I want you to go to the window, open it, stick your head out and yell...

Peter Finch posthumously won the Oscar for Best Actor for his role as "The Mad Prophet of the Air-waves" television anchorman Howard Beale in Sidney Lumet's 1976 film, Network.

*******

“If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.”

— Oscar Wilde

Quote by Oscar Wilde used by artist Virgil Marti for his work “For Oscar Wilde,” installed in the Eastern State Penitentiary,  an abandoned 19th century prison in Philadelphia for a 1995 show, Prison sentences: The Prison as Site/The Prison as Subject, curated by Julie Courtney and Todd Gilens.

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” 

— Oscar Wilde

*******

2013 Turkish Uprising

2013 News channel's workers chapulling. Photos by Erginbilgin, via Wikipedia

Chapulling (Turkish: çapuling) is a term, coined from Prime Minister Erdoğan's use of the term çapulcu (roughly translated to “looter”) to describe protestors in the 2013 protests in Turkey. The word quickly caught on, and was adopted by the demonstrators and online activists. Many took the concept further by integrating the unique nature of the demonstrations and defined it as "to act towards taking the democracy of a nation to the next step by reminding governments of their reason for existence in a peaceful and humorous manner."

People hanging out of their windows and banging on pots and pans, drumming, honking their car horns, or clapping their hands on the street below near Taksim Square in Istanbul, Turkey tonight. 

—  6/9/13 video by independent journalist Jenna Pope (Capucul).

*******

We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones, 

We turned the dusty drill: 

We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns, 

And sweated on the mill: 

But in the heart of every man 

Terror was lying still.

— stanza from Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol, a poem first published under his prisoner identification number, C.3-3.

*******

Pope returns to Turkey, just a few weeks later, and reports of new laws being enforced by the government: People are being fined for banging on pots and pans. It is illegal to have tables and chairs on the streets.

App - #19 Çapulcu Tencere from Kumanda TV on Vimeo.

A clever capulcu-er comes up with a solution. The "Capulcu Tencere" app can now be downloaded onto your phone for free. Protesters can still bang the pots and pans and not break the law.

People gathered for iftar (the evening meal when Muslims break their fast during the Islamic month of Ramadan) on Istiklal Street right after the march to demand the release of activists (many were university students) who were arrested after the police raided their homes several days ago. 

— 7/18/13 photo by Jenna Capulcu Pope@BatmanWI