Next stop – the Tate Modern!

Because folks artists will find a way to call anything art, if someone will show it.

Email message exchanges are momentary, digital and private. Preserving an email challenges these notions. What happens if the messages are made permanent, analog and public? In other words, how is the meaning of an email altered when the medium upon which it appears is changed from computer screen to something else? Would it still be email? After some initial thought, Marshall Mcluhan’s famous statement “The medium the message” came to mind and I wondered if email be considered art if it appeared on a canvas.

To investigate my questions, I decided to present the text of my mother’s email on a stretched 24″ x 30″ canvas. This had the effect of making my mom’s email permanent, analog and public – again, three characteristics that are contrary to email. Additionally, I printed out my response to my mother’s email and her response to mine. The resulting dialogue triptych forces its viewers to re-examine today’s most prevalent mode of communication.

Right. And I’m going to be opening a new show called “Crumpled Costs,” a series of pieces of folded and wrinkled store receipts pulled from my pants pockets, scribbled notes on the back, demonstrating how these small ephemeral pieces of the mundane expenses of our lives, our citizenship papers for the consumer culture, pervade the spaces around us, constant reminders of our dependence on modern economic deities such as “Home Depot” and “Safeway” and “Target,” and themselves holy writs of
modern scripture in the form of ad hoc shopping lists, to-do reminders, and blogging topics.

I’m ready for my grant now …

(via BoingBoing)