When Art and Politics Meet …and Drink Organic Vodka: Downtown for Democracy’s “The Pocket Guide to Politics”
“The Pocket Guide”—a five-by-seven-inch seventy-five-page book in which art works are paired with dry, sometimes facile descriptions of how the American government functions—is an experiment in combatting a “lack of interest and engagement in the electoral process among creative professionals,” by providing basic definitions of things like lobbyists, gun control, and the electoral college. It is also, to borrow a phrase coined by Didion, an exercise in insider baseball. The assumption is that no introductions are necessary: everyone who purchases this primer on American politics (from places like the OHWOW bookstore and the über-hip Opening Ceremony boutique) will recognize some of the fourteen artists who contributed nineteen illustrations—or at least they’ll pretend to.
Click-through for more about the pocket guide, and to see a slideshow of it’s contents: http://nyr.kr/Jz1gAw
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