Nation Guide to the Nation

Chapter 1 Part I. COLLECTIVES Beehive Design Collective. Members of the busy Beehive Design Collective refer to themselves as "culture workers" or "pollinators"; individuals use "bee" as a surname. The group is based in an old Grange hall and identifies with the Grange's nineteenth-century Populist fight against Wall Street. They oppose transnational corporations, free trade, biotechnology, industrialization; they believe that art (design, graphics, cartoons and caricatures) can play a pivotal part in conveying political ideas. They conceive their role in the fight to be designing elaborate, historically accurate posters; touring universities with graphic presentations on the issues; discussing same with other activists at the grass roots and giving away their posters. 3 Elm Street, Machias, ME 04654, (207) 255-6737, www.beehivecollective.org http://www.beehivecollective.org > The Bubble Project. Artist Ji Lee cut out 30,000 blank white bubbles and plastered them on ad posters all over New York City. People responded by filling the bubbles with caustic, antiadvertising quips. Lee slapped the funniest bubbles on his website, which received 50,000 hits and crashed. In 2006 he collected some of the all-time great quips in a book called Talk Back: The Bubble Project. In late 2007 Ji Lee told us: "The BP is still going strong. The website has been visited by over two million people. The bubbling has spread to hundreds of countries. I receive e-mails every day from different bubblers around the world, from India, Australia, China to Turkey. Now Italy has a Bubble Project website (www.progetttobolla.com http://www.progetttobolla.com > ) as does Argentina (www.proyectoburbuja.com http://www.proyectoburbuja.com > ). The BP has taken on a life of its own, and it will keep going as long as there are ads on the streets!" Recently sighted on the Bubble Project website: "What country would Jesus bomb?" www.thebubbleproject.com The Busycle. A bicycle built for fifteen, a pedal-powered traveling art piece, this contraption sits on the stripped-down chassis of a van. Fourteen pedalers sit seven to a side, facing out, a set of pedals in front of each of them. The driver up front guides the Busycle as they pedal in unison. Their leg power is transmitted to a central gear shaft that turns the wheels. The Busycle travels to different cities on cross-country story-collecting tours. During stops, the crew invites locals to climb aboard, work the pedals and experience the purposeful joy of pulling together, of being cogs in a larger effort. Then they assemble around a virtual campfire to tell their stories, which are videotaped and shared with people at the next stop. The Buscycle was created by Boston-based artists Heather Clark and Matthew Mazzotta while they were in residence at the Berwick Research Institute's Public Art Satellite Program. www.buscycle.com Center for Tactical Magic. CTM believes in opening creative lines of communication, spreading information and bringing people together. Over the past eight years they've mobilized more than 200 people on projects in cities across the United States as well as internationally. For example, they have a Tactical Ice Cream Unit (TICU) that distributes free ice cream and political literature from a truck, which "is familiar but different-it's a fully armored car that's an ice cream truck." It displays two menus: "treats for the streets" and "food for thought." The truck carries audiovisual equipment and is available as the centerpiece at rallies, providing the sound system, stage, music and refreshments. 1460 Madison Avenue, Memphis, TN 32104, (901) 722-3001, www.tacticalmagic.org http://www.tacticalmagic.org > Critical Art Ensemble. CAE is a collective of five "tactical media artists"Nation Magazine Staff is the author of 'Nation Guide to the Nation' with ISBN 9780307387288 and ISBN 0307387283.