Khaled Sabsabi - Beachhead's Peace of Mind at Artspace NZ

Posted 27/05/2016

Bringing a selection of art works, which politically share a common ground demanding critical thinking, social justice, and global peace, the exhibition entitled Beachhead’s Peace of Mind retrieves an archival image found on the Internet associated with the newspaper, Beachhead, which appeared in Venice of California in 1968. The first issue of Beachhead, which still serves as a free community paper* today – with a few breaks in publication over the years – started with this editorial note on its first page:

“This paper is a poem. It is the first of a series. Your participation will decide how often we appear. This paper is a poem for the people. We decided not to sell it to some of you, but to give it to all of you. It is a poem for all the people. It is also a paper made by people who love to make poems and dig doing a newspaper which is also a poem. Our subject this issue is Venice. Our purpose is to create a community. We would like to give you a new poem every day. We hope to do it, for now, every two weeks."

The image, associated with the call, displays a group of people gathered on a beach collectively forming the peace symbol. The sign was originally designed for The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND); the British nuclear disarmament movement by Gerald Holtom in 1958, and also associated with the “Ban the Bomb” movement and later with others such as “flower children” in the Summer of Love (1967) in San Francisco. A decade of radical changes, liberation movements and political transformations extended its meaning from an “anti nuclear energy” sign into generational statement.

Artists:

Khaled Sabsabi