Bad Vibel

"Alan goes to Korea, where we have some big orders coming through," Ron explained recently over lunch--a hamburger, medium-well, with fries--in the V.I.P. booth by the door in the Polo Lounge, at the Beverly Hills Hotel. "I call Alan on the phone. I wake him up. It was two in the morning there. And these are my exact words: `Stop. Do not pursue the bread-and-batter machine. I will pick it up later. This other project needs to come first.' " The other project, his inspiration, was a device capable of smoking meats indoors without creating odors that can suffuse the air and permeate furniture. Ron had a version of the indoor smoker on his porch--"a Rube Goldberg kind of thing" that he'd worked on a year earlier--and, on a whim, he cooked a chicken in it. "That chicken was so good that I said to myself"--and with his left hand Ron began to pound on the table--"This is the best chicken sandwich I have ever had in my life." He turned to me: "How many times have you had a smoked-turkey sandwich? Maybe you have a smoked- turkey or a smoked-chicken sandwich once every six months. Once! How many times have you had smoked salmon? Aah. More. I'm going to say you come across smoked salmon as an hors d'oeuvre or an entrée once every three months. Baby-back ribs? Depends on which restaurant you order ribs at. Smoked sausage, same thing. You touch on smoked food"--he leaned in and poked my arm for emphasis--"but I know one thing, Malcolm. You don't have a smoker."

- Malcolm Gladwell, "The Pitchman." The New Yorker, October 30, 2000

Hegel's Hotel

Bernard Madoff Client List
"The accusation is that artists are at best the ultimate freelance knowledge workers and at worst barely capable of distinguishing themselves from the consuming desire to work at all times, neurotic people who deploy a series of practices that coincide quite neatly with the requirements of neoliberal, predatory, continually mutating capitalism of the every moment. Artists are people who behave, communicate and innovate in the same manner as those who spend their days trying to capitalize every moment and exchange of daily life. They offer no alternative."
—Liam Gillick

Manila Vice

"But yeah, ten years ago, Paul Martin, who was then Canada’s finance minister, later Canada’s prime minister, was at a meeting with Larry Summers. This is 1999, so Summers at that time was Bill Clinton’s nominee for Treasury secretary. And the two men were discussing this idea to expand the G7 into a larger grouping to respond to the fact that developing country economies like China and India were growing very quickly, and they wanted to include them into this club, and they were under pressure to do so. So, what Martin and Summers did—and this history we only learned last week. This really wasn’t a history that had been told. So this story came out in The Globe and Mail. And it turns out that the two men didn’t have a piece of paper. They wanted to—I don’t know how this would possibly be the case, but their story is that they wanted to make a list of the countries that they would invite into this club, and they couldn’t find a piece of paper, so they found a manila envelope and wrote on the back of the manila envelope a list of countries. And by Paul Martin’s admission, those countries were not simply the twenty top economies of the world, the biggest GDPs. They were also the countries that were most strategic to the United States. So Larry Summers would make a decision that obviously Iran wouldn’t be in, but Saudi Arabia would be. And so, Saudi Arabia is in. Thailand, it made sense to include Thailand, because it had actually been the Thai economy, which, two years earlier, had set off the Asian economic crisis, but Thailand wasn’t as important to the US strategically as Indonesia, so Indonesia was in and not Thailand. So what you see from this story is that the creation of the G20 was an absolutely top-down decision, two powerful men deciding together to do this, making, you know, an invitation-only list.

"And what you really see is that this is an attempt to get around the United Nations, where every country in the world has a vote, and to create this expanded G7 or G8, where they invite some developing countries, but not so many that they can overpower or outvote the Western—the traditional Western powers. So, as this happened, we have also seen a weakening and an undermining of the United Nations. And I think that that’s the context in which the G20 needs to be understood. And that’s why a lot of the activists in Toronto this week were arguing that the G20 is an illegitimate institution and the price tag is—that we, as Canadian taxpayers, have had to take on for hosting this summit, you know, $1.2 billion, is particularly unacceptable, given that we have the United Nations, where these countries can meet in a much more democratic, much more legitimate forum, as opposed to this ad hoc invitation-only club from the back of an envelope in Larry Summers’s office."
–Naomi Klein talking to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! (June 28, 2010).

"Laziness is the absence of movement and thought, dumb time—total amnesia. It is also indifference, staring at nothing, nonactivity, impotence. It is sheer stupidity, a time of pain, futile concentration. Those virtues of laziness are important factors in art. Knowing about laziness is not enough, it must be practiced and perfected. Artists in the West are not lazy and therefore not artists but producers of something... Their involvement with matters of no importance, such as production, promotion, gallery system, museum system, competition system (who is first), their preoccupation with objects, all that drives them away from laziness, from art. Just as money is paper, so a gallery is a room. Artists from the East were lazy and poor because the entire system of insignificant factors did not exist. Therefore they had time enough to concentrate on art and laziness. Even when they did produce art, they knew it was in vain, it was nothing... Finally, to be lazy and conclude: There is no art without laziness."
—Mladen Stilinovic´from Documenta 12 Magazine Nº 12 Life!, 2007

the nurturing, comfortable, safe, infinitely promising Holding Environment

Late stages in the Structural Integrity exhibition as part of the Next Wave Festival in Melbourne.


The laptop in the Holding Environment powered the works of two different pieces by other artists, a radio broadcast by "Sound Research of China" and a video by Guangzhou-based artist Zhou Tao. The heat from the computer's operation helped to produce an appropriate climate for the growth of mushrooms—in this case, the oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus)—inside the Holding Environment. Remember, May is autumn in Australia.

The Golden Flush

"Although the city was soon choking on its own effluent again, the value of night soil and animal dung was still firmly engrained in people's minds - particularly since seventeenth-century Londoners had discovered the pleasures of fruit and vegetables grown in their own manure."

Hungry City - Carolyn Steel

Check out Spoox Magazine's newest issue #6 !!!! Audio magazine featuring the Knowles Eddy Knowles track "Teddy's World", from "Soundtrack for the Holding Environment" (2008) http://spooxmagazine.org/

No results found for artworld:

Did you mean antiworld?

The square peg doghouse with big round catflaps

Those Patio Lanterns

Model: Gordon Laurin.

Date: Thursday, August 9th, 1984
City: Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Venue: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design Cafeteria

In the August '98 issue of "Chart" magazine, Jay Ferguson from Sloan interviews Thurston (and Steve) and they discuss this show:

Jay: The reason I mention Halifax is because Sonic Youth actually came and played here in the early '80s...do you have any memories of that?

Thurston: Yeah, the Nova Scotia College contacted us; it was really early on... They asked if we wanted to come up and do a symposium. I didn't really have any idea what that meant. I just thought we were going to play a gig. I think Kim and Lee had more of an idea but they didn't really, sort of, translate it to me. They just figured I knew as well [laughs]. Anyways, the first thing we had to do is go to this class and sort of talk about ourselves... and then we were walking out, thinking "What are we doing?" There was no real agenda except to go to this class. We just sat around and talked to some students. And then I made a flyer for the gig that night.

Jay: A friend of mine has one of those.

Thurston: Oh, wow... I just took it out of a film book... It was from some 80s horror movie.... [Just then, Steve Shelley pipes up: "Evil Dead?"] ... Evil Dead! It was a picture of this hand coming out of a grave and grabbing this woman like this. [Thurston illustrates by grabbing his throat with his hand, to much laughter.] And I wrote "Sonic Youth Live Halifax," et cetera. We hung them up all over town and all over the university. There was a large feminist contingency there and they were just incensed.

Jay: Oh, really?

Thurston: Like, "Who are these people coming here and putting this obscene imagery all over the place?" And they tore 'em all down and spread the word to ban the show. At the same time, there was a huge hardcore gig in town. I think it was D.O.A. and, like, 20 other bands. So the kids who were going to go see something, they were gonna go to that. And the art students were sort of conflicted about going. So I'd say there was maybe eight people there.

Jay: I think it's one of those shows that 150 people claim they saw but there was only.... Well, eight people.

Thurston: We also, at the time, picked up a lot of stuff from the streets of Halifax and brought it to the gig. We did a lot of banging on garbage cans. A lot of clatter.

(from the Sonic Youth website)

"If you think the quality of tobacco from the factories is bad, think of the counterfeit stuff being processed without regulations in caves!"

Spa entrance sculpture.

Flight Centre

"Against the explosion of 'self-expression' among many 'avant-garde' artists, 'New Measurement' proposed a principle of 'elimination of individuality', which has become the basis of their entire research. In this group whose membership has consisted, at different periods, of three-to-six artists, no room has been allowed for individual or personal ideas, experiences, and expressions. Instead, it undertakes collective work operating mechanically (measuring, calculating and drawing...) strictly respecting the collaboration rules based on 'numerical relationships' between things. The result of their work, then, consists of a large amount of rules, formulas and diagrams, signs and manuscripts, which record the discussions, calculations and presentations. Such a process, more importantly, has given birth to a 'non-art language' (or a 'quasi-language') situated between letters, mathematics and linguistic research. Hence, ideological problems or troubles have been transcended and even eliminated by a purely numerical, rational and un-individual research and the invention of its language."
–Hou Hanru, 1996

Dear all, as I am sure you’ve probably guessed, this Pavilion show is not going to go through. There are two sides to this equation: Heritage Canada who initiated the project and asked if I wanted to do it and Cirque du Soleil which is in charge of the artistic programming and (I think is probably putting a lot of money into this pavilion because of their interests in China.)

I presented my proposal to Heritage Canada and to Cirque du Soleil a few weeks ago and they took forever to get back to me and when they did, they flat-out rejected it.

I am very sorry to have raised your hopes. The heritage Canada side lead me to believe that it was a sure thing but the curator from Cirque was not willing to collaborate. She basically had her own show planned and wasn’t willing to make the effort to include us.

Again I am very sorry to have wasted your time. Believe me I feel just as upset about this whole situation as you do.

I hope though, that we may have a chance to collaborate in the future!

Campaign

"Termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art," Farber contends, "goes always forward eating its own boundaries, and, like as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity."

Bartleby the curator

Hello.
We already received application of Knowel Eddy Knows

...

slipper

Terroir

"Context cannot be recreated"

- Julie Ault

doctor hello

Knowles Eddy Knowles

My other office is a bistro table, 2009

The Bistro System

"An economist who's agnostic about economics is unemployable"

- Sir Alfred Sherman

FX

Note: butt stamper whose sand is stamped with FX hotel brand, in the foyer outside the elevators.

[Brecht was insisting on the need for what he called a 'smokers theatre' where the audience would puff away at its cigars as if watching a boxing match, and would develop a more detached and critical outlook than was possible in the ordinary German theatre, where smoking was not allowed. 'I even think', says a fragment 'that in a Shakespearean production one man in the stalls with a cigar could bring about the downfall of Western Art. He might as well light a bomb as light his cigar. I would be delighted to see our public allowed to smoke during performances. And I'd be delighted mainly for the actors' sake. In my view it is quite impossible for the actor to play an annatural, cramped and old-fashioned theatre to a man smoking in the stalls.']

- Brecht on theatre: The development of an aesthetic, edited by John Willett

“policy of ambiguity.”

"If you’re not in China, you’re not playing the game."

Lester Thurow, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Return to sender

"Dear BH Billington,
Knowles Eddy Knowles is an international collaborative art group founded in 2004. We have been invited to participate in a fascinating and well-esteemed exhibition at the West Space art centre in Melbourne. Our idea necessitates the use of diamonds in the gallery space; of course, the diamonds would be on loan and would be returned at the end of the exhibition. West Space is run by good, honest Australians who would make sure the precious stones are safely installed and maintained.
Any colour will do. In fact, the more colours the merrier. Variety is the spice of life- KEK's message- and that's why we would like to construct a buffet table on which the diamonds could be safely displayed behind protective glass. Seeing as how the diamonds will not be adorning anyone's fingers, we have decided that it would be perfectly acceptable if not all of the diamonds are perfect- we welcome the flawed ones.
KEK would like to request to borrow diamonds from BH Billington for our show. Please carefully consider our request and send your reply to us through the West Space art centre.
Thank you and look forward to hearing from you.
Knowles, Eddy, Knowles
Mon, May 9, 2005 at 12:40 PM"

HQ

Windows in the side of a hill in Hogo, Shaanxi Province. Forty million people live in cave houses in Northern China.
"Therefore, we don't consult with the Titito [dear little uncle] any more. He used to appear formerly, but now he can't. He is completely tired out and he can't. It is in vain that they ch'alla [perform ritual] for the Tio. We made him of great stones that had metal in it. He used to look like a person smoking a cigarette just like us. After he finished the cigarette he would chew coca, chewing with the women from their bags of coca. We used to enter before the Tio with our silk shawls. We used to consult him. We reached for the metal in his hands. It was beautiful, like raw sugar."

- June Nash and Manuel María Rocca. Dos mujeres indigenas, Antropología Social Series, vol. 14, pp. 1-130. Mexico, D.F.: Insituto Indigenista Interamericano. 1976. Quoted in The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America by Michael Taussig

if i don't respond to this by end friday can you remind me to?

"One hundred and forty-four participants were randomly assigned to one of three independent groups, and subsequently performed the Cognitive Drug Research (CDR) computerized cognitive assessment battery in a cubicle containing either one of the two odors or no odor (control). Visual analogue mood questionnaires were completed prior to exposure to the odor, and subsequently after completion of the test battery. The participants were deceived as to the genuine aim of the study until the completion of testing to prevent expectancy effects from possibly influencing the data. The outcome variables from the nine tasks that constitute the CDR core battery feed into six factors that represent different aspects of cognitive functioning. Analysis of performance revealed that lavender produced a significant decrement in performance of working memory, and impaired reaction times for both memory and attention based tasks compared to controls. In contrast, rosemary produced a significant enhancement of performance for overall quality of memory and secondary memory factors, but also produced an impairment of speed of memory compared to controls."

- International Journal of Neuroscience 2003, Vol. 113, No. 1, Pages 15-38

"The twin principles of modernism and marketing: seeing fresh promise in familiar things."

lumpen

"16. (Trans.) A paraphrase of the controversial aphorism 'l'art est le plus haute joie que l'homme se donne a lui même', which Lefebvre attributed to Marx in Contribution à l'esthetique (1953), but which he later admitted was his own invention. This 'forgery' was one of the reasons given for his exclusion from the PFC in 1957."
-Henri Lefebvre Critique of Everyday Life, Volume 2

George Baker

citing Moyra Davey citing Roland Barthes in 1977: "When we attach a lot of importance to certain networks of friendship it is because we're always trying to reproduce the utopia of a childhood space, that of a child playing around its mother. Ultimately, in an affective relationship, whether or not its amorous, we always simulate a certain maternal space, a space of security which is, why not say it, a gift space."

- via facebook

“The Tao produces the one. The one produces the two. The two produces the three. The three produces all beings.” -Lao Tzu

"The scent of cigarettes became his madeleine. (3)

(3) If we consider Proust to be the first man who articulated the idea of remembrances of things past, then this would be the perfect time for the remembrances of things present - we can contribute the ever-growing list of consumed items through the years (product names, price, serial number), as well as records of chance encounters in shopping malls, travel groups around the world (height, weight, body type). Compared to these overly material-based data, He Shan's involuntary memory of the cigarettes would appear to be more poetic and lasting. That scent of cigarettes surrounding the woman has always allowed him to sense the continuity and reality of life."
–Hu Fang, Garden of Mirrored Flowers, 2009.

see you at CAVE bar and restaurant

HELLO... I'M ON THE TRAIN... NO, THE TRAIN... YOU'RE BREAKING UP...

"It just feels right to hold the internet in your hands as you surf it.
And with a screen this large you can just see more of the web, as
you're surfing it... The whole website... in the cleft of your ass..."
- Steve Jobs

life under a heliocentric regime

Money is now pregnant

Upsidedown Sieg Heil

A Very Young Artist

"Recruited as plantation hands, they frequently showed themselves unwilling to work steadily. Induced to raise a cash crop, they would not react "appropriately" to market changes: as they were interested mainly in acquiring specific items of consumption, they produced that much less when crop prices rose, and that much more when prices fell off. And the introduction of new tools or plants that increased the productivity of indigenous labour might only then shorten the period of necessary work, the gains absorbed rather by an expansion of rest than of output. All these and similar responses express an enduring quality of traditional domestic production, that it is production of use values, definite in its aim, so discontinuous in its activity."

Marshall Sahlins - Stone Age Economics quoted in The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America by Michael Taussig