ARTPOLITIC

Brian Haw

2010-02-08T23:37:00.001Z

Brian Haw, originally uploaded by Mike Marcus.

New Website

2010-01-05T11:16:00.002Z

I am happy to announce that my new website has finally gone live. You can find it at mikemarcus.co.uk

Elizabeth

2009-11-20T21:55:00.003Z

my love and best friend, originally uploaded by Mike Marcus.

An out-take from the shoot we did for the London Nude Tech Calendar. It is the first serious shoot we did together and Elizabeth was a wonderful, relaxed model.

All proceeds from the calendar go to the charity Take Heart India. You can see the image that was used in the Guardian.

Recent street interventions

2009-08-19T11:15:00.003+01:00

Mike Marcus, originally uploaded by unusualimage.

Mike Marcus, originally uploaded by Youngknife.

Space

2009-08-17T12:39:00.011+01:00

london street art: mike marcus with Isolitude, originally uploaded by mermaid99.

I am putting together an Arts Council funding application and exhibition proposal for a large relational art installation somewhere in London. Up until now I have mostly put my work on the street with the occasional gallery show. However I do not find either environment to be an ideal place to show my work.

Street installations are hard to control. I'm to getting sick of sneaking around trying to avoid police and (ironically) the issue of vandalism (people tagging over, destroying or removing my work) is discouraging me in the sense that I do not with to be part of any type of territorial battle.

Galleries tend to be dry and exclusive and I feel that they exclude and alienate as many potential viewers as they encourage. Rather than disseminating good art, commercial galleries are only interested in showing work, which will generate sales, to a public who are able to buy.

Because of this, I am looking for a space which is neither street nor private. An in-between space where a sense of public ownership can be fostered but I could still retain control over installation and preservation of my work.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Proposal for an intervention in the Palestinain occupied territories

2009-08-12T11:02:00.003+01:00

In the past I have used street art, and particularly the medium of the pasted poster to disseminate political ideas.

There is a jewish religious law which prevents the destruction of the 'written word of god'. This usually manifests in the practice of burying decommissioned holy texts such as bibles and prayer books on consecrated ground. The religious jewish population of Israel are extremely fanatical about keeping their laws in a very literal sense. Interestingly for this project the religious and zionist lobby overlap considerably and both have significant political clout - It occurred to me that it might be fun to give them a conflict of interests.

I propose that houses in danger of demolition are identified and their outsides papered with blown up copies of jewish texts. The religious right would protest violently to prevent their demolition despite the fact that they are the very group who pressure the israeli administration for increased settlement building activities in the occupied territories.

Apart from the obvious human rights benefits of such a project, for me as an artist I am attracted to the surreality of the mental image it invokes. I think that it could lead to some extremely visually arresting photography - Hasidim in full religious garb, preventing bulldozers from accessing rows of houses clad in black and white calligraphic forms.

Paint

2009-04-03T20:46:00.003+01:00

Character study - watercolour on paper

character study, originally uploaded by Mike Marcus.

Final painting - oil on canvas

oil on canvas, originally uploaded by Mike Marcus.

Exogamy #2/2t print release - 12th Febuary

2009-01-28T16:10:00.029Z

exogamy #2/2t print, originally uploaded by Mike Marcus.

February the 12th sees the first print release from the new Exogamy #2 series

The image features a triptych of intersexual hybrid figures, each a digital "genetic" synthesis of my own self portrait with that of a woman who I encountered in my daily life. In this case, I met each of the donor females via a different internet social network.

There will be an accompanying release of 33 unique large format public works, one placed in each of the London boroughs. This is indicative of a new direction for me, marrying my 'street art' and 'fine art photography' careers into one unified practice.

The edition consists of 85 20x16 inch silver gelatine photographs (plus 4 selenium toned Artist proofs) on 300gsm fibre based semigloss paper. Each piece is individually hand printed by myself in the darkroom from a digital internegative. The edition size is intentionally large in order to keep the price low and enable ordinary people to afford to purchase a print during the current economic climate.

Synthesis #1/1

2009-01-12T01:44:00.006Z

Synthesis #1/1, originally uploaded by Mike Marcus.

A rough sketch for the forthcoming "Synthesis" series - A digital hybrid between a human and a mannequin.

Red Dots

2008-12-04T19:50:00.017Z

In the past month I have had a solo exhibition (in collaboration with the wonderful Amie Slavin), marketed an edition of prints and have been involved to some extent or another in three group shows. All these are in some way linked to the "urban art" scene.

Urban art is what you have to call street art when it is put in a gallery in order to avoid hypocrisy. The scene's spiritual home is London and over the past four or five years, it has grown exponentially. There is an established and very conscientious fan base who travel the world attending exhibitions and que outside galleries overnight to have a chance of buying the latest canvas. These collectors have become so numerous and demand so great that Banksy's latest print release sold out within seconds leading to a catastrophic collapse of the publishers database.

Obviously this has had an impact on the street where there have been hundreds of new artists producing lookalike work in an attempt to cash in on the gold rush.

Uncle Sam, originally uploaded by Sandrine Plasseraud.

Like many fine artists eventually do, I have reached a point where I want to devote myself to my practice full time. In order to do this, I need to make enough money through public funding and print sales to cover my needs for rent, food, art materials and the occasional beer. Obviously the urban art scene is a good place to target because so much money is being spent. For this reason I devoted much of the past month to marketing myself in this sector.

As this period draws to a close, I have to say that I have been left a little disappointed. Of the long conversations I have had with collectors and dealers, I have come to the conclusion that the scene wants to consume (both commercially and intellectually) safe art. Because of the supreme lack of imagination shown by its aficionados, todays urban art seems to be a retrospective of yesterdays street art, a parody of itself.

What happened to the radical movement where we could say what we wanted without being moderated by galleries? Weren't we meant to be subversive? These days it seems that we are more conservative than the art establishment which we reacted against. Somewhere during the change from "street" to "urban", the movement lost its passion and subsequently its message.

I wanted to comment on this so rather than bring the street to the gallery, I brought the gallery to the street. I went outside and sprayed little red dots on all the art I could find. The kind that galleries use to show when a piece has been sold.

Wrong suit, Clark - L.E.T., originally uploaded by Sandrine Plasseraud.

new print release

2008-11-22T13:09:00.006Z

new print release, originally uploaded by Mike Marcus.

55.5 x 75 cm 6 colour screen print on 280gsm velvet black Somerset paper.
Edition of 35, signed and numbered.

For more information or to order, contact Jealous Gallery.

cs #7

2008-11-20T09:16:00.009Z

cs7f, originally uploaded by Mike Marcus.

CS is the most common form of tear gas. Its use by military forces is forbidden under the Geneva Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997. However during the first year of the Al-Aqsa intifada alone the Israeli Defense Forces used 120,000 tear gas grenades against Palestinians as a form of racially motivated collective punishment.

Although the Jews own encounter with the gas chambers makes the use of chemical warfare notable for its irony, it is only one example of many human rights abuses exercised by Israel during its 41 years of military occupation.

To encourage awareness of the continuing violations enacted by my people against a weak and vulnerable minority and to register my protest, as an ethnic Jew against the injustices carried out in my name, I exposed myself to CS gas and photographed the results.

I had no other way to cry.

סי . אס . הוא סוג גז מדמיע הכי נפוץ . השימוש בו על ידי כוחות צבאיים אסור לפי אמנת ג'נבה ולפי וועדת נשקים כימיים משנת 1997 . למרות זאת בזמן שנה ראשונה של אינתיפאדת אל עקצה בלבד כוחות צבא הגנה לישראל השתמשו ב120000 רימוני גז מדמיע כנגד פלסטינאים כסוג של עונש קבוצתי על רקע גזעי

למרות שליהודים הסטוריה עם תאי הגזים השימוש בגז המדמיע הוא אירוני וזוהי רק דוגמה אחת לשיבושי זכויות בני האדם הרבים שנעשים על ידי ישראל במשך 41 שנות כיבוש

על מנת לעודד מודעות להפרות המתמשכות על ידי האנשים שלי כנגד מיעוט חלש ופגיע ולציין את המחאה שלי כיהודי כנגד האי צדק המתנהל בשמי , אני חשפתי את עצמי לגז סי.אס. וצילמתי את התוצאות

לא הייתה לי דרך אחרת לבכות

The Buff

2008-10-25T12:04:00.010+01:00

Unknown Dog & Mike Marcus Banksy Stencil, originally uploaded by HowAboutNo!.

One evening whilst walking through Blackall Street in Shoreditch, London, I came across a graffiti removal crew.

Mike - Hi, what are you doing?
Graffiti removal man - We have been instructed to clean all these walls.
M - Why?
GRM - They have decided to clean up london for the 2012 olympics
M - So you are removing all the art and graffiti throughout the city?
GRM - Everything except Banksy.
M- Why except Banksy?
GRM - It brings in tourist money.
M - Oh. How do you know what is Banksy and what isn't?
GRM - Thats the difficult part.

On the way home I decided to make the task a little more difficult for them.

Violence

2008-08-12T13:29:00.013+01:00

acrylic gesso on newsprint - Soho, London, originally uploaded by mikemarcus.

I have seen too much violence. It has left hurt inside me. I can feel it in my chest. I trust people less and I'm more angry. Since that first day on the beach, an innocence has been lost and a weight gained.

Someone once said to me "I spray stencils because I cant afford therapy". You know what? She had a point.

I have put this scene on the streets before before. Laser prints with the words "milk and honey" in the lower right. Pasted on walls in Tel Aviv. It was designed then to offer a counter commentary to the perceived social brotherhood that the Jewish state prides itself in.

This time I painted the scene with a brush. The image might be similar but for me the work serves a very different purpose. Each stroke of paint let out some trauma. Each work that I finished left me feeling purged, more pure, gentle and delicate.

I have seen too much violence and I need to release it. Stroke by stroke, scribble, flick and dab. Pasted to a wall and shared with you.

Watchers

2008-06-27T10:33:00.017+01:00

Sticker, originally uploaded by Simon Crubellier.

She is all of us:

Dirty and fatigued by a world which expects too much and doesn't give enough in return. Guilty because in a dark place she keeps the knowledge that society is no more than a collection of of her. There is nobody else to blame so in silence she stands and watches.

Hiding behind a mask of her own making she protects herself from what?

As a child she remembers bright sun and crisp cold mornings. The smell of grass, wet leaves, crumbling wood and moss on brick. The gas has always drifted across someone else's fields.

Has the air become so hard to breathe or is it the social oxygen which she scrubs before daring to touch?

Her body sculpted from from bits of magazine and television, barely able to hold its manufactured pose. A reflection of the vulnerable soul within.

She fears this weeks new collective anxiety. Islam? Terror? Dark skin? She can't remember the difference anymore.

Her bag is packed, back is covered but in the end she stands nude and accountable in a crumbling city.

mikemarcus, originally uploaded by Romanywg.

Self hating jew

2008-06-16T15:28:00.009+01:00

self hating jew, originally uploaded by art crimes.

It makes me happy when people feel so strong that they are willing to modify one of my street installations. Generally they believe that they are in some way refuting what I am trying to express or providing some sort of counter argument when in fact they usually end up reinforcing my original statement or better still, completing a concept that I felt I was only able to partially express on my own.

Here is a great illustration of my point:

When I photographed myself wearing a T-shirt with the words "self hating jew" written on it, I was trying to vocalise some concepts which I have been playing with for quite a while. I felt that there was something inside me regarding the subject which had alluded my attempt to vocalise. Then somebody augmented (completed?) my work and now I realize what I was trying to say.

The phrase "self hating jew" is often thrown at members of the Ashkenaz ethnicity who have a social conscience strong enough to speak out against the human rights abuses perpetuated by the zionist majority. This majority which includes my parents, family and most of the people who I grew up with use the label to imply the following:

1) To be born into the Ashkenaz ethnicity is to be Jewish; religion is about birth rather than choice.
2) Zionism is synonymous with Judaism and therefore to speak out against one is to be against the other.
3) Only someone who hates themselves would hate their religion.

This twisted logic hides a true source of self hate and one which enables the Jewish people to justify the human rights abuses against Palestinians carried out by Israel in their name.

To be Jewish is to be paranoid. It is to believe that antisemitism hides beyond every corner, that we are always one step away from the next holocaust. Its the ultimate in egocentricity because the truth is that almost nobody cares enough about us to hate, love or anything else. The truth is, we are just people and the only people to single out Jews for special attention are Jews themselves.

The annotation to my work which I placed outside the Tate Modern gallery in Sothwark, London demonstrates this truth better than I can myself. Please read it and see for yourself.

Self hating Jew, originally uploaded by Beswarick.

Labels

2008-06-06T12:13:00.013+01:00

Am I unreasonable for not conforming to peoples expectations that I should be exactly the same as them? Are people justified in considering me strange because I don't watch TV or enthusiastically join pub conversations about football? If I was to give in and join the mainstream, who's mainstream should I join? My father the other day asked me why I had sided with the enemies of my people. Meanwhile, a Palestinian will be suspicious of me by default.

This is the way the world works. It doesn't matter who one is or what one does. One will always be judged by others using ethnicity as a point of departure. To a Jew I am a race traitor, to a Muslim, an occupier of land which doesn't belong to me. In truth I am neither but the label has been stuck to me and the adhesive backing is permanent.

In acknowledgment of this, I photographed myself wearing the labels which have been served on me by each of the three cultures that surround my life. I printed the resulting images on address labels because it seemed to be the most appropriate medium.

The following text is pilfered from wikipedia and chopped around to prove my point

In the United States and United Kingdom, the term "self-hating Jew" sometimes is used to accuse a Jew of hiding, being ashamed of, or failing to understand his or her religion or heritage. The phrase sometimes is used against a Jew who is considered to be actively working against the interests of the Jewish people, as those interests are perceived by the person using the term. It has been used in this manner against Jewish reformers and anti- or non-Zionist Jews. For example, some Jewish writers and activists who are critical of Israel or Zionism have reported the phrase being used against them solely because of their political views.

Dr. Mick Finlay of the Psychology Department at the University of Surrey writes that "an accusation that an individual is distancing themselves from the group can be a rhetorical attempt to silence dissent, to cast some possible members as inauthentic, and to represent particular political positions as somehow essential to the categorical identity." He also notes that "the concept of the 'self-hating Jew' illustrates the importance of recognizing that psychological concepts often develop in particular political contexts and are used by people to give those projects a supposed legitimacy outside of the political."

Rabbi Michael Lerner and Noam Chomsky have stated that some pro-Israel advocates define and apply the label in a manner designed to silence or discredit any Jew who disagrees with their politics regarding Israel. On being described as "self-hating", retired Hebrew University professor Israel Shahak replied "That is a Nazi expression. The Nazis called Germans who defended Jewish rights self-hating Germans."

Jewish deicide is an canard that placed the responsibility for the death of Jesus on the Jewish people as a whole. This deicide accusation is expressed in the religious/ethnic slur "Christ killer".

If, as Christian theology holds, Jesus is a God, an incarnation of a God, or an aspect of a God, the ones responsible for the crucifixion would be guilty of deicide, knowingly or not. According to the New Testament accounts, the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem charged Jesus with blasphemy, a capital crime under biblical law, and sought his execution.

As a part of Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the Roman Catholic Church under Pope Paul VI issued the declaration Nostra Aetate ("In Our Time"), which in part repudiated the doctrine of Jewish guilt for the Crucifixion.[6] Nostra Aetate stated that even though some Jewish authorities and those who followed them called for Jesus' death, the blame for this cannot be laid at the door of all those Jews present at that time, nor can the Jews in our time be held as guilty.

The t-shirts are ill fitting. As are the labels.

Horse - a video installation proposal

2008-04-03T17:49:00.018+01:00

looking for shelter, originally uploaded by marvocado.

The proposed work will consist of a video piece set in the village of Bil'in in Palestine. Its aim will be to highlight the continuing struggle of the Palestinian people who face constant abuses to their basic human rights while the international community effectively turns a blind eye. Special emphasis will be placed on exposing the ridiculousness inherent in the current Israeli military policy toward the Palestinian population in its aim to control the status quo of occupation.

Although the village of Bil'in is 4km east of the 1967 armistice line and therefore well inside the state of Palestine, the controversial separation wall runs through its land preventing a population who is largely reliant on farming from accessing 60% of their agricultural resources. Although the wall's route has been judged to be illegal by the Israeli supreme court it continues to stand while Israeli settlements claim the captured land for current and future expansion plans.

Every Friday afternoon for the past three and a half years, the Palestinian villagers have invited both their Israeli supporters and visiting international activists to join them on the short walk from the village centre to the wall in committed non-violent protest against its existence. Each week the group are met with violent crowd dispersal techniques from a military presence intent on preventing the group from expressing their right to free expression on their own land. Military aggression against this group most commonly takes the form of attacks by CS gas and stun grenades although there have been numerous shootings leaving both Israeli and Palestinian demonstrators with permanent and serious disabilities.

The work will consist of a silent video documentary of these events. Shot from multiple angles and focal lengths, edited into a continually looping montage demonstrative of the atmosphere experienced on a Friday afternoon in Bil'in. During filming, two performers dressed in a pantomime horse costume will be introduced into the demonstration space. Trotting in and out of clouds of tear gas, galloping away from stun grenades and tripping over rocks, this comic counter-narrative will serve two purposes. It will juxtapose the gravity of the situation and the resolve of the demonstrators (thereby underscoring both) and provide a visceral demonstration of the farcical nature of Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people.

The work is to be displayed projected onto the far wall of an otherwise dark corridor-like space. A 40ft shipping container would be ideal for this. Preferably (depending on cost) the interior walls of the space would be soundproofed with a black anechoic material (neoprene sheeting?) to deaden sounds, vibrations and any reflections caused by viewers as well as blocking any outside stimuli. This will create a solemn and respectful atmosphere in which to view the work. The atmosphere of this environment will be analogous to the atmosphere created in the holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem and therefore subtle parallels will be drawn between the past treatment of Jews by Nazis and the present treatment of Palestinians by Jews.

Sara

2008-03-13T20:18:00.003Z

I hope you know how much you have been an inspiration to my photography.

Zionism Kills

2008-02-05T17:55:00.001Z

plane1, originally uploaded by mikemarcus.

Dead animals #2

2007-10-16T12:49:00.000+01:00

My photography has often utilised dead animals as a metaphor for issues that we would rather avoid. I would like to talk today about a very significant 'dead animal' and one which has a critical impact on western foreign policy. The dead animal in question is the Holocaust.

A few days ago I received a phone call from a journalist who saw my work in Golders Green and traced me by googling my blog. He interviewed me and wrote an article about my work and its message. All good so far. One of my main reasons for using street art as a medium is to create a public forum for the sociopolitical issues that are important to me. I want what I have to say to be disseminated through the media. Therefore I welcome enquiries by journalists.

Unfortunately though, the story might never be published. The journalist phoned me a couple of days later to say that they could only run the article if my real name was used. This is risky for me because it could result in my prosecution for fly-posting and a resulting fine. I didn't understand why the editor was so intent on identifying me until i spoke to him directly. Then all became clear - he is petrified of the reaction from the Jewish community and would prefer the vitriol to be directed towards me rather than his paper.

This phenomenon of fear is the reason why the world stands by as Israel abuses the human rights of more than 4 million Palestinians, Bedouin and Druze. To speak out is to be labeled an antisemite. The Jewish community makes no distinction between the valid political position of anti-Zionism and the racist and deplorable doctrine of antisemitism. As a result, they bully anyone who so much as whispers a criticism of Israel.

This raises two questions: Why is this so and why are people so scared of being accused? In fact both questions have the same answer - the Holocaust.

I grew up in a fairly typical Jewish community. Almost everyone around me was Jewish including all my parents friends and most of the people in my street. It was never overtly stated but I knew that it wasn't particularly acceptable to bring home a non-Jewish school friend. All through my childhood one message in particular was hammered into my mind: I am Jewish and most people who don't share that privilege, hate (or at least dislike) me because of it. The fact that I never actually witnessed all this supposed antisemitism was inconsequential. There were the examples of the holocaust, the Jewish expulsion from Spain and a hundred other historical Persecutions to give me all the proof that I needed. The conclusion - everybody hates Jews.

The result of this paranoid superiority complex is that the Jewish community have set up a multitude of organisations to protect themselves from what they perceive as the overwhelming antisemitic threat. These range from huge letter writing networks which can be mobilised on command to far more sinister organisations who operate vigilante groups instructed by the Israeli security services in secret offshore training camps.

These organisations share a single objective. They silence criticism aimed at Israel and the occupation by leveraging holocaust guilt. Newspaper editors do not refuse to publish articles because they fear the accusation of being anti-French. It is shameful that the press can be viciously critical of Islam while a local paper cannot publish an interview with an activist who speaks out against the occupation of Palestine.

The holocaust was unimaginably tragic for the tens of millions of people who faced persecution and slaughter at the hands of the Nazis. Its such a shame that the Jewish community has to cheapen the memory by using it as a "get out of jail free" card.

Beautiful Children

2007-10-10T15:23:00.000+01:00

Last month was the Jewish new year. Rosh Hashana as it is known in Hebrew lasts for two days and is followed 10 days later by the most holy day in the Jewish calendar - Yom Kippur, known in English as the day of atonement. You might say that as a people we have a lot to atone for but Tel Aviv being an almost entirely secular city uses the day to have fun.

Traditionally there are no cars on the road and all businesses including pubs and shops are shut. Kids and adults alike take to the streets on their bikes, rollerlades or just by foot and use the opportunity to explore their environment in a way thats only possible once a year. The whole city is completely quiet other than the sound of the occasional conversation and birds nervously calling to eachother. Its like a perfect combination of buy nothing day, reclaim the streets and critical mass and most importantly, everyone joins in. The only day of the year when you can breathe clean air and sunbathe on the main freeway running through Tel Aviv.

Last Yom Kipur, I used the opportunity to gather some like minded friends and embark on a street art marathon. Over the course of 25 hours we sprayed, pasted and painted around Tel Aviv. I acted as a human stencil so that an outline of my body could be painted on the highway, a lookout as a friend created a huge mural in Yehuda Halevy street and an insructor for a gang of girls on bicycles who wanted to learn how spray on walls. Most importantly I sprayed the message "create beautiful children, marry and arab" on walls all over the city.

Image courtesy of Nathalie Dbarth

This year I was due to fly to England a day before Yom Kipur. I was eager to start my new job and although missing the best day of the year was a huge sacrifice, I considered it worth the price. In hindsight, seeing as the contract was postponed and finally cancelled I should have flown a few days later but at the time I wasnt to know the way things would transpire.

My answer to missing Yom Kipur was to squeeze in as much street art as I could in my final week. During the days I was packing and running errands and at nights I was prowling the city with spraycans, posters and buckets of paste. On the last night before I was due to leave, I translated "create beautiful children, marry an Arab" into Hebrew and used what was left of my paint applying it to walls all around the city.

Images courtesy of Tal Bright

There seemed to me to be a poetry in spanning the Jewish year with this message. Beginning in English, ending in Hebrew. A symbol of my own transfrmation as an activist. Beginning with the desire to communicate a personal message in my mother tongue and ending with the need to challenge deeply held public beliefs. Over the course of a year, I have taken apon myself a responsibility to question the racism ingrained into my culture and my ultimate use of hebrew, the language of the Jews reflects this intent.

Rebranding Israel

2007-10-06T21:48:00.000+01:00

I sat in the mini-cab and tried to hide my sticky hands from the driver. The carrier bag at my feet was dripping wheat-paste over the floor of his car.

I commented that behaviour on the road seemed to have deteriorated since I had been away. He blamed "foreigners", he said London's full of them. Most of the antisocial behaviour that I witness comes from native Londoners but he said its because they are frustrated. I groaned to myself and prepared to spend the rest of the journey in silence. Another racist taxi driver - what a surprise.

Then he asked me where I have been. I told him Tel Aviv. It turns out he lived there for years. Not such a surprise seeing as I picked up the cab in Golders Green - center of London Jewish life and the Israeli ex-pat community.

He served in the IDF, an infantry unit. Thinks that "they" want to kill us. Drive us into the sea. Denies that he has been brainwashed to hate and rejects my theory that the biggest problem faced by Israeli society is militarisation. He spent the rest of the journey countering my examples and denying that we have to take responsibility rather than blaming everything on the Palestinians. All along I'm aware of how ironic it is that I just covered Golders Green with posters designed to discuss this very issue.

It started a year ago when I noticed that the Israeli state emblem is a candle stick surrounded by olive branches. Not just any candle stick but the Menorah - light of god and central focus of the ancient temple. Even though this symbol was everywhere - bank notes, passports, anything official, I never really bothered to examine it. When I finally did it seemed so out of place, so not in tune with the modern state that I felt obliged to say something.

Israel needed re-branding. No Menora burnt sacred oil night and day in the holy of holies, tended by priests and always alight (even if a miracle was required). Modern Israel was a military aggressor and its logo should reflect that fact.

I replaced the Menora with a soldier hiding behind his gun. This seemed to me to be a far more accurate symbol of what the modern state of Israel stands for and over the period of about a month I stuck, pasted and sprayed my new logo around Tel Aviv. I literally re-branded Israel.

Now I have exported my new state brand. Its presence in Golders Green spells out an important message to the Israeli community there:

You might have left Israel. You might have a better job, more money and less stress but you still have responsibility. There is a travesty being carried out in your name and if you don't stop it, nobody will.

Dead animals #1

2007-10-01T21:46:00.000+01:00

When we see an animal carcass lying by the side of the street we cross the road to avoid it. We hold our breath. By refusing to inhale the air that might have been close to the rotting flesh, we symbolically avoid bringing the cold fact of death into our warm comfortable world. We know intuitively that the animal was probably hit by a car or ripped apart by one of our pets. An innocent victim of our ceaseless march to modify the natural world around us.

The collateral damage from human progress is something that we would prefer to ignore. Dead animals make us feel uncomfortable so we shut our eyes and move on.

We also refuse to consider the origins of our food. When we eat a burger we don't think of a dead cow. Hanging upside down, throat slit and eyes showing the fear that accompanied its last few breaths. We even call it by a different name. Its beef not cow - not animal but meat.

No images of feathers matted together with drying blood cross our minds as we pop a chicken nugget into our hungry mouths. We all ignore the source of our comfort. We have to. Otherwise we couldn't live with the guilt.

Similarly we learn not to question the origin of our national security. 3.6 Million oppressed Palestinians, nearly a million dead in Iraq. As long as we are safe and well fed, we let the butchers and the soldiers do whatever they need to do. As long as they hide the dirty truth and just deliver the goods, we live our lives and don't complain.

SHIT Update

2007-10-01T20:52:00.000+01:00

Yay! I made it onto the shit list!

Those kind (but slightly scary) people over at masada2000.org even wrote a longish bio under my name. You can find my listing under M for Mike.

I wrote them the following courtesy email:

From: mike marcus
To: masada2000org@yahoo.com
Sent: Monday, October 1, 2007 8:51:38 PM
Subject: thankyou
Hey Guys
I am delighted that you saw fit to add me so promptly to your list. I feel very honored indeed that you considered my application worthy of inclusion.
I would like to particularly thank you for providing a hyperlink to my blog. Its always nice when somebody helps my work to achieve a greater public profile. I find that a little free marketing goes a long way.
Mike Marcus
Photographer/Digital Compositor
http://mikemarcus.blogspot.com

You can see the original letter that I sent here

SHIT

2007-09-27T18:27:00.000+01:00

I just sent an email (below) to the guys that run the "SHIT list". SHIT in this case stands for 'Self Hating and Israel Threatening Jew'. I know that it should more accurately be called the "SHAITJ list" but it doesn't have the same sophisticated ring to it.

From: mike marcus
To: masada2000org@yahoo.com
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2007 6:25:33 PM
Subject: How do I get listed?
Hello
I just came across your "shit list" on the Internet. I must say that I would love to be listed amongst so many esteemed names. What do I have to do to be considered for inclusion?
I have recently criticized the occupation on Israeli TV and in the Tel Aviv and national press. I also regularly paste left wing and anti-Zionist posters on the streets of Tel Aviv, visit Ramallah to integrate with its Palestinian residents and maintain a blog named "personal intifada". Is that enough to get me in or is there some sort of application process that I should be aware of?
Thanks for the great work, your list a great resource for getting in touch with other Jews who share an interest in human rights.
Mike Marcus
Photographer/Digital Compositor
http://mikemarcus.blogspot.com

I recommend that other Jews follow my lead and request inclusion in the list. It's time for the Jewish left invalidate the phrase "Self Hating Jew" by reclaiming it as their own.

Vandalism

2007-09-10T14:28:00.000+01:00

Its easy to provoke a reaction in Israel. All you need to do is tell the truth and watch everyone flip out.

I made a poster from one of the images in my CS series. Black and white, teary eyes hardly able to stay open and mucus streaming out my nose. I gassed myself again, this time for display on the street.

I pasted 60 posters in my local neighbourhood with a short explanatory text underneath each one.

The reaction was violent - within a day most of the posters had been ripped off the wall (not an easy thing to do), sprayed over or otherwise deleted. My eyes were poked out, my throat cut and the words "homo" and "satan" scrawled on my image. Most importantly someone had gone around making sure that the text pasted under each poster was completely unreadable - that the message was totally removed from the public realm.

Presumably nobody doubted the assertion that Palestinians are tortured with CS gas as a policy of collective punishment otherwise they would have said so in their black drippy spray paint, marker pens and scratchy devices. Rather they all went nuts because I dared utter the unspeakable. I broke the code - lets all pretend that we are the victims in this war, not aggressors. The good citizens of Tel Aviv felt a civic duty to censor my heresy for the benefit of their venerable neighbours. Everyone put their hands over each-others ears and sang a chorus of "La la la, I'm not listening, I dont want to know".

I wish to thank all those who were so conscientious in silencing my voice. You did more to demonstrate the depth of the social problems here in Israel than I could have ever done on my own. Because of you my small street art project has attracted attention of the newspapers and TV. My message will be received by a wider audience as a result. I hope that we can continue our beneficial collaboration. I will be pasting more copies in the center of the city this weekend. I hope you can join me.

Ramallah

2007-09-03T16:17:00.000+01:00

I climb onto the bus and check myself. I’m not in danger. Sure there was a minor problem but the remnants of my racist upbringing have amplified my justifiable concern into outright paranoia. As I choose a seat I believe that the other travellers want me dead.

I was having a great time. Flitting around Ramallah market responding to the wild gestures made by people who desperately wanted to be photographed. I couldn’t eat another thing. My stomach too full from the cakes and fruit given to me by shopkeepers.

On the way to the bus I stopped at the Mosque. As I took off my shoes, two teenagers sparked up a conversation with the minimal English that they possessed. One introduced the other as Mah’med, I repeated his name. Their attitude changed, they noticed that I had pronounced the word with a Hebrew “chet” rather than an English “h”. They asked a few questions in Hebrew. I said that I didn’t understand. They switched to English and asked if I spoke the language of the Jews. I said no.

Was I being followed to the bus station? Probably not. But after lifetime’s exposure to propaganda, it certainly felt like I was.

I was interrogated at the checkpoint. Treated like a Palestinian. I was happy for that. Happy to feel first hand the humiliation I had seen subjected on others. Today I wasn’t a Jew. I had left my Israeli ID at home. I held my British passport against the bullet-proof window while a child with a gun barked instructions at me. Today I’m not a member of the master race and these boys are more dangerous than the guys in the mosque.

The average Israeli would tell me that to go to Ramallah is to face certain death. This fear fuels the conflict and absolves us from guilt every time a young mother gets shot in the face. Few have travelled 10km from Jerusalem to test the theory. If they did, they would know that it is fiction. That’s not to say that there aren’t dangerous people here, it’s just a matter of perspective. In all the visits I have made to Palestine this is the only time I have felt remotely threatened.

In hindsight it wasn’t a good idea to go into the Mosque. Religion is the root of this evil and the one place I might find the Jew killers everyone warns me about. It’s no coincidence that Baruch Goldshtien and Igal Amir both wore a skullcap.

Walking between bus stations in Jerusalem I cross the racial border and see a gang of religious-zionist youth with M16’s and grenade launchers slung across their backs. I recognise them. They belong to a group known as “Benei Akiva”. My parents encouraged me to attend their meetings when I was a child.

Bedouin

2007-09-03T16:08:00.000+01:00

The first time I saw a Bedouin was in early 2000. It was in Dahab, a small but developing diving resort on the east coast of the Sinai desert. He walked among the tourists and Egyptian workers with an air of dignity so strong that the rest of the crowd seemed grey and faded by comparison. The red and white checked kafiyah that topped his head swayed gently to punctuate a graceful gait and as my eyes followed his path, he seemed to float. In my minds eye, I see him towering above the throng that surrounded him.

As I lay in bed that night under a shabby orange mosquito net, the fragrance of coffee and cardamom floated through my open window and his image haunted my thoughts. Watching the stars pierce the blackness of the sky, his elegant white robe and dark skin danced across my mind leaving an indelible mark in its path.

Since my first trip to Sinai I have returned many times. Each time I felt a growing affinity for the inhabitants. Gradually I began to return regularly to the same location – my beautiful secret beach adjoining a small hamlet known as “Arab Hemden”. The 40 or so inhabitants are all members of the Muzeina tribe whose traditional land covers the tip of the Sinai peninsula between El-Tor, Nuweba and Ras Mohammed.

My skin is brown and I have sand in my ears. A pendant given to me by Saham - 14 years old and beautifully cynical – hangs round my neck. As I step out of the car into the humid air of Tel Aviv my heart aches for the dessert. It’s only been a few hours but I want to be close to the Muzeina once more.

Article

2007-07-29T09:39:00.001+01:00

I was written about in the newspaper on friday.

English translation coming soon...

Digital Procreation and the New Origin of Species

2007-07-20T17:25:00.001+01:00

My forthcoming exhibition of photography, "Exogamy" and its future sequels "Endogamy" and "Synthesis" started life with the working title "Digital Children". This image shows an example of a digital child; in this case the "parents" are my mother and father. It is a synthetic derivative of two portraits, one from each parent. Each facial feature is neither from one or the other but a digital "genetic" synthesis of the two.

Internet social networking expert Yaniv Golan has been witness to the project’s development over the past year and a half. He even sat in front of my camera for some of the early tests.

Here is what he has to say about digital children:

"The concept of digital children is intriguing to us social-network-web-folks. Here is a different, albeit somewhat technical way to look at it: In a world where a lot of our interactions are online, where new relationships are formed in online social networks, where people create avatars and spend their life online in Second Life - it makes a lot of sense to explore the concept of digital children as yet another way to express my online life. Will people living virtual life and making virtual friends want to deepen the relationship and have a digital child with one of their digital friends?
"In fact, I could even imagine a service that lets two folks who have an online (and possibly also an offline) relationship submit their photos and ask the service to create a digital child for them, which they will then post on their profile as one further proof of their relationship."

How did humanity get to the point where two intelligent people can possibly have such a conversation?

It started in 1859 when Darwin killed god. Since "Origin of Species" was first published, a huge body of evidence has been discovered to support Darwin’s predictions. Although science can never be 100% confident that a hypothesis is correct, its incredibly unlikely that we will ever find a better explanation of the observable facts than the theory of natural selection. However it leaves us with a problem. If all species came from other species, which in turn came from chemical elements created during the explosion of a second-generation star and its subsequent planetary nebula, there is no room for god - the creator of man.

This left a vacuum. Until then, there were two realms, earth and heaven. Man lived on earth while god inhabited the spiritual realm. As science had made a convincing argument for the absence of god, far more convincing than the theological counter-proposals, the domain of the divine was in all probability, empty.

Being an inquisitive species, it wasn’t long before the first people began to settle this newly vacant territory. In dribs and drabs the squatters came to claim their stake.

The first one in was Nietzsche who not only acknowledged that "god is dead" but went on to explain what we should do about it. He exclaimed, "humanity is something which ought to be overcome" and proposed a social evolution of Homo Sapiens into the Übermensch or superman - a being who possesses the "will to power", a certainty of her ability to change the world. Thus, Nietzsche predicts that the future individual will possess omnipotence of god.

Next to enter was Jung who mapped the geography of this new territory and explained how it differed from our more familiar corporeal environment. Jung distinguished between an "individual psychology" and a "collective psychology", labelling the latter as "a reservoir of the experiences of our species". This "objective psyche" as it was later known is common to everyone and has a better sense of the self's ideal than the ego or conscious self does. It thus directs the self, via archetypes, dreams, and intuition, toward self-actualisation.

The average individual didn’t have direct access to explore this divine realm of collective consciousness until the 1960’s. Yves Klein lead the way for an entire generation to “leap into the void” now that there were two newly available techniques for entry. The first was the practice of transcendental meditation which was imported from the east and popularised by the Beatles. People learnt the techniques necessary to experience "Nirvana" first hand. The second was lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) which had been discovered by Albert Hoffman 30 years previously and was rapidly gaining popularity as a recreational drug. Fuelled by the spirit of exploration encompassed by Huxleys book "The Doors of Perception" people en masse visited the infinite reality.

In the 1976 book “The Selfish Gene”, biologist Richard Dawkins noted that humanity was starting to leave the vector of biological evolution in favour of cultural modification. He created the concept of a meme, a unit of cultural evolution analogous to the gene as a unit of biological evolution. Whereas the gene was the basic unit of information defining the nature of a species, the meme served a similar role carrying cultural information in the collective psyche. Just like genes, memes occasionally mutated and only the ones useful to the evolution of the Übermensch were selected for replication.

By 1984 (an auspicious year for the world to change) we had a fully conceptualised collective reality existing apart from the corporeal with its own geography, biology and culture but no way to live in it long term. Any visits were either due to a spiritual ritual or by taking LSD or one of the many psychedelic drugs that had been discovered since by Alexander Shulgin. Both vehicles to the Olympian Universe were infuriatingly temporary. Then William Gibson then wrote a book called Neuromancer and proposed for the first time the concept of Cyberspace:

"A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation. A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity."

This potent meme began to propagate and within 5 years Timothy John Berners-Lee had invented just this and named it the Word Wide Web. It is still today a little unwieldy, a fact illustrated by Douglas Adams when he said, "The World Wide Web is the only thing I know of whose shortened form takes three times longer to say than its long form". However a fuse has been ignited which will elevate humanity into the state of the Übermensch. After only a decade and a half of development we have already seen our lives change in unimaginable ways. We have instant access to the entire embodiment of human knowledge and are getting increasingly closer to an equal access to all minds. We communicate in ways that we never dreamed possible and a collective consciousness is beginning to form out of the haze of technology.

This is the world we now live in. A world where both the virtual and physical are becoming equally real. Where relationships between people do not depend on physical presence or even the ability to speak the same language. Where ideas and concepts exist outside of the brain of the individual in the collective mind of society where we call them memes. It is a world where a digital child is a serious prospect. If people can have cyber sex then why not cyber offspring?

Could it be that the digital child is really the result of natural selection? The artist rather than being the creator has simply been used by the “selfish meme” for its own survival? Maybe the Übermensch has no biological substance but consists purely of information. Emerging out of the “primordial soup” of zeros and ones “Homo Superior” is first glimpsed on the wall of an art gallery.

Doing Something

2007-07-19T17:45:00.000+01:00

According to memetic theory, a meme (IPA: /me:me/, IPA: /me:m/ or IPA: /mi:m/) — a unit of cultural information, cultural evolution or diffusion — propagates from one mind to another analogously to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another as a unit of genetic information and of biological evolution. - Wikipedia

I have been thinking about the concept of a meme quite a lot recently. I'm actually in the process of writing something about how the left can use memetics to its advantage and then this came along...

I always had a gut feeling that history would remember me for something. Now I know what. It seems that during a lengthy and exhausting discussion under one of my photographs on Flickr, I accidentally created a new meme:

Reverse Zionism - The concept of accepting ones role in the collective liability that the Jewish people hold for the injustice committed by the Zionist movement. Whereas a Zionist might move to Israel for the purpose of strengthening the Jewish state, a reverse Zionist comes here with the intent of trying to repair the damage caused by his or her co-patriots.

When people ask with some incredulity why I am in Israel. I usually answer "I came for a woman, we broke up. I'm not sure why I'm still here". Maybe the answer is, at least in part, Reverse Zionism.

Now I just have to work out what to actually do!

Apollonia (three stories)

2007-07-17T16:00:00.000+01:00

She sent an SMS that simply read "I need you". I got on a bus and left the city for the first time in weeks.

Her apartment had the atmosphere that comes after generations of habitation. Her father built it and it had always been her family home. It fit her like a pair of sneakers just before they fall apart.

On the kitchen table was the disorder of family life. A blue tablecloth under a box of small preserved cakes from a recent trip to the east and a scattering of take away-menus. Amongst the mess was the ammunition. Two boxes of squat round tipped bullets from the days of mandate Palestine, a small artillery shell and what looked like some sort of grenade. It seemed normal to her that they should be there. There have always been plenty of weapons in the Levant.

We drove to the beach. As I sat there, aiming my camera across the curve of her bare thigh to the seascape beyond, my mind wondered back to other times I had been to this place.

I remember feeling that my father had a sense of purpose as we strolled across the beach. Israel was strange and new. He can’t remember why he brought an 7-year-old child to this place. It wasnt close to where we were staying and it isn’t on the tourist map. He told me that the ruins were from a Roman glass factory that tumbled down the cliff into the sea. He was wrong. He can’t remember why. The truth about this middle-class suburb, where chunks of crusader castle lie scattered across the beach is a truth of a thousand years of war.

21 years later I stepped down from the plane onto the steaming ashphelt. The humidity hit me like a wall. My mouth was dry and my heart felt like it was having trouble keeping the beat. I was going to see her for the first time in months. She was standing there, outside the customs hall in a white linen dress. Face calm, mixed emotions etched into her eyes. We got in the car and drove straight to the coast. I was excited. I had never before lived by the beach. She led me down the cliff and lay a blanket over the sand and pebbles. Huge chunks of stone wall sat in the sea. I had the feeling of being here before. I hadn’t been to Israel since I was a child.

A pair of helicopters flew past loaded with guns and bombs. She leaned closer and whispered in my ear "welcome home".

Gas

2007-07-16T13:16:00.001+01:00

Until I was in my twenties, I couldn’t burp. After drinking a can of Coke I could feel the gas raising up inside me and then some reflex mechanism would make me swallow it back down.

That reflex was installed in my young mind by my parents. Since early childhood they would shout at me every time I let out gas. I would be labelled vulgar and uncivilised. As a result I developed the unhealthy reflex to fit with the social values instilled in me.

At the age of twenty-two I spent a week in a remote country farmhouse with my then girlfriend. The nights were moonless and after sunset, impenetrable darkness would settle around our little island of light. The romance was palpable.

One of these nights we were lying in bed after a home cooked meal. I was feeling physically uncomfortable due to my inability to burp. This was nothing unusual. It was then that my girlfriend decided to teach me how to release the pressure. By the time the sun started to show itself in the dawn sky. I was able to let out tiny but significant burps. After a few weeks of stuffed crust pizza and Coke practice sessions, I was getting pretty good at it and today I burp with pride.

I never however, learnt to cry. My eyes can well up but the flood never comes. It is a more powerful social force than parental etiquette which stops me, even today from expressing my sadness with full-blown tears. It’s a shame because there is a lot to cry about.

I would like to cry about this:

Tear gas is the common name for CS or 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile, a relatively non-lethal weapon used effectively throughout the world by police forces to control riots and disperse threatening crowds. Its effects include irritation to the eyes, nose and throat causing temporary gasping, coughing and excessive tearing. Its use by military forces is forbidden under the Geneva Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997. However during the first year of the Al-Aqsa intifada the IDF used 120,000 tear gas grenades against Palestinians. Since then the use of CS gas by Israel as a form of collective punishment has increased. Soldiers are regularly observed throwing 25gram tear gas grenades into enclosed spaces such as hospitals, stores and civilian homes in spite of the manufacturers warnings that such practice can lead to lethal overdose. CS gas is also used extensively to dissuade both Israeli and Palestinian civilians from exercising their right to non-violent protest against the building of the separation barrier.

I did what I did as a symbolic gesture to acknowledge this reality. I did it in solidarity with the Palestinian people, ISM volenteers and Israeli avtivists who are gassed regularly as a punishment for opposing the occupation with words and thoughts. I did it becasue I had no other way to cry.

I sat down in front of my camera and exposed myself to a dose of CS.

Revenge

2007-07-14T23:10:00.000+01:00

How many Arab lives does it take to avenge an American life?

Every 9.62 days, there is an equivalent amount of casualties in Iraq & Afghanistan as September 11th

Exogamy #1

2007-07-14T11:57:00.000+01:00

From the exhibition literature:

The name “Exogamy” is a term used by Anthropologists to refer to the practice of intentionally breeding outside of one’s cultural or ethnic group. The artist chose to examine this concept with a body of work heavily influenced by the his own experiences growing up in a closed and xenophobic religious community and, more recently, as a witness to the violent tension between Jewish residents of Israel and Palestinians refugees in the Occupied Territories - largely the result of interracial segregation. The work's objective is to enable the artist to “exogamisze”, or metaphorically reach out to a wider community through the practice of digitally merging his own self-portrait with those of others.
The creative process in use (known as "morphing" in the visual-effects industry where the artist worked for many years) mirrors the genetic creation of a child, synthesized from both parents DNA. In this case however, the raw material of life is contained within pixels rather than chromosomes. The facial features of each “digital child” do not belong to either one parent or the other but possess an entirely new and unique form, derived from information contained in a pair of photographic "parents". Sexless and often without clear gender, the resultant beings appear real in all ways but in actuality have never existed outside of a single photographic expression.
Taken together, the work forms a distinct body, each tableaux resemble the artist in some way while retaining much of the donor parents look. Although the gene pool is selected from across racial and social economic groupings, the child images homogenize into a uniform collective that defies easy categorization.
Exogamy #1 was shot over two sessions in a London nightclub. The subjects were strangers to the photographer who agreed to sit for a portrait after a brief explanation of the project. Rather than use a private area to set up his photographic equipment, Mike chose a space next to the bar where the creative process could be witnessed by everybody present. By doing this, the cathartic creation process was enacted as public performance.

Images from the series:

Trees #1

2007-07-14T09:34:00.000+01:00

His nephews treat the child soldiers with a calm friendliness, they shake their hands and ask "how are you" in Hebrew. Their comradeship is utilitarian. Its calculated to get the best results from the situation. At other times these same young boys or others like them have come in to the village with tear gas.

His mood is different from that of his kin. Is he bemused? Is he holding back the anger he has fostered over 40 years of dehumanisation, belittlement, oppression? He doesn't say much, he seems unable to. He isn't weak, he holds himself in a stance of someone respected by his community but verbally he defers to the youngers. We don't share any languages but he looks at me and i see in his eyes memories from a childhood when hundreds of sleepy villages flowed between the hills and across the plain to the sea. Now gone. Denied.

In his hand he grips the property deeds. A symbol of the unspeakable frustration we all feel. Across most of the world these contracts are sacred. They document the boundaries of our land. They inform and enforce. In Palestine if a Jew wants, he takes. That's the law. Maybe it isn't written but these kids with guns enforce it anyway.

One night the fundamentalist Jewish settlers of Kidumim descended from their hilltop fortress and built a fence around his land. On following nights they laid out irrigation and planted young olive trees. Israel is the only country in the world who plants trees as an act of war. We do it so that rich, fat men and women with traditional 'family' values can sit in their armchairs in New York or North West London and say:

See! We make the dessert bloom. What do THEY do?

The young soldiers tell us that we aren't allowed on the land. We show them the deeds, they don't care. They say its a matter for the law to decide but the courts need evidence and that's why we are here. The police are called, they don't want to come. Why should they? They protect the rights of Jews. We leave the land.

The soldiers are more interested in my camera than the old man and his property deeds. They ask me how many megapixels it is, how much it cost. They apologise. To me, not to him. The are "just following orders" (weren't these words used before?). Their orders are to prevent the settlers from coming down the hill with sticks and dogs. I see a settler standing on his balcony with a rifle.

Every country has a way to deal with its most violent and antisocial elements. Its thieves, murderers and bloodthirsty fundamentalists. We arm ours and protect them with a teen army who are more interested in cameras than the zionism that they protect.