My favourite class since returning to school four years ago, was a course called Art in Crisis probably, because I learned about artists I didn’t previously know about from Iran, China, Kenya, from the labour movement, from World War Two and I had to write a final paper about any instance of artists making protest work which we did not study in class. I decided to write about the John and Yoko Bed-In for peace, a concept that was lost on me as a kid who just liked John Lennon’s music. I understood the peace part but not the bed-in, what did that mean? Took a long time to understand their perspective, which was since they were famous and since the media would follow them around and intrusively record anything about them why not use that to promote their actual beliefs – world peace. Calling it a bed-in was the zinger, made them assume it was about sexual exhibitionism so even more of them showed up ready to transmit their findings and they did, but not about sex about how to make world peace by halting activity and staying in bed.  However, if instead we were to write about someone we did study I would have chosen Taravat Talepasand who is an Iranian American who made an unflattering bust of the Ayatollah which was against the law in Iran but not a big deal in America. In order to be in solidarity with Iranians who might wish not have freedoms limited, she added liquid LSD to the sculpture’s eyes thus simultaneously risking herself with the law for breaking American drug laws. I liked her creative thinking around solidarity.