I'M NOT GOING TO CALL HIM A LIAR BEHIND HIS BACK BUT I WOULD SAY IT TO HIS FACE IF HE WAS HERE
26 September 2010
17 September 2010
8 September 2010
6 September 2010
An Empty Paper Bag in a Suit

Mr Harvey
This is to inform you that if you do make any more two course
Hole, you will have all your Frames broken and your goods too, though you may think you have made your doom just I shall know how to break your frames, we will not suffer you to win the Trade will die first, if we cant do it just to night we will break them yet, and if we cant break them we will break something better and we will do it too in spite of the devil.
Remember Ned Ludd
5 September 2010
2 September 2010
Moulins



Ecological ashtray designed with Felipe Escudero, going into mass production in 2013!
"I just met a Spanish artist who proposed a new project - it's a bit macho but could be interesting - he wants to punch every Spanish architect he meets in the face! To try and wake them up! It's a rather primitive form of critique but I think it encapsulates a frustration people have with what's going on in our built environment. Why should all these public spaces be privatized? Was anyone asked if they wanted another ridiculous mall in their neighborhood? But to answer your question - I think that it's done both. I'm now more aware of the compromises and processes involved when considering larger urban projects but that, in a way, makes not doing anything even more valuable." –Nils Norman
30 August 2010
Hybriw
"We will continue to employ the methodological concept of the model by setting out precisely what its attributes and properties are:
a) It refines certain characteristics of the concept in general, and of conceptual elaboration or conceptualization. By summing up an experimental and practical given, the classic consept turned too much towards the past, and also towards the simple. The model is a more flexible tool, capable of exploring the complex and the random. With it, thought becomes 'propositional' in a new way: programmatic. However, if the 'model' refines the concept, it cannot dispense with it. It presupposes a conceptual elaboration.
b) Like the concept, the model is a scientific abstraction and a level of abstraction. It is always revisable, and cannot be taken either as a reality or entity imminent to the real beneath the appearances of phenomena (the ontological temptation, which structuralism finds hard to avoid), or as a norm or value (the normative temptation). The methodology of models forbids their fetishization.
c) The model is constructed in order to confront 'reality' (experience and practice). It is useful, not least because it helps us to appreciate the gap between itself and the facts, between the abstract and the concrete, between what has been certified and what is still possible. The model is useful: it is a working implement for knowledge. Only the concept has the dignity of knowing.
d) As far as a set of facts is concerned, there can be no question of a single model. If we are to grasp the actual and the possible,we must construct several models. The confrontation between these will be as interesting theoretically as the confrontation between one of them and the concrete element it represents. In this way diversity and discussion during the process take on added value. No one model can be sufficient or pretend to be sufficient by bringing research to a halt. So we are faced with two alternatives: ontology or criticism, dogmatism or empiricism (or pure relativism).
e) The concept of the model also helps to refine the concept of hypothesis. Every model encompasses a hypothesis (in the broadest sense, theoretical or strategic). Every hypothesis concludes by constructing a model, which is the halfway stage between inventing the hypothesis and proving it. So the model assumes the qualities of the hypothesis: provability, creativity. As Politzer said, it should enable us to move from philosophical luxury to the economy of philosophy, by separating the hypothesis out from speculation.
f) Because it must prove its creativity, the model must have an operating or operational character. However, this trait must not be fetishized. The operating techniques linked to a particular model must be examined with care and suspicion. Fetishization of this characteristic, which blows it up out of all proportion, is the feature of a certain well-defined ideology, namely technocratism. The operational model becomes the practical and theoretical property of a bureaucracy and a technocracy. This brings us back to the most disturbing aspect of structuralism. The fetishization of the concept of the 'model' is part of the strategy of the social group of technocrats."
–Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life; Volume 2, p. 177.
27 August 2010
Cosima von Bonin IDLER, LEZZER, TOSSPIECE, 2010 STEEL, GLASS FIBRE REINFORCED PLASTIC, ALUMINUM, STYROFOAM, LACQUER DELINEATION: COSIMA VON BONIN & DIRK VON LOWTZOW SITTER: LIVIA VON BONIN MANUFACTURING: SAYGEL & SCHREIBER BERLIN MAY AND JUNE 1, 2010 STEEL, LACQUER, PLATE-GLASS,SPRUCE 130 CM x 90 CM x 400 CM SMOKE, 2008 / 2010 (COSIMA VON BONIN & MICHEL WÜRTHLE) PERSPEX, STEEL, LACQUER, NEON LAMP, LIGHT-EMITTING DIODE Photo: Markus Trette © Kunsthaus Bregenz, Cosima von Bonin | |||||
24 August 2010
a comely Dikē throttled an ugly Adikia

"9. Archives are governed by the Laws of Intellectual Propriety as opposed to Property
As the monetary value of the global information economy gains more importance, the abstract value of images get articulated within the language of property and rights. The language of intellectual property normativizes our relationship to knowledge and culture by naturalizing and universalizing narrow ideas of authorship, ownership and property. This language has extended from the world of software databases to traditional archives where copyright serves as Kafka’s gatekeeper and the use of the archive becomes a question of rights management.
Beyond the status of the archive as property lies the properties of the archive which can destabilize and complicate received notions of rights.
They establish their own code of conduct, frame their own rules of access, and develop an ethics of the archive which are beyond the scope of legal imagination. If the archive is a scene of invention then what norms do they develop for themselves which do not take for granted a pre determined language of rights. How do practices of archiving destabilize ideas of property while at the same time remaining stubbornly insistent on questions of ‘propriety’.
Intellectual propriety does not establish any universal rule of how archives collect and make available their artifacts. It recognizes that the archivist play a dual role: They act as the trustees of the memories of other people, and as the transmitters of public knowledge. This schizophrenic impulse prevents any easy settling into a single norm.
Propriety does not name a set of legislated principles of proper etiquette, instead it builds on the care and responsibility that archivists display in their preservation of cultural and historical objects. The digital archive translates this ethic of care into an understanding of the ecology of knowledge, and the modes through which such an ecology is sustained through a logic of distribution, rather than mere accumulation.
It remembers the history of archivists being described as pirates, and scans its own records, files and database to produce an account of itself. In declaring its autonomy, archives seek to produce norms beyond normativity, and ethical claims beyond the law."
—from Pad.Ma, 10 Theses on the Archive15 August 2010
- Richard Lewontin
30 July 2010
Bad Vibel
- Malcolm Gladwell, "The Pitchman." The New Yorker, October 30, 2000
10 July 2010
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
30 June 2010
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.
–Naomi Klein talking to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! (June 28, 2010).
19 June 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
11 June 2010
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.
31 May 2010
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."

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/
28 May 2010
2 April 2010
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)
29 March 2010
23 March 2010
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
20 March 2010
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!
19 March 2010
Campaign
9 March 2010
7 March 2010
5 March 2010
26 February 2010
24 February 2010
FX
- Brecht on theatre: The development of an aesthetic, edited by John Willett
22 February 2010
“policy of ambiguity.”
18 February 2010
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"
13 February 2010
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
11 February 2010
if i don't respond to this by end friday can you remind me to?
8 February 2010
5 February 2010
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
4 February 2010
“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.














