26 November 2009

Bobo International


"A well-cultivated person will not stoop to compete for the No. 1 place with average Joes and Janes. A bobo is well-cultivated. His notebook displays a style of simplicity. Bobos love country folk, a weathered fisherman, a craftsman in the remote coutnryside, or a short and plump artist who dances simple folk dances and sings simple folk songs. For bobos, those simple-minded country folk look serene and peaceful. Although they are poor, they lead a rich life... Corresponding to the fundamental spirit of the bobos is the simple but smart-looking E100. It is clothed in simple dark blue, but its keyboard and LCD screen shines in fashionable silver. A contradictory colour scheme like this matched with a daring design delivers to the bobos a jazzy sense of romance."
–advert copy for Legend Solei Notebook E100

23 November 2009

the Other likes to drink red wine too!


"With the extenuation of the political sphere, the president comes increasingly to resemble that Puppet of Power who is the head of primitive societies. (Clastres)
"All previous presidents pay for and continue to pay for Kennedy's murder as if they were the ones who had suppressed it–which is true phantasmatically, if not in fact. They must efface this defect and this complicity with their simulated murder. Because, now it can only be simulated. Presidents Johnson and Ford were both the object of failed assassination attempts which, if they were not staged, were at least perpetrated by simulation. The Kennedys died because they incarnated something: the political, political substance, whereas new presidents are nothing but caricatures and fake film–curiously, Johnson, Nixon, Ford all have this simian mug, the monkeys of power."
–Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 1981

22 November 2009

Encouragement for Dioxin sniffers

"The conceptualists liked to propound the following question: suppose the greatest artist in the history of the world, impoverished and unknown at the time, had been sitting at a table in the old automat at Union square, cadging some free water and hoping to cop a leftover crust of toasted corn muffin or a few abandoned translucent chartreuse waxed beans or some other item of that amazing range of Yellow Food the Automat went in for - and suddenly he got the inspiration for the greatest work of art in the history of the world. Possessing not even so much as a pencil or a burnt match, he dipped his forefinger into the glass of water and began recording the greatest of all inspirations, this high point in the history of man as a sentient being, on a paper napkin, with New York tap water as his paint. In a matter of seconds, of course, the water had diffused through the paper and the grand design vanished, whereupon the greatest artist in the history of the world slumped to the table and died of a broken heart, and the manager came over, and he thought that here was nothing more than a dead wino with a wet napkin. Now, the question is: would that have been the greatest work of art in the history of the world or not? The Conceptualists would answer: of course, it was. "

- Tom Wolfe, "Up the fundamental aperture", in The Painted Word, 1975.

12 November 2009

DID YOU HEAR RADIOHEAD WILL COLLABORATE ON A NEW CITY WITH RICHARD FLORIDA?

"Noise can make sleeping difficult on occasions, whether from snoring, sexual activity, someone either returning late or leaving early or the close proximity of so many people. This can be solved by carrying earplugs." – From Wikipedia "Hostel" entry.

5 November 2009

The ten pound garbanzo bean

Inevitably, when addressing Knowles' diversified oeuvre, one is drawn to the authorial presence of the artist as it is self-consciously inserted into the work. This entry point is encouraged by Knowles' practice of deploying his signature in the spectacular form of a logotype, a practice in which the artist's monogram is stylized into a symbol like those that are commonly used by corporations for brand-marketing purposes. During a decades-long refusal to attain a consistent and identifiable morphology, "KEK" at once stands as a nexus bringing together a diverse array of projects and providing a stable chart for translations into meaning.
–Alexander Alberro, Meaning at the Margins: The Semiological Inversions of Knowles Eddy Knowles