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zaterdag 30 april 2011

25 abandoned yugo monuments


Kruševo

...From 2006 to 2009, Kempenaers toured around the ex-Yugoslavia region (now Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, etc.) with the help of a 1975 map of memorials, bringing before our eyes a series of melancholy yet striking images. His photos raise a question: can these former monuments continue to exist as pure sculptures? On one hand, their physical dilapidated condition and institutional neglect reflect a more general social historical fracturing. And on the other hand, they are still of stunning beauty without any symbolic significances.
VIA

woensdag 27 april 2011

Heath Bunting art for sale.



Dear Collector

Betting that the US Dollar continues to fall and that silver continues to
climb, I created one signed and sealed promissory note, redeemable on
24/01/2012 for value of 100 USD worth of art, on sale for one 1 oz (.999
purity) silver coin.

http://irational.org/heath/promissory_notes/100_usd_promissory_note.jpg

Thank you for your consideration.

Heath Bunting

curious mornin!


VIA

zondag 24 april 2011

Itch-LL ma leader fetish ...

Sunnyside up

Uncomfortable Moments With Putin



The two leaders laughed awkwardly at Putin’s suggestion of a blog called ‘Uncomfortable Moments with Putin Looking at Kim Jong-Il Looking at Putin.

VIA

+ here + here

Google Street View, Coming Soon to a Living Room Near You


It’s time for Google to rename its Street View feature. Google Maps’ Street View is no longer limited to streets, the company is now using tricycles to photograph off-road locations like the gardens at the San Diego Art Institute or Château de Chenonceaux in Civray-de-Touraine, France.
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maandag 18 april 2011

Cities & Malls


Documentary by SBS Dateline (Australian TV) about the Chinese real estate market.

Original link to SBS Dateline video: http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/watch/id/601007/n/China-s-Ghost-Cities

For hire: one small country, just $70,000 a night



READ HERE

Guerrilla Girls



HERE + HERE

zondag 17 april 2011

Save Rugina !



It took the artists Nicolai Ischimji and Valerii Moshkov 25 years of hard work and several tons of scrap-metal and industrial waste to sculpt this unique art installation of European significance – the outdoor sculpture complex “Rugina & Co” – “РЖАвЧИНАХ” (“RustInRanks”). The exhibition of sculptures is organically integrated into the landscape and includes pieces such as “Purgatory”, “Bureaucratic Apparatus”, “The Shepherd”, “Iron Curtain” – a vivid three-dimensional contemplation on the age of totalitarianism and industrialization.

“Rugina” by any account is a major phenomenon of Moldova’s contemporary art: this sculptural complex is a testimony to the conceptual power and a vast creative potential of its artists. Moreover, it is a true blueprint of non-conformity, an example of selfless service to the ideals of art and expressional freedom in the conditions of underground under a totalitarian regime, a powerful manifesto of intellectual independence and global mentality. VIA

FLICKR

YOUTUBE

MOCA's Art in the Streets


VIA

zaterdag 16 april 2011

Love the art, forget the ideas



“INDEED it is difficult,” wrote Gottfried Leibniz in 1699, “to describe how beautifully all the laws of the Chinese, in contrast to those of other peoples, are directed to the achievement of public tranquillity and the establishment of social order.” Leibniz was not the only European Enlightenment-era thinker to see in China a worthy and enviable model of an idealised state under the rule of benevolent—and, yes, enlightened—leaders.MORE

Spectre discussion...

From: Rob Myers
Subject: Re: [spectre] Re: (fwd) Sign the Petition: Release Ai Weiwei
Date: April 15, 2011 12:09:59 PM GMT+02:00
To: spectre@mikrolisten.de

I don't give a shit about Ai Wei Wei and his publicity juggernaut, but nor do I give a shit about chippily opposing "cultural elites" or whatever. Vapid negativism leads to supporting reaction in word and deed with the warm glow of virtue in one's heart, and here we are.

Support all artists whose freedom is attacked (including Heath).

- Rob.

Click for MORE

vrijdag 15 april 2011

Louis Vuitton sues Danish artist Plesner in the Netherlands over depiction of bag in art work



HERE

and HERE

Spectre discussion...

From: Andreas Broeckmann
Subject: [spectre] (fwd) Sign the Petition: Release Ai Weiwei
Date: April 14, 2011 3:03:13 PM GMT+02:00
To: spectre@mikrolisten.de

On April 3, internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was detained at the Beijing airport while en route to Hong Kong, and his papers and computers were seized from his studio compound.
Sign now! we need to reach 100,000 signatures!
http://www.change.org/petitions/call-for-the-release-of-ai-weiwei#?opt_new=f&opt_fb=t

'The members of the international arts community express their concern for Ai's freedom and disappointment in China's reluctance to live up to its promise to nurture creativity and independent thought, the keys to "soft power" and cultural influence.

The initiative has been taken working closely with Jerome Cohen, the leading Chinese human rights lawyer who is working on Weiwei's case, and who believes that this action could be effective.
To support the petition you can link it on your website, on Facebook and Twitter sites, in order to quickly reach millions of people.'

We need to reach 100,000 signatures.

From: heath bunting
Subject: Re: [spectre] (fwd) Sign the Petition: Release Ai Weiwei
Date: April 14, 2011 8:06:19 PM GMT+02:00
To: Andreas Broeckmann
Cc: spectre@mikrolisten.de

andreas broeckmann

can you explain why you are campaigning for this person ?

are you sure he not guilty of tax evasion ?

does the fact that this campaign is supported by so many elite organisation not make you question this campaign ?

i didn't note much interest or support in my case when i was arrested every time i entered or exited the united kingdom or when i was disappeared by the UK secret police and accused falsely of bomb threats at a london airport - i was facing up to 7 years in prison

this was a result of my work with borders and identity and i still live
under surveillance

in the similar manner that no one benefits from my rise through the art stratosphere, hence no rise or stardom, who is benefiting from Ai Weiwei and his hyper inflation in the attention economy ?

Ai Weiwei campaign seems a classic case of elite people protecting their own transgressions (tax evasion) and profiting from disaster capitalism rather than universal human rights and human rights workers, such as artists

would there be an international campaign by elite institutions to support a independent artist, such as myself ?

this seems a very similar situation to julian assange. instead of the social network supporting a member of the blood rank, we should be supporting social justice and human rights and those that work using such methods

Ai Weiwei is clearly a member of the international blood rank posing a social networker - an astroturfer

this strikes me a co-option of the social network for the purposes and values of the elite

hope you can answer some of these questions

hope you are well

heath bunting

From: Andreas Broeckmann
Subject: Re: [spectre] (fwd) Sign the Petition: Release Ai Weiwei
Date: April 15, 2011 8:14:47 AM GMT+02:00
To: spectre@mikrolisten.de

heath,

thank you for these questions. i will think about them carefully, since i assume that these are the kind of questions that people like myself will have to answer when they get in the hands of the chinese stasi, should the chinese stasi choose to ask me questions about why i supported a campaign for the release of ai weiwei.

http://www.change.org/petitions/call-for-the-release-of-ai-weiwei

because you now know that i have this association when reading your questions, i assume that you will understand that i would rather not enter into this interrogation now. such interrogations are structured to make people say contradictory things which harm them and others.

i respect you as an artist and your work (e.g. http://status.irational.org/ ), and because of that respect i choose to assume that the imputation in your questions - that ai weiwei might be in prison for good reason - is rhetorical and strategic. (besides, i believe that people who evade taxes should not be put in prison, but forced to pay taxes.)

i support the campaign for the reslease of ai weiwei because i believe that he is wrongfully imprisoned, like many other people in china (and elsewhere). he is a figure-head, and the campaign has, in my understanding, an important 'symbolic' dimension in that it is directed against the lack of freedom of speech and freedom of the arts.

i did not know that you were arrested. it is of course a problem of the attention economy that i didn't know about this. is it cynical to say that, while i despise that fact that you get arrested regularly because of your work with borders and identity, i am glad that you have been arrested by people acting on behalf of authorities that released you again soon afterwards, rather than also arresting your partners and keeping you under arrest away from the public eye for an (as of yet) indefinite period of time. the latter is what is happening to ai weiwei.

should this happen to you and i know about it, i will also support the campaign for your release.

regards,
-a

...

trcuk

donderdag 14 april 2011

Photosynthetic Restaurant - Jonathon Keats


San Francisco art prankster Keats, who pens Wired’s recurring “Jargon Watch” column, has had plants on his clever brain lately. He’s screened pollination pornography in California and blue-sky documentaries for potted plants in New York. He opens his photosynthetic restaurant — “where the plants will eat well without needing to worry about getting eaten” — this week in the sun-streaked gardens of California’s Crocker Art Museum.

MORE

dinsdag 12 april 2011

Man In Orbit - 50th anniversary


                                                  MORE

Be Your Own Souvenir! by blablabLAB

Be Your Own Souvenir! from blablabLAB on Vimeo.


The installation was enjoyed during two weekends in January 2011 by the tourists, neighbours of La Rambla and citizens of Barcelona, a city that faces a trade-off between identity and gentrification, economic sustainability and economic growth...

Banksy Pop-up Cinema and The Old Vic Tunnels


Leake Street, also known as the “Banksy tunnel“, beneath Waterloo station in Lambeth, London, shot to prominence during the “Cans Festival” of 2008, an event organised by Banksy that saw the tunnel walls decorated with graffiti. Though not technically legal, authorities tolerate the ongoing creation of graffiti in the tunnel. Leake Street’s arguably most famous urban art – ironically now painted over – is a work of graffiti depicting the removal of graffiti, created by Banksy in May 2008.

MORE

zondag 10 april 2011

zaterdag 9 april 2011

donderdag 7 april 2011

Stick Insect Phasmida



Stick insects are among the best camouflaged of all creatures, with a body shape that mimics the branches of their home.VIA

Stink Ant - Museum Of Jurassic Technology


"
In the rain forest of the Cameroon in West Central Africa lives a floor dwelling ant known as Megaloponera foetens, or more commonly, the stink ant. This large ant - one of the very few to produce a cry audible to the human ear - lives by foraging for food among the fallen leaves and undergrowth of the extraordinarily rich rain forest floor.

On occasion one of these ants, while looking for food is infected by inhaling a microscopic spore from a fungus of the genus Tomentella. After being inhaled, the spore seats in the ant’s tiny brain and begins to grow, causing changes in the ant’s patterns of behavior. The Ant appears troubled and confused; for the first time in its life the ant leaves the forest floor and begins to climb.
..."
MORE

Geminoid Summit



VIA

dinsdag 5 april 2011

Extradite R. Gonggrijp?




"DEN HAAG - Minister Uri Rosenthal does not exclude Rop Gonggrijp be extradited to the United States. It appears from the Minister replies to parliamentary questions from Green MP El Fassed. The U.S. is investigating the role of Gonggrijp at Wikileaks."

More Google Translate

In Dutch

Ai Wei Wei - TED

Post dedicated to Juliano Mer Khamis palestinian actor & director who got killed yesterday in Jenin.



a MOVIE HERE

maandag 4 april 2011

What is a NGO - Artist?



HERE

AND I THINK IT'S CONNECTED TO HERE

AND HERE

AND THEN IT MIGHT LOOK LIKE THIS ONE HERE

Pixls - Vuk Cosic






"A comprehensive collection of very usefull elements for creating images.

Best viewed in slideshow, fullscreen, but rather nice in smaller size too.

Use them at your discretion, as part of any type of image. You will discover that these things are damn great."


HERE

zaterdag 2 april 2011

Forgotten audio of Eisenhower speech highlights his commitment to saving art in time of war



HERE

Handspring Puppet Company: The genius puppetry behind War Horse


"Puppets always have to try to be alive," says Adrian Kohler of the Handspring Puppet Company, a gloriously ambitious troupe of human and wooden actors. Beginning with the tale of a hyena's subtle paw, puppeteers Kohler and Basil Jones build to the story of their latest astonishment: the wonderfully life-like Joey, the War Horse, who trots (and gallops) convincingly onto the TED stage."

(Joey, the War Horse, comes in around 9:12.)
"The People,and the people alone, are the active force in the making of world history, while we ourselves are often childish and ignorant."

Mao Zedong

Bushwick City Farm



VIA

The Gagosian Effect



VIA

vrijdag 1 april 2011

Creepy app warns of an end to privacy



Creepy, a package described as a 'geolocation information aggregator,' is turning heads in privacy circles, but should people be worried? We chat to its creator, Yiannis Kakavas, to find out what's going on.

MORE