Artist & Author
Based on my experience working at a successful start-up from 2009-2015, this 64-page book includes photographs taken in offices and warehouses, corporate haiku written during long meetings, spam email promotions, digital collages, office humor, and more. The book and "The Corporation" exhibition highlight a number of current themes in American life: corporatism, neo-liberalism, greed, boredom, chaos, futility, plastic, cardboard, dysfunctional hierarchies, and the color beige. Limited, numbered edition of 100 includes free download of hold music made by the artist.
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The publishing debut of Custom Flotilla highlights one of the great lyricists of the early 1980s. This 20 page booklet presents brief selections from Le Bon's song lyrics, in turns koan-like, aphoristic, and fantastic. Due to popular demand, this is the fifth reprint of the booklet and features four new pages of hard-won wisdom and/or enigmatic graphic symbols. In a convenient size comparable to a condom wrapper, you will want to take this wherever you go and keep it handy for times of need.
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Throughout the making of “Official”, the image stuck in the editorial mind was of artist as office worker, for better or worse. As individual toiling in obscurity on small works of no consequence which are brought to the public with great effort and to small effect. Clocking in and out, only without the paycheck. I asked contributors to work backwards from the [tele-]visual presentation of ideas to the ideas themselves.
The artist book "Official" presented the notion of artist as bureaucrat, as ad-man, as consultant, as worker and professional. This issue marked the first public emergence since the late '90s of my project "Imperial Services," a private consulting firm, members of which contributed to the issue.
The “Bank Notes” booklets were sent in deposit envelopes, an apt delivery method for what were essentially ready-made bank robbery notes.
"Bank Notes" (2010) was issue #4 of Clearinghouse Publishers. The versions sent to subscribers included a $2 bill stapled in as the last page, which alluded to not only how much money was being spent making and sending these issues, but to the idea of art and artists as fountains of generosity, depleting themselves for the benefit, or just the mere entertainment, of the public. Presumably I made this in the depths of the Great Recession as we were all being screwed by bailed-out banks. “No funny stuff”--ha!
Pages from "Making Things Worse" (2010), issue #3 of Clearinghouse Publishers.
"Making Things Worse" (2010) was issue #3 of Clearinghouse Publishers with accompanying letter. It focused on one aspect of that year's Open Engagement conference of socially engaged art, whose theme was "Making Things, Making Things Better, Making Things Worse."
"Content Management" (2010), issue #2 of Clearinghouse Publishers with accompanying letter.
Since this is a list of all “bands” and not all “band names,” if a name is used by more than one band, it is listed that many times.
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Many people have pointed out that this book was obsolete immediately, and wondered why someone would have a list like this printed when you could simply consult lists on the internet for the most complete, up-to-date info. Part of the playful (in a non-ironic way) nature of this object is that it is kind of like a tomb of information, a snapshot, a monument to the human tendency to wrap our arms around the impossible and solidify the ever-shifting. Also, as a document that could only be assembled in a reasonable amount of time in the internet age, it is a successful attempt to limit information and to separate it from hyperlinks. This book has one kind of information only, and I find that very liberating as a reader, and respectful of a reader’s attention.
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I considered this piece of conceptual art finished when it had been printed out on plain white letter paper. But, lo and behold, through persistence (thanks partly to completing Tony Robbins’ series of “Personal Power” cassettes) I managed to have it published and it became a rather nice-looking coffee table book.
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