A Chicago court has condemned the Chicago Parks District for the destruction of a public art installation in one of its parks. Wildflower Works was a 1.5 acre field of wildflowers created in 1984 by artist Chapman Kelley in Chicago’s Grant Park . Kelley described the garden as a painting in the summer when in bloom and a sculpture in the winter. Chapman Kelley, along with friends and supporters, maintained the installation over the years with their own time and resources. In 2004 the Parks District, without consulting Kelley, reduced it by half and surrounded it with a knee-high hedge and closely cropped lawn.
Kelley, who was 71 at the time, sued under the Federal Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), legislation created in 1990 to protect public art. VERA requires that artists be notified at least 90 days before public art is altered, removed or destroyed. Kelley was given only a few days notice, not enough time to take legal action or remove the flowers himself. The court valued the art work at $1.5 million.
The decision comes in the midst of a municipal battle to save Grant Park and Bicentennial Plaza from bulldozers and redevelopment. A consortium of private interests have proposed a new 100,000 square foot museum to built in the plaza.
The Park was created in Chicago’s downtown on the shoreline of Lake Michigan as a permanent green space in 1836. Chicago residents enjoy less greenspace per capita than any of the other 10 largest cities in the U.S.
For more information about the fight to save Grant Park go here.
Accompanying photo by Chapman Kelley.
Posted by Michael Lithgow on October 11, 2007 in
ANKO | When is a Threat Not a Threat? | "Remember those three inert grenades I bought? Here’s what became of the first. I’m modifying them under the common theme of “When is a threat not a threat”. I came up with the idea in planning some public art projects. If you wheat paste or paint, it’s vandalism. Leave a sculpture somewhere and they’ll think it’s a bomb. We all remember what happened with the aquateen hunger force movie promotions, yes? No one wants to get arrested, so these won’t leave the house."
Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet. (Mark Twain)
Posted by Rob Maguire on May 8, 2007 in
September 11 triggered many things, but one of the most pernicious is the rise of fear-based and paranoid cultural norms. This Spring, artist kanarinka will run the entire evacuation route in Boston and measure its distance in breaths. She will have recording and broadcasting equipment strapped to her body. The breaths will be amplified and broadcast into the public space around her.
The project will include running performances in public space (2007), a web podcast of breaths (2007), and a gallery installation of the archive of breaths (2008). The performances and website are presented by iKatun for the 2007 Boston Cyberarts Festival. The project will be on view at the Cyberarts Gala on Fri, May 4, 2007, 6:30pm at the Hotel @ MIT, Cambridge, MA.
You can have a listen to kanarinka’s podcasts by going here.
kanarinka is a member of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things, who recently launched the New American Dictionary, the Fear and Security Edition. .
Posted by Michael Lithgow on May 2, 2007 in
HA SCHULT | Trash People | Creating armies of human sculptures out of household waste, HA Schult has installed mass crowds of his Trash People at famous locations across the world. This particular installation was at lake Stellisee, Switzerland.
A fresh yellow street sign silently instructs Toronto's pedestrians to demonstrate a respect that has long been absent from sidewalk's of Canada's largest city. Homeless sleeping: QUIET, reads the metallic notice, freshly bolted to a downtown lamppost.
The creative genius of Ontario College of Art and Design student Mark Daye, this sign is one of many he designed and erected in downtown Toronto, subverting official signage to draw attention to the city's homelessness crisis. The others sport similar messages: "Homeless warming grate. Please keep clear." "Please have change ready for the homeless." "Homelessness has nothing to do with lack of shelter."
In an interview with the Toronto Star, Daye explained his rationale behind the project. "I started thinking about the way sign systems work. There's official signage. There's advertising. So I thought, what would happen if I used official-looking signage, but I put an unofficial message in it?"
Simple, subtle, effective--just enough to draw the ire of government officials. Lacking both a sense of humor and compassion, the City of Toronto has been feverishly removing the unapproved messages in a bid to cleanse the city of any subversive signage.
"You can't do that," city spokesperson Brad Ross told the Star. "We have an encroachment bylaw, so we've been removing them as we come across them. The signs that the city (has) are way-finding and also letting people know what the restrictions are with respect to parking and stopping and turning and those kinds of things. They're strictly for motorists to understand what the bylaws are on the roads." By this rationale city workers should parade around town removing billboards for cologne and car dealerships.
Although Daye's signs will not last long on the streets of Hogtown, they are already being immortalized online. For more photos of the signs, follow these links: [1], [2].
(Photo: Toronto Star)
Posted by Rob Maguire on April 8, 2007 in
Memory is political. Refugee Nation is an artist intervention into the collective memory of Americans and Laotians about America's 13 year secret war in Laos.
During the month of April, four artists -- Leilani Chan, Ova Saopeng, Mali Kounchao and Steve Arounsack -- will be retracing, documenting and creating with the memories of the secret war. The artists will be traveling in Southern California and in Laos recording stories from the perspective of the refugees who fled to America and those who were turned away.
The artists will also be hosting community gatherings on Saturday afternoons at SPARC Gallery in Los Angeles, inviting members of the Laotian community to share their stories about the war. For those who can’t attend in person, the artists can be reached by email or phone (for details go here). Stories and images can also be contributed online by going to the artists myspace place - here.
The installation will involve workshops in performance, oral history interviewing, and mental health training; an interactive kiosk that will allow audiences to view oral histories and drawings, a timeline of the secret bombings with pictures, videos and narratives, and information about the Laotian Diaspora around the world; and an installation using family photographs and immigration portraits of Laotian refugees affected by the war. Stories will be woven into performances that incorporate poetry, song, dance, and martial arts into an examination of the complexities faced by Laotians who have fled to the United States in the wake of the Vietnam War.
The culminating public event will be Saturday, April 28th 7:00pm-10:00Pm. For more information about the exhibition go here.
America’s secret illegal war in Laos began in 1962 with the CIA training some 30,000 indigenous Hmong tribesmen to fight a civil war that threw the country into turmoil. Over 240,000 Laotians fled the country to the United States. Much about this war still remains hidden. For more info, wikipedia is probably as good a start as any.
Posted by Michael Lithgow on April 7, 2007 in
For a great blog about art crime, check out Jo-Anne Green, Michelle Riel and Helen Thorington’s March 6, 2007 blog titled Poetic Terrorism and Guerilla Art in the 21st Century. They provide an excellent and thoughtful overview of art crime in today’s paranoid times. Their article begins with the origins of the term “guerilla art” and then offers an excellent introduction to the work of activist artists including bansky, Mode 2, the Guerilla Girls, Steve Kurtz, the yes men, the Venice Billboard Correction Committee, Jason Sprinkle, Nazrin Mazoi, Christopher Boisvert, Zanny Begg, Fernando Botero – and even the January arrest of Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevendorf, two Boston artists who were hired by Turner Communications to install LED lit cartoons around the city. It freaked out local authorities and the artists have been arrested for creating a bomb scare and causing panic. Freaky times.
To read their excellent blog go to networked_performance.
Posted by Michael Lithgow on March 7, 2007 in
| Games |
