“Life art” as in that shit that goes on all around us is sometimes art just by observation and not my ongoing perception, experience and actions within it making me a “Life Artist”…
It just so happens as I spent a good portion of yesterday trying to grasp the pretentiousness of someone saying their way of living was art and calling them self a “life artist” one of my very favorite instances of “life art” was meeting the same fate as Kira Kaechele’s pieces.
A little over a year ago past Varg had the good sense* to post an image on The Chicory about one of my favorite pieces of “life art,” a house on Whitney that had been marked after the storm with the words, “Danger, Unstable.” Over the years as the house continued to stand despite the proclamation written on its front, pieces of plywood fell off and portions of the spray paint washed away and slowly, “Danger, Unstable” became “Dang Stable.”
We all laugh when pieces of signs fall off and become something else. Like when a sign for “Hip Hop Dance Classes $25” becomes “Hip Hop Dance Asses $25” or something like that. But I don’t think I have ever seen this happen so that the meaning is juxtaposed. So that it becomes the exact opposite of what it was meant to be. And the slow reveal as the house was expected to collapse but stayed up and the words slowly transformed day-by-day, pass-by-pass on the way to work or play, that little house went from being a dangerous place facing imminent collapse under its own weight to a “little engine that could,” standing proud, dang stable.
As I was writing yesterday about the destruction of Kira Kaechele’s Art Life pieces being torn down by the city, my own version of Life Art was being torn down in symmetry.
Doing this all Squandered Heritage style…
Before…
After…
* I say that because he’s usually fucking me over much the way I’m fucking over future Varg right now by wasting my day writing blog posts.