall’s Island. The Frieze Art Fair, organized by the inimitable duo Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover, has for the past 11 years been exclusively a London affair—fortunately for New Yorkers and other art lovers, the Frieze empire’s expansion across the pond promises to be a positive influence on the New York art world by invigorating the gallery scene and applying some needed pressure on the staid Armory Show to step up its game.

Above left: Ben Schmacher at Bortolami. Courtesy of Bortolami Gallery. Right: Paulina Olowska at Galeria Foksa. Photograph by Pip Deely.

Justin Matherly. “Every body moves, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly (Dedicate to everyone).” Courtesy of Bureau.

Left: Virginia Overton. “Untitled (mirrors for Randall’s Island)”. Commissioned and produced by Frieze Projects New York. Photograph by Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Linda Nylind/Frieze. Right: Artist Uri Aran and curator Kalika Farmer.  Photograph by Pip Deely.

Uri Aran. “Untitled, (Ticket Shack).” Commissioned and produced by Frieze Projects New York. Photograph by Linda Nylind, Courtesy of Linda Nylind/Frieze.

Left: Henry Codax (a collaboration between Jacob Kassay and Olivier Mosset). “Untitled (Purple). ” Courtesy of Martos Gallery. Right: Ryan McGinley. “Marmoset (Horizon Blue).” Courtesy of Team Gallery, New York.

Leif Ritchey. “Green Tangerine. ” Courtesy of the journal gallery.

Left: David Adamo at Untitled Gallery (NADA fair). Photograph by Pip Deely. Right: Transcendental black metal band Liturgy at Essex Street gallery. Photograph by Pip Deely.

Our recently debuted issue features interviews with members of the New York graffiti collective the Peter Pan Posse, lead by Mint (a.k.a. Mikhail Sokovikov) and Serf (a.k.a. Jason Aaron Wall), along with a group photo by Michael Avedon. Get a preview by perusing Michael’s individual portraits above and below, then order the issue here.

Above: Mikhail Sokovikov. All images by Michael Avedon.

Left: Jacuzzi Chis (a.k.a Same). Right: PJ Monte

Click “Read More” for additional images.

Jason Aaron Wall

Left: Sean Kinney. Right: Beni Zooted.

Pablo Power

I heard a story that Frieze Director Amanda Sharp found Randall’s Island on Google Earth – the perfect location to introduce New York to the art wonderland she created with Matthew Slotover almost a decade ago in London. It was a clever move to have visitors leave the main island by ferry or school buses to reach the airy white snake lying by the river (actually a tent, designed by SO-IL, Brooklyn, for the occasion). Both clients and exhibitors seemed refreshed by the mini-adventure and in the right mood for business. And business is good, especially for local emerging galleries who see the additional costs that come with being present in a major art fair drop dramatically, while their contacts with potential buyers and curators increase. For Gabrielle Giattino, owner and director of Bureau, less economic pressure means more agency over the work she chooses to present,“With having the fair in our home city, we can show exactly what we want at this point, without worrying about shipping costs.” Hence the massive sculpture by American artist Justin Matherly displayed in her booth. The work, cast in concrete, involves both the building up and the “unearthing” of material. It carries a sense of deep melancholy, and the uncanny beauty of something missing or lost.

For Mathew Higgs, director of White Columns, participating in the fair is about the possibility of proposing something different to a larger international audience. The mythical, downtown, non-profit art space decided to work with members of Creative Growth, an art center in California providing professional studios to adult artists with developmental, mental and physical disabilities. “We are not a commercial gallery and don’t have to look after the career of our artists. We made a conscious choice to signal the fact that there are other contexts for art by showing the work of artists who entertain a different relationship to art-making. It allows another set of ideas in the narrative of the fair.”

Outside the tent, yet another narrative takes place with the Frieze Projects curated by Cecilia Alemani and sponsored by Mulberry. Responding to the fair’s location, the program includes eight artworks displayed across the lawns and in between the trees, almost playing hide and seek with visitors. Among them, the displaced landscape of Latifa Echakhch, dealing with the iconography of the American West, and consisting of two hundreds tumble weeds from Utah, frozen over the lush grass of Randall’s Island, as if the desert wind had stopped for a moment. The program also welcomes the shadow theater of Ulla von Brandenburg, which echoes in the booth of Parisian gallery Art Concept, with a series of drawings on paper. For Olivier Antoine, director of the gallery, and a regular of international art fairs, this first edition is extremely well put together and functions efficiently, but the space feels slightly too big. The structure of the tent, lingering from the north to south entrance like a long ribbon, reminds him of Manhattan. And indeed, the fair offers something similar to a wandering day in the city: walking from neighborhood to neighborhood, not feeling the distance, the eye constantly caught up by a new image, a new shape, by something never seen before that creates instant desire. Born and raised in London, Frieze may just have found its match in the islands of New York.

New York-based photographer Weston Wells presents Outings, a seventeen-panel collage piece that examines the places and characters he has captured between his travels and day-to-day encounters. Shot entirely on film, each saturated plate delivers a tableau with loose narrative. The collages’ often bucolic and adventurous spirit reflect the photographer’s wanderings, both near and far.

Click “Read More” for additional images.

With campaigning for the 2012 general election well under way, Downtown for Democracy, the political action committee established during the 2004 elections, is back. Aimed at motivating and engaging the creative community to political action, the organization has begun this cycle’s crusade with the publication of a 75-page civics primer. D4D and OHWOW Present: The Pocket Guide to Politics breaks down and clarifies the complicated, and some might say confusing, workings of our representative government.

The product of a collaboration between Downtown for Democracy and the OHWOW Gallery, the book elucidates and visualizes the workings of government functions. Or, in the words of OHWOW founders Al Moran and Aaron Bondaroff, “[It] is an attempt to translate the American political system into the language of the creative community, a demographic that influences what young America reads, listens to, watches and wears. We hope this resource will help inspire the creative community to get active and involved in our political system as election season approaches.” Contributing artists featured in the book include Joana Avillez, Tim Barber, Dan Colen, Alex Kalman, Andrew Kuo, Casey Neistat, Terry Richardson, Konstantin Trubkovich, Bert Rodriguez, Aurel Schmidt, Adam Squires, Josh Safdie and Aaron Young. Their various works tackle and illustrate some of the dire issues confronting this year’s voters, such as the economy and national debt, healthcare reform, women’s reproductive freedom, gun control, and marriage equality.

As illuminated by the wide breadth of these concerns, this election is not only about our next president. It is also about the quarter of Senate seats and all 435 spots in the House of Representatives that are up for grabs. Having seen the 2010 midterm elections usher in a majority of extremely active and vocal ultra-conservatives into Congress, this time around they are aiming at seizing control of both Houses. This in effect would have the right-wing controlling the running of our government for the years to come. With so much at stake, it is clear that this is an imperative election requiring mobilization from those that influence culture, and the far-reaching, young demographic that spreads the word.

The pocket guide is the preliminary tool in the call to action.

The guide is set for release on May 1, with a launch at The Standard. D4D and OHWOW Present: The Pocket Guide to Politics, costs $10.00 and will be available through the OHWOW and D4D websites.

Few of us enjoy the annual ritual of mailing our annual income taxes into the Feds. For Dustin Grella, getting a letter in the mail can be a literal drag.

Grella, an artist and a C-7 quadriplegic who resides in Tribeca, has been mailing himself a letter daily for the past 10 years. The letters, numbering 3,650 and counting, still unopened, are now on display in a show, entitled Notes to Self, in Chelsea.

While letter-writing has become a bit of a cultural anomaly, Grella has enjoyed this practice of the daily writing; however, actually getting the epistles to post has proven less than straightforward, given the wheelchair inaccessibility of many of the city’s post offices.

So Grella chose tax day, yesterday, to stage a performance protest. With his taxes in his mouth and his wheelchair chained to his ankle, Grella attempted to drag himself up the 30+ steps of the James A. Farley Post Office on 32nd Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan at 6.30 pm. Grella was apprehended and made to detach from his chair, so the artist proceeded up the stairway to the cheers of onlookers and supporters – many in wheelchairs themselves – sans chair, on his behind. Once inside he dragged himself to the line, did his postal business and then slid himself back down the steps, one at a time.

And Grella was not the only protester on view in midtown yesterday. A festive group of young men in baseball uniforms, calling themselves the Tax Dodges paraded around with their hoola-hooping counter-parts, a group of girls in red cheerleading garb calling themselves The Loopholes.

Taxes paid, theater in check.

Notes to Self can be seen at the AC Institute Satellite Space, 547 W. 27th St., Suite 210, NYC through April 28.