That’s an image from the video installation DeadSee, which was on display earlier this year (and may be still, for all I know) at MOMA in NYC. And here’s a video of the latter portion of the work, probably best viewed with the sound off, because of all the tourist-generated rhubarb in the background:
And the artist’s statement:
In the wall-sized projection DeadSee (2005), a cord connects five hundred watermelons, creating a six-meter, spiral-shaped raft on the salt-saturated waters of the Dead Sea. Secured within this sculptural configuration, the artist floats with an arm outstretched toward a collection of “wounded” fruits, their intensely red flesh revealed. The nautilus form gradually unfurls, leaving the surface of the water a nearly monochromatic azure and the artist’s body exposed.
Today, shocking news has emerged of the sub-human conditions in which the Chinese Olympic Team (identities obscured here for their protection) is kept. Sadly, it appears that the famously controlling Chinese government is taking no chances on defections, forcing the diminutive athletes to train in specially-segregated gyms. The armed guards in attendance insistently deny to curious passers-by that the amazing feats of prowess observable are those of the products of Beijing‘s notorious “Population Density Optimization EugenicsProgram, claiming somewhat lamely that the entire thing is nothing more than a “cicada circus,” the bigger, better Chinese version of a flea circus.
The miniature sculpture works of Olympics sport events, pole jump, weight lifting, parallel bars, tennis ball and football made by handicraftsman Guo Futian, 52, are displayed at his home in downtown Beijing city, China, 04 August 2008. Maohou is a Chinese folk art form, and a form of Miniature Art. Artists build miniature sculptures using cicada sloughs and Magnolia buds. An old Beijing artform, Maohou sculpture came into being during the Qing dynasty. The most common Maohou sculptures feature dancing or posturing monkeys, with Magnolia buds used for making its body, cicada torso used for the limbs, and cicada antennae used for the tail. Legend has it that a Beijing herbal medicine shopkeeper designed such miniature toys for his son using the two traditional medicine ingredients since he was too poor to buy any toys.
MistressCowfish suggested I start a group, because after Friending people, Grouping is teh hawtness on Facebook, which sounds to my elderly ears like a rave gotten completely out of control, but whatever.
I have Grouped.
If you’re on Facebook, you’ll find me at The Deadbeat Club (cue Metro‘s bitter humour…).
Inspired by glorious deadbeats throughout history such as the authors of Frugal Indulgents, Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde, Quentin Crisp, Vincent Van Gogh, and that guy … you know … that guy whose name I can’t remember, who destroyed his priceless collections and then killed himself rather than let the collection fall into Ceasar’s hands. See, if Boris would join the group he could tell us who that was.
Yes, surely in a Deadbeat Club there’s some room for rich, sore losers. Especially if they’re buying.
Ladies, Gentlemen, and the Undecided, please raise your glasses, mugs, or sippy cups to our anthem:
I was good, I could talk
A mile a minute,
On this caffeine buzz I was on
We were really hummin'
We would talk every day for hours
We belong to the deadbeat club
Anyway we can,
We're gonna find something
We'll dance in the garden
In torn sheets in the rain
We're the deadbeat club
We're the deadbeat club
Going down to Allen's for
A twenty-five cent beer
And the jukebox playing real loud,
"Ninety-six tears"
We're wild girls walkin' down the street
Wild girls and boys going out for a big time
Let's go crash that party down
In Normaltown tonight
Then we'll go skinny-dippin'
In the moonlight
We're wild girls walkin' down the street
Wild girls and boys going out for a big time
Anyway we can
We're gonna find something
We'll dance in the garden
In torn sheets in the rain
Chorus
Oh no! Here they come
The members of the deadbeat club
Yes, Rodney Scott McLagan of Hobart, Australia, hereinafter and for the rest of his natural life at the very least known as Octopus Sex Man, has been released from custody with a $1500 fine and a suspended four-month sentence for possessing 31,000 images of pony, snake, dog, tiger and octopus porn.
“Without the opportunity for normal sexual relationships fantasy is often indulged. It also emerges from the report that you are particularly self-conscious about your teeth.”
It is reportedly the first case of British teeth being responsible for a shokushu goukan fetish. Still, better that than throwing him back to try to swim in the human gene pool; It’s polluted enough in those waters. The Zeta Male is (surprisingly, given his usual body composition) the very opposite of buoyant.
raincoaster 