Political Funeral
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Political Funeral // Bring Out Your Dead! A/ In the time of the Black Plague, Town Criers urged the townspeople to bring their dead into the streets to show the enormous loss and suffering of the disease. Now ACT UP calls on the public to memorialize our dead with ashes, photographs and memorabilia, and demonstrate our grief and anger at the State. A(TUP Full funding of state health c^-^rO^rafns. AIDS programs, inclu^n^^^l^P, tuberculosis and other coi^fcinf^mle diseases No cuts to SSI, AFDC, l^edi-C^^sistance prograi^§ Oi State tunaeame yx V €>' V Endorse alternative treatments o uhd Cal OSHA '.y"^ Keei Ihe growing AIDS cas^foa^dT Repeal proposistion 13 1 health care in the state prison system No more corporate coddling Stonyete Wilsons grab of local property tax revenues State Capitol Building, Sacramento Friday Oct. 29,12 noon For transportation or other info CALL: 415/252*9200 Disaster .J: Sincerely, Ij ^ncerely. flnRHPHDNE/FllXZflP HOilEI tITII iNDHY, JULY ZO, 199Z ACT is once UP/GOLDEN GATE again taiggting Astra Pharmaceuticals with an international phone/£ix zap on After six months of negodating meetings, letter writing, and demonstrations by Act Up and other aids activists, Astra refuses to lower the price of their anti-cmv drug Foscamct. The international phone/^ zap is meant to continue the of the outrageous price of Foscamet, which is the highest priced aids drug in history, at also called Foscavir, is one ofthe simplest compounds to manufitcture. Astra will not negotiate and will not drop the price. Astra is on the lives of people with aids. Astra has responded poorly to the community for yean. San Francisco activist Terry Sutton was told to choose between his sight and his life when Astra refused to allow him access to Foscamet if he continued taking azt. Now, Astra is robbing and the American public blind with their drug pricing. Monday, July 20, Astra will host a reception/symposium at the International aids Conference in Amsterdam. To coincide with demonstrations at the Astra symposium, activists at home can increase the agitation by hudng and phoning the following numben on July 20th (use the enclosed ^ sheet): Stefan Soivell U Vice President of Finance Astra Phannaceuticais Phone: 508-366-1100 Fac 508-366-7466 0 Sarah MartiiKHunley Astra Keproentative Phone: 508-366-1100 exL 2297 Ted Bitner Hfl and Knmvfton (Astra's PR fnn) 415-78! 2430 Furthermore, we ask that your fnends and families continue to harass Astra, mail Astra copies of the enclosed flyer. Send postcards saying Too bad I can't see this, I'm going blind because I can't aflbid Foscamet." P. 1 NOV 04 '92 02:35Pr'1 SF filDS^fPUyORTIOfl, ,. 3 November 1992 DATE: G'dali Braverman TO; ' ACT-UP/Golden Gate SENT TO FAX #: FROM; Lea Pappag NUMBER PAGES (INCLUDING COVER) SENDER'S PHONE #; 415-864-5855 EXT. 904n SENDER'S FAX #: 415-552-1583 NO RESPONSE,REQUESTED; YES X. ARTIST'S CHOICE John Baldessari e.g.. Grass, Water Heater, Mouths, & etc. (for John Graham) The Museum of Modern Art, New York March 17-May 10, 1994 THE ARTIST'S CHOICE SERIES IS MADE POSSIBLE BY A GENEROUS GRANT FROM THE CHARLES A. DANA FOUNDATION. FOREWORD DATING BARS AND MONTAIGNE John Baldessari This is the fourth in an ongoing series of exhibitions; in each, their fragments into a new form, in which the "meaningless" I love to go to a museum and play games and think of all the ing, but less will suffice. It may be a line, a shape, or even a sub¬ an artist is invited to mount a small show drawn from the serendipity of odd formal or thematic similarities can spur paintings on the wall as if connected like frames in a strip of ject (a cup or a shoe). Little paintings within paintings maybe, Museum's collection. The series was conceived with several unexpected new meanings. Baldessari's constant questioning of movie film. Or think of, say, a van Gogh near a Cezanne. If a like those Russian dolls. I seldom see an image that I do not goals in mind. Most simply, it allows our visitors a chance to the standard logic of pictorial arrangements within individual blank canvas were inserted between, what kind of painting want to crop. Usually the image will have too much fat, too see the works in the collection in a fresh way. The Museum's works and among groups of images engages serious issues of upon it would convert the three into a seamless whole? much baggage. I think I can make it better, more essential, normal display reflects the curators' selections according to language structure and meaning with a deft, light-hearted blend tighter in what I feel it might accomplish. hierarchies of historical importance, and has been traditional¬ of playfulness and pedagogy. This tenor is, of course, personal, Or lookingat a Picasso, if it were placed in the middle of a much ly divided in terms of separate mediums (photography in one but it also exemplifies the ways in which Southern California larger canvas, and the painting continued to the new borders, Perhaps it is the tyranny of the frame. By playing these games I area, paintings in another, etc.), and presented in a linear, has produced a distinctive variant style in Conceptual Art, as what would it look like? can prevent the frame from closing in, from dominating. I select chronological order. The artist, freed from these constraints, in Minimalism and Pop. Los Angeles, with its relatively unchang¬ and I crop and I have all these details of works. As a result, icons can mix mediums, bring less familiar works to the fore, and ing climate, its scarcity of monuments of pre-modern history, Or a reassembled Greek vase with missing shards replaced are made manageable and less important works become bet¬ show well-known masterpieces in surprising contexts. Such and its culture—which includes long, contemplative stretches with plaster—how I am able to fantasize upon that tabula rasa. ter. A democratization. Like Elvis in the army. Yet each cropped intentionally idiosyncratic selections both challenge us to see in automobiles and a special relation to the illusions of The power of vacancy, of nothingness. How interesting a void element is a work of art for me and each lovable (as in a litter more, and to see differently. movies—seems to have nurtured a special kind of sly, deadpan can be! And if the original shards were replaced one by one of little dogs). Beyond expanding our sense of the depth and richness humor and detached irony. Baldessari is a master of that sen¬ with plaster shards, when would the vase become a part rather of the Museum's holdings, these personal groupings also under¬ sibility. than a whole? What is the difference between a part and a The next job is to assemble these diverse parts into a new line the ongoing relationship between the Museum's role in From the particularity of Baldessari's selections, we whole? (It is a matter of intent; of what I want it to be.) If a whole, to build them like words in a sentence or phrase. They preserving the past of modern art and its engagement in con¬ might draw at least two general lessons. First, Baldessari shows Richard Long rock piece were substituted rock by rock, at are like words that jump out at me from a page. Why, in scan¬ temporary creativity. The Artist's Choice shows suggest how how photographic reproduction can enlarge the descendancy what point (if any) would it be stolen? ning a page, be it a page in a dictionary or a novel, do some contemporary innovation may be joined to a personal vision of of works of art, encouraging individual parts to migrate and words defy gravity—levitate before my eyes? Fey or jejune, for modern art's past. By seeing the collection through the eyes of spawn separately in rogue fashion. Second, his collage is a par¬ Art musing. But then, that is how art is made—by play. example. That an essay could be written about each gives proof artists who use it as a base for new departures, we appreciate ticularly vivid demonstration of a crucial way in which modern of dormant power. more fully the ways in which the Museum is a living resource art has evolved and continues to evolve—not as a linear relay Of several ideas for this project what I decided to do was to for the continued unfolding of modern art. race of movements and isms, but through hybrids, mutations, go about it as if I were doing art of my own. Often I rummage So trial pairings are attempted, with the artist as cupid. As few limits as possible are placed on what each artist and unpredictable recombinations that are first produced by through boxes of unsorted photos. I would do the same at Wouldn't it be a windfall if words could seek the word of their may do, and each approaches the opportunity differently. John individual sensibilities and then attract—as Baldessari's work MoMA. dreams in the personal columns? Sparks fly; magnetisms occur. Baldessari is the first to make a new work as a part of his pre¬ clearly has—new "schools" around them. In the singles bar of words, awkward attempts at pairings are sentation, assembling a hybrid construction of details from I went through notebooks of photo documentation looking for made. What word will go home with another word? Perhaps a paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, and film stills from Kirk Varnedoe some element or detail that would jump out at me.