Feed The People

Damien Hirst once again validates my unsavory perception of collectors and auction houses.

“We’re still appealing to a small percentage of the world’s population,” said Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art in London. “These people are sophisticated and they still have budgets for art.”

Maybe Sotheby’s can stage an auction to bail out the U.S. economy?

Rudy, is Wasilla cosmopolitan enough?

Our atelier of sculptors, hard at work creating busts of Andy Warhol from their visual memory.

Please read my review of the current Sterling Ruby show at the LA MOCA in West Hollywood. It is also on enxuto.net.

Friday, August 15th, 1 - 4 PM
Berman School of Ceramic Arts
5622 Cahuenga Blvd, North Hollywood, CA 91601

MAP

Erica Love and I are hosting a communal ceramics event. We need people who are super-excited about clay to participate in making the bust of a well-known person. The identity of this late celebrity will be revealed before you begin sculpting.

All materials and guidance will be provided for free, however, we require that participants donate their final piece to the project.

Email ceramicproject@gmail.com if interested.

My pictures were featured in the blog I Heart Photograph. The site includes daily posts of new photo work.

A nice little piece on JL Godard published in the New Yorker several years ago.

Aubrey de Grey is chairman of the Methuselah Foundation. I stumbled upon the foundation’s Understanding Aging Conferencat at UCLA’s Royce Hall in late June. De Grey offered the keynote speech outlining the principals of regenerative medicine, or in other words, immortality.

De Grey is a thin man whose most prominent feature is a large beard that is more shaman than Cambridge-educated scientist. His appearance was followed by a series of talks by clinical scientists researching topics that could, in some way, stop aging. Most of the science surrounded stem cell research and regenerating dying cells.

The Methuselah Foundation is backed by the deep pockets of hedge-fund manager and PayPal founder Peter Thiel. He contributed $3.5 million to the Methuselah Mouse prize for researchers who can extend the lifespan of a mouse. These advances would then be directed to extending human life indefinitely. As a reality, regenerative medicine would probably be hijacked for divisive political and theological debates, indefinitely stalling any kind of practical scientific applications.

If the history of art is a part of social history understood as a mastery of nature by humankind (described by Max Weber as a process of rationalization) then immortality seems to be the province of the arts as well as science. The case can be made that de Grey is constructing a fantasy that will one day be delivered through science.  But this form of speculation may be best considered after viewing a documentary on the topic.

Below is the first part of a BBC program on Aubrey de Grey available in its entirety on Youtube. Cheers!

An MTA employee taking photographic portraits of co-workers at the Metropolitan stop on the G train in Brooklyn. This activity appeared to be happening during regular work hours.