Join the new world

Tip o' the musical hat to Frantz, Frantz, Byrne, Harrison and Weymouth. What with recent shenanigans in my beloved SFP, leading to my current self-imposed exile at the Old Farts Home, this musical note on "occupation" seemed kinda apropos this round.

The featured New World artist of the week is the art collective Gran Fury, which was best known for its alignment with the activist milieu around ACT UP/New York, but covered a wider canvas, as it were, than only AIDS activism.

In the pre-Internet 1980's Gran Fury adopted the appropriation of commercial and mainstream language into a "social media" for political ends, echoing in a lively way the situationist method of detourning mass-media for subversive and liberationist ends.

Even their "Gran Fury" logo speaks to their delight in expropriative word play. Their famous "Read My Lips" posters were a clever reply to Reagan's widely-known, if terminally schmaltzy, slogan about tax reform.

Their work in making what was at the time largely unspoken concerns about AIDs, homophobia and sexism not only spoken, but public as hell helped to energize a generation of activists. All work associated with the Gran Fury label is placed into the public domain and is intended to be used for agitational purposes.

Several members of Gran Fury are still making art that aims to motivate social change.

(I still have my "kissing doesn't kill" poster. 🙂 )





Watch out, you might get what you're after. Trump babies are strange, but not a stranger. I'm an ordinary guy. Burning down the house.


Hold tight. Wait till the party's over. Hold tight, compadres, we're in for nasty weather. There has got to be a way. Nah. Burning down the house.






Here's your ticket. Pack your bag. Time for jumpin' overboard.
The transportation is here. Close enough but not too far, Maybe you know where you are and you're fightin' fire with fire.

Nah. All wet! Hey, you might need a raincoat. It's a shakedown!





Dreams walking in broad daylight. Three hun-dred six-ty five de-grees. Oh, my! Burning down the house





It was once upon a place. Sometimes I listen to myself: "We're gonna come in first place!" People on their way to work and baby what did you except? Gonna burst into flame.

My house is out of the ordinary. That's right! Don't wanna hurt nobody.





Some things sure can sweep me off my feet. Burning down the house.

No visible means of support and you have not seen nothin' yet.





Everything's stuck together and I don't know what you expect staring into the TV set, fighting fire with fire.