Tag Archives | Art

Bombing London With Poetry

By on October 30, 2012 in News 0

This past June, the Chilean arts group Los Casagrande dropped more than 100,000 poems, printed on scraps of paper, from a helicopter above central London in a performance titled the Bombing of Poems. They have done the same in Warsaw, Berlin, and Santiago — all cities which have been bombed during wartime.

Local government approved of the Bombing of Poems as a jubilant spectacle anticipating the pomp of the Olympic festivities to come, but the stunt’s meaning may be more ambiguous. Was the poetry drop an emergency measure in an era in which funding the arts has been deemed no longer possible, and the metropolis is dominated by finance? Is it a commentary on the blanketing of the city with propaganda?

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Painter Creates Cosmic Paintings in Minutes

By on October 24, 2012 in News 7

Artist Brandon McConnell creates some pretty stupendous outer space images with a few cans of spray paint, some pages ripped from a magazine, a blow torch and a handful of other tools you’d find at a local hardware store.
The finished paintings are reminiscent of the covers of sci-fi paperbacks from the 1950. Nice stuff, and with a little bit of practice you could probably do the same.

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Space Satellites As Humanity’s Final Monuments

By on October 14, 2012 in News 24

The spacecraft EchoStar XVI will beam trillions of images into the darkness and then enter an eternal “graveyard orbit”. Artist in residence at MIT Trevor Paglen on satellites as the new pyramids:

Currently, more than 800 spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit form a man-made ring of satellites around Earth. The dead spacecraft in orbit have become a permanent fixture around Earth, not unlike the rings of Saturn. They will be the longest-lasting artifacts of human civilization, quietly floating through space long after every trace of humanity has disappeared from the planet’s surface.

Presented by public art organization Creative Time, The Last Pictures is a project to acknowledge these spacecraft as the monuments of our historical era. They are our Pyramids, our Stonehenge, and our Nazca lines.

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The Yoga of Fantasy Drawing

By on October 3, 2012 in News 46
Elfin

Drawing to me is like Yoga. I don’t mean “like taking a yoga class.” Think about Yoga as if you were one of its original creators or discoverers. That’s what I am getting at. Drawing, for me is like going on a journey that suprisingly leads to places I never expected, possibly to the edge of enlightenment itself.

When I draw, I tap into what yoga taps into: increased awareness and mind body integration. I become more alive, which sounds a bit trite, I guess. But it’s really true: I become more energized and physical. If I have been drawing, when I shoot a basket into the trash, it goes in. Or if it doesn’t go in, I know why. I feel it. I map out the space between me and the garbage can.

I become aware of my breathing, my posture, even my heartbeat. I can feel if there is negative energy trapped in my body.… Read the rest

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The Guantanamo Bay Museum Of Art And History

By on October 3, 2012 in News 1

Visible in Google Maps, the Guantanamo Bay Museum of Art and History exists hypothetically rather than physically, predicated on an alternate reality in which Barack Obama shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention center earlier this year and converted it into a historic site and cultural institution:

The Guantanamo Bay Museum of Art and History, located at the former site of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba, is an institution dedicated to remembering the U.S. prison which was active between 2002 and 2012 before it was permanently decommissioned and closed. The museum offers free guided talks and discussions on both the history of the detention camp, its closure, as well as the processes that brought the museum into existence.

 

… Read the rest

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The Conspiracy-Genius Artwork Of David Dees

By on September 28, 2012 in News 18

Illustrator David Dees, who unbelievably also does artwork for mainstream children’s products, has created the internet’s best and most extensive collection of paranoid conspiracy-related imagery. It’s a must-see, with themes including vaccines, antidepressants, Bohemian Grove, chemtrails, the Federal Reserve, Bilderberg, Ron Paul, television brainwashing, and even the threat of energy saver light bulbs:

… Read the rest

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Los Angeles Street Artist Trolls Entire City with Fake Plaques

By on September 24, 2012 in News 1

Via the LA Times:

Los Angeles street artist “Wild Life” transformed a number of the city’s banal eyesores into works of “art”:

Eight random areas of downtown L.A. have been marked with what appear to be official city plaques, offering elaborate background information about the dumpsters, city blocks, and signposts to which they are affixed, reports The Lost Angeles Times. The plaques are even equipped with faux-signatures from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch, and allude to A-list artists and directors like Yoko Ono, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Werner Herzog as alleged designers of the city’s downtown spots.

But the mysterious art project, which goes by the name of “Art Appears,” is really just a giant hoax. We hate to break it to you, but the dumpster on Traction Avenue was not designed by Andy Warhol. The so-called “Thirsty Palms” exhibit on 2nd Street? Not by Chris Burden, says Curbed LA.

… Read the rest

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Criminal Charges For Tokyo Artist Who Cooked And Served His Own Genitals

By on September 21, 2012 in News 8

Is Mao Sugiyama a man ahead of his time? His mind-bending artistic/culinary/surgical endeavor, intended to raise awareness of asexuality, seems to have been done in an entirely ethical manner, but he now faces persecution from authorities. Japan Daily Press reports:

It’s been three and a half months now since 23 year old Mao Sugiyama cooked and served his own genitals to diners in Tokyo, but the “chef” is finally facing criminal charges. Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department has said that Sugiyama and three others who organized the event are looking at allegations of indecent exposure.

After undergoing voluntary surgery in order to fulfill his desire of becoming asexual, the young illustrator then offered to cook and serve his severed organs to five of the high-paying bidders. Sugiyama cook[ed] his penis, scrotum, and testicles to five diners for roughly $250 each.

Sugiyama…says that it was part of an effort to raise awareness about asexual people and others of sexual minorities.

… Read the rest

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Folk Art and Forteana Collide in the Work of Jacob Petersson

By on September 14, 2012 in News 4

Picture: Jacob Petersson (C)

Swedish prop artist Jacob Petersson combines elements of cryptozoology, folkore and folk art to create nightmarishly curious objets d’art. The “Sasquatch Hand” featured here is just one of many unique pieces featured at his website “CURIOMIRA“, which is definitely worth a visit if you’re a fan of art and the unknown.

 

 … Read the rest

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Art, Terrorism and the Negative Sublime

By on September 13, 2012 in News 0

Picture: DOD (PD)

Arnold Berleant writes at Contemporary Aesthetics:

1. Terrorism and Aesthetics

It has become increasingly clear that the arts, and the aesthetic, more generally, occupy no hallowed ground but live on the everyday earth of our lives. Recognition is growing that the aesthetic is a pervasive dimension of the objects and activities of daily life. Perceptual experiences that possess the characteristics of aesthetic appreciation are marked by an intense, focused sensibility we enjoy for its intrinsic perceptual satisfaction. We typically have such experiences with works of art and with nature, but they are equally possible in other occasions and with other kinds of objects. Such experiences engage us in an intensely sensory field in which we participate wholly and without reservation, as we customarily do with works of art. The objects and occasions, however, may be ordinary ones, such as eating, hanging laundry, engaging in social relations, or operating a perfectly functioning automobile or other mechanism.

… Read the rest

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