DRILL BABY DRILL

(DRILL BABY DRILL by heathendude via Delicious Ghost)

 

This is how I feel this election season. I feel like I’m about to be
trapped in a vampire rave and will end up in a post-apocalyptic world
before I know it. Of course, in this fantasy, I survive, because I
always survive in these things. Unless I don’t and become an awesome
poltergeist. 

This video makes me think of a post on San Antonio’s Emvergeoning by Ben Judson on lectures by The Art Guys and David Adjaye :

"Where David Adjaye revealed something about a city by imbuing a
building with a different kind of meaning, the Art Guys revealed
something about a city through an act of absurdity. In architecture, so
often forgotten among its inhabitants, Adjaye pushes us to awareness
with an overriding sense of intentionality and purpose; in art, so
often overanalyzed by its devotees, the Art Guys push us to awareness
with unrelenting whimsy."

 (Animal Charm’s Pet Programming) 

I think the same principles that Adjaye applies to cities are at work in DRILL BABY DRILL, as they are in the work of Animal Charm and TV Carnage,
two groups that highjack the detritus of television and reconfigure it
to create new meanings through a similar "unrelenting whimsy" that The Art Guys probably recognize.

Applying this sort of aesthetic to political discourse might do wonders
for the left (I know, I know, the term is problematic, whatever). It
dissapoints me that art in politics in 2008 seems to mean that boring Shepherd Fairey poster.
Sure it’s iconic, but it’s also a derivative snoozefest. It doesn’t
make me think about much. I know the stakes are high but so should our
standards. It’s not elitist to have high standards, it’s smart and
effective. 

 

(Bryan Boyce’s State of the Union) 

Byan Boyce
is an artist that has effectively used this dadaist culture jamming to
make a leftist point. Where is he now? Where are the Bryan Boyces of
2008?

 

 

 

 

UPDATE: Apparently even boring political art can get you arrested. Shepherd Fairey was arrested during the DNC (WTF?):

“Get on the fucking ground or we’re going to kick you in the fucking
head!” Fairey quotes them as saying. The artists were thrown down,
handcuffed and arrested, charged with “interference and posting
unauthorized posters.”

 (via Artkrush)