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When Teri Kwant submitted her yard sign to the Walker Art Center's "My Yard Our Message" project, she did not know that "I am for preemptive peace" would turn into the most popular of all the designs submitted. Neither could anyone have anticipated the delicious entendre this sign now resonates with in light of the country's second female vice-presidential nominee's ignorance when it comes to identifying major foreign policy changes authorized by the incumbent and fellow Republican president ... delicious or devastating, depending on your level of political disenchantment these days--oops, I meant hopefulness.

Speaking of hopefulness, I had high hopes for the UnConvention, a cluster of art events meant to provide a counterpoint to the Republican National Convention. I cannot say that I have seen every single event associated with the UnConvention, but what I did see was a curious mix of the plainly uninspiring and of what felt like an exercise in gallows humor--the last resort of the oppressed. I have been reluctant to write about the UnConvention, in part because I so badly wanted it to be meaningful in more than the usual, politically correct, aesthetically pleasing, and sincere ways. Don't get me wrong: I do not mean to object to aesthetic pleasure and political mindfulness, least of all to sincerity, vastly underrated in an age of lazy cynicism. Nonetheless, I still could not shake the sense of dissatisfaction and disengagement.

Studio on Fire's work on view at Poster Offensive 4 at the Black Dog Cafe in St. Paul.

Another advantage of creative, truly unconventional protest: media interest and coverage. Getting the word out. Did you know that the biggest protest rally in the history of Alaska just happened last week? That people--mostly women--gathered to protest their governor's nomination? That is was bigger than the support rally for aforementioned governor? Did it get covered in any media outlets you know?

Back to the Twin Cities, where I am still hoping for a doctrine of preemptive peace. Back to the UnConvention and its disappointingly conventional forms of civic engagement.

The Walker Art Center, the MIA, Intermedia Arts, Forecast Public Art, and mcad collaborated to mount the first Liberty Parade in late August, the first of a possibly annual "full-scale art and music celebration, a march in support of democracy and freedom of expression," proudly announcing that "politics doesn't have to suck" and claiming to be a "CELEBRATION of shared values (liberty, freedom, justice, equality, free speech) rather than a partisan protest." I thought that sounded good. But unfortunately, watching the parade on Nicollet Avenue, I began to feel that liberty and libertarianism were marching hand in hand here. Ron Paul's supporters came out in full force and the whole event--despite the art cars and polar bears and rocket-riding girls in red, white, and blue--took on the air of a political demonstration after all, clamoring for attention and support for free-market principles. (These days, with the current government drifting into a quasi-socialist model of state ownership of banks and insurance giants, this advocacy seems positively outlandish.)

In St. Paul, the Poster Offensive 4, put together by Spunk Design Machine at the Black Dog Cafe, was announced as "a non-partisan poster show dedicated to the promotion of peace and democracy." Participants were asked to take "politics and political expression into consideration when designing images for the show." The result is hardly non-partisan: my favorite is Andy Powell's Earth is Pissed, featuring an elephant-eating polar bear. I know, a poster is not as powerful as a governor suppressing scientific findings on global warming and suing the federal government to remove polar bears from the list of endangered species. (How much science does it take, really, to understand that ice, a.k.a. habitat of polar bears, melts?) This poster cheered me up in these scary times... It is not just Americans who, wide-eyed and bewildered, are watching the cynical insults and irresponsibilities served up as "change" during this campaign season. Poster Offensive 4 offers a momentary antidote to democratic depression and will travel to Frank Stone in early October.

At form + content, another gallery huddling under the UnConvention's wide umbrella, Colleen Sheehy and Camille Gage co-curated the ambitiously titled "Party Party in a Tweety Land b/w This Republic of Suffering." Simply put, the show pits suffering--in the form of torture, homelessness, death, grief--against pop and celebrity culture, nostalgically evoking the era of vinyl with its titular split into an A and B side.

Kristie Bretskie's and Scott Seekins' work at form + content.

The symmetrical arrangement of the work on display seems to support this intentional duality: the frontal space is devoted to partying--Javier Tavera's ecstatic ravers next to Scott Seekins' pop art fantasies--and, more subtly, to responses to a situation where nihilism may come to appear as the only reasonable response to political inertia, as Jenny Schmid's Nihilists and Libertines suggest. In the back, Harriet Bart's impeccably elegant work memorializes the names of fallen soldiers on handwritten, partially unfurled scrolls. Above them, suspended from the ceiling, plumb bobs hang like strange instruments of divination. Bart's piece is flanked, on both sides, by oil paintings of torture and grief. The comparative rawness of paint and brushstrokes by Kim Benson and Jaron Childs offers a compelling visual contrast--but again, the symmetrical arrangement is almost disturbing in its neat separation of party and suffering.

Why am I disturbed by the symmetry? I don't have a good answer. I think it has something to do with side A necessitating, even requiring, side B to establish its very meaning--a yin/yang kind of idea. And, as a fan of preemptive peace, I feel the urge to resist the suggestion that, well of course, in order to have peace, there has to be war. (Perhaps that resistance makes me naïve in the eyes of some. Thankfully, I'm not running for any office.) But perhaps this culture's obsession with celebrity voyeurism does indeed lead directly to homelessness--as shown in Kristi Bretskie's portraits--along with torture, death, and grief. But then again, maybe this causal link is a little too simplistic.

Equally disturbing, albeit in a different way, was the fact that, on opening night, here we were, partying the night away, in a gesture of almost uncanny self-referentiality: the gallery audience effectively became part of the exhibit, for better or for worse. Good intentions were irrelevant; the occasion usurped the significance of individual encounters with the work, re-scripting them as just another self-absorbed party in tweety land. This effect, along with Philipp Hader's brilliant video, struck me as the most compelling aspect of the show. (Hader appropriates ipod-ad aesthetics to show chilling, violent scenes.)

Overall, "Party Party in a Tweety Land b/w This Republic of Suffering" assembles work well worth seeing. But--and this is a contradiction of sorts--the show ultimately seems too unfocused, floundering under the weight of the many complicated issues it raises, while, at the same time, its curatorial corset is too tightly laced as to give the individual pieces space to breathe.

So, as part of the UnConvention we have pretty conventional gallery shows, yard signs, posters, marches--but how about protest that is not just creative within established forms but creatively seeks to devise new forms?

One project, performed during the RNC on the streets of St. Paul, deserves special mention here: "Don't You Feel It Too?" by Marcus Young and the Primary School of Conceptual Art, urged dancing and inadvertent participants alike to embrace their awkwardness. As far as I understand, the goal was not to provoke predictable outrage--but instead to shift, ever so subtly, what we take for granted--whether that's the propriety of quietly dancing in public or the conventions of political campaigning.