Plea from ASAC Eire

Dear Fellow Artists,

I'm enclosing materials that I hope you will read and consider-materials concerning life and death.

I write to ask for your support for the Global Art Strike 1990-1993. This strike, first suggested by Gustav Metzger in London's Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Journal, calls on: "...all cultural workers to put down their tools and cease to make, distribute, sell, exhibit, or discuss their work from 1 January 1990 to 1 January 1993."

Please join us and support the Irish branch of this Global Art Strike. While many, if not all, of you could not give up art even if convinced to do so, I know that if you study the arguments carefully, you'll understand why an Art Strike is necessary to assess accurately the position of art in our society today.

All we do ask is that you help us to spread the word-to raise the level of debate and consciousness in our society by donating 0.7% of your income from art. We also request that your galleries, publishers, and associates of all kinds remit 0.7% of their commissions. (This sum represents the sum the Irish Nation recommends states give in foreign aid and so forms the benchmark of our consciousness. Ireland gave .18% of her GNP in 1988.)

Art Strike Committees exist in many countries as well as here in Ireland; any of them will be happy to supply more information about how you can help.

I know that you represent an imaginative and caring part of our society, and that you do not want people to starve in famines or be born to die in poverty. Please devote a little of your time and consideration to your responsibilities as an artist. Help your fellow workers help the world. Give up art. Save the starving.