Zhang Huan
From: http://www.zhanghuan.com/index.asp






Leopold Kessler
From: http://www.secession.at/art/2007_kessler_e.html
Leopold Kessler’s works focus on public space, exploring the topography of cities – from the traffic signs that structure urban life to the modes of behavior influenced by it. The artist’s interventions aim at squares, paths, street signs or street barriers, which serve as material for his sculptures. Moreover he has repeatedly pointed out the gaps that can be found in the systematic organization of social space.


For an exhibition at the Neue Galerie in Graz in 2006 Kessler increased the water pressure of the Erzherzog-Johann fountain on the city’s main square, with the effect that for a certain time the water spilled onto the ground around the fountain. Along with this intervention he created a video that displayed the square with the fountain in the middle from a tourist’s point of view. The tourist’s view on the city is covetous and presuming, with the intention to make urban complexity and impermeable mobility legible and more manageable. Although working with public space, Kessler does not see this as a public mission. His unsolicited actions or interventions go almost unnoticed, since they are hidden or appear as authorized acts or construction-related measures.


For the Secession Leopold Kessler has created the high-definition video Perforation Kal. 10 mm, which shows a series of interventions at various locations in Vienna. A man, dressed like a street worker (Kessler), is strolling through the quiet early morning streets in a completely self-evident manner. He punches holes in street signs using an oversized hole-puncher, which he has designed especially for this purpose. Perforating the signs seems to involve a lot of effort, requiring considerable strength while making a great deal of racket. Kessler displays an amazing nonchalance in his work and even makes himself liable to an administrative fine. Visiting various locations on one given stroll, he hardly leaves any traces behind. The meaning of these interventions cannot be immediately grasped.


Kessler directs the viewer’s attention towards the inversion of visibility and invisibility, since it is precisely the brightly visible neon-orange vest that makes him invisible for most people. Within the exhibition setting Kessler’s interventions even draw international attention.


Is Leopold Kessler interested in the holes he has punched or the signs? Do the perforated signs still function as traffic signs or have they already become sought-after collector’s items? At what point do the irregularly arranged holes result in a pattern? Can the perforation form a line, a surface as Kessler strolls through the city? Thomas Bernhard describes strolling as an act that motivates and articulates thoughts, reflecting the relation between movement and standstill. Or do these holes simply allude to the use of firearms? Street signs with bullet holes are not an uncommon sight in the outlying areas of large cities. Furthermore the choice of bullet holes is again referring to the tourist's perspective, which seeks out the potential danger as an urban attraction. In this case however, the artist's work is being shown at the Secession, one of Vienna's most photographed buildings and a major tourist sight.


Leopold Kessler: The next generation
From: http://www.kopenhagen.dk/interviews/interviews/interview_leopold_kessler/

Roman Ondak

The stray man,2006
A man is asked to wander near the windows of a gallery, situated adjacent to the street. He occasionally gazes through the windows into the gallery, but never enters.

Cezary Bodzianowski




"Bodzianowski's absurd theatre makes salutary alterations into the fabric of everyday life, casting a wry eye over Camus' Myth of Sisyphus in the process. Domestic détournements are composed of a ribald wit and verve whose impact is alternately nebulous or robust -- the minutiae of life elevated to centre stage. Magically realist performances, documents and objects make up a prolific practice informed by droll pathos and an eye for incongruity. Bodzianowski's insouciant flanerie recalls the chess career of Marcel Duchamp, or Arthur Cravan's forays into boxing, forever blurring the boundaries between art and life, poetry and gaucherie."
Susannah Thompson

From: http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/2006/11/cezary_bodzianowski_at_sorcha.php

The Kingpins

From: http://thekingpins.joshraymond.com/

From www.vanessabeecroft.com

Bodies in Urban Spaces
From: http://www.ciewdorner.at/

Janine Antoni

Janine Antoni's work blurs the distinction between performance art and sculpture. Antoni transforms everyday activities such as eating, bathing, and sleeping into ways of making art, such as painting and sculpting. Themes in her work include mortality, desire and the body.

http://artforum.com/video/mode=large&id=20081&page_id=0

this sounds way to familiar...

Bruce Nauman

Walking in an exaggerated manner around the perimeter of a square


Martin Creed
Work 850


Bas Jan Ader
fall II









after Bas Jan Ader

Nina Beier-Marie Lund

The Difference between Humans and Walls
A group of uniformed employees of a museum are asked to stand,
blocking different passages in the exhibition. When a visitor asks
to pass, they disperse and regroup somewhere else.


Event, various durations, Tate Britain, November 2007

taken from http://www.ninajanbeier-mariejanlund.com/



The Play Me Series (Look in the Window Until Someone Looks Back at You) (2006) © the artists 2007

from http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/art53562

"This book (Plans for other days) suggests, it doesn't dictate. It is a list of proposals on how to relate to our surroundings. A manual of moments. It is a life we are living. Being at home, going out, feeling on our own and being together. We look at the simple things that don't get that much attention and seek alternatives to routines. We alter and take over what we can touch and feel. With everyday interventions and intuition we try to reclaime our lives. We try to come closer, closer to our own lives and to others."
Janfamily:

MEANINGLESS WORK

Meaningless work is obviously the most important and significant art form today. The aesthetic feeling given by meaningless work can not be described exactly because it varies with each individual doing the work. Meaningless work is honest. Meaningless work will be enjoyed and hated by intellectuals - though they should understand it. Meaningless work can not be sold in art galleries or win prizes in museums - though old fasion records of meaningless work (most all paintings) do partake in these indignities. Like ordinary work, meaningless work can make you sweat if you do it long enough. By meaningless work I simply mean work which does not make money or accomplish a conventional purpose. For instance putting wooden blocks from one box to another, then putting them back to the original box, back and forth, back and forth etc., is a fine example of meaningless work. Or digging a hole, then covering it is another example. Filing letters in a filing cabinet could be considered meaningless work, only if one were not considered a secretary, and if one scattered the file on the floor periodically so that one didn't get any feeling of accomplishment. Digging in the garden is not meaningless work. Weight lifting, though monotonous, is not meaningless work in its aesthetic since because it will give you muscles and you know it. Caution should be taken that the work chosen should not be too pleasurable, lest pleasure becomes the purpose of the work. Hence, sex, though rhythmix, can not stictly be called meaningless - though I'm sure many people consider it so.


Meaningless work is potentially the most abstract, concrete, individual, foolish, indeterminate, exactly determined, varied, important art-action-experience one can undertake today. This concept is not a joke. Try some meaningless work in the privacy of your own room. In fact, to be fully understood, meaningless work should be done alone or else it becomes entertainment for others and the reaction or lack of reaction of the art lover to the meaningless work can not honestly be felt.

Meaningless work can contan all of the best qualities of old art forms such as painting, writing, etc. It can make you feel and think about yourself, the outside world, morality, reality, unconsciousness, nature, history, time, philosophy, nothing at all, politics, etc. without the limitations of the old art forms.


Meaningless work is individual in nature and it can be done in any form and over any span of time - from one second up to the limits of exhaustion. It can be done fast or slow or both. Rhythmically or not. It can be done anywhere in any weather conditions. Clothing, if any, is left to the individual. Whether the meaningless work, as an art form, is meaningless, in the ordinary sense of that term, is of course up to the individual. Meaningless work is the new way to tell who is square.
Grunt
Get to work

by Walter De Maria, March 1960

Xavier Le Roy



from the Louseinmore blog

good old Tehching Hsieh.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/03/01/arts/01sont_CA2.ready.html