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Just the thing to go with your Princess Diana commemorative plates
By adamg on Sat, 11/30/2013 - 9:57pm
Artists Mike Mandel and Chantal Zakari, who say they were forced indoors by the hunt for the missing Tsarnaev brother, have come up with a series of Shelter in Plates to commemorate the hunt and lock down:
Confronted with military troops searching our homes and surroundings, for sixteen hours families were ordered inside, police stationed at corners and half-way points on every street. No cars were allowed into the search zone. No one was allowed outdoors. We watched through our windows while SWAT teams methodically searched every yard, under porches, and in some areas inside homes, as well. These plates commemorate the people of Watertown living under siege.
Why, yes, they have a convenient online ordering system. But hurry: These limited-edition plates will only be available until Jan. 15.
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Comments
How apropos!
That these moronic holdovers would seek to use the capitalistic system that these jack booted thugs were obvious tools of to strike a blow against said system. How deliciously Machiavellian! My goodness! Someone should clearly give these advanced thinkers their own installation! Say maybe at the lobby of the Federal Reserve, or 245 Summer, home of Fidelity Investments. I'm sure they'd have no problem taking their money.
And how about some reviews of Professor Zakari's skills at molding young minds, from some of those young minds:
Then there's this one, my favorite:
And finally;
Well, color me surprised!
?
Holdovers from what? And what makes you think they're critiquing the capitalist system? Seems more like a critique of the police state in which we are increasingly living. And the instructor review page you cite has 4 "good" reviews, 2 "poor" and 1 "average." 7 reviews isn't much of a sample - and these "rate my professor" sites aren't much more reliable than Yelp. I don't get your knee-jerk, empty criticism. (Do they owe you money or something?)
Artists can't make money if they criticize the economic system? Artists can't be allowed to criticize the Marathon Bombing response? Art professors shouldn't be such dickheads to the slacker students in their classes?
I mean if you want to criticize what they produced go ahead. I don't think it's particularly good either, but I'm not going to start off with an attack on them as people. If your problem is one of the "my kid could do something better than that" sort then go ahead and say it. There's plenty of pretentious "artists" out there that you can wail on, and you don't need to quote art students to do so. If you have a problem with the fact that some people think the multi-city shutdown and militarized response in the apprehension of the bombers was a bit over the top then state it.
As far as the "art" project goes, whatever. Pretty gimmicky and I certainly would NOT pay that kind of money for it, although I like this one:
Disclosure: I know nothing about these two people, never knew anyone who took courses with them and won't make a penny off their crappy plates.
Fine.
Their art sucks. Not just these plates, but what I saw for examples on the web pages. I would think that my objection them as both artists and people was obvious. This was not some random manifestation of the loss of liberties that has been slowly developing since the passing of the Patriot Act and 9/11,nor was this security theater. This was two armed, crazed gunmen loose in a city where the previous night one of them was throwing bombs at the cops in the middle of a residential street.
I also do not object to their right to create art that reflects their objections. I do however find it strange that they can ask money for their crap while voicing ,in my opinion, sentiments that mock and do not take into consideration that these were ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances and not the Nazis purging the Warsaw ghetto.
As to your objection to my cherry picking the reviews, what would be the point if I put up the good ones, when my intent the whole time was to criticize these two pompous jerks, who apparently felt the cops should have chased the Tsarnaev brothers armed only with old copies of McSweeney's.
hey now....
...never underestimate the power of a well aimed McSweeney's to the privates.
"Artists"? Really? Modern
"Artists"? Really? Modern society has that low of standards? The masters of old are spinning in their graves.
What a fascinating critique.
What a fascinating critique. Do you have any thoughts on the music young people listen to nowadays?
Interesting
I thought I had problems.
Did they make plates with the following?
1) Martin Richard's funeral
2) The boat - preferably showing the militaristic capture of Dzhokhar
3) Dzhokhar and his brother with a backpacks containing a pressure cooker filled with nails
Those would be good reminders of what happened on the Monday before Watertown went into lockdown.
milk cop?
what about the cop with the gallons of milk?
Plate of unwitting irony
What I like about the idea is that it does confront a happy image of domestic peace represented by the pleasant and eye pleasing decorative pattern with the image of military action in a domesticate setting. Does it necessarily suggest an evolving police state or is it a recognition of the cultural nuclear collisions that a global society and economy produces (conscious or not?).
I believe that there is still a mythic idealized image of placid domesticate peace. Even when war comes to our door it happens at the edge of the nation (i.e., Hawaii in WW 2). The U.S. invulnerable against attack, immune from massive conflict (rioting in the 60s being an aberration). We are the nation of white picket fences and yards, a chicken in the pot and 2 cars in the garage. This is far from real but it is a myth that is alive. For all the shortcomings of meeting the ideal the ideal itself remains.
So when the outside world violates the invulnerability, penetrates and tries to destroy one of the holiest self-images of a national psyche via jets or born and naturalized citizens, it doesn't surprise me that the responsive force is basically that of a B-52 bombing an ant hill. Destroy an image that is tantamount to being a fundamental myth of the national secular religion terrifies and pisses of a lot of people. No pun intended but this makes Andres Serrano's Piss Christ a carton image in comparison.
As images the plates are to me ironic contrasts of a national myth of domesticate tranquility slammed against the real and horrible violence of global and homespun terrorism.