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This is a version of an article recently published in the Visual Artist’s Newsheet. It’s a response to a roundtable discussion titled ‘Creativity versus Commodity’, organised for Colin Darke’s exhibition at Temple Bar Galleries, Dublin, written about here. [February 8th 2008]
The Capital Paintings evolved from Darke’s earlier work, Capital, where the artist transcribed the entire text of Marx’s three volumes of ‘Das Capital’ onto 480 2D objects, all mounted in A4 laminates. With The Capital Paintings, Darke has returned to the previous work, reconsidering and re-presenting every piece in the earlier work as a to-scale oil painting on canvas, though removing the layer of text previously written over each object. Thus, ‘Darke flips the previous process, the ready made becomes the ‘unique’ art object, the banal commodity further commodified and rarified via its display in the gallery context’. (1) The format of Darke’s work replicates the Christmas ‘selling show’ it immediately followed, and promotes this obvious slippage.
Where Capital was perhaps a distant cousin of Marx’s text, the Capital Paintings are a familial relation at another remove from the initial work, and a further remove still from Marx. Nevertheless, he hovers as the invisible referent.
Sarah Pierce chaired the discussion, which, titled ‘Creativity versus Commodity’, set up from the very beginning a problematic polarity of these two terms. Pierce opened with remarks that questioned the usefulness of this supposed opposition, proposing the notion of a ‘circular economy’ that we are all implicated in, but it proved a difficult opposition to shift.
Sunny day at IMMA*:
Wheelchair ramp to crappy bookshop
None to ladies’ toilets
*Irish Museum of Modern Art
The curatorial premise of Adam Szymczyk and Elena Filopovic was of a ‘diurnal’ biennale, with an exhibition on show during the day, and different programmed events to happen every night. With four different venues, little or no information available on artists outside of the mediation programme, or labels on works, this strategy acknowledged and emphasised the partiality of the exhibition experience.
This was to be welcomed in some respects, as I found that I tried harder to engage with the work than I might normally do, especially considering that many of the artists were unknown to me. However, the flipside of this was that when you did get really interested in an artist or a given piece of work, it was difficult to find out more, or even to remember their name. Participating artists are not foregrounded on the biennale website which results of course in a presentation that is much more curator-centric than artist-centred. Which I suppose is not bad in itself, but I know what side my bread is buttered on.
Civilian Art Projects & Curator’s Office, Washington DC, team up to present ‘Craigslist’. Featuring the work of Jason Horowitz, Jason Zimmerman, John & Joseph Dumbacher. From the press release:
craigslist explores how four artists utilize this renowned community website as a conceptual component in their artistic practice. The exhibition features works by the artist team Joseph Dumbacher & John Dumbacher, Jason Horowitz, and Jason Zimmerman and is co-curated by Jayme McLellan, Director of Civilian Art Projects, and Andrea Pollan, Director of Curator’s Office. An opening reception is scheduled for Friday, March 21 from 7 - 9 pm.
An essay by Andrea Pollan will accompany the exhibition. The artist team of Joseph and John Dumbacher solicit willing models on craigslist to meet them in movie theaters where they create haunting and identity-obscuring photographic portraits. Similarly, Jason Horowitz advertises for models to pose in his studio where he shoots extreme close-ups of their body parts and then explodes the scale of the image to create an unsettling nexus of anonymous portraiture and landscape. Jason Zimmerman exploits images posted by users on craigslist.org as his raw material. He creates digital photo albums of hundreds of individuals who publicize their sexual availability by uploading images of their naked bodies but with their facial identities distorted or obscured.
Civilian Art Projects, Curator’s Office, Craigslist
Image: Jason Horowitz, Liz #4, archival digital print, 42″ x63″, ed. 1/5, 2006
‘Ethnographies of the Future takes into account the vast geographies impacted by colonial rule by bringing together artists whose works present a critical relationship to post-colonial identity politics. The artists in the exhibition, with their diverse historical reference points, make clear that the terms of cultural identification are unstable. In installations, videos, and mixed-media works, they suggest an ever-shifting discursive field where the possibilities for defining ethnography are unending. Drawing on histories of the Caribbean, South Asia, Israel, China, Korea and Japan, the South Pacific, Europe, and the Americas, the exhibition addresses colonial rule from a contemporary, global perspective.
Ethnographies of the Future is staged in two parts: a gallery installation that resembles a museological presentation of ethnographic objects and a video screening. Both components of the exhibition capture the time-based aspects of post-colonial identity politics where locational identity, cultural history, and the body as territory, set the stage for a discussion on the construction of identity.’
Artists include Elia Alba, Rajkamal Kahlon, Seung Young Kim and Hironori Murai, Simone Leigh, Ohad Meromi, Marc Andre Robinson, Pak Sheung Chuen, Allison Smith Sriwhana Spong, Roberto Visani with John Movius. On April 16, film and video works by Pedro Barateiro, Lene Berg, Nao Bustamante, Katia Kameli, Grace Ndiritu, Sriwhana Spong, and others will be screened.
Image Credit: Ohad Meromi, Moon Colony, 2005, video still. Courtesy of the artist and Harris Lieberman Gallery, New York.
Curated by Sara Reisman, March 18 - May 5 2008 at the Bric Rotunda Gallery
Artist duo McDermott and McGough currently have a retrospective exhibition on view at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (another one for the collaborative artist couples list).
From the press release:
An Experience of Amusing Chemistry: Photographs 1990 – 1890 comprises some 120 works created using a wide range of historic photographic techniques, including the use of palladium, gum, salt and cyanotype prints. David McDermott and Peter McGough met when they were both part of the famous East Village New York art scene of the 1980s, and have since become renowned for their seamless fusion of art and life.
In a revolt against the confines of chronological time, they have built their practice through appropriating imagery and objects from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They have also assiduously reconstructed their lives as Victorian gentlemen – complete with knee britches, top hats and tail coats – immersing themselves in the environment and era in which they feel most at home, and, incidentally, dating their works accordingly.
My instinctual response to this work was unfairly and unjustifiably dismissive. I don’t think it’s the act of performative nostalgia, of literally attempting to live in the past, that spurred this displeasure. I actually think it’s the specific era that the artists chose: Victorianism is so passé. Different ‘pasts’ (that is, historical eras) go in and out of fashion like anything else. I wonder if it is simply their choice of the Victorian era that caused my nose to curl up?
The press release also claims that ‘they also subvert the obvious by incorporating homoerotic and art historical references, allowing the subject to expand outside of its time-capsule-like boundaries and to exist in relation to current cultural and artistic ideals’.
Image above: Bubble of Soap Formed at the Extremity of a Strand of Straw, 1884, 1990, palladium print. Image held here
In Paul Murnaghan’s Memorious, (14 - 28 January 2006), advertising space was used as a platform to announce that the artist’s memory capacity was for sale. Once the advertisement had been read, the work was completed in that form. If the contacts that were included in the ad were utilized, the work entered a second phase, one in which the activator gained control. At this stage it is necessary for that person to make some decisions. Which memory shall be chosen, why this memory, what is its value?
Memory was the first monument, before drawing, photography or object. Like any ideology or belief, the substance of the monument corrupts over time. Memorious offered a functional placebo of commemorative effect. Of course the purchased certificate will not degrade in the same fashion. The dictated text or monument is wax sealed in a document of personal authenticity. The substance may be a complete fabrication, a dream, a wish or a memorial. Here, all is valid and true. It is intended that these manuscripts will resurface at some stage and that individuals will reengage with the content of the text.
from the artist’s website
*Funes the Memorious is a famous story by Jorges Luis Borges that imagines the risks of perfect memory: it concerns a man who possesses ‘total recall’ and is paralysed by it.
Yesterday my laptop died.
I am ashamed to say that I reacted to this news in a similar fashion to how I responded to a recent phonecall notification of a family death: shock (surprising myself at how well I was dealing with ‘the situation’), followed by immersion in attempts at practical problem-solving, followed by belated panic and an overdue sense of hopelessness and disorientation.
Michael said something cool today. He said something remarkable and unprecedented has occurred to us as a species now – “We’ve reached a critical mass point where the amount of memory we have externalised in books and databases (to name but a few sources) now exceeds the amount of memory contained within our collective biological bodies. In other words, there’s more memory ‘out there’ than exists in ‘all of us’. We’ve peripheralised our essence.” *
I was haunted by the loss (of photos, music, work projects, documentation of artwork, pieces of writing, invoices, tax returns) that were embedded in this machine, not backed up. My outsourced memory was not backed up and I had no one to blame but myself. The worst part of the loss were the gaps in my inventory of the things I knew I had lost: the things I couldn’t even remember but had lost anyway. I imagined these things sitting zipped up tightly in yellow folders. These yellow folders had clearly defined edges but blurred-together names; they hovered somewhere close to the right side of my forehead but slightly above it, lost in a blind fringe.
I awoke with a headache the day my laptop died, and it has refused to recede. I’ve had a lot of reading to do and been overtaken with anxiety since I’ve been unable to take notes except in written, paper, form. My thinking has become linear and I realise I’m not entirely used to it. The pressure to internalise all of this material and remember everything now is making my headache worse.
After flatlining, the laptop actually responded to artificial resuscitation but I have been told that the medium-to-longterm prognosis is bad. So we are making the most of every day we have left together.
Today I went out and bought a monstrous backup hard drive. The muscles around my cheekbones and mouth relaxed for the first time since the emergency (I hadn’t realised they had been all pinched together). I experienced a warm, flowing sensation inside my body (not pee or other bodily fluid: something much more ethereal and life-affirming).
Your life is made up of experiences: your music, your memories, your information. As that collection grows, so does the need to save your life.**
I am disgusted with myself for buying into this.
* Microserfs, Douglas Coupland, 1995. ** Printed on the packaging of my new external hard drive.
Artist Vanessa Beecroft, best known for her performative installations of naked, or semi-naked women, is a pertinent artist to think about in relation to the aesthetics of the crowd.
At the heart of this is the very question of the aesthetic, or the look, of the crowd (as seen from outside it) versus any potential agency it might have, which seems strictly limited within Beecroft’s work. The women on display in Beecroft’s installations are typically tall, thin creatures, their ranks reminiscent of fetish photography, fashion, porn, fascism and science fiction in varying measures.
Now that Beecroft’s predeliction has shifted from spectatorship of the Aryan blonde body to the black female body (as found in Sudan, a body sited within a particular racial and geopolitical discourse), it seems she has finally moved a fetish too far.
This is a short and admittedly slightly random post based on a collection of observations about table tennis/ ping pong: I saw an exhibition in IMMA yesterday by Mark Clare and it seems that table tennis is the mode du jour to address geopolitical issues. Very zeitgesity.
There is a pleasing symnetry to it when you start to see it in an epic,East versus West, Communism versus Capitalism kind of way. After the jump, a short anthology of culturally important moments in table tennis. Contributions welcome…
1. An impoverished ping pong table collapses in the midst of a game among youngsters at Santa Anita assembly center for evacuees of Japanese ancestry, California, 1942. Image held here
I missed the boat on this one but it’s still a great idea and worthy cause. Not to mention an interesting experiment in ‘collective intelligence’…
There’s a lack of art/artist info on Wikipedia, and we’re often too busy to find the time to contribute. So, we’re setting aside one day where a crew of people collectively drop serious knowledge into wikipedia about art. From your favorite notable artwork, artist or exhibition, to our soon-to-be-famous peers. We’ll also add structural links to alumni schools and categories like collective art groups, non profit orgs, etc.<br>
The day is Saturday January 26th: an afternoon on the internet quietly enriching the public domain. We imagine groups of 2-4 people around tables across the country, bottomless coffee cups fueling the discussions, fact checking, and troubleshooting. Ideally lots of “oh, that person worked with X, I’ll make a page for them, link me up.” There will also be a lot of online chatting across coasts. Video chats if bandwidth permits.
Get the full info here
Image held here
The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum!
… putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity and beauty mean nothing…
In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. This is why Nietzche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht)…
But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Capital Paintings are a re-iteration, re-enactment or re-telling of a previous body of work by the artist, Capital, where he transcribed by hand the entire three volumes of Karl Marx’s Das Capital onto 480 two dimensional objects. Read the rest of this entry »
[the book above is The Future of Nostalgia, by Svetlana Boym]
A recent stay in Berlin found me at Ostel, a hostel renovated as an homage to ‘ostalgie’, in the style of the former DDR. (see this post)
My expectations of the place were of course building it up for a fall, but even still, it seemed oddly, eerily empty. It lacked spirit. And as much as it pains me to say it, it lacked the elusive texture of authenticity, not even that I would know what that was.
The rooms were furnished sparsely, mainly with what seemed like strips of imitation vintage wallpaper and IKEA furniture, peppered with some older items – in our room some beautiful books, a radio/ record player, and a fantastically ugly circular wicker-framed mirror. Builders were at work on scaffolding outside the window, which highlighted the grating, sparkly newness of the place, spotless tiled bathroom and all.
Almost instantly, the experience of walking through the corridors recalled my experience of Hotel Ballymun, something I have not written about here. The parallels between the 2 places are fascinating – one a self-conscious recreation that walked a line between irony and sincerity, manufacturing the authenticity (or the knowing postmodern suspicion of any such experience) craved by tourists; the other an art project that served as some kind of memorial that implicitly traded on such modes of collective experience and cultural memory.
‘I quit Facebook.’
This was announced to me during a lull in conversation during my lunch break yesterday. G (not the same G mentioned previously) said it with a certain determination, a certain set of the jaw, and carried through with a hint of pride. Something like the way would announce giving up cigarettes, except with more certitude and confidence, like this was a particularly nasty and worthless habit and he was particularly certain he would feel no need to return to it.
I just came across this work by Joseph Beuys while researching a Fluxus lecture… if I ever get around to it I resolve to compile a sizable selection of ’defaced money’ artworks. This piece is from 1979.
The irony of this particular work is the large, iconic artist’s signature that takes pride of place on the face of the note. This authorial statement, the form of a defacement, enacts a particular economic alchemy (such a suitable word in relation to Beuys’ oeuvre): it elevates it even closer to gold and exponentially further away from any intrinsic ‘use value’.
Perhaps, to give him credit, this was Beuys’ intention. Often though, his critical gestures were weighted heavily in favour of his own self-mythologisation.
[I think this might actually be the thumb of Engels, not Marx.]
Berlin, December 2007
Recently I attended a conference where G, my partner and sometimes collaborator, was presenting, and I was not. What surprised me was the level of confusion about why this was the case. It hasn’t happened to me when I have presented on my own without him.
It’s clear enough to me that sometimes G works alone, sometimes I work alone, and sometimes we work together - though what might be better to say would be that we always work together but only sometimes produce jointly-authored work. We share a bed but sit on individual chairs. There are differences, arguments, and separations. We have a history of occupying very intimate shared living spaces (tents, shepherd’s huts and the like) but we also spend plenty of time apart. Too much sometimes.
I often wonder how other artist couples manage it, the dynamic of sharing living space, with or without the art that they might make together. What are the dynamics of this specific relation of collaboration - is it qualitatively different or ‘better’ than other forms of collaboration? And what are the risks, for the practice, and/or the relationship? Is it inevitable that the collaborative practice is ultimately subsumed into a) the biography of the relationship, or b) one of the individual practices, in a hierarchal format?
I’ve been compiling a list of artist couples who also collaborate on occasion, or as a mainstay of their practice. Other contributions are welcome… Nina Canell and Robin Watkins; Marina Abramovic and Ulay; Christo and Jeanne Claude; Claes Oldenburg and (I’m ashamed to say I don’t know the name of ‘his wife’). Are Allora and Calzadilla in a relationship? Not sure about that one. Jennifer and Kevin McCoy; Heather and Ivan Morison.
More thoughts on this to come.
A show at the Whitney I’m sorry I’m missing. More here
Image: Richard Serra, Television Delivers People, 1973
Richard Florida was the keynote speaker at a Creative City Regions conference in October, hosted by the Dublin Region Authority and the Dublin Employment Pact. (Info on the conference here)
Florida’s presentation didn’t say anything he hasn’t said before, but the North American, evangelical-influenced delivery was extremely impressive. He is at points very persuasive in his thesis of what the ‘Creative Economy’ is and what it needs. He paraphrased the conference chair in his diagnosis of the ‘Knowledge Economy’ (old hat terminology now) as being “the last gasp of the industrial age”.
However, while the conference was eager to attach Florida’s prestige to the proceedings, the presentations that followed him (in his absence, having jetted off to another conference) showed a notable difference in their opinions/ agendas. The talk was all about the Knowledge Economy, not the Creative Economy: even the DRA website fudged the issue by describing the conference as addressing ‘the creative knowledge economy’.
Florida himself is part of a broader trend in culture where economics is becoming ‘pop’: described as a public intellectual (and he has earned a PhD so I don’t wish to imply he is in any way underqualified), his manner of delivery draws on that of the motivational speaker, informed by the legacy of North American television and evangelicism.
In Ireland, Eddie Hobbs and David McWilliams have become similarly vocal pundits in the national media, particularly McWilliams, whose economic background has seeped into a large scale social trendforescasting. He is particularly fond of coining neologisms (Breakfast Roll Man, Decklanders, the Pope’s Children, etc – see his books and TV programmes, The Pope’s Children and The Generation Game). From this perspective, the field of economics is undeniably more enmeshed in mainstream popular culture than it has previously been.
Richard Florida visited Ireland in October 2007.
See www.creativeclass.com and www.creativeclass.typepad.com
A full report on the conference will be published in the Visual Artist’s Newsheet, January 2008
Image held here
Key to Artwork Diagram:
- Concept (raw commercial intervention)
- Initial Transaction (unanticipated relations)
- Economic Filter (seven models of transaction)
- First Advancement of Transaction (Cork alternative auction)
- Bipolar Field of Constraint (Liberal Capitalist – Socialist)
- Second Advancement of Transaction (Belfast alternative auction)
- Transformation of Capital (exchanges of goods – further relations)
- Investment of Transformed Capital (constrained models of social transformation)
- Analysis / Assessment
The National Sculpture Factory commissioned Art / not art to create a project in tandem with the NSF seminar Do You Speak Art? (or where are you coming from?) exploring the relationship between art and globalisation. In response, Art / not art purchased and auctioned (three times) an exceptional sculpture by Thai artist Pornpraeseart Yamakazi, entitled ‘Want to Be Rich?’ (see below). As part of the seminar on 3 Nov, Art / not art presented the sculpture for auction. A bid of €500 was accepted for consideration in the ongoing art-transaction.
| Now Art / not art have purchased ANOTHER exceptional piece of contemporary art, a painting by Thai artist Mit Ja-In. You are invited to join in deciding its fate.
Using contemporary means of communication, cosmopolitan connections, transnational standards of artistic accreditation, modern money transfer systems and freight networks we have purchased and imported from the other side of the world a sculpture by an artist previously unknown to us, all in a matter of weeks. The nature of this intervention, however, has yet to be decided. It all depends on what Art/ not art do next. |
The friendly attitude of continental diplomats and businessmen to the emerging Irish Free State, in the form of investment and expert labour, arguably led to the successful founding of the sugar industry in the 1920s. Reubenshafen or Port de Bettavres was the name for the ‘beet port’ behind the sugar factory in Carlow, its name depending on the origin of the speaker (Germany or Belgium).
Reubenshafen Quarter is the only name in the proposed Greencore development on the sugar factory site that refers to sugar, even obliquely, or the site’s previous use. The potential Reubenshafen Quarter is linked to an obscure and little-known history, appropriated by Greencore in order to claim a new corporate identity.
(images courtesy Greencore & First Impressions Ltd). See also issue 3 of The Fold - ‘The Disappeared’, a Workroom Elsewhere project curated by Alison Pilkington and Cora Cummins. Below image: Rabbi Zaiman Alony, a senior member of the Jewish community in Ireland, supervising the packaging of sugar in 1976 in the Carlow factory. For more about internationalism and the Irish sugar industry, see the ‘extras’ section here.
In addition to Dingle’s impressive ‘wall of democracy’ (a forum for all the newspaper clippings about the name change, plebicite etc, full story here) I noticed this sign in the local Spar. This kind of unstaged, sponataneous talking really impresses me.
It also seems to make many potential artworks seem redundant.
Seán Lynch: Joseph Beuys’ Irish Energies (reconstruction) 2007; peat briquettes, butter; original made in 1974
A number of discussions with fellow artists recently have involved the idea of re-enactment, and why so many artists seem to be so drawn to it as a strategy at present. In Ireland this might include artists like Jesse Jones and the 12 Angry Films project, or Seán Lynch, whose work frequently revists anecdotal, unreliable or surprising histories, or Brendan Earley’s revistations of Modernism. My own interest in re-enactment tends to veer towards the kitsch and an interest in unearthing political threads embedded in such popular cultural productions - this is explored particularly with a body of work being made with Gareth Kennedy. Sources for retelling and re-enactment here have included a Dallas TV script (1987), the film King Kong (1977), and an advertising jingle for Gulf Oil, based in Bantry Bay (1968).
This trend has also being reflected inwards within the art world itself, particularly within performance art, for example Marina Abramovic’s Seven Easy Pieces (2005), which involved the re-enactment of key performance works by other artists. (See Caitlin Jones’ post on the topic at Rhizome here). She suggests that the impulse to re-enact is either an homage or a repetition, but there are perhaps other impulses at work too.
It seems to me that the impulse to re-enact is caught up with a sense of nostalgia, maybe a ‘revolutionary nostalgia’ like that suggested by Walter Benjamin. It seems clear that the artist re-enactment is related though distinct from the Hollywood remake, which is a different impulse altogether. Where Hollywood seeks to remake stories already told, artists seek to re-enact stories that went unrealised. Svetlana Boym points out that the twentieth century began with utopia and ended with nostalgia - they are twin impulses, caught up with a sense of optimism and potential failure.
During the week in Dingle, the visiting artist’s presentations, work habits, cooking, and going over fences was documented by Lanca, a documentary film maker. This flipped on its head the usual position of the visiting artist as a kind of quasi-ethnographer or pseudo anthropologist. Above: Lanca films a rock.
Portion of bread given to Thomas Ash while on Hunger Strike, Dingle Library/ Leabharlann Daingean Uí Chúis
Yesterday’s words were gathered around the town from conversation, observation, questions, emails and books. It’s interesting to observe a picture of the place emerging, and how that’s informed by the words I’m trying to extract. I’m aware that these words are impositions I’m making, more in the spirit of addition than uncovering, and it’s interesting to watch myself doing that. Now that the week is ending, and the presentation is due to happen today, my ability or attempts to think a little bit more through Irish are sadly dissipating.
Previous posts have addressed the topic of nostalgia, and mentioned how different and particular words are present for it in different languages. Almost invariably these words emerge at the formation of a new national state, or come to consciousness after a war or revolution. (See this post) I was interested in the possibility of there being an Irish equivalent after the emergence of the Free State, and I’ve been trying to track it down. Part of this journey of course lies in the extrapolation of what nostalgia is or feels like - longing, sadness, homesickness, sentimentality… and for what - place, time, or something else. It was interesting to see these conversations emerge from the question (asked in Irish) about how to locate this feeling, idea, single word.
Suggestions made to me and argued over included uaigneas (more like ‘loneliness’); bheith buartha; maoineachas. Most people were unable to locate an exact word, which makes me think perhaps I am looking at the question backwards in terms of ‘untranslatabilty’. Finally I ended up with a series of dictionaries in the library - the most appropriate place really (see photos) - and reached what seems to be the definitive answer: cumha.
Yesterday’s words: tír grátheoir (patriot - literally ‘country-lover’); ag iompú catsúla ar (making eyes at); cuidsúlach (eyecatching); tnúthán (longing); cúlaitheach (retrogressive); barántúil/ údarach/ intaofa (authentic); sochar (profit); inneach na cainte (texture of speech)
Fúadach [elopement]
Daonleathas [democracy]
Cró na Snáthaire [eye of the needle]
Spiléar [fishing line of hooks] – sp.
? [make a living]
Fiach mhara [shag]; fiach dubh [raven]
Bleach [sound]
Maoineachas [nostalgia?]
Raitleach [hag] – on scannán an lá cheana féin
Raibiléire [hussy] - on scannán an lá cheana féin
[Texture?]
[Authentic?]
Thanks to Danny for the guided cliff walk and the words that flowed into the landscape.
For what has taken me to Dingle/ Daingean Uí Chúis this week see here. I’m here with artists Katie Holten, Ben Geoghegan and Andrew Duggan.
I’m intrigued with the culture of talking at the moment.
This draws partly from the fact that I am paid much better as a professional talker about art (seminars, symposia, conferences etc.) than a maker of it. I just had this thought while listening to Tony Cascarino speaking on the radio about football; now there’s an interesting career choice, making money by talking and playing poker.
I’ve done a few of these professional talks lately, and it’s given me cause for reflection. Sometimes it’s quite invigorating (something to do with an ego trip I suppose) and other times it’s completely exhausting. I’ve decided to take a hiatus from public talking after the last one. I feel I don’t have that much left to talk about (I felt like a limp dishcloth) and it worries me slightly that by doing these talks I’m presenting myself as a person with answers. Or maybe that I’m a has-been before my time.
I wonder how we arrived at this point, if we will ever get tired of talking, and what it might be a substute for. I wonder has Umberto Eco written a brilliant essay about it?
- Chapman brothers offer to draw on any form of currency with the Queen’s head on it for free.
- Collectors, critics and show-offs hand over crisp ne’er before used £20 note.
- Artists hand over a £10 one.
- and students £5
- Chapman’s draw 100 (-ish) of these a day over 4 days.
- £4,800 (at a £12 average) is removed from circulation and effectively spent on an artwork which no one has paid for.
Source: newsgrist.typepad.com
There are plans in Milwaukee to build a public sculpture of the Fonz, the character from hit TV show Happy Days based in the city.
Visit Milwaukee, a non-profit group that promotes the city as a tourism and convention destination, is leading an effort to raise $85,000 to commission the statue. So far, Visit Milwaukee has raised $45,000, and the group is confident it will meet its timetable of unveiling a bronze Fonz in 2008, said Dave Fantle, the agency’s vice president of public relations. The agency already has contacted four artists and hopes to choose a sculptor by the end of October, he said. Visit Milwaukee got the idea of a Fonzie statue from TV Land, a cable network that broadcasts reruns of vintage shows. TV Land has donated six sculptures commemorating memorable TV events or characters to various cities, such as Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore). All six sculptures are from shows mainly popular in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, in keeping with TV Land’s focus on its baby boomer audience.
So this potential statue seems to represent a doubling of nostalgia, the twinning of the desire for a past located in fiction: the Happy Days sitcom was produced in the 70s and 80s, in a setting two decades earlier.
See here for a vox pop of opinions from Milwaukee residents.
