Saturday, January 24, 2004
AND THE WINNER IS. . .
Scott Burgess shares the background on the winner of a truly prestigious award -- or at least it once seemed to be prestigious:
You may have missed the announcement of year's Sonning Prize, a biannual award for "outstanding contribution to the advancement of European civilization."
Joining past winners like Winston Churchill, Albert Schweitzer, Niels Bohr, Bertrand Russell and Vaclav Havel will be Mona Hatoum, a Palestinian artist now living in London. . .
For example, it's not hard to see why the prize committee was impressed by Roadworks. As one commentator put it: "By tying a pair of military-type Doc Martens boots to her bare ankles and dragging them behind her in the street, Hatoum created a metaphor for the frustration and helplessness characteristic of the times."
Powerful stuff.
Entrails Carpet is equally impressive. As the curator cited above notes: "although the rubbery surface texture of Entrails Carpet might repel the viewer at first, the sinewy undulations of the endless intestinal passage become abstractions the longer the viewer gazes at them."
Hold it. Wait a second. Is it just me, or do you too sense an Edward Saidish, "post-colonial" moment approaching? Oh, yes . . . and here it is now:
The video installation So Much I Want to Say exemplifies
"my experience of living in the West as a person from the Third World, about being an outsider, about occupying a marginal position, being excluded, being defined as ‘Other’ or as one of ‘Them’."
Oh, being "Other". That less than original thought should at some point be forced into some unfortunate graduate student's paper.
Scott continues:
Perhaps this German curator best sums up her contribution:
"she repeatedly addresses the violence inherent in institutional power structures and, by contrast, the isolation and vulnerability of the individual."
Or, as another great social commentator once put it:
"Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I'm bein' repressed!"
Now that she is no longer a Liberal Democratic front bencher -- and wouldn't you know it, all because she was trying to understand where suicide bombers were coming from -- Jenny Tonge will undoubtedly have an increasing amount of free time to be "challenged" and "confronted" by "artists" like that one.
Jenny, enjoy. ¶ by Robert, Saturday, January 24, 2004
Scott Burgess shares the background on the winner of a truly prestigious award -- or at least it once seemed to be prestigious:
You may have missed the announcement of year's Sonning Prize, a biannual award for "outstanding contribution to the advancement of European civilization."
Joining past winners like Winston Churchill, Albert Schweitzer, Niels Bohr, Bertrand Russell and Vaclav Havel will be Mona Hatoum, a Palestinian artist now living in London. . .
For example, it's not hard to see why the prize committee was impressed by Roadworks. As one commentator put it: "By tying a pair of military-type Doc Martens boots to her bare ankles and dragging them behind her in the street, Hatoum created a metaphor for the frustration and helplessness characteristic of the times."
Powerful stuff.
Entrails Carpet is equally impressive. As the curator cited above notes: "although the rubbery surface texture of Entrails Carpet might repel the viewer at first, the sinewy undulations of the endless intestinal passage become abstractions the longer the viewer gazes at them."
Hold it. Wait a second. Is it just me, or do you too sense an Edward Saidish, "post-colonial" moment approaching? Oh, yes . . . and here it is now:
The video installation So Much I Want to Say exemplifies
"my experience of living in the West as a person from the Third World, about being an outsider, about occupying a marginal position, being excluded, being defined as ‘Other’ or as one of ‘Them’."
Oh, being "Other". That less than original thought should at some point be forced into some unfortunate graduate student's paper.
Scott continues:
Perhaps this German curator best sums up her contribution:
"she repeatedly addresses the violence inherent in institutional power structures and, by contrast, the isolation and vulnerability of the individual."
Or, as another great social commentator once put it:
"Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I'm bein' repressed!"
Now that she is no longer a Liberal Democratic front bencher -- and wouldn't you know it, all because she was trying to understand where suicide bombers were coming from -- Jenny Tonge will undoubtedly have an increasing amount of free time to be "challenged" and "confronted" by "artists" like that one.
Jenny, enjoy. ¶ by Robert, Saturday, January 24, 2004
