Rirkrit rocks: As cross-disciplinary as ever, Rirkrit Tiravanija’s latest project is theatrical in nature–he was the artistic director for Ramakien, a music-theater take on the Thai version of the Ramayana, held at Lincoln Center this weekend. Featuring Thai rock bands, Sek Loso, the Photo Sticker Machine and Modern Dog, the piece was met with mixed reviews, including the New York Times , which called it both “grandly ambitious” and “overstuffed.” (Also: a recent profile I wrote on Tiravanija.)
Art Shark? This new boardgame offers a curiously pessimistic view of the art world: “Use your sneakiest tricks to make a fortune collecting art. Switch fakes with original art. Outbid other players at auction. And discover 64 masterpieces as you play.” Via Modern Art Notes.
Pumpin’ for the man: A fascinating article from last month on SFMOMA’s Drawing Restraint exhibition. I love this passage on trucker Jim McKinney: “His rig was laden with 1,600 gallons of liquid petroleum jelly for a 10-ton sculpture by artist Matthew Barney, who has made the greasy goop a prime ingredient in the shaping of his strange and alluring visual world. McKinney, a down-home Tennessean who usualy hauls hazardous stuff like butyl ethanol, had never heard of Barney… He said he was just there ‘to do the pumpin’.” Via Gregg Chadwick.
Typing restraint: SFMOMA’s marketing campaign for Drawing Restraint has some interesting components: text-messages, projections featuring visitors’ reactions to the show, busboard and banners, etc. The key to it all is a website where visitors can type in their feedback on the show with a small catch, they’re “restrained”–get it?–to a certain number of characters.
Beirut dispatch: Artist Walid Raad offers perspectives on the war in Lebanon from the inside: “There is no such thing as targeted/surgical shelling in a city with hundreds of thousands of homes, built cheek to cheek… Do we need to open more morgue doors to reveal yet another mangled body, yet another weeping parent, yet another angry relative denouncing this or that government? this or that policy?” Via NewsGrist.