House
Artist Lars Stenberg talks about his latest art project.
House, a site-specific, time-based work will take shape in two phases. The first phase, a collaborative sculptural project between the artist, Westpac and Bunnings, explores the tension between the empty, unfinished volume of the building and the unceasing monthly mortgage repayments. The second, performance-focused, phase will involve selected members of the public who will “live” in the space created in the first phase, interacting with the work and contributing to it by fortnightly electronic transfer.
“Like my last work Car, House is a truly post-modern exercise,” said Stenberg, “as it employs self-knowing irony to explore the banal and uninteresting concerns of a middle class, middle aged man, and cleverly fuses the most popular contemporary method of expression, financial accrual, with traditional techniques such as painting and nailing things together.”
House builds upon the success of Stenberg’s most notorious work Personal Pension, a 45 year performance in which the artist burns an ever increasing sum of money every month, and which was shortlisted for the What Investor? product of the year in 2006.
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Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Friday, December 10, 2010
UN Security Council to Dismantle Internet
A spokesman for the US-owned United Nations Security Council confirmed last night that telecommunications workers around the globe would be drafted in to complete “the greatest disarmament programme since the Second World War”.
The Internet was invented in the 1960's as a fault-tolerant communications network for military and private use. The unforeseen explosion of personal computing, mobile communications and the World Wide Web, however, has meant that ordinary people have accidentally been given access to more information than at any time in history. Some of this information is also correct.
Roy Hobbs, Minister of Branding and New Media in Her Majesty’s Government, described the Internet as “a complete fucking nightmare.”
“There have been no international protocols, treaties or test bans to limit the Internet’s proliferation. With the exception of parts of rural Scotland, every country in the world is now part of what is probably the most dangerous weapon the we have ever known.”
“The threat to ordinary people of unfiltered ideas, lunatic beliefs and unmanaged information has to be countered. Allowing this sort of thing to go unchecked will erode the very bedrock of our democratic freedoms. We must act now.”
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| Wikileaks.com - the future of web browsing |
“Here in the UK we were pursuing a more moderate approach, a Third Way, if you like. We have already redirected Wikileaks to a list of 24-hour emergency plumbers. Our next step was to give everyone really high-speed internet so that they could spend their time downloading the latest series of Desperate Housewives and watching dancing cats on YouTube rather than reading news items or, dear God, sharing ideas.”
“It’s an approach that has worked well with television.”
“But we have realised that as this is the UK we couldn't possibly deliver a high speed broadband network any time within the next twenty years. So we are following the Security Council resolution and dismantling the whole thing. The Internet was a colossal miscalculation. Demolishing the infrastructure will save hundreds of innocent lives, and will create dozens of much-needed jobs in Reading.”
“Interruption to your daily lives will be kept to a minimum, although you will no longer be able to send or receive email, or call the emergency services. Or anyone else. You will, however, still be able to use your iPhone to play Angry Birds.
He added, “What about that level thirteen, eh?”
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
New advice from HM Govt to students
Preview of the new UK government poster campaign produced in the wake of the student protests
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Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Regeneration Nightmares Vol 1
Part of the day job is working with folks who don't get much of a say in how their environment is built and managed.
Part of what we do is host events that are accessible, fun and create a casual atmosphere that enables people to voice their opinions on decisions that will affect their places. We take these opinions and ensure they influence the planning decisions from the beginning of the project.
This is a cartoon I made a while back which we were going to use in a piece of promo that didn't quite come off.
It is, of course, a work of fiction and no resemblance to any real person, living or dead, or any public art project, is intended or implied.
Part of what we do is host events that are accessible, fun and create a casual atmosphere that enables people to voice their opinions on decisions that will affect their places. We take these opinions and ensure they influence the planning decisions from the beginning of the project.
This is a cartoon I made a while back which we were going to use in a piece of promo that didn't quite come off.
It is, of course, a work of fiction and no resemblance to any real person, living or dead, or any public art project, is intended or implied.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Red Dot or Not
Three and a half easy ways to earn a living as an artist
The Red Dot is the goal of many artists. The Red Dot confers on the artist (after a suitable wait for the gallery to process the payment and remove their commission) almost superhuman powers such as the ability to pay rent or their overdue electricity bill. In quantity the Red Dot can produce a kind of mania and artists who have the Red Dot can be seen in supermarkets spending lavishly on basic food items that are not on special or near their sell-by date. This all sounds great but beware. Artists who have too many Red Dots may be seen by commercial galleries as “product”. Do you really want to be painting the same picture in ten years time? And remember, you’re only as good as your last show.
Then there are artists who shun the Red Dot. For them it is a symbol of a system that forces artists to sell their souls and prostitute their abilities to produce meaningless gewgaws for the bourgeoisie. They are the Cutting Edge, challenging the concepts and conceits of Art and refusing to sell out to the system. They remain true to themselves by competing for official government support in the form of grants and residencies. Filling out application forms and lobbying decision makers can often be time consuming and in many cases these artists see grant applications and social networking as part of their art form.
The third way to earn a living as an artist is to earn a living doing something else. What that might be depends on the artist but it is often wise to choose something that offers flexible hours and does not involve creativity so that can be saved for making art. Administration and hospitality are popular choices. Infantry soldier and trawler fisherman less so. Nightshifts can be handy for artists who prefer to work in daylight. Aside from the ability to eat and pay rent, a big advantage of this method is that it allows artists to experience "real life" which in turn can give their art more "meaning". Experiencing real life, along with a working class background and claiming an indigenous great-grandmother are essential for any artist who wants to be written about in a lifestyle magazine. Being attractive and/or having a nice house can also help.
For artists at the beginning of their "career" (as it’s been called since the 80’s) it should be noted that none of these methods is guaranteed to net financial success. In only a few cases will the Red Dot sales approach make the artist permanently wealthy. Government agendas change often and only artists adept at predicting fashions can rely on grants. The third method is not without danger too. The seductive lure of eating regularly and being able to socialise with friends who have proper jobs can lead to voluntarily taking on more hours until there is little time left for art making. So the “three-and-a-halfth” method, and the most sustainable, is to do all three, in a balance that suits.
A final sober word of caution. Many students at Art School (or “university” as it’s been called since the 90’s) view the idea of doing nothing but make art as a sort of holy grail. When you’re surrounded by other people making art in a social atmosphere it’s easy to imagine doing just that for the rest of your days. The reality is that often art-making is a very solitary occupation and anyone considering being an artist for the rest of their lives should consider how they might balance that with other activities that keep them human. Even if you don’t need the money, maybe that barista job is a good idea.
The Red Dot is the goal of many artists. The Red Dot confers on the artist (after a suitable wait for the gallery to process the payment and remove their commission) almost superhuman powers such as the ability to pay rent or their overdue electricity bill. In quantity the Red Dot can produce a kind of mania and artists who have the Red Dot can be seen in supermarkets spending lavishly on basic food items that are not on special or near their sell-by date. This all sounds great but beware. Artists who have too many Red Dots may be seen by commercial galleries as “product”. Do you really want to be painting the same picture in ten years time? And remember, you’re only as good as your last show.
Then there are artists who shun the Red Dot. For them it is a symbol of a system that forces artists to sell their souls and prostitute their abilities to produce meaningless gewgaws for the bourgeoisie. They are the Cutting Edge, challenging the concepts and conceits of Art and refusing to sell out to the system. They remain true to themselves by competing for official government support in the form of grants and residencies. Filling out application forms and lobbying decision makers can often be time consuming and in many cases these artists see grant applications and social networking as part of their art form.
The third way to earn a living as an artist is to earn a living doing something else. What that might be depends on the artist but it is often wise to choose something that offers flexible hours and does not involve creativity so that can be saved for making art. Administration and hospitality are popular choices. Infantry soldier and trawler fisherman less so. Nightshifts can be handy for artists who prefer to work in daylight. Aside from the ability to eat and pay rent, a big advantage of this method is that it allows artists to experience "real life" which in turn can give their art more "meaning". Experiencing real life, along with a working class background and claiming an indigenous great-grandmother are essential for any artist who wants to be written about in a lifestyle magazine. Being attractive and/or having a nice house can also help.
For artists at the beginning of their "career" (as it’s been called since the 80’s) it should be noted that none of these methods is guaranteed to net financial success. In only a few cases will the Red Dot sales approach make the artist permanently wealthy. Government agendas change often and only artists adept at predicting fashions can rely on grants. The third method is not without danger too. The seductive lure of eating regularly and being able to socialise with friends who have proper jobs can lead to voluntarily taking on more hours until there is little time left for art making. So the “three-and-a-halfth” method, and the most sustainable, is to do all three, in a balance that suits.
A final sober word of caution. Many students at Art School (or “university” as it’s been called since the 90’s) view the idea of doing nothing but make art as a sort of holy grail. When you’re surrounded by other people making art in a social atmosphere it’s easy to imagine doing just that for the rest of your days. The reality is that often art-making is a very solitary occupation and anyone considering being an artist for the rest of their lives should consider how they might balance that with other activities that keep them human. Even if you don’t need the money, maybe that barista job is a good idea.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
When I hear the word culture…
The sky is falling! The oceans are rising! We're doomed Captain Mannering! We urgently need to either:
1. Change our light bulbs
or
2. Give up everything and buy a goat and a gun
None of the visions offered by climate change enthusiasts is compelling because none of them offers us anything inspirational. I like goats, but even so there's just not enough va-va-voom to get me going. The goals are survivalist and the messages are the sort of apocalyptic ones that so many people get off on... the frisson of excitement that we're all stuffed.
What we need is an inspirational goal to work towards.
Culture is the only mechanism by which we can envision the future in any sort of positive way. It is also the glue which holds our society together. Cultural philosopher and writer Roger Scruton argues that absence of culture results in dysfunctional societies, citing as an example the collapse of Islamic culture and the corresponding rise of fundamentalism to fill the void.
In my experience folks sometimes bristle at the word “culture” ("when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun"*), and usually in those cases the word seems synonymous with “the ballet and the opera”, with its attendant whiff of elitism and pretention. Luckily we now avoid the issue by using the phrase “cultural capital” instead which gives culture the free-market seal of approval as something that can be weighed, measured, valued and sold.
It’s fashionable to dismiss high culture – Dead White Male culture – as irrelevant, as of no further use, as somehow anti-democratic. But works of culture can give us a collective insight into the sublime, the beautiful, the utopian. They imagine other ways of being and lay them out for us in stories, pictures and music. Culture presents alternatives; neither as something to vote for, nor as something to go to war for, but as something we’re free to take to our hearts or dismiss. Of course, the truth is that our reactions are usually somewhere in between, and culture accommodates this too. It is rarely black or white, and you can put an X in every box if you like. Culture understands and embraces duality.
Culture helps us ask the right questions. Tolstoy’s question, “what shall we do and how shall we live?” has been the touchstone for Russian literature for decades and remains the fundamental question for us all. At its best, culture strips away the flim-flam that obscures the basic questions we need to ask. One of the criticisms often levelled at culture is that it’s not part of the so-called real world. Far from being a weakness, this is its central strength. Culture dispenses with budgetary constraints and political policy, skips over contemporary mores, dodges fashion and gets to the heart of the matter.
The ability of cultural activity to illuminate fundamental questions and to propose answers might well be the sole measure of its value. Using this measure we can see that the community art project that asks questions about the future of our village and illuminates the past is of value. War and Peace is of value. Elegy to the Spanish Republic is of value. The open mic night at the local pub is of value. The latest Europop song, Strictly Come Dancing or CSI, while entertaining, are less so.
We cannot envision any sort of sustainable, enjoyable future for ourselves without understanding and supporting cultural activity. The great thing about culture is that it is a dialogue that has been going on for millennia. We are each free to make our own contributions to the dialogue, in whatever form we choose (even if we’re not old enough to vote, or live in a country where we can't vote). If we fail to acknowledge culture as central to how we move into the future then we will be forced to rely, as we have been in the past, on the reactionary visions of politicians, religious leaders, multinational corporations, and prophets of doom. Pick one.
*often wrongly (but compellingly) attributed to Goebbels. The actual quote is a line from the 1933 play Schlageter by Hanns Johst, a Nazi propagandist and Poet Laureat. "Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning!" "Whenever I hear of culture... I release the safety catch of my Browning!" Not quite as snappy, but then brevity is the soul of wit.
1. Change our light bulbs
or
2. Give up everything and buy a goat and a gun
None of the visions offered by climate change enthusiasts is compelling because none of them offers us anything inspirational. I like goats, but even so there's just not enough va-va-voom to get me going. The goals are survivalist and the messages are the sort of apocalyptic ones that so many people get off on... the frisson of excitement that we're all stuffed.
What we need is an inspirational goal to work towards.
Culture is the only mechanism by which we can envision the future in any sort of positive way. It is also the glue which holds our society together. Cultural philosopher and writer Roger Scruton argues that absence of culture results in dysfunctional societies, citing as an example the collapse of Islamic culture and the corresponding rise of fundamentalism to fill the void.
In my experience folks sometimes bristle at the word “culture” ("when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun"*), and usually in those cases the word seems synonymous with “the ballet and the opera”, with its attendant whiff of elitism and pretention. Luckily we now avoid the issue by using the phrase “cultural capital” instead which gives culture the free-market seal of approval as something that can be weighed, measured, valued and sold.
It’s fashionable to dismiss high culture – Dead White Male culture – as irrelevant, as of no further use, as somehow anti-democratic. But works of culture can give us a collective insight into the sublime, the beautiful, the utopian. They imagine other ways of being and lay them out for us in stories, pictures and music. Culture presents alternatives; neither as something to vote for, nor as something to go to war for, but as something we’re free to take to our hearts or dismiss. Of course, the truth is that our reactions are usually somewhere in between, and culture accommodates this too. It is rarely black or white, and you can put an X in every box if you like. Culture understands and embraces duality.
Culture helps us ask the right questions. Tolstoy’s question, “what shall we do and how shall we live?” has been the touchstone for Russian literature for decades and remains the fundamental question for us all. At its best, culture strips away the flim-flam that obscures the basic questions we need to ask. One of the criticisms often levelled at culture is that it’s not part of the so-called real world. Far from being a weakness, this is its central strength. Culture dispenses with budgetary constraints and political policy, skips over contemporary mores, dodges fashion and gets to the heart of the matter.
The ability of cultural activity to illuminate fundamental questions and to propose answers might well be the sole measure of its value. Using this measure we can see that the community art project that asks questions about the future of our village and illuminates the past is of value. War and Peace is of value. Elegy to the Spanish Republic is of value. The open mic night at the local pub is of value. The latest Europop song, Strictly Come Dancing or CSI, while entertaining, are less so.
We cannot envision any sort of sustainable, enjoyable future for ourselves without understanding and supporting cultural activity. The great thing about culture is that it is a dialogue that has been going on for millennia. We are each free to make our own contributions to the dialogue, in whatever form we choose (even if we’re not old enough to vote, or live in a country where we can't vote). If we fail to acknowledge culture as central to how we move into the future then we will be forced to rely, as we have been in the past, on the reactionary visions of politicians, religious leaders, multinational corporations, and prophets of doom. Pick one.
*often wrongly (but compellingly) attributed to Goebbels. The actual quote is a line from the 1933 play Schlageter by Hanns Johst, a Nazi propagandist and Poet Laureat. "Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning!" "Whenever I hear of culture... I release the safety catch of my Browning!" Not quite as snappy, but then brevity is the soul of wit.
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