I am delighted to present 3 awesome creations to you.
Jo-Anne Speirs from Johannesburg, South Africa:
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| Jo-Anne Speirs, South Africa, 2010 |
I met Jo-Anne and her husband in Jamaica. Highly cool people. They are friends with my best west coast friends and hence in the music business.
Jo-Anne doesn't like punk rock! How is that possible or even doable? Haha, so funny, what an independent mind she is. I am impressed. I don't think we even talked about Bloody Hands, and she just sent the picture in. Nice wedding ring.
Those who send in work without being asked to do so are my heroes. She's the first African person to participate. I don't want to look at Bloody Hands from a corny network perspective and expanding the social sculpture around the world... but I just did. :) Oooh, I'm getting corny points.
Jo-Anne happens to be the photographer of one of the best portraits of myself, that I will hereby share with the world for the first time. It has quite the resemblance with a self-portrait I did myself in 2004 from the series "Private Apocalypse" titled "I don't lift up the seat".
Well, I really don't.
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| Jo-Anne Speirs, Jamaica, 2010 |
Now a completely different chapter: family affairs.
Nikki's Mom from Germany:
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| Nikki York's Mom, Germany, 2010 |
The difference between me and you is, that I am going "oh my God, Mom, did you hurt yourself?", and if my sister reads this, she might think that too. The answer is unknown. And in fact, I don't want to know it. It disgusts me to think about that my family could be injured, which I find psychologically interesting. That's TMI, talk to me about the weather. My Mom mentioned in the email she sent, that it didn't feel good. Args, I'm sorry. She also wrote, that it turned out like some sort of blood diamonds. There you go, diamonds it is.
In regards to social sculpture I deem some solid family participation crucial. Thanks so much, good job. So it's snowing in Germany?
It does snow where Zach Gold is coming from, here in New York.
He now also is one of my heroes, because he completely self-motivated sent in a great video. In my opinion this is quality art. Damn, I can't insert the video in here, you need to click the link to see it.
Zach Gold, New York, 2010
I wish I would have seen a video like this at the Art Basel, Miami Beach. I was glad I went... but then again, I'm not much in the mood for a rant as I promised.
Or I'll keep it short: My highlight was Tony Shafrazi's boot with Tony Shafrazi in there, wearing a lavender tie matching his lavender socks. I once had dinner with Tony Shafrazi, or let's say, I attended a dinner in Cologne after a gallery opening at gallery Jablonka that was also attended by him. I like him, I think he's really cool, and I like his selection of artists.
My second highlight was, that I accidentally ran into a pile of art in ignorance. Art Basel had offered an iPhone app that didn't quite work, so I was looking at my phone getting really annoyed with it. And I didn't see, that Ai Weiwei's gallery person had dumped a pile of sunflower seeds on the floor. I ran right into it, and it was like in Matrix: Two gallery security people came running towards me in slow motion. Their faces in agony they were shouting "nooooooo" trying to hold me back...
O.k. they stopped me, before I fell into the thing. What the hell though? The sunflower seeds were made of porcelain. I just read that it took 1600 artisans in China 2 years to produce all the seeds and that the actual show is in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall till May 11th. Yeah, so what the hell? In London they are walking all over the seeds and the artist intended the sensory experience. They should have let me fall. Spiesser!
I wonder, if Weiwei has directed the galleries to put the seeds into a pile like that - it gave me the wrong impression. I thought it was badly done arte povera, while it seemingly only was living room sized memorabilia to be sold. Like a sweaty shirt of Elvis or Madonnas bra. I totally missed the political and sociological point up until now - the real art piece is spread out over 1000 square meters.
Now I want to know: 2 Years = 100 weeks x 40 hours (let's assume they didn't do overtime) x 1600 workers = 6.400.000 hours work went into the seeds. So how much does a Chinese skilled artisan make an hour, if he doesn't get exploited by an artist?
Ah right, minimum wage in China is $150 a months. I call that competitive. So 24 months x $150 x 1600 workers = $5.760.000 plus material costs, plus transport costs (that stuff weighs over 150 metric tons), storage costs... Who has all these millions spare?
Ah, a half a ton of seeds costs 300.000 Euro. If all 300 portions sell - if they are for sale - that would be 90 Million Euros...
Ai Weiwei must be proud. He got 1600 people a job for 2 years, the Chinese government does not like him. If I wanted to do that here in NY I would need $48 Mio for minimum wage... I like Weiwei.
I did start ranting. I am a reliable institution.
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