lartidia

[lartidia]

Angel’s Rainbow, Sarkis (2017)

[lartidia]

The Owl, Maria Anto (1969)

[lartidia]

[Nadzieja]

Jeżeli nam się uda to coś my zamierzyli i wszystkie słońca które wyhodowaliśmy w doniczkach naszych kameralnych rozmów i zaściankowych umysłów rozświetlą szeroki widnokrąg i nie będziemy musieli mówić że jesteśmy geniuszami bo inni powiedzą to za nas i aureole tęczowe aureole ...ech szkoda gadać Panowie jeżeli to się uda To zalejemy się jak jasna cholera

- Andrzej Bursa

[lartidia]

Painkillers, Joanna Rajkowska (2014)

materials: powdered analgesic, polyurethane resin

“The idea of Painkillers stems from a research concerning the germ warfare that the British conducted against the indigenous population of North American Indians when they distributed smallpox-infected blankets among the local Indian population. Knowledge about epidemics and spread of smallpox was actually used to produce a predecessor of biological warfare. Equally striking was the development of Soviet biological weapons, especially during the Cold War era. For example, the infamous Biopreparat program, “Biological substance preparation”, was effectively a major biological warfare agency, and was run by, amongst others, the Ministry of Health. One of the scientists, Yuri Anatolievich Ovchinnikov promoted the use of molecular biology and genetics for creating new types of biological weapons. Kanatzhan Alibekov (physician and microbiologist) who is currently a biodefence consultant in USA was one of the major figures in Biopreparat and he not only oversaw the biological weapons facilities but also the significant number of pharmaceutical facilities that produced antibiotics, vaccines, sera, and interferon for the public. These paradoxes serve as a historical background for Painkillers, a project whose aim is to explore the involvement of the pharmaceutical companies in conflicts and relationship between the military and pharmaceutical industries.”

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on a photo: 

Uzi submachine gun

Use: General, 1954 – present

Origin: Israel

Used by: Worldwide

Wars: Suez Crisis, Six-Day War, Vietnam War, Yom Kippur War, Colombian internal conflict, Sri Lankan Civil War, Portuguese Colonial War, Falklands War, 1982 Lebanon war, South African Border War, Rhodesian Bush War, Somali Civil War, Mexican Drug War, Syrian Civil War

photography and description: taken from www.rajkowska.com

[lartidia]

Bodyspacemotionthings, Robert Morris (1971)

“The work was originally shown in the Duveen Galleries of what is now Tate Britain. It was abruptly closed, because Tate staff 'were not able to cope with the frantic means of emotional release that the exhibition became. An orderly pandemonium was expected, but pandemonium broke out’, reported the Times in 1971.“

“The Guardian’s reporter in 1971 noted: 'Some of the 1,500 visitors became so intoxicated by [the] opportunities that they went around "jumping and screaming" to quote the exhibitions keeper, Mr Michael Compton. They went berserk on the giant see-saws, and they loosened the boards on other exhibits by trampling on them ... "It was just a case of exceptionally exuberant or energetic participation," Mr Compton said tolerantly.” 

“As parts of the work were wooden, first-aid staff had to pick splinters out of people's backsides.”

“Tate curator Kathy Noble says Morris was 'exploring ideas of spacial awareness, of becoming aware of yourself, your own body, as a physical object in space'”

photography - archives, description - Guardian

[lartidia]

Fountain of light, Ai Weiwei (2007)

“This monumental work bears reference to the work of Soviet painter and architect Vladimir Tatlin, particularly his draft deisgn for the Monument of the Third International (1919). Tatlin wanted to build then the largest building in the world - it would be 400 meters tall and hold offices of international communist organisations. Ai Weiwei employed the utopian project of the Soviet construcitivist, and in this way recalls the utopian assummptions of the Soviet avant-garde. Instead though, he turned it into a 7-metre tall chandelier, a utility object, useless and purely decorative due to its size. He also used crystals mass-produced in China, alluding to the communist regime ruling there, as well as to the connections between art and politics.”

photography by Ai Weiwei, description’s been taken from the Zachęta National Gallery of Art magazine