“The weight of futility that our society places upon the individual is a meaningless illusion that disappears as soon as you realize that your own two hands can lift it away. Power exists within you as soon as you choose to use it.” – Brokefix member
You may have heard by now about the brouhaha in my home state of Maine over our delightful governor’s most recent offense. A few weeks ago, he ordered a mural honoring the history of laborers in Maine removed form the capitol building in Augusta. Along with outrage form citizens, the federal government has even piped up to say that since federal funds paid for the mural, Maine now owes the feds $60,000 — all because our dear governor thought the mural was ‘unfriendly’ toward businesses.
In a beautiful move on April 2, a creative group identifying themselves only as “BrokeFix” decided to ‘photo-bomb’ the capitol building in a late-night creative act of non-destructive graffiti as a means of ‘restoring’ the mural. More recently, they took their guerrilla art to the buildings of Portland, Maine (wish I’d known they were coming!), including in this version projections of quotes from the online feedback they’ve received.
The Huffington Post ran an exclusive interview with the group earlier today, and they even got a mention by Rachel Maddow, who said, “I love this thing that you guys did, this nondestructive, nonviolent, art confrontation at the state capitol.”
So do I.
Exactly! Art to the Rescue!
Excellent!
@ Jere… Funny, I’ve been cursing the return to our winter cold. I mean it’s -33C with the windchill. And it’s April. (String of expletives. April always is the month of tease.) I’ve been craving some signs of summer. But your star-gazing reminded me how I always feel in June and July when the sky never gets dark enough for stars… I’d best bundle up, shut my mouth, and enjoy them, and the northern lights, while they’re here. Time enough for summer sun when it decides to show.
..I was outside in the backyard urinating a bit ago, and I looked up through the lemon tree branches. There, was this big shiny in the sky. I asked it, “are you a planet?”, (..you see, it grabbed my attention with its magnitude), “..or a star?” Then I saw it twinkle. “Oh, a star I see!” So I went out front to the southern exposure, saw the moon, engrained a rough estimate of distances between myself, the moon, and multiple other shinies (a map of sorts in my memory). I had already by this time realized that I had an astronomy program that I could research with, starry night. So I opened up the book and found my guy, it was Arcturus.
🙂 ..I’m not sure how disparate this sounds to anyone out there.. sometimes it’s a challenge for me to maintain the details, when it’s already been traveling so far.. 🙂
Sometimes i get lost in the world and hold it against the world. I hold it against. I hold it back. I don’t let forth. I don’t budge, or move, I don’t. I don’t go forth, too enjoy the big ol’ shinies in the sky.
Too enjoy breathing, and the trees.. (I know, it kills to think about when you’re already in the fog.. but,) everything is built on foundations which are a rotating continuity.
..We’ve got some ‘oddball’ cosmic weather these days.. I’m liking it!
Jere
Thanks for this, Amanda! Definitely time to get off my ass. That quote is… well… it’s been said: inspiring.
Time to get some of the amazing women around here gathered up to make some fresh theatre.
Thank you, Amanda, for sharing this inspiration. Something can be done as long as there is the will to do. Would not be surprised to find some Burning Man people in this group of artists.
Amanda – Photo-bomb! I love it! Thank you. It is so inspiring to see what creative people can do to bring a few healing moments of sanity back into the world – kind of like the “random acts of kindness” idea. Perform random acts of sanity.
The Brokefix member’s comment about futility being a meaningless illusion that can be broken by action reminded me of the old story of the child on the beach where for some reason millions of starfish had been washed onto shore. The child was throwing starfish back in the ocean, one at a time. An adult came by and said, “What are you doing? There are too many standed starfish to make a difference.” As she threw another starfish into the ocean, she said, “It makes a difference to this one.”
I saw a picture on HuffPo about the group today, and I fully expected you to be in there, Amanda!