art and controversy on the topic of Darfur

Today I will be immersed in recording movies, a colleague and I are going full throttle in a virtual dialogue to enhance the understanding of HIV/AIDS related topics. Fun and will keep you updated.

So I was looking for a short, yet vibrant post to put on my blog today and in comes Wilfred Rubens with an amazing story of consumption versus art. A Danish artist Nadia Plesner (now working in the Netherlands at the renowned Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam) was trying to do her two cents to make the world a better place. So she pondered on Darfur and how she could make an art piece that would be meaningful and immediately capture the imagination as well. So she came up with a t-shirt, depicting an black child with Paris Hilton dog and handbag.

After a couple of months - last February - the people from Louis Vuitton got hold of her t-shirt and campaign and they urged her to stop the campaign, because she was unlawfully depicting one of the really ugly Louis Vuitton handbags. The thing is, it is just a handbag image, you cannot tell which label it would be from. So... engaging art can truly trouble high-end posh handbags making manufacturers (that produce their material in low income countries, in many cases without insurance of any kind) . By this time the Dutch newspapers are on the story (in Dutch) and it begins to stir digg. Nadia risks having to pay if she keeps her t-shirt and campaign going.

Acting is easy: buy her t-shirt (or art) and boycot Louis Vuitton.

I wish eLearning could stir a good uproar once in a while :-)