Categories: "Titles as Context" and

"Greater than Sum of Parts": I Think I Had An Accident (2009), Reuben Lorch-Miller.

What Happened to the Middle Class?

From "Zombie Nation," posted at MUTE, 2006-05-10 by Paul Helliwell :

The term zombie entered the English language as a result of slavery, in Robert Southey’s History of Brazil. William B. Seabrook’s book The Magic Island, a first-person account of Haitian voodoo rituals (like Maya Deren’s much later Divine Horsemen), inspired White Zombie, 1931, the first zombie movie. In this we see a sugar plantation owned by Bela Lugosi and staffed by zombies. One of the shambling beasts falls into the grinding machinery and becomes at one with the product. This images anxiety about stolen labour on the part of both producer and consumer embodied in what at once unites them and keeps them separate – the commodity. By 1968 and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, filmed in de-industrialising Pittsburgh, their passivity was the passivity of the mass non-violent resisters campaigning for civil rights. They lumbered because they were inevitable, the mass in human flesh to be sadistically destroyed, interested only in increasing the number of zombies – apocryphally by eating their victim’s brains. By Dawn of the Dead, 1978, their very existence is overproduction: ‘When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth’ – zombies were the proletarian dead proletarian shopping. ‘But why have they all come to the Mall?’ asks one of the living, ‘I don't know… I guess it must have meant something to them in their lives.’ For Web 2.0 users, like the human survivors in Dawn, incarcerated by the zombie hordes in a shopping mall where everything is free, this anxiety of stolen labour can only increase (despite the muzak). Beneath the glossy reflective surface of the commodity is putrifying zombie flesh – humanity is not superfluous in the age of globalised production but only its ‘creative’ part is recognised (leading to its haunting by the latest in a long line of unquiet Marxist spectres).

More at the link above. See also Elizabeth Warren.

Exhibition: "Non-Profit Margin" (Event # 1 of 3)

Possibly excessively complete visuals here.

This exhibition at CentralTrak is the first of three events in the ART WORK in dallas series inspired by Temporary Services' ART WORK project. The exhibition runs through July 24.
Still to come: the symposium at S.M.U. on June 12 and the program of readings back at CentralTrak on June 19; for more info, see the "ART WORK" in dallas Facebook page or my previous post.

UPDATE: Great review of the show by Erin Starr White in Art Lies, Fall 2010.

For more info about the entire ART WORK in dallas event series, see here.

World's Slowest Porsche

Re- ART WORK, a Dead-On Letter to MoMA

from Hollis Frampton; see a more legible version of all five pages here.

It's hard to resist re-blogging Kim Joon's images; his words clinched it:

This is much like the way in which our lives are conducted in the larger social matrix. I want people to be able to feel the tension between human (in)ability to control desires and situations. That we have less control than we think in defying forces in capital-driven society.

More at WebUrbanist , which says the artist's images are entirely computer-generated; the green-skinned image is a detail from my previous post on the 2010 Dallas Art Fair (click on the image for a larger version).

Good/Bad Art Collective

In the spirit of appreciating our local art history,

"a collective group of artists founded in 1993 in Denton, TX, but have since expanded to include a facility in Brooklyn, NY. Puts on some of the strangest/most surreal/avante garde/most entertaining events i've ever had the pleasure to see. all events operate under one-night-only policy. if you miss it, too bad. some of my favorites over the years:

• Overdue Paintings- Art on Reserve: an exihibit consisting entirely of art borrowed from a public library
• a show where folk bands and space rock bands set up on opposite sides of The Argo, playing at the same time, competing for the audience's attention
• Isolation Chamber: Three members were locked in a room with closed circuit surveilance for three days with nothing but 3 loaves of bread, 3 bottles of water and a see-saw that had to be kept moving at all times or a loud blaring horn would go off.
• Rock Lottery: the names of 25 local musician were randomly drawn from a hat at 10a.m. to form five bands. they had untill that evening to write 3-5 songs (only 1 cover allowed) to perform for the rock show that night. there were 2 subsequent Rock Lotteries after this, and the event was also ripped off without credit by the clubs in Deep Ellum. best band names from the event: Magic Johnson: The Gathering, Gee Gee Allin Alda,
• Benefit 25: Cornhole vs. The Dooms U.K.: one of my personal favorites. a full size wrestling ring was constructed inside The Argo. members of both bands had to come up with wrestler personas for themselves. the two bands then wrestled each other for the headlining slot.
• Very Fake, But Real:a scale replica of the Good/Bad building was constructed, with a roller-rink around it on which rollerderby was played.
• Benefit 31: "One man's ceiling": a "ceiling" was constructed above the stage at Rubber Gloves as though there were an apartment above the stage. fully furnished. throughout the night, as the bands played, the occupant of the apartment grew increaslingly agitated at the noise coming from below, stomped on the ceiling, yelled at his unruly downstairs neighbors and eventually came down and got in a scuffle with one of the bands.
• Benefit 37: Pinch Hitter: there was a sign up sheet at the door, any one member of each band could be replaced for one song by anyone in the audience.
• Good/Bad Burns!: rumors were circulated beforehand that the Good/Bad building was going to burn down that night. anyone driving by that night was treated to smoke machines billowing smoke and fake flames (the kind with orange/red paper having a light shown on it, being blown by a fan) in the windows
• an event where the entire Good/Bad building was filled with styrofoam packing peanuts
• during one rawk show benefit, all the members of E.F.F. played while jumping on a giant trampoline. not being able to take a drum set on the tramp, the drummer was driven around the crowd playing in the back of a pick-up truck
• another personal favorite of mine, 3 frat boys [actually, there were 4] were lured off Fry Street and walled into a white room with only a keg, a microphone [and a video camera], some markers and a window for observers. they shouted into the microphone, scrawled obscinities on the wall, and when the keg was empty, broke down a wall and escaped."

From everything2.com. (Sadly, Good/Bad is defunct.)



Video via Richie Budd, one of the creators of the project (thanks, Richie!) Richie also has work in the current exhibition at CentralTrak (Dallas), The Non-Profit Margin.

Gaiety