Monday, November 6, 2017

“On Half a Tank of Gas” at various locations in New Glarus, Wisconsin


(link)

I wonder how many people came, I wonder how many stayed. I wonder what the people thought. I wonder if they felt it was an enriching cultural experience, I wonder if they had fun. I wonder if they talked about it afterwards. Did they laugh and later drink wine. Were they disquieted. Was the art, distinctly coalesced for this "Little Switzerland" town, only able to communicate nuance with a cultural context, finding Mike Kelly & Paul McCarthy's adaption of Joanna Spyri's most renowned Swiss novel, Heidi, and finding interest in the adaption's latent violence with characters as puppets for violent marionetting as revealing something instrinsic to it. Is the US's absurd level of interest in personal heritage, roots, DNA home testing kits hitting 2.6 billion$ market in 2014, assigning themselves sister cities, and "where your family is from" a cocktail question, is this interest undone by the fact that most contemporary artists today have little cultural heritage, besides the "international style" of Art, that contemporary artist implies the jettisoning of tradition besides the giant global one we conform to.



See too: “Work Hard” at Swiss Institute