According to the Telegraph, more than 13,000 people applied to be living statues on Anthony Gormley’s project for Trafalgar Square’s empty fourth plinth, one hour each, night and day, for 100 days. Titled One & Other, it opens July 1 with 613 participants.
The Telegraph was wrong about one thing. A fork-life truck will lift not just a “mixed bag to Britons” to temporary glory. Applications were accepted from around the world, including one from Seattle artist Ellen Ziegler. After her name came up, she raised funds for her trip via Facebook.
Jon Snow and poet Benjamin Zephaniah.
Ziegler:
I plan to expand my work with mirrors into a time-based interactive performance on the Fourth Plinth at 9:00 am UK time, July 24, 2009. Live webcams will broadcast in real time; there will be BBC and international media coverage.
Go, Ellen! I think you should cover the plinth in spider’s webbing and sit in it, truer to your work.
Ralph? If you think spider’s webbing should be on the plinth, you should have entered the plinth lottery. Plus, I’ve never seen webbing by Ellen Ziegler. She wants to do mirrors; mirrors it is.
Much discussion as to whether it’s ART. Or if it’s Any Good. I think Gormley handled it well, as did the guys from White Cube and the Portrait Gallery:
http://www.skyarts.co.uk/video/video-one-other-is-it-art/
and a taste of the spirit of it all:
http://www.oneandother.co.uk/blog/2009/07/godzillas-day-out.html
PS: tune in to http://www.oneandother.co.uk at 1 am Seattle time on July 24. I may regret this, but everyone might as well see me do it…
And give the website a check from time to time. You absolutely never know what you’re going to see. Some of it is unbelievably lame, some is brilliant, and most of it is a collage on a grand scale.
also think about what old Karlheinz Stockhausen said:
Hide what you compose in what you hear.
Cover what you hear.
Place something next to what you hear.
Place something far away from what you hear.
Support what you hear.
Continue for a long time an event you hear.
Transform an event until it becomes unrecognizable.
Transform an event that you hear into the one you composed last.
Compose what you expect to come next.
Compose often, but also listen for long periods to what is already composed, without composing.
Mix all these instructions.
Increasingly accelerate the current of your intuition.”