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Chris Ashley presents greatest hits from two years of posting daily html drawings. Not to take away from any others, but this one's a beaut, fusing golden section neoplatonism, designer paint swatches, and what I can only see as a pictogram of a hand (Four, July 28, 2005, HTML, 404 x 344 pixels).
The participation of Chris, jimpunk, Linkoln, and me in the empyre listserv forum in June, as "artists who blog," seems to have thrown a spanner in everyone's works. As explained here earlier, it went badly, with the moderators allowing a bunch of faux-academic boors to bash blogs and bloggers. I bailed after two weeks and still wake up in a cold sweat. Shortly thereafter, Ashley went on hiatus from daily html drawing posting (since resumed with added photo-imagery), jimpunk disappeared from Screenfull, followed by Linkoln, after posting a "searching for jimpunk" drawing. Maybe "artists blogging" is a fragile thing, even if the artists aren't fragile people, a pursuit to be cherished and supported as opposed to acting all threatened about.
Steve Gilliard on Republican racial "inclusiveness" post-Katrina:
The unhappiest man with a home today is Ken Mehlman, [Republican National Comittee] chair. All his dreams of cutting into the Democratic base went up in smoke as the [National Review Online] lit their verbal cross and Bush failed like he has always failed. Bush could charm himself into a job, but once he did, the shitty decisions started and kept on coming. Mehlman would be laughed out of the room if he said the GOP was a party of inclusion. Please. You had the President's mother speaking like a Kenyan colonist in a village.If you're feeling glum, the video of the guy (off camera) saying "Go Fuck Yourself, Mr. Cheney" will really lift your spirits. I watched it with a group and we all laughed really hard. Cheney is giving a serious speech--being his usual Mr. In-Control self, even though he failed in Iraq and the only thing he's good at is lining his pockets--and the heckler (a doctor, apparently), who has a very clear voice and sounds like he's about 10 feet away from the VP--completely breaks the flow. He says "Go Fuck Yourself, Mr. Cheney" twice! The reporter comments on it and Cheney attempts to make a lame joke. Cheney likes to pretend he's the only adult in the room, but if you'll you'll recall, "Go fuck yourself" is what he snarled at Patrick Leahy on the Senate floor. It's great to see that when he goes out in public he's not so insulated as to escape hearing that people out there are mad and specifically hate him--him, personally--as the architect of a failed war and failed economic policies.
Congratulations to Stefan Eberstadt, whose sculpture Rucksack Haus adorns the cover of Dwell magazine this month. In the US we'd say "backpack house." I called it sculpture but it's also fully functional architecture; the box, perforated with wraparound windows, skylights, and "floor-windows" hangs suspended by cables from a larger building. The piece has received much attention in Germany and it's great to see it getting ink in the States. It occurs to me that housing such as this might be very useful in a certain flooded city we know. Not being flip here--the city should encourage provisional structures such as this parabuilding, rather than just letting the fat cats raze and redevelop to make New Orleans safe for their ilk.
I was in Munich last month attending the wedding of Stefan to Courtenay Smith, a friend and colleague from my Texas years and who is now curator of Lothringer Dreizehn, an art space located at Lothringer Strasse 13 in Munich. I had a great time; best wishes to both.