We Make Money Not Art is a very good blog by (mainly) the indefatigable Regine. She covers a wide range of topics, with an emphasis on contemporary, technologically-based art.
As you might expect, she, and much of the art featured, tilts politically to the left. Which doesn't bother me -- if something's interesting, I'll link to it. Sometimes, though, the socialist weenies get a bit overweening (the italicized sentences are quotes from some documents):
Wishing to reintroduce Chechnya to an international audience while reacting to the proliferation of international biennales, the Emergency Biennale has been conceived in a geopolitical context which has become so complex that it seemed urgent and necessary to mobilize the artists. The show is stopping from February 24 to March 12 in Riga, Latvia (after Paris, Brussels, Bolzano, and Milano). A part of the concept involved a call to the artists to create works in a double exemplary likely to fit in a suitcase for Grozny (cared by a local partner), the other one for a touring exhibition around the world. (via e-flux.)Among the works selected is the Human Rights Memory Stick by Jota Castro: Originally, the idea of this USB memory stick was to allow an easy, discrete and rapid diffusion of confidential and censured information on Chechnya.
(However, before sending this work to Chechnya, we discovered that there was only information on Jota Castro : press releases and articles on his shows, images of his artworks as well as pictures of himself (portraits). We chose not to send it.)
The line ". . . urgent and necessary to mobilize the artists" was funny enough; what really made this special was Jota Castro's touching solicitude for the people of Chechnya.
Castro (no relation to Fidel, as far as I can find) was in his former life a diplomat to the UN and European Union. Somehow this does not surprise me.