2007 September Archive at C-MONSTER.net

Monthly Archive for September, 2007

MANHATTAN RETURNED TO INDIAN (for a day)

Published

on September 21, 2007

. 1 Comment

I spent the better part of today sitting on a lawn chair on a piece of sod in the middle of Columbus Avenue in Manhattan. The occasion: Celso had created his own sovereign nation (an art installation complete with a tee pee, a trading post and gambling) on a parking space-sized piece of turf for NYC Park(ing) Day.

The highlights:

6:30 am: Set up a tee pee, trading post (a couple of boxes of American Spirit cigarettes) and gambling center (a dozen lottery cards with Celso’s drawings) on the corner of Columbus and 62nd. Only 14 hours to go.
7:30 am: A lady asks us if the tee pee is for sukkot.
7:45 am: Celso leaves to find a bathroom and two Jehovah’s Witnesses come over and read the Bible to me. I tell them I’m running a trading post and offer to trade them my apple for a Bible. They tell me that God loves me and leave.
8:15 am: A bystander tells us we’re “cuckoo” (complete with disdainful Manhattan eye-roll).
8:41 am: A building maintenance guy asks us if we’re psychics. I offer to tell him his fortune for $20. He respectfully declines.
10:42 am: A cameraman from Fox News takes footage. (We ended up making the evening newscast for a whole second.)

10:44 am: Someone offers us $1 for our parking spot.
12:15 pm: G. Gordon Liddy walks by. I’m so busy talking I don’t get a picture. An opportunity for a sublime family Christmas card quickly evaporates.
12:35 pm: Someone agrees to a trade! In exchange for one American Spirit cigarette, we get half a mini-bottle of hotel hand lotion.
1:45 pm: Four members of the production crew from Lincoln Center come over for lunch. One of them has just spent 36 hours straight working on a VH1 show.
4:35 pm: A Dalmatian and two Shih-Tzu’s hungrily eye our grass.
5:00 pm: The after-work rush begins. Young professionals make themselves at home on our sod. Someone asks if we’ll be serving cocktails.
7:45 pm: Breakdown begins.
8:00 pm: Celso and I review the day’s loot. In exchange for the loosies, we ended up with: 1 yellow highlighter, 1 ballpoint pen with a logo for Schilke Music Products, Inc. in Illinois, 1 purple rubber lizard, 1 box of Jolt chewing gum, 1 zen poem in a photo cartridge (“Zen zen zen zen/Angst angst angst angst/Styley styley styley styley/Chillin’ at the tee pee”), 2 #2 pencils, 1 bag of soy jerky (teriyaki flavored), one postcard of NYC by Jeff Prant, 1 Paper Mate ballpoint pen, 1 graphite pencil and 1 Band-Aid.

For more pics, see my Flickr set.

Posted by C-Monster

Nature Break

Published

c-monster

on September 20, 2007

in C-Monster and Nature Break

. 0 Comments

Photo by C-Monster.

Aerial maneuvers over Brooklyn. See the video here.

Posted by C-Monster

Today’s color dose.

Published

c-monster

on September 19, 2007

in C-Monster, Graffiti and Photography

. 0 Comments

Photo by C-Monster

Nothing rescues the grey blandness of midtown better than a good graff truck. Featured here: SKI, RESKEW and 2ESAE

Posted by C-Monster

Inappropriate?

Published

c-monster

on September 17, 2007

in Art, C-Monster and Incisive Reportage

. 0 Comments

New York Mag reports that these pieces by Wes Lang, featured in a show called Mailorder Monsters at Deitch Gallery were deemed inappropriate by Jeffrey Deitch and yanked from the exhibit–after the show’s debut on Sept. 6th. I was at the opening and managed to snap this shot before the pieces came down. (The show was purportedly an exploration of “new trends in fucked-up figuration.”) The original press release for the show explained the purpose of Lang’s work:

Wes Lang’s monsters come from the cultural detritus of a very fucked-up America. He takes images pushed under the cultural carpet and forces them back into view to be countenanced. He often takes on Native American art, black Americana, the Civil War era, or pornography in his exploration of the deleted scenes of American history.

For the record: I’m hardly in love with Lang’s pieces. It’s the kind of look-at-me stuff that begs for controversy. (And frankly, these images are an old trend in fucked-up figuration, not a new one.) But I’ll defend his right to make them. Art doesn’t always need to be comfortable. But I did see something else there that I found disturbing. And it had nothing to do with the art.

Posted by C-Monster