Studio Practice: Installation as Performance – Chat
and
Khris Soden The Portland Tour of Tilburg
– laura becker
i had the extremely odd meta moment tonight when i realized my 2 tba experiences of the day both involved returning artists that i had blogged about before (one being the chat including vivarium studio, who brought “itching of the wings” here in 2006, the other being khris soden who in 2005 performed as a citizen of “the M.O.S.T“) and could therefore return to my previous postings to remind myself not only of my thoughts about them, but of how i was feeling those years.
Photo by Axel Nastansky
meta – yes, but also, rewarding. i have proof positive in my own words that these artists are staying true to form. vivarium studio (who’s new work i’m not seeing until tomorrow night) still brings weight to frivolity by bringing meaning to the mundane. khris soden still helps people travel to imagined locales, even if this time that locale actually exists.
that continuity is rewarding in itself, but what’s even more valuable is seeing how the world has changed them at the same time. in vivarium studio’s case, that change translates, in practical terms, into a worse political landscape to get work funded (Sarkozy). and when it comes to Khris Soden’s tour of Tilburg, perhaps he’s moved from the self-imagined Mostlandia to the honest old town of Tilburg because now we actually need to know where we might possibly expatriate to if the shit hits the fan.
luckily he was able to tell us “why tilburg”. for instance, you may know that portland is the 23rd biggest city in the states, but did you know that the netherlands is the 23rd densest country in the first world?
and did you know that the netherlands chooses to put their taxes towards education and social service rather than the military, and the result is that there are no wars and no homeless?
also, have you heard about this place in tilburg called the paradox, that has 104 beers on tap?
and how bout the fact that they have an indoor smoking ban on tobacco, but not marijuana, or their bicycles with headlights that run on their own wheel motion energy (would that make them carbon negative?), or their similar same-sex and death-with-dignity attitudes?
or that we have stumptown, and they have the cafe of the tall tree? well, i guess that’s technically an opposite, but you get the point.
when all this was going through my head all i could think about was that time in college when we finally succeeded at synching up the wizard of oz and dark side of the moon – you know they really have nothing to do with each other, but you can’t help think that they were made for each other.
