Andrew Schroeder

An oldie but goodie from the days when George W Bush was still president. Somewhere in central Minneapolis, there was an enormous sculpture/installation of sorts depicting all of the evils of the administration. Nothing says political protest piece like baby heads and astroturf.

Andy Warhol's Archive - via bad banana

What you should do is get a box for a month, and drop everything in it and at the end of the month lock it up. Then date it and send it over to New Jersey. You should try to keep track of it, but if you cant and you lose it, that’s fine, because its one less thing to think about, another load off your mind.

-Andy Warhol from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) 1975

via pablogt

So many years will be spent searching, studying, classifying, before my life is secured, carefully arranged and labelled in a safe place – secure against theft, fire and nuclear war – from whence it will be possible to take it out and assemble it at any point. Then, being thus assured of never dying, I may finally rest.

- Christian Boltanski from Research and Presentation of All That Remains of My Childhood 1944-150

I enjoy complaining. In fact, I’d say that a solid 30% of my day is spent complaining about something. Today, I’d like to just briefly air my displeasure regarding the current state of performative elements in art. My lament is basically this: when did it become acceptable to be a complete douchebag, embarrass yourself and your colleagues, and then pass it all off by saying, “Oh it was a performance”?

My attention is drawn to a local artist who’s claim to fame is being rather idiotic on a decidedly idiotic tv show about artists trying to make it big. After the show was said and done and we all witnessed the blasé horrors which were that particular event of reality TV, this artist gets credit by saying it was all just a performance.

Right.

Perhaps I’m wrong and this strategy could come in really handy. For example, I am going to do a piece that “examines the relationship between debtor and consumer” by maxing out my credit card. When I get the bill, I’ll just send a note to the credit card company saying, “This was a performance. I’m not going to pay. Ok?”

We’ll see how that goes.

laurent champoussin – photographies.

The built environment, like language, has the power to define and refine sensibility. It can sharpen and enlarge consciousness. Without architecture feelings about space must remain diffuse and fleeting.

Yi Fu Tuan

from “Space and Place”

There is something peculiar about the way we attribute the clarity of some photographs to the world itself. I try to reinforce that paradox by making photographs that convince the viewer that those revelations, that order, that potential for meaning, are coming from the world and not the photograph.

— Frank Gohlke, 1979