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A post here a few weeks ago mentioned Justin Samson (at John Connelly Presents through Saturday June 18) and went off about hippies in the art world. This was rather ignoring the sci fi/surrealist element, which tips the work more into the culture surfing category from the "makin it real" category, although there is still all that sewing, and those God's Eyes. Images from the show:
The Sturtevant show closing Jun 18 (Sat)--Perry Rubenstein, 23rd St, north side, near 10th ave--is unbelievable. Note-perfect recreations of signature Duchamp works (stool wheel, urinal, bottle rack, snow shovel and many less famous ones), coal sacks on ceiling, films of rotoreliefs projected on wall--all very low, dark lighting, a slightly musty antique feel--exactly what a show of historical Duchamp works would look like, although scholar-devotees like Arturo Schwarz could probably find discrepancies and anachronisms. These recreations were made by Sturtevant over the period from the late '60s to the early '90s. Amazing! Did NOT deserve the sneering review from Ken Johnson in the Times ("they love her in Europe"). Sturtevant stayed on the straight appropriation track where Sherrie Levine went astray with exquisite craftsmanship for the collector tribe and hoky bombast (gold plated urinals, etc).
Connections among Vernor Vinge's sf novel A Deepness in the Sky, the film Jean de Florette, and Joe Sacco's graphic novel/documentary Safe Area Gorazde, for anyone else who was wondering: In Deepness the podmaster (bad guy) has a limited amount of water, organic chemicals, and human laborers in his space hideout, so he must fastidiously conserve all these elements as he waits out several decades for the planetbound alien culture to mature and become ripe for exploitation. In Florette the Depardieu character fights like a Trojan to save a business that is carefully and scientifically worked out but dying for lack of water. In Gorazde, the Bosnian Muslims hoard food and equipment, rotate military duty, and rig generators on rafts in the river so they can have electricity, all for a semblance of a decent life in a city under siege. The common thread is players improvising like mad in the face of scarce resources and a ticking clock. That's more of a plot arc than a theme in the sense of "innovation is good and ennobles mankind." If the podmaster had been successful a race would have been enslaved, and in the other two examples people "did what they felt they had to do" in the face of conscious or institutional villainy, so not sure if there are any uplifiting conclusions of the Heritage Foundation persuasion to be reached. Not that anyone said that.