So, Shepard Fairey pastes one of his murals on a wall in Covington, the people in the neighborhood hate it, and they almost immediately paint over it. Yet another example of the people of Cincinnati failing to appreciate the Contemporary Arts Center, right? It’s like Mapplethorpe all over again.
Here’s what the CAC’s director said about the whole thing:
“Look at the conversation we are having today, about this piece,” [Raphaela Platow] said. “Maybe it will cause people to research what this piece was, and read about the real issue of child soldiers, which is an ongoing reality in some parts of the world. Even under a whitewash, Shepard’s work is inspiring dialogue and, hopefully, providing more opportunities for learning – and actively thinking through the issues our world is facing.”
If you want to “inspire dialogue,” then have a freaking dialogue already. Don’t plaster a building with an ambiguous, potentially offensive picture of a kid holding a machine gun, and then blame the locals for failing to do proper research into the artist’s intention. This is a sidewalk, not an art history class.
Here’s some research: this mural was copy-and-pasted from a 2008 print, which in turn used 1970′s photos of Cambodian child soldiers taken by legendary photojournalist Al Rockoff. It doesn’t have anything to do with Cincinnati or Covington, and no one should expect random onlookers – much less elementary school kids and their 20- and 30-something parents – to instantly “get it” without some kind of preparation or education.
Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Inside a gallery or an art museum, paintings and sculptures are stripped of their original contexts and put in the middle of a literal white space so that they can be contemplated for their purely aesthetic qualities.
Neighborhoods don’t work that way. Fairey and his assistants come in and paste up this mural in a few hours, then move on to their next gig. I’m sure that he meant his artistic billboard to be a gift to the local community, but did anyone ask the whole of the neighborhood what it wanted – or take the time to hear what it needed? Did anyone pay attention to the “ongoing reality” of the actual neighborhood?
The chances are pretty good that you’ve heard about this already, but if you haven’t, strap in. Hell, strap in anyway. I feel like Emmett Fitz-Hume and Austin Millbarge after training right now, and it’s because I’ve been looking at stuff about the Craig Venter news off and on all day.
First off, you’ll recognize Craig Venter as the guy who did the whole Human Genome Project thing and made stacks of money off of that. Second, you’ll shit your pants when you realize that this whole “Synthetic life” thing could prove to be the building blocks of every god-damned crazy thing you’ve ever thought about the future.
Essentially, and you’ll have to excuse me because I’m the farthest thing from a scientist, he figured out the vital genome of a particular type of bacteria, built one from scratch, and put it into a bacterial cell and BOOM, off it went, replicating and kicking bacteria ass like it should. It’s akin to removing an engine from a car, taking it apart, building your own from scratch, and putting the new one in the same car. Except for the fact that doing something like that with a car doesn’t potentially revolutionize everything we could possibly know about biology and, maybe just maybe, life itself.
If there were a way that I could type the sound of 13-year-old girls screaming right now, I would. It’s like The Beatles plus Frankenstein. This:
Plus this:
I’m just baffled right now, and excited to see what’s coming next. My excitement primarily comes from this article from Nature (pdf warning), wherein 8 scientists comment on the breakthrough (and make no mistake, that’s what it is), positive and negative. The most promising clause in the entire article (and boy howdy there’s a lot of them) is this: “One of the most important scientific achievements in the history of mankind.”
It’s the kind of sentence you can write, but when there’s something like this behind it, the whole thing gains a completely different level of meaning. Wow.
Dear Brian Hamrick: go touch one. Your story about “The Dangers of Commuting by Bike” was poorly thought out, and completely unenlightened when it comes to bike commuting.
You might already know that several of the TCM staff commute by bike year round–and this story was too much for me to not comment on in any way.
A quick summary of the story: cars can hit people, and that’s dangerous. Nothing about how to ride a bike like a vehicle, nothing about the numerous education programs offered by the cycling community in Cincinnati, nobody from any localbikeshops in town–just some video of people on bikes (on the sidewalk at points) talking about how they’re scared of getting hit by cars.
You know, he could have Googled “Vehicular cycling” or “cycling in the street” and come back with LOADS of useful material for educating people how to safely ride in the street and share the roads with cars. Instead, we got something like “Cincinnati isn’t bike friendly, but they’re working on that.” The only way any city becomes bike friendly is by having people cycle on their streets. Education through experience. It doesn’t have much to do with bike lanes, bike plans, or fear. It’s just being out in the street–you’ll learn to share the road with cars, and they’ll learn to share it with you. It’s not that goddamned hard.
The goal of Cincinnati’s revised bike plan is to double the number of daily cyclists by 2015, if I’m correct. If we keep getting shitty, fear-mongering “journalism” about how getting hit by a car while your on your bike sucks, that goal isn’t going to be met. And it will be Brian Hamrick’s fault.
Cincinnati needs a hero. That hero is Chuck Norris, who has just reclaimed his rightful place at the top of our concrete jungle’s food chain.
If you happen to be strolling down Race street near 7th, just be sure you don’t let his patriotic gaze kick your ass. Norris, along with Chewbacca, a vintage Mustang, and even a map of the United States made of steak are among the manly artifacts assembled in a storefront window housing one of the coolest pieces of clothing no one will ever wear: a suit made entirely of sew-on patches. In a word, it’s bitchin’.
In a lot more words, it’s just one piece of a new tribute to one of Cincinnati’s most celebrated artists, Anne Wainscott. Wainscott’s portfolio is stuffed with thousands of fashion illustrations from her days as an artist for the Enquirer and Shilito’s, the city’s first department store. In the days when photography was too expensive for advertising, Wainscott’s pencil made the pictures in painstaking detail.
Shilito’s might be gone, but Wainscott’s enormous body of work is still alive and well, inspiring the Landor company to gussy up the ol’ Shilito’s windows with displays based on Wainscott’s art. There’s even more to see inside if you find yourself walking by during business hours, and you really shouldn’t miss it if you have ten minutes to spare. Just be sure you go back once the sun goes down. It looks incredible at night.
And get there before the end of July, or you won’t know what the Hell I’m talking about. And you’ll miss out on Chuck-friggin-Norris.
We learned a thing or two from our first Best Bar in Cincinnati tourney last year. The first of these is that there’s a need to lay out some info on how the whole thing works. So here you go:
The first round is matchups of four. There will be one winner in each foursome. Each successive round is head-to-head.
You may vote as many times as you wish, but to keep the rigging to a minimum, voters may only vote once every two hours per IP address. I’m looking at you, half of the people who voted in last year’s tournament.
If you’re a patron of any of these places, be sure to tell your bartender/manager/bar owner that they’re in the tournament.
I think that’s about it.
We’ll be posting these polls as a couple separate posts early on Monday. The first round will close on the following Sunday, when we’ll be posting results. Simple enough? On to the matchups then, shall we? Your first round of 32 Cincinnati-area bars is:
Mainstrasse Village Pub
Arnold’s
Dilly Cafe
Mainstay Rock Bar
Cock and Bull
Crazy Fox Saloon
The Righteous Room
O’Malley’s in the Alley
The Establishment
Grammer’s
Northside Tavern
Molly Malone’s (Covington)
MC Chris’s “This Pie’s So Good it is a Crime” is one of the better songs I’ve heard all year. This, of course, is based on the fact that it’s referential to other stuff I like (i.e., Twin Peaks and Ghostbusters (you’ll see)), coupled with the fact that MC Chris is awesome. Behold:
