‘Fake Column’ (2002) by Jose Dávila
Tag Archives: DIY
Bruce Nauman
‘Body Pressure’, a 1974 performance piece by Bruce Nauman.
The performer is instructed (through a poster hung on the wall) to press himself against the wall in various positions. The poster is also a free edition.
The text from this poster is below.
Body Pressure
Press as much of the front surface of
your body (palms in or out, left or right cheek)
against the wall as possible.
Press very hard and concentrate.
Form an image of yourself (suppose you
had just stepped forward) on the
opposite side of the wall pressing
back against the wall very hard.
Press very hard and concentrate on the image pressing very hard.
(the image of pressing very hard)
press your front surface and back surface
toward each other and begin to ignore or
block the thickness of the wall. (remove
the wall)
Think how various parts of your body
press against the wall; which parts
touch and which do not.
Consider the parts of your back which
press against the wall; press hard and
feel how the front and back of your
body press together.
Concentrate on the tension in the muscles,
pain where bones meet, fleshy deformations that occur under pressure; consider
body hair, perspiration, odors (smells).
This may become a very erotic exercise.
Sofia Leiby
Work from ‘Salutary plank’ (2010) by Sofia Leiby
Screenprint on found book page.
‘Salutary Plank’ is a modest memorial ‘plaque’ installed at Ox-Bow School of Art commemorating the absence of happiness in a specific domain, or, the infeasibility of nostalgic fulfillment in the modern “natural” landscape.
Ken Okiishi
Stills from ‘(Goodbye to) Manhattan’ by Ken Okiishi
Okiishi has been living between New York and Berlin since 2001, and (Goodbye to) Manhattan combines materials from that experience (filmed between 2006 and 2009) into a seventy-two-minute, semiautobiographical transposition of Woody Allen’s classic Manhattan. Okiishi’s cast of characters is pared down to Manhattan‘s three female protagonists, interpreted by key players in the artist’s actual New York/Berlin life; its script is the Google translation, into English, of the German version of Allen’s original.
Watch the video here
Erin Shireff
Stills from ‘Live feed’ by Erin Shireff
In Shireff’s online project Live Feed (2007–ongoing) we can watch her walking around a vaguely human-shaped mound of clay that dominates her tiny studio. Though this is supposedly a ‘live feed’ of artistic creation, despite Shirreff’s constant movement the clay monolith lies inert, failing to take shape as a sculpture.
Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys
Pictures of the exhibition ‘Objekte als Freunde’ (‘Objects as friends’) by Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys at the Kestnergesellschaft in Hannover, on view until August 16, 2011.
The exhibition consisted of 168 photographs of installations of the most random objects from 1 euro-shops or thrift stores, all of the same size and very detailed.
From different corners of the room came a generic, dull, computerized voice describing different colours and their associations and meaning. This sound belonged to the animation shown below.
Fischli & Weiss
Untitled (Tate), by Fischli & Weiss was commissioned to form part of the opening displays of Tate Modern when it opened in 2000. Its collection of everyday objects, resembling a workshop, were each individually handmade and in part designed to mimic the working environment of the Tate Modern gallery prior to it’s opening.
