Cher, Chair, Share

ukena

Ole Ukena, Cher, Chair, Share (Hello, Joseph), Poster of the singer Cher, a chair, a printed definition of the word share / 220 x 175 cm / 2011

The power of language can both separate us and bring us together. This piece, which is based on Joseph Kosuth‘s masterpiece Three and One chairs from 1965, playfully capitalizes on linguistic similarities while highlighting cultural absurdities bringing about the question: could a pop icon, place to rest and a single noun have anything in common/share common ground? In this work the intended act of misinterpretation becomes the actual act of artistic creation.

Disappear with me

disappear_large_nobackground_square_6c6304be-15f0-4d53-bc3b-21f642a7a8d6_grande
“Renowned American photographer Alec Soth invites you to disappear with him, and spend a few days conversing with him through Snapchat. Over the course of the conversation, Alec will send the buyer a series of twenty-five original photos, which may vary from beautifully composed landscapes to simple shower selfies depending on how the conversation develops and the nature of the narrative that emerges. Each photo will only ever be seen by Soth and the buyer, and will disappear immediately. The buyer may choose to send Soth photos in return as part of the conversation.”

Art is a meaningless word

“Art may soon become a meaningless word. In its place, ‘communications programming’ would be a more imaginative label, attesting to our new jargon, our technological and managerial fantasies, and our pervasive electronic contact with one another.”

— Allan Kaprow, Manifesto, 1966

American Standard

terris
Reece Terris, American Standard, 2004

“American Standard is an installation that featured fifteen functional urinals arranged in a pyramid formation on the wall of the men’s washroom in the Alexander Centre studio at Simon Fraser University.  Transforming the facility into a public indoor fountain, water overflowed from the uppermost urinal and splashed its way down through the formation creating a deluge of water flooding the sunken floor. Visitors enter the space via tiled stepping stones, providing access directly to the sink and preexisting toilet, leaving the facility fully functional and open to both sexes.
American Standard draws upon the ‘readymade’ and confronts its art-historical underpinnings (recalling Marcel Duchamp’s iconic Fountain), while imparting more than pure reference, as it extends beyond the object-oriented readymade into an architectural space. Rather than demonstrating how context produces meaning within objects, American Standard presents an environment in which objects re-contextualize their space, revealing architecture’s dependence on standardized form and socially assumed function within even the most private of public spaces.”

Cut-up as a magical process

burroughs

“What Bill [William S. Burroughs] explained to me then was pivotal to the unfolding of my life and art: Everything is recorded. If it is recorded, then it can be edited. If it can be edited then the order, sense, meaning and direction are as arbitrary and personal as the agenda and/or person editing. This is magick. For if we have the ability and/or choice of how things unfold—regardless of the original order and/or intention that they are recorded in—then we have control over the eventual unfolding. If reality consists of a series of parallel recordings that usually go unchallenged, then reality only remains stable and predictable until it is challenged and/or the recordings are altered, or their order challenged. These concepts led us to the realization of cut-ups as a magical process.”

– Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (Thee Psychick Bible)

[via]

Nonfunctional Satellites

paglen-artwork-038-prototype-nonfunctional-satellite-4-4

Nonfunctional Satellites, by Trevor Paglen

“Developed in collaboration with aerospace engineers, the nonfunctional satellites are space-worthy sculptures designed as small, lightweight satellites that expand to become large, highly reflective structures. Placing one of these objects into low-earth orbit would create a visible “sculpture” in the night sky, visible from the earth below after sunset and before dawn as a bright, slowly moving, flickering star. The sculpture would remain in orbit for several weeks before burning up upon reentry through the atmosphere.
These designs are responses to the question of what aerospace engineering would look like if its methods were decoupled from the corporate and military interests underlying the industry. The nonfunctional satellite recasts the old question of “art for art’s sake” within a different context, asking whether we can imagine something like “aerospace engineering for aerospace engineering’s sake.”