A fantastical Victorian device enabling Londoners to see America is coming to life, created by artist Paul St George and produced by Artichoke, the creative group that brought The Sultan’s Elephant to London 2 years ago.

This way to New York - through a 40ft-long Telectroscope
by Robert Gore-Langton
The Times
May 3, 2008

The story goes that an eccentric Victorian engineer called Alexander Stanhope St George invented a mysterious device called a Telectroscope. This would allow its users to communicate visually over long distances via a network of tunnels – a kind of steam-age webcam.

St George’s fanciful project came to nought. But his great-grandson, the tricksy British artist Paul St George, says that he has discovered the existence of the Telectroscope in the family archives, and has set about completing it using modern technology.

His 21st-century Telectroscope will allow people at one end in London to see those at the other, in New York. It opens later this month, just by Tower Bridge. (more…)

From Mark Borkowski’s Borkowski Blog, May 6, 2008:

I have just been sent this release about a solo show by artist activists the “Vacuum Cleaner”. The group plans to sell £14,040 of Coke, Heroin and Hash as part of a gallery show. What a wonderful idea. Contemporary art is reaching new heights, mixing a PR stunt with art. Is it a wind up? I really don’t care, but I know where I’d like to be on Friday evening.

Get Ta Suck
A solo show by artist activist’s the vacuum cleaner.

Artist to sell £14,040 of drugs in Glasgow Gallery

Preview 09.05.08: 7-9.30 pm
Exhibition runs 10.05.08 – 18.05.08
Weds-Sun 12-6pm

+44 141
SWG3 - work@swg3.tv
100 Eastvale Place
G3 8QG

Glasgow based artist activist ‘the vacuum cleaner’ are planning to sell £14,040 of Coke, Smack and Soap Bar (Hash) as part of a gallery show at the Studio Warehouse, Glasgow.

The piece titled Smack, Soap Bar, Coke is one of a series of new works to be included in the groups first solo gallery show. The ‘enfants terrible’ of the Glasgow art scene will also be including some of their most controversial existing works; including The Ultimate Television Commercial, a remix of the Paris Hilton Sex Tape, Deep Throat and Coke bottles, the video hasn’t been seen since it was band from most of the internet last year. (more…)

[Editor’s note: Like the idea of creating your own coffin or urn? You may be a candidate for The Final Curtain, Joey Skaggs’ Disneyland-like memorial theme park for the dead…]

Buried in a tinny: US man shows eternal devotion to beer
Livenews.com.au
May 5, 2008

An American man loves his favourite beer so much, he’s had a coffin made to look like a can of the brew.

Bill Bramanti got a local sign company in Chicago Heights to make it look like a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer in its signature colours of red, white and blue.

“I actually fit, because I got in here,” he told Associated Press.

The 67-year-old has thrown a party and filled the coffin with ice and his favourite brew.

Bramati’s daughter at least sees some method to her father’s apparant madness.

“Why put such a great novelty piece up on a shelf in storage when you could use it only the way Bill Bramanti would use it?” she asked.

image: 2news.tv

Submitted by Rose Foster:

Yale student claims to make art from her induced miscarriages–but it’s a hoax [Editor’s note: see updates at the end in which she claims it is not a hoax]

Aliza Shvarts ‘Abortion Art’ Project a ‘Creative Fiction,’ Yale Says
by David Emery
About.com: Urban Legends
April 17, 2008

Yale art student Aliza Shvarts delivered a one-two punch to the media on Thursday, beginning with the announcement of her senior project: an exhibition chronicling a nine-month period during which she impregnated herself “as often as possible” with semen from voluntary donors then videotaped herself inducing miscarriages and preserving the bloody byproducts thereof. “I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts was quoted as saying in the Yale Daily News. She got her wish in spades. The announcement sent shock waves through the blogosphere, eliciting disgust and outrage from every quarter, expressed via headlines on the order of “The Art of Murder” and “Aliza Shvarts Is a Monster.”

Hours later came an announcement from the Yale University Office of Public Affairs stating that the art project was just that — art. “The entire project is … a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body,” read the statement by Yale spokesperson Helaine Klasky. “She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages.” (more…)

Submitted by André Gattolin:

Banksy, the well-known english street painter, strikes again, this time in the center of London, attacking the ’society of control’.

For more info –> (more…)

Dumpr.net presents: Museumr

Have you ever dreamt of your own exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art? A private gallery in Kunstmuseum Stuttgart? Have your art displayed in museum halls all around the world — eternal fame is just around the corner!

Click on this link. Select a photo. Select a museum image and voila! Your photo looks like it’s in a museum!

via News.Scene360

At the Modern, Art in a New York Minute
by Randy Kennedy
New York Times
April 11, 2008

There are several reasons you might want to stage an unauthorized group exhibition inside the fifth-floor restrooms at the Museum of Modern Art: to attract attention, to poke a little fun at a powerful institution, to make a satirical point about the high-dollar commercial art world, to invite your friends to watch you pull off a good goofball stunt.

Last Friday just before 6 p.m., when a group of young artists who are finishing master’s degrees at the School of Visual Arts entered the museum with strange bulges under their coats, they were motivated by all of those things. But one of the artists, Jonathan Hartshorn, who had already placed some of his drawings inside a MoMA bathroom and photographed them last month — in what he called his solo show there — had yet another reason for preferring its restrooms to those of other New York museums.

“The bathrooms are so clean, man,” said Mr. Hartshorn, 31, whose drawings often involve crosses, grotesque faces and cone-shaped masses. “Someone comes in to clean those things like once every 15 minutes. It almost looks like an exhibit space itself, it’s so clean.”

And so after his group-show colleagues — Brendan Carney, Thury Sigurthorsdottir and Scott Lawrence — went unobtrusively into the men’s and women’s rooms, one at a time, tag-team style, to hang (with tape) and place their photographs and sculptures in the bathroom, Mr. Hartshorn got down on the men’s restroom floor, draped himself with a shower curtain and began strewing flowers around the black tiles, in a performance-art piece that simultaneously evoked Casper the Friendly Ghost and Joseph Beuys. (more…)

From Wooster Collective:

Every time we start to think that street art is starting to get a bit tired and boring, along - out of nowhere - comes something that reconnects us with why we fell in love with street art in the first place.

photos: Trish

Here are two videos by artist Joshua Allen Harris:

(more…)

Newton Virus, along with two other Troika works — SMS Guerrilla Projector and the voice-surround sound-machine Exploded Monologues — is on exhibit at the ‘Design and the Elastic Mind’ show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York February 24 through May 12, 2008.

From Troika Art and Design Studio, London:

In the beginning were harmless computer viruses. Viruses born out of the wit of early computer adopters, viruses whose sole purpose was to surprise and amuse. A non-destructive form of artificial life.

We wanted to revive this golden era, and went on to create our first computer virus. We chose to do it for mac as the platform is still a virgin territory

Spice up your colleagues’ day with our Newton Virus, the first virus to introduce gravity to your laptop, causing the desktop icons to fall down as if subject to the gravitational pull from the real world.

Watch the video!

(more…)

A message from Joey Skaggs, editor of Pranks.com and Chair of the April Fools’ Day Parade Committee:

This year’s parade will be led by President George Bush and his entire cabinet. They will be given a 60-second lead and then pursued by an outraged lynch mob. We have a George Bush look-alike but want to make sure we have a large lynch mob to pursue him. So, anyone interested in participating, please do. Also, the more George Bush look-alikes the better.

Additionally, hooker look-alikes are welcome to join the Mayflower Hotel Suite Float featuring New York Governor Eliot “Dickhead” Spitzer.

All interested look-alikes should be at 59th Street and 5th Avenue no later than 11:30 am on April 1, 2008.

About the parade: New York City’s 23rd Annual April Fools’ Day Parade begins at 12 noon, Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. The parade route has changed temporarily due to construction in Washington Square Park. This year the parade will detour east across Fourteenth Street to Union Square where the post-parade festivities will begin.

The New York April Fools’ Day Parade was created in 1986 to remedy a glaring omission in the long list of New York’s annual ethnic and holiday parades. These events fail to recognize the importance of April 1st, the day designated to commemorate the perennial folly of mankind. In an attempt to bridge that gap and bring people back in touch with their inherent foolishness, the parade annually crowns a King of Fools from parading look-alikes.

The public is encouraged to participate, in or out of costume, with or without floats, and may join the procession at any point along the parade route. Floats can be no wider than 10 feet and no longer than 25 feet. They can be self-propelled, towed, pushed or pulled. Customized bicycles, tricycles, baby carriages and aerial balloons are welcome. The Parade Committee assumes no liability for damages caused by satire. All participants are costumed look-alikes. Parade floats and marchers must be at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue no later than 11:30 a.m.

Here’s the full April Fools’ Day Parade press release, which lists the floats and festivities already scheduled.