The Digest. 05.06.08.

Can you hear me now? (Photo by Celso.)

• Video of wrecking crew taking down Justin Dustin Shuler’s car-kabob sculpture, Spindle, in Berwyn, Illinois—under the cover of darkness—to make way for a fucking Walgreens.
• Newsflash: Art=Currency.
• Crap you can buy to “de-brand” your home. (Via NotCot.)
• This’ll kill an afternoon: The 50 Greatest Commercial Parodies of All Time. (Via Murketing.)
• Reviewing the reviewers: Art to Go takes on the Washington Post’s review of Murakami.
• Biopiracy.
• African art: hot, hot, hot?
• EcoArt Blog draws an interesting parallel between Bauhaus Earthworks and Indian burial mounds.
• Artist Alex Metcalf “listens” to the trees. Literally. And it’s pretty damn cool.
• Trippy ‘net art of the day, courtesy of Peter Baldes. (Via AFC.)
• Photo Essay: The UK Government Art Collection.
• Warhol’s Mao may sell for a buttload of $$$ in Hong Kong auction.
• Trailer from Line of Beauty and Grace, a film about Jock Sturges.
• Today’s art-in-the-trash find: A medieval processional cross.
• In Orlando (as everywhere else): Using art to shill real estate: “Condo developers and their marketing teams ‘understand that art attracts the kinds of demographics they want.’” (Via AJ.)
• Fighting over the United Flight 93 Memorial in Pennsylvania.
• The Cascais Music Conservatory in Portugal.
• SCI-Arc’s Blobwall.
• Looks like the Blobwall: a NYT chart showing American consumer spending. Great seeing that sizeable chunk devoted to fast food. (Via Monoscope.)
• In California, architectural mega-developments that serve as mini police states: No bicycles, no skateboards, no dogs over 25 pounds. And no independent thought.
• Speaking of mega-developments: Photos of the rising Steven Holl city-within-a-city project in Beijing.
• A zero-energy photovoltaic wall in Beijing that will soon start screening art videos. (Via NotCot.)
• Graff of the Day: Grito, RGTD and Aryz in Barcelona.
• The Telegraph’s Richard Dorment on Banksy: He liked him, then he didn’t, and now he kinda likes him again.
• Photos from Peabe’s solo show in Chicago.
• On Sunday, I went to the Graffiti Research Lab film and panel (lots of sausage) at MoMA and then I had the opportunity to watch a bunch of dancers get jiggy next to a Donald Judd sculpture. (See the video.) It was an interesting night. (Update: Crank Junky on Flickr gave me a heads up on this link, where you can download the full GRL film.)
• An Iron Man/Obama billboard jam.
• The Daily Show on our Bataan Death March of a Democratic primary process.
• Vintage Latin American Music of the Day: Ella.
• Your moment of Beethoven’s Fifth, Sid Caesar-style. (Via VSL.)