Dismantling the Corporate State, and Other Amusements

Works by Anne Elizabeth Moore
June 19 – August 22, 2009

Dismantling the Corporate State, and Other Amusements is an exhibition of nine experimental works and activist projects of Anne Elizabeth Moore at Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book & Paper Arts, 1104 S. Wabash, 2nd floor. One of the projects, Pie Off, will be presented at the opening reception on June 19 from 6-9pm. Another will be The Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness which will occur at the closing event, Friday, August 21 at 6:30pm.

A staunch critic of consumerism and media activist Moore has been writing, publishing, and interceding in culture since the age of 15. The indomitable author of Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity, founding editor of the Best American Comics series, and former editor of now-defunct Punk Planet has seen her work exhibited in major museums, praised by the business press, and forcibly ejected from retail establishments. Dismantling the Corporate State, and Other Amusements includes a wide range of both personal projects and collaborations, from Chicago to Cambodia. A retrospective of sorts, this exhibition will be the first to present this work in one place.


This exhibition runs from June 19 – August 22, 2009. An artist’s talk with Anne Elizabeth Moore will take place on Friday, August 21 at 6:30 for the exhibition’s closing which will be followed by The Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness.

EXHIBITION PROJECTS INCLUDE:

New Girl Law: 2008 (New Girl Law Audio Book is 2009)
New Girl Law is a letter-pressed, hand-bound book created in conjunction with the 32 young Cambodian women leaders in Phnom Penh. Over a two-week period at the Harpswell Foundation Dormitory and Leadership Center for University Women, the group collaborated a revision of the traditional text known as Girl Law which circumscribes proper roles for women in Cambodian culture. This version calls for basic human rights, gender equity, the eradication of corruption, and funding for cultural production. It is a re-envisioning of a potential future for the country. Co-written in Phnom Penh, and printed at AS220's Community Print Shop in Providence, Rhode Island, New Girl Law has been the subject of several international discussions of women's position in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including two among groups of economically disadvantaged creative young women in Providence and San Antonio.

Anne Zine
Produced between late 1993 and 2004, AnneZine was a quarterly publication devoted to the unique needs of people named Anne, Annie, Ann Marie, and the like, and consisted of 47 issues, although 38 of them were fake. Each issue was created in editions of between 12 (issue #1) and 300, with multiple reprints.

The Catalog of This Exhibition
The Catalog envisions an exhibition devoted to uncreated works of art, and attempts to establish a language for talking about potential through four essays that push the boundaries of art past the visual, past the experiential, and past the conceptual into the inconceivable and impossible. It is a piece of writing that exists mainly online, but was set into a hand-bound book with coffee-stained paper for physical exhibition. It exists in a physical edition of only one. (2007)

Radical Education Roadshow: How to Make This Very Zine
Radical Education Roadshow provides do-it-yourself instructions on how to make a zine in several languages. From 2004-2009, Anne Elizabeth Moore travelled the country making zines with young people using this tool, and this is a selection of their amazing, hilarious works.

Unlympics
From January to February 2009, the Unlympics were a series of competitive events that engaged Chicago residents in active dialogue about the 2016 Olympic bid. The Unlympics looked at highly organized, internationally recognized, massively marketed, thoroughly branded, and extremely expensive sporting events not from a pro or con standpoint, but from a questioning standpoint. The Unlympics included real sports, fake sports, and things that should be sports but aren’t yet, including Class-Conscious Kickball, Fashion, Karaoke, Live Action Role Play Family Dinner, The Solitary Isolation Game, and Spelling. Indoor and outdoor games were held throughout the city and open to the public. These events were sponsored by organizations with a stake in the 2016 Olympic bid (unlympics.wordpress.com). Summer Games are being planned now.

The Foundation for Freedom
The mission of the Foundation For Freedom was to bring the best and brightest former ad pros together once a year; inspire young people to leave the craft; focus the industry and public at large on the profoundly negative social and economic impacts of advertising; inspire problem-solving methods focused on the most important issues facing the real world; and shine a light on the influence that advertising, media, and marketing industries have on dwindling public space, atrophying human relationships, and the destruction of democracy. In collaboration with the Anti-Advertising Agency, the FFF created an award for one lucky ad pro, PR exec, or marketing rep dedicated to leaving their life of commercial creativity and onored them with a gala event and giant novelty check during Advertising week in New York City. (2008)

The Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness (closing event)
Established in 2005 as an antidote to the several barriers that had been erected to prevent Anne Elizabeth Moore from winning other awards, the Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness was created by Kevin Duneman and is juried annually by Anne Elizabeth Moore, who really only ever considers herself in the running for it. A major upset in the awards' history occurred in 2007 when dark horse candidate Sarah Fan appeared seemingly from nowhere to claim victory. The 2008 award goes to Anne Elizabeth Moore in Chicago Illinois, whose achievements had gone unrecognized for several consecutive months except for by her cat, and the occasional conspicuous consumption of pie, which, although delicious, is sometimes just not enough. The 2009 award will be the first to be judged by an open ballot. People besides Anne Elizabeth Moore will be considered for this year's award. This award will be presented at the closing event, Friday, August 21 at 6:30pm.

Operation: Pocket Full of Wishes
Operation: Pocket Full of Wishes was originally a series of eight cards that mimicked the shopping aides found in American Girl Place. The ‘wish’ cards include names, images and prices of items. Anne Elizabeth Moore’s cards bore items like “Domestic Partnership Benefits,” Safe and Effective Birth Control,” and “Free Tampons.” These were distributed inside the store to the doll consumers. Eventually, it became national news—and lead to Anne Elizabeth Moore getting banned from the store. (2004)

Pie Off
Pie Off is an Irregular Semi-Annual Competitive Pie-Baking Competition held in the United States of America, devoted to exploring the boundaries of not only good taste, but also the boundaries of what constitutes competition, how decisions are made in groups, and what the limits of consumption are for even those individuals who claim to love pie more than anything else in the world. Each competition is themed differently and was devoted to the exploration of a different judging rubric, including: popular vote, Survivor-style elimination, panel of experts, celebrity vote, US Election-style, and autocratic. Pie will be provided. Opening Reception: June 19, 2009, 6-9pm.

Anne Elizabeth Moore’s website: http://www.anneelizabethmoore.com/
Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book & Paper Arts: http://bit.ly/5NY1R
Press Inquiries: Elizabeth Burke-Dain, 312.369.8695 or eburkedain at colum dot edu