p l e a s e d o n t s t e a l o u r i d e n t i t y

Finally made an effort to Repo man after accidentally watching the remake, Repo Men, and never correcting the mistake. It’s basically about a 20 something named Otto who works as a repo man. And that's about it. The movie chronicles all his bizarre adventures and strange people he meets. Our favourite aspects were the street scene hijinks and the funny and pretty crude dialogue. One of the best scenes has to be when Otto comes home to find his parents smoking weed on the couch zombie-like in front of the TV listening to a Christian evangelist. While this is all happening, Otto goes to the fridge and proceeds to eat out of a blue and white can labeled ‘Food’. It reminded us of the recent exhibition we went to, Maryam Jafri’s ‘Economy Corner’. Displayed in the gallery were consumer goods, which all had similarly blank packaging, devoid of colour and imagery. Some other great scenes were when a dead rat is thrown into a woman’s car and doesn't accomplish its purpose at all; the money in the presents that Otto throws out the window opened by the tires of another car, provoking us into sighs of disbelief; the ‘I left a book of matches’ line that diverts Otto's friend at the petrol station; Miller by the ashcan fire contemplating the disappeared from the future and ‘the lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything (still unsure what this means); and the punk criminal act of ‘Let's go get sushi and not pay’, (another amazing line being ‘let’s go do some crimes’). It took us a while to realise the irony/knowing-ness of the whole thing; we underestimated it due to its age.

We’ve taken some steps towards finishing ‘Temporary Allegiance’ – a work which is a flag made out of both our visas, one each side. We didn’t know how ‘cool’ the American government are about you blowing up your visa and printing it onto a 3 x 5ft flag, so to combat any potential mishaps we decided to censor our details. This also falls neatly in line with ideas of leaked documents or other sensitive information that requires secrecy. Something to reference here might be James Bridle’s film ‘Every Redaction’, a short film documenting every redaction, page by page, of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture. Our work is slightly less politically evident/motivated but there are some comparisons. While we’re on the subject of flags, we also managed to purchase the plain/white flag we need for ‘The Best 4 x 4 x Far’.

We’ve been thinking about something to do for this for a while and today concluded with using the format of a Christmas cracker joke. We also thought about fortune cookie and maths exam where all questions are about us (if Jim has three oranges and Sid has two how many to they have all together etc. etc.) these works will still hopefully get made but for now we’re focusing on the Christmas crackers. We want to incorporate what they’re about within the subject of the text – crackers are, allegedly, about celebration and being cheerful and togetherness. The inventor of the cracker, Thomas Smith, began by selling ‘Christmas bourbons’. The first stage step in the evolution towards cracker-hood was when he started including poems or mottos with the sweets. Perhaps we could think about this as some sort of context for the work. The setting is also important; has it been discarded, left on the floor, or is it in a wallet, next to a photo of a loved one. The text should mirror or conflict with the setting. A floor-bound piece might read, ‘And they lived happily ever after, without each other.’ This would encapsulate the cheesy nature of the Christmas joke but with a seemly tragic, just kind of not, twist leaving the reading unsure of how to interpret the work.

The ‘wrapped art’ piece is now underway; we’ve created a structure and collated some boxes in a variety of shapes and sizes. We’ve purchased a huge amount of bubble-wrap and some tape, which should all be coming tomorrow (Amazon in New York is totally awesome, if not slightly scary). All the pieces need to be wrapped in brown wrapping paper and taped up before being bubble-wrapped and taped a final time. The information on the invoice/delivery note is still something we need to consider, research into what ‘real’ ones look like might be a place to start.