Teaching Capitalism to Nature: Wealth of Nations: Book 2: Chapter 3
“In the ongoing dispute between the environment and the political economy, it occurs to me that nature fails to understand the fundamental characteristics which define recent economic developments. Perhaps if we could teach our environment about the prosperity of a capitalist model, then nature might surrender its unreasonable demands, which have up to this point, inhibited economic growth.
We certainly cannot teach environmentalism to capitalists”. Clint Sleeper
Topp & Dubio in a street ongoing project Series of random uninspired moments in the daily practice of Topp & Dubio. All pictures are taken in the hometown of the artists.
Topp & Dubio study and scrutinise reality from a conceptual starting point, often arising from sudden moments of curiosity and a desire to explore parallel worlds. Their projects flawlessly deal with fact and fiction, the concept of art and daily life, the personal and the public, observation and participation, authenticity, history and documentation, the romance of imagination and the absurdity of reality.
From the small book “Photos of seagulls on the roof of the NGV while Tony Elwood delivers the opening speech at the NGV Art Book Fair 2016. (First printed Melbourne 7:30pm, Friday 29 April, 2016).”
A5, 12 pages, black and white laser, saddle stitched, open edition.
“The booklet was part of a larger project I did called Making Public the Making Public. In 2016 the National Gallery of Victoria had their second Art Book Fair and instead of selling books at a stall, I set up to make books that responded to the site.
There were 12 booklets in total (‘seagulls’ was the most popular), produced very quickly and with minimal equipment during the two and a half days of the fair. I made them and gave them away for free during the fair”.
Her absence fills the spring Her absence fills the room You follow her absence around the room
A 4-dimensional absence You follow her absence around and around and around Her absence follows your eyes around the room
A repeated absence, the same room (I follow your absence around the room) You follow her absence and you find yourself alone in the room
I follow your absence around the room, repeating You follow her absence around your life I follow your absence through the spring
Her absence leaks into cyclical time The slow walk around the room with her absence Nothing in the room except her absence
Your absence is watching me Your absence sees me watching Your absence remains with me
With an obsession for personal documentation I have kept a detailed daily account of my online life in now discontinued or steadily fading online social media platforms(Twitter, MSN Messenger Chat Logs, Blogger, etc.). I select passages from these platforms and submit them into a repetition text-based algorithm. This algorithm selects, at random, text ranging from single words to four consecutive words. It deconstructs the inputted text in this pattern, providing a collection of disjointed paragraphs, which I then decipher. I select stand out phrases/word patterns and use these as the base for creating my piece titles and accompanying writing. The end result is an entirely new interpretation of words written in the past, during a time when the words had completely different connotations. In this new presentation the words are repurposed, creating a forced cycle of repetition.
Dear Alice, For Three Milks I am doing a performance where I am driven in a car very slowly from my house to the house where the three milks are. It is a tiny way, just around a corner. The drive is called Grace Slick. She wrote the song White Rabbit. The first time she was involved in White Rabbit the song was long but not many people heard it, and the second time around, the song was tiny but millions still hear it. It was as though the smaller song took a pill and slotted into the bigger one, and yet the bigger one is tiny in length. If the drive is called Grace Slick, who am I and what am I doing inside? I am not sure. I’m day dreaming about your part. On 1st September it would be great if you could enter the event, anytime is fine, walk to a surface and put down a piece of paper very slowly. I’m sure people would notice. The paper could have the Three Milks story on it after all, and maybe after all of this, Three Milks is like a fairytale that has undergone a transformation in disguise. Love, Sarah SarahBoulton.tumblr.com
Anonymous.
It is said to be part of the project of Koki Tanaka for Skulptur-Projekte Münster 2017.
NB (9/22): The work is indeed Koki Tanaka’s and is part of the project How To Live Together
2013 – on going
Paper, USB flashdrive
24 x 16 x 1 in each frame (60 x 40 x 2.5 cm)
Every month, the artist is writing her diary daily on two pages of paper using a vanishing ink pen – recollecting onto paper the day’s causal occurrences, personal thoughts, private moments and uncensored reflections as they resurfaced in her mind.
Once the two white pages are covered with these ephemeral notes, she scans them before the text evaporates. In six hours, each word has slowly and organically disappeared from the page, taking away with it the weight of the content and the contribution that this daily recollection has for the present and the future. At the end of each day, all that remains are two blank, white pages, lightly marked by the pen’s etchings, waiting for the next day’s narrations.
The same process is repeated each day of the month on the same two pages. After that, the two blank pages of paper that bore the weight of the artist’s hand and personal history are framed and publically displayed while the scanned documents, the only traces that the process itself really happened, are stored on a USB key casually taped behind each frame.
A series of 16 iron cubes (11cm x 11cm x 11cm).
Each cube shows an engraved signature of the artist, the year of production and a unique number (1-16).
Inside one of the 16 cubes a gold bar of 50 grams is hidden. The value of this gold bar (on the day of purchase 14-06-2017) is € 1852. In the other 15 cubes a bar is hidden made of iron of exactly the same weight. Each of the 16 cubes are for sale.
The destruction of a block will risk legal prosecution by the artist or by one of the other owners.The cubes are protected by copyright and by the concept of the collective dream.
In 2014 Frank Warren printed 3000 postcards, addressed to himself on the front, the backside left blank.
He handed the cards to passers-by in the streets and public buildings and asked them to write a personal secret on it and then to post the card anonymously.
Since 2014 PostSecret received and collected more than a million postcards.
Every Sunday a small selection of newly received cards is posted on the website Postsecret.com.
170417 Replacement piece
A stone was taken from where it had weathered and another left in its place.
Memory, time, marker
Easter Sunday, Rocky River floodplain, Ohio, 2017
