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17 Facts About Paul Garrin

1.

Since the 1990s, Paul Garrin has carried his politicized style of action art-making onto the Internet, founding companies and projects that work to free the Internet from corporate and government control.

2.

Paul Garrin took night classes at the Philadelphia College of Art, and worked at an offset printing shop in the day to support himself.

3.

Paul Garrin began working with video while studying fine arts at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City where he enrolled after two years of classical art training in painting, drawing, sculpture, materials, and printmaking at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

4.

At Cooper Union, Paul Garrin studied with many well-known artists including Hans Haacke, Vito Acconci, Robert Breer and Martha Rosler, all of whom had a major impact on Paul Garrin's aesthetics and critical social content in his works.

5.

In 2001, Paul Garrin, was awarded the Cooper Union President Citation for outstanding attainments and contributions to his profession, and was inducted into the Cooper Union Alumni Hall of Fame.

6.

Paul Garrin belongs to the second generation of video artists whose works mix technological innovation with social criticism.

7.

In 1988, Paul Garrin created one of his most groundbreaking videos entitled "Free Society" featuring original music by downtown composer and musician Elliott Sharp.

8.

Between the years 1984 to 1997, Paul Garrin was among the pioneers in the field of fashion videography.

9.

Paul Garrin worked with a number of popular fashion designers of the day.

10.

Paul Garrin enlisted Don Ritter, another friend and artist working in the same realm to create the live targets in the Border Patrol installation.

11.

Paul Garrin's works have been documented in numerous publications worldwide including "History of 20th Century Art" by Taschen.

12.

In 2001, Paul Garrin was awarded the Cooper Union President's Citation for outstanding attainments and contributions to his profession.

13.

Paul Garrin started working for Paik on March 30,1981, the day that Ronald Reagan was shot, and spent the day recording TV news broadcasts of the event.

14.

Evident in Paik's later pieces, Paul Garrin produced hundreds of works with his richly layered and textured tour-de-force imaging techniques, where images multiply and divide within the frame; temporal and spatial shifts proliferate, visuals and sound are juxtaposed in ironic contexts.

15.

Paul Garrin, who was taking video pictures from atop a van was clubbed by two police officers as he pleaded that he was climbing off the vehicle at their instruction and urged not to be hit.

16.

In 1992, Paul Garrin was a UNESCO Fellow at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Germany, where he was first introduced to the Internet.

17.

In 2003, Paul Garrin launched WiFi-NY, an independent, cooperative community wireless broadband network that serves downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn.