Autoterrorist

December 20, 2006

Alright, I know this is a bit crude…

But I thought of this when I was trying to fall asleep last night, still worried about my thesis:

We’ve all heard the expression “regurgitating facts” when it comes to taking tests. And most of us have felt like we’re just “throwing up” a bunch of words when we’re writing a quick essay for a class. Well, writing a research paper, then, is kind of like taking a long crap.

It doesn’t take much to regurgitate, all you have to do is just chew and then spit it out. Throwing up an essay is really nauseating at first, but then you throw up once, maybe a few times and then you feel a whole lot better. Research has to be ingested, then digested, and shit out in a totally synthesized form. It sucks when you’re constipated though.

I’m sorry.

Cat:

Uncategorized

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December 5, 2006

Banksy’s critique of architecture

WPvideo 1.10

Banksy – Boring

Cat:

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December 2, 2006

Get your COMMUTE out of my NEIGHBORHOOD

Since moving into an apartment on Fell Street, one of the busiest one-way express multi-lane motorways through San Francisco—a street I refuse to ride my bike up for fear of being ploughed over by an inattentive office drone in a Maxima—and hearing besides the incessant traffic and inconsiderate honking the agonizing death of one unfortunate dog, I have realized how grossly inappropriate these high-speed roads are in a city like this. And how ridiculously outdated the automobile is as an everyday mode of transport. My radical solution is to abolish automobiles in the city, or AT LEAST turn Fell and Oak into two-way, slowed-down traffic. No one NEEDS to hurtle towards Golden Gate Park at 50 mph…

That’s why I was intrigued by this post on SF Cityscape about a proposed car-free community in the Heyward Hills, Quarry Village. Not that I would necessarily want to live in Heyward, but I support the idea. Turns out, too, that the space you save not providing for your car, actually lowers the price of purchasing or renting your home. It amazes me how much trouble people ignorantly endure in parking, pumping, and repairing their cars. My neighbors have three cars for some idiotic reason. They can’t even be in them all at once! Constantly going out and reparking them all! Who needs it! vent vent vent..
I hope this is a trend that is actualized for the 21st century—the CarFree City. I hope more people could be convinced that their “need” for cars as a form of transportation is, in fact, invented and is not economically or ecologically viable. Here’s a list of car-free places.

Cat:

urban environments

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Clean graffiti

BLDGBLOG and Eyeteeth have posts on the Brazilian artist Alexandre Orion’s project of discriminately scraping the soot off of the wall of a Sao Paulo tunnel, creating the graphic representation of a series of skulls for the benefit of passing motorists, whose polluting exhaust and soot provide the medium for the piece. Since he is actually cleaning the walls the police can’t charge him with vandalism, but they still couldn’t stand by and let art go up on the walls without permission and they buffed it anyway.

A similar project is going on in Chicago in protest of two of its polluting power plants. Treehugger posted about this “powerwash graffiti” on the sidewalks there.

Cat:

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Wish I was Regine Debatty so I could travel all over Europe and go to cool exhibitions.

We-make-money-not-art posted a fascinating review of a conference called “Resistant maps,” which discusses new mapping technologies, democratization of cartography and Situationist tactics of the derive and psychogeography. Cartografia Resistente (unfortunately only in Italian) is a project based in Florence which explores alternative tactics of discovering the city and its territory through derive.

Another supercool project involving Google maps is this one by Aram Bartholl.

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Graffiti removal as subconscious abstract art

While browsing the forum at 12oz Prophet I came across a discussion of Matt McCormick’s film “The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal,” which argues that city workers buffing graffiti are actually subconsciously creating modern art masterpieces a la Rothko. The film looks really interesting (best part: Miranda July is the narrator), and there is an excerpt on the website, but I’ll have to try later and locate it somewhere in its entirety.

Graffiti writers and sympathizers disagree with the argument of the film. A particularly astute comment was this:

“modern art”, as they so elegantly call it, is the biggest sham since organized religion. to say that the people removing graffiti are subconscious artists is an utter fallacy based on a delusion. these people are NOT subconsciously creating art…they are consciously suppressing it.

Based on the short excerpt of the film, I think it was intended to be little more tongue in cheek than the commentor took it, but this isn’t the first time someone has come up with the realization that buffed graffiti bears quite a resemblence to certain revered pieces of modern art. Ayme Frye sent me a flyer for an exhibition called “Painted-Over Graffiti” that she saw in Chicago a few months ago by a photographer named Jeff Laird. He went as far as creating sculpture based on the “irregular color-fields” left behind by the anti-graffiti task forces, even proposing massive monuments to them. The major let-down of his work is the obvious omission of any discussion about the graffiti under his glorified irregular color-fields.

It is apparent to me, that the art in graffiti removal is in the selection by other artists to bring attention to the particularly aesthetically appealing examples of it. For, as most of us know, most buffed graffiti is pretty unspectacular.

“...Wait, which one is the Art?”

Cat:

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December 20, 2006

Alright, I know this is a bit crude…

December 5, 2006

Banksy’s critique of architecture

December 2, 2006

Get your COMMUTE out of my NEIGHBORHOOD

Clean graffiti

Wish I was Regine Debatty so I could travel all over Europe and go to cool exhibitions.

Graffiti removal as subconscious abstract art

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