monolithic oil drum installation

jean claude & christo’s website

With Hirst circumventing the gallery and going straight to auction, Murakami going head first into luxury brand dissemination of work, and sneaker companies hiring every graffiti writer I know, today’s artist sees a conscious shift in how commerce interacts with 1) the work, and 2) the artist as BRAND 3)gallery as (home furnishing)store.

Two legendary artists who remain entirely outside of white walls that confine & confuse many(thanks a lot postmodernism & abstract shite) are Jean Claude & Christo. You’ve probably heard of their art. You may have walked through their gates in Central Park. But the historical scope & financial aspects of their ephemeral installations are the thing that escaped me until I heard them speak of their work at the ICA a few weeks ago.

All their artwork is SELF FUNDED and the realization of their projects reflects fundamental changes in politics & economics. Christo does the preparatory sketches for the project on the top floor of the same manhattan loft they’ve lived in since the 1960s- where a young Philip Glass installed their plumbing. They pay for the rental of the site, all the processing & legal fees & meetings for the project to be approved.. every last red cent. They sell the preparatory sketches to their benefactors to generate these funds, and give the world these giant installations.   This is where Wu-tang got their idea(maybe) to hustle the first run of 12″ for Protect ya Neck out the trunk until they could broker groundbreaking deals with multiple labels.

When i say that the works & their process reflect fundamental changes in politics & economics, it means that each single installation must win approval of the government & the landowners of its particular setting. When they wanted to wrap up the Reichstag, they had to convince German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder(as well as the entire structure below him) that their manifested daydream somehow made sense and would be a public good. Pragmatic politicians are notoriously hard to convince of the worth of art -especially abstracted giant public works. It took 9/11 and the election of Bloomberg to see the Gates in Central Park to fruition – a project that started in the late 1960’s. That scope of decades to execute art is lost in today’s immediate gratification culture, where trend cycles & public attention has diminished to a infinitely small point.

As artists, they perfectly meld modernism with social critique. As people, they are  pure in mind and purpose. We hold artists(and some designers bridge this gap as well) to be the dreamers of society and I am thankful to have learned from these two through the ICA. I just wanted to write something from a former skeptic who now believes fully in what they do. So is the transformative nature of art.

A couple more peculiarities:
They were born on the same day at the same time.
They only sign their work.
Jean Claude only became an artist out of love for Christo. Had he become a dentist, she would have become a dentist.
They only discuss their work and cannot comment on any other artist.
They allow others to help build these creations. You can sign up at their website.

Here’s a link to the Harvard Business School x ICA event I attended , which was the catalyst for my change in opinion.

I met the filmakers behind the excellent indie documentary Freestyle: the art of rhyme in 2002 when backpackers still had some semblance of record sales -Def Jux was laying down bladerunner beats topped with innovative eMCees(cold vein deserved 10 mics) and not yet an overstuffed roster of C- talent, soundbombing 2 was still fresh in memory, Dan the Automator was churning out diverse projects(w/ Mike Patton!?), Kid Koala was writing a book,…. before dilla became an above ground legend and heads were open enough for a label like anticon to have success.   

Kevin Fitzgerald (aka DJ Organic) had been filming and editing the project for 8-10years at this point and he was travelling the world screening one of the many final edits.   I helped him out with the Boston screening and I want to say Thank You for letting me assist in his amazing labor of love.

The Film’s centerpiece is the (arguably best)battle between Supernatural and Craig G at the now legendary Lyricists Lounge (video below, complete w/ Sir Bobbito intro).

I now present to you,  my pick for BOTH the BEST AND WORST Freestyle Battle of All time:

if you got through that,  here’s the remix

and the milli remix

spotted by Greg of MISHKA .  

Eli obviously has physical disability ( MC Envy says he “should stop rapping and stick to walking cripple”),  he falters  for a painful silence, but when the beat comes back in, he comes HARD with two of the best punchlines I’ve ever heard in a freestyle  - “You like Rosie Odonell at a bisexual bridal shower.”   That is tenacity – to come from so far behind, drop all your shit on the floor, entirely lose your flow and then just come back swinging with elbows and uppercuts until the opponent is dead.   That’s why this is the best freestyle battle of all time.  

1) Dj Mehdi destorys the AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY This friday!

2) Kangol 70th Anniversary is tonight

3)-even more of-(Ricky) Powell’s newest exhibition is at Sugarheadquarters til 12/7/08

A bit about Ricky – about three years ago, he was in Boston for a street art gallery event. He’s giving his traditional photography narrative when he’s interrupted by a smart remark(perhaps it was a dumb question) from one of the people in the crowd. Ricky addresses the gentleman directly, “oh, what do we have here? a trustafarian? THE WHITE LION?” and to this day, that kid is know as the White Lion.

The reason for the above post is that I’m slated to land in NYC thursday for a couple presentations and more importantly to enjoy the beauty of the city changing to Autumn. The smells are different, the colors change and everything is reborn. It’s nice here as well in Beantown, but ain’t no place like the 5boros (where i saw my first white chalk outline as a child while staying w/ grandma).

Thoreau lived in solitude at Walden Pond for two years and two months formulating a pure philosophy of divinty within self (the writings became central to transcendentalism and mirrors the RBN ideals of God Self) and finding that modern man is shackled by ipods, stupidly expensive pants and crappy jobs that lack meaning. His modern man was enslaved by different constructs but everything he wrote while in self imposed exile (ok, not really exile, he still gave lectures to his neighbors in an outdoor amphitheater he built) still rings true today. Hell, it’s even more important now as we see the financial situation worsen to a point where even Middle America trusts our elected officials & banks less that we trust this guy.

I journeyed to Walden for several reasons: I like hiking, the leaves are changing colors, my buddy John Allen of Headband and myself have been going on walkabouts round town and had mini van at our disposal. Interesting sidenote; I once saved my friends’ marriage by bringing him to Walden and simply talking shit out. They named their dog after me in an unequal exchange.

Anyways, Walden & its’ philosophies as a counterpoint to the American psyche at a time when our shit is going terribly wrong….what was I trying to get at? With the financial bailout ultimately rewarding CEOs of failed banks and adding to our insane debt to China(where we have no leverage to bargain as we already owe them our shirts: figuratively & literally) we’re seeing that the individual citizen is not only alone, but actually has the government working directly against them. The cost will be passed to the taxpayer, wall street will remain unregulated for the most part, 401ks vanished overnight, and then this bullshit etc etc. So , again, Walden and Self Determination and it’s relationship to art/design/fashion/and most importantly, hood figgas. Well, FUBU also known as “For Us By Us” is an excellent example of circumventing the status quo and getting over by any means necessary. This mentality is finally taking root in the average American who watches NASCAR & shops at Walmart and of which 5-10% of engage in S&M for pleasure. (source Kinsey Institute).

This mentality was also a founding tenet of Hip Hop. With ghettos in NYC abandoned by the government and left to burn ( an excellent historical account can be found in the book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop) , we saw Hip Hop born out of the adverse conditions. I wonder what the hell is going to come out of the current Hell we’re living in, or if we’re too subdued by our computers, SUVs and Doritos (yummo!) for real change to occur.
Traditionally, university campuses are one of the strongest places for revolutionary thought & movement to become organized and later galvanized. I talk to the students that come through my shop and I truly wonder if they can save this ragged world. Hey you with the knapsack & facebook profile, please prove me wrong. The future, after all, is unwritten!

On a lighter note:

DOWNLOAD: a really old dub reggae blend i did of “dirt off ya shoulda” that heads seem to like.