"Punk-artist-anthropologist Cameron Jamie has made three documentaries on violence; I’ve read about them all and seen
just this one." The author speaks of "Kranky Klaus," LA-born artist Jamie's peek into the Austrian folkloric character
Krampus, a sort of photo-negative of Santa Claus who comes on Christmas to punish bad children.
[more inside]
posted by Astro Zombie
on Jun 18, 2011 -
12 comments
Since the late '70s,
Gordon Monahan has been
making a
career of extracting the unheard from pretty much anything he can get his hands on.
Monahan's works for
piano, loudspeakers, video, kinetic sculpture, and computer-controlled sound environments span various genres from avant-garde concert music to multi-media installation and sound art.
Such pieces include
long string installations activated by wind (Long Aeolian Piano, 1984-88), by
water vortices (Aquaeolian Whirlpool, 1990) and by
indoor air draughts (Spontaneously Harmonious in Certain Kinds of Weather, 1996). His work for
electronic tone generators and
human speaker swingers (Speaker Swinging, 1982), is a hybrid of science, music, and
performance art, where
minimalistic trance music based on the Doppler Effect contrasts with issues central to
performance art such as physical struggle and '
implied threat'.
John Cage once said, "
At the piano, Gordon Monahan produces sounds we haven't heard before."
[more inside]
posted by wcfields
on Apr 29, 2011 -
4 comments
A
digital clock made of wood and operated by 70 workers for one continuous 24-hour period.
"Even though the workers are trying hard to construct every single minute, they are constantly on the verge of failing."
posted by freshwater_pr0n
on Dec 27, 2009 -
35 comments
Are lice art? "Seven young artists from Berlin are trying to stretch the boundaries of art by living in an Israeli museum for three weeks with lice in their hair."
Video.
posted by fleetmouse
on May 2, 2008 -
141 comments
A site for artist
Bas Jan Ader (
wikipedia) who was last seen in 1975 when he took off in what would have been the smallest sailboat ever to cross the Atlantic. Site includes his most famous piece,
I'm Too Sad to Tell You.
posted by dobbs
on Dec 23, 2007 -
15 comments
Art Crimes is a fascinating site about the history of vandalism in the fine arts, recently revived by a Frenchwoman who left a
lipstick imprint on a 2 million dollar painting by
Cy Twombly. Other examples include a
British suffragist attacking a Velazquez with a knife, an
installation vandalized by the Israeli ambassador to Sweden,
two Chinese performance artists who urinated into Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, and a
Canadian art student who vomited blue gelatin on a Mondrian. Oddly enough, the artwork that has weathered the most attacks is Rembrandt's
The Night Watch, which has survived two knife attacks (one by an unemployed teacher with a butter knife) and an attack by a mental patient who had a compulsion to fling sulfuric acid at fine artworks. Other art vandalism methods, including glass cutters, hammers, scissors, guns, and ink, are discussed
here.
posted by jonp72
on Jul 26, 2007 -
38 comments
We need more artists in politics! In 1969, Canadian performance artist Vincent Trasov constructed a
human-sized peanut costume and took on the familiar identity of
Planters mascot Mr. Peanut. Five years later, Trasov took his performance art persona to the next level as he entered Mr. Peanut into the 1974 Vancouver mayoral election, running on a platform of "
Performance,
Elegance,
Art,
Nonsense,
Uniqueness, and
Talent." Trasov posed a "visual question" to his opponents at the debates via tap dance, received at least one
celebrity endorsement during his campaign, and in the end, garnered 3.4% of the vote. Recently, Trasov (and fellow artist Michael Morris) launched the
Morris/Trasov Archive, where you can find a nice collection of photos from the campaign trail online (Performance -> My Five Years in a Nutshell).
Mr. Peanut
remains a central part of Trasov's art; his "Histories" place Mr. Peanut in the Bamyian Valley of Afghanistan, the Marx-Engels monument at Berlin, and at the entrance to Thebes, playing the role of Oedipus opposite the Sphinx.
posted by duffell
on Dec 10, 2006 -
11 comments
kama3d ~ Made by an anonymous French artist, this series of sculptures of kama sutra positions was supposedly exhibited at the Chambéry Modern Art Museum (Musée d'Art et d'Histoire) recently. Now you can virtually walk around them. Reminscent of that sculpture of Britney giving birth on a bearskin. But are they real?
*NSFW* (Note: FLASH)
posted by crunchland
on Jul 13, 2006 -
36 comments
On Friday, September 2nd, artist Mary Coble will subject herself to a marathon tattoo session that could make a career Marine wince. Beginning at 6 p.m. and likely continuing until dawn the next day, a tattoo artist will etch 400 names of victims of the nation's gay, bisexual and transgender hate crimes into the artist's back, legs and arms. And we're
all invited to watch.
More (WashPo [reg.rqd])
posted by crunchland
on Sep 1, 2005 -
18 comments
Democratic Torture - "By touching a hotspot on their screens the Global audience can shock my exhausted face...". Yesterday his face "was sewn into a bind" today in around 3 hours time viewers may "contribute an electric shock direct to Mike Parr by interacting directly with the webcast"
A
SMH article and an
Artist's Biography provide some context.
posted by atom71
on May 2, 2003 -
2 comments
