Occupying music and art

The diversities built into the Occupy movement have been probably the movement’s most refreshing and necessary feature; nowhere is that panorama of possibilities more obvious than in the range of artists enlisted to express those possibilities.

The movement’s various actions in New York, Seattle, Boston, Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix and hundreds of other cities and towns have yielded a trove of striking posters and flyers advancing the Occupy concept.

The only consistency is in their inconsistency, the push against convention that defines the movement distilled in artwork that’s often moving and inspiring. The Occupy Wall Street site are a great place to glimpse posters and handbills from around the country, and the world.

Here’s a short sampler:

Meanwhile, the world of music isn’t being left out. On Wednesday, at The Huffington Post, “content creator” Greg Garry wrote about the song “Money,” the first single from the second album by the Ohio indie rock band The Drums. Garry said the song “seemed poised to be the poster song of our current financial armegeddon. It really is the "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime" for the new Depression.”

Whether you buy that bid for anthemhood or not is up to you. Garry did, however, include a YouTube video created by a Drums fan who used the music as a soundtrack to a series of OWS protest images. The combination of music and image is sometimes achingly effective.

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Image credits: Occupy the Streets poster: via gstrike.org. What Is Our One Demand poster: Adbusters. Sorry You're Occupied: Dan Cassaro. Occupy Cal: Fred Zaw.