Walking across Broadway and Bleeker on Thursday I saw a squashed rat in the intersection. And then another, and another, and so forth. Seven in total. Look both ways. They must have been disturbed by something, or some source of food was drawing them across. They didn’t all get squashed at the same time. The last one, for example is much fresher than the first few shots. Someone made a comment that if there were seven squashed, there must have been many more that made it across.

Flickr images taken with iPhone 4 (not posted here because they’re gruesome).

A couple weeks ago I went to the Tonya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea, and encountered the work of Jeffrey Vallance and Mark Dion. I’d heard of Mark Dion, but not Jeffrey Vallance. Vallance’s work was presented with acerbic wit and odd reverence, at first off-putting but then I was drawn in by narratives (look for Blinky’s bone, and the Red Pencil, not to mention the underwear he wore when he met the ruler of Tonga).
Mark Dion‘s work never fails to impress me. Imagine taxonomy a la aesthetes of the 19th century when there were still things left to discover, nouveau thoreau… looking back. When you look back to the methods olden days the romantic can creep in, however since it’s all new work the commentary of categorization and preservation takes on new meaning. The world of our times has be so thoroughly dissected that it’s nice to refresh the eye on artwork with this new/old intent.  An interesting Dion quote:

“My interest in Surrealism really comes from the way that the Surrealists used museums and collections with an overlay of the irrational onto the rational. They were also engaged in museum culture and were very interested in the recently obsolete. For me, that’s an interesting element of museum culture- that sense of obsolescence.”
- Mark Dion

Mark Dion

Dion’s work usually has animals or elements found in nature, and points to how we as non-human animals use, interact with, or think about animals and the environment.

Tomorrow I’m headed to MoMA to help Douglas Repetto– as part of the Bauhaus exhibit at MoMA, Douglas will lead a workshop:

Join Machine Project for a day of woodworking, mechanical mayhem, and cute baby horses. Participants collaborate with artist Douglas Repetto in manufacturing a herd of “foals”—simple walking tables—small tables that actually “walk” across the floor—handmade from scrap wood and basic mechanical parts. The foal-building workshop is a humorous take on issues central to the Bauhaus movement, including the relationships between form and function and between craft and mass production. At the end of the afternoon the foals are let loose in MoMA’s Education and Research Building. Musicians from the experimental chamber ensemble WetInk provide musical accompaniment with improvisations informed by the movements and intersections of the foals. Poet Joshua Beckman reads traditional ceremonial foal poems of his own devising. Foal pandemonium or peaceful frolic? There’s only one way to find out! Workshop participants and audience members may adopt a foal. Take-home foal-building plans are available.

Workshop: 2:00–6:00 p.m.
Performance: 7:00–8:00 p.m.

(more…)

This is very cool.  It’s interesting how they added an extra joint to the legs in this prototype. Wonder if they’ll modify that once they get arms swinging, if that’s their next step.