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"Michael devoted his work to exploring the limits of the galleries and schools and museums that give context and space for art, poking at all sorts of barriers and shibboleths with a humor that was sometimes sly, and sometimes hilarious. He removed walls and doors and windows from galleries and museum spaces, letting in daylight and air, letting out preconceptions." Pioneering conceptual artist Michael Asher dies at 69 [more inside]
posted by wreckingball on Oct 16, 2012 - 7 comments

35 full-length Viennese Actionist films 1957-1969. *NSFW* (Extreme graphic & scatological situations.) "The term Viennese Actionism describes a short and violent movement in 20th century art that can be regarded as part of the many independent efforts of the 1960s to develop 'action art' (Fluxus, Happening, Performance, Body Art, etc.)." Previously: 1, 2. [more inside]
posted by Skygazer on Jul 14, 2012 - 29 comments

Despised by the rock establishment which they assaulted with every turn, Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics were so far ahead of their time in so many ways it is hard to know where to begin. They synthesized punk and metal before it was cool to do so, used chain saws and other noise put through amplifiers, and their stage shows were second to none. (previously) [more inside]
posted by Trurl on Mar 21, 2012 - 46 comments

After receiving a $20,000 grant from the Australia Council, Denis Beaubois set about creating his artwork, Currency, 2011, by withdrawing $20,000 from a teller at the Reserve Bank of Australia and writing down the serial numbers. The artwork sold at auction yesterday for $17,500. [more inside]
posted by robcorr on Aug 31, 2011 - 75 comments

We all know Instructables, the crowd-sourced how-to site that brought us great tutorials like "Garbage Bag + Rice Cooker = Alcohol Still," and "Quick Sauerkraut with Caraway Seeds and a Baseball bat" - wait, what? Oh, you must be reading some of Tim Anderson's 200-plus Instructables. Tim's a curious fellow best known for co-founding 3-D printer manufacturer Z Corp (previous-Z) um, no, wait, maybe for writing the Heirloom Technology column in Make Magazine? No? Hmm, then what is he "best known for?" Well, there's a bunch of other stuff in here. . . . [more inside]
posted by richyoung on May 25, 2011 - 13 comments

Conceptual art collective, and part-time unemployment agency, Workforce Central Florida recently began the "Cape-a-bility Challenge" that has been taking some flack for spending $73,000 giving 6000 red capes (costing $14,000 for the capes alone) to the unemployed in their battle against the verbosely named existential super-villian Dr. Evil Unemployment. [more inside]
posted by wcfields on Apr 20, 2011 - 34 comments

HINDSIGHT IS ALWAYS 20/20 is an information art piece. Artist/composer R. Luke DuBois [previously] manipulated the text of individual State of the Union addresses from each presidency, sorting the words according to frequency of use, to generate a Snellen eye chart for each President. [more inside]
posted by Herodios on Nov 20, 2010 - 24 comments

How To Explain It To My Parents: a video series from Lernert & Sander where conceptual artists explain their work to their parents. [more inside]
posted by fryman on Oct 31, 2010 - 5 comments

An article in an art-related blog recently mentioned a new installation by a Columbus, Ohio conceptual artist named Richard Whitehurst: an exhibit reachable only by a tunnel, growing progressively narrower, with the artist waiting to rape anybody who attempted to pass. [more inside]
posted by acb on Oct 1, 2009 - 41 comments

Play the life simulator. [more inside]
posted by idiopath on Apr 11, 2009 - 34 comments

"In the early 1970s, the artist Chris Burden pioneered a kind of sculpture that explored boundaries few people would care even to approach." The artist has had himself (in two of many examples...) nearly electrocuted and shot; some of his later and lighter work includes building complex model bridges and reconstructing a "Speed of Light Machine". He created a ghost ship, uninhabited and self navigated, and continues to surprise with his latest work.... [more inside]
posted by Kronos_to_Earth on Jun 8, 2008 - 23 comments

"He spent three days in a room with a coyote. After flying into New York, he was swathed in felt and loaded into an ambulance, then driven to the gallery where the Action took place, without having once touched American soil. As [he] later explained: ‘I wanted to isolate myself, insulate myself, see nothing of America other than the coyote.’" ( documentary yt clip)
posted by bardic on Jul 3, 2007 - 88 comments

Lustfaust, an expiremental noise band from West Berlin has been steadily building an online retrospective archive of band photos, memorabilia from past gigs, and collected submissions of artwork that fans created for their own mix tapes. They can also be found (of course) on MySpace. For those of you in the NYC area, tomorrow is the final day of a show at The Volume Gallery that features artwork created by fans of the underground group . What they've pieced together is a pretty loyal and diverse following for a band that doesn't really exist.
posted by stagewhisper on Jul 21, 2006 - 23 comments

The one that got away? GIVE a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a world-famous English artist a fish, however, and he'll pickle it in formaldehyde, flog it to a South Korean art gallery for $5.7 million, and trouser the difference.. A controversial shark hunter learns of Damien Hirst adding value to "a freebie".
posted by bunglin jones on Jul 8, 2006 - 54 comments

I am still alive. Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara sent these telegrams to friends throughout the 70s. He's most famous for his date paintings, in which he paints the day's date on canvas before midnight. His book series I Met is a 12 volume list of the people he met in the '60s and '70s. His ten volume One Million Years (Past and Future) comprises books with every one of 1,000,000 years (998,031 BC-1969 AD (past) and 1980-1,001,980 AD (future) listed. Reading One Million Years is a series of installations of readings from the books. One was placed in Trafalgar Square, and in a further wrinkle in time, this guy caught it with his pinhole camera. Here is a short essay about Kawara's existentialism, and here's a longer essay (Google cache) about Kawara's art's ontology. (PDF)
posted by OmieWise on Apr 10, 2006 - 51 comments

10,000 kltes to be flown ”on both sides of the 500-kilometer long barrier that separates Israelis and Palestinians” on my birthday (but not in my honor). Inspiring, or just silly?
posted by LeLiLo on Apr 30, 2005 - 26 comments

After Walker Evans Alternatively, After Sherrie Levine. In 1936, Walker Evans famously photographed a family of sharecroppers. In 1979, Sherrie Levine rephotographed Evans' work. Performance artist Michael Mandiberg has reproduced Levine's work online, made them available for printing, and assembled texts and wrote plays to give the site's conceptual art concept - and Levine's work - meaning, and a punchline.
posted by livii on Mar 20, 2005 - 16 comments

This is the text of a painting called "Arsewoman in Wonderland," shortlisted for the UK's Turner Prize 2002. Fiona Banner's painting consists entirely of a textual narration of a porn film; specifically, a porn film dedicated to an extended exploration of anal sex, with an "Alice in Wonderland" theme. (Apparently, dwarves are also involved.) The Turner, which comes with a £20,000 purse, ostensibly recognizes the best British art. Now, I love a good conceptual dig as much as the next guy, but does Banner's painting really challenge the way we "compartmentalise private and public behaviour," let alone represent the best the British art world has to offer?
posted by adamgreenfield on Dec 8, 2002 - 49 comments

Software as conceptual art ... And a critique of current affairs? Or maybe you're just looking to play around with it... Need help?
posted by j.edwards on Oct 26, 2001 - 3 comments