OUR AMBITION:
Art was once the voice of the times, but it has now taken a back seat to commercial interests. Our social identity is now dictated by branding and advertising instead of self exploration. We were once led by Da Vincis, Goyas, and Warhols, but we are now led by the likes of Nike, Apple, Gap, and Gucci. This increasingly harmful use of art as advertisement has boiled our self-worth down to what we own, and what we should own. Needless to say, we are set upon a path.
Crow’s Quarter is a publication that challenges burgeoning artists to question and expand art’s role in creating a more authentic and fulfilling human experience. CQ presents a range of invited contributions from artists, photographers, musicians, writers, and critics to explore the boundaries of the human experience as it relates to a greater social identity. We ask artists to come together and collaborate over a theme to create a captivating and thought-provoking publication that invites the viewer to become engrossed in the artistic exploration and appreciation of one’s role in human identity.
OUR VOICE:
CQ presents a sophisticated voice that uses observation, humor, and critique to make poignant artistic comments about social morés and personal identities. It is our goal to balance out and experience that will have you busting up laughing in one section, and seriously contemplating how to improve your role in society in another. If you like art, music, fashion, and smart (more often than not smart ass) commentary then you will love CQ.
POSSIBLE THEMES AND TOPICS:
1) Serializing our surroundings by documenting the activities of people in a certain situation such as in a corner store, bar, park, restaurant, kitchen, etc.
2) Topic of resistance: finding social and political issues that artists can react against and expose.
3) Politics: satire about political figures
4) Awkward Activities: challenging an artist to live or act in a manner that is out of their normal realm of existence and then record that in a visual manner.
5) Names on Facebook: finding people who have the same names on Facebook and taking their portraits.
6) Unique People: documenting the roller-skating people who get really into being decked out and roller-skating to their interesting and odd heart’s content.
7) The Informers: exploring artists who inform or create new culture.
Art Diaries: getting behind the minds of artist that inspire culture.
9) Who is Art? Taking a look at people who may or may not be considered successful artist but are enjoying their dedication to whatever they may create.
10) Success: taking new vantage points of what success means. Success could be an old old woman actually making it across the street. It could be finishing a gigantic burrito. It could be running naked through Dolores park on a sunny day.
11) Fashion
12) Music
13) Identity and relationships based on race
14) Globalization: a confused concept of what is culturally ours theirs or who cares.
15) Narcissism: exploring a world where people are only concerned with themselves and the way they look. Visuals could include something like people always looking at their reflection while something awful happens that they could have stopped.