May 5, 2002

10:03 PM

"Do Itis a manual of artist's instructions for you to actualize. It includes works by over 60 contemporary artists ... Once you have actualized an instruction, please send us a picture and your name, we will include it in the manual" I dont know about you, but I'm going to go get some boards and a bunch of bugs to squash right now - for Baldessari, of course. [via caterina]
posted by vacapinta (3 comments total)

Body Pressure
Press as much of the front surface of
your body (palms in or out, left or right cheek)
against the wall as possible.
Press very hard and concentrate.
Form an image of yourself (suppose you
had just stepped forward) on the
opposite side of the wall pressing
back against the wall very hard.
Press very hard and concentrate on the image pressing very hard.
(the image of pressing very hard)
press your front surface and back surface
toward each other and begin to ignore or
block the thickness of the wall. (remove
the wall)
Think how various parts of your body
press against the wall; which parts
touch and which do not.
Consider the parts of your back which
press against the wall; press hard and
feel how the front and back of your
body press together.
Concentrate on the tension in the muscles,
pain where bones meet, fleshy deformations that occur under pressure; consider
body hair, perspiration, odors (smells).
This may become a very erotic exercise.

The tough part is finding someone who will photograph me naked being "erotic" with the wall.
posted by skallas at 10:50 PM on May 5, 2002

Interesting idea, and some of the instructions—of the ones that are actually doable—seem neat. So far, I especially like Roald Hoffman's Untitled.

Baldessari's little project on the other hand, is quite simply fucked. I'm the last person to get all tree-huggy about not killing bugs, although I do avoid it. This is just cruelty, on no less a scale than beating the shit out of a puppy(or whatever particular creature just melts your heart) with a stick, and then going out to find another.
With the exception of one(that I'm aware of) piece, even Damien Hirst has stuck with using things that are already dead.
posted by Su at 1:36 AM on May 6, 2002

Skallas, there's a show called Big Brother that's tailor made for people like you. About twenty minutes into the first UK show they did exactly that.
posted by vbfg at 3:21 AM on May 6, 2002