Pan-aud-icon?

A sound sculpture titled "panopticon"

I was very excited by the notion of an aural panopticon, then I realized that the title of the work has to do with the shape and not the concept.

But really, what would an aural panopticon be like?

This?

What if you are not on the phone? Hard to imagine for those born after 1990, I know, but a larger number of the world still live most hours of their days off the phone.

Watergate and X-files telling us that smoke detectors are all bugged and under your desk there's a tape recording rolling?

Frida Khalo

I was thinking a lot about Frida Khalo today and I thought to look up some graffiti inspired by her. I am not surprised - but almost all of the graffiti only includes her face! I loved everything I found, but the following is one of my favorite ones, located in Oakland, California. It is a stencil!

In light of recent events...

Osama in graffiti.

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Osama Che Laden

in light of last night.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiagocarvalho/2865468262/

(2 martyrs on one t-shirt for the price of one!)

If Hitler had been a Hippy

So, this is Flag, the Jasper Johns' painting I was referring to in my second question. Johns did several other versions of it, but this one was the first to be exhibited in 1957, and it looks like it startled the art world at the time: Alfred Barr of MoMA wanted to purchase it but he was afraid that it might be seen as unpatriotic by his board, so he arranged for someone else to buy it and later donate it to the museum.




As for the title of this post, it's a reference to the work of Jake and Dinos Chapman who defaced three paintings done by Adolf Hitler when he was young. These pictures initially featured gloomy landscapes, vistas of Roman Ruins and still life; the Chapmans added light, rainbows and psychedelic colors. It's an interesting case of defacement, since no one really knew about the existence of these paintings before (apparently Hitler did them when he was trying to enter art school in Vienna), nor was anyone eager to defend them as works of art that deserve respect, after the Chapmans brought them to light.

So here they are:






Some serious "psychedelic goth", ain't it ?

Chairman who?

Other than the fact that I find any parodies on Mao invariably hilarious (perhaps only because the "original" Mao or Mao portraits are so serious) I also wonder if Taussig's point on Sympathetic Magic is time/place contingent.

Obviously 20 years ago in China these images will be defacement much akin to the naked statues of Australian royals, but today they were accepted as jokes. Taussig did say that jokes and unmasking work the same way. Has Mao's death and China's modernization changed how these parodies would be viewed?

What is defacement in one context, could it be a non-defacement in another, and maybe even become art?

Defacement and Graffiti

I suppose that being that defacement is the last topic in this course, it runs really well with my weekly graffiti theme. I love when I am in subway stations and I see that people have physically played with the advertisements. Besides with magazines, these advertisements represent the rare occasions we are actually face to face with ads, that aren't mediated; we can physically touch and rip and write on these advertisements. With that said, here is poster boy!

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