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.

Last year, Smithsonian Magazine had a major article about origami and the incredible number of folds that can be made on a single small piece of paper like a dollar bill. Computer programs are also used to identify the number and location of folds for “Olympic level folders.”

For more, visit CommonGate Art, thanks Erin

Marc Horowitz: The Centre for Improved Living is at Hayward Project Space, London SE1 (0871 663 2501) from 18 March to 13 April

Marc Horowitz: The artist-cum-prankster has a hot date with Britain
by Nicholas Barber
The Independent
9 March 2008

Nicholas Barber meets the man who invited thousands of strangers to dinner and was voted one of America’s most eligible bachelors

Marc Horowitz’s website is well named: ineedtostopsoon.com. You probably haven’t heard of Horowitz, but if you’re curious about art, comedy and the ways the internet is blurring the distinctions between them, you might log on to his site intending to glance at it for a moment, only to find the minutes slipping into hours. Even while the words “I need to stop soon” are echoing round your head, there’s always the temptation to click on one more link.

The biggest time-swallowers are the amiably rough-around-the-edges YouTube videos of Horowitz’s Pythonesque sketches, from the Underwear Trying-on Contest to the operetta about how he invented the internet. Get past them and you come to the video tours of Horowitz’s gallery shows in Paris, Geneva and Como. Each exhibition is titled The Centre for Improved Living and is stocked with sculptures, sketches and posters that could, in a semi-ironic way, make life easier. Among the exhibits are a rug for sweeping things under, a kit that enables you to take revenge on noisy neighbours, and a card which reads “I’m sorry for breaking into your bank”. (”Just in case you break into a bank, you have an apology letter already written,” explains Horowitz.)

Also on the website are videos of Horowitz’s performance art, including his Errand Feasibility Study, for which he rode around San Francisco on a pack mule. And once you move on from the videos, there are suggested daily activities and photos which reveal that Horowitz, aged 30, has a certain kind of nerdy chic. There are even doodles and hand-drawn T-shirts available for a few dollars apiece.

Watch Mark Horowitz’s ‘I Invented the Internet’: (more…)

Submitted by Peter Moosgaard:

In 2006, Italian artist Gianni Motti presented a piece of soap, he claimed to be made out of Silvio Berlusconis body fat.

Motti claimed to have good contacts at the clinic where the former Italian Prime Minister had his cosmetic surgery. The removed body fat from his face is now a piece of art called Mani Pulite, which translates “clean hands”, a statement on Berlusconi’s assumed connections to corruption and the mafia. The soap was sold for 15,000 Euros to a private collector.

Other projects by Motti include staging his death and, with artist Christoph Buchel, exhibiting the U.S. rent for Guantanamo in form of uncashed checks, which Fidel Castro gave to him as a present.

Guantanamo Initiative

From Art Cornwall site:

In response to the illegality of the U.S Government’s lease on the land at Guantanamo Bay, currently used as a U.S Naval base and penal colony, Christoph Buchel and Gianni Motti collaborate with La Biennale di Venezia to officially request a new lease from the Cuban government on said land. Further, the Guantanamo Initiative seeks to transform this contentious land from a military base into a cultural base.

In addition to displaying treaties and documents that expose the illegitimacy of the U.S. lease contract imposed on Cuba in 1903, the exhibition at the Arsenale presents 47 annual rent checks issued by the United States to the Cuban Government since 1959 - all of which the Republic of Cuba has refused to cash. The exhibition of uncashed U.S. treasury checks exists in anticipation of a museum that the Cuban Government plans to build for these cheques when the land at Guantanamo Bay is finally restored to Cuba.

Buchel and Motti July 2005

photo of Mani Pulite: Mark Vallen’s Art for a Change
photo of Gianni Motti: ead.nb.admin.ch

Related Links:

Viktor & Rolf Dream On
by Christina Binkley
Wall Street Journal
February 27, 2008

“NO!”

Enough is enough. I was intrigued last season by the three-dimensional violins built into clothes by Viktor & Rolf. And I absolutely loved the show they did a year ago when models were outfitted with framed apparatus so they could carry their own lighting and sound systems. It was great theater and, since you couldn’t see the clothes at all, it highlighted the nature of fashion shows, which have more to do with the production than with the clothes.

But now we have V&R’s three-dimensional words build into clothes — a “NO!” rising up off a model’s shoulders and emerging like a hunchback behind. Lots of “NO!” painted on models’ faces. And “DREAM ON” or “WOW” similarly built into clothes. To which I say, “Huh?”

The gold staples used in place of sewing on many garments were interesting. But apparently, this had to do with a protest against fast fashion, which is like a protest against fashionable clothes for the poor and middle class — just a little too Marie-Antoinette for me. I share the fashion industry’s concern that valued artisans are losing jobs to poorly paid Chinese factory workers, but fast fashion isn’t the problem: economics, and environmental and labor laws is.

Some designers — I’m thinking of folks like Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto here — create fine art with their clothes, but this isn’t that.

It was more like a schoolboy’s prank.

Read more about Viktor & Rolf’s Fall 2008 collection:

Submitted by Andrew Dietz:

Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats discovers the last true folk artists remaining: 50 leyland cypress trees. Watch the drama unfold as these trees, outfitted with easels, paper and pencils, communicate through art…seriously.

The Agrifolk Art Movement part #1 (4:43):

Part #2 — The Process (2:50):

Part #3 — Day 2 (5:17):

Videos created by Atlanta-based director Eyekiss

Related article:

Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia
The Moment Art Changed Forever
At the Tate Modern, London
Now through May 26, 2008

From the Tate Modern Web site:

Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia were at the cutting edge of art in the first half of the twentieth century, and made a lasting impression on modern and contemporary art. Duchamp invented the concept of the ‘readymade’: presenting an everyday object as an artwork, Man Ray pioneered avant-garde photographic and film techniques and Picabia’s use of kitsch, popular or low-brow imagery in his paintings undermined artistic conventions.

Their shared outlook on life and art, with a taste for jokes, irony and the erotic, forged a friendship that provided support and inspiration. At the heart of the Dada movement and moving in the same artistic circles, they discussed ideas and collaborated, echoing and responding to each other’s works. Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia explores their affinities and parallels, uncovering a shared approach to questioning the nature of art.

via artdaily.org

Seen on the North Carolina State University campus, by artist, Loki:

via Wooster Collective

Submitted by artist, Wayne Zebzda:

In 1982, a traffic island in San Francisco, with one lone tree, was turned into a national forest. The perimeter was fenced in, signage and an information box with pamphlets were installed. The site was patrolled by a life-size androgynous plywood ranger named Lou.

Skip Twitchell of Video West Magazine interviewed the artist Wayne Zebzda at the site:

The project was part of the 12th International Sculpture Conference.

Submitted by Steve Lambert:

The Davis Welcoming Committee was a one day event for commuters coming to and from the Davis Amtrak station from cities like Sacramento, Oakland, and San Jose.

Travelers were unexpectedly welcomed with free flowers, keys to the city, free popcorn, a marching band, and a gathering of people celebrating their arrival (or departure). Also greeting them was Scott Vermeire playing an unusual “Mayor” or as he called himself, the “King of the Town.”

The Davis Welcoming Committee was organized by Steve Lambert and Cynthia Yardley.

From Worth1000.com:

(more…)

Pretty Decorating: The Art of Nick Walker

Here’s Nick Walker, a stencil artist from Bristol, preparing for this, his first solo show, in LA. The video is a Romanywg Production.

via Wooster Collective

Speculation abounds about a new Banksy spotted outside the New Beverly Cinema in LA, the previous site of a maid sweeping trash under the wall.

via Wooster Collective and Kitsune Noir

Submitted by Peter Moosgaard:

Netherlands artist Helmut Smits combines the tasiest of ideas with great wit and feeling for spaces. At the same time he cleverly tries to hack our perception of public life. Here is a small selection from his amazing work:

Photo tip, 2004

His installation Photo tip offers the visitor the possibility of posing as a hostage on CNN. It is only made from wood, print, sandbags and a chair. How simple great work can be.

Another work consists of planting a tree in front of billboard. After some years the billboard should no longer be seen from the road. Only a (hopefully) fresh green tree.

Tree in front of billboard, 2006

(more…)

A Ball Bonanza at the Spanish Steps
by Mike Nizza
January 16, 2008
The Lede

Updated, 3:49 p.m., scroll for video.

A greyish 18th-century landmark in Rome was transformed into a colorful mess today when a half-million plastic balls were dumped at the top of the Spanish Steps.

The balls bounced downhill before filling the Barcaccia fountain, leaving surprised passers-by and tourists snapping pictures of a scene that recalled the indoor-playground ball pits that spark joyful frolicking by children of all ages.

Many people collected some of the balls and took them away as an “unforgettable souvenir of this event,” which was pulled off by Graziano Cecchini, the man who turned Trevi Fountain blood-red last October.

“It is an artistic operation that documents with art the problems that we have in Italy,” Mr. Cecchini said at the scene. He was later detained by police, news agencies reported. (more…)