Two Mediums, One Story: Damien Hirst Does the Art World One Spot at a Time

Damien Hirst's International art world invasion continued on January 12th 2012 with 331 of his spot paintings on display-and-sell missions in every Gagosian gallery world-wide (that's 11 - three in New York, two in London, and one each in Paris, Geneva, Rome, Athens, Hong Kong, and Beverly Hills).

Two fantastic art critics similarly discuss this cruelly banal cultural phenomenon through two different mediums  - Peter Schjeldahl covered it in this week's New Yorker with his article Spot On and Hennesy Youngman propagated his thoughts via YouTube.

(Hennesy the younger art critic will be talking at Concordia U. in Montreal next week thursday 26th. for an event called What Does It Mean, And What Can You Do About It? )

Jan 18th Wikistrike: Free Knowledge, Copy Rights, Intellectual Property

"SOPA and PIPA represent two bills in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate respectively. SOPA is short for the "Stop Online Piracy Act," and PIPA is an acronym for the "Protect IP Act." ("IP" stands for "intellectual property.") In short, these bills are efforts to stop copyright infringement committed by foreign web sites, but, in our opinion, they do so in a way that actually infringes free expression while harming the Internet."

- Wikipedia

Vacuuming The Cosmological Threats of Dirt: Simulated Pigeon Shit in Las Vegas

Las Vegas' strip is an accumulation of anything's simulacra displayed in such a way that it can fit in a perfect picture frame. Wonderfully consumable, a Barthesian wonderland and very stimulating for four days, Las Vegas' simulacra is never dirty - tacky but never dirty - and always honestly thought-out, so it becomes very exciting when dirt is included in the equation.

After taking a cab from a convention center filled with electronics to Paris where I had a drink in a plastic-Eiffel Tower, I walked through a Hector Guimard-themed Casino to wait for a car to take me to Venice. Behind twenty other humans waiting for motorized saviors at the Paris (there's an unsaid ban against walking in Vegas), I noticed fake pigeon dung covering the Victor Baltard-inspired marquee. This isn't anecdotal.

As mentioned before, like the rest of Vegas, nothing is here by happenstance, everything is the result of recent thought-out and human-powered decisions. The water like every carpet and every tree was selected and transported by a group of rational humans less than thirty years ago. It is the most honest, and arguably rational, materialization of a late 20th century cultural phantasma composed of all and any signs and simulations. So seeing man-made fake pigeon dung in Vegas is very very meaningful. Perhaps it represents the American stereotype of Paris which includes more pigeon dung than the one they have for Venice (where there is no fake pigeon shit). Or perhaps Paris' train stations are the only ones worth reproducing for a hotel in Vegas hence the inclusion of its pigeons... 

Whatever the possible reasoning this instance adds an exciting new dimension to my research on pigeons and dirt as "matter out of place": the fact is that the matter signifying the presence of dirt (the pigeons) on the Las Vegas Paris' marquee is 'clean' (it isn't actual shit, but paint) and so beyond matter or context, this sanitized representation of dirt authenticates simulacrum by vacuuming any of the cosmological threats implied by the actual things it signifies.

And this is what is so charming about Las Vegas.

Horses

Horses, Screen-printed on cotton by Saul Steinberg from 1949-52 from the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum

What Average Americans Are Doing: Sleeping, Eating, Working and Watching Television

This is how an average American over the age of 15 spends his or her 24 hours of daily existence (based on 2008 statistics). Playing with the different categories of Americans makes for a good fifteen minutes of entertainment and brain workout trying to figure out why, on average, at 8:50pm as many as 55% of the 65 or over are watching television while at as little as 8% of the 18-25 are socializing. 

Graph by Shan Carter, Amanda Cox, Kevin Quealy, Amy Schoenfeld found in The New York Times