Andrew Schroeder

Andreas Serrano, Piss Christ

Its been a while since I’ve posted to this little experiment of all things eclectic, so I’ll kick off my return with a bit of a rant. It is a new morning and I’m sitting here at work thinking about the Easter weekend that is fast approaching. I use the term Easter weekend rather loosely. As an Atheist, this is much more of a “go shopping so you look good when you meet your boyfriend’s parents on Sunday” weekend. Truly something that is much more important and tangible than 2000 year old best selling fiction. Anyway, I’m a touch behind the times and just realized that some Christian nut-job felt the need to attack one of my favorite pieces of contemporary art: Andreas Serrano’s Piss Christ. Now, I get while simple-minded folk would consider this piece to be controversial – the almighty Jeezy Creezy dipped in blood and urine. Gotcha. It is a touch oozy and a bit… anatomical. But then again, isn’t the whole “body and blood” of communion? After all, there is the belief that the second one swallows the wine and unleavened bread it turns into blood and flesh. (Right now I’m drinking San Pellegrino and hoping the second I swallow it turns into a fine vodka)

If I pretend to give myself a partial lobotomy and think like a follower of organized religion, I can get all hot under the collar about this work. But then again, logic and open-mindedness (or simply mindedness) kicks in. Isn’t Piss Christ a rather encouraging metaphor of the sacred and the profane merging together? Isn’t it a not so subtle reminder that religions are human creations… that they are the things of piss and blood?

That said. I’m going to stick to my original conclusions after reading about the incident in France: the only way this piece could possibly be better would be if it were a picture of an actual Christian dipped in urine.

In Neutraface - The Ultimate Yuppie House Number

An amazing post from the rather amazing Andy Sturdevant.

CLICKY

Take a litle walk to the edge of town
Go across the tracks
Where the viaduct looms,
Like a bird of doom
As it shifts and cracks
Where secrets lie in the border fires,
In the humming wires
Hey man, you know
You’re never coming back
Past the square, past the bridge,
Past the mills, past the stacks
(more…)

Waiting is the period we endure until the expected happens. We wait for all sorts of things: the bus, dinner, colleagues who are late for a meeting, the rain to stop, etc. Waiting is built into our social lives. And our waiting behavior is influenced by a fair number of variables. There isn’t a prescribed method for waiting, and yet waiting in certain contexts tends toward a similar pattern of group impatience leading to aggressive strategies that are meant to better position the waiting individual for the event.

Via The New Shelton wet/dry

Actually, when the hate mail came in we took a perverse pleasure in trying to find the worst. I found it funny because I had never been as passionate about anything as some of these people were about their puppet show hosts. In fact, when we changed the color of the jumpsuit, we’d get death threats. On the internet, that’s entirely commonplace, but back then, remember, people were taking pen in hand, purchasing stationary and stamps for those death threats! That’s commitment.

-Mike Nelson VIA

How could a 15 foot tall fiber glass statue of an Egyptian anubis possibly look out of place in Minnesota? Huh?