In other news, I've started practicing calligraphy.
Philippe Parreno's Anywhere out of the world is incredibly fascinating.
It is a conceptual art piece and part of a project that consisted of buying a character meant as a throwaway design for comics or commercials and then have artists create artwork from the perspective of her as a fictional character trapped in a system that considers her existence a commodity to the bought and sold.
It's an example of something that happens sometimes where an artist is trying to comment on the state of alienation in modern society and end up creating something that resonates a lot with the experience of being trans.
Ann Lee is so trans-coded she even has her own transition timeline (the original concept art she's based on and the 3d model created to embody her).
I can't decide whether I think it's brilliant or pretentious art school nonsense.
Just when I think I've made up my mind, I learn that they'd sell $200 silkscreen posters with Annlee on it and the slogan "no ghost, just a shell", but the 'shell' is just the Shell logo and I'm like "oh, come on!"
It is so unbelievably pretentious, I didn't believe it was made by the original artist I first, I thought it was an art student who thought they where really deep.
At the same time, yes I'd probably want it on my wall.
...and just when I think it's unbelievably pretentious and 2 deep, I think about it and actually, the Shell logo is pretty perfect? The whole point of the argument is that Ann Lee, while ostensibly a character, was bought as intellectual property for use in commercial project, much like a logotype would.
The shell symbol isn't just a pun, it is altering the meaning of the text to something like "no ghost, just a logo" or "no ghost, just a commercial icon" and that ties into the central theme of the project, which is essentially asking what it takes to liberate a fictional character from commercialism.
And liberating a fictional character from commercialism evidently involves selling premium posters for 250 euro each.
Oh, come on!
